Joseph Kanon - A Good German

“Oh,” she said, the sound catching in her throat like a whimper. “Both?”

“Yes, both.”

“Oh,” she said again. She sank to a chair, covering her eyes with a hand.

Jake expected Professor Brandt to reach out to her, but instead he moved away, leaving her isolated, alone with her news. Jake looked at her awkwardly, stuck helpless in his role, a friend of the family unable to do more than be silent.

“Some water?” Professor Brandt said.

She shook her head. “Both. It’s certain?”

“The records-there was so much confusion, you can imagine. But they were identified.”

“So now there’s no one,” she said to herself in a small voice.

Jake thought of Breimer looking out of the plane window at the wrecked landscape. What they deserved. Seeing buildings.

“Are you all right?” Jake said.

She nodded, then stood up, smoothing out her skirt, visibly putting herself in order. “I knew it must be. It’s just-to hear it.” She turned to Professor Brandt. “Perhaps a walk would be better. Some air.”

He picked up a hat, clearly relieved, and led them down the hall, away from the front entrance. Lena drifted behind, ignoring Jake’s arm. “We’ll go out the back. They’re watching the building,” he said.

“Who?” Jake said, surprised.

“Young Willi. They pay him, I think. He’s always in the street. Or one of his friends. With cigarettes. Where do they get them? He was always a sneak, that one.”

“Who pays him?”

Professor Brandt shrugged. “Thieves, perhaps. Of course, they may not be watching me. Someone else in the building. Waiting for their chance. But I prefer they don’t know where I am.”

“Are you sure?” Jake said, looking at the white hair. An old man’s imagination, protecting a boarded-up room.

“Herr Geismar, every German is an expert at that. We’ve been watched for twelve years. I would know in my sleep. Here we are.” He opened the back door to the blinding light. “No one, you see.”

“I take it Emil hasn’t been here?” Jake said, still thinking.

“Is that why you’ve come? I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is. Dead, perhaps.”

“No, he’s alive. He’s been in Frankfurt.”

Professor Brandt stopped. “Alive. With the Americans?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God for that. I thought the Russians—” He started walking again. “So he got out. He said the Spandau bridge was still open. I thought he must be crazy. The Russians were—”

“He left Frankfurt two weeks ago,” Jake said, interrupting him. “For Berlin. I was hoping he’d come to you.”

“No, he wouldn’t come to me.”

“To find Lena, I mean,” Jake said, awkward.

“No, only the Russian.”

“A Russian was looking for him?”

“For Lena,” he said, hesitant. “As if I would help him. Swine.”

“Me?” Lena said, listening after all.

Professor Brandt nodded, avoiding her eyes.

“What for?” Jake said.

“I didn’t ask questions,” Professor Brandt said, his voice almost prim.

“But he didn’t want Emil,” Jake said, thinking aloud.

“Why would he? I thought—”

“He give you a name?”

“They don’t give names. Not them.”

“You didn’t ask? A Russian making inquiries in the British sector?”

Professor Brandt stopped, upset, as if he’d been caught in an impropriety. “I didn’t want to know. You understand-I thought it was personal.” He looked at Lena. “I’m sorry, don’t be offended. I thought he was perhaps a friend of yours. So many German women- one hears it all the time.”

“You thought that?” she said, angry.

“It’s not for me to judge these things,” he said, his voice correct and distant.

She looked at him, her eyes suddenly hard. “No. But you do. You judge everything. Now me. You thought that? A Russian whore?” She looked away. “Oh, why am I surprised? You always think the worst. Look how you judge Emil-your own blood.”

“My own blood. A Nazi.”

Lena waved her hand. “Nothing changes. Nothing,” she said and strode ahead, visibly walking off her anger.

They crossed the street quietly, Jake feeling like an intruder in a family quarrel.

“She’s not herself,” Professor Brandt said finally. “It’s the bad news, I think.” He turned to Jake. “Is there some trouble? This Russian-it’s to do with Emil?”

“I don’t know. But let me know if he comes back.”

Professor Brandt looked at Jake closely. “May I ask what exactly you do in the army?”

“I’m not in the army. I’m a reporter. They make us wear the uniform.”

“For your work. That’s what Emil said too. You’re looking for him-as a friend? Nothing else?”

“As a friend.”

“He’s not under arrest?”

“No.”

“I thought perhaps-these trials. They’re not going to put him on trial?”

“No, why should they? As far as I know, he hasn’t done anything.”

Professor Brandt looked at him curiously, then sighed. “No, just this,” he said, gesturing toward the gutted schloss. “That’s what they’ve done, him and his friends.”

They were approaching the palace from the west, the ground still covered with pieces of glass from the smashed orangerie. Berlin’s Versailles. The building had taken a direct hit, the east wing demolished, the rest of the standing pale yellow walls scorched with black. Lena was walking ahead into the formal gardens, now unrecognizable, a bare field of mud littered with shrapnel.

“It was always going to end this way,” Professor Brandt said. “Anyone could see that. Why couldn’t he see that? They destroyed Germany. The books, then everything. It wasn’t theirs to destroy. It was mine, too. Where’s my Germany now? Look at it. Gone. Murderers.”

“Emil wasn’t that.”

“He worked for them,” he said, voice rising as if they were in court, the case he’d been arguing for years. “Be careful when you put on a uniform. It’s what you become. Always the work. You know what he said to me? ‘I can’t wait for history to change things. I have to do my work now. After the war, we can do wonderful things.’ Space. We. Who? Mankind? After the war. He says this while the bombs are falling. While they’re putting people on trains. No connection. What are you going to do in space, I said, look down on the dead?” He cleared his throat, calming himself. “You agree with Lena. You think I’m harsh.”

“I don’t know,” Jake said, uncomfortable.

Professor Brandt stopped, looking at the schloss. “He broke my heart,” he said, so simply that Jake winced, as if a bandage had been lifted off the old man’s skin, exposing it. “She thinks I judge him. I don’t even know him,” he said, his words seeming to droop with him. But when Jake looked up, he stood as stiffly as before, his neck still held up by the high collar. He started into the park. “Well, now the Americans will do it.”

“We didn’t come here to judge anybody.”

“No? Then who else? Do you think we can judge ourselves? Our own children?”

“Maybe nobody can.”

“Then they will get away with it.”

“The war’s over, Professor Brandt. Nobody got away with anything,” Jake said, looking at the charred remains of the building.

“Not the war. No, not war. You know what happened here. I knew. Everybody knew. Grunewald Station. You know they liked to send them from there, not in the center, where people would see. Did they think we wouldn’t see there? Thousands of them in the cars. The children. Did we think they were going on holiday? I saw it myself. My god, I thought, how we will pay for this, how we will pay. How could it happen? Here, in my country, a crime like this? How could they do it? Not the Hitlers, the Goebbelses-those types you can see any day. In a zoo. An asylum. But Emil? A boy who played with trains. Blocks. Always building. I’ve asked myself a million times, over and over, how could this boy be a part of that?“