The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (25 page)

The morning her building was bombed Lottie collapsed in the street. Rescue workers carried Mrs. Preutzmann up from the blazing neighbor building before it too fell in on itself. The landlady awoke screaming for her husband. A fireman covered Lottie with a blanket, then she was left alone. She curled beside her cello, locking out behind closed eyes the crashes, sirens, shouts. A wailing crowd milled in Regensburger Strasse. Volunteers handed out hot drinks and bland buns. In the afternoon, with the sun cloaked in smoke, Lottie rose. Her body carried an ache that seemed to outweigh the cello case; she dragged it and herself to Charlottenburg. All the trains were stopped, there was so much wreckage across the tracks. The whole city was ignited. One train had barreled on fire into the Anhalter Station, slamming into the station like a flaming arrow. In backyards, winter piles of coal burned, giant anthills of angry red. They will smolder for weeks. The air was polluted with the cremation of buildings and escaping gas. Lottie’s progress through the city was held up by uprooted trees, broken telegraph poles, torn wires, craters, and mounds of smoking rubble. The fire-borne wind hurled roof tiles, gutters, and glass shards into the streets. She staggered through it all to Mutti.

When Freya opened her door, she wept to see her daughter. She took Lottie upstairs to bed and tended to the many scratches and cuts on her face and arms. She soaked her daughter’s blistered hands in Epsom salts. The two did not talk much. For three days Lottie lay in Freya’s bedroom, wrapped in quilts. Her mother slept on the sofa in the room or in a guest bed. She shuttled in hot tea and soups. Freya sat on the edge of the mattress resting her hand on Lottie’s foot or her forehead. Lottie fixed on the ceiling or shut her eyes. The Galiano stood in the corner like a patient friend, waiting for her to rouse and play.

On the fourth morning, Lottie left the house with the cello. She was weak and downhearted, but there was a rehearsal for the Philharmonic. She could not miss it, even with swollen hands, her place with the BPO as tenuous as it is. Freya walked with her to the U-bahn station, carrying the cello. The two kissed cheeks. Despite her worries, Lottie felt her spirits stir. A glimmer inside her hoped everything might be all right. Her mother could make it so. Lottie had not lost everything; not her cello, and not Mutti.

At dusk when she returned, Freya sat her down in the den. She took her daughter’s hands. Her eyes slid sideways to the basement door several times. Then Freya took a deep breath and spoke.

“You’re feeling better.”

“Yes.”

“Good. I can tell you now.”

Lottie blinked.

“I’ve taken in a Jew.”

Lottie shook her head, balking at understanding what she’d just heard.

Freya repeated. “I’ve taken in a Jew.”

Lottie jerked back her hands as though from the maws of mad dogs.

“You’ve done what?”

“He’s in the basement.”

Lottie rattled her head. “No, no, no.”

“Lottie, listen to me. He has nowhere else to go. He’s been hiding from the Nazis for two years. If we turn him out he’s dead.”

Comprehension crashed into Lottie’s brain like the burning train at the station.

“He’s dead?
He’s
dead? What about us? We’re dead if he stays here.”

“No.”

“Yes! He’s got to go. Right now!”

“No. He’s already been here for a month. He’s going to stay. To the end.”

“A month! You’ve ...”

Lottie leaped from the sofa. She ran down the hall to the basement door, envisioning for the first time the demon behind it. She spoke to the door, an exorcism.

“Listen. You hear me? You’ve got to leave. We can’t have you here. Get out!”

The door was silent. Lottie feared the doorknob, what she might see if she turned it, moist and white, the Jew in the darkness, the Jew eclipsing her life.

She put her hand on the knob.

Freya laid her hand over Lottie’s. Her mother’s grip was shocking, hard.

Her tone was calm, not just a mother’s words but a protector’s, firm and righteous.

“Get away from this door, Lottie.”

As strong as Lottie’s hands were, Freya pried her fingers from the door.

She took Lottie by the elbow and towed her back to the sofa. With a yank the two women sat.

“Mutti.”

“No.”

“Do you understand the danger you’ve put us in?”

“Yes.”

Lottie needed to explain it anyway to her mother, who couldn’t possibly understand, or else she wouldn’t have done this. “If we’re caught, we’ll be shot. Right outside in the street, in front of your house. The SS will
shoot
us, Mutti.”

“And what will they do to him if he’s caught?”

“I don’t know.”

Freya was stricken. She wagged her head, solemn, almost a shudder.

“That’s the worst of all possible answers.”

Lottie stood. She wanted to look down on her mother, that was her mood.

“Mutti. We’re not heroes.”

Freya also stood.

“We’re not monsters. Today, in Berlin and everywhere in Germany, that’s all there is. It’s a choice and every German makes it. Do nothing, know nothing. Or act. Monster or hero. That’s all there is for the whole world until this is over.”

Freya put her hands to her hips. She spread her legs.

“Lottie,
Liebchen,
I only put myself in this danger. I had no idea you’d be coming to live with me. You’re here now and you’re welcome, of course. But I’ve made my choice in this matter. You’ve got to make yours.”

The arguments lasted for days. Lottie demanded to know how they could feed a third mouth when they could barely scrape by themselves? Their ration cards are already growing more and more useless, government stores are drying up. The few remaining shops are being burned out from the bombings. They have not enough money for black-market food.

