Leaving Berlin (7 page)

They heard a groan from the other car, the driver trying to move. Willy looked at Alex, his eyes darting with alarm.

“Take the gun. No witnesses.”

“Are you crazy—?”

Willy grabbed his wrist, clutching it. “No witnesses. He’s seen you.” He looked at Alex’s face, then squinted from the pain and opened his eyes again, an act of will. “Nobody knows. You’re still protected.” He squeezed his wrist again. “Take the gun. Quick, before—”

“I can’t,” Alex said, almost a whisper. “I never—”

“They’ll kill you. That’s what this is. Do it. In the head. Don’t think, just do it. Then run like hell.”

“What about you?”

Willy twisted his mouth, then looked again at Alex. “Do it, for chrissake. Take the gun.”

Alex looked at it, still clutched in Willy’s hand, and started prying his fingers off. There was the sound of a motor in the distance. How far? He took the gun and walked over to the other car. A faint moaning, the driver opening his eyes at the sound of footsteps. A startled look, what prey must feel like at the end. The driver tried to raise his hand, his gun weaving. Do it. Don’t think. Alex fired. A roar of sound, then a splat as the driver’s head ripped open, the insides oozing, then stopping. No witnesses. Alex stared at the man for a second, feeling his stomach heave. But there was nothing to bring up, just the taste of bile, too early for food.

The motor again. He glanced toward the bridge. The British truck. Don’t think. Run. He raced over to Willy. Eyes closed. Alex felt his neck for a pulse but there was nothing, the skin already cool or was that his imagination? The morning was cold. You could see your breath, coming now in quick puffs. The sound of the truck again. Oddly, the other car engine was still running and for one crazy second Alex fought the impulse to turn it off. Disappear. Now. No one here but the dead. No witnesses.

He darted behind Willy’s car and then followed the standing wall until there was a break and he could slip behind. Not as neat as the square here, piles of rubble. But what did it matter? Run. In a few seconds they’d be here. He listened to the sound of his shoes crunching on the dust and mortar and he realized he had never run so fast, that he was somehow trying to outrun the sound of his own running, make it disappear. An old woman was stopped at the next corner and turned, terrified, and he saw what she must be seeing, a man running too fast, still waving a gun in his hand, his shoes slipping on loose bricks as if he were splashing through puddles, and he
knew he should stop, slow down, but he couldn’t. He kept running, away from the British soldiers who must now be swarming over the cars in Lützowplatz. Running from the old woman, who must have seen his face. Running away from all of it, all the lines he never thought he would cross, sprinting over them.

It was only when he reached the Budapester Strasse bridge, where there were a few cars, that he put the gun in his coat pocket and slowed to a walk. He felt the sweat on his face. Sweating in the early morning cold. Slow down. Breathe. No witnesses. On the bridge, after a quick glance around, he tossed the gun over, a plop in the water, and then started to walk again, forcing himself not to run, draw attention. A man’s startled eyes as you aimed a gun. His head opening. That’s what this is.

By the time he reached the Adlon, he was breathing normally again, a guest just back from a long walk. A new doorman, the day shift, said good morning, and for an anxious moment Alex wondered if anything showed in his face. How do you look after you’ve killed a man? But the doorman simply waved him through. No one knew. Upstairs, he lay on the bed and kept replaying Lützowplatz in his mind. Willy’s grimace. They move you up faster here. His panic, running, and now this strange troubled relief afterward. Nothing in his face. Getting away with something. And now what? A protected source, one contact. But someone knew enough to follow Willy. They knew he was here, even if they didn’t know who he was. Three bodies in the square, two guns, an impossible arithmetic. They’d be looking. Whoever they were.

When he finally did close his eyes it was not so much sleep as sheer animal exhaustion, the body shutting down for repair, a void, like the space where his house had been. Irene with a Russian. Frau Gerhardt. Someone he didn’t know, even if he’d known every part of her. It would be easier that way, someone he didn’t know. You want
a ticket back, this is it. When he heard the knocking on the door he was at the von Bernuth house, the SA pounding, Kurt bleeding, Irene meeting his eyes. But it was only Martin coming to collect him. His eyes were still scratchy, tired. No hot water, an astringent splash of cold. They’d be waiting at the Kulturbund, maybe one of them open for a little business. Not understanding what it would mean until he was in it, over his head.

