David Gillham - City of Women

“Give my regards to the Portierfrau,” Sigrid tells her, filling the coffeepot with water. “I’m sure she’ll give you an earful of all my anti-social remarks.”

Mother Schröder issues her a penetrating look as she is slipping on her gloves. “You think this is a joke?” she asks solemnly. “ Someone has to maintain our good name with the Party.”

When Kaspar emerges from the bedroom, he is dressed in one of the few suits Sigrid has left in the wardrobe. The clothing hangs on him as if he were a scarecrow. “Look,” he says, grinning darkly. “I can attend a fancy-dress ball as a civilian.”

But the sight pains Sigrid. “You’ve lost so much weight,” she whispers. Kaspar only shrugs and sits down at the table. As she sets his plate in front of him, she asks him, “You have exercises this morning?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Do you think they’re helping?”

“Tossing the medicine ball with my fellow cripples, all for the greater glory of the Fatherland. Of course it’s helping. It’s making me a better German. Can’t you tell?”

“Will you be bringing your comrades back with you tonight?”

Sawing into the powered eggs on toast with his knife and fork. “My comrades ?”

“Unteroffizier Kamphauser,” says Sigrid. “Unteroffizier Messner.”

He shakes his head for a moment. “They’re imbeciles,” he tells her. He’s chewing but doesn’t appear to be tasting. His face is devoid of expression. “Only imbeciles survive, it seems.” And then he asks, “What about you?”

“Me?”

“What is on the agenda for Frau Schröder’s day?”

“Errands.” She pours coffee into his cup, then turns away from his eyes, and starts scraping the skillet with the metal spatula. “Shopping and whatnot.”

“Are you seeing him?”

Sigrid stops, the spatula frozen in her hand. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know where he is right now. I’m sorry, Kaspar. I can’t have this conversation. I simply can’t.” She abandons the skillet in the sink. He says nothing as she pulls on her coat and ties on her scarf. But before she leaves, she is compelled to kiss him quickly on the forehead.

He stops her, taking her arm. “Are you in trouble?” he asks.

She gazes at him. “Yes.”

“How deeply?”

“Deeply enough.”

“So tell me,” he suggests, but she can only shake her head.

“ What can I tell you, Kaspar?” she asks sadly. “What good could it possibly do?”

To that he has no answer.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I will do my best to keep you out of it.”

But as she turns to go, he still holds on to her arm. “Is he a soldier?” He asks. “There’s no shame, Sigrid. There are plenty of men who’ve simply had enough of this war. If you’re hiding him—”

“Kaspar,” she says, and nearly spills it. Nearly lets the truth burst out of her. But instead she simply shakes her head and removes his hand from her arm. He does not resist.

A TRAFFIC JAM on the stairwell. As Sigrid descends, she finds that this is not only the morning Frau Granzinger is leaving for the country with her brood and new duty-year girl in formation, but that it is also the morning the Frau Obersturmführer returns from Breslau, now hugely swollen. She watches them collide in the building’s foyer. Frau Granzinger, looming largely in her monstrous traveling cloak and flat-brimmed hat, is herding the children with her usual impatience, hurling orders at the skinny duty-year girl, in a hurry to make it to the trains before the bombers come. The Frau Obersturmführer is accompanied by a teenaged Hitler Jungvolk toting her luggage, who tries in vain to maintain his military posture in front of the skinny girl, as he is shoved aside by the hefty taxi driver handling Granzinger’s steamer trunk.

“ Ah , Frau Schröder ,” the Frau Obersturmführer calls to her. Her voice is stiffly cheery. Her face bloated, strained, and pale as lard.

“You’ve returned, Frau Obersturmführer,” Sigrid observes, hesitantly.

“Yes.” The woman nods, trying not to mind the jostling from Granzinger’s spawn.

“ Friedrich! Mind your manners, you little monster,” Granzinger barks, and slaps the boy’s head. “My apologies, Frau Obersturmführer. We’re trying to catch a train.”

“You’re leaving Berlin?”

“For Eberswalde, yes,” Granzinger answers. “Where there are no bombers and no bombs. My sister runs a hotel with her husband. She’s always looking for reliable help with the cleaning and cooking. Helga! Leave your brother alone , do you hear? I’m so sorry, Frau Obersturmführer, but we must be going. I’d say welcome home, only you can keep this town, as far as I’m concerned. I grew up here, but I’m done with the place now.” With that, she bustles out the door, shouting at the taxi driver to mind the steamer.

“Up the stairs to the fourth floor,” the young Frau instructs the Jungvolk boy, who only briefly hesitates at the daunting task of hauling the Frau Obersturmführer’s heavy cases up the stairs.

Sigrid falls in step beside the young woman, taking her traveling bag and offering her arm as a crutch.

“I must be heavy as a cow by now,” the Frau Obersturmführer announces with a painful smile.

“What happened?” Sigrid hears herself asks.

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound so inquisitive. But I thought you were going to be staying in Breslau. For the birth.”

“I was. But things,” the Frau Obersturmführer tells her, “things didn’t quite work out. My mother, you see, she is not the easiest person to live with. We quarreled. It was silly, really. But there it is. And here I am.”

“Yes,” Sigrid agrees. “Here you are.”

IT TAKES SIGRID LONGER to get to the Kantstrasse than she anticipated. The trains are stalled because of a water main rupture. Or a suicide on the tracks. Or because the Feldgendarmerie are combing the cars for deserters. All of these are theories advanced as absolute fact by Berliners trapped in the underground cans with her. But when the train budges forward, further discussion ceases. The train had stopped, and now it’s moving again. What more does anyone need to say?

When she finds Herr Kozig near the bronze of Wagner across from Fräulein von Hohenhoff’s studio, a frown stamped on his face below the postage-stamp mustache, he has lost the sullen snugness that he cultivated as a U-boat resident of Auntie’s Pension Unsagbar, and is overtly anxious over Sigrid’s tardiness. He is out of his postal uniform, with a rucksack over his shoulder and a bandage wrapped around his head that covers one eye. His clothes are still shabby, but whose aren’t? And now at least his shoes are in decent order. She greets him formally, in a loud enough voice for others waiting at the stop to hear. “So sorry to keep you waiting,” she says, and smiles. “Shall we walk?” Only a few eyes edge briefly in their directions.

“I was worried. I thought you’d been picked up,” he whispers urgently to her as they walk briskly past the sculpture-laden façade of the Theater des Westens.

“No, just delayed. Couldn’t be helped. You have the photographs?”

“Yes,” he says, and covertly hands over an envelope. “You haven’t mentioned my disguise,” he points out, referring to the bandage. “It was the Fräulein’s idea. She thought it would make me look like a bombing casualty.”

Sigrid quickly inserts the envelope into her bag. “Very genuine.” Across the street she spies Ericha’s stocky taxi driver with the scar, leaning against the door of a green-back cab. He gives her a quick look, lifting his eyes from a folded newspaper.