David Gillham - City of Women

“It is the husband’s job to carry his bride over the threshold of their new home,” he answered, smiling. “Don’t you know?”

But when he crossed the foyer with Sigrid in his arms, and was suddenly faced with the multiple flights of stairs ascending farther and farther upward, he paused gravely. Sigrid laughed. “Well, go on,” she prompted. “What’s keeping you, husband? It’s only a few stairs.”

“I thought this building had a lift.”

“Did you? How? You grew up here.”

“Yes, and I always imagined a lift.”

She laughed again contently. “Then put me down, put me down,” she said, smiling. “Carrying one’s bride across the threshold of the foyer will quite suffice for German common law, I’m sure.” When her feet touched the floor again, her arms were still hung around his neck, and she kissed him. He smiled back at her. Though she could tell that the kiss in a public area had made him uncomfortable. “Go,” she commanded lightly. “Go, husband. If you want to carry something, then carry your bride’s luggage over the threshold.”

She remembers watching him take up her bags with gallant obedience and climb the stairs with them. It was a feeling she so seldom experienced in her life. A feeling of home. Of coming home after a long journey. And here was her husband, taking up her bags. In that instant, she decided that she had , in fact, made the correct decision by marrying Kaspar Schröder. And that she was so relieved, so very relieved, that she would no longer have to live on her passion alone, as her mother had done. She would, instead, have all the things her mother disdained. A clean floor swept by her own hand, good bone china, a good German kitchen, a meaningful but uncomplicated routine, and a man in her bed to share the simple intimacies at the end of the day, without heartache, without the squalid Sturm und Drang.

What a relief it was.

Eight years later, as Sigrid steps in and shakes raindrops from her scarf, the stingy foyer is dank as a pit, its tile hexagon disintegrating at the edges. On the wall, the official notice board, maintained by Portierfrau Mundt, is festooned with bulletins from the Reich Rationing Office, the Reich Medical Office, the Security and Aid Service, the Air Defense League, the Winter Relief Fund, and the Social Insurance Bureau. Sigrid ignores them as always, and starts up the grueling helix of stairs to the top floor, passing the buckets of sand and water at each landing, just in case a British phosphorus stick someday finds a home on the roof.

At the door to 11G, she heaves a sigh and turns her key in the lock. Entering the flat, she is met by the smell of coal smoke. Her mother-in-law must have just lit the coke stove. Just enough briquettes fed into its belly to make it through the evening with a draft of heat. Sigrid removes her coat and scarf. The short entrance hall leads into an incommodious box kitchen. Then come three rooms and one bath barely large enough to fit the cast-iron tub. Newsprint is stuffed between the double-hung windows to deaden the buffeting winds gusting in from the lake districts, and the window glass is taped up against bombings.

“Mother Schröder?” she calls out, smelling the old woman’s bitter cigarettes. Her mother-in-law appears from the kitchen, toting an iron tureen with pot holders. “You’re late,” the old lady declares. Even after all these years, she still uses the formal address with her. “Next time, I’ll start without you, and you can scrape out what’s left.”

Stuck into a chair at the table, she listens to her mother-in-law grouse about a downstairs neighbor. It’s hard to separate the incessant noise of her complaints from the incessant burble of the cheap Volksempfänger wireless in the next room. “You’d think the Luftwaffe has won the war for us single-handedly to hear her tell it,” the old lady grumbles. “And all because that boy of hers, who barely has the brains to blow his nose, somehow learned to work an airplane.” Mother Schröder’s face is gaunt, well chiseled. Her hair once blond, now wintry white in its helmet of hairpins, her eyes hot as stoves. “You know, I tried to convince Kaspar to sign up for the Luftwaffe before he was conscripted. He could have had a position with the Air Ministry right here in town, I’m sure of it. A man of his abilities. But, of course, men do not listen to women,” she declares with remorse, the lines around her mouth deepening. “He could have been making a true contribution to the war effort with his intellect. But instead what do they have him doing? Marching with a rifle. As if there aren’t a hundred other men, less gifted, who couldn’t be doing that in his place.” She clucks over the foolishness of it all, and then gives Sigrid a look. “You’re not eating.”

“I don’t have much of an appetite.”

Another look. “We don’t waste food. It’s immoral. Not to mention illegal.”

“I’m not wasting it. I’ll put it in my thermos. It’ll keep until tomorrow,” Sigrid says as she stands and lifts her bowl from the table. “But if you think I’ve transgressed, feel free to ring up the authorities. I’m sure you can get a job at a ball-bearing plant after they haul me away for soup crimes.”

“Of course. Disrespect . That’s all you ever have to offer.” Her mother-in-law shakes her head in resignation. She removes one of her acrid cigarettes from a packet beside her soup bowl. But as she lights it up with a spirit lighter, the wireless snags her attention. “ Ah. This is a new song,” she announces. And for a moment, the old woman’s expression lightens its starch. She fingers the notes in the air, and hums tunelessly along with the radio songstress. Sing, nightingale, sing—a song from the old days—touch my weary heart. Until the broadcast cuts out with a spurt of static and is replaced by a sharp, syncopated beep. Quickly Sigrid is up and tuning the dial on the wireless, until she catches the strident warning voice of the Flaksender announcer. A large force of enemy bombers has entered the territory of the Reich, on course for grid square G/H. To repeat: Enemy bombers currently on course for grid square G/H, Gustav/Heinrich .

It’s the signal that the British bombers have crossed the line into the Mark Brandenburg, and are coming for Berlin.

Sigrid gazes bleakly at the wireless, but Mother Schröder is already bustling about, firing off orders. “Turn off the gas line, and see to the fuse box, daughter-in-law. And the blankets . Don’t forget the blankets. I’m sure those dreadful benches haven’t gotten any softer on the backside.”

THE TENANTS PACK themselves into the cellar with grumbles and rubber-stamped frowns, but without any embarrassing panic. They have learned to soldier through the routine. They are armed with their air raid bags, their Volksgasmasken, their water jugs, and heavy blankets. They pick up the same vinegary prattle, as if they had left it behind during the last raid, but it’s easy to tell from their faces that the return of the bombers in strength after so many months has soured their stomachs. This is not supposed to be happening. They have been assured by the proper authorities that Berlin’s air defense rings have now been so well armored that they are simply impenetrable. So how is it, then, that the British Air Gangsters have regained such traction in the skies? It’s an unanswered question that hangs in the cellar air like the stink of mildewed sandbags and mice droppings.

Sigrid is impatient for the bombers to come. To finish their business and allow her to be on her way. Around her, the tenants hem her in with their stale bodies, their stale complaints. If she hates the Tommies at all, it is because they have forced her down into this goddamned hole again. A wail from Frau Granzinger’s infant closes in on her. Trapped. How did she ever become so trapped?