Joseph Kanon - Leaving Berlin

Alex took off his coat and lay on the bed, too tired to get undressed, staring at the dim chandelier overhead. They’d told him the most likely places for bugs were telephones and lighting fixtures. Had the chandelier been listening? He thought over everything the boy had said, how it would sound. But what could be more innocent than a walk in the park?

In the silence he could hear the planes again, muffled, as if he were listening from below in one of the hotel shelters. Some of the guests would have been in furs, not wanting to lose them if their rooms disappeared by the time the all clear sounded. Could you actually hear fire, flames licking at walls just overhead? Then the shelter became the cell in Oranienburg, not the barracks, the interrogation cell, airless, the old nightmare, and he willed his eyes open, short of breath, and went over to the windows.

Why have blackout curtains now, live in the dark? In California you could keep the windows open, never be shut in. He pushed the heavy drapes apart, then felt the first draft of cold air seeping through. Still, better than living in a tomb. Anything was better than that.

The view faced the back, the hills of rubble that had been Wilhelmstrasse off to the left, an empty stretch of wasteland ahead, barely visible by moonlight. The new view from the Adlon. Maybe that’s why the curtains. Inside, cocooned, you could still imagine the ministries lined up in their grave permanence, not the ghost town that was actually there, a faint ashy gray in the pale light.

What Lützowplatz would be like too. The world of his childhood already belonged to memory, to old photographs. Bicycles by the Landwehrkanal, afternoons in the park, Aunt Lotte’s fussy visits-you didn’t expect any of these to survive. Things changed. Cars in the photographs looked faintly comical. But now the city itself was gone, streets no longer there, wiped not just from memory but from any time, the standing ruins like bones left behind, carrion.

And he’d come to feed on it too, a prize catch, already caught, the bargain he’d had to make. Do whatever they wanted. And what would that be? Not just a walk in the park. He lay there, the room getting colder, seeing Ruth’s cautious eyes. Did you testify? In exile you learned to get by, principle an extravagance you could no longer afford. A lesson he thought he knew, all those years of it, and then thrown away in one heedless refusal. Would it have mattered, giving them names they already had? What if he’d done the practical thing, cooperated with the committee? But no bargain had been offered, not then. And he’d seen the faces before, the jowls and smirks, when they’d been Nazis, the same bullying voices, and he couldn’t do it. An act of contempt, cause for deportation, and then a different bargain, the one the committee would not know about.

“It’s perfect,” Don Campbell had said when they met in Frankfurt. “Telling the committee to go fuck themselves? Not even Brecht did that. Talk about lefty credentials. The Russians would never think- Perfect.”

“Perfect,” Alex had said, a monotone.

“And they want you. They think they’re pulling a fast one, getting you.”

“But I’m pulling the fast one,” Alex said, his voice still flat.

Don looked up. “That’s right. A fast one on them. And a fast one on the committee. Work with us, we’ll get you back in. New papers from State.” He nodded. “A guarantee. Uncle Sam takes care of his own.” He paused. “And you see your kid.”

The closing argument, why it was perfect, Alex’s cuffs.

“How long do I do this?”

“They’ll give you privileges,” Don said, not answering. “They do that with writers. Like they’re movie stars. Extra payoks .”

“What?”

“Food packages. Off ration. You’ll need them too.” He lowered his voice. “Wait till you see it. The Socialist paradise.”

“I am a Socialist,” Alex said, a wry turn to his mouth. Fifteen years ago, before life had tied him up in knots. “I believe in a just society.”

Don looked at him, disconcerted, then brought things back. “That’s why you’re perfect.”

He drifted into a half sleep, eyes closed but his mind still awake, sorting through the long day, the mayor’s welcoming speech, posing for Neues Deutschland , and now there was tomorrow’s reception to get through, and all the days after that. His picture would be in the papers. Irene would know he was here, if she was still alive. But why would she be? Any of them? You still have family in Germany, Martin had asked. His parents’ deaths at least had been confirmed.

“We had to check, if you had any people left,” Don had said. “The Russians use that sometimes. If the family’s in their zone.”

“Use them how?”

“Pressure. Bait. Make sure you cooperate.”

“Imagine,” Alex said.

Don looked up at him. “But it’s not an issue here. We have the records. They’re both gone, your mother, your-”

“I could have told you that.”

“We like to make sure.”

“I had an aunt. Lotte. She married into a Gentile family, so-”

“I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope.” He took out a pen. “What’s the married name? I can put a query through the OMGUS files.”

“Von Bernuth.”

Don raised an eyebrow. “Really? Von?”

“Really. They got it from Friedrich Wilhelm himself. After the Battle of Fehrbellin.” Then, seeing Don’s blank stare, “It’s an old name.”

“Nice. Rich relatives.”

Alex smiled. “Not anymore. They went through all the money. Lotte’s too, probably.”

“Where was this? Berlin?”

Alex nodded. “And Pomerania. They had property there.”

Don shook his head. “Commies broke up all the big estates. If she’s still alive, she’s probably somewhere in the West. A lot of them left after.”

“That would make her easier to trace then.”

“Easy. Try to find records in that-”

“But if you do turn anything up-on any of them.” He caught Don’s expression. “I knew the family.”

“But they’re not related. Just the aunt.”

“That’s right, just the aunt.”

Not related. Everything else.

But nothing came back on Lotte. Old Fritz had died and Erich’s army records listed him as taken POW in Russia, which probably meant the same thing. But Irene and Elsbeth had vanished. The final downfall, even the name itself gone now.

It was Elsbeth who had kept the family genealogy, in a large leather book that sat on a sideboard in the country house.

“The christening records go back to the thirteenth century,” she had said, a caretaker’s pride.

“Ouf,” Irene said, “and what were they doing? Getting drunk and planting beets. What else is it good for?” This with a wave of her hand to the flat fields stretching toward the Baltic. “It’s still beets. Beets and beets. Farmers.”

“What’s wrong with farmers? You should be proud,” old Fritz said.

“Anyway, the Poles do all the work. Nobody in this family ever did anything.”

Lazily picking up her lemonade and leaning back against the lawn chair, as if offering herself as living proof. One of those summer afternoons, the air too still to carry the smell of the sea, just the baking fields. Irene in shorts, her long leg propped up, making a triangle.

“Well, now is your chance to do something then,” old Fritz said, already sipping beer. “Instead of hanging around with riffraff. Drug addicts. Pansies. Out every night.”

Irene sniffed, an old complaint, not worth answering. “But still living at home.”

“Of course living at home. A girl not yet married.”

“So what should I do? Drive a tractor maybe.”

Alex smiled, imagining her up on the high seat, her hair a braided crown, like the model worker in a Russian poster. Women with wrenches, rolling up their sleeves. Not languidly painting her toenails, as she had been doing earlier, each stroke a kind of invitation, looking up and meeting his eyes, even the nail polish now part of the secret between them.