Christopher Reich - The Runner

“That’s all?” Ingrid was unable to conceal her disappointment. Ten thousand Reichsmarks sounded like a lot, but these days it was only equal to a hundred pre-war marks.

“The market dictates the prices, not I, Frau Grafin.” He led her up the rear stairs into his back room. “How may I be of service?”

Ingrid handed Karlsberg a prepared list. His eyebrows rose and fell as he studied the paper. He gave her breasts a final ogle, then said, “Let us see.”

Karlsberg drew a blue linen curtain to reveal a wall of cardboard cartons and wooden crates. Spam. Peaches. Pears.

Corned beef. The bounty of the American army. He took several cans from each and set them on the counter. An icebox squatted in the corner. He opened it and took out a half dozen boxes of Danish butter and a dozen eggs. A burlap bag full of sugar slouched against the wall. He emptied two brimming scoops into a paper bag. Apples. Potatoes. Corn. Soon the counter was covered with enough food to keep her household fed for a month. She sifted the goods. Something was missing. “I asked for steaks. Last week you assured me that you would have some good US chops.”

Karlsberg removed his spectacles and cleaned them with his apron. Several times he glanced up at her, only to look away when he met her gaze. Clearly he was mustering his courage. “I have the steaks,” he said haltingly, “but I’ve given you all I can for the wine.”

“You said ten thousand Reichsmarks.”

“And I’ve given you ten thousand Reichsmarks’ worth of groceries.”

“Balls!” she exclaimed. “These bottles cost at least that much before the war, if you were fortunate enough to find them.”

“Certainly, Frau Grafin is correct. However, customers are less discerning these days. A Latour may bring more than a simple vin du table , but not much.”

Ingrid fought to hold her tongue. The prick might as well have both hands in her pockets stealing her money. She could feel her face flush with anger.

Karlsberg reached below the counter and brought out a carton of Chesterfields. “Take some cigarettes. You can kompensieren .”

Kompensieren meant to trade or to barter. This is how it was supposed to work: Ingrid would take Karlsberg’s cigarettes to a nearby farm and use them to purchase a hen or two, a dozen eggs, maybe even a gallon of fresh milk if she was lucky. Bundling up her supplies, she’d find a train into the city — Munich, let’s say — and trade half her eggs for lightbulbs, one of the hens for heating oil, a pint of milk for some medicine. If particularly canny, she might end up with a few cigarettes to spare, and at day’s end, repurchase a bottle or two of wine from Karlsberg to toast her business acumen.

Good luck!

Ingrid had neither the time nor the opportunity to go from one vendor to the next trying to bargain for eggs or chickens or cigarettes. She lived in a secluded valley, fifty kilometers from the nearest town of any size. She had Ferdy Karlsberg and that was that. The only thing she could do with the Chesterfields was smoke them.

“It was steak I requested. For my boy.”

Karlsberg stared at her long and hard, then went to the freezer and took out a white box that he placed on the counter. “Here are the steaks,” he said, lowering his head as if ashamed by this show of weakness. “But you’ll get nothing else out of me.”

But Ingrid had seen something in the freezer that held far more appeal than the steaks. “Is that ice cream I saw in there?”

Karlsberg smiled. “Vanilla and strawberry.”

Ingrid’s first thought was of Pauli. He adored ice cream and hadn’t had a spoonful of the stuff in over a year. He would be mad with joy. She could practically hear him giggling. Slow down, she cautioned herself. Even with an ice block or two in the wheelbarrow, the ice cream would melt long before she arrived home. Her only chance of getting the ice cream home in some kind of edible condition was to find someone to drive her there and on this of all days, she hadn’t seen a single GI. It figured. Another possibility came to mind. Ferdy Karlsberg used to deliver their groceries in an old brown Citroen truck. If anyone had gasoline, it would be him. As a black marketeer, he had connections, and Lord knew, he was as frugal as a Swiss.

Suddenly, Ingrid was acting, not thinking. Recalling his lascivious glances, she grabbed his apron and pulled him closer. Before she knew what she was doing, she had whispered the proposition in his ear. Karlsberg turned beet red. His eyes were wide with surprise and desire. “Well?” she asked. “Is it a deal?”

“ Jawohl, Frau Grafin .” The disrespect had evaporated from his voice.

Ingrid stepped away from the counter and shook her hair loose. A streak of heat soured her body, momentarily promising nausea. Drawing a deep breath, she steeled herself to her task. She unbuttoned the front of her dress, pulling down the sleeves one at a time. And when she was sure she had his fullest attention, she unsnapped her brassiere and pulled it off her shoulders. There she stood, daughter of Germany’s richest industrialist, object of adoration for field marshals, famous actors, champion drivers and the like, breasts pale and exposed, nipples embarrassingly erect, in front of a fumbling bunzli whose face had grown so red, so feverish, that the mere whisper of a pinprick would make him explode. And all for a quart of vanilla ice cream. She’d take two quarts, goddammit. Let him stop her!

Karlsberg let slip a petulant whimper and the next thing she knew, he was over the counter, clammy hands groping her breasts, moist breath wet in her ear, moaning about love and desire and she didn’t know what else. Ingrid wrestled free of his clumsy grasp, fighting off the inquisitive hands then taking an abrupt step to the rear. The excited grocer tumbled head-first onto the floor, landing in a pile at her feet. The entire incident had lasted no more than ten seconds.

Ingrid rushed to fasten her brassiere and button up the dress. But she held her ground. Neither shame nor fear nor acute humiliation — his or hers — would separate her from her groceries. She waited until Karlsberg dusted himself off, then addressed him in her most formal voice. “Be sure to load everything into the truck before you get the ice cream. And bring an ice block or two along just in case.” Karlsberg remained frozen to the spot, his cheeks angry, his eyes accusing.

“Sofort!” she shouted. “Right away.”

Karlsberg jumped to work.

Number 61 Rudolf Krehlstrasse sat at the end of a wooded lane high on a steep mountain near the outskirts of Heidelberg. It was an unremarkable house, leaves of faded yellow paint falling from its neglected woodwork, birch shingles curled with age. Set back from the street amongst a clutch of leafy oaks, it cowered like the shy girl at a party, the homely lass who went home with her dance card empty. Erich Seyss double-checked the number, then strolled up the walk and rapped on the door. Heavy feet sounded from the rear of the house. Waiting, he gazed at the city below.

Heidelberg had escaped the war unscathed. Declaring it a hospital city seven months earlier, the high command had transferred the local garrison — by then a Volksturm detachment peopled with elderly men and teenage boys fifteen kilometers north to Mannheim. Red crosses painted on fields of white decorated dozens of city roofs, mute pleas to the Allied bombers who by then held mastery of the sky. It was a quaint convention, and one, to his surprise, the Allies had honored. Looking to his left, he made out the medieval red brick ruins of the Schloss , at once majestic and crestfallen, slumbering in the morning haze. And below them, the Neckar flowing lazily under a half-dozen crumbling bridges, bisecting the city into old town and new. The view had looked the same in 1938, in 1838, and a hundred years before that. It was the Germany of Martin Luther, the Great Elector, and the Kaiser; the Germany of Hegel, Bismarck and Hindenburg.