Joseph Kanon - A Good German

“Maybe I was too dumb to know any better.”

“When I saw you in the court—” She lowered her head, her voice trailing off. “Now he knows too, I thought. Now he’ll only see her.” She tapped the right side of her chest. “The greifer.”

“But you still asked to see me.”

“There’s no one else. You helped me once. You remember who was.

Jake shifted in his chair, awkward. “Renate, I can’t help you. I have nothing to do with the court.”

“Oh that,” she said, waving her cigarette. “No, not that. They’ll hang me, I know it. I’m going to die,” she said easily.

“They’re not going to hang you.”

“It’s so different? They’ll send me east. No one comes back from the east. Always the east. First the Nazis, now them. No one comes back. I used to see them go. I know.”

“You said you didn’t know.”

“I knew,” she said, pointing again, then to the other side. “She didn’t. She didn’t want to know. How else to do it? Every week, more faces. How could you do it if you knew? After a while she could do anything. No tears. A job. It’s all true, what they said in there. The shoes, the Cafe Heil, all of it. And the work camps, she thought that. How else could she do it? That’s what happened to her.”

Jake looked up, nodding to her real side. “And what happened to her?”

“Yes,” she said wearily, “you came for that. Go ahead, write.” She sat up, darting her eyes sideways to the guards. “Where shall we start? After you left? The visa never came. Twenty-six marks. A birth certificate, four passport pictures, and twenty-six marks. That’s all. Except somebody had to take you, and there were too many Jews already. Even with my English. I can still speak it. You see?” she said, switching. “Not a bad accent. Speak for a while-they’ll think I’m showing off for you. So they’ll be used to it.”

“The accent’s fine,” Jake said, still confused but meeting her gaze, “but I’m not sure I understand everything you’re saying.”

“Any change of expression from them?” she said.

“No.”

“So I stayed in Berlin,” she said in German. “And of course things got worse. The stars. The special benches in the park. You know all that. Then the Jews had to work in factories. I was in Siemenstadt. My mother too, an old woman. She could barely stand at the end of the day. Still, we were alive. Then the roundups started. Our names were there. I knew what it would mean-how could she live? So we went underground.”

“U-boats?”

“Yes, that’s how I knew, you see. How it was, what they would do. All their tricks. The shoes-no one else thought of that. So clever, they told me. But I knew. I had the same problem, so I knew they would go there. And of course they did.”

“But you didn’t stay underground.”

“No, they caught me.”

“How?”

She smiled to herself, a grimace. “A greifer. A boy I used to know. He always liked me. I wouldn’t go with him-a Jew. I never thought of myself as Jewish, you see. I was-what? German. To think of that now. An idiot. But there he was, in the cafe, and I knew he must be underground, too, by that time. I hadn’t spoken to anyone in days. Do you know what that’s like, not to talk? You get hungry for it, like food. And I knew he liked me and I thought maybe he would help me. Anyone who could help—”

“And did he?”

She shrugged. “To the Gestapo car. They took me in and beat me. Not so bad, not like some of the others, but enough. So I knew I wasn’t German anymore. And the next time would be worse. They wanted to know where my mother was. I didn’t tell them, but I knew I would the next time. And then he did help. He had friends there- friends, the devils he worked for. He said he could make a bargain for me. I could work with him and they’d keep us off the list, my mother too. If I went with him. After this? I said. And you know what he said to me? Tt’s never too late to make a bargain in this life. Only in the next.‘” She paused. “So I went with him. That was the bargain. He got me and I kept my life. The first time I was sent out, we went together. His pupil. But I was the one who spotted the woman that day. I knew the look, you see. And after the first time-well, what does it matter how many, it’s just the first one, over and over.” “What happened to him?”

“He was deported. When he was with me, it was all right for him. We were a team. But then they split us up, and on his own he was not so successful. I was the one, I had the eye. He had nothing to bargain anymore. So.” She squashed out the cigarette. “But you did,” Jake said, watching her.

“Well, I was better at it. And Becker liked me. I kept my looks. You see here?” She pointed to her left cheek, folded up near the edge of her eye. “Only this. When they beat me, my face was swollen, but it went down. Only this. And Becker liked that. It reminded him, maybe. I don’t know of what.” She looked away, finally distressed. “Oh my god, how can we talk this way? How can I describe what it was like? What difference does it make? Write anything you want. It can’t be worse. You think I’m making excuses. It was David, it was Becker. Yes, and it was me. I thought I could do this, that we could talk, but when I talk about it-look at your face-you see her. The one who killed her own. That’s what they want for the magazines.” “I’m just trying to understand it.”

“Understand it? You want to understand what happened in Germany? How can you understand a nightmare? How could I do it? How could they do it? You wake up, you still can’t explain it. You begin to think maybe it never happened at all. How could it? That’s why they have to get rid of me. No evidence, no greifer, it never happened.”

She was shaking her head and looking away, her eyes beginning to fill.

“Now look. I thought I was finished with that, no tears. Not like my mother. She cried enough for both. ‘How can you do this?’ Well, it was easy for her. I had to do the work, not her. Every time I looked at her, tears. You know when they stopped? When she got in the truck Absolutely dry. I thought, she’s relieved not to have to live this way anymore. To see me.”

Jake took a handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to her. “She didn’t think that.”

Renate blew her nose, still shaking her head. “No, she did. But what could I do? Oh, stop,” she said to herself, wiping her face. “I didn’t want to do this, not in front of you. I wanted you to see the old Renate, so you would help.”

Jake put down the pen. “Renate,” he said quietly, “you know it won’t make any difference what I write. It’s a Soviet court. It doesn’t matter to them.”

“No, not that. I need your help. Please.” She reached for his hand again. “You’re the last chance. It’s finished for me. Then I saw you in the court and I thought, not yet, not yet, there’s one more chance. He’ll do it.”

“Do what?”

“Oh, look at this,” she said, wiping her eyes again. “I knew if I started—” She turned to the guards, and for an instant it occurred to Jake that she was playing, the tears part of some larger performance.

“Do what?” he said again.

“Please,” she said to the guard, “would you bring me some water?”

The guard on the right, the German speaker, nodded, said something in Russian to the other, and left the room.

“Write this down,” she said to Jake in English, her voice low, as if it were coming from the back of a sob. “Wortherstrasse, in Prenzlauer, the third building down from the square. On the left, toward Schonhauserallee. An old Berliner building, the second courtyard. Frau Metzger.”

“What is this, Renate?”

“Write it, please. There’s not much time. You remember in court I told you I didn’t do it for myself?”