Authors: Gordon Ferris
I walked over to where her face lay on the pillow. “Is this what you want?”
“Silly man, get in.”
I took my clothes off slowly, not wanting to rush anything, and padded over to her, feeling the rough carpet and then the cool linoleum. Her face was away from me when I pulled up the cover and
slid in behind her. Her body was hot and naked, and I buried my face in her soft neck. I stroked her shorn hair and realised how little I’d known of her ears. I ran my hand down to her
breast. She turned to me and we lay looking into each other’s eyes. I wondered if she saw a stranger too?
Our lovemaking started slowly and finished in a flurry of limbs and tossed sheets, and we lay cradled in each other’s arms till the skin cooled. I got up, went through to the sitting room
and brought back two lit fags. We lay smoking and wondering who was going to talk first. I wished no one would.
She said, “When it’s dark, we will go back and see, OK?”
“Why not stay here? I could sneak some food in and we could hole up for days.”
She pinched my nipple. “You know we can’t. They have been brothers to me. We must find out.”
“It might not have been them they were after.”
“Hah. We should have shot the Nazi swine we evicted from my parents’ home. They sold us out. Ariel was right.”
“What if they’re dead?”
She lay quiet for a while. “I hope they are dead. If the Russians took them alive, they will wish for death.”
“And then? Will you come back with me? To London. Or Glasgow. I could show you my home. It’s different up there. Quieter. Except Saturday nights. We could be away from all
this.”
She rolled over and sat up. I watched her bare back, counted the knobs on her spine, reached out, touched her hip. She flinched.
“I can never go back. There are others here I need to contact. I promised.”
“Promised what?”
She twisted round so she could see my face. She shook her head. I studied the hollows and curves of her body, the velvet skin of her breasts and sheen of fine hair over her limbs like a sleek
seal. I got up, and walked round to her side of the bed and held out my arms. She stood up into them and I held her body close to me as though for the last time, and we kissed. As we dressed we
talked and I won the argument. I would go to her parents’ flat and find out what had happened. She would wait for me nearby.
It was a wonderful evening, soft and warm. We walked hand in hand, the picture of young love, she in her pretty frock and beret and me tie-less and jacket unbuttoned. I would have left it behind
but I needed somewhere to carry my papers and to cover the handle of the Luger jutting from my waistband at the back. We separated at a bar just before the Russian sector. An enterprising barkeeper
had rescued some tables and chairs from the rubble of a hotel and made a little pavement café among the ruins. I left her nursing a beer and holding a spare key to my room in case I
wasn’t back before curfew.
The alley was deserted when I peered down it. No trucks, no soldiers. I could almost have imagined it. And yet, and yet… as my feet crunched through the rubbish and the
debris, I noticed small things: a pool of glistening oil, empty shell cases, fresh half-truck caterpillar tracks. I saw no one. All the curtains were drawn and the windows closed, except one: it
was Eve’s flat. A curtain flapped and the remnants of the window frame dangled from the remaining hinge.
The front door lay on its side, splintered and smashed. I peered into the dark stairwell and saw bullet holes on the wall. A long series of dark marks streaked the floor. I didn’t remember
them. I bent down and studied them. They were dark brown. I put a finger out and touched. Dry.
The tang of spent ammunition and explosives hung in the air. I pressed on up the stairs. I noted the odd bullet hole and more of the smudge marks, as though something had been dragged down.
Ahead was Eve’s flat. The front door was still on its hinges but it was badly holed. I walked through. Straight ahead was the lower floor which had been used by local Germans. Up the
stairs was the attic room where Eve and the men had taken me. I listened and thought I heard a sound ahead of me. Nothing. I took out my gun, undid the safety and cocked it. I began to climb the
stairs. I got to the top and stepped over the threshold.
The room was torn to bits. The walls and ceiling were splattered with bullet and shrapnel holes. The window frame had been blown out. Shards of glass lay across the floor. The beds were wrecked
and their covers shredded. The table and chairs were smashed against the wall. A bullet-riddled mattress lay across the debris. I could see the three of them making their last stand behind the
upturned table and mattress. Against machine guns and grenades, it wouldn’t have taken long.
