David Gillham - City of Women

Kretchmar gazes back. Behind her, the message canisters whoosh through the pneumatic tubes.

ON THE TRAIN, Sigrid burrows into the silence beneath the rattle of the cars. She doesn’t think of the patent office. She doesn’t think of the singular blankness of Renate’s glance. She doesn’t even think of Herr Kozig’s bloodless death mask. She thinks that, if she closes her eyes, she can still imagine Egon’s hands touching her body. The pleasing roughness of his fingers on the skin of her shoulder. His palm lightly dancing across her nipple.

Suddenly there is an intrusion. A body squeezing into the space beside her, too close. For an instant she thinks Egon has returned, but the body is the wrong size. Too stringy. No meat on it. She gazes into the angry, hawkish face of the U-boat youth from Auntie’s pension.

“Where is he?” he demands in a scrubby whisper.

She gazes back without words.

“I have a knife,” he hisses, “so you’d better tell me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. The catcher named Grizmek. I’ve seen you with him. Where is he?”

A blank glare. She thinks for an instant of Herr Kozig’s little pistol she has wrapped in a handkerchief at the bottom of her bag. “I have no idea,” she says.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“Tell me. Tell me or maybe I’ll slit your throat right here.”

“No,” Sigrid says, not removing her eyes from the boy’s. “No, I don’t think you will.”

The boy’s face clenches like an angry fist, but his eyes are suddenly enraged with grief. “He murdered my sisters. They’re dead, because he turned them in to the Gestapo. He might as well have killed them with his own hands.”

“Frau Schröder?” a voice inquires with a sharp concern.

Sigrid’s eyes twitch toward a stubby soldier who is leaning forward from the opposite side of the carriage. It’s one of Kaspar’s drinking comrades from the kitchen table, though it takes her a moment to summon the name. “Unteroffizier Kamphauser,” she says.

“I thought it was you,” he says. “Are you all right?” he inquires more closely, his voice gaining weight as his eyes roll toward the youth, training the gun sight gaze on him. “Is this Schurke giving you trouble?”

But before she can answer, the train bursts into the station, and the boy is up, shoving into the crowd exiting to the platform. The soldier stands abruptly, as if to give chase, but Sigrid waves her hand. “No. No, please. It’s fine. Just an overly excited boy.” The doors are rolled closed, and the train ambles forward. She gains a glimpse of the boy’s face on the platform for a moment, staring with anguished rage.

“Thank you, Herr Kamphauser,” she says, her hand pressed to her breast, slowly breathing in, slowly breathing out. Recovering.

The soldier sits down, then nods his head. “No need for thanks. Though, actually, I’m Messner. Kamphauser is the tall one.”

A blink of confusion, then, “Oh. I’m so sorry.”

“No need.”

“My head, you understand, is so full of cobwebs these days.”

“It’s nothing. I answer to anything,” he grins. A joke. In the gloom of the U-Bahn, his complexion has lost its fermented ruddiness and gone muddy. “Frau Schröder, please excuse me. I don’t mean to talk too much. Or to bother you. It’s just that there’s something I feel I should say. It’s something I’ve been thinking about, and since we’ve met like this…”

She looks at him carefully. “Yes?”

“You know,” he begins with a slightly uncertain note in his voice, “I just want to say that your husband… ”

“My husband,” she repeats blankly.

“Your husband,” he says, “is really the sort that keeps a mutt like me going.”

Another blink. “He is?” she replies, surprised by a sudden urge to listen.

“Oh, yes. I mean, I know what I am, Frau Schröder.” He chuckles bleakly. “I’m dirt. I’m nobody. But a man like your husband, who worked as a bank officer. Who has a nice flat and a good wife. For him to invite me to his home, it means something,” he says. “It truly does. I don’t mind admitting that I’m going to miss him greatly.”

Something in her stops dead. “Say that again.”

“I said, I’m going to miss him,” Messner repeats. “When he returns to active duty.”

She hears this, then watches the impact of her expression on his.

“You knew this, didn’t you?” He is sounding suddenly anxious. “I mean, you must have known this already.”

“Are you saying,” Sigrid breathes in. “Are you saying that he’s been recalled to the front?”

“No. No, not recalled,” Messner frowns. There’s a helpless insistence to his voice. “But surely you know this, Frau Schröder.”

“Know what , Herr Messner?”

“He volunteered.” A crooked pain shapes the man’s face. “When he heard that his regiment was being redeployed to the Ukraine, he volunteered to rejoin them.”

“But. But he can’t . You must be wrong about this. He’s been wounded . He’s still going to the hospital for therapy, for God’s sake.”

“One of the doctors at the hospital certified him as fit.”

“ Fit? And is this doctor insane ?”

“I’m… I’m certain they won’t put him on the line,” he tries to reassure her. “There are plenty of jobs in the rear. He could be clerking for a transport company, just as he’s doing now,” he says with hope.

“No.” She shakes her head at the floor of the carriage. “No, this is too much.”

“I apologize , Frau Schröder. I opened my trap when I shouldn’t have, obviously, and I’m sorry. Please don’t tell him it was me who spilled the beans, will you?” he pleads. “I wouldn’t want him to think ill of me.”

Sigrid looks back at Messner, but really she has stopped seeing the man. Stopped hearing what he is saying.

KASPAR OPENS THE DOOR, and stops long enough to survey her at the kitchen table. Then shuts the door and hangs up his greatcoat. “What are you doing?” he inquires.

“Having a drink. Would you like one? I have a glass ready for you.”

For a moment he does not respond. Then he sits down and faces the glass as Sigrid dumps out three fingers of schnapps. “Prosit,” she offers, and empties her glass in a swallow.

“I’ve never seen a woman do that before,” he remarks, then downs his own.

“Never?” She takes the bottle and pours two more measures. “Not even your whores from the Warthegau?” When he doesn’t answer, she says, “You know, I happened to see one of your comrades from the hospital on the U-Bahn.”

“And he was sober?”

“He told me that you are the sort that keeps him going.”

“Me? I am the sort?”

“You, yes. Because you worked as a bank officer. Because you have a nice flat and a good wife.”

He stares at her and she stares back.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Kaspar? I thought you said you wanted only the truth between us.”

His mouth turns downward at the edges. “I didn’t think it would matter to you,” he answers.

“My husband has volunteered to return to the front, and he didn’t think it would matter to me?”

“Why would it? You have your man tucked away to keep you satisfied. Why would you care what I do?”

“So that’s it ? It’s male jealousy? The mortar wounded your body, but I’ve wounded your pride, so you’re marching back to Russia to make yourself a target for all those machine gunners who missed you the first time?”