Potsdam Station (14 page)

As they walked away Effi breathed a huge sigh of relief. With any luck at all, they would sit out the last few days in the suburbs.

But first they had to reach this haven, and that, as soon became obvious, was easier imagined than done. There was no U-Bahn out to Friedrichshain, so their trip would be on the surface, and an air raid was almost guaranteed for later that morning. Travelling by tram would require at least one change, and with the service in its current state of repair might take most of the day. It would be safer to walk the four or five kilometres, but it wasn’t a part of Berlin that Effi knew at all well. She nipped back to the NSV desk, and tried to memorise the names of the streets they needed to take.

Rosa had stayed with their luggage in the middle of the concourse, and was now talking to their
Hitlerjugend
friends from the previous night, who had doubtless noticed her standing alone, and sallied forth to offer their protection. By the time Effi reached the threesome, Rosa had explained their circumstances, and the taller of the two had offered to escort them to their new home. She felt like refusing, but knew she was being foolish. The young man seemed nice enough, and he was no more to blame for the uniform than Paul had been. There had been a time, she remembered, when Paul had loved his shirt and shorts and ceremonial dagger. ‘That would be very kind of you,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you’re allowed to leave the station?’

He returned five minutes later with the necessary permission, and soon they were out in the open air. A blanket of grey cloud hung low above the city, threatening rain. They started walking up Frucht Strasse towards Küstriner Platz, the young man carrying Effi’s suitcase, she carrying Rosa’s. The buildings of the Eastern Goods Station were missing most of their roofs and some of their walls, but trains were still being loaded by squads of foreign prisoners. Küstriner Platz had suffered serious damage, with several buildings reduced to rubble, the square itself combed with craters.

On the far side, Frucht Strasse continued north towards Frankfurter Allee. As they walked the young man told them his name was Franz, and that his father had died at Stalingrad. They wouldn’t let him fight just yet, but when the Russians reached Berlin he planned to have his revenge. When Effi asked after his mother the boy shook his head. ‘She has a boyfriend now,’ he told them. ‘She doesn’t need me anymore.’

Approaching the elementary school on the corner of Frankfurter Allee they saw people lined up on the pavement, and a few moments later the roar of approaching vehicles provided a reason why. It was a military column heading out of the city, presumably bound for the not-so-distant Oder. It was mostly composed of trucks, all of which gave the impression of having been to Moscow and back. Two, Effi noticed, had French registration plates, so perhaps they’d gone with Napoleon.

There were also several horse-drawn guns and three well-worn tanks. Black-uniformed officers stood ramrod straight in each turret hatch, reminding Effi of Roman chariot riders. The tanks looked almost as ancient, but had probably come from the Spandau repair shops.

Turning her head to follow the procession, Effi suddenly caught sight of two men in leather coats. One chose that moment to glance in her direction, but seemed sufficiently reassured by her
Hitlerjugend
escort to resume his perusal of the passing column.

The noise was quite deafening, and the first sign of trouble was the sudden disappearance – like a Jack-in-a-box in reverse, she later remembered thinking – of one of the tank commanders. The hatch slammed shut and the tank accelerated, its treads whipping up a storm of brick dust. She was still wondering why when the first bomb exploded on the far side of the school, throwing earth and brick across Frankfurter Allee and up into the sky, and she was still looking round for Rosa when the second lanced down through the school roof and blew her off her feet.

If she passed out, it was only for a split second – the rest of the stick was exploding behind her, the school roof still crashing back to earth. There was pain and blood above her left ear, but otherwise she seemed uninjured. Raising her head, she could see people struggling to their feet.

But not Rosa. The girl was lying flat on her back a few metres away. Her eyes seemed to be closed.

‘Please no,’ Effi heard herself beg as she half crawled, half scrambled her way across the glass-strewn pavement. The girl’s suitcase had been blown open, her meagre possessions scattered across the stone.

She could see no blood. ‘Rosa! Rosa!’ she entreated

The eyes opened, took Effi in. The mouth tried hard to smile. ‘Am I all right?’ she asked.

