The Second Winter (28 page)

“Perhaps you want to put a shirt on first,” the policeman said to Gerhardt.

Gerhardt lowered his head. “Thank you,” he said to the policeman. “That is kind of you.”

“Please,” Martina repeated. “Please —”

“I’ll only be a minute,” Gerhardt said to the policeman. He stopped in front of Martina, took both her wrists in his hands, lifted them a little, gave them a gentle shake. “Shhh,” he said to her. “It will be okay. Herr Hoffman will understand. I’ll explain everything to him, and they will let me go. Surely.”

“But Gerhardt —” Martina said.

“There will always be tomorrow,” her husband reassured her. He squeezed her wrists softly, then turned once again toward the policeman. “I’ll only be a minute,” he said a second time. Then he led his wife back to the bedroom and, slipping it from the hanger, put on the shirt he had been planning to wear that afternoon for their passage into West Berlin. Martina had washed it in the sink just the day before, and the thick cotton was still slightly damp. The collar was stiff with the residue of hand soap. He buttoned the collar, pulled the sleeves taut, fastened the cuffs. Martina settled onto the hard bed. She sat as she always did, with her spine straight, her shoulders back, her hands folded in her lap. And that is how she remained as Gerhardt left the room and followed the policeman out the door and to the station.

August 13, 1961
.

Early the next morning, a small crowd had gathered on the eastern edge of Pariser Platz. The grinding buzz of earthmovers had woken the city at midnight, and over the course of the last few hours the sounds had only intensified. Up and down the twisting length of the border between East and West Berlin, soldiers were wielding hammers and picks and shovels. Trucks carrying GDR troops continued to roll into the city center. The work crews were swelling, and in an impossibly long line front of them, before the foundation of the wall could be laid, the military had already constructed a human barrier that stretched over the north-south axis of the city, along boulevards and side streets and across bridges and train tracks without interruption. Martina had barely slept. Gerhardt had spent the night in jail, and she wasn’t used to the emptiness of the small apartment. The foreign noises had scared her. She had gotten dressed before dawn and had let herself outside and crept stealthily through the dark, making her way toward the Brandenburg Gate. She was among the first to reach the edge of the plaza. By seven thirty, as sunlight slowly began to stain the streets, hundreds of other Berliners had joined her, and the crowd was quickly growing larger. Without the sun, it had been difficult to see exactly what was transpiring. Now, the majestic crown of the gigantic, neoclassical gate was bathed in an orange glow, and the four bronze horses of the
Quadriga
, and Nike, their charioteer, were looking down upon a massive, orchestrated operation to divide east from west.

What is happening?
The voice sounded in Martina’s ear. At first she didn’t hear it. And then the words were repeated. “What is it? What are they doing?”

Martina put the speaker’s face together. She recognized the woman, but she wasn’t immediately able to place how she knew her. The best she could do in response was to shake her head.

“Where is your husband?” the woman asked her. “You look ill. Are you okay? If you need our help —” And then Martina noticed the man standing next to her, and she knew who these people were. She offered her neighbors from across the narrow alley an apologetic grimace, then turned back again and faced the activity across the plane of the square. Beneath the gate, the legions of soldiers were being joined by a flank of military trucks. From this distance, some of the vehicles appeared to be tanks, and it was clear enough that their guns were trained not across the border but back upon the people inside their own city.
What is happening?
The woman repeated her question, but now she had turned away from Martina and was asking it of someone else.
I’m only surprised
, another voice said,
that it took them so long
.

Martina stood silently a few minutes longer. Then, when the crowd was growing so large that she felt herself begin to panic, she pushed through these people — surprised not by their anger and shock, which was palpable, but by their polite acceptance — and made her way back home. As she walked, the city woke, and she found herself moving upstream in a trickle and then a flood of her compatriots, all of them caught in some invisible gravity, drawn west. She was glad when she was able, finally, to step inside her apartment and close the door behind her.

