City of Women (20 page)

Sigrid stares back for a moment as if the old prune has spoken to her in tongues.

“My brother, Frau Hoff,” Auntie interprets. “Herr Brückner. He was wounded during the last war,”

“Frog bayonet,” the geezer explains sternly. “Second Verdun.”

“Then, please, Herr Brückner, please remain seated. I’m really so sorry to have disrupted your evening.”

“Not to worry,” Auntie informs her. “I have what you need right at hand.” But whatever Frau Hoff needs that is right at hand, it seems to take Auntie an eternity to find it in a cardboard box of papers she has pulled out from under the curtain of the kitchen sink.

“So, Frau Hoff. I’ve heard your name mentioned before. You work for Schmidt, do you?” the old man suddenly demands.

Sigrid flinches in response. “Yes. For Herr Schmidt.”

“How long?”

Sigrid concentrates on breathing. “How long? A while. It often seems longer than it’s actually been.”

“I can believe that. I’ll be blunt, Frau Hoff, I never trusted your employer. I think he cheated my brother-in-law, Otto, for years, and now is making a career of cheating his widow. It’s a crime. And someday I’ll prove it.”

“Reinhold, please. Not again,” Auntie begs as she returns from the sink, a dog-eared file folder closed with elastic in her hands. “You must excuse my brother, Frau Hoff. He has made a mistrust of humanity
his
career.”

Herr Brückner snorts. “And my sister, Frau Hoff, has never learned to keep her mouth shut in front of strangers.”

“An old family tradition.” Auntie grins dimly. “So. Here you are,” she says, handing over the file folder. I hope this will satisfy Herr Schmidt’s needs.”

“Yes.” Sigrid steps toward her. “Thank you.” Removing her gloves, she places them on Auntie’s kitchenette table, managing to signal Auntie with her eyes as she pretends to inspect the file folder’s contents. “Yes, I’m sure this will be more than adequate. Good night. And good night, Herr Brückner. So very pleased to meet you.”

The old man shrugs. Her opinion, not his.

Halfway down the corridor, Auntie appears behind her, flapping the pair of gloves in the air. “Frau Hoff. You left your gloves behind.”

Up close, Auntie looks as if she has just been through the wringer.
“What are you doing here?”
she hisses. “I
told
the young one that no one was to come tonight.”

“Well, I didn’t know that, because the ‘young one’ has gone
missing
,” Sigrid informs her, and watches the old woman’s expression fall flat. “She didn’t come home last night. That’s why I’m here. I thought perhaps—”

“I haven’t seen her,” Auntie declares curtly.

Sigrid looks at her for a blank moment.

“And I’m not in the business of dispensing sympathy if that’s what you’re here for. What happens, happens. Nothing to be done.”

“I
know
what
business
you’re in,” Sigrid replies archly, “and I didn’t come for sympathy. I came for help.”

“Well, help is the last thing I can give you. If the young Fräulein is missing, then it means she may have been compromised. Which means that
I
have been compromised, which means that
our guests
have been compromised, and which, by the way, means that
you
have been compromised, too. So you came to the wrong place for help. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to my brother for further interrogation. Take your gloves and go. And don’t come back unless you’ve decided that you can be of some help to
me
.”

“Helene!” the old fart calls from the flat. “What’s taking you? My coffee’s gone tepid.”

Auntie frowns. Hands over the gloves. “Good night.”

•   •   •

T
HE NEXT EVENING
a raw eastern wind skids off the lakes. It rends the snapping banners clinging to their flagstaffs, gusts the thin dry snow in whirling patterns across the asphalt of the Uhlandstrasse, and carries the Gestapo into their apartment building.

“So you have no idea concerning her whereabouts?”

The man’s voice is dull. Bored. It matches his expression.

“That’s correct,” Sigrid replies.

“Yet according to”—he consults his notebook with a frown for the name—“according to Frau Granzinger, the two of you were friendly.”

His face is pale and doughy. Thick eyebrows. Dark eyes with only a pilot light burning. “‘Friendly’?” Sigrid repeats, as if only vaguely familiar with the concept. “Did she use that word? If she did, then I’m afraid she overstated the matter considerably. I found Fräulein Kohl to be a confused young girl. Perhaps I took some pity on her and tried to give her a steer in the proper direction.”

“And what direction would that be?”

“As I said, she was confused. Girls at that age often fall victim to emotional turmoil. Certainly you must be aware of that.”

The man looks back at her blankly.