‘I think you are,’ Effi told her, putting an arm around the girl’s neck and gently pulling her into a sitting position. Over Rosa’s shoulder she saw that Franz was collecting the clothes, and carefully folding each item before putting it into the suitcase. And that now he was reaching for the tell-tale blouse.

‘Franz,’ she said, but he had already seen the faded star. Ignoring Effi, he simply stared at it for several seconds, and then went on with his folding.

But by then it was too late. One of the leather coats had seen it – or perhaps only Franz’s reaction. He pushed the boy aside, knelt down beside the suitcase, and unfolded the blouse once more. ‘Ha!’ he said, and held it up for his partner to see.

The partner’s eyes swivelled to take in Effi and Rosa. ‘Jews!’ he said, with the triumphant surprise of someone who had just happened upon a pair of living dinosaurs. ‘You’re under arrest,’ he added superfluously.

Effi looked at the two of them. There was no kindness in their faces, and not much in the way of intelligence: nothing, in short, to which she might appeal as one human being to another. She helped Rosa to her feet, swaying slightly as she did so. Her head wound was beginning to throb.

‘Don’t leave me,’ Rosa said numbly.

‘I won’t.’

Franz had closed the girl’s suitcase. He gave it to her, and then looked up at Effi, offering a silent apology with his eyes.

‘Thank you for your help,’ she told him, picking up her own suitcase.

‘This way,’ one of her captors insisted, and gave her a gratuitous shove. She stumbled down onto her knees, and her head started whirling around. A hand grabbed her upper arm, and she could hear Rosa screaming: ‘Leave her alone! Leave her alone!’

‘I’m all right,’ she managed to say. ‘Help me up,’ she told the man, and much to her surprise, he did. A crowd of women was watching them, and Effi found herself wondering how many of them had seen her in the movies.

They were ushered across the wide street, and up the opposite sidewalk, the two leather coats striding along behind them. They seemed in ridiculously high spirits, and Effi could almost feel them preening themselves when a ready-made audience of women erupted from the Memeler U-Bahn station. Effi had not heard the all-clear, but the air raid was obviously over. Come to think of it, she hadn’t heard a warning either. Even the sirens were admitting defeat.

The nearest police station was a hundred metres further up the road. The front desk was untended, but voices could be heard below – the local
Orpo
officers were either still waiting for the all-clear or wholly engrossed in a game of cards. One Gestapo man headed for the stairs while the other stood watch over their prize. Lowering herself onto a bench, Effi still felt a little woozy, but after a minute or so something seemed to shift. Her wound continued to throb, but she no longer felt like passing out.

The other Gestapo man reappeared with a suitably chastened sergeant, and soon the former was describing their capture on the telephone. His voice grew less jaunty as the call progressed, and Effi deduced that their future was no longer in his hands. He confirmed as much when he came out. ‘Dobberke’s people will collect them later,’ he told his partner. Catching Effi’s eye, he hesitated for a moment, as if there was something he wanted to say, then continued out through the doorway. His partner followed without so much as a glance in their direction.

‘Are they going to kill us?’ Rosa asked in a whisper.

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Effi said, although she really had no idea. ‘The war’s almost over,’ she added, as if that was bound to make a difference. The girl looked less frightened than she should, and Effi had the strange feeling that their arrest had almost come as a relief.

‘I’m sorry about my blouse,’ Rosa said after a few moments. ‘I should have let you burn it.’

‘No,’ Effi said. ‘I’m glad you kept it. This isn’t your fault. It’s just bad luck. But don’t worry, I think we’ll be all right.’

‘We deserve to be,’ Rosa said. ‘That’s what my mother used to say – we deserve to be safe.’

‘We certainly do,’ Effi agreed, laughing in spite of herself.

The sergeant’s face appeared in the hatch, with a look that suggested she’d lost her mind.

It was two hours before ‘Dobberke’s people’ arrived, two hours in which every policeman on the premises found time to give them the once-over. Only one man looked actually pleased to see them there, whereas several sighed with either sympathy or exasperation. Most gave them mystified stares, as if they found it hard to believe that Jews were still walking their streets. The uniformed Gestapo who came to collect them were obviously more used to dealing with fugitive aliens, and shoved them through the doors of the Black Maria with hardly a second glance.

