Joseph Kanon: A Good German

“Wasn’t he at the conference?” Liz said.

“Hasn’t started yet. Uncle Joe’s late. They say he has a cold.”

“A cold?” Jake said.

“Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Truman’s pissed, I hear.” He glanced at Jake. “That’s off the record, by the way.”

“What’s on?”

“Not much. I’ve got some handouts for you, but you’ll probably throw them away. Everybody else does. There’s nothing to say till they sit down, anyway. We have a briefing schedule set up at the press camp.”

“Which is where?”

“Down the road from MG headquarters. Argentinischeallee,” he said, rolling it out, a joke name.

“Out in Dahlem?” Jake said, placing it.

“Everything’s out in Dahlem.”

“Why not somewhere nearer the center?”

Ron looked at him. “There is no center.”

They were climbing the big flight of stairs to the main entrance doors. “As I say, the camp’s right by MG headquarters, so that’s easy. Your billet too. We found a nice place for you,” he said to Liz, almost courtly. “Photo schedule’s different, but at least you’ll get out there. Potsdam, I mean.”

“But not press?” Jake said.

Ron shook his head. “They want a closed session. No press. I’m telling you this now so I don’t have to hear you squawk later, like the rest of them. I don’t make the rules, so if you want to complain, go right over my head, I don’t care. We’ll do the best we can at the camp. Everything you need. You can send from there, but your stuff goes through me, you might as well know.”

Take looked at him, forced to smile. A new Nanny Wendt, this time with gum and get-up-and-go.

“Whatever happened to freedom of the press?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll get plenty of copy. We’ll have a briefing after every session. Besides, everybody talks.”

“And what do we do between briefings?”

“Drink, mostly. At least that’s what they’ve been doing.” He turned to Jake. “It’s not as if Stalin gives interviews, you know. Here we go,” he said, swinging through the doors. “I’ll get you out to your billet. You probably want to clean up.”

“Hot water?” Liz said.

“Sure. All the comforts of home.”

In the driveway the congressman was being bundled into a requisitioned Horch with an American flag painted on the side, the others into open jeeps. Beyond them, at the end of the drive, were the first houses, not one of them intact. Jake stared, everything emptying out again. Not an aerial glimpse anymore; worse. A few standing walls, pitted by artillery shells. Mounds of debris, broken concrete and plumbing fixtures. One building had been sliced through, a strip of wallpaper hanging off an exposed room, scorch marks around the window holes. How would he ever find her in this? The same dust he’d seen from the plane, suspended in the air, making the afternoon light dull. And now the smell, sour wet masonry and open earth, like a raw building site, and something else, which he assumed was bodies, still lying somewhere under the rubble.

“Welcome to Berlin,” Ron said.

“Is it all like this?” Liz said quietly.

“Most of it. If the roofs gone, it was bombs. Otherwise, the Russians. They say the shelling was worse. Just blew it all to hell.” He threw the bags into the jeep. “Hop in.”

“You two go on ahead,” Jake said, still looking at the street. “Something I want to do first.”

“Hop in,” Ron said, an order. “What do you think you’re going to do, get a taxi?”

Liz looked at Jake’s face, then turned to Ron and smiled. “What’s the rush? Take him where he wants to go. You can give me a tour on the way.” She patted the camera slung around her neck, then put it up to her eye, crouching down. “Smile.” She snapped his picture, busy Tempelhof behind.

Ron glanced at his watch, pretending not to pose. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“A little tour,” Liz said, wheedling, snapping a few more. “Isn’t that part of the service?”

He sighed. “I suppose you want to see the bunker. Everyone wants to see the bunker, and there’s nothing to see. The Russians don’t let you in anyway, say it’s flooded. Maybe Adolf’s floating around down there, who knows? But it’s their sector and they can do what they want.” He smiled back at Liz. “You can get the Reichstag, though. Everybody wants a picture of that and the Russians don’t care.”

“You’re on,” she said, lowering the camera.

“If I can get us there. I know the way from Dahlem, but—”

Liz jerked her thumb toward Jake. “He used to live here.”

“You navigate then,” Ron said, shrugging, and motioned Liz into the jeep. “You can ride up front.” Another grin.

“Lucky me. Just keep your hands on the wheel. The whole U.S. Army’s got this problem with their hands.” Jake paid no attention, the flirting a harmless buzz beside him. Some people had emerged from one of the piles of rubble, two women, and he watched them pick their way carefully over the bricks, listless, as if they were still shell-shocked. In the July heat they were wearing overcoats, afraid to leave them home in the basement of the ruined house, where everything, maybe even themselves, must be open for the taking. What had it been like these last few months? Carthage. Maybe she was like these two, burrowed in somewhere. But where? He realized for the first time, looking at the women, that he might not find her at all, that the bombs must have scattered people too, like bricks. But maybe not. He turned to the jeep, suddenly anxious to get there, a pointless urgency, as if everything that could have happened to her had not already happened.

He lifted himself into the back, next to Liz’s cases.

“Where first, the bunker?” Ron said to Liz, who nodded. He turned to Jake. “Which way?”

Not where he wanted to go, but stuck with it now, a favor to Liz. “Turn right at the end.”

Ron let out the clutch. “Don’t bother taking notes. Everybody says the same thing anyway. Lunar landscape. That’s the big one. And teeth. Rows of decayed teeth. AP had rotting molars. But maybe you’ll come up with something original. Be nice, something new.”

“How would you describe it?”

“Can’t,” Ron said, no longer flip. “Maybe nobody can. It’s-well, see for yourself.”

Jake headed them north on the Mehringdamm, but they were forced to detour east and in minutes were lost, streets blocked off or impassable, the whole map redrawn by debris. Five minutes back and already lost. They threaded their way through the ruins, Ron glancing back at him as if he were a broken compass until, luckily, another detour put them on the Mehringdamm again. A cleared stretch this time, which would get them to the Landwehrkanal, an easier route to follow than the unpredictable roads. Only the major streets had passable lanes, the others reduced to winding footpaths, when they were visible at all. Berlin, a flat city, finally had contours, new hills of brick. There was no life. Once he spotted children skittering over the rubble like crickets, and a working detail of women reclaiming bricks, their heads wrapped in kerchiefs against the dust, but otherwise the streets were quiet. The silence unnerved him. Berlin had always been a noisy city, the elevated S-bahn trains roaring across their trestle bridges, radios crackling in the apartment block courtyards, cars screeching at red lights, drunks arguing. Now he could hear the motor of the jeep and the eerie creaking of a single bicycle ahead of them, nothing else. A cemetery quiet. At night it would be pitch dark, the other side of the moon. Ron had been right-the unavoidable cliche.

At the Landwehrkanal there was more activity, but the smell was worse, raw sewage and corpses still floating on the water. The Russians had been here two months; had there been so many to fish out? But there they were, bodies stuck on the piles of the wrecked bridges or just suspended face down in the middle of the canal, held in place by nothing but the stagnant water. Liz had dropped her camera to hold a handkerchief over her mouth against the smell. No one said a word. Across the water, Hallesches Tor was gone.