She sat down on the stiff mattress in the bedroom she shared with Gerhardt, uncertain what to do with the time in front of her. When she noticed the suitcase she had packed just the day before, a few hot tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked
them away, then twisted the suitcase around, unfastened the clasps, lifted the lid. Her favorite shawl — a large rectangle of turquoise cashmere that Gerhardt had bought her for Christmas some years ago — was crushed on top. It didn’t take up too much space, and she couldn’t have imagined leaving it behind. She placed it on the bed next to her, revealing the stacks of keepsakes underneath.

Her hands went first to the photographs her brother, Hermann, had managed to send her over the course of the war. These she had kept in a box in the closet, and they were in remarkably good condition. The top few were covered with a thick layer of dust. Some of their edges and corners were bent. But for the most part, they were pristine. She hadn’t had room for the box. She had simply stuffed the photographs naked into her suitcase, confident that they would survive the short trip she and Gerhardt had been planning to make. Except for a small leather case, which she had also packed in the suitcase beside them, they were the only objects she possessed that had belonged to her brother.

She lifted out the leather case next, ran her fingers over its sharp edges. It had been years since she had opened it. In fact, she had only opened it once, the day that it had arrived. It had been delivered to her through the regular mail, sealed in an envelope that also contained a letter informing her of her brother’s death. Somehow, she had lost that letter. She had looked for it as she packed this suitcase, and it was nowhere to be found. How ever could she have lost it? She could still see the typescript, punched into the thick cotton bond by the stroke of a typewriter’s keys.
We regret to inform you that First Lieutenant Hermann H. Schmidt has been killed while on active duty in service of the Wehrmacht
. She weighed the case absently, realized that she was still holding it, finally worked a fingernail
under the small clasp in its center and spread its cover open. Inside, its single content — a war decoration, a steel cross displayed on a bed of silk — had come loose from its hook, and it slid out onto her lap. She had not held the medal before. In fact, the decoration had upset her — she didn’t like what it implied, that her brother had served the Reich well in his capacity as a soldier. It had been sufficient to look at it inside its case. She picked it up now, ran her fingers over the old ribbon, pressed her fingertips against its sharp edges. Maybe she would throw it away. Maybe this wasn’t something for her to keep.

And then, as she was preparing to return the medal to its hook, she noticed that the case wasn’t empty. There was something else inside, tucked behind the folds of silk that cushioned the steel cross. Whatever it was, it slithered from one side to the other as she tilted the case. Noticing a small tear in the silk cushion, she stuck a finger carefully into the hole. A few seconds later, she was holding the necklace. The distant tramp of footsteps echoing in the alleyway outside her window, the quiet murmur of voices, faded into the steady pulse of her own heartbeat. The cramped bedroom was absolutely silent as she lifted the sapphire pendant and let it dangle in front of her, twisting in the shadows like a small fragment cleaved from a star.

Sjælland, Denmark. December 26, 1941
.

It was nearly midnight by the time Oskar and Polina reached the harbor in Korsør. With so much snow on the tracks, the train was rolling slowly. The last ferry for Nyborg had departed two hours earlier. Curfew had passed, and they were fortunate to have made it this far without being questioned. In Ringsted, a complement of rowdy German soldiers had boarded the car. Spotting them on the platform, Polina had shoved Oskar into the toilet compartment, and they rode as far as Sorø like that, cramped together, cold, the filthy steel trap rattling at their feet. At Sorø, all but two of the soldiers had disembarked, and the two who remained were drinking beer, too drunk to care who else was traveling with them. Still reeking of piss from the dirty toilet, Oskar and Polina ventured back out and were able to find seats in another carriage. Now, the train was nearly empty as the heavy wheels clanked over the rails and the pneumatic brakes pumped to slow the locomotive down.
The slither of the wheels on the steel rails echoed against the undercarriage over a section of track sheltered from snow. In the aftermath of the sound, Oskar realized how unusually silent the journey had been.

