Joseph Kanon - A Good German

“Look what Dorothee found for you,” he said to Erich, handing him a half-eaten bar of chocolate and smiling as the boy tore off the foil. “Not all at once.”

“You’re good to him,” Lena said. “Is she better?”

“Her mouth is still swollen,” he said. A slap two nights before from a drunken soldier. “Too swollen for chocolate, anyway.”

“Can I see her?” Erich said.

“It’s all right?” Rosen said to Lena and then, when she nodded, “Well, but remember, you must pretend she looks the same. Thank her for the chocolate and just say, Tm sorry you have a toothache.‘”

“I know, don’t notice the bruise.”

“That’s right,” Rosen said softly. “Don’t notice the bruise.”

“Can I do anything?” Lena said.

“She’s all right, just swollen. My assistant will fix her up,” he said, handing Erich the bag. “We won’t be long.”

“And that’s the life you give her,” Emil said to Jake when they’d gone. “Whores and Jews.”

“Be quiet,” Lena said. “You’ve no right to say such things.”

“No right? You’re my wife. Rosen,” he said dismissively. “How they stick together.”

“Stop it. Such talk. He doesn’t know about the boy.”

“They always know each other.”

Lena glanced at him, dismayed, then stood up and began to clear. “Our last evening,” she said, stacking the plates. “And how pleasant you make it. I wanted to have a nice dinner.”

“With my wife and her lover. Very nice.”

She held a plate for a second, stung, then dropped it on the stack. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s no place for a child here. I’ll take him to Hannelore’s tonight.”

“You can’t get back before the curfew,” Jake said.

“I’ll stay there. It’s no place for me either. You can listen to this nonsense. I’m tired.”

“You’re leaving?” Emil said, caught off-guard.

“Why not? With you like this. I’ll say goodbye here. I’m sorry for you. So hurt and angry-there’s no need to end this way. We should be happy for each other. You’ll go to the Americans. That’s the life you want. And I’ll—”

“You’ll stay with the whores.”

“Yes, I stay with the whores,” she said.

“You’ve got a nerve,” Jake said.

“It’s all right,” Lena said, shaking her head. “He doesn’t mean it. I know him.” She moved toward him. “Don’t I?” She lifted her hand to place it on his head, then looked at him and dropped it. “So angry. Look at your glasses, smeared again.” She took them off and wiped them on her skirt, familiar. “There, now you can see.”

“I see very well. How it is. What you’ve done,” he said to Jake.

“Yes, what he’s done,” she said, her voice resigned, almost wistful. “Saved your life. Now he’s giving you a chance for a new one. Do you see that?” She lifted her hand again, this time resting it on his shoulder. “Don’t be like this. You remember in the war-how many times? — we wondered if we would survive. That’s all that mattered then. And we have. So maybe we survived for this-a new life for both.”

“Not all of us survived.”

She moved her hand away. “No, not all.”

“It’s convenient for you, maybe, that Peter’s gone. In your new life.”

Only her eyes reacted, a quick wince.

Jake glared at him. “Listen, you bastard—”

Lena waved her hand, stopping him. “We’ve said enough.” She looked down at Emil. “My god, to say that to me.”

Emil said nothing, staring at the table.

Lena went over to the bureau, opened a drawer, and pulled out a snapshot.

“I have something for you,” she said, carrying it over. “I found it with my things.”

Emil held the picture in front of him, blinking, his shoulders sinking as he studied it, everything softening, even his eyes.

“Look at you,” he said quietly.

“And you,” Lena said over his shoulder, so intimate that for a second Jake felt he was no longer in the room. “Would you like it?”

Emil looked up at her, then pushed the photograph away and stood, holding her eyes for another minute before he turned and without a word crossed the floor and closed the bedroom door behind him.

Jake picked up the picture. A young couple, arms around each other on a ski slope, goggles pushed up over their knit caps, smiles as broad and white as the snow behind them, so young they must be someone else.

“When was this?” he said.

“When we were happy.” She took the picture from him and glanced at it again. “So that’s your murderer.” She put it down. “I’ll get Erich. You can do the dishes.”

“Don’t look for me. I will see you,” Gunther had said, and in fact when Jake and Emil arrived at the parade he was nowhere in sight, hidden somewhere in the crowd of uniforms that bunched around the Brandenburg Gate and then straggled out through the wasteland of the Tiergarten on the Charlottenburger Chausee. The Allies had won even the weather-the humid, overcast sky had turned bright and cloudless for the parade, with a breeze strong enough to flap the marching rows of flags. Posters of Stalin, Churchill, and Truman hung from the arch, and through the columns Jake could see the troops and armored vehicles beginning to flow toward them down the Linden, thousands of them, with more crammed along the pavement to cheer. There were only a handful of civilians-grim-faced curiosity seekers, small bands of apathetic DPs with nowhere else to go, and the usual packs of children, for whom any event was a distraction. The rest of Berlin had stayed home. Along the gray avenue of charred tree stumps and ruins, the Allies were celebrating themselves.

When Jake got to the reviewing stand the first bands had already passed, an overture of blaring horns. He thought of the other parades here, five years ago, the trees of the Linden shaking from the heavy thud of boots back from Poland. This was looser and more colorful, the French almost playful in their red pompoms, the British marching so casually they seemed already demobilized, shuffling home. The spit and polish had been left to the 82nd Airborne, wearing shiny helmets and white gloves under shoulder straps, but with the music and scattered applause the effect was more theatrical than military, show soldiers. Even the reviewing stand, with bunting and microphones for speeches later, rose up from the street like a stage, filled with generals in uniforms so elaborate they looked like bassos ready to burst into song.

Zhukov was the gaudiest, both sides of his chest lined with medals that ran all the way to his hips. Next to him, Patton’s plain battle jacket and few ribbons had a kind of defiant simplicity. But the drama was in the positioning. Zhukov, front and center, would take a step forward only to find Patton moving up with him, so that by the time he reached the railing, finally upstaged, they had become a bobbing vaudeville turn of generals. The press responded, snapping pictures from their own viewing stand, and Jake saw that even General Clay, usually somber, was trying to suppress a smile, almost winking at Muller, who answered with a tolerant roll of his eyes, silver-haired Judge Hardy still, suffering fools. For a second Jake wished he were just covering it all for Collier’s — the noisy air, the absurd jockeying, the backdrop curtain of the burned-out Reichstag in the distance. An interview with Patton maybe, who would remember him and was always good copy. Instead, anxious, he was searching the crowd for a face. What he thought, as more troops marched by, was that he had never seen so many guns in his life and that Gunther had been wrong, he didn’t feel protected at all. Any one of them, milling around, waiting to make a move.

“We’re going to watch the parade?” Emil said, puzzled.