The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (56 page)

He walks up to the shore. Bandy takes out the Speed Graphic this time. He wants to shoot faces and hands, the thousand soldiers in the vanguard of the deepest American penetration of the war into Germany.

He unfolds the accordion bellows of the camera, clicks the lens in place, slides in a film packet, and searches for a shot. Once this bridgehead is solidified and the span across the river complete, it won’t take long for a formidable force to transport across the river. The two battalions of the Eighty-third that have been ferried across so far throw dirt in the air with shovels, picks, even helmets used as trenching tools. They burrow into the German earth, knowing the enemy may come to throw them back. They will not go back easily out of these holes and revetments, not a one of them wants to return across the river without first seeing Berlin.

Bandy wanders through the men, freezing time among them with his camera, they will be here forever digging like this, heroic and cheerful and young. Some sing with their mates while they excavate. Almost every man smokes, sportily, like movie stars playing soldiers with cigarettes dangling from sweaty lips, and Bandy feels good that he is a farmer for them too.

A lieutenant with freshly wet calves from his drop-off in the Elbe approaches Bandy. He does not bear on his shoulders the enthusiasm of the rest of the men, there’s something else there.

Here it comes, Bandy thinks. Friday the thirteenth. Never fails.

“Sir. Mr. Bandy, sir.” The young officer doesn’t seem to know how to address him.

“Yes, Lieutenant. What can I do for you?”

“Sir, I don’t know if you know.”

“Know what?”

“Word is that yesterday, President Roosevelt died.”

Bandy narrows his eyes and grimaces. This is sad damn news, he thinks. Rotten timing for the old man. Shitty. Just when we’re standing here so close. No one wants to die this near to the end. He should’ve gotten to see it. He should’ve been able to live long enough.

Well, so should a lot of people.

“How?”

“They say he just keeled over. Down in Georgia. Just up and died.”

The lieutenant nods when Bandy says nothing more. The man turns to go. Bandy sits on a rock. The heavy Speed Graphic gets lowered to the ground. Bandy takes off his helmet and rubs a hand through his hair, scratching the back of his head.

FDR’s gone. Bandy drops his emptied hands into his lap. He works his fingers, trying to feel the real shape of the loss, but what he feels instead is the weight of his cameras, the pictures he’s taken and the dangerous places he’s trod himself, the frames of the dead, and the millions of men striving to survive. He thinks about their sacrifices and risk, and his own, and compared to it all, Roosevelt’s passing kind of pales. That’s not right, Bandy thinks, not fair, the man was the President for thirteen years, he brought America out of the Depression, guided us through the war.

What’s missing, what refuses inside Bandy to give the President’s passing its proper due? Bandy uses his eyes to search for the answer. He tries hard but what he sees instead is anonymous soldiers burrowing into enemy ground, men rushing across a river in hopes of taking a hostile city. He sees men in danger in a foreign land, far away from home and loved ones. Men who have lost dearer friends than Roosevelt, who have not finished their mission. Bandy counts himself among them. There’s work left to be done by these men and Bandy. They are all dispensable to that work. The answer comes: Roosevelt is too.

Bandy dons his helmet. He watches the word spread among the digging men. They stop to hear the news. Many do as Bandy did, take off their helmets and scratch their heads with dirty hands. Most go back to work after a respectful pause, a few walk over to the next group to tell them. The men are all sorry but not stymied. This isn’t a crisis for them, Bandy thinks, it’s a death, and that is woefully familiar.

Before dark, the treadway bridge is finished. At dusk, the large pontoon span is completed. Another thousand men cross to solidify the bridgehead. Green tanks rumble over to add their might to the defense. The Rag-Tag Circus now straddles the Elbe.

Bandy catches a ride with an assault boat back across the river, to deliver his exposed film to the liaison officer for a flight to London in the morning.

On the west bank he pulls out the Leica for one last series of shots of the fat pontoon bridge. In the gloaming the Leica will let him shoot faster than the Speed Graphic before dark falls. A truck rumbles over the slats, the pontoons bounce on the moody water in the fading day. Bandy moves to the approach of the bridge, to photograph the span in retreating perspective with the truck on it.

He includes in his frame a sign nailed in place by the men of the Eighty-third. They have named their bridge, the first and only American bridge across the Elbe, with the typical panache of the Rag-Tag Circus. In honor of the new President of the United States, the sign reads:
truman bridge. gateway to berlin. courtesy of the
83RD
infantry division.

~ * ~

April 14, 1945, 2:15
p.m.

Goethe Strasse

Charlottenburg, Berlin

freya sits in the hall, her back against the wall. she slumps,
legs akimbo in front of her. Her dress rides above her slim knees. Mutti on the floor looks to Lottie like a woman who has been knocked there.

Lottie stands back, arms folded, leaning in the doorjamb. She sees the loss of weight in herself now showing on Mutti’s arms and calves. There hasn’t been much to eat since the horsemeat ran out. The stuff was easier to stomach than Lottie would have thought. Freya cooked it into jerky and sausage, soaking the meat in salted water before frying out all the bacteria and rot, then heavily seasoning it to stave off the taste of spoilage. After a week the stores were gone. Freya, as Lottie expected, brought food into the bunkers to hand out to neighbors, old folks, and children.

