City of Women (12 page)

“Careful of what?”

“Careful of your emotions. You can’t afford to form attachments.”

Going down the steps of the stairwell to the street level, Sigrid catches a shadow of a glance. “What?” she inquires.

“Nothing,” says Ericha.

“No, you gave me a look. What is it?”

“It’s nothing. Only sometimes I wonder about your motives.”

“My motives? What on earth do you mean by that?”

“I mean you’re getting older.”

“Why, thank you, little one. How kind of you to note that.”

“Well, you are. You must be close to thirty by now, and without any children. Perhaps you need to be a mother, even if it’s only to strangers.”

“And perhaps you need to concentrate less on nonsense. You’re so smart that you think yourself into knots. Besides. Just ask anyone. I haven’t a germ of maternal instinct. So no more theories, please.”

“You never talk about your husband,” Ericha says.

Sigrid swallows sharply. “I do.”

“No. You don’t. Other women talk about their husbands constantly. So it makes me curious that you don’t.”

“I suppose I am not ‘other women.’ What’s private to me is private.”

Ericha gives a drilling look. Then turns away, and unlocks the door that leads to the street. “I’m sorry. I won’t ask again. Did you bring the parcel?”

Sigrid looks back blankly. “Did I?”

“From the laundry room.”

“Oh. Yes. Remind me to give you a groschen for the next time. I had the devil’s own time finding your penny scratch.” She reaches into her coat pocket, and retrieves a parcel in brown paper. “What is it?”

Ericha unties the twine as her answer. Then pushes aside the brown paper to reveal a stack of worn and crinkled bank notes of varied denominations that have been passed, well used, from hand to hand. “A withdrawal from our bank,” she says.

Sigrid stares in the pale wattage of the stairwell bulb. “Where did this come from?”

“People who make donations to us rather than Winter Relief.”

“There must be close to three hundred marks here.”

Ericha does not respond to this. Instead, she says, “You should have a key.”

“What?”

“A key to Auntie’s door.”

“And I’m sure your Auntie would be less than pleased at that idea.”

“Don’t misjudge her just because she can be thorny. It’s her way. Believe me, if she didn’t find you trustworthy, she wouldn’t be letting you past the landing,” Ericha tells her.

“Is this a test?”

“No.”

“Is this your way of measuring my commitment?”

“No. It’s not a test.”

“It is, because with Ericha Kohl, everything is a test.”

Ericha shakes her head. “Never mind. If you don’t want the responsibility, then you don’t.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t say one thing or the other.”

“Fine. If you give me a key, I will take a key.”

Ericha reties the parcel of bills.

“What’s it for?” Sigrid asks.

“A bribe. An important document.” After tightening her knot on the parcel, the girl replaces it in Sigrid’s handbag.

“What are you doing?”

“Giving it back to you. You’ll need it. Our contact will be waiting for you in the cinema tonight at quarter past seven. Rear mezzanine.”

If we were mobsters in Chicago, you’d be called my bagman.

“I’m not sure I wish to do this,” Sigrid says.

“Maybe not. But you’ll do it anyway,” Ericha tells her confidently.

“Oh, you think so?”

“Yes. Because it’s a test. And you can’t resist passing tests.”

Sigrid frowns. “Why can’t
you
do it?”

“Because the man you’ll be meeting knows me. I was in the BdM with his daughter.”

“His daughter?”

“His brainless daughter. I bloodied her nose.”

“I won’t ask why.”

“So, you’ll do it.”

Sigrid takes in a sharp breath. “My God, I’m going to be late getting back to work.”

“So, you’ll do it,” Ericha repeats.

“Yes, yes, I’ll do it,” she squawks. “Now, open the door,” Sigrid commands. “Quickly.”

•   •   •

S
HE IS ONLY
a few seconds short of returning late to the patent office. Fräulein Kretchmar gazes at her, as she quickly removes the cover of her typewriter. The woman’s mouth opens, as if she might speak, but then she doesn’t. Sigrid breathes in, then breathes out.

Coming home at the end of the day, she finds her mother-in-law down on her hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor, plunging a stiff-bristled brush into a pail of dirty water with a sickly-sweet odor.

“My God.” Sigrid frowns. “What
is
that smell?”