T
HE RECEPTION HAD BEEN
called for four, the early hour, Martin explained, because of the difficulties getting home in the dark. “The West refuses to sell us coal, so naturally there are shortages.” “And we refuse to sell them food.” “Because they refuse to sell us coal.” The kind of airless, circular argument Alex remembered from meetings in Brentwood, before he stopped going.

Even at this hour, though, the sky was already dusky, filled with clouds promising snow. They picked their way along a path cleared through the rubble toward the light of the club windows. The Kulturbund was on Jägerstrasse, just off Friedrichstrasse, and suddenly familiar.

“Well,” Alex said. “The old Club von Berlin.” Where Fritz had often spent the afternoons, napping after a brandy.

“I don’t know,” Martin said, slightly stiff. “Now the Kulturbund.” The only thing it had ever been to him.

“The Nazis changed the name. Herrenclub, I think, but it was the same people. Landowners. Old money. Funny it should be here, the Kulturbund.”

“Funny?”

“Culture was the last thing on their minds.” Nodding over papers in the library. Playing cards in one of the private rooms. Buying each other drinks in the bar, maybe even where Fritz had arranged the favor for him, Oranienburg for a price.

“Then it’s good, yes? Better.”

“The waiters had tailcoats, I remember,” Alex said.

“Yes,” Martin said, uncomfortable.

“Still?” Alex said, amused. “So. Socialist tailcoats.”

Martin looked away, not sure how to answer.

Inside they could hear tinkling glasses and voices floating down the marble staircase.

“I thought we’d be early,” Alex said, giving up his coat.

“Everyone is anxious to meet you,” Martin said, leading the way. “Goethe.” He pointed to the portrait on the landing.

At the top they were met by a huddle of men, all wearing lapel pins with the SED handshake.

“Such an honor. Your trip was comfortable?”

One polite question after another until they blended into one, the usual official welcome. Alex nodded and smiled, automatic responses. No one knew.

There were two dining rooms, one with walnut paneling and the other, where the party was, with a burgundy satin brocade, the long members’ table now pushed against the wall for a buffet spread. He smiled to himself. Anxious to meet him, but already filling plates, the eager freeloading of any faculty lounge. Someone handed him a glass of sweet champagne. The room looked neglected, the brass railings dull and the carpet tired, but it was otherwise much as he remembered, plush furniture and heavy drapes, like a room in the von Bernuth house. Was she already here?

“So, my friend. Ruth told me she saw you.” Brecht, grasping his arm as he shook his hand, the stub of a cigar smoldering in his mouth.

“Yes, she’s here?”

“Still in Leipzig. She likes to make these little trips. I said, send a letter. But, well, Ruth. So, you’re here. All the little birds returning to the nest. And Feuchtwanger was sorry to see you go, yes? Always sorry, but he stays. How is it there now?”

“Still warm and sunny.”

Brecht shrugged. “So, sun. But now everyone’s here. Speaking German again.” He waved his hand to the room, and, as if in response, the sound rose, lapping at them, the comfortable babble of one’s own language. “There’s a spirit, you can feel it.”

“I hear they’re giving you a theater.” Making conversation, sleepwalking. Had the British soldiers seen anything?

Another shrug. “People come up to you in the street. They know who you are. In California, who do they know? So it’s flattering. But the work we can do now. Not
Quatsch
for some studio. Wait till you seen Helene. Magnificent. You’re at the Adlon too, Ruth said? It’s comfortable. Better than a house, while this is going on.” A finger to the ceiling, the unseen stream of planes. “They won’t sell us coal, so it’s a problem.” Martin’s explanation, what everybody knew.

Alex looked over Brecht’s shoulder. The room was filling up, men in old suits and women without makeup in wool skirts and thin shapeless cardigans.

“You know who’s also here? Zweig. Soon everybody. Except Saint Thomas maybe. The bourgeois comforts, very important to him. A Biedermeier soul, Herr Mann. Biedermeier prose too,” he said, a small twinkle, having fun. “A stuffed sofa, with tassels. In his case maybe Switzerland would be better.”

“Why should he go anywhere?”

“He can’t stay there. It’s starting again. He thinks the Nobel will protect him? Not if they—well, you know this. Who better? I congratulate you, by the way. I didn’t know—forgive me—you had such strong—” He paused, peering at Alex. “A dark horse. All the time—I didn’t know you were even in the Party.”