Who else knows about the Jew? Will Mutti keep her mouth shut and not tell her friends, not want to show off how good she’s being, how heroic? Who among her acquaintances will trade in Mutti’s and Lottie’s lives for an extra portion of horsemeat?

How can the Jew be trusted? How does she know he’s not a spy, just waiting to grab her and some ring of imagined conspirators?

Who’s to say how long he’ll keep his word and stay put? That he won’t go crazy in the dank basement and go out for a stroll? It’ll all be over then.

What happens if the house is bombed and he’s found in the basement, moaning, ”Get me out, get me out.” After they rescue him, they shoot him. And then Lottie and Mutti. He’s a Jew in their basement.

Why give a stranger such control over them?

Freya held her ground. Lottie caved in. She had no choice. She has nowhere else to go. Like the Jew They are trapped in Mutti’s house together. But trapped or not, Lottie will not acknowledge him.

She finds it creepy that he sits there on the top step, listening, waiting for someone to walk by, capture a word or two outside his barrier. He perches there probably even when the house is empty. What kind of human being is it who can tolerate such darkness, silence, hatred, danger, suspicion, fear? The Jew scares her for his power, not only over her life, but what it must take to withstand his own.

At night Lottie awakes from nightmares and stares in the cold gloom at the door to her room. He’s down there, crouched on the top step behind the door. The nightmares must come from him. She’s afraid he’ll sneak out and touch her while she sleeps, that she’ll wake up and find him over her.

Mutti says he’s a wonderful man. A teacher of history, he knows all sorts of tales. His own is a horrible story. If Lottie would only let him tell it to her, she would see there’s no choice but to help him. He’s alone. His people, all his people, terrible, terrible.

For the two weeks she has been in Mutti’s household, the Jew has respected Lottie’s wish not to be seen or heard by her. She has never said it directly to him; she has not spoken one word to him since she demanded that he leave; but he has heard her say it to Mutti. Lottie thinks he might not even be real. He might be nothing more than an empty wish by Mutti, a fantasy that she could be so brave as to help a Jew.

When Lottie is out of the house, she doesn’t know what he does. Does he come out and sip tea with Mutti? Do they chat on the sofa? No, he must stay hidden. If a neighbor happened by, if a curtain were left opened to the street ... no, the consequences of the smallest slipup will be awful.

Lottie watches her mother move the soup kettle to the burner. The skillet begins to spit grease. The Jew behind the door can smell food coming, he rises like a goldfish to it. Lottie cannot stand the house, the malaise and tension, another moment. How can the Jew sit day after day, weeks without light, with such silence? How can a human being live like a rat? She wants to rap the door hard with her toe, make him jump, tumble down the steps.

Lottie whirls away from the kitchen, arms bound around her. She stomps the long walk to the front parlor. She goes to the sofa and folds with a bounce. It’s quiet in the parlor, the kitchen is a long way back. The rooms in Mutti’s house are narrow, and there are a lot of them. The building is a two-story row house, with a face of fat gray stone. The Gothic facade has been marred by shrapnel and some windows have been shattered, but Freya has been lucky with the bombings. And fortunate with the authorities; there’s room here for three more families.

She goes to her cello case. She takes out the Galiano, it is shiny and ancient. Placing a chair in the center of the room, she arranges the instrument between her knees. She hugs the cello, lays her head on its cool wooden shoulder. The Galiano is innocent, she thinks, perfect and good. In its big chest is nothing but the songs of maestros. Lottie knows how to caress it to bring them out, the music in the cello’s breath. She strokes its waist. Why are we here now, she wonders, you and me in this awful time and place? She’s ashamed that the Galiano—two hundred years old, it has cried and laughed on stages in Vienna, Rome, Paris, London, seen centuries of opulence and honor—must find itself today in Berlin.

Lottie lifts her head. Her cheek wears the flat kiss of the cello.

She flicks her glance at the kitchen, to her cooking, courageous mother. Then to the basement door, behind which an unknown manner of man suffers for deliverance.

Fine for the two of you, Lottie thinks.

Now, listen. This is what I can do.

She inclines her head, her eyes half closed. Lottie descends to the place inside her where the music waits with its arms out, always, like a child to be lifted. She draws the bow across the strings, slowly, the opening strain to the first solo of Schumann’s Concerto for Cello in A minor, Opus 129. This is Lottie’s dream piece. She’s practiced it a hundred times. One day she will play the solo in front of the Berlin Philharmonic and adoring thousands. In her mind they’re in their seats in the theater now.

Her playing builds with the work. This is not her private, rehearsal tone but full concert pitch. Her vibrato and bow stroke would fill the Beethoven Hall to the rafters were she there. Lottie lifts her chin, her head undulates left and right with the sound, the cello charms her as though out of a basket. Under lowered lids, Lottie sees her mother in the doorway.

The music broods for many measures, exploring the lower registers of the cello, the sounds of a father weeping. Then the music becomes the keen of a mother, high-pitched, sweeping into a quicker lament, the beating of fists. Lottie surrenders to the pain and the selfishness of her genius. She is strapped to the passages and cascades with them. She is oblivious to all else but the cello and her cause, to play as powerfully as the Jew, to play as loftily as anything Mutti might behold of herself.