The Good German (4 page)

“All over. Mostly barracks down in the old Telefunken factory. Some over by Onkel Toms Hutte,” he said, pronouncing it in English.

“Uncle Tom’s Hut?” Liz said, amused. “Since when?”

“Since always. Their name. They like the book, I guess.”

Jake’s room must have belonged to the daughter of the house. There was a single bed with a pink chenille spread, floral wallpaper, and a vanity with a round mirror and pink ruffled skirt. Even the blackout drapes had been backed with pink fabric.

“Sweet.”

“Yeah, well,” Ron said. “Like I said, we can switch around in a few days.”

“Never mind. I’ll just think virginal thoughts.”

Ron grinned. “That’s one thing you won’t have to worry about in Berlin.” He turned to the door. “Just leave any laundry on the chair. They’ll pick it up later.” And then, with a click, he was gone, taking his breeze with him.

Jake stared at the frilly room.
They
who? A house staff to fetch and carry, one of the spoils of victory. What had happened to the girl, requisitioned out of her pink cocoon? He walked over to the glass-topped vanity. A trace of powder, but otherwise cleared off, all the jars and tubes swept into some case on the way out. Idly he opened the drawers, empty except for a few publicity stills of Viktor Staal with pinholes in the corners, presumably no longer her dreamboat. But at least she’d had a room to leave. What about Lena? Did she pack her perfume bottles and compacts and get out in time, lucky, or linger until the roof caved in?

He lit a cigarette and walked over to the window, unbuttoning his shirt. The yard below had been dug up to make a vegetable garden, but the rows had become a muddy tangle, tramped over, he supposed, by the Russians foraging for food. Still, you could breathe here. The wounded city, just a few miles away, had already begun to fade, hidden by the trees and suburban houses, the way an anesthetic blotted up pain. He should have taken notes. But what was there to say? The story had already happened. From the looks of it, building by building, old men and teenagers sniping from doorways. Why had they held out? Waiting for the Americans, he’d heard. Anyone but the Russians.
The peace will be worse
—Goebbels’ last warning, the only one that came true. So, the final madness. Whole streets on fire. There’d been roving packs of SS, hanging boys from lampposts as deserters. To make an example. In the camps they’d killed people right up to the last hour. Here they’d even turned on their own. Not war anymore, a bloodlust.

Jake hadn’t filed a real story in two months, not since the camps; he had been waiting for Berlin. Now he felt that Berlin would defeat him too, that all the copy would end in Ron’s lunar landscapes and decayed teeth, inadequate attempts at scale. He had run out of words.

personalize it. Not the thousands, just one. She’d be here. It wasn’t too much to hope for, one survivor. He looked again at the garden. Near a shed in the back, a gray-haired woman was hanging wet clothes over an improvised line of rope. A
hausfrau
.

“But what are you going to do?” he’d said. “Come with me. I’ll arrange it. I’ll get you out.”

“Out,” she said, dismissing it, the word itself improbable. Then she shook her head. “No, it’s better.” She’d been sitting at her dressing table, still in her slip, perfectly made-up again, her nails red. “I’ll be a
hausfrau
,” she’d said almost casually, putting on lipstick. “A good German
hausfrau
.” She lowered her eyes. “Not this, all the lies.”

“They’re not lies,” he’d said, putting his hands on her shoulders.

She looked up at his face in the mirror. “The lies to him.”

Down below, the gray-haired woman had spotted him in the window. She hesitated, then nodded in a servant’s bow and picked up the wicker basket. He watched her cross the muddy yard. Personalize it. What had her war been like? Maybe she’d been one of the faithful, shouting her lungs out at the Sportpalast, now doing laundry for the enemy. Or maybe just a
hausfrau
, lucky to be alive. He crossed over to the bed, dropping his shirt. What did it matter either way? Losers’ stories. Back home they’d want the glamour of the conference, Truman horse-trading with Stalin, the great world they’d won, not the rubble and the people in the Tiergarten with the future knocked out of them.

He took off the rest of his clothes and wrapped a towel around his waist. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, and he opened the door to a rush of steam and a surprised yelp.

“Oh.”

Liz was in the tub, her breasts barely clearing the soapy water, wet hair swept back from her face.

“Don’t you knock?”

