City of Women (31 page)

When she wakes, Kaspar is laid out on the bed beside her, still in his boots.

“Kaspar?” she asks, drowsily.

“Have you been with him?”

She feels the tension at the back of throat. “What?”

“The Herr Leutnant. I don’t assume he was actually delivering that bottle of cognac to share with a gang of lowly foot-wrapped Indians.”

“If you’re asking me to read the man’s mind, Kaspar,” Sigrid answers quite truthfully, “I assure you, I cannot.”

Kaspar says nothing more for a moment. He exhales thickly, and then informs her, “What I don’t understand,” she hears him say, “what I don’t understand is why I am
alive
. I should have been killed a hundred times. But for reasons I cannot imagine, I wasn’t. Men died all around me, but I remained alive. One morning, we were just outside of Rzhev. It was snowing. We were up to our knees in it. Pinned down by a couple of Bolshie MGs. I was watching one of my squad mates bleeding into the snow. Bright,
bright
red on the white. The color was so beautiful. So very seductive,” he says. “And suddenly I decided I had had enough. So I stood up. Just . . .”—he hesitates—“stood up. I was going to walk straight into the Maxims and let them riddle me to pieces. I refused to survive again when all around me all my squad mates were dead or dying. But then came an explosion. It was a mortar round. That’s the last thing I remember before waking up on a hospital cot.”

Sigrid is surprised by a sudden feeling of compassion for her husband. A feeling of common mystery. Thousands transported. So many dead. Who decides who lives? Divine calculation? Fate? All evidence aside that neither exists, that life is a random series of numbers. One lives, six die, three live, a thousand die. She cannot help but believe that there is some kind of unknowable clockwork in operation. Some vast pattern, unseen at street level. Perhaps, because otherwise what would be the point? She starts to say something like that. Such things cannot be known, but stops when she realizes that, in fact, Kaspar is no longer beside her. Even though he may be still filling the other half of the bed with his body, he has returned to the East.

“That’s a terrible story, Kaspar,” she offers quietly.

And for an instant, he seems to actually see her again. Long enough for her to see him drowning in the depth of his own gaze. “No. That’s a story of stupidity. But if you’d like to hear a
terrible
story, I have one of those, too.”

She is not sure she does, but Kaspar does not wait for her permission. “It was August. Very hot. The air was so heavy with dust it was choking. We had been given orders by battalion to secure a little town west of Zubtsov. Just a village, really, I couldn’t tell you its name, but it had cost us. I mean, cost us
dearly
. Ivan simply didn’t want to give it up. They were NKVD frontier troops, and they fought like mad dogs. We took it, lost it, then took it back again. Three days it went like this, back and forth, three days straight, with no sleep, no food, only fighting. Then, finally, the panzers arrive, and the Ivans evacuated. But what they left behind,” he says, “it was inhuman. They had taken prisoners. Eleven of them, two from my company. We found their bodies, stripped naked, mutilated. Heads crushed in. Entrails exposed. Genitals sliced off and stuffed into their mouths.” He pauses, gazing up at the ceiling, as if he were seeing it all there. “What we felt, when we found them? I can’t explain. It was more than rage. It was more than grief. It was something that has no name.”

He stares.

“That night we found a cache of vodka that the Reds had left, and got very drunk. Very drunk, and decided that such a crime couldn’t go unpunished. So we assembled and went back into the village. Three squads of men. We rousted everyone out of their shacks. Women, children, young and old, and forced them into an empty horse barn. Then we boarded shut the doors,” he says, gazing, “and set the barn on fire.”

Silence.

“It took an hour before the screaming stopped, though it seemed much longer. At one point, there was a woman. A woman who had dug a hole under the barn with her hands, and tried to squeeze her child out. But when we saw them, we opened up and cut them into pieces.”

Sigrid does not move. She cannot move. She can only listen as the tears roll down her cheeks.

“I cannot explain it, Sigrid. I will never be able to explain it. But at that instant, I believed they were
guilty
. All of them. Even the woman and her child. I believed they were all,” he whispers, “less than human.”

Quietly, Sigrid rises from the bed. Kaspar does not try to stop her. He does not seem to notice. In the bathroom, she manages to turn on the cold water tap to wash her face, but then can only glare at the water swirling down the drain. When she looks up, the mirror above the sink holds an image of a stranger. Hair dangling. Eyes like stones.