“My advice to her, and how closely it was heeded, I cannot say, but my advice to her was to work and work
hard
. Redouble her efforts. Forget about her personal pains and dedicate herself to the task at hand.”

“Which was?”

“Which was the care of Frau Granzinger’s children, of course. Keeping them fed. Keeping them clean.”

The man’s stare is unaltered.

“I told her, you see, that changing soiled diapers might not be very glamorous, but that in doing so she was serving the nation as surely as does the frontline soldier. But then a man in your position must understand that all too well, Herr Kommissar.”

The man’s eyes flicker ever so slightly.
Must I?

“Serving as a policeman, that is. Of course, I have no doubt that as a German man you would much prefer to be waging war with a rifle on the battlefield. But you know that there are other battlefields, too, battlefields that are just as important. Fighting the enemies within as well as the enemies without.” Sigrid says all this wearing a face of humorless sincerity, her eyes bluntly serene in her convictions.

For a long moment, the man observes her, his gaze illuminated by an infinitesimal glint of scrutiny. Then the door across the hall opens and a man in a snap-brim hat and leather trench coat emerges from the Frau Obersturmführer Junger’s flat. But it is not the Frau Obersturmführer showing him out, but the half sister, dressed in her well-pressed nurse’s uniform. The woman gives Sigrid a momentary glance, and then offers a, “Heil Hitler, Frau Schröder,” in quite a perfunctory manner. A tone that Sigrid mimics perfectly in her reply. “Heil Hitler, Fräulein Kessler,” she responds, and then both turn to view the doughy-faced men standing on the landing with the impunity that is the property of the unvarnished heart. Fräulein Kessler shuts her door. The man looks at his partner, who only shrugs; then he stuffs his notebook back into the pocket of his overcoat.

“Thank you, Frau Schröder,” he says without gratitude, “for your time.
Heil Hitler.”

“
Heil Hitler
,” Sigrid responds earnestly. She closes the door with a careful thud, then presses her head against the wood, listening to the echo of the men’s footsteps as they descend floor by floor. When she tugs off her cardigan, she realizes that she has sweated through her dress. Mother Schröder surveys her darkly, puffing on one of her stinking cigarettes. Only a puddle of schnapps remains in her glass. “I
told
you,” she declares sharply. “I
told
you, didn’t I? That girl was trouble from the start. Now, look what we’ve got. The Gestapo at our door.”

“The Gestapo,” says Sigrid, hanging her cardigan on the hook and wiping her cheek. “was at
everyone’s
door. Not just ours.”

“And did
everyone
break out into sweat because of it?” the old lady inquires with a sour smirk.

Sigrid removes her hand from her cheek. “They did if they have any brains.”

Mother Schröder snorts. Tends to her cigarette. “You’re lucky I’m a Party member.”

“Yes,” Sigrid tells her, crossing to the sink and unscrewing the tap. “Every day I thank God for that.”

“You know, you might, for once, think of someone else’s welfare,” the old woman calls out caustically after her. “If they arrest you, it’s your whole family that follows. Forget about me, I’m an old woman. But think about your
husband
, if you can still remember his face. Think about what might happen to
him
.”

Sigrid fills her cupped hands and presses her face into the water from the kitchen sink’s open tap. She feels it tingle on her skin, then rises up and summons breath. “Kaspar is a soldier. A
wounded
soldier. The army won’t let anyone touch him. Besides, I haven’t done anything wrong. I work in a patent office. I come home, I go to sleep. I wake up for the bombers when they come, and go back to sleep after they leave. The next morning I start the process over again, just like everyone else. Why should the Gestapo have the slightest interest in arresting me?” Is she reassuring herself with this dialogue? By now she is back into the front room, wiping her hands on the dish towel.

“Because you have no sense,” her mother-in-law explains curtly. “That’s always your problem. You think because you’re so smart that you can get away with anything. That you’re above it all. But you’re not, my good girl. And if you’re not careful, you’re going to find that out, just like that sow Hildegard Remki did.”

For an instant the old lady’s eyes are searing, then she looks rapidly away. Inhales smoke. A second later she reaches over and snaps on Frau Remki’s Telefunken, leaving Sigrid standing there, glaring at her as the Ninth Symphony
invades the room. Sigrid feels a chill through her sweated blouse.