He stood as they approached the station, peered through the black window. Passengers were gathering at the door of the next car, waiting for the train to reach the end of the line. They appeared to be civilians, all of them — Danes — none of them a threat. Polina had fallen asleep, and she looked so peaceful that Oskar hated to wake her. Her head was resting on her forearm, and her mouth gaped in her sleep like a child’s.

Oskar touched her shoulder. Her breath steamed onto his fingers, and this made him shiver. When she didn’t stir, he shook her, then squeezed her arm. At last, she opened her eyes. As far away as she may have been in her dream, she was immediately back again. “Did you know,” she asked him, “that you are the most handsome boy I have ever seen?”

Oskar flushed. He understood that she was lying to him. This was flattery that she had learned in order to survive. He was an awkward boy. His nose was too long, and it was bent where it had been broken when his father had slapped him at twelve. His hair was neglected and unwashed. In the past few years, he had become so thin that his ribs jutted from his chest. There was nothing handsome about him, and he knew it. Nevertheless, he
wanted
to believe her.

“Of course,” she said, “I have never loved handsome boys.”

It appalled Oskar to hear her use the word, though he wasn’t certain why.
Had she loved at all?

The train jolted. A lit sign glided past the window. “Korsør,” Oskar said.

Polina pushed herself upright on the uncomfortable seat. She joined Oskar in the aisle, followed him to the front of the
car as the train rolled to a stop. The brakes whined, and a conductor blew a single high-pitched blast on his whistle. Then, after a moment of silence, the doors swung open. Exiting the carriages, the tired passengers spoke in muffled whispers.

They had nothing to carry. Oskar hunched his shoulders against the wind. Polina lifted her collar to protect her face. She leaned into him as they followed the other passengers from the station into town. It felt natural when Oskar looped his arm around her waist. Her hair whipped into his mouth, and he tasted her. The lamps surrounding the small harbor blinked in the distance. Polina’s hand found Oskar’s pocket, and the cold touch of her fingers thrilled him. They chased the flickering lights without knowing where they were going, for one long moment removed from the passage of time. The series of steps that had brought them to this point had become a blur. And to Oskar, nothing lay in the future that could be better than these few minutes now.

They stopped at the first small hotel they passed. They were already soaked through, and there was no reason to go farther. Polina wandered into the bar, where a man with waxed hair was playing an upright piano. The hotelier at the reception counter narrowed his eyes as Oskar approached. He was more interested in watching Polina than in taking Oskar’s money, and he seemed to know instantly what kind of woman she was.
This isn’t that kind of hotel
, he said to Oskar.
If it wasn’t so late and if we weren’t so empty, if it wasn’t storming outside, I would turn the two of you away
. Oskar took the key from him and found Polina in the bar. When the piano player winked at her, she winked back. Her fingers tightened on Oskar’s arm as they climbed the stairs.

In the small room, Polina stood in the dark by the window. “Do you want me naked?” she asked.

At first, the question didn’t make sense to Oskar. Then he felt his cheeks redden. From downstairs, he could hear the faint tinkling of the piano, and he remembered the way the piano player had winked at her, and then the look in the hotelier’s eye when he first saw Polina. “I’m going to sleep,” he said. She was still standing at the window when he pulled off his coat and his shoes and his pants and climbed into bed. The mattress was as hard as rock underneath him. Smells from the kitchen rose through the floor. He closed his eyes, and the room began to spin. Outside, the storm swept over the west coast of Zealand. Oskar had the sense that it would destroy everything in its path. By morning, nothing of this pathetic industrial harbor would remain.

When Polina slipped under the covers behind him, Oskar was already half asleep. For a brief instant, he imagined that they were sharing the bed inside the German’s apartment. Then church bells chimed and the windowpanes reverberated, and he remembered where they were. She wrapped her arms around him, and he counted her fingers against his chest and thought about her face, masked in white makeup. The music downstairs melted into the bars of “Heart and Soul.” “I have a sister,” he said.

Polina’s fingers tightened on his ribs. Her breath warmed his neck.

“I have a father, too. But not a mother. I mean, I don’t know my mother anymore. I saw her yesterday, but that was the first time in three or four years.”