SEVENTEEN

T
HEY HAVE RETURNED
to the bench in the Tiergarten near the Lutherbrücke. There’s a raw, damp wind blowing, following the Spree up from the lakes and riffling through the limbs of the poplars and black chestnuts. Ericha is bundled in a ragged jacket, and her shoes are starting to display a certain shabbiness from constant wear. The leather cracked. The sole separating from the uppers at strategic seams. She attempts to strike a match for her cigarette. No sign of Franz, but this time Sigrid does not mention him. Finally the match catches and Ericha lights up. A shiver passes through her body like a wire.

“What happened to the warm coat you had?” Sigrid asks, but Ericha only shrugs off such a question. Avoids eye contact.

“Your hands and face are chapped.”

“I’m on the move a lot” is all the girl says. “Don’t worry about me. What do you have to tell me?”

“I have the money,” Sigrid answers. “For the ship passages.”

Finally Ericha looks at her.

“Don’t ask,” Sigrid tells her, stealing a drag from her bitter cigarette.

Ericha shakes her head. “I wasn’t going to.” Her eyes have taken on the depth of the river as she accepts the cigarette back. Sigrid clears the long sidewalk leading off the bridge with another German glance, then digs into her bag. “Put this in your pocket,” she tells Ericha, and presses Melnikov’s envelope into the girl’s chapped hand. “There should be enough there for everything.”

Ericha quickly stuffs it into her coat, then stares into Sigrid’s face. “You see, Frau Schröder,” she says. “I wasn’t wrong about you.”

“Yes, yes. You have the Menschenkenntnis. So I’ve heard. Inside the envelope there’s also an address. Written on the back of a cigarette card.”

“An address?”

“Auntie can’t help you. It’s the address of someone who can.”

A moment of grayness. “You mean an abortionist?”

“Use some of the money. There’s plenty,” Sigrid tells her. “All you need to know is on the card.” But when she looks back at Ericha’s silence, she asks, “It’s what you want, isn’t it? Isn’t it what you
want
?”

But Ericha only gazes at her, her face stamped with dread. “Will you come with me?” she finally asks.

“I can’t. I’d be a danger to you,” Sigrid tells her, after a German glance. “Do you recall the Kommissar from the cinema? He appeared at my work and questioned me in the director’s office.”

“Questioned?”

“About my relationship with you. I told him nothing, of course, but you can see how it makes me a liability. Even now it could be dangerous for us to be sharing this bench. I must have changed trains a half dozen times to make sure no one was following me.”

“And was there?”

“Not as yet,” she says with a glance over her shoulder. “At least not that I could see. But who knows what the Herr Kommissar has up his sleeve? He could reappear at any moment and decide to cart me off. So I think this is the last time we should meet for a while.”

Ericha directs her gaze at the cracked slate of the sidewalk and smokes. Sigrid closes her eyes at the silence between them.

Then she hears, “I don’t care.”

“What?”

“I don’t care if you’ve been questioned. I don’t care if Heinrich Himmler is spying on you from your pantry closet. You’re no more a liability to anyone than I am. It’s
me
whom the Gestapo is after.
I’m
the danger.” And then she says, “I’ve been thinking about turning myself in.”

“Nonsense.”

“It’s
not
. If I give myself up to them, then the danger will be removed.”

“And what about the people you are hiding? The
lives
you have been protecting. Who will get them
out
?”

“You will.”

Sigrid very nearly laughs. “Now,
that
is ridiculous.”

“I think it is not.”

“Ericha, you’re frightened. I understand. I am frightened, too. But those little girls, their mother. They need
you
. Not me. Not anyone else. Compared to you, the rest of us are just running errands.”

Ericha says nothing.

“You are
not
going to turn yourself in. Do you understand me, child? I will not permit it.”

Slowly, Ericha drops her cigarette and grinds it out. “You will never,” she says, “be a liability to
me,
Frau Schröder.”

—

The camera flash bleaches the room as Sigrid turns the key in the lock. There is a pretty girl, her dress hanging loose around her hips, naked from the waist up. She wears a mask of comic shock, clutching a handful of letters as Auntie’s former pension guest, Herr Kozig, now costumed in a postman’s uniform, cups her breasts from behind. Her hair is wrapped in gooseberry braids. Postman Kozig wears a grin below his postage-stamp mustache, as he leers down at the flesh he is fondling. It’s a bit of a shock to see him so employed, but Wolfram was right. The uniform carries him. Their eyes dart to Sigrid when she enters, but neither breaks his pose. They are obviously under strict orders.

