David Gillham - City of Women

The bombers come and make their noise, and even when the lights blink out briefly, no one gets hysterical. Crying forbidden. The Berlin citizenry toughening up. Several men pass around a cigarette. Their wives take out their mending. People look for comfortable places to settle. Remarkably, a train passes by, though it doesn’t stop. Lit faces in the windows telegraph past, like creatures from a ghoulish dream. Tommy is not close tonight.

“No bonbons for us tonight,” one of the men pipes up. “Churchill’s after the Siemens factory,” he declares with confidence.

How is it that these men think they know so much? Sigrid cannot help but wonder. Did Churchill ring them up in advance and say, Relax, gents. I’m heading for Spandau. One of the wives steals the thought from Sigrid’s head, and speaks as much aloud, followed by some harsh laughter on the part of the fellow’s chums. Sigrid smiles with mild satisfaction, but when she looks at Ericha leaned against the wall, the girl is staring into a dark hole.

“Fräulein Kohl?”

Nothing.

“Ericha?”

Still nothing.

Sigrid takes breath. “There is no reason to worry,” she assures. “The old fool’s right. We’re not the target.”

“I’m not worried. The all-clear will sound soon.”

“Ah,” says Sigrid. “More Gypsy soothsaying.” She says this mildly. But the look Ericha fires at her is anything but mild. “ What? What’s the matter ?”

“The girls in my BdM troop,” Ericha tells her in an emotionless voice. “That’s what they used to call me. The Gypsy.”

“Really? Well. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

A pause. “ They did,” she says.

As the all-clear siren bawls its single note above them, Ericha goes mute and remains so, even as the crowd climbs the station steps and emerges into the darkness of the street. She has taken on the quality of a somnambulist. Not so unusual for a Berliner these days, but the transformation is so sudden that Sigrid feels uneasy.

“ Look, ” she whispers, latching onto Ericha’s arm, “I know I’m often harsh. It’s how I am. But striking yourself dumb won’t remedy the situation.”

Ericha raises her eyes. “Nothing will remedy the situation, Frau Schröder. We are all of us stuck in this mess, until the day when the last standing bricks in this town are turned into rubble. That’s the only remedy we can expect. A clean slate. Counting upward from zero.”

Sigrid stares, half baffled, half mortified. “I think you have gone mad, child,” she whispers.

Ericha does not disagree. “Mad enough to surrender. Come with me, Frau Schröder, and I’ll show you what you’ll soon regret seeing.”

A low bank of cloud cover glows crimson above the burning factory district to the northwest. The stench of chemical-rancid smoke perfumes the air. A fire brigade pumper clangs past them. A few shadows hurry down the opposite side of the street. They hurry, too, until they reach the curve in the nameless street and the Litfass pillar guarding the empty windows of the tobacconist shop.

“Last chance to turn back,” Ericha informs her. “Are you sure?”

“ Yes , I’m sure . Now, open the door, will you please?”

Ericha inserts the key by touch in the darkness. The door opens with a complaint of rusty hinges. Only when they are both inside, and the door is closed and locked behind them, does she tug the chain on a dangling lamp, dimly revealing a narrow corridor with a decrepit carpet runner smelling of burned wood. “This way to Ravensbrück, Frau Schröder,” she announces.

Sigrid recoils.

Ravensbrück is the concentration camp for women, north of Berlin on the Havel. A favorite spot for the Gestapo to send females arrested for political crimes. “Is that a joke ?” Sigrid frowns.

“You’ll find out,” Ericha replies, then turns and starts climbing the steps.

“IS THIS STILL A FLAT?” Sigrid asks when they reach the top. There’s a residence plaque by the door, with a number, but no name, only an impression in the paint where a nameplate had once been tacked. But Ericha hushes her and knocks. Twice. Then three times. The hallway is thick with shadow and stinks of fire rot. The old woman who opens the door is a hefty old Berliner mare, with deep-pocketed eyes and a voice like a shovel full of cinders. “You scared the shit out of me,” she declares crossly, then clamps her eyes on Sigrid. “Who’s this?”

“A friend,” Ericha tells her. “She’s here to help.”

“Help? Help how?” The old woman squints with animal suspicion. “By gossiping to her friends about what’s none of her business?”

“My name is—” Sigrid begins, but the woman chops her off sharply.

“I don’t need to know your name, gnädige Frau, and you don’t need to know mine.”

“Auntie, please,” Ericha pleads aggressively. “You can trust her.”

“No, you can trust her,” the woman snorts. Her face drops into a deeply furrowed scowl. “But I suppose I’ve got no other choice in the matter. You’re both here, so you may as well come in.”

The door opens to a squat room crowded with furniture. The air smells of cat piss and lye soap. Sigrid starts to cover her nose, then quickly stops herself. Cats scurry away to their hiding places, except for a giant tom, enthroned on the shelf of a bookcase with a few dirty ledger volumes. The old woman shuts the door behind them and shoves the dead bolt closed.

“This is the lady I told you about. Who gave me the clothes,” Ericha says.

“The clothes…” The old eyes squint. “Oh, you mean the one with the fancy fur hat. Quite a thing,” she tells Sigrid as she shambles across the room.

“Do you…” Sigrid starts, still trying to knit this together. “Do you wear it?” To which the old woman cackles.

“ Wear it? Oh, yes .” She nods mockingly and poses, as if modeling the sable on her grizzled gray mop. “I wore it just yesterday to the opera , don’t you know. Die Fledermaus ,” she declares with a faux grin, which quickly drops from her face.

Giving the tomcat a gentle shove from the bookcase shelf, she snorts at the absurdity. “It’s all right, Hektor,” she informs the tom, “you’ve done your job.” The cat hops down, and the old woman reaches around and pulls what must be a latch, because the bookcase squeaks and swings out on a hinge, revealing a door in the wall.

“Handy little construction, isn’t it?” the old woman points out with wry pride. “My husband, may he rest, could be handy at times.”

“Where does it lead?”

“You saw the tobacconist on the street? That used to be our business, till the old fool fell asleep at his desk one night with a lit cigar. He was always afraid that his employees were stealing from him, so he blocked off the entrance to the attic stockroom from below and built this door in our flat.” The old woman shrugs as if tossing away the thought. “Now I use it to board my special guests . I call it the Pension Unsagbar,” she says. The Pension Unspeakable. “Not exactly the Hotel Adlon, but better than the alternatives.” The first face Sigrid sees, as the door is opened, is thin and peering. An old man staring back with watery, suspect eyes. Then an old woman whose face is as white as powder, her skin mapped with lines, her mouth set in a distant scowl. She gazes out at Sigrid’s entry into the cold, dank space in the way ghosts must watch the living. Ericha steps up and announces, “This lady has come to help. She can be trusted.” But she addresses the inhabitants of the space as if she might be speaking a language they do not understand.