Pierre Frei - Berlin - A Novel

As always, hasty footsteps could be heard along the two shopping streets shortly before closing time. A babble of voices rose from the shops. Office workers were buying their supper on the way home from the U-Bahn. Jutta bought half a pound of freshly churned butter in the dairy, and quarter of a pound of sliced meat in Lehmann's butcher's shop.

'Hello, bookworm,' Jochen greeted her by the public clock.

'Good evening, teacher, sir.'

'Hop in.' He took a half eaten apple off the passenger seat. 'Want a bite?'

'Thanks, no. I had breakfast ages ago. Was the weekend with her fun?'

'Oh, don't be silly. We worked damn hard. Isabel's a good companion, that's all.' He pulled her close. 'You're the only one I love.'

'When?' She let the tip of her tongue play in his ear.

'Later, you immoral girl. Off to school first.'

The Hanomag set off, making a comic rattling sound. They stopped in the Dahlem district, outside a large building with a double roof. A mighty clock tower rose above the broad entrance. The wings of the building adjoined the central section to right and left.

'The Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Gymnasium, my future place of work as teacher of German, English and history. Qualified Schoolmaster Weber. Sounds good, eh?'

'Provided you pass the exam,' she said cautiously.

'The last test was this morning. They handed out the certificates this afternoon. I passed the whole thing. What do you say now, bookworm?'

'Three cheers!' she cried so loud that a pedestrian turned to stare. She hugged him hard. 'Why didn't you say so at once? I thought you wouldn't know until next week.'

'So you'd quake with anxiety on my behalf? Well, it's over and done with now.'

'You're a genius,' she said happily.

'Lucky, more like. I shone with those Merovingians in my history viva, thanks to Isabel's knee.'

'You were cheating, then!'

'No worse than Armin Drechsel. Professor Gabler himself hinted that he'd be asking him about Charlemagne.'

'Gabler's favourite?'

'Gabler's Party Comrade.'

'Does he still go about the place in silly short trousers with his knees braced rigid?' Jutta had met Drechsel a couple of times, and hadn't really taken to him.

'Drechsel is high up as a Hitler Youth leader. He's going to teach maths, so we'll be seeing each other daily in the staff room. I have to get on with him as well as my other colleagues. Isabel's coming round later with sparkling wine. We're going to celebrate our success.'

'Not a day without Isabel.'

'Don't be a spoilsport. She's a nice girl. Come on, let's look at my new workplace. The caretaker knows we're coming.' They ran hand in hand up the steps to the porch. Inside was a vestibule with pseudo-Romanesque columns, and between them a roll of honour of former pupils who had fallen in the Great War.

Jutta read aloud. 'Imperial Count Kuno von Schweinitz — Baron Artwig Schreck zu Cadelbach — Prince Heinrich XXIII von Selb. Not a single ordinary Schulze, Meier or Muller. It's pure Almanach de Gotha.'

All of Prussia sends its sons to board here,' Jochen said. A Prussian Eton. The headmaster was tutor to the imperial princes.'

'What a snob you are!'

'So why do you think I want to marry Princess Jutta von Kopenick?'

'Do you really want to?'

'You bet I do, princess. Come along, I'll show you a classroom and the big hall. The caretaker locks up at eight on the dot.'

After the guided tour they chugged away again. Twenty minutes later they parked the little car at the end of Trabener Strasse. There was no wind, and it was sultry. A storm was in the air. Jochen put up the convertible's roof to be on the safe side.

The man on duty at the turnstile to the Grunewald railway yard greeted them. They climbed over rusty rails and clinker with thistles growing in it. Their destination was an old saloon car, out of service and in the sidings, which the Mitropa rail company rented out cheap. Jochen had made himself comfortable here with his books, a spirit stove for cooking and a paraffin stove for heating. Jutta enjoyed this idyll two or three times a week.

She wound up the portable gramophone and put a record on. '1 don't have a car or a manor house, I'm not rich. ' The hit of the season echoed from the box, which was covered with black artificial leather.

'Where are we off to today, then?' Jochen inquired.

'The Riviera. We'll ride from Menton to San Remo and on to Genoa.' She went into the sleeping compartment. He followed her soon afterwards. She leaned out of the window. 'How blue the sea is! Oh, look at that big white ship!' she cried, inventing scenery for them to pass. She was still wearing her blouse, but from the waist down she was naked. She cried out with delight as he entered her. They called this 'going on our travels', and it was their favourite game.

Isabel came picking her way across the tracks with two bottles of sparkling wine in a net bag. She looked up with interest at Jutta, whose flushed face spoke volumes.

The gramophone was idling to a halt as they went to the front of the saloon car. Jochen switched it off. Isabel was lounging on an upholstered seat. 'Hello, you two,' she murmured lazily.

Jutta put water on. She had wrapped herself in her dressing gown. When the water came to the boil she turned the flame down and put half a pea sausage in the pan. 'Something hot every day, that's what my mother insists on. And there's sliced meat too.'

Jochen sawed slices of bread off a loaf and unwrapped the yellow butter from its greaseproof paper. The smell of pea soup rose from the pan. 'Pea sausage,' he told them. 'Steamed pea-meal mixed with fat, salt and spices and pressed into a sausage shape. The recipe was developed for the Prussian Army during the Franco-Prussian war to save on weight for transporting supplies, and to enhance its keeping quality.'

'The things you know,' said Isabel admiringly.

He spread pate on some slices of bread and put cooked ham on the rest. He opened a bottle of sparkling wine and poured three glasses.

Jutta handed Isabel a cup of soup. 'Did you pass too?'

Not as brilliantly as your fiance.'

Jochen indicated the letter beside his plate. 'Mail from Africa. My parents send their love. They'd come and meet you if it wasn't so far from Windhoek.' Jochen's grandparents had emigrated from Mecklenburg to German South West Africa at the end of the last century, to raise cattle. His parents had remained there, breeding cattle even after the end of German colonial rule. They sent their younger son to school back in the home country, so Jochen had grown up with relations in Naumburg.

'Why not go there on honeymoon?' Isabel suggested.

And of course you'll come too,' Jutta said mockingly.

'If you like.' There was no throwing Isabel off balance. She took a good bite of her bread.

After supper, they listened to the Berlin Philharmonic under Furt- wangler. The programme included Mendelssohn's Fifth Symphony. 'Better push the window up,' Isabel warned them. 'The composer's just been banned.'

'Do you seriously think anyone over in the signal box can tell Felix Mendelssohn from Paul Lincke? And what if it turns out that Lincke has a Jewish great-grandmother? Will his "Little Glow-worms" be banned too? Do we really have to go along with this idiocy?' Jutta was furious.

Jochen kept calm. 'Don't get so worked up, bookworm. We're not the ones who make the rules.'

'We keep them, though, like a flock of sheep.' Jutta tucked her knees under her chin and immersed herself in French Cuisine; she had asked her boss to let her borrow the book. 'Did you know that they put fox meat in a real daube provencale? They wrap a piece in muslin and add it for the flavour.'

'No. I didn't know.' He yawned. 'We'll drink the second bottle another time.'

'Fine. Goodnight, lovebirds.' Isabel disappeared into the dark.