Wilhelmina von Hohenhoff peers up from behind her camera. “Concentrate!” she snaps, then follows their eyes. Her face is still as imperious as a hussar’s when she glares at Sigrid’s intrusion. “That door was
locked
,” she declares.

“Someone,” Sigrid answers, “gave me the key.” And that’s when Ericha shows herself. For a hard moment, the woman’s stare does not lessen, until she turns back to her camera.

“One more shot,” she announces.

•   •   •

“S
O YOU’RE JUDGING ME
?”

“What, Herr Kozig?” Sigrid says.

The female model has dressed and departed, but Herr Kozig is still in his postal uniform, tugging uncomfortably at the collar. “The photographic pose,” he answers. “The young woman in undress. I saw the look on your face.”

“And what look did you see, Herr Kozig, exactly?”

“You’re not my rabbi, gnädige Frau. This lady,” he says with a hand in the direction of Fräulein von Hohenhoff, “this lady has generously agreed to give me a place to sleep. I was only repaying her kindness by assisting her in her work.”

“Of course you were, Herr Kozig. And such demanding work, too.”

Herr Kozig frowns sheepishly, but then Fräulein von Hohenhoff claps her hands for attention. She has rolled out a rack of clothing into the center of the room. Dresses, coats, hats on hooks, shoes on the bottom rack. “I have nothing that will fit the children, but if anyone is in need, they should feel free to take.” Sigrid notes that the woman has yet to speak directly to Ericha, but rather skirts her, including her only in the nonspecific plural.
If anyone is in need
. Frau Weiss steps up to the rack, and touches a coat sleeve. “Oh, this is so lovely. It’s been years since I’ve seen something stylish. I can’t imagine.”

“You like it? It’s yours,” Fräulein von Hohenhoff announces without fanfare, and opens up a tall white photographer’s scrim. “That stool, please, over here,” she directs Kozig, who quickly obeys. “The children,” she directs, “must sit very still. No fidgeting. And no talking.”

And then each face is frozen by an instant of flash. Face forward. No left ears showing. Frau Weiss looking exhausted, the little girls obedient and blank. Herr Kozig, in uniform, scowls bureaucratically back at the camera. Sigrid looks at her watch, her belly full of acid.

“You’re next,” Sigrid tells Ericha.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re not exactly going to get very far under your own name any longer, so
you’re
next
.”

“And what about you?”

“What about me? I’m a kriegsfrau
.
My papers have all been properly issued. What else do I need?”

Ericha looks at her with suspicion. But then steps in front of the scrim.

Fräulein von Hohenhoff raises her eye from the camera’s viewfinder long enough to peer at her. Then sinks back down. “Eyes open,” she warns, and then pulls the trigger on the flashgun. Ericha meets the burst of sharp white light without blinking.

“Thank you,”
Sigrid hears. She turns and faces Frau Weiss. The two girls are holding on to her, eyes large, their mother’s hands petting their heads. “I know that sounds like such a small thing to say, considering what you are doing for us. What you are risking. But I don’t know how else to put it.”

Sigrid gazes back into the woman’s face. A woman from Vienna and her two daughters. Strangers. No longer part of the story she has been telling herself. “You’re welcome. I wish I could say it was because it’s the right thing to do. That’s why
she
does it,” she says, nodding to where Ericha is seated on a chair, covertly trying on a new pair of shoes. “But me? I’m not sure. Guilt, maybe. Hope. I don’t know.”

Frau Weiss nods with thoughtful eyes. “Well,” she replies, “whatever the reason. You’re
doing
it. Which is more than most can say.” The littlest, with the tiger, tugs on her mother’s sleeve and whispers. “Ah,” her mother tells her. “Yes. A good idea for all of us. Is there a WC?” she asks.

•   •   •

“W
HEN WILL THEY BE READY
?”

Sigrid has stepped up to Fräulein von Hohenhoff as she is lifting the scrim. “The photographs.”

“I’ll print them tonight.”