“Pine needles,” the old woman replies, slapping the brush onto the floor. “Stewed pine needles. It was on one of my radio programs.”

“Well, at least it’s not the soup. Have you put it on yet?”

“Just now. Watch where you’re stepping, will you? If you leave footprints,
you’ll
have to clean them. Not I.”

Sigrid enters the kitchen. Lifts the lid on the soup pot, sniffs the contents, then replaces it. No meat. A little over half a kilo per week per person permitted by their allotted ration Marken does not allow for many meaty soups. But she can smell the aroma of cigarette tobacco. And not the odorous ersatz brands, either, but the real thing. Renate’s gift. She considers mentioning it, just to wheedle, when the old lady suddenly announces, “Your new friend stopped by.”

She steps out of the kitchen.
“Friend?”

“The Frau Obersturmführer Junger,” her mother pronounces archly. “She asked if you could come at
two
on Sunday, rather than one.” A pointed glance out of the corner of her eye as she scrubs. “I told her you’d be
delighted
.”

After supper, she informs Mother Schröder that she is going to the cinema as she walks out, closing the door behind her before any argument can slow her down. She clatters down the steps, listening to the noise of her flat-heeled shoes on the worn wooden planks, and bursts out the door as the twilight glooms the streets. The air is stiff with cold, but she breathes it in with a mix of relief and trepidation. In her bag is the parcel of banknotes.

She has stolen one of her mother-in-law’s Aristons from the packet, and lights it with a match from a paper box as she walks. The tobacco is so bitter that at first she feels she might retch. She pauses by a poplar tree to overcome her light-headedness, and then forces down another drag. This time the smoke sticks to her throat. Then, as she expels it, she spots the figure in the bleakness.

A man across the street.

It’s not that she recognizes his face. His face is obscured by the down-turned hat brim and the upturned collar. Perhaps it’s his posture that causes her heartbeat to shorten. The slightly dangerous slouch. Hands hidden in his pockets. The tilt of the head. And most of all his stillness. That stillness within him that she could never quite touch.

It’s as if she can feel herself rooting to the spot. She does not move, and neither does he.

The No. 14 Elektrischetram hums up the Uhlandstrasse in the opposite direction, and after it passes, no one is standing across the street. No one at all.

•   •   •

I
N THE CINEMA’S BALCONY
, Sigrid finds the father of the BdM girl whose nose Ericha bloodied. He’s a nervous bureaucrat, with multiple chins that ripple when he frowns. Opening an envelope, he exhibits the contraband he’s brought to market. In the light from the screen Sigrid can read the title on the cardboard document cover.
BOMBENPASS
. A passbook for bombing victims. Tensely, she slides him the paper parcel in exchange. The bureaucrat yanks open the parcel wrapping and thumbs through the marks. Then he nods curtly. Transaction completed.

The bureaucrat scurries away, but Sigrid stays. She breathes deeply. The film assaults her ears with music. It rushes sharp gray-white light past her eyes. But she is concentrating on the darkness. Is he out there? Waiting for her? Buried in a row of seats, an escapee from the solitary prison of her memory? She searches the blackness. Waits. But then the house lights are raised. A scattered collection of Berliners, thickly wrapped in coats and scarves, are on their feet, milling toward the exits like somnambulists as the porters herd them down the aisles.

No one buried in the seats. No one waiting. No man. No ghost.

The last time she acted as Egon’s bagman, she was carrying a tin of Malzkaffee in her purse. She was posted in the spot by the stairs as instructed, and was waiting on the skinny Berliner with the homburg once more. But she was looking at her wristwatch, because the man had not yet arrived, and she would soon be late in returning to the office. She tried not to appear anxious or out of place. But then a Sipo agent in a raincoat turned up on the platform, with a uniformed Orpo officer trailing. When the Sipo man started stopping women—women only—and asking for their papers, she felt a burn of nausea in her belly. Her eyes darted back and forth. No sign of the skinny Berliner or his black homburg. Perhaps he had spotted the Sipo men before her. Perhaps he had been tipped off. Perhaps they had already arrested him and were now searching for his accomplice.