A pair of crushed spectacles lay by the mattress. The dark smears here were thicker and led to two pools close to one another. This time so much had been spilled, it hadn’t completely set.
I bent and touched. My finger came away red, and I smeared it on a corner of a curtain.
I started back downstairs, then heard it again. From the room below. I crept along the short corridor. My gun led the way. I got to the opened door. I jumped forward holding my pistol in both
hands.
“
Hande hoch
!” I shouted. A familiar enough term to me, but never before used
by
me. It was the favourite sport of one of the camp sergeants. He would line up outside
the hut and make us stretch our arms in the air. It was a way of testing how fit we were and whether it was worth feeding us. He would pace up and down the line of faces twisted in pain and fear.
He was a master of the game. He would wait till our shoulders were burning and our arms trembling like branches in a gale, then he’d start to count down from fifty. Slowly. Anyone who
couldn’t keep his arms above his head before the final
nul
was marched off, never to return. You could try to practise, but with too little food it might simply expend precious
energy.
I heard the sob. It came from behind the couch. I called again and the sob became two, then three, then ran into a litany of weeping. A head appeared. An old face with a scarf holding grey hair
in place.
“Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.” She edged out on her hands and knees and got to her feet. She wore a shabby dress and a pinny. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears.
I lowered my gun.
“What happened here?”
“Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”
“Just tell me what happened. What happened to the men who lived upstairs?”
“The Russians came. Are you Russian?” The panic dissolved her face again. There were red-haired Cossacks, I’d heard.
“English.” It was simpler than Scottish.
Some of the lines left her brow. “The Russians. They came for the Jews. No one likes the Jews. They were hiding up there.”
“Are they dead?”
She shrugged her shoulders, and rubbed at her cheeks. “I suppose. Some of them. There was a lot of shooting. Then a big bang. Then it was quiet. They took two bodies. Such a mess. Blood on
the stairs. And look at my ceiling.” She pointed up. Large bits of plaster had fallen leaving the wooden laths on show.
“Two
bodies. Only two? Are you sure?”
“I saw two. They asked me. After. If I’d seen the woman.”
“How did they know?”
A furtive look slid over her face. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t tell them.”
“Who did?”
“You’re not Jewish? You don’t look Jewish. People round here don’t like them. They’re the cause of all this. Anyone could have told the Ruskies.”
“Haven’t you done enough to them?”
Her face of misery clammed up and she wiped it dry with the edge of her apron. She patted her hair under her scarf; she wasn’t as old as I’d first thought, maybe in her fifties.
“Do you have a cigarette?” she asked.
I gave her one and lit it. She inhaled as though it was pure oxygen. She sat down on the arm of her couch. She pulled her skirt up to her knee and crossed her bare legs. They were white and
blotched with broken veins, but still slim.
“There was a girl,” she said. “Probably their whore. But she wasn’t here when they came.” She dragged deep on her cigarette and blew the smoke in a long funnel.
“Were they looking for the girl?”
Again the shrug and then a lowering of her eyes so that she looked at me from under her eyelashes. “Do you want a girl?” She smoothed the skirt round her knees and pulled off her
scarf. She shook her hair. The grey roots showed through the badly dyed dark hair. She ran her hands through it and sucked her lips to bring colour to them. I stared at her, disbelieving. But who
was I to judge, in this place at this time? I turned and made for the door.
“Don’t go,
liebchen
. We could have fun. I could get us some food. Give me two dollars and we will eat like royalty. Ten, and you could spend the night with me.”
I turned and looked at her. She was standing hands on hips in what she must have thought was a provocative pose, but was more like a child playing than a middle-aged woman. Her attempt at a
coquettish smile barely hid the terror of her daily fight for life. She might have been a respectable
hausfrau
once, nice clothes, greeted politely by shopkeepers and petty officials. There
would have been a husband, now perhaps rotting in an unmarked mass grave outside Moscow. She must have seen the pity in my look. Anger flushed her face and brought the tears again.
“Get out! Get out, you smug English swine! You did this! Your bombs! Look at what you’ve done to us!”
I took out my half-empty packet of fags and placed them on the floor and left her sobbing. Her curses followed me into the street.
