The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (15 page)

The alien laborers get the worst of it, thinks Lottie. There are almost a million of them in Berlin, brought in from conquered countries to replace the German men gone to the front. The western European workers, the Dutch, French, Belgians, get better treatment than the rest. They at least get German food ration cards and are allowed into the shelters during raids. But not the eastern prisoners, the Slavs and Poles. They must wear humiliating insignia on their prison garb, the Poles a yellow-and-violet
“P”
Ukrainians a blue-and-white
“Ost.”
They’re fed meagerly, and must endure the bombings exposed in their flimsy barracks. The most malicious treatment is reserved for the Russian prisoners of war. These wretches are given the most difficult, filthy, and dangerous toil. All contact between them and German citizens is prohibited. When they die, they’re dumped into unmarked graves. The Nazis make certain that every captured Red soldier is starved and worked to death in the streets and wreckage of Berlin, where all can see. To the Nazi mind, this is good for morale.

Lottie reaches the U-bahn station and boards a train. The aboveground tracks carry her to Wilmersdorf through a moonscape of desolation. She looks out to the passing tableaus of hungry, degraded men tramping through the alleys guarded by codgers or boys; wounded soldiers in slings, with canes or stumps, swathed heads, patched and empty eye sockets; wandering refugees who have retreated to Berlin from the path of the Russian advance, villagers and city dwellers towing trunks, arms laden with children, telling terrible stories to anyone who will listen and feed them; once-fashionable women now bundled in tattered coats, wearing shoes woven of straw. Through these cold scenes outside the train window Lottie rides to her flat to pick up her cello, don her tuxedo, and perform Mozart and Brahms for an appreciative audience. The seeking, haunted, even missing, eyes of the soldiers and citizens in the streets watch her speed past. They say, The Russians are coming. The city is dying. But Lottie replies from the hurtling train, I play the cello. I must, I will, have protection, somehow.

At her flat, Lottie changes into her concert uniform and nets her hair. Being the only woman in the BPO, and a temporary one at that, she must dress at home, while the men prepare themselves in their private locker room. Unless there is a performance, she does not put on makeup. It’s viewed as indulgent and unpatriotic. But today she is allowed, and people who see her carrying her big cello case will smile, knowing she’s a musician and special in lipstick and a touch of rouge. She lingers in the mirror, enjoying herself in a tux. The look is vintage Berlin hermaphrodilia, recalling those prewar days of cabarets and sexual libertinism Berliners are renowned for around the world. Lottie knows she would never engage in such permissiveness herself, but she smiles at her image in the mirror nonetheless for she is proud that she is beautiful and that today there is a BPO concert.

Lugging her cello onto two more trains, by two-thirty she reaches the Admirals Palace near the Friedrichstrasse railway station. On stage, Lottie takes her chair, fourth cello. She settles the instrument against her shoulder and nods around to the men, who acknowledge her arrival. She warms her fingers and her bow hand, she tunes the strings, which have gone out from the temperature changes of her travel here. Everyone on stage, one hundred and five of them, does the same in his way with his own instrument. The collective sound is haphazard and disjointed, it is also the welcoming womb of performance to any classical musician. Lottie feels warm and connected. The despair of Berlin outside, the world’s hateful spasm, is chased away by the flying fingers and pursed lips making these awful, wonderful, vintage sounds.

Dr. Gerhart von Westermann, the orchestra manager, walks on stage. The musicians rest their preparations. Von Westermann steps up on the conductor’s rostrum, he wants to speak. The players seem startled. Lottie has never heard the man say one word, he does his job with brilliance, but in the background of the orchestra.

Von Westermann welcomes them all and wishes them a fine concert on behalf of Furtwängler’s final appearance. The rotund man clears his throat, then swallows.

“There is a concern,” he says.

He adds nothing for several seconds, until one of the trumpeters prods, “Yes, Gerhart?”

“There is a, um, problem.”

Several musicians now say, “Yes, Gerhart?”

“The, ah, the entire Philharmonic may be called into the
Volkssturm.”

The men of the orchestra are unbalanced by this sudden news. Brass horns bump music stands, tubas are put down, many men stand in anger, the violinists grip their instruments like chickens by the neck.

“No! Unheard of! Impossible! We were promised! Exempt, we’re exempt!”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, please. Gentlemen.”

The musicians do not return to their chairs or soften their voices until von Westermann steps off the rostrum in frustration to leave the stage. At this they quiet as if by a conductor’s baton. The orchestra manager reascends the riser.

“There is nothing definite at present. But you must be made aware that Herr Goebbels has made statements to the effect that no one, absolutely no one, will be exempt from service now that the Russian advance is picking up speed across Poland. He is revoking all exemptions. The Red Army may be in Berlin at any time.”

Someone calls, “What about the Americans, the English?”

“I know as much about the intentions of the Americans and the British as you do, which I will suppose is nothing. Right now it seems that anyone who claims to know anything is worried about the Russians.”

A tympany drummer with a maid’s voice unlike his instrument, high and quavering, calls out the question Lottie is sure is on every man’s mind.

“Well, what are you going to do?”

“Do? Me? What can I do?”

Voices raise again. “Something! Talk to Goebbels! We’re the BPO, for God’s sake! Goebbels has always been behind us, go talk to him! Talk to Speer!”

