Pierre Frei - Berlin - A Novel

Girders were glowing up on the fourth floor. Burning phosphorus flowed stickily down the lift shaft and ran over the linoleum on the floor of the cabin. making the man inside tread from foot to foot like a dancing bear on a hot iron surface. 'Help me out of here,' he croaked.

A hit nearby flung her to the floor. She picked herself up. The pressure had burst the door of the porter's lodge open. There were holes which had once been windows in the living-room wall. It was a way out! Behind her, the man imprisoned in the lift desperately rattled the brass bars. She didn't need to kill him, she could just have let it happen. An offer from the devil himself.

It seemed like a betrayal of Jochen and Didi, but she couldn't do it. She couldn't let him burn to death. She braced herself against the beam. Her shoulder hurt, but she kept pushing. Slowly she got the beam upright. One last effort, and the force of gravity sent it falling the other way. She opened the folding door, and the man staggered out past her.

Outside, burning rubble was raining from the rooftops. People were protecting themselves with wet blankets, getting the water from burst hydrants. Fragmentation bombs cut down dozens of fugitives. Then the bombers moved away. Jutta stood in the middle of the street. Her red fox fur looked like the skin of a mangy dog. Animals from the nearby Zoological Gardens were wandering around, disorientated. A female gorilla was carrying her infant in the charred stumps of her arms. The phosphorus had burnt her hands off. Drechsel lay dead on a black heap of snow on the pavement. His brown uniform had been shredded by bomb splinters, and one of the zoo's jackals was licking his empty, infantile face.

'They won't drop bombs at Christmas.' Frowein the greengrocer had heard it from a customer who had heard it from her dressmaker, whose brother knew someone in counter-intelligence. And they have people close to the enemy, believe you me.'

'Not spending Christmas in the cellar would be nice,' Jutta sighed. She put the pound of apples and the few nuts to which she was entitled in her shopping bag along with a red cabbage. Next door in Otto's: Coffee Roasters, which had had nothing to roast for ages, there was a special ration of real coffee and even a few ginger biscuits. She hung her net bag in the back room of the bookshop, where her boss was unwrapping something. A bony object came into view. 'What's that supposed to be?' asked Jutta, surprised.

Diana Gerold was slightly nettled. A goose, of course.' Her friend in the Swiss Embassy had proved useful yet again. 'Rather a thin one, I'll admit, but it will do for the three of us. Can we have Christmas dinner at your place, Jutta? Our stove isn't working. A bomb hit the gas mains.' She opened the Morgenpost. 'Electricity supply guaranteed for Christmas,' it said on page two. 'We can roast the bird in your electric oven. Anja still has a bottle of cherry brandy left from last Christmas. But we'd have to stay the night, there'll be no transport running late.'

'I can contribute a bottle of burgundy from Father's last stocks.'

The shop door opened. Herr Lesch was returning two library books. 'Time this mess was sorted out,' he grumbled. 'Not a new Hercule Poirot to be had anywhere. Do you think Agatha Christie is still writing?'

'We'll find out after the Final Victory.'

'Do you believe in that?'

'What, in Agatha Christie?'

Herr Lesch muttered something and left the shop. Outside, he peered in through the display window, which had been cracked in many places and repaired with sticky tape, and watched Jