Joseph Kanon - A Good German

“Where’s the fire?”

“Let’s go. I have to see somebody.”

“Oh,” she said, an exaggerated drawl. She reached over and took her shoes. “Not this time. Let her wear her own.”

Jake ignored her, hurrying them to the jeep.

“You know, it’s none of my business—” she began as she got in.

“Then don’t say it.”

“Touchy,” she said, but let it go, leaning back in her seat as they started down the road. “You know what you are? You’re a romantic.”

“Not the last time I looked.”

“You are, though,” she said, nodding her head, having a conversation with herself.

“What’s Joe doing in Berlin?” Jake said.

But the drink had taken her elsewhere. She laughed. “You’re right. He’s not. Anyway, what do you care?” She turned to him. “It’s not serious, you know. With him. He’s just-around.”

“Doing what?”

She waved her hand. “He’s just around.”

She put her head back against the seat, cushioning it, as if it were too much trouble to hold it upright on the bumpy road. For a second Jake wondered if she was going to pass out, but she said idly, “I’m glad you like the picture. It’s a fast shutter. Zeiss. No blurs.”

The blur instead seemed to be in her speech. They had circled the old Luftwaffe building and were heading into Gelferstrasse, almost there. In front of the billet, he idled the motor and reached for the shoulder bag.

“Can you manage?” he said, fitting the strap in place.

“Still in a hurry, huh? I thought you lived here.”

“Not tonight.”

“Okay, Jackson,” she said softly. “I’ll take a hike.” And then, surprising him, she leaned over and kissed him on the mouth, a full kiss.

“What was that for?” Jake said when she broke away.

“I wanted to see what it was like.”

“You’ve had too much to drink.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, embarrassed, gathering her bag and getting out. “My timing isn’t the best, either.” She turned to the jeep. “Funny how that works. It might have been nice, though, don’t you think?”

“It might have been.”

“A gentleman,” she said, hitching up the bag. “I’ll bet you’re the type who’ll pretend to forget about it in the morning, too.”

But in fact it stayed with him all the way to Wilmersdorf, the unexpected mystery of people, who they really were. He’d been right about Frau Dzuris, ready for bed and clutching her wrapper, frightened by the knock. And he’d been right about the picture. “Yes, you see, like a German,” Frau Dzuris said. “That’s the one. You know him? He’s a friend?” But in the dim light of the doorway, his eyes never went to the photo, caught instead by the empty space on the cloth over her left breast, where a pin once would have been.

The next day it was Liz who didn’t remember. She was on her way to Potsdam with one of Ron’s tour groups, thinned out by hangovers, and seemed surprised that he mentioned Joe at all.

“What do you want to see him for?”

“He has some information for me.”

“Uh-huh. What kind of information?”

“Missing persons.”

“You going to tell me what you’re talking about?”

“You going to tell me where he is?”

She shrugged, giving up. “He’s meeting me, as a matter of fact. In Potsdam.”

“Why Potsdam?”

“He’s getting me a camera.”

Jake pointed to the one she was carrying, with the prized fast shutter. “He get you that too?”

“What’s it to you?” She smiled, palms up. “He’s a generous guy.”

Jake grinned. “Yeah, with requisitioned cameras. He say where he got it?”

“Ask him yourself. You coming or not?” She pointed to Ron’s car, an old Mercedes. Two reporters were dozing in the back, legs spread out, waiting for the trip to start.

“Too crowded. I’ll follow.”

“Better stick with me. Look what happened the last time we went.”

So in the end she rode with him. They followed Ron’s car until they reached the Avus, then lost it when it jerked into autobahn speed, weaving in and out of the stream of cars heading out of Berlin. The traffic surprised him. In the bright sunshine it seemed everyone was going to Potsdam-trucks and jeeps and cars like Ron’s, snatched from garages for new owners. Behind them an old black Horch filled with Russians barely kept up, but the others were racing on the open highway, prewar driving, with the trees of the Grunewald rushing past.

When they got into town, the bomb damage he’d missed before leaped to the eye. The Stadtschloss, a roofless ruin, had taken the worst of it, and only sections of the long colonnade were left facing the market square. The Nikolaikirche opposite had lost its dome, the four corner towers looking more than ever like odd minarets. Only the

Palladian Rathaus seemed likely to survive, with Atlas still perched on top of its round tower, holding up a gilded ball of the world, a kind of bad joke-the British bombers had spared the kitsch.

The Alten Markt, however, was lively. A rickety tram was running in front of the obelisk, and the huge open square was crammedhundreds, perhaps a thousand people milling between stacks of goods, bargaining openly, as noisy as the medieval market that had given the space its name. It reminded him, improbably, of the souk in Cairo, a dense theater of exchange, hawkers grabbing buyers by the sleeve, the air full of languages, but drained of color, no open melons and pyramids of spices, just scuffed pairs of shoes and chipped Hummel knickknacks and secondhand clothes, closets stripped for sale. But at least there was none of the furtiveness of the Tiergarten market, one eye keeping watch for raiding MPs. The Russians were buying, not guarding, eager to be back in business after the hiatus of the conference. No one whispered. Two soldiers walked by with wall clocks balanced on their heads. None of this would have been here when Tully came. Jake imagined instead a meeting in some quiet corner. Maybe even in the Neuer Garten, just steps from the water. Selling what?

They left the jeep near the empty space in the colonnade where the Fortuna Portal had been and wandered into the crowd, Liz snapping pictures. Ron’s car was nowhere in sight, probably still headed for Truman’s villa, but Jake noticed, amused, that the Horch had had to squeeze in behind the jeep, the only place in Berlin with a parking problem.

“Where are you meeting him?” Jake said.

“He said by the colonnade. We’re early. Look at this-do you think it’s real Meissen?”

She picked up the soup tureen, gilt-edged handles and pink apple blossoms, the kind of thing you could have found by the dozen in Karstadt’s before the war. But the German woman selling it, gaunt and sagging, had come to life.

“Meissen, ja. Naturlich.”

“What are you going to do with that?” Jake said. “Make soup?”

“It’s pretty.”

“Lucky Strike,” the woman said in accented English. “Camel.”

Liz handed it back and motioned to the woman to pose. As the camera clicked, the woman smiled nervously, holding out her dish, still hoping for a sale, and Jake turned uneasily, feeling ashamed, as if they were stealing something, the way primitive people feared a camera took souls.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he said as they moved off, the woman shouting after them in disappointment.

“Local color,” Liz said, unconcerned. “Why do they all wear pants?”

“They’re old uniforms. The men aren’t allowed, so the women wear them.”

“They aren’t,” she said, pointing to two girls in summer dresses talking to French soldiers, whose red berets flashed like bird feathers in all the khaki and gray.

“They’re selling something else.”