“Good. I’ll be by in the morning to collect them.” Then, “What about
him
? Your new model?” she inquires, glancing at “Postman” Kozig, who is examining his official identity in one of the floor-length mirrors, his chin clean-shaven now, his postage-stamp mustache neatly trimmed. Shed, temporarily, of the U-boat shoddiness he wore in Auntie’s attic.

“He snores. Loudly. I can hear him through the wall. For that reason alone, I want him out. But he can’t stay past tonight, in any case. Tomorrow evening there are people coming to my studio.”

“People?”

“Clients. Some of them Party members. I doubt I will be able to convince them that he is the butler.”

“I understand. I’ll collect him along with the photos. Has he said anything?”

“Such as?”

“Such as anything.”

“No, I put him to work.”

“So I saw.”

“Everyone works,” she answers in a mildly distracted way. “There is no free ride. Everyone earns their keep.”

“Well, he hardly seems to have
objected
,” Sigrid observes.

But the tone of Fräulein von Hohenhoff’s voice changes. “Do you mind, may I speak with you for a moment?” she asks. Sigrid follows her over to the screened-off area where the photographs of the schnauzers watch with blunt canine inquiry as Fräulein von Hohenhoff lights a cigarette. “I’d like a realistic assessment,” she declares.

“Of what?”

“Of their chances.”

“Realistically? I don’t know. Possibly their chances are not very good. There are certainly plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong. But one hopes otherwise. One must
believe
otherwise. What else can be done?”

“And what about
her
?”

“Her?”

“You know who.”

Sigrid can only answer, “I cannot tell the future, Fräulein von Hohenhoff.”

“Then what use are you?” she breathes, but then shakes her head. “Look, all I can do is give money. I can’t give it to her, but I can give it to you,” she says, and presses a pearl gray stationery envelope into Sigrid’s palm.

“Thank you. It will help,” Sigrid tells her, but Fräulein von Hohenhoff only shakes her head, and glares furiously at the smoke she expels from her cigarette, her eyes gone wet. “It’s a fucking crime,” she whispers. “How a creature like that can burrow into you, so you can’t get her
out
. It’s just a fucking
crime
.”

Down in the stairwell, waiting for Frau Weiss and her children, Ericha lights another cigarette. She has picked out a new coat and new shoes from the rack, and looks better, less disheveled. But her eyes are still oven pits. “I’m going tomorrow,” she says. “To the address you gave me.”

“I’ll come with you,” Sigrid says.

“No. I know I asked you to, but I’ve changed my mind. This is something . . . It’s
my
problem. I’d rather just do it alone.”

Voices at the top of the stairs. The children descending with their mother.

“Ericha,” Sigrid whispers. “You sound as if you’re punishing yourself.”

“I’ll contact you soon,” Ericha replies quickly, and opens the door to the street. “All is clear,” she says, and steps out onto the sidewalk.

The next morning is Saturday. Sigrid is making breakfast. Ersatz coffee. Powdered eggs as tasty as powdered laundry soap. Stale bread that she toasts in the oven for Kaspar. Her mother-in-law has left early. She has volunteered to accompany Mundt once a week to the Party office in the Jägerstrasse to sort through the mountains of clothes, shoes, combs, stockings, and coats collected for the frontline troops and for bombing victims.

“Give my regards to the Portierfrau,” Sigrid tells her, filling the coffeepot with water. “I’m sure she’ll give you an earful of all my anti-social remarks.”

Mother Schröder issues her a penetrating look as she is slipping on her gloves. “You think this is a joke?” she asks solemnly. “
Someone
has to maintain our good name with the Party.”

When Kaspar emerges from the bedroom, he is dressed in one of the few suits Sigrid has left in the wardrobe. The clothing hangs on him as if he were a scarecrow. “Look,” he says, grinning darkly. “I can attend a fancy-dress ball as a civilian.”

But the sight pains Sigrid. “You’ve lost so much weight,” she whispers. Kaspar only shrugs and sits down at the table. As she sets his plate in front of him, she asks him, “You have exercises this morning?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Do you think they’re helping?”

“Tossing the medicine ball with my fellow cripples, all for the greater glory of the Fatherland. Of course it’s helping. It’s making me a better German. Can’t you tell?”

“Will you be bringing your comrades back with you tonight?”

Sawing into the powered eggs on toast with his knife and fork. “My
comrades
?”

“Unteroffizier Kamphauser,” says Sigrid. “Unteroffizier Messner.”