Joseph Kanon - A Good German

The church basement had been fitted out with a few cots and rows of mattresses scavenged from bomb sites. In one corner an old wood-stove was heating soup. The room was bare-no crayoned drawings or cutouts, no piles of toys. As he watched Lena settle the children, he saw for the first time how exhausting the work must be, keeping them busy with imaginary games. Kurt still clung to her, burying his head whenever Jake caught his eye, but the others raced for the stove. “I’d better get the rest before the soup goes,” Jake said, relieved to have an excuse to get out.

The return trip took longer. Fleischman insisted on bringing the cart and hanging it over the back with his body wedged against it for support, so that each bump in the road threatened to dislodge it with a crash. They seemed to move by inches, as slow as the train. At the church, it finally did fall, then needed a heave to turn it upright. “Thank you. It’s for the wood, you see. Otherwise, the stove—” Jake imagined him working his way through the rubble in his white collar, picking up splintered pieces of furniture.

They had to carry the sleeping children in, dead weight, even the thinnest of them heavy. When he got to the basement doorway, a boy’s head against his chest, Lena looked up and smiled, the same unguarded welcome as at Frau Hinkel’s, but softer now, as if they’d already been to bed and were holding each other.

The soup was watery cabbage thickened by a few chunks of potato, but the children finished all of it and sprawled on the mattresses, waiting for sleep. A line for the one toilet, some squabbling, refereed by an exhausted Fleischman. Lena washing faces with a damp cloth. An endless night. The girl with the mucus was crying, comforted by Frau Schaller stroking her hair.

“What will happen to them?” Jake asked Fleischman.

“The DP camp in Teltowerdamm. It’s not bad-there’s food, at least. But still, you know, a camp. We try to find places. Sometimes people are willing, for the extra rations. But of course it’s difficult. So many.”

The few children still awake were given books, the old bedtime ritual, Lena and Frau Schaller reading to them in murmurs. Jake picked one up. A children’s picture book of Bible stories, left over from Sunday school. His German could manage that. He sat down with the chocolate eater and opened the book.

“Moses,” the boy said, showing off.

“Yes.”

He read a little, but the boy seemed more interested in the picture, content just to sit next to him and gaze. Egypt, exactly the way it still was, everyone’s first imaginary landscape-the blue river, bullrushes, a boy on a donkey turning a waterwheel, date palms in a thin strip of green, then brown desert running to the top of the page. In the picture, women had come down to the water’s edge to rescue the floating wicker basket, excited, in a huddle, just the way they had pulled Tully out in Potsdam. Drifting toward shore.

But Moses was supposed to be found, set into the current toward a better future. Tully had been flung in to disappear. How? Thrown from the bridge leading to town? Dragged in until the water took him? Dead weight, a grown man, much heavier than an emaciated child, a struggle for someone. Why bother at all? Why not just leave him where he’d fallen? What was another body in Berlin, where the rubble was still full of them?

Jake looked at the picture again, the excited women. Because Tully wasn’t meant to be found. Jake tried to think what this meant. Not enough to get rid of him; he had to vanish. First simply AWOL, then missing, a deserter, then finally irretrievable, a file nobody would follow up. Nothing to investigate, permanently out of the way, every trace, even the dog tags, supposedly at the bottom of the Jungfernsee with him. But the riding boots had slipped off, not held by laces, and he’d floated, carried by the water and the wind until a Russian soldier had fished him out, like Pharaoh’s daughter. Where he wasn’t supposed to be found.

He looked up to find Lena watching him, her face drawn, so tired her eyes seemed weak, almost brimming. The boy had fallen asleep against his shoulder.

“We can go. Inge will stay with them.”

Jake moved the boy gently onto the mattress and covered him.

Pastor Fleischman thanked him as he walked them to the door, a formal courtesy. “About the climate? It’s hot there. So perhaps I should send the healthiest.” He sighed. “How can I select?”

Jake looked back at the sleeping children, curled up in clumps under the blankets. “I don’t know,” he said.

“He’s a good man,” Lena said in the jeep. “You know, the Nazis arrested him. He was in Oranienberg. And the parishioners got him out. It was unusual, to do that.”

What it was like, day to day. A waitress collecting a check, a thousand cruelties, then the odd act of grace.

“Did you know him before? I mean, was this your church?”

“No. Why?”

“I was wondering if anyone could trace you through him.”

“Oh,” she said quietly.

He glanced at her, her head nodding, not yet asleep but drowsy, as peaceful as one of the children. Not just bait but living with a man asking questions, vulnerable either way. There had to be another place, somewhere nobody knew. But who had flats? Generals’ girls and whores.

“You passed the street,” she mumbled as he sped up Tauentzienstrasse toward the Memorial Church.

“I have to make a stop. Just for a minute.”

He double-parked in front of Ronny’s in a row of jeeps.

“Here?” she said, puzzled.

“I won’t be long.” He turned to one of the waiting drivers. “Do me a favor, will you, and keep an eye on the lady?”

“Now I need a guard?” Lena said softly.

“Watch her yourself,” the GI said, then took in Jake’s uniform patch and stood up. “Sir,” he said with a salute.

There was the usual blare of music as he went through the door, a trumpet leading “Let Me Off Uptown,” loud even in the noisy room.

The club seemed more crowded than before, but Danny still had his own corner table, Noel Coward hair slicked back, drumming his fingers to the music, a permanent piece of the furniture. Only one girl tonight, and next to him Gunther, staring into a glass.

“Well, here’s a treat,” Danny said. “Come to cheer old Gunther up, have you?” He nudged Gunther, who barely managed an acknowledging glance before going back to his glass. “Bit down in the dumps, he is. Not the best advert for the girls. You remember Trude?” A hopeful smile from the blonde.

“Got a second?” Jake said. “I need a favor.”

Danny stood up. “Such as?”

“Can you fix me up with a room? A flat, if you’ve got it.”

“For yourself?”

“A lady,” Jake said, leaning closer, not wanting to be overheard.

“How long do you need?” Danny said, glancing at his watch.

“No. A place to live.”

“Oh, you don’t want to be getting mixed up in that. Get their hooks in and then what? You want to spread the wealth. Cheaper in the end.”

“Can you doit?”

Danny looked at him narrowly, ready for business. “It’ll cost you.”

“That’s all right. But nobody’s to know.” He met Danny’s eyes. “She has a husband. Can you fix it with the landlord?”

“Well, that’d be me, wouldn’t it?”

“You own it?”

“I told you, nothing like property. You see how it comes in handy. Mind, I’ll have to chuck somebody out-they won’t like that a bit. They’ll need a little something for relocation. That’d be extra.”

“Done.”

Danny glanced up, surprised not to have to bargain. “Right. Give me a day.”

“And not with the other girls. I don’t want people coming and going.”