“Sorry, I—” he said, but he didn’t move, watching her slide down into the tub, covering herself, her flesh as pink as the vanity ruffle.

“Have a good look?”

“Sorry,” he said again, embarrassed. A soft woman’s body, without the uniform and gun holster, now hanging on a peg.

“Never mind,” she said, smiling, a veteran of shared tents and field latrines. “Just keep your towel on. I’ll be out in a sec.”

She plunged her head into the water to rinse, then smoothed her hair back and reached for a towel.

“You going to turn around, or do you want the floor show too?”

He turned his back to her as she stepped out. A splash of water and a rustling of cloth, the sounds themselves intimate.

“I suppose I should take it as a compliment,” she said, wrapping herself in a robe. “You never noticed before.”

“Sure I did,” he said, his back to her.

“Uh-huh.” He could hear the water running down the drain in gulps. “Okay, decent.”

She was in a silk wrapper, toweling her hair. He looked at her, then cocked his head like the young GI at the Chancellery.

“How about I buy you a drink later?”

“With my clothes on? Can’t. I’m busy.”

“That was fast. Not young Ron?”

She grinned. “I wouldn’t have the strength.” She fixed the towel around her head in a turban. “Just business. Have to see a man about a duck. I’ll take a rain check, though.” She nodded at the tub. “Better run your water. It takes a while.” She gathered her things slowly from the stool, then sat down.

“Are you staying?”

“Jake? Tell me something. That business this afternoon—who was she?”

“Why a she?”

“Because it was. What’s the story? You know I’ll get it out of you eventually.”

“No story,” he said, turning on the taps. “She went back to her husband.”

“Oh,” she said, “that kind of story. She left you?”

“I left Berlin. Dr. Goebbels’ request. There was an attitude problem.”

“I’ll bet. When was this?”

‘ ’Forty-one. Did me a favor, I suppose. A few months later and I’d have been stuck.“ He waved his hand to take in the city. ”In all this.“

“So only she got stuck.”

He looked at her for a moment, then went back to adjusting the taps.

“She stayed with her husband,” he said flatly.

“I wouldn’t have,” she said, trying to be casual, a light apology. “Who was he? One of the master race?”

He smiled to himself. “Not too masterful. He was a teacher, actually. A professor.”

“Of what?”

“Liz, what is all this?”

“Just making conversation. I don’t often get you at a disadvantage. The only time a man will talk is when he has his pants off.”

“Is that a fact.” He paused. “Mathematics, since you ask.”

“Math?” she said, laughing slightly, genuinely surprised. “An egghead? Not very sexy.”

“It must have been. She married him.”

“And slept with you. Mathematics. I mean, a ski instructor or something I could understand—”

“He did ski, as a matter of fact. That’s how they met.”

“See,” she said, playing, “I knew it. Where was this?”

He glanced at her, annoyed. Another woman’s magazine piece, the encounter on the slopes, as wistful as Eva Braun’s last glass of champagne.

“I don’t know, Liz. Does it matter? I don’t know anything about their marriage. How would I? She stayed, that’s all. Maybe she thought they’d win the war.” The last thing she thought. Why say it? He turned off the taps, annoyed now with himself. “My bath’s ready.”

“Were you in love with her?”

“That’s not a reporter’s question.”

She looked at him and nodded, then stood up. “That’s some answer.”

“This towel is coming off in two seconds. You’re welcome to stay—”

“Okay, okay, I’m going.” She smiled. “I like to leave a little something to the imagination.” She gathered up her things, slinging the holster belt on her shoulder, and went to the door.

“Don’t forget the rain check,” he said.

She turned to him. “By the way, a piece of advice? Next time you ask a girl for a drink, don’t tell her about the other one. Even if she asks.” She opened the door. “See you around the campus.”

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DINNER WAS SURPRISINGLY formal, served by the gray-haired woman and a man Jake took to be her husband in a large corner room on the ground floor. A starched white tablecloth was set with china and wine goblets, and even the food—standard B rations of pea soup, stewed meat, and canned pears—seemed dressed up for the occasion, ladled out of a porcelain tureen with ceremony and garnished with a sprig of parsley, the first green Jake had seen in weeks. He imagined the woman snipping off pieces in the muddy garden, determined even now to keep a good table. The company, all men, was a mix of visiting journalists and MG officers, who sat at one end with their own whiskey bottles, like regulars in a western boardinghouse. Jake arrived just as the soup was being served.