In the bedroom, she removes the sweaty garment and picks a dry one from the bureau. Sitting on the bed, she examines the postcard she has secreted from the pocket of her coat. Ericha’s eyes are as naked as her body. She regards Sigrid with equally naked appraisal. Eyes steaming wet, Sigrid turns the card over in her hand, and reads the address printed on the back:
WILHELMINA VON HOHENHOFF. BEAUTY IMAGES, 146C KANTSTRASSE, BERLIN
.

THIRTEEN

S
HE KNOCKS
but there is no answer, though she can hear a woman’s voice. A strong voice, engaged in argument. Quietly she tries the brass door handle, and the door pops open with a smooth click. Peering in, she finds that the loft is full of shadows. Heavy drapes are closed over tall windows, shutting out even a blink of light. Only a table lamp, dressed with a red scarf, burns at the opposite side of the room, where she can see, in the warm, blood-red light, a very tall, athletically trim woman in trousers, pacing back and forth on the telephone, shouting into the receiver with a commanding anger. “I don’t
care
, Dieter, I don’t care! Those are all
your
problems,
not mine
. Now, we have an agreement and you will stick to it, is that understood?!” But before poor Dieter, whoever he is, can possibly make a reply, she rings off with a slam. Sigrid stands in the threshold, the corridor leaking light behind her. “You’re late,” the woman announces imperiously. “That’s your first and last warning. Keep me waiting again, and I’ll sack your ass.” She steps away from the lamp glow, and a second later, Sigrid is blinded by a stinging assault of white light.

“Well, don’t just stand there, for fuck’s sake,” she hears the woman demand.

Tentatively Sigrid steps forward, shielding her eyes. “You are Wilhelmina von Hohenhoff?”

The woman steps into the light with an expression of critical appraisal. Her thick bob of curls is dyed henna red. Her eyes are hooded and deeply set. “You’re a little old for this,” she observes.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Most of my girls aren’t much past twenty. But still, you have the eyes, and an interesting bone structure,” she says.

Sigrid backs off half a step as the woman fluffs her fingers through her hair. “Frau von Hohenhoff.”

“
Fräulein
von Hohenhoff. Good hair. Maybe a braid. But later for the details. Take off your clothes. I want to see your body.”

“I am not here to strip down for your camera,
Fräulein
von Hohenhoff.”

“
No?
Then why are you wasting my time? I’m sure you were told that I only do nudes.”

“I am not here to be photographed. Will you please turn off those lights?”

The woman examines Sigrid with a sudden frown. “Then why
are
you here?”

“My name is Frau Schröder. I’m here about . . . about one of your
models
. Now, if you please, I’m being blinded.”

The woman retains her frown, and walks off, the noise of her heels on the hardwood floor echoing into the loft’s high ceilings. A metallic click kills the brightness, which is replaced by the glow of a line of studio lights. Sigrid blinks and lowers her hand.

“You have a good look,” the woman informs her. “So I won’t boot you out the door just yet. But don’t get comfortable.”

“I’m looking for a girl named Ericha Kohl.”

“Yes? And you think she sat for me, do you?”

“Well,” Sigrid says, and produces Ericha’s playing card, “she wasn’t exactly sitting.”

The woman observes the card and then Sigrid. “Are you a wife?” Fräulein von Hohenhoff inquires blankly.

“Am I a what?”

“Sometimes wives appear hunting for their husband’s bed partner. Sometimes
husbands
appear hunting for their
wife’s
bed partner. My girls are not threatened by variety.”

“No. Nothing like that. But you know her, correct?”

“Oh, yes. Who could forget the courageous young Ericha?” The woman crushes out her cigarette in a small enamel ashtray overloaded with butts. “Why do you ask, if it’s not too much trouble to tell me?”

“Because,” Sigrid answers, “she’s gone missing.”

The woman gazes back at her. Then turns suddenly and strides away, over to a sideboard, without a word. Sigrid follows the echo of her heels. “You have nothing to say?” she asks.

“What would you have me say? A girl has gone missing.” The woman shrugs, finding a cigarette to light. “They often do.” The room around them is cluttered with cameras and equipment, light stands, props, and assorted Hetzblätter. The smell of developing fluid mixes with the bitter aroma of strongly brewed coffee. On the wall are a dozen or so framed photographs of schnauzer dogs. “My children,” she explains. “Arco and Duxi. Dead now. I could never bring myself to have another after them,” she explains with wistful efficiency, and then sits and lights another cigarette. But Sigrid is not interested in the dog photos. She is staring at several painted background flats stacked against the wall. Sigrid recognizes the canal scene from Ericha’s pose.

“You disapprove?”

“What?”

