The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (26 page)

Lottie listens. She knows her performance is compelling. The cello is a treasure box she sweeps clean, the Schumann piece is her broom; she leaves nothing inside the instrument, bringing out every bauble and secret of it for her mother and the Jew to marvel at.

When she is done, her eyes are fully closed. She lowers the bow gracefully, with flourish. By instinct of her imagination, she stands to the applause of the concert hall. She lifts her head and there is Freya clapping, a dish towel over her shoulder. Mutti’s eyes are red-rimmed.

Freya says, “Bravo, child. Bravo.” She pulls the towel off her shoulder to dry her eyes.

The clapping continues.

It carries from far down the hall. From the basement.

Freya beams at her daughter, but only for a moment. She turns away, walking a few steps into the dining room. She calls, “I told you she plays beautifully. Doesn’t she?”

The single clapping continues, softened by distance and walls. Lottie wants it to stop. This is wrong, a violation of the rules. He should not become real. It was the bargain they all made. He’s clapping. He’s there. The Jew behind the door speaks to Lottie.

Freya returns fully to the parlor. She has been moved.

“Liebchen,
that was magnificent. Was that for me?”

Lottie fumbles with the bow and the cello, putting them in the case. The clapping does not die out. He’s there. A Jew in their house.

“No.”

“Well.” Freya folds the kitchen towel. “It was practice, then. Wonderful.”

Make him stop, Lottie thinks. It’s ridiculous.

Freya cocks her head backward, to the basement. “Listen to him.”

“I have to get ready. There’s a concert at four.”

“I didn’t know. Will you be playing the Schumann?”

Stupid question. Stupid mother.

“No.”

The clapping stops.

Freya stays in the room while Lottie stows the Galiano. Lottie replaces the chair and makes for the stairs. Freya speaks to stop her.

“Liebchen.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. You can see what that meant to him.”

Lottie imagines the history teacher on his dark stoop. He probably cried too.

Making no reply, she climbs the steps, aggravated. She did a self-centered thing. An awful thing. She played with all her might to humble them both, show them who was extraordinary among the three. Plenty of people suffer, everyone in Berlin. Millions are brave. But who possesses Lottie’s gift? A handful in the world.

Mutti chose to see Lottie’s vanity as noble. Mutti warped her daughter’s egotism into generosity. The Jew clapped a full minute after the music stopped. He’s ludicrously appreciative. The two of them stole the music from Lottie. They wept and molded it into their own images, for their purposes, further proof that they’re the most special and good of anyone.

Lottie changes into the tuxedo and puts up her hair. Twenty minutes later she lands in the foyer. The cello is by the door, beside a paper sack of salami sandwiches. Lottie dons her overcoat, and without saying goodbye takes both packages into the chill city afternoon.

By two o’clock she has arrived at the Beethoven Hall. Today’s concert is Mozart and Schubert. There’s plenty of cello in the Schubert, even for fourth chair. Outside the theater, people stand in line. The afternoon concerts are free, but there are limited seats available for the public. Large sections are blocked off for Nazi officials and servicemen. When the lights go up after performances, Lottie and the musicians look out over a lake of black uniforms, whitecaps of bandages. Sometimes there are no lights; ushers use lanterns to lead the audience out.

Backstage, there is animated chatter. Whenever the musicians of the BPO gather, the first thing they do is weigh their fates. Lottie doesn’t take part in the discussions; she’s a woman, only a provisional member of the orchestra.

The men lump into clatches of five to ten, often by instrument. What will happen to them? Will they be conscripted into the
Volkssturm
? Will Speer act to save them? Is Goebbels just going to throw them to the wolves after all they’ve done for Berlin? Lottie sits alone, her back to a wall, casting her attention left and right like a fishing lure. An oboist found some black-market bread, here’s the address. A French-horn player saw a Belgian worker crushed to death by a falling beam. Another string player was bombed out of his house; oddly, along with Lottie, the string section has been hit hardest. Someone in the percussion section has been listening to Allied broadcasts. This can get him executed so he whispers, though he is among men he can trust. They all have the same interest: survival, for themselves and the BPO. He says the Americans and British are ready to cross the Roer River, headed for the Rhine. They’re aiming at Berlin. He believes the German troops will lay down their arms and escort the
Amis
in. Then they’ll all band together and take care of the dirty Reds.

The French-horn player hears this. He shakes his nose at his grouping of brass players. The Russians will be here first, he says. They’re only fifty miles away. He’s a sad, spongy old man, dripping of ugly tales and depressing news. Lottie avoids him and his clique.

The Russians are brutes, he says. The things he’s heard,
tsk.
You don’t want to know. You may even have heard worse. And they’re getting angrier and more out of control with every step closer to Berlin.

Pity the city, says a trumpeter.

The French-horn player answers. Oh, Berlin can take it. We just have to keep our heads down and lie low. But pity the women.

When several heads in the group tilt towards Lottie, they seem surprised to see her glaring back. Chagrined, they lean again into their circle, their voices ratcheted down. Lottie hears another
tsk.

