The Reader Berlin - Streets of Berlin

The cold air drew more & more people out into the night & more tables became free & a waitress in a stained apron hobbled about the place on one good leg to replenish tea lights. The beast now had stepped inside & was drinking a tall Schultheiss against the wall & tho he was completely still, his eyes searched the room for something. I was gossiping with Jenkins about Edward VIII at a little table in the corner & he suddenly dropped the subject & whispered in nudge-nudge-wink-wink tones that Eddie the Bavarian told him that our beer-drinking, door-tending beast is a Red & was a bodyguard with Thälmann on the day he was arrested back in March ’33. Gosh, I said, but one should not be surprised a jot in this place. I am bored of politics, especially tonight & vermouth had dulled my curiosity yet further. So I told Jenkins that unlike Haw-Haw I do not mix work & alcohol & then I fell silent. After an awkward moment, Jenkins said sulkily that a man of my profile & line of work might still like to watch his own back just in case.

& soon thereafter I took my leave. It was a fine cold night so I intended to meander back to my new digs the long way, over the red-crowned bridge into Kreuzberg & back just for the heck of it. I drank the sharp air & watched the crystalline stars shimmer over Horst-Wessel-Stadt. They shine so much brighter for the booze & the blackout & a moon shadow cut the Schillingbrücke in half & swam on the Spree’s dark surface. I looked at the water a while as I used to do the Thames at Hammersmith outside the Blue Anchor in another life.

- Ah yes, hullo, hullo.

I turned to see Jenkins, who explained he was vainly looking for a taxi back west, where (he told me earlier) he lives in a grand Jugendstil place on the first floor, rooming with the widow of a Prussian-somebody-or-other. Funny thing is he seemed to have deflated & I wondered why he did not simply sneak past me as he was no longer in such fine fettle as he was back at the Atlantis. The man who only two hours ago was regaling the womenfolk with obscure bon mots about how he reads Gogol to maintain his equilibrium, which nobody understood but everybody laughed at, for Jenkins seemed just that kind of an odd chap & it was infectious. Now he seemed to have crumpled into himself & looked distracted & almost nervous. At length he took out a packet of Garbáty Golds & sheepishly offered me one & I said don’t mind if I do. Even tho I preferred to be alone, a smoke is a smoke, especially these days. We lit up & watched in silence for river traffic. There was none.

A painter tasked with rendering Jenkins would no doubt notice first the purple patches under his eyes & conclude that lack of sleep & over-familiarity with the bottle has done the man a violence. To pass the time I asked what vintage he is & he said he is a ’91. Well, looks older is all I can say. The river winds all the way up to the crowded rabbit holes & drinking dens of Alexanderplatz & I tried to detect the outline as we looked west. No luck.

Jenkins settled against the railings of the bridge.

- You know, old boy, I happen to like your programme. Gives the Tommies what they want. Music, dirty jokes & then rant on about the plutocrats & the Jews for a bit in between & the Ministry gives you your bread at the end of the month. You’re right popular with the boys back home, they say.

- Well, that’s nice. It’s a breeze & it keeps the fellows happy.

- Telling them their birds are going behind their backs with other chaps while they’re stuck out there in France?

- Pinch of salt, Jenkins. They understand that it comes with the territory.

But I know it all, of course. My little chats have already been denounced in radio pages of The Times & my censor at the station tells me that The Mirror has started a pretty little petition to have me hung by the neck until dead if Hitler loses this thing. Needless to say, mother & Steven are less than thrilled at having a celebrity in the family & doubtless the hacks are banging down the door every other day for an interview. MY SON THE NAZI PROPAGANDIST! Read all about it. Still, maybe they’ll make a few bob off it & can finally fix the bloody roof, if the Luftwaffe doesn’t take it right off again.

Down below on the invisible quayside, a drunk was intoning something that sounded a bit like Ave Maria but was not. I shuddered & regretted accepting the cigarette. There to the right of the river behind the smokestacks were my lodgings & tho I still had to retrieve coal on this coldest night of the year, I looked forward greatly to my rickety camp bed which groans in the night & my book & a sleep-inducing libation of sorts & tomorrow I shall wake fresh to hack out the next script on my trusty Imperial. But still bloody Jenkins loitered in the Here & Now, wanting to talk & yet not to talk.

Somewhere the distant Lazarus Church struck 3 & Jenkins glanced up at the sky. Queer thing about the blackout is how the eye is so quick to make friends with it. I can detect now infinite shades of black & someday shall perhaps get around to naming them. I could see apartment rooftops inked jagged against the turquoise of the night’s canvas & even make out the corner building close to Atlantis, a grand Bohemian-looking affair.

- You think the RAF will make it over here one day, bomb us to smithereens?

- You heard what Goebbels said today. It’ll all be over in a year. I’d rather think about that dreamy maidservant in the pinafore at his place this afternoon.

- The curly one?

- Right.

- She was fine, fine. But think about it – all this…

Jenkins gestured at the grand void surrounding us & sighed theatrically.

- Look at it.

- Look at what?

- Imagine it then. I am fond of this place, our Athens on the Spree. & I fear that maybe we are experiencing the last days of Rome. These buildings are but fragments of a departing dream & soon none of this & none of us will even exist.

- You, Jenkins, are drunk.

- Maybe I am. & maybe I’m just losing the old marbles & none of this exists at all anyway. Maybe the brain has just deteriorated into a parade of marvellous illusions & I’m lying in an Islington hospital with a cold compress on my noggin & a pretty nurse by my side.

He laughed & recovered his composure.

- But I was after a taxi. Perhaps I shall have more luck back on your side of the river.

With outstretched hand he bade me a sudden goodnight & with the other slipped a pack of those Schwarzmarkt Garbátys into my right pocket. I watched him retreat, a strange, shambling figure negotiating the icy bridge back into Horst-Wessel-Stadt in search of his ride home. & yet a car glided past just moments later with dimmed headlights, looking curiously like one of the 770s from our earlier convoy to Goebbels’s place. & perhaps it is all irrelevant & he is right & Horst-Wessel-Stadt is just a dream & we are just characters in some stupid dream that will someday be over. But the cold felt real & it will soon bring the night’s snow.

I took a nip of brandy from granddad’s old hip flask to warm me & started the slow way home back across the bridge. The lightless lamps were carved crooked into the purple night. All was shadow & the distances of the lampposts deceived in the darkness. I turned past the now-silent Atlantis, rusty shutters down & for a moment I swear I could see the doorman’s huge frame lurking in the shadows with two or three other fellows & talking in low voices dripping with Berlin dialect. One of them called out to me, called me “little friend,” but I pretended not to hear & walked faster. Stars blazed above & around as I walked briskly down Romintener Straße towards the sleeping theatres & shops on Große Frankfurter Straße, with the neogothic hulk of the Lazarus Church looming now on the left. Slow footsteps followed, but I didn’t take the trouble to turn around to ask who the walker was. & then my house at last & I neglected to collect the coal from the dank cellar & veritably danced up the three flights of stairs, which reek tonight of ovens & – someone must have turned a trick on the Schwarzmarkt – cigar smoke & I swear it was coming from Frau Becker’s place. Past the malodorous water closet & into the digs which I shall describe another time for I feel all described out. I locked the door behind me & pulled the chain to.