Fräulein von Hohenhoff nods toward the flats. “Of what I do. You shouldn’t. I provide a valuable service to the Wehrmacht by boosting the morale of our troops.”

“My approval or disapproval is of no importance,” she says.

“Well, I’m glad we can agree on that.”

“Can you tell me,” she asks, “the last time you saw her?”

Fräulein von Hohenhoff does not have to consider. “Last night. She appeared here in the late evening.” The woman inhales smoke, and expels none of it. “I’d hoped she’d come to pose again, because the camera loves her. Strange. To look at her, you’d never imagine, the scrawny thing. But no”—she knocks off a bit of ash into another loaded ashtray—“that wasn’t why.” “Up close, behind the vigor of her façade, Sigrid sees that the woman is aging. The jawline pulping. The skin of her neck wrinkling, starting to sag. Her teeth and fingers filmed by tobacco stains. “
So
,” Fräulein von Hohenhoff says with a cool gaze, “who are you to her?”

“We are neighbors.”

“Neighbors. And why should I give a piss about that, Frau Schröder?”

“She works for the woman who lives above me. We’ve been friends,” she says, but suddenly it all becomes a jumble. Too much to explain and not enough. “It’s not a joke. The police are looking for her,” she announces. “They came to our apartment block last night.”

“The police?”

“The Gestapo,” Sigrid clarifies.

Fräulein von Hohenhoff takes a breath. Stares at the ashtray and then raises her eyes heavily. “Do you know?” she asks.

“Know?”

“What she does.”

A minuscule pause. “Yes.”

“Then you must have some idea how useful a photographer might be to . . .”—the woman pauses, to choose the correct words— “. . . to her
hobby
.”

Sigrid says nothing

“I gave her my key,” the woman tells her. “If she ever needed it. Ever needed a place. But Ericha Kohl is a ghost, Frau Schröder. She appears, she disappears.” A shrug. “Like an apparition. If you know her at all, then surely you know that much.”

“So, you have no thoughts . . . ?”

“On the contrary. I have many thoughts about our Fräulein Kohl. But where she
is
or
might be
, I have not an inkling.”

Sigrid stares for a moment at the woman’s face. “Are you lying to me?”

A stony look in reply. Then the Fräulein is up. She steps away, with eyes averted as she rubs a thumb across her forehead. Smoke floats in the air around her. “I was never running a business, you understand. Photos for identity documents? I did them as favors. And only for certain people.”

“But you supplied documents to Ericha.”

“I am a photographer, not a forger. That work went to someone else. A man she knew in the Heerstrasse,” she says, her voice gaining an edge.

“A man, yes. She called him Johann.”

“I had no contact with him,” she announces flatly. “You say his name was Johann?” A frown. “I didn’t inquire.”

“Fräulein von Hohenhoff,
please
,” Sigrid finally begs. “No more of this piecemeal story.
Tell me what you know
.”

The woman turns, her face transparent and loaded with pain. “I was angry,” she declares, her eyes gone suddenly red. “She came to me, not out of any feeling, but only to ask for money. Only money. This
man
. I knew how she was soiling herself with him. I was
angry
,” she repeats.
“I tossed a hundred marks on the floor and told her to go fuck herself.”

Sigrid takes in a painful breath. But the Fräulein turns away.

“Now you may be permitted to judge me, Frau Schröder,” she says in a sickened voice. “And then get out.”

•   •   •

S
IGRID TRAVELS THE
K
ANTSTRASSE
like a sleepwalker, twice bumping into eternally hurried Berliners rushing in the opposite direction. She is headed, ostensibly, for the Zoo U-Bahn station, but is only dimly aware that she has made a wrong turn. “Get your eyes
examined!” Her fellow citizens scold her. “Are you blind?” they demand to know. And then a body slams into her with such force that only a pair of hands seizing her arms prevent her from hitting the pavement. The impact forces her to struggle for focus. Then she sees the face, and his name catches in her throat.