A train whooshed into the station. It was headed the wrong direction, but Sigrid turned and stepped onto it anyway. She tried to keep her breathing level. It seemed to take a lifetime for the train to get under way, and when at last it rumbled forward, she had lost sight of the Sipo agent. Had he boarded the train as well? She stood tightly clutching the handrail when someone touched her on the shoulder, and she spun around with sparks in her eyes.

“
Excuse me
,” a young boy in a Hitler Youth uniform said, obviously startled by her reaction to his touch. “But I thought . . . I thought you might like to sit down.”

She glared at him, and then glared at the vacant seat he was offering her. “Ah,” she breathed finally. “Thank you.”

Your instincts are good. You made the right decision.

She had clamped the tin of Malzkaffee onto the table that afternoon, and announced to Egon that she was through with being his bagman. “Look at my hands, how they are shaking just talking about it. I could barely get through my work for the rest of the day. I’m sorry, I’m simply not cut out for this, Egon.”

He took her hands in his and settled her onto the bed opposite him. “Don’t worry. Your instincts are good. You made the right decision.”

“Don’t try to charm me.”

“I’m not.”

“I can’t do it any longer. I’m just a hausfrau. That’s all.”

He took a deep breath and expelled it. She knew what he was doing. He was calculating how to handle this. How to handle
her
. “Let me get you a drink,” he said, and left her slumped on the bed as he headed for the bottle in the cabinet. She picked up his cigarette smoldering in the ashtray and took a puff. Its bitterness bit into the back of her throat.

“Here. Take this.”

“I shouldn’t,” she said, accepting the glass. “I’ll smell of alcohol when I get home.” But she took a swallow anyway, and closed her eyes as the heat flowed down to her belly. He flopped down on the bed, with a jangle of springs, leaning his head against the wall, and picking up his cigarette. “I’ll get someone else,” he said.

She looked over at him. “Will you?”

A shrug. “Of course I will.” And then he looks away from her, examining the rising smoke. “What else can I do?”

When Ericha appears in the cinema seat beside her, she jumps.

“You did it,” the girl whispers.

“What?”

“You did it. You made the exchange.”

“Yes.” Sigrid frowns. “Yes, I did it. A bombing passbook.”

“A
blank
bombing passbook. We can type any name we like on it.”

“Now all we need is a typewriter.”

“You have a typewriter at your job.”

“I see. So I am to be the secret agent at the Reich Patent Office. I have a typewriter, yes, but I also have a supervisor standing at my back.”

“Never mind, then. There are other typewriters,” Ericha tells her. “You’re upset.”

“No. I just can’t stand to sit here any longer. Please, let’s go.”

The old usher opens the door for them, but also blocks it, clearing his throat with intention. “Evening, gnädige Frauen. Enjoy the film?”

“Give him some money,” Ericha instructs in a whisper. “Ten marks.”

Sigrid obeys, digging the money from her purse.

The old man grunts his thanks and clears the way for them with ersatz gallantry.

“You pay him off?” she asks Ericha as they hurry down the steps.

“Not me.
You
,” she answers, but then says, “It’s a good spot for transactions. It’s worth a bit of wire to protect,” she says, then asks, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re lying,” Ericha tells her as they reach the bottom of the steps, but leaves it at that.

The trip back down the Uhlandstrasse is filled with silence. The silence of the images inside Sigrid’s head. His face. The weight of his eyes. The lightness of his fingers on her cheek. But as they enter the building, they are overrun by Frau Granzinger and her brood.
“Fräulein! Where have you been?”
Granzinger demands. Sigrid sees something in Ericha freeze up, and she is abruptly reminded of the girl’s youth. “I told you, did I
not
,” Granzinger is blaring, “that I had an appointment tonight?! And look at me! Here I am dragging all these children with me, because
you
, my duty girl, were nowhere to be found
as usual
.”

“Frau Granzinger,” Sigrid starts to intercede, but the woman sharply waves off her interruption.

“Please, Frau Schröder. Don’t defend her. I realize you have taken an interest in this muddleheaded thing, and I won’t ask why. But,
please
, tonight keep your explanations to yourself. Now
upstairs
. All of you!” she booms at her brood. Then to Ericha she adds with a glower, “And that includes
you
, Fräulein.” Stuffing her hausfrau’s bag, the size of a serving platter, under her arm, she finishes with Sigrid. “And to you, Frau Schröder.
Good night
.”