There was a small barred window in the back, but Effi already knew where they were going. She had heard of Dobberke: one of the Jews she had sheltered at the Bismarck Strasse flat in 1943 had escaped from the collection camp on Grosse Hamburger Strasse, which Dobberke then ran. All Jews captured in Berlin had been taken and held there, until their numbers were sufficient to justify a transport. A year later another fugitive had told her that the Grosse Hamburger Strasse camp had been closed, and its functions transferred to the old Jewish Hospital out in Wedding. And that Dobberke was now in charge out there. The
greifer
– those Jews who scoured Berlin’s streets and cafés for U-boats on the Gestapo’s behalf – were also based at the hospital.

In most situations, Russell had once told her, there were some things beyond an individual’s control and some things that weren’t, and what mattered was realising which was which. He’d been talking about some politician – she couldn’t even remember which one – but the principle held true for all sorts of things, from acting in movies to surviving the Nazis. Or, in this particular case, a Jewish collection camp. So which things in this situation were still in her control?

Her identity, above all. Who was she claiming to be? They had assumed she was a Jew, and she hadn’t denied it, mostly for fear that she and Rosa would be sent to different fates. But now…

What did she want? To live, of course, but not at the cost of abandoning the girl.

Were they still killing Berlin’s Jews? They couldn’t send them east anymore, so were they kil ing them here? Was there a gas chamber out at the Jewish Hospital? It was hard to imagine such a thing in the heart of Berlin. Even the Nazis had shrunk from that – it was why they had bothered to move the Jews east before killing them. But maybe now they had nothing to lose.

If she wasn’t a Jew, then who was she? Not the film actress Effi Koenen, who was still wanted for treason – a definite death sentence there. And not Erna von Freiwald, who was probably now being hunted in connection with the Lübeck-bound fugitives. Helping the Jews might not see her executed, but helping those involved in the plot to kill Hitler probably would. So Dagmar Fahrian, the woman whose papers she now carried? Dagmar had to be a better bet, particularly if Fürstenwalde soon fell to the Russians. Perhaps Dagmar’s sister had married a Jew before the Nuremberg Laws came into force, and then given birth to a
mischling
daughter after that became illegal. Perhaps the sister had died, and the Jewish husband had sent the child to Dagmar for safe keeping, before disappearing himself.

As a story, it had a lot to commend it. She and Rosa would be kept together, and both would have a better chance of survival – Effi as a misguided aryan, Rosa as a
mischling
. As the van zigzagged its way up the rubble-strewn Müller Strasse she gave Rosa a whispered account of their new mutual history.

The girl listened intently, only frowning slightly at the end. ‘But we will get our real history back one day?’ she half asked, half insisted.

‘We certainly will,’ Effi promised her. She wondered what Rosa would make of the fact that her new protector had once been a film star. Through the rear window she could see the S-Bahn bridge by Wedding Station. They were almost there.

A few minutes later the van pulled to a halt. The back door was flung open, and one of the uniforms gestured them out. Stepping down onto the street, Effi saw that they had stopped beside a tall iron archway. A plaque announced the address as Schulstrasse 78, and the building behind it as a Pathology Department.

Beyond the arch there was a two-storey gatekeeper’s lodge, and this, they soon discovered, was used for administration. A woman took their papers, timed their arrival, and told the bloodstained Effi that she would be taken to the hospital for medical treatment. When Effi asked that Rosa be allowed to accompany her, the woman sighed in exasperation, but made no objection. A young orderly escorted them down a long underground corridor and up several flights of stairs to the medical facility, where a nurse with a Jewish star found Effi a trolley to lie on, and then disappeared in search of a doctor. The man who turned up ten minutes later looked like a
Der Stürmer
stereotype of a Jew, but lacked the star to prove it. He examined Effi’s head wound with none-too-gentle fingers, pronounced it superficial, and marched off, shouting over his shoulder that the nurse should apply a bandage.