The yellow door talks to Freya. They discuss flight from Berlin.

“A car,” the Jew’s voice says. “That’s the best way.”

Mutti laughs. This part of her has not weakened yet.

“Do you know what a car costs now, Julius? They’re impossible. A jalopy that barely runs costs over twenty thousand marks. And petrol? One liter is fifty marks.”

“That’s twenty cigarettes.”

“Impossible, like I said. A kilo of butter, that’s best. You can get twenty liters of petrol.”

The Jew echoes, “Butter.”

The talk pauses to taste the delicacy in their memories.

“And what if you had a car?” the Jew asks. “Where would you get the papers to leave Berlin?”

“You’d need a travel permit.”

“And a military pass. I’d need a military pass.”

“Yes. And a
Volkssturm
exemption card.”

“All right. How much, do you think?”

“Oh, Julius, impossible. Too much money to count.” Freya turns to lift her eyes to Lotti
e.”Liebchen,
you’re clever. How much do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, play along. How much?”

The Jew’s voice. “How much, Lottie?”

She has grown used to the disembodied voice, but not when it speaks to her. She has passed these conversations in the hall a hundred times, sometimes listening in like she does now out of boredom. But Lottie cannot stop being spooked whenever the Jew addresses her from behind the door. Why can’t he come out? This discipline
of his.
Ach,
Lottie thinks, the Jews.

“I don’t know. I’ve heard a hundred thousand marks for everything.”

Mutti nods and smiles, thanking her daughter for not walking off. She pats the floor next to her to say, Come, sit with your mother.

Lottie dons a reluctant posture, then accepts the invitation. She slides her back down the wall to touch shoulders with Mutti. Lottie kicks out her legs beside her mother’s. They are the same legs, narrow ankles, shapely at the calf. Freya is still a beautiful woman.

Sitting like this at the foot of the yellow door, it seems a large figure, broad-shouldered and stolid, even towering. But when the door speaks, the voice is small, seeming to come from somewhere around the door’s shins.

Freya says, “Julius, tomorrow is Passover, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“What would you like to eat? I know the Jewish people have to eat special foods for the holidays. What would you like, then?”

The game continues, where they pretend to have cars and proper papers and money.

“I would like a lamb bone. And parsley and bitter herbs. Yes, and matzoh.”

Mutti beams to hear these things. A Jew, in danger for his life because of who he is, still wishes to worship as a Jew. Lottie sees on Mutti’s face she thinks this is wonderful, a green sign of spring in late winter.

“Lottie?” the Jew asks. “Do you know the story of Passover?”

Lottie stares at the yellow door. She has no reply, she doesn’t want to make conversation. Her mother prods her in the thigh.

“No.”

“It’s the story of Exodus.”

Without being asked to do so the yellow door describes the Jews’ flight from enslavement in Egypt three thousand years ago. Moses brought down plagues from God, but Pharaoh refused to let the people go. For the final plague, God’s Angel of Death flew over Egypt taking the firstborn of every Egyptian family. The Jews’ houses were marked on their doors with the blood of a lamb, and the angel passed over them. Pharaoh was horrified and stricken by this final persuasion. He demanded the Jews leave. They departed Egypt so quickly, there wasn’t time for their bread to rise, so they let it bake on their backs as they left. That’s why Jews eat unleavened bread, the matzoh, on Passover. To remember. But Pharaoh changed his mind and hunted the Jews down in the desert. God saved His chosen people and parted the waters to let them pass from Egypt. Then God destroyed Pharaoh’s army.

It’s a tale of deliverance. Lottie listens, hoping she will soon have the same good luck to leave Berlin as the Jews had out of Egypt. She wonders why God would save the Jews from Pharaoh but not from the Nazis. Perhaps God doesn’t save whole peoples anymore, just in ones and twos, like Lottie, and hopefully Mutti, and maybe this Jew behind the door. Lottie thinks it’s good the man wants to remember his ancestors’ passage to freedom. If she is saved from the war she too will recall her salvation faithfully the rest of her life.

“It’s a wonderful story,” Freya says when he is done.

“I pray every day it’ll be our story.”

“Will boiled potatoes do, Julius? Tomorrow? With some parsley?”

The Jew laughs. It’s a nice laugh, ironic and honest. “Yes.”

Mutti takes her daughter’s hand. She pats it and bounces their bond in her lap. “We’ll see this through, don’t any of you worry. We’re together and we’ll make it our story.”

The Jew says, “Right.” Lottie says nothing. Her mother gives her hand another little shake, to provide the assent for her.

“Lottie?”

She answers the door this time. She will leave Egypt soon and the rest will stay behind. She decides she can be better while she is here. The BPO’s season is coming to a close. Some of the musicians listen to illegal radio broadcasts. The
Amis
are on the Elbe. It won’t be much longer.

“Yes, Julius?”This is the first time Lottie has said his name.

“I have something for you.”