The day’s performance is lackadaisical. The image of a Russian plague massing on the Polish border is a pall over the performers. Furtwängler is gone; the director until he returns is Robert Heger. He appears perplexed waving his baton, a jockey on a distracted horse. Heger beats the BPO but they respond with reluctant speed. The Mozart is mangled; Lottie cannot even muster much gusto for the Schubert. But the house erupts in applause when they are finished. Heger drops his arms and turns for his bow, he is snappy, badly hiding his anger. The orchestra stands and bows. To Lottie they look like an orchestra stretching their necks to a guillotine.

The house lights come up. The musicians shuffle off the stage. Lottie hears low-slung curses from the men. Chairs skid out of the way, sheets of music flutter to the stage floor. Lottie holds her spot, focusing her eyes on the back of the auditorium, at the top of the aisles where Berliners queue to exit. The line on the right is slow, a few soldiers on crutches hobble as best they can. Berliners are patient behind them.

The line on the left is also slow. Something unusual is going on. Two men in uniform are at the head of each aisle, handing out items from baskets. Lottie eases the Galiano to its side on the floor. She steps into the wings, then down the stairs to the house floor.

At the tail of the right-hand line in the emptying house, Lottie accepts a few kind statements from an elderly couple. She bites her tongue and says thank you. They congratulate her for being a woman in the orchestra and admit surprise; from the audience they could not spot her for the tuxedo. Lottie explains it’s only until the war is over, they nod. Approaching the top of the aisle, Lottie discerns that the men in uniform are boys, Hitler Youth. From thirty feet away, she sees the blue of their eyes, like welders’ torches. Their paramilitary outfits are hard things, dark shells of leather and spiny creases, they look so wrong for boys of fourteen or fifteen.

Lottie follows the slow gait to the boys. Ahead, some people dig into the baskets, then hurry away. Others halt and gaze down at what the two youths offer, seeming to fall into a spell until someone prods them and they either dig in or walk on, dazed. No one speaks. The two Nazi youths say nothing. They look everyone in the face. They are stony, sober children.

When the old couple in front of Lottie gain the top of the aisle, the two peer down into the basket. Their eyes stay in there for several moments, netted in what they see. Their glances rebound up together, and in the look they share Lottie reads the lives these two have spent by each other’s side. Fifty years or more, husband and wife. On their twin faces are love, children, tragedy, loyalty. Still as twins, they nod just slightly, never unlocking their eyes. The man reaches into the basket for both of them and takes two.

Lottie steps up. The basket is held out.

Inside are capsules, wrapped and labeled in tiny plastic packets.

Cyanide.

Lottie catches her breath. Her gut plummets.

Dear God.

This is all the protection Hitler can summon at the end for his German people against the Russians. Baskets of poison, government-sanctioned suicide. A Home Guard made up of old men and frightened musicians. Cities of ruins. And dead-faced boys, whose hands holding out these baskets are smaller-boned than Lottie’s.

She’s disgusted. Neither of the Hitler Youth twitches, they could be mannequins.

Her disgust twists in her gut like a dirk, twists into nausea.

The Jew in the basement is real. The Russians are real. The cyanide is real.

Doom.

Lottie loses her balance. Neither ebon boy moves to aid her. One knee buckles; she grabs hold of the gilded door frame. The theater spins. She wants to vomit.

One of the boys speaks.
“Fräulein.
We cannot protect you.”

Lottie lifts her chin above the tide of her rising insides. Looking into their faces, she does not know which of the boys talked. She dips a hand into the basket. The packets beneath her fingertips are white, soft, little kisses in the basket. She fingers a pill. So small, so enormous. She’ll put the thing in the Jew’s food. That’ll take care of one problem.

Her hand digs deeper. The tablets play around her knuckles. They seem gentle, competent. The pills make a vow to her: we’ll keep our promise. Trust us, but nothing else. We’re the only things in your world that will do what we say. Take me. Me! No, pick me!

She hovers over the basket.

She won’t poison the Jew. He may live like a rat in the basement but she won’t kill him like one.

Lottie’s head clears. Her hand is still plunged in the pills. They nibble at the backs of her fingers like minnows.

She chooses .You. Little friend, you are for me.

She plucks another. And you. You can come also.

For Mutti.

The Gestapo or the Russians—one or the other, when they come— will be coming for Mutti too.

Everything is real.

February 22, 1945, 11:10
p.m.

With the Ninth Army on the west bank

of the Roer River, near Jülich

Germany

bandy never likes night operations. he can t take photos in the
dark.

He pulls a lantern closer to his lap, not for the light but the heat. The air is river-damp and chilly, even in his tent. He takes a quick look around at his setup: cot, desk and chair, blankets, magazines. He’s been living high on the hog the last ten days, staying in one place. By afternoon this’ll all be torn down, moved across the river and given to someone else. Bandy doesn’t want to spend any more nights in tents. He, along with the whole U.S. Ninth Army, wants to get going again, to Berlin. He wants to sleep in the front seat of a rolling truck on the
Autobahn.
In the last week he hasn’t sent one photo back to New York. Photos of what—waiting? Even so, his instincts tell him he’s in the right place.