Was I surprised to find Eve gone when I got back to the café? No. The barman – after a dollar tip – told me she’d left with a man. A big man. With a
great black beard. She’d left a message for me. She said – and here he screwed up his face to recall the words –
she knew what I’d find
.
She had business to
do
. And it seemed Gideon had found her.
I set off back to my digs. I knew the business she had to do. I prayed to whatever gods still had patience with this city and this people that I would be able to stop her before it was too
late.
EIGHTEEN
All I knew was that Eve was with Gideon They were both safe – for the moment. But Gideon’s size and intensity made him conspicuous. If she was going to make a play
for Mulder and it involved a giant with a nose like a battering ram and a beard that could shelter a murder of crows, the chances were high they’d be caught. What were they planning? To go in
with grenades and guns blazing? A suicide mission? Had our lovemaking yesterday been a way of saying goodbye?
At five in the morning I was sitting on my bed with my head in my hands, waiting for the dawn. A full ashtray sat at my feet. A thin tendril of smoke from my last fag rose into the dead air. The
thought of venturing outside made me want to curl up in bed again. Berlin was getting me down. I felt I’d been washed up on the blackened beach of a remote island at the end of time: me and
the other flotsam of a corrupt society. Rotting hulks littered our shoreline. The survivors were fighting among themselves, for food and water, for their very lives.
I gave myself a mental kick and dragged myself to the communal bathroom. I shaved and washed and scoffed a life-giving breakfast in the mess. By nine o’clock I was standing outside, hope
set on a low flame, waiting for Vic. I’d met him last night and asked for his help. It was a tall order.
By nine-thirty I was thinking of abandoning my vigil when I heard a great toot. Coming towards me was a massive German staff car, the three-pointed star on its radiator glowing with power. All
it lacked was a brace of swastikas fluttering from the bumpers. Vic sat at the wheel, waving with one hand, steering and smoking with the other.
“Will this do?” he asked innocently as he drew up and wound down the window.
“I asked for a set of wheels, Vic, not the Kaiser’s personal runabout. Where the hell did you get this?”
He rubbed his nose. “Contacts. It was liberated from the garage of a big cheese in the ritzy part of town. Some say it was Goebbels’ personal transport, or his bit on the
side.”
“It’s – how can I put this – a wee bit conspicuous. That’s all.”
He looked hurt. “Don’t you want it then?”
I suddenly saw the humour in all this. “Course I want it. Vic, you’re a bloody hero. Now show me how to drive this heap of tin. I don’t want to demolish the Brandenburg Gate.
Not after all it’s been through.”
God knows how he found the petrol, far less the car itself. But driving this luxurious tank made me feel much better. It certainly drew glances. I left him, mid-morning, with his admonition
not to bend the bleeding car, if you please, Danny-boy
ringing in my ears. I lied when I told him what I was up to –
impressing a bint, Vic, old pal
– or he might not have
handed over the keys so easily.
As I sailed through Checkpoint Charlie – trust the Army to come up with a truly forgettable name – I got saluted by the two Red Army soldiers. I drove down the Holzmarktstrasse and
parked along from the little café where Eve and I had watched the District Controller come and go. With plenty of Russian soldiers wandering about it should be safe from petty thieves,
unless they wore officer tabs.
I settled down with a pot of tea and the four-page German newspaper that claimed to be the
Neu Berliner Zeitung
. I was conscious of curious eyes from the
grosse frau
in charge of
the café and some of her customers, but when I challenged them by returning their glances they went back to their soft susurrations of local gossip.
Lunchtime dragged on, and I was beginning to think nothing would happen. Which is when it did. Across the street there was a flurry of movement. Soldiers slapped their rifles in salute, and out
stepped Heinrich Mulder. He glanced up and down the street and walked quickly off in the direction of his apartment. I paid my bill and left, coughed the big car into life and eased its nose into
the street just as Mulder disappeared round the corner. I double-declutched, found second, and felt the V12 engine pull the car up to walking speed. At the turning I stopped so that I could see
down the street. Mulder had already vanished. I left the engine running but rolled the window down so I could hear any ructions.