Joseph Kanon - A Good German

“Why don’t you?”

“I don’t have the legs for it. Not anymore. Needs someone young who doesn’t mind a bit of trouble.”

“Why Breimer?” Jake said. “What makes you think he’s doing anything but making dumb speeches?”

“Well, the man at the stadium, for one thing. Remember him? Thick as thieves. He’s with one of the tech units.”

“How do you know?”

“I asked,” Brian said, raising an eyebrow.

Jake looked at him steadily, then grinned. “You don’t miss a thing, do you?”

“Not much,” he said, returning the smile. “Well, I’m off. You’ve got a tired young lady wanting to go home and here I am, blathering on. Fraulein.” He nodded to Lena again, then turned to Jake. “Think about it, will you? Be nice to see you back at work again.”

Jake put his arm around Lena and headed them toward Olivaerplatz, away from the streetwalkers and cruising jeeps. There was moonlight, so that you could see the broken tops of buildings against the sky, spiky, like jagged pieces of gothic script.

“Is it true what he says? About the scientists? They want to pick Emil’s brain too?”

“That depends on what he knows,” he said, evasive, then nodded. Yes.

“Now them. Everybody wants to find Emil.”

“He must have flown,” Jake said, still thinking. “Nobody walks from Frankfurt. So either he hasn’t got here yet or he’s hiding somewhere.”

“Why would he hide?”

“A man’s dead. If they did meet—”

“Still the policeman.”

“Or he got a ride. He did before.”

“When he came for me, you mean.”

“With the SS. Some ride.”

“He wasn’t SS.”

“He came with them. His father told me.”

“Oh, he’ll say anything. So bitter. To think, the only family I have now, a man like that. To send away a child.”

“He’s not a child anymore.”

“But SS. Emil?”

“Why would he lie, Lena?” he said gently, turning to her. “It must be right.”

She took this in, then turned away, literally not facing it. “Right. He’s always right.”

“You like him, though. I could see.”

“Well, I feel sorry. There’s nothing for him now, not even his work. He resigned when they fired the Jews. That’s when the fighting started, with Emil. So he was right, but now look.”

“What did he teach?”

“Mathematics. Like Emil. They said at the institute he was their Bach-passing the gift, you know? Just alike. The two Professor Brandts. Then one.”

“Maybe Emil should have resigned too.”

She walked for a minute, not answering. “It’s easy to say now. But then-who knew it would end? Sometimes it seemed the Nazis would be here forever. It was the world we lived in, can you understand that?”

“I was here too.”

“But not a German. There was always something else for you. But Emil? I don’t know-I can’t answer for him. So maybe his father’s right. But your friend, he wants to make him a criminal. He was never that. Not SS.”

“They gave him a medal. It’s in his file. I saw it. Services to the state. You didn’t know?”

She shook her head.

“He never told you? But didn’t you talk? You were married. How could you not talk?”

She stopped, looking across Olivaerplatz, empty and moonlit. “So you want to talk about Emil? Yes, why not? He’s here. Like in the film, the ghost who comes back. Always in the room. No, he never told me. Maybe he thought it was better. Services to the state. My god. For numbers.” She looked up. “I didn’t know. What can I say to you? How can you live with someone and not know him? You think it’s hard. It’s easy. At first you talk and then—” She trailed off, back in her head again. “I don’t know why. The work, I think. We didn’t talk about that-how could we? I didn’t understand it. But he lived for that. And then, after the war started, everything was secret. Secret. He wasn’t allowed. So you talk about daily things, little things, and then after a while not even that, you don’t have the habit anymore. There’s nothing left to talk about.”

“There was a child.”

She looked at him, uncomfortable. “Yes, there was a child. We talked about him. Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice. He was away so much. I had Peter. That’s how things were with us. Then, after Peter-even the talking stopped. What was there to say then?” She turned away. “I don’t blame him. How can I? He was a good father, a good husband. And me, was I a good wife? I tried that once. And all the time we were—” She faced him again. “It wasn’t him. Me. I stopped.”

“Why did you marry him?”

She shrugged, making a wry smile. “I wanted to be married. To have my own house. In those days, you know, it wasn’t so easy. If you were a nice girl, you lived at home. When I came to Berlin, I had to live with Frau Willentz-she knew my parents-and it was worse, she was always waiting at the door when I came in. You know, at that age—” She paused. “It seems so silly now. I wanted my own dishes. Dishes. And, you know, I was fond of Emil. He was nice, came from a good family. His father was a professor-even my parents couldn’t object to that. Everybody wanted it. So I got my dishes. They had flowers-poppies. Then, one raid and they were gone. Just like—”

She looked at the crumbled buildings, then picked up the thread again. “Now I wonder why I wanted them. All that life. I don’t know-who knows why we do what we do? Why did I go with you?”

“Because I asked.”

“Yes, you asked,” she said, still looking at the buildings. “I knew, even that first time. At the Press Club, that party. I remember thinking, nobody ever looked at me this way. As if you knew a secret about me.

“What secret?”

“That I would say yes. That I was like that. Not a good wife.”

“Don’t, ”Jake said.

“So I couldn’t be faithful to him,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard. “But I don’t want to hurt him. Isn’t it enough to leave him? Now we have to be policemen too? Waiting here, like spiders, to trap him.”

“Nobody’s trying to trap him. According to Bernie, they want to offer him a job.”

“Picking his brain. And then what? Oh, let’s go now. Leave Berlin.”

“Lena, I can’t get you out of Germany. You know that. You’d have to be—”

“Your wife,” she finished, a resigned nod. “And I’m not.”

“Not yet,” he said, touching her. “It’ll be different this time.” He smiled at her. “We’ll get new dishes. Stores in New York are full of them.”

“No, you only want that once. Now it’s something else.”

“What?”

She turned her head, not answering, then leaned against him. “Let’s just love each other. It’s enough now,” she said. “Just that.” She started walking again, pulling his hand lightly with hers. “Look where we are.”

They had turned without noticing into the end of Pariserstrasse, the heaps of rubble like pockets of shadow along the moonlit street. The washbasin was still perched on the mound of bricks where Lena’s building had been, its porcelain dull in the faint light, but Frau Dzuris’ notice had fallen over, the ink now streaked by rain.

“We should put up a new one,” he said. “In case.”

“Why? He knows I’m not here. He knew it was bombed.”

Jake looked at her. “But the American who went to Frau Dzuris didn’t know that. He came here first.”

“So?”

“So he hasn’t talked to Emil. Where did you go after?”

“A friend from the hospital. Her flat. Sometimes we just stayed at work. The cellars were safe there.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died. In the fire.”

“There must be someone. Think. Where would he go?”