Lottie sits in the heart of this pandemonium, afraid for her own purposes. Certainly as a woman she will not be called into the
Volkssturm
like these hapless men of the Philharmonic. But her membership among them has provided her with status and connections. How can Goebbels do this? The orchestra provides the only citywide distraction and pride left for the miserable citizenry of Berlin, for the great and small alike, Nazis, frightened soldiers, grieving mothers. Every Monday the Philharmonic’s performances are broadcast to all of Berlin and the fighting troops. Through Lottie’s quartet, she has made precious money, been paid in barter food, eaten hot meals. If the BPO and with it her quartet are disbanded, if these tuxedoed men are given guns and marched off to meet the Russians, her world will fall with theirs.

The only chance is if the Americans and British reach Berlin first.

The men continue to haggle with von Westermann for some course of action, but it’s clear at present there is none. Hopelessness abides in their scattershot voices. In the acoustics of the Admirals Palace, their pleas sound orchestral, as random and unmusical as was earlier the tuning of their instruments.

* * * *

FEBRUARY

et every one

Kill a hun

Winston Churchill

oldiers of the Red Army!

Kill the Germans!

Kill all Germans! Kill! Kill! Kill!

From a leaflet dropped to advancing

troops, composed by the Russian

propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg

signed by Stalin

* * * *

THREE

February 2, 1945, 10:15
a.m.

Aboard the U.S. Navy cruiser
Quincy,

Grand Harbor

Valletta, Malta

T
he president squeezes his daughter’s hand.

“Look at Winston,” he says. “That cigar he’s smoking is so big, I can see it from here. It’s like he’s got a dog’s leg in his mouth.”

Anna laughs. “Oh my God, you’re right!” Three hundred yards off, aboard the British cruiser HMS
Orion,
the Prime Minister has shouldered his way between the white sleeves of two seamen in the long, perfect queue of swabbies gathered at the ship’s port rail. Churchill and his cheroot are spotted with ease, he is the only dark, animated blot in the line of British seamen, all arranged at motionless attention. He waves to the
Quincy
steaming alongside, at the President and Anna seated on the bridge.

Roosevelt sweeps back his blue cape, doffs his old cloth cap, and raises the hat in salute to the Prime Minister. Churchill seems to bounce on his heels in excitement. The man loves a show, thinks Roosevelt. Anna keeps laughing, her bright blue eyes like opals rolling in a palm, jumping from Churchill’s animation to her father’s face. She’s a handsome woman, Roosevelt thinks, a beautiful gal. Her voice is a song of excitement: “Isn’t this fun? Isn’t this splendid?”

The
Quincy
makes toward its berth in Valletta harbor, slipping broadside to the
Orion
. When the two are abreast, a flight of five RAF Spitfires in V-formation roars overhead, flying low enough for Roosevelt to see the pilots salute in their cockpits. Before the echoes of the plane engines have drained from the surrounding Malta hills, brass bands aboard both naval ships strike up “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Every sailor in sight, and there are hundreds on both vessels, snaps taut to salute the American flag steaming into harbor.

The President leaves his hat in his lap and leans back his head to play the sun across his cheeks. The morning is warming and clear. His daughter’s hand held in his squeezes his fingers and pulls out. Anna says, “Oh, Daddy, there’s Sarah. I’m going to wave. I’ll be right back.” She goes to the rail to greet Churchill’s daughter. He watches her step away, two sailors break attention to make room for her, she’s as tall as the seamen. She goes up on tiptoe. Roosevelt guesses that all the stiff sailors around her want to look down at her legs.

The feel of the ship is good, old, and familiar. He grew up sailing on the lakes around Hyde Park in upstate New York. For seven years he was assistant secretary of the Navy. He feels himself stronger today than when he was in wintry Washington. The rest and relaxation of the Atlantic and now the sunny Mediterranean have restored him.

At the White House he’s treated like a prisoner of his health. Everywhere he turns, there it is; in the news, the Republicans keep bringing it up, in his daily routine. The topic taints everything. His “ticker” doctor, heart specialist Bruenn, takes his blood pressure every afternoon and sets him out pills. His chief physician, Admiral McIntire, comes into his bedroom each morning and watches him eat breakfast in his pajamas and read his papers, gleaning God knows what medical evidence. He’s restricted to less than four hours of concentrated work per day, including only one hour of meetings and interviews. He takes naps. Massages. Medication. Doctors creep in the folds of the White House like mice, multiplying every time there’s some setback, a stomachache, a fever, a nasal congestion. But on this voyage, the gentle roll of the ship has helped him sleep late every day, until ten or eleven. At noon, he lunched with Anna and some of his cronies. Afternoons, the President lounged on the deck, sorting stamps or reading official documents. At five came happy hour, followed by dinner and a movie.

On the seventh day at sea, January thirtieth, Roosevelt celebrated his sixty-third birthday. Anna threw him a party with five cakes. Three were the same size, representing the first three terms in office. The fourth cake was huge, for the current term, and the last was a little cake with a question mark of frosting in the center, for a possible fifth term. Roosevelt laughed for the sake of the crowd around him, and won all the money at poker that evening. But he worried into the night over the question mark, whether or not it was on the wrong cake. His doctors don’t tell him much. They don’t talk to anyone but each other. Roosevelt could insist they level with him, but he doesn’t ask. They have their jobs. He has his.