“Well, here’s a sorry sight.” Tommy Ottinger, from Mutual, extended his hand. “When did you blow in?”

“Hey, Tommy.” Even balder than before, as if all his hair had migrated down to the trademark bushy mustache.

“I didn’t know you were here. You back with Murrow?”

Jake sat down, nodding hello across the table to the congressman, sitting between Ron, clearly on caretaking duty, and a middle-aged MG officer who looked exactly like Lewis Stone as Judge Hardy.

“No broadcasting, Tommy. Just a hack.”

“Yeah? Whose nickel?”

“Collier’s.”

“Oh,” Tommy said, drawling it, pretending to be impressed, “in
depth
. Good luck. You see the agenda? Reparations. You could nod off just thinking about it. So what do you know?”

“Not much. I just got in. Took a ride through the city, that’s all.”

“You see Truman? He went in this afternoon.”

“No. I saw Churchill, though.”

“I can’t use Churchill. They want Truman—how’s he doing? I mean, how the fuck do I know? He hasn’t done anything yet.”

Jake grinned at him. “Make something up. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

The serving man placed the soup in front of him, looking surprised when Jake thanked him in German.

“You know what he said today? In Berlin? ‘This is what happens when a man overreaches himself.’”

Jake thought of the miles of debris, reduced to the lesson for the day. “Who’s your source? Jimmy Byrnes?”

“Sounds just like Truman, don’t you think?”

“It will, if you use it.”

“Got to fill the air somehow. You remember.”

“The old graveyard shift.” The 2 A.M. broadcasts, timed for the evening news back home.

“Worse. They kept Berlin on Russian time, so it’s even later.” He took a drink, shaking his head. “The Russians—” He turned to Jake, suddenly earnest, as if he were confiding a secret. “They just went all to hell here. Raped everything that moved. Old women. Children. You wouldn’t believe the stories.”

“No,” Jake said, thinking of the bayoneted chairs.

“Now they want reparations,” Tommy said, rolling his deep radio

voice. “I don’t know what they think’s left. They’ve already grabbed

everything that wasn’t nailed down. Took it all apart and shipped

it home. Everything—factories, pipes, toilets, for Christ’s sake. Of

course, once they got it there they didn’t know how to put it back together, so I hear it’s all sitting on the trains, going to rust. Useless.“

“There’s your story.”

“They don’t want that either. Let’s not make fun of the Russians. We have to get along with them. You know. They’re touchy bastards.”

“So what do they want?”

“Truman. The poker game. Who’s a better player, him or Uncle Joe? Potsdam poker,” he said, trying it. “That’s not bad.”

“And we’re holding the cards.”

Tommy shrugged. “We want to go home and they want to stay. That’s a pretty good card.”

The serving man, hovering in a frayed suit, replaced the soup with a gray stew. Salty, probably lamb.

Tommy picked at it, then pushed it away and took another drink. “So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet. I thought I’d look up some people I used to know, see what happened to them.”

“Hearts-and-flowers stuff.”

Jake spread his hands, not wanting to be drawn in. “The poker game then, I guess.”

“In other words, sit around with the rest of us and do what Ron here says,” he said, raising his voice. “Right?”

“If you say so, Tommy,” Ron said, shooting him a wary look across the table.

“Handouts. We can’t even get near the place. Stalin’s afraid somebody’s going to take a potshot at him. That it, Ron?”

“I’d say he’s more afraid of being quoted out of context.”

“Now, who’d do a thing like that? Would you do that, Jake?”

“Never.”

“I can’t say I blame him,” the congressman said, smiling. “I’ve had a little experience in that department myself.” His manner was looser now, a campaign geniality, and Jake wondered for a second if the stiffness on the plane had been nothing more than fear of flying, better hidden than the young soldier’s. His wide tie, a dizzying paisley, was like a flash of neon at the uniformed table.

“You’re Alan Breimer, aren’t you?” Tommy said.

“That’s right,” he said, nodding, pleased to be recognized.

“War Production Board,” Tommy said, a memory display. “We met when I covered the trust hearings in ‘thirty-eight.”