“There’s someone following you,” he whispers. She feels his breath burning her ear. “Black trilby and gray overcoat, a half block back.” And then aloud, “Excuse me, gnädige Frau, for my blunder. My apologies.” In a heartbeat he is gone, merging into the oncoming pedestrians, but Sigrid is stuck solidly in place, staring after him. Her heart, her brain, her body are in full-blown shock, as the echo of Egon’s voice reverberates in her head and heats her flesh. When she lurches forward it is without thought, and this time when she plows into someone she is knocked flat onto her rump. Her head swims. She blinks at the other woman who is bent over her, apologizing, retrieving the contents of Sigrid’s purse, which have been spilled on the sidewalk. “Are you hurt?” the woman keeps repeating. A slim, thoughtful face, her eyebrows pinched together with concern. “Are you hurt? I’m so sorry. I simply wasn’t watching,” she says, gathering up a comb, a compact mirror, a pencil stub and a tube of headache powder, and then stops dead to stare at Ericha’s naked postcard. Sigrid snatches it from the woman’s hand with a curt “Thank you,” and clambers to her feet. “I am unhurt.” Then, pushing past without another syllable, she searches the street with a breath of frantic hope, but no hope is found, only strangers. Strangers in front of her and strangers behind her. Though, purchasing a copy of the
B.Z. am Mittag
from a uniformed paperboy, is a hefty Berliner bear wearing a slate gray overcoat and a black trilby hat. Sigrid gulps down a metallic taste of fear, puts down her head, and charges down the walk in the opposite direction, weaving through the midday mob. A block farther, she turns quickly into a small café and finds a chair and a table. Her hands are shaking. Her body shivering. The waitress squints at her. “Sorry, are you ill?” she inquires, but Sigrid ignores the question. Orders coffee. Shock, fear, and unadulterated excitement. The thrill of his voice. The sight of his face. The grip of his hands. So suddenly, igniting her heart.
Alive
. He is not a ghost of her imagination. He is alive and touchable.

The bell over the door jangles, and she glances up with wild hope, but only spots the hefty man entering with a newspaper under his arm. Gray coat, black trilby. He pays her not a whit of attention, but thumps down behind a table, and spreads open his newspaper, ruffling pages, clearing a gummy congestion from his throat. He orders a coffee and a brandy and a Dutch cigar.

Her palms are sweating. She downs a few swallows of the tasteless coffee in her cup and quickly stands. Her coins ring on the tabletop and she bullets for the door. Outside, she sees the E bus, slowing for its stop in the Auguste-Viktoria-Platz, below the zoo. Her pace quickens. She risks a glance behind, only to see the hefty man veering out of the café door with a frown. She picks up her pace again. By the time the bus eases to a halt with a moan of brakes, she is running, and though she dares not turn again, she knows that he is running, too. The last of the passengers are loading themselves aboard, and the bus driver is signaling his return to traffic by the time she makes it to the stop and hammers on the door. This is illegal, and most drivers ignore such desperate actions, but sometimes it works. The bus halts, the doors swing open, and she clambers up. The driver grunts at her, but the young female conductor wearing a striped BdM armlet sets in with an immediate lecture, which Sigrid ignores. She is too busy watching the great bear huffing and puffing as he runs, red-faced, beside the departing bus before tossing up his hands in frustration. The bus grinds into gear and pulls away from the curb, spewing oily exhaust. A car horn sounds in the street. Inside, it is crowded and she must stand. A baby cries over the noise of the motor. An old hausfrau snores. A wordless disgruntlement fills in the empty spaces. She’s not even sure where she is going, but doesn’t care. The thrill has turned upside down inside of her. Standing there aboard the lumbering bus, jostled and bumped, the odor of unwashed clothing filling her nostrils, she feels Egon’s abandonment as keenly as she did the last time they shared a bed. He was there, and then in a blink he was gone. Disappearing into daylight and not throwing a shadow, making his escape, without her. As always. Without her.

•   •   •

A
T THE DOOR
to the building she is met by Portierfrau Mundt, in her bleached apron over a drab housedress, who holds the foyer door for her as if Sigrid is a truant child. “Awfully late for a married woman to be coming home from work, Frau Schröder,” the woman notes. “More delays on the trains, no doubt?”

Sigrid gives her a dark eye. “You were holding supper for me, Portierfrau? Or just spying from your window?”

“My husband and I are responsible for residents of this building,” she reminds her archly. “Remarks like that do you no good. As you may one day discover.”

Sigrid climbs the stairs, deaf to Mundt. Deaf to herself, beyond the thumping of her heart. At the landing to her flat, she pauses. Digs blindly into her purse for the key. When she doesn’t find it, she digs into her pockets. Where had she put the foolish thing? But when she draws out a piece of grayish wartime paper, folded in half, her heart thumps deeply. For a moment, it’s too much. She closes her hand over the note and presses it against her belly. Then she steals a breath and opens the fold. Quickly scans the contents once, and then again. It’s only a few words. But she reads them over and over, then jumps when the door opens behind her.