David Gillham - City of Women

Sigrid gazes until she feels the woman’s eyes lock onto hers, then she steps forward and changes the newspaper she is holding from her right arm to her left. That is the signal, which answers the guarded question darkening the woman’s eyes.

“Excuse me, can you tell me the way to the zoo?” the woman asks, her voice controlled, but her face bleached by the effort.

“Yes,” Sigrid answers as trained. “It’s not far. I’ll walk with you there.”

“I’m sorry,” the woman whispers thickly. “I was afraid to take the bus.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I was afraid I would see someone I knew.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sigrid repeats. “You’re in friendly hands now. But we must move quickly.”

The U-Bahn carriage rocks with the rigor of the steel rails. Its dim thunder covers them like a blanket, covering any need for conversation. The woman sits with the older girl beside her and the younger on her lap. The children have frothy curls and deep brown eyes. Faces like hearts. The older sits in quiet imitation of her mother’s self-possession. The younger rests her head on her mother’s shoulder, and carries a small wooden tiger, with most of the stripes worn off. When required, the woman gives them brave smiles. Sigrid observes covertly, as if watching some small, inexplicable ritual: a mother and her children. Then looks away and absorbs the high-pitched keening of steel at the turns. The carriage bumping. Exhausted faces across the aisle colored by the low-wattage light. A poster featuring a German mother with her towheaded Kinder as she tucks a baby into its crib . German women who are child-rich show the same dedication of body and life as the frontline soldier in the thunder of battle. Protect the children , it commands, the most valuable possession of our Volk!

She does not take them to Auntie’s pension. Only to the coffee bar inside the Bahnhof Zoo, where she seats them at a table and heads back outside to the street. The blind man’s there, at his post under the bahnhof clock, and she drops a few groschen into his cup, as planned.

“Bless you,” he rasps. Black goggles as dead as night.

“They’re inside,” she tells him.

“Yes. That’s good. You should take a pencil.”

“I should what?”

“You’ve done your job. Take a pencil and go about your business.”

“You mean I’m to leave them there alone?”

“They are not alone, gnädige Frau,” he says, “and neither are you. Now take a pencil and go .”

THAT EVENING SHE FLEES to the cinema after supper. The back row of the mezzanine smells of floor mop solution. The newsreel features footage of American soldiers taken prisoners by the Afrika Korps in the Kasserine Pass. The narrator contemptuously describes the American troops as mongrels. But Sigrid finds the faces of the young men heartbreaking. With sand in their hair and sticking to their skin, they stare into the camera like motherless children. She has taken to listening to the forbidden broadcasts while her mother-in-law is at her kaffeeklatsch, hunching by the radio in the standard position, with her ear pressed to the speaker. According to the BBC, the British have hounded the panzer armies in North Africa across Libya to the border of Tunisia. Of the war in the East, they say that, in the face of continued Red Army assaults, Ninth Army has evacuated positions south of Moscow near the city of Rzhev.

On the cinema screen, a squad of panzer grenadiers grin for the camera as they ride the turret of a Mark IV tank across a frozen white field. She allows herself a moment to imagine Kaspar’s face. She pictures him now gaunt and unshaven. His helmet crooked, frosted white, like those of the men in the newsreel. Only without the smile for the camera. Instead, she draws a mild frown of appraisal on his lips.

And suddenly Ericha is beside her.

“Good evening, Frau Schröder.”

Sigrid blinks. “You’re late, I was afraid something had happened.”

“Something did happen. But I’m fine.”

“You’re not going to tell me what , I suppose?”

Ericha confirms this by ignoring the question. “You did well today,” she tells Sigrid. “Thank you.”

Sigrid shrugs. Shakes her head as she stares up at the screen. “No thanks are required. I was anxious as a cat.”

“Still. You did what was needed. Our cargo was safely delivered.”

“Cargo? Is this how we must speak now?” she asks.

“I can’t stay long.”

“I thought you would be coming back with me.”

“No. Something came up.”

“Something happened, something came up.” Sigrid frowns with frustration.

“I’ve left a wrapped parcel in the laundry room. There’s a loose brick by the wringer. You’ll see it. I scratched it with a pfennig.”

“Scratched it?”

“I need you to pick it up and bring it to Auntie’s tomorrow night. I’ll meet you there at half past seven.”

“And if there’s a bombing raid?”

“Then the night after. Or the night after that.” Ericha starts to stand, but then doesn’t. “So how did it feel?”

“Feel?”

“You know what I mean. How did if feel to act ?”

“It felt terrifying,” Sigrid answers. “I felt like I was testing fate at every step.”

The girl almost smiles. “Good. That’s how you’re supposed to feel. It’s what keeps us out of the dungeons in the bottom of the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.”

HER MOTHER-IN-LAW has begun to interrogate her about her whereabouts. Going to a picture show? you say. What’s it called? Who’s in it? What’s it about? All questions designed to trip her up; to expose her in some way. Obviously the old woman suspects something, though exactly what, it’s difficult to say. Some kind of unsavory behavior. So Sigrid has launched a counteroffensive. She’s begun babbling at length over dinner, about this film and that. About how gifted is Zarah Leander, how lovely is Ilse Werner, how hilarious is poor Heinz Rühmann, how stern is Otto Gebühr, his face chiseled from a slab. In order to keep the plots straight for these films she never actually watches, she has begun memorizing the extracts in the back of Kino magazines, which she buys, dog-ears, and then leaves about the flat as proof of her cinematic devotion. Finally her mother-in-law gives up a groan. “Enough, enough. If I was so interested in such nonsense, I’d be wasting money as well at the ticket booth. But enough , please.” She surrenders.

That night, when Sigrid returns from the Pension Unsagbar, the old lady does not question her.

Emboldened, the next night Sigrid gathers a quarter stick of chemical stretch butter and two tins of powdered milk from her mother-in-law’s pantry, and totes them in her shopping sack to Auntie’s, along with a head of brownish cabbage and two greasy fish fillets from Hörsig’s, which Auntie fries up in a skillet and carves up into bites, as the cats go mad at her feet. But the cats are out of luck. At this point there are half a dozen people in the Pension Unsagbar to consume the feast. A scrawny middle-aged man with a large black mole on his face who habitually cracks his knuckles and wonders aloud what time it is. Of course, no one in the Pension Unsagbar owns a watch any longer. Watches have been sold long ago. Then there is a young husband and wife with three boys and an old grandpa, whom they all call “Opa.” The husband and wife are so desperately grateful for her help. “To keep the children fed , you understand,” the husband repeats over and over. But the children themselves eat quickly and covertly, as if they fear that the bites of fish and the few chunks of dried fruit may be stolen from their hands. The grandpa just stares backward at a world that no longer exists, or forward at a world beyond his comprehension. When Sigrid offers him a slice of bread with some gelatin spread, he blinks his watery pink eyes and waves it off, saying only, “For the young people.”