David Gillham - City of Women

OPENING THE DOOR to her mother-in-law’s flat, Sigrid smells camphor balls. “Frau Mundt has posted a notice from the Party,” Mother Schröder announces as Sigrid removes her coat and scarf.

“A notice?” she asks, still distracted by her own memory.

“A collection for the war effort,” the old lady says, “of winter clothing.”

Sigrid glances at the striped dress box from Tempelhof’s that her mother-in-law is filling. “And do we have any winter clothing left worthy of collecting?”

“As usual, your attempts at humor are ill placed.”

There were always collections being made. SA men rattling tins for Winter Relief in the rail stations. Hitler Youth collecting pots and pans door to door for scrap metal drives. Sigrid digs through the pile on the table. Last year it was the same. Scarves, old gloves, some rabbit-fur collars. But this year it’s also the gray-blue houndstooth coat the old lady had worn before the war, and a long black wool cape that Sigrid had bought for herself before she’d quit her job at the telephone company to get married. None of Kaspar’s clothes. Kaspar’s bedroom wardrobe has become something of a shrine to her mother-in-law since he was called up. “And I am contributing my sable hat?” Sigrid asks. It is the only expensive gift that Kaspar ever bought for her. Russian sable. It was their fifth wedding anniversary, after he had been promoted to the position of authorized signatory at the bank. She had picked it out from a shop window in the Unter den Linden.

Mother Schröder grabs the hat like it’s an old cleaning rag. “You mean this ?” The old woman shrugs, tossing the hat aside. “Fine. You want to keep it, go ahead. Let our soldiers turn to ice. Forget about the fact that your husband is at the front right now, doing his patriotic duty. You must have your important hat.”

Sigrid takes a breath. “No,” she replies, returning the hat to the heap. “It makes no difference,” she says, and realizes that this is true. Let it return to Russia.

That evening, per Frau Mundt’s notice-board instructions, Sigrid places the striped dress box and the pair of coats on the landing for official collection by the Portierfrau’s slovenly husband. She notes that across the hall, at the door of the Frau Obersturmführer’s flat, are a pile of coats and a wicker basket full of furs and wools. Also, two pairs of skis complete with poles, which are added to the inventory by a lean, dark-headed man supported heavily by a cane, who steps out of the flat just as Sigrid is taking her mental inventory. Her surprise must register clearly on her face, because he lifts his eyebrows and asks, “Did I startle you?”

He looks to be in his early thirties, not so much older than she, wearing a dark wool cardigan, with a patch at one of the elbows, over a white linen shirt buttoned at the collar. His face is evenly proportioned, with patrician features. What used to be called an “officer’s face.” But his gaze is like a gun sight, as if he is looking at her down the bore of a rifle. When she does not respond, he stacks the skis neatly against the wall. “Well. Shan’t be getting much use out of these anytime soon. Skiing, as I recall it, requires two legs,” he tells her, and turns his weight on his cane to reenter the flat.

“Wait. I’m sorry,” Sigrid hears herself suddenly say.

Again he takes her into his sights. “You’re sorry? For what?” he says mildly. “That you were impolite, or that I am a one-legged cripple?”

“Both,” she answers. She can feel a sudden thickening in her blood. A certain dryness at the back of her mouth. It’s not that she feels stripped by his gaze, more like annihilated. “Are you in pain?” Sigrid asks, feeling her face heat.

“Yes,” he answers. “Are you?”

“Me?”

“You look it,” he tells her. “In pain, that is.”

“Yes,” she hears herself answer suddenly.

“Then you should do something about it. I could help you.”

“Help me?”

“Relieve the pain.”

She swallows. Absorbs the force of his stare. “No. Thank you.”

The man fixes her with the gun sight a moment longer, then shrugs. “Well, you should do something , gnädige Frau,” he tells her, opening the door to the flat. “I have my pain, and what can be done about it? Stitch a leg back on after it’s been blown off? Not very practical. But you? What’s your excuse?”

THAT NIGHT, Sigrid lies awake, staring up at the darkness of the ceiling. She’s still awake with a wire of tension in her body. Her palms are clammy. It’s been so long that she’s even thought about doing this that she’s hesitant. Will she remember how? Shoving off her covers, she gingerly tugs up her nightdress and lets her fingers go seeking. They come up dry at first, but then she feels the dampness. Her body slowing, arching. Tightening. She must bite her wrist to silence her cry. Her cry for the man who has turned her past into a treasury, and her future into an ash pit of hope.

It’s Saturday. Her day for the dairy shop and greengrocer. So she swallows some belladonna with a cup of sour chicory coffee, eats a slice of tasteless rye bread, and hurries out the door, only to be intercepted at the top of the stairs. Frau Mundt, the porter’s wife, is decked out in her best Nazi fashion. The blue-black Frauenschaft uniform, complete with the felt fedora and swastika pin on the lapel of her overcoat. An ensemble she is known to wear any time she visits the Party’s district office in the Jägerstrasse.

“’Morning,” Sigrid offers quickly.

“ Heil Hitler ,” Mundt reminds her.

“Yes of course. Heil Hitler . I’m sorry, but I’m on my way to Brodheker’s, before they run out of milk.”

But Frau Mundt makes no move to clear the stairwell. “Perhaps you did not see the notice,” she announces, in a tone a bit too sharp for a Saturday morning.

“Notice,” Sigrid repeats. “I’m sorry, notice ? I don’t know what you mean.”

“ Donations , Frau Schröder,” Mundt replies with a thin frown. “Of warm clothing for our men in the east, struggling against the Bolshevik enemy. Your husband among them, I believe. They were to be placed on the landing for collection.”

“Yes. Oh, yes, of course. I put out our donation last night. Right here at the door. A box and two coats.”

“Is that so?” Mundt replies dubiously with pursed lips. “Well, then. I suppose we have a mystery on our hands, Frau Schröder. Because my husband, the Herr Hausleiter, picked up no such donation. The only clothing left on the landing was that at the Frau Obersturmführer Junger’s door.”

Sigrid gives the door a glance. “Well, then there must have been some mistake. Perhaps it was all mixed together in error.”

“No. No error was made. I spoke personally to the Frau Obersturmführer on this subject first thing. All of her items were accounted for.”

Sigrid heaves a breath. “Then you’re correct, Frau Mundt. It is a mystery. Since you’re so positive that your husband couldn’t possibly have mixed one set of coats with another, then I recommend you speak to my mother-in-law. Perhaps she can explain it.” Mundt shoots her eyes in the direction of Sigrid’s door. Maybe she’s not quite so anxious to tangle with the elder Frau Schröder. “ Go ahead . She’s in the kitchen boiling diapers for Frau Granzinger. You know, in the spirit of the people’s community. But I’m sure she’ll be quite happy to discuss the matter with you. Now, you’ll excuse me, please, I don’t wish to miss my bus,” she says as she squeezes past and dashes down the steps.