“I’m not. Other people were. But that was their business. Most of them left anyway. After ’39.”

Brecht looked around, hesitant. “Well, that time. It’s not so well understood here. How people felt. To them, you know, it was a kind of disloyalty. Not to follow the Party.”

“And be nice to Hitler. But of course Stalin knew what he was doing all along.”

A flicker of caution, then a small smile, unable to resist. “He usually did,” Brecht said, a boy being naughty. He looked at Alex. “They’ll ask you to join now. Just tell them you’re not a joiner. No organizations. A writer works alone.”

“Is that what you said?”

“It’s enough discipline with Helene,” he said, waving the cigar, then lowered his voice. “Then you’re not obliged—to do what they say. A little independence. They have to work with you. Push-pull. And they will. It’s a new start here.” He cocked his head west. “Over there, business as usual. It doesn’t change. Nazis. The Americans don’t care, as long as they’re not Communists. Like the committee. But here there’s a chance.” Believing it, like Martin. “But first, bread. They’re reissuing your books?”

Alex nodded. “All of them. Even
Notes in Exile
. Pieces.”

“Make sure they pay. They can afford it. They get a subsidy. It’s a priority with the Russians, culture. Coal not so much,” he said, another wry shrug. “You’ve met Dymshits?”

“Not yet.”

“A lover of German literature—Goethe, by heart. There he is. Sasha,” he said, approaching a slight man with dark hair and glasses, eyes slightly watery. “Meet our guest of honor. Major Dymshits.”

“I’m so pleased,” he said, taking Alex’s hand. Another face from the faculty lounge, bookish, an eager smile. “Welcome.”

“I gather you’re responsible for bringing me here.”

“Your talent brings you here,” he said with a quiet flourish, his German precise but accented.

Alex nodded, a court gesture. “My thanks in any case. And for this reception. So much—”

“My advice is have some ham now. It always goes first.” A polite joke, the smile in place again. “Artists are always hungry, it seems. There is so much I want to ask you. The scene in
The Last Fence
when the shirt catches on the barbed wire— Perhaps a lunch one day, if you would like that?”

“Of course,” Alex said. That easy. Just as Willy had hoped. When that was all they’d wanted.

People were still coming in, more men than women, none with her blond hair. She wouldn’t stay in a corner, she’d come up to him. Almost family. How would she look? Fifteen years.

“This is your publisher,” Dymshits was saying. “Aaron Stein. Aaron will be taking care of you at Aufbau.”

“An honor,” Stein said, bowing, a younger version of Dymshits, the same glasses and gentle Semitic face. “We’re so pleased. I hope you will come to the offices, meet everyone. We’re just down the street.
Notes in Exile
—”

“Of course it’s a favorite with him,” Dymshits said. “Both of you exiles. Aaron was in Mexico City with Janka and Anna Seghers.”

“Mexico. What was that like?”

“All right,” Aaron said tentatively. “Of course, foreign. Walter had a little Spanish, from his time in Spain, you know, but most of us—so we had each other. Los Angeles was better, I think. Anyway we used to think so. Everyone wanted to go to America.”

“Even those of us who were already there,” Brecht said, a growl in his voice. “Where was it, this America we’d heard about? In Burbank? Culver City? No, not possible. So maybe nowhere. No such place.”

“Like
Mahagonny
,” Dymshits said.

Brecht ignored this, taking a drink instead.

“Here’s Colonel Tulpanov,” Dymshits said, standing straighter. “He very rarely comes, so you see how popular you are.”

“His boss,” Brecht said.

Dymshits shot him a glance, pretending not to be annoyed.

Tulpanov, in military uniform and short-cropped hair, had none of Dymshits’s easy manner. There was an awkward exchange, welcome and thank you, then a blank pause, waiting for Dymshits to fill it with small talk.

“You know where they are?” Brecht said, a nod to Tulpanov. “The Information Administration? Goebbels’s old offices.”

“The building doesn’t matter,” Dymshits said quickly, before Tulpanov could decide whether to take offense. “It’s what we do inside. Anyway, there were not so many buildings left standing. In those days you took what you could get. You know, we had a theater open that first month. Then more.” This directly to Brecht. “Newspapers. Film licenses. So Berlin would have a life again. Ah, Bernhard, come and meet our guest.”