Audrey Magee - The Undertaking

‘You are surely the only young man left in Berlin,’ she said.

‘And you get to have dinner with me, Mrs Faber.’

‘I must be very honoured.’

The food arrived. And two bottles of wine.

‘Why is that you are not on a front, Mr Meyer? I thought all young men were obliged.’

‘The Führer finds me useful.’

‘Why? What do you do?’

‘I make him happy.’

‘That, I gather, is quite a skill.’

‘One I am good at.’

‘You are fortunate then. More fortunate than my husband or brother.’

‘You make your own luck in this life, Mrs Faber.’

‘I suppose you do, Mr Meyer.’

She went every Thursday at six to a room over the restaurant, the sheets as starched and pressed as the napkins downstairs. He was always there, lying on the bed, smoking, waiting, his cheeks blanched from a life spent indoors. And he was chubby. Almost fat.

‘I have a present for you,’ he said.

He gave her a box with Paris written on it. She opened it and took out a silk robe, blue, red and yellow tropical birds woven into its fabric.

‘It’s beautiful. Stunning. Thank you.’

‘I have chocolate too,’ he said.

‘May I have some?’

‘In a minute.’

He stubbed out his cigarette and clicked his tongue at her.

She took off her coat, her shoes and her dress, standing away from him at the end of the bed. Then her stockings, her underwear. She was naked in front of him, her arms hanging by her sides.

‘And your hair.’

She pulled at the pins and turned towards him so that he could see it fall the length of her back. She wrapped her arms across her chest. She was shivering.

‘It’s cold in here.’

He undressed, stretched her along the bed, fucked her, and then gave her the chocolate. She ate it immediately.

‘Aren’t you going to keep some for your son?’

‘He’s fine. And my mother would eat it anyway.’

In the dining room it was busier than usual, the men pristine in uniform and medals, the women upright, furs across their shoulders to ward off the October chill. She moved with him from table to table, her arm in his, exchanging pleasantries and warm intentions, smiling still when she reached her own seat at the curtained window, a draught swirling at her feet. He sat down, looked around the room, then at her.

‘You need one of those furs. Do you have one?’

‘A stole, no.’

‘I’ll have to buy one for you.’

‘That’s most kind, Joachim.’

The waiter brought them martinis, both without olives, and listed the evening’s menu – rabbit or Norwegian salmon. She laughed.

‘Fish! That’s why it’s so busy. You never said anything.’

‘I thought it should be a surprise. Would you like wine too?’

She nodded, he ordered and they fell silent until the fish came, pan fried, its exterior crisped, its interior moist and firm, a perfect salmon pink.

‘It makes me want to live by the sea,’ said Katharina.

‘Have you been?’

‘Twice to the North Sea coast.’

‘The Mediterranean?’

‘Never.’

‘I’ll take you when this is over.’

He refilled her wine glass and she ate more fish. She considered saving some for Johannes, for her mother, but ate it all.

The chocolate cherry cake for dessert arrived as the sirens started. Katharina stood up. He told her to sit down again.

‘They’re not capable. Never will be.’

She looked around the room, at the waiters and generals continuing as they were, and sat back down. He ordered more wine.

‘How can you be so confident?’

‘We’re German. They’re not.’

‘Is that all? Is that all we need to win?’

‘It’s a cloudy night, Katharina. And there are gunners on the roof.’

She let the waiter refill her glass.

The sirens blared.

‘It’s an air raid, Mother.’

‘I’m aware of that, Katharina.’

‘Come on then, up. Get out of bed.’

‘I’m sick of air-raid shelters. Of threats that come to nothing.’

‘Come on, Mother.’

‘I’m not going.’

‘Fine.’

She pulled on her coat, lifted Johannes from his cot and wrapped him in blankets, all the while kissing his still baby soft skin. He cried, but calmed when she held him under her coat, to her heart, his eyes suspended between sleep and wakefulness. Her father ushered them through the door and closed it. They were halfway down the stairs when it opened again. It was her mother.

‘All right, I’ll come with you.’

‘Fine,’ said Katharina.

‘It’s just so tedious. And pointless.’

‘They’re sometimes lucky, Mother.’

She moved swiftly, rushing ahead of her parents and then stopping to wait for them, to hurry them along.

‘I need to find a cot,’ she said.

‘Go on,’ said her father. ‘We’ll catch up.’

‘He’ll be intolerable if I don’t.’

‘Go on, Katharina.’

The queue moved as calmly as it usually did; they all knew what to expect, the children’s former excitement drained by habit. She climbed the stairs until she found a cot, made of rope, with a pillow and two neatly folded blankets. She set the boy down, stroked his hair and stood over him, shielding him from the shadows and movement, stepping away when she was certain he had fallen back to sleep. She went towards the staircase to look for her parents but was forced back by the crowd, by a city on the move. She sat down instead, close to Johannes, irritated that her father had her bag with her book and sewing, the suitcase with the blankets and cushions. It would be a cold, dull few hours.

She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but listened instead to the noises outside. She was never sure which she heard first, the planes or the flak guns, or whether it was just a simultaneous explosion of noise that lasted until the bombs ran out. She listened to the rattle of the guns, pitying the men on the roofs, but envying them too, heroes showered the morning after with gratitude, flowers and sometimes chocolate. Their wives too. Thanked and lauded. Women married to success. Not to the Stalingrad men who brought silent awkwardness and a swift change of subject to something less embarrassing. She had learned no longer to talk of Peter, to act as though he was dead, although she had yet to receive the widow’s pension. She had no papers to prove he was dead. Or alive.

Fragments of concrete fell into her hair. She brushed them off. The bombing was close. Closer than usual. The children whimpered and huddled into their mothers’ whispers. Johannes slept on. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall. It could be tolerated. Like Meyer’s fleshy hands. Everything had only to be tolerated.

She opened her eyes again and raised them to the sky she could not see. The sound had changed. The drone was gone; its predictable hum displaced by the acceleration of engines. They were coming down from the sky, diving, lunging at the city, so close that she imagined she could see the pilots, their long, skinny faces, their eyes hidden behind round, wire glasses. She screamed and threw herself to the floor, terrified men and women falling on top of her, pinning Katharina to the dust as the planes came down, a furious, indignant swarm, bomb after bomb falling, the thud of each explosion penetrating the walls and ceiling, sucking the air from her lungs, the emptiness filling with dry, suffocating panic until the air returned in a rush; a see-saw of breath and asphyxiation, of deafening screams and deafened silence; the English pilots growing balder and fatter with each bomb they dropped, their heads back, laughing as they drew on thick, dark cigars. She was sobbing. She could hear her son crying in his cot, but she could not reach him, could not get out from under the mound of bodies on top of her. She clawed at the floor, at the fluorescence painted onto the cement, ordering her mind to survive what her brother’s had not.