Berlin: A Novel (9 page)

'I shall call you as a witness to exonerate Frau Horn, Frau von Bergen. But you won't be able to avoid giving evidence under oath.' The lawyer looked gravely at her. 'I can't hold out much hope. A remark like that is regarded as high treason.' He struggled for words. And the penalty for high treason is execution by the guillotine.'

'They come early in the morning, two wardresses, one warder. They don't need to wake you, you've been lying awake, night after night. The women help you into the smock, put the wooden clogs on your feet. The warder handcuffs you. Then they cut your hair off to leave your neck free. You walk down long corridors, past pale faces staring silently at you through the peepholes in their cell doors.

'They lead you down a staircase into a basement, open a door, push you in front of a lectern. There's a burning candle and a crucifix on the lectern. Behind it you see the public prosecutor who demanded your life in court and now is going to get it. Beside him, your own lawyer and a lay assessor. Three men not involved in the case stand around the room in black suits. To your left there's a black curtain from ceiling to floor of the basement. You hardly notice it.

'You see the public prosecutor. He reads the verdict out to you again, you don't know why, you know it by now. You hear his final words: "Executioner, do your duty."

'The black curtain is hauled up. Bright light fills the white-tiled space behind it. You see the scaffold. It's smaller than you expected. One of the black-clad men takes hold of your ankles from behind, pulling your feet from under you. Another holds your hands behind your back. The third holds your upper arms and body. They drag you to the scaffold and push you forward over it, like a loaf of bread going into the oven. You look down into the basket which will soon catch your head. You feel the hard wood of the frame closing over your neck. The executioner pulls the cord. The guillotine falls. It falls for an eternity, and then finally brings you release.'

Karin raised her face, wet with tears. '1 didn't want that to happen,' she sobbed, shaken by convulsive weeping.

'Lore Bruck did. She had an old score to settle with Nadja. An everyday tale of jealousy.' Erik de Winter was lying beside Karin on the grass. 'I once had to attend an execution as lay assessor. I had to tell you what it's like. I couldn't spare you. Even if it happened nearly a year ago. You can't come to terms with something unless you know all about it.'

Alongside films designed to encourage the population to hold out. Goebbels had decreed light fare to divert their minds. Theodor Alberti was directing an amusing love story, Springtime Games, starring Karin and Erik. This warm, sunny spring of 1945 was ideal for location shots beside the river.

The rumble of guns from the East had been coming closer and closer these last few days. Since yesterday columns of German soldiers, gaunt figures, had been moving along the nearby road in the vague hope of reaching the Western lines on the other side of the Elbe. It would be better to be taken prisoner there than fall into Bolshevik hands.

'Go over to make-up and get your face repaired.' Erik helped her to her feet, but then immediately threw her to the ground. A low-flying Russian aircraft swooped past close above them, engines roaring. They heard the staccato tack-tack of its machine guns. Earth sprayed into the air around them. Then it was quiet again. A lark sang high in the sky against the distant thunder of the guns.

All right, ladies and gentlemen,' called the director from the river bank. 'Come on, children, time to shoot the bathing scene.'

Not with me, Theo,' called the chief cameraman from the slope.

'What's the matter, Erwin?'

The cameraman pointed to the opposite bank. 'Oh, nothing much, just a Russian tank on course for the Greater German movie industry. Adios, amigos, I'm off' He settled his peaked cap firmly on his head and disappeared over the far side of the slope.

Now they could hear the drone of a diesel engine and the rattle of tank tracks. A T34 came slowly into view on the other side of the river. 'Come on, this way.' Erik rolled down the slope and dived into the reeds. Karin clutched her shoulder bag and followed him. She was wearing trousers, a sweater and stout shoes, because the screenplay had provided for a hiking scene before the river-bathing. She landed beside him. In single file, they waded kneedeep through the mud. They clambered back on land once they were past the next bend in the river.

Erik pointed to a hayrick. 'We'd better dry off a bit there before we go on. I have an aunt in Nauen. We can stay with her until the proud victors have finished running riot.'

No, Erik, it'll be better if we part company.' She hugged him. 'See you at four-thirty after the war.'

Going by roundabout ways, Karin reached Berlin ahead of the Russians, and spent the final days of the war in the cellar with the other tenants of her building. When the firing finally died down outside, she picked up her small suitcase. 'Hey, where d'you think you're going?' snarled Herr Krapp. He was a Party member and air-raid warden, and very full of himself.

'Up to my apartment to celebrate the final victory,' she replied.

'Better stay here, Frau van Bergen,' Dr Seidel the dentist warned her.

'I've been hiding long enough.' Karin opened the cellar door.

'Nobody leaves this shelter without my permission,' barked Herr Krapp.

'Oh, shut your big mouth, Krapp, and you'd better take your helmet off,' Seidel said. 'Your headgear might give our liberators the wrong idea.'

She climbed the stairs to the second floor. Apart from a little damage caused by shell splinters, her apartment was intact. She went into the kitchen, where she could look down on the Hohenzollerndamm through a chink in the boards nailed over the window frame.

There were troops who looked like Mongolians in the street, with horsedrawn, tarpaulin-covered carts. The soldiers were shouting and pushing a naked young woman back and forth, and finally pulled her into one of the carts. One by one they clambered up under the tarpaulin. There were at least twenty men standing in line. The screams of their victim rose up to Karin. Then they turned to whimpering, and soon died away. You'll be next, she thought. Everything within her rebelled against this dreadful idea.

She remembered the chrome-plated pistol, a prop from one of her films, which Conrad Jung had given her at the premiere as a souvenir, with its magazine full. 'In case a bad man comes your way.' he had joked. She took the little weapon out of its hiding place and put it in the pocket of her track suit. She'd account for at least one attacker before she ended it all.

A dirty jeep braked sharply. The officer beside the driver rose to his feet and shouted an order. Reluctantly, the Asiatic soldiers obeyed. They climbed into their carts, cracking whips. The shaggy little horses moved slowly on. The raped woman was thrown out of one of the covered carts and landed in the road, where she lay with her limbs skewed awkwardly. Her vulva was nothing but bloody mush. The officer jumped out of the jeep, drew his pistol and signed to the two soldiers in the back seat to follow him. Bending low, he ran to the door of the building and disappeared from Karin's view.

The driver got out. He aimed his sub-machine gun at the naked, lifeless piece of humanity. The victim's body arched under the force of his salvo, and then collapsed.

Karin heard them searching the apartments. First the ground floor, then the first floor. All front doors had remained unlocked during air raids, to make fire-fighting easier, so there was nothing to bar the intruders' way.

Standing very straight, she waited for the three Russians in the doorway of her apartment, holding the small gun in her pocket. Instinctively, the officer raised his pistol. Very well, thought Karin, shrugging.

The soldiers pushed past her. Next moment they reappeared. One of them said something in guttural tones, obviously reporting that there was no one else in the apartment. The officer put his pistol in its holster. A brief command, and the soldiers went away.

Karin looked at the man opposite her. He was tall and lean, with grey eyes and a firm chin. He wore the clasp of some decoration on his dusty uniform tunic, and broad epaulettes. Closing the apartment door behind him, he took his helmet off, revealing a well-shaped head and wiry fair hair. He took a cigarette case out of his breast pocket.

'Like a cigarette?'

She didn't smoke, but this wasn't the moment to decline the offer. 'Yes, please.' She took one.

He gave her a light. 'The first few days will be the worst,' he said, apologetically. After that things will gradually calm down.'

'You speak German,' she cried in surprise, and coughed. She had only just registered his fluent, educated German.

'You're not used to smoking. I guess?' He laughed. 'We people from the Baltic speak many languages. Pure self-defence. I'm Major Maxim Petrovich Berkov.'

'Karin Rembach.'

'Nazi?'

'I'm an actress. I'm not a Party member, if that's what you mean.'

'We Russians like art and artists. Will you wait a moment? I have bread, sausage and vodka in the vehicle. Close the door behind me.'

When he came back she was wearing a lightweight if crumpled summer dress, much more suitable for this warm May day than her tracksuit. His glance penetrated the thin material. With an unexpected, quick movement he drew her close to him and raised the skirt of the dress. Then he had the little pistol in his hand. Karin had put it in the elastic waistband of her panties. 'Better this way, I think.' He smoothed her dress down again. 'Nasdrovye.' He handed her the vodka bottle.

She drank only a little, but devoured the smoked sausage and coarse wholemeal bread. She hadn't had anything proper to eat for days.

'You'll stay with me,' he said suddenly. 'I like you.'

His decision matched her own wishes. She needed a protector, and this one had made a civilized impression on her. Karin was a realist. He could have taken her by force and then left her to his men. The question wasn't whether she wanted him but whether she could keep him long enough, until the worst was over.

'Come here, Maxim Petrovich.' Her voice promised him what he was waiting for.

It was a sensible arrangement, and the whole building profited by it, although some of the women sniffed in a superior way. The major was interpreter to General Bersarin, who had just been appointed city commandant. He stationed a tanker of drinking water and two guards outside the corner house of Karin's street. He brought food, which Karin shared with the other people in the building, and had glass put into the windows of her apartment. He was a passionate and a thoughtful lover.

On 1 July 1945 the Western Allies moved into Berlin. There was water in the mains again, although it was highly chlorinated, the transport system was more or less up and running, and the theatres were putting on more and better performances than they had for the last twelve years. The building on the Hohenzollerndamm on the corner of Mansfelder Strasse was now part of West Berlin. Maxim Petrovich Berkov did not come back.

The tribunal for artists of stage and screen met in a classroom. Its chairman was an old Communist whom the Russians had freed from a concentration camp. He tried hard to be objective, and listened to all Karin had to say.

'It is true that I made three films with Conrad Jung. Queen Louise was suppressed by Goebbels, Midsummer Night was a love story from a Scandinavian novella, and St Elmo's Fire was the tragedy of a seaman's wife in the last century. Working with Jung was very important to me. He is a director of high standing.'

'Note that the defendant calls the maker of the propaganda film The Wandering Jew a director of high standing,' said the tribunal member on the left, a stout woman in her fifties, who disliked Karin for her youth and beauty.

'Did you act in that film?' asked the chairman.

'No, I was shooting a comedy in Prague at the time, and then a harmless love story for UfA, with Erik de Winter, directed by Theodor Alberti. The Russians interrupted our location shots on the banks of the Havel.'

'Thank you for your full account.' The chairman turned to the other members of the tribunal. 'The defendant's professional opinion of the director Conrad Jung and the fact that he made an anti-Semitic film should not influence our ruling.' He leafed through his papers before going on. 'Frau Rembach, we now come to a very grave charge.'