David Gillham - City of Women

“She’s really a very remarkable woman, Fräulein von Hohenhoff,” Kozig tells her enthusiastically. “Don’t you agree? And not unattractive for her age.”

But Sigrid does not answer. She has spotted Franz waiting for them, shed for once of his signature coat and trilby, and dressed in a heavy oilcloth jacket and worker’s cap. Parked at the curb is a rickety Ford lorry with a gas generator attached. But when she turns her eyes to Herr Kozig, something is wrong. He has stopped in his tracks, his face suddenly drained.

“What is it?”

“That man up ahead by the lorry. He’s Gestapo.”

“What?”

“He’s Gestapo , I said.”

“Don’t be absurd. That’s impossible.”

“I know what I know . And what I know is that that man works for the Gestapo . We’ve got to get out of here.” And before Sigrid can attempt another word, he breaks away in a panic. Sigrid swivels back to look at Franz. He has taken a step forward with uncertainty, but then freezes up. She follows his eyes, and feels her color drain as well.

Two men in leather trench coats are jumping out of a black Benz sedan. She hears a popping noise, and one of the headlamps on Franz’s lorry bursts. Everything is racing around her, but at the same time moving very slowly. She can see the gun now in Kozig’s hand, the tiny nickel-plated revolver producing its little puff of smoke. “Halt! Halt!” the trench coats are bellowing. The pistols in their hands are much bigger. When they discharge, Kozig shudders and drops to one knee. And that’s when Franz moves. He seizes one of the trench coats from behind with his bearlike arms. All it takes is a twist of the neck and the man dangles in his grip. One of the big guns is now in Franz’s fist. He fires twice. The second trench coat crumples, but not before discharging a final round. The cap flies from Franz’s head with a splatter of red, and the big man drops like a felled tree. Sigrid’s mind is swirling. Noise everywhere. Screaming. Shouting. A whistle blowing. Car horns honking. Someone shouting. She turns to see the scar-faced taxi driver, shoving Kozig into the rear of his cab. “Get in!” he is shouting to her. “Get in!”

KOZIG IS BLEEDING in the rear of the taxi, and gulping breath. “Find the wound and put pressure on it,” the driver orders as he barges the vehicle through the streets. “Put pressure on it or he’ll bleed to death . ”

Sigrid is rummaging through Kozig’s clothing. “Where are you shot?” she keeps repeating. “Herr Kozig, where are you shot ?” But Kozig only groans. There is so much blood, but finally she discovers the bullet hole drilled into the man’s thigh.

“I found it! It’s in the thigh!”

“ Press down on it! Hard! Both hands!” she hears, but when she does, Kozig screams.

“It’s hurting him!”

“Of course it’s hurting him. He’s got a goddamned bullet in his leg. It must have chipped an artery. You’ve got stop the bleeding or he’s dead.”

She forces herself to ignore Kozig’s pain, and does as commanded, but blood is oozing through her fingers. “It’s not helping . He’s still bleeding .”

“You’ll have to make a tourniquet. Use your scarf!” the taxi driver yells over his shoulder to her. “Tie it tightly around his leg above the wound. Tightly ! So it cuts off the flow.”

Kozig gnashes his teeth against the agony as Sigrid follows the taxi driver’s direction, but instead of her scarf, she has removed the silly bandage wrapped around the man’s head. The back of the cab is pungent with the odor of blood. Everything is drenched red. But she manages to knot the bandage, tight, around the man’s thigh. “Done!” she shouts.

“Now pressure again.”

Sigrid clamps her hands back down over the wound, but this time Herr Kozig’s reaction is less sharp. More internalized. “Where are you driving?” she calls to the cabbie.

“There’s a doctor. Not far from here. We’ve used him before.”

“He said,” Sigrid begins. “He said that Franz was working for the Gestapo. That’s why he broke.”

“Well, he was right. Franz was working for the Gestapo.”

“What?”

“His trucking business. He cleaned out the flats of Jews who’d been taken for transport to the Grosse Hamburger Strasse. He was always looking for strong backs, so I’d help him when I wasn’t in the cab.” He hits the horn, cursing at another driver. “I know it may sound ghoulish,” he admits, “but we made money. Money for food, for ration cards, for bribes. Clothes for our U-boats.”

“Well, if that’s so, then tell me why was the Gestapo waiting for us with guns?”

This question the driver cannot answer. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Franz was having troubles. Money troubles. His wife is very sick. In a sanatorium that costs plenty. Maybe,” he starts to say, but doesn’t finish the sentence. “I don’t know.”

Herr Kozig gurgles. Attempting to speak. “Don’t talk,” Sigrid tells him, but he keeps trying to reach into his coat. Finally she bends her ear to his mouth. “In my pocket,” he whispers. “Coat pocket . Please.”

“Herr Kozig, I can’t . I can’t let the pressure off your wound.”

His face is bleaching white. His mouth works. His eyes trail away for a moment and then focus on something only he can see. He starts to whisper. Something foreign to Sigrid’s ear. Something ancient. “Shema… Yisrael…”

“Not much farther!” the taxi man shouts as he wings around a turn and bumps into an alleyway. The bump jolts Sigrid enough that she loses her perch, and by the time she regains herself and presses back down on the wound, something has changed. Herr Kozig’s stare has gone still as stone.

The cab jerks to a halt. “We’re here , ” yells the driver. He leaps from behind the wheel, and hammers on a rear door of one of the buildings. A stout matron answers, and he argues with her. But Sigrid is looking at Herr Kozig’s face. His mouth is hanging open. His teeth are stained brown. An eyelid has drooped so that only the white shows. The other eye no longer absorbs light. She reaches into the inside of his coat with her bloodstained fingers and removes a small folded photograph with scalloped edges. The crease down the center divides him from the two children. Herr Kozig, well fed in a tailored suit and spats, trimly barbered, posing by a garden wall. The children plump and smiling, a bow in the girl’s hair, the little boy in lederhosen. She gazes at the image, then returns it to the dead man’s pocket, just as the cabdriver yanks open the rear door.

“No point,” Sigrid informs him bleakly. “There’s no point.”

THERE IS A SINK outside of the doctor’s surgery, with a deep basin and a goose-necked spout. Sigrid has stripped down to her slip. The rest of her clothing is stained crimson. The water from the spout is hot, the lye soap burning and abrasive. It feels good. As she scrubs away the blood it feels as if she is scrubbing off her old skin. She can hear the taxi driver arguing again, this time with the doctor. But she can’t make out the words until the door pops opens and the matron enters.

“I cannot help you. I am not an undertaker.”

“So what am I to do with him? Dump him in the Landwehr when nobody’s looking?”

“If that’s what you decide. It’s really none of my affair. I treat only the living.”

The door shuts. The nurse is an obese, unsmiling woman, with an expression as stiff as her starched apron. “I am to bring you these,” she announces, and plops a bundle of clothing with a paper sack on a laminated tabletop. “They won’t fit,” she informs Sigrid with stern satisfaction, “but it’s better than walking the streets half naked. The contents of your pockets you will find in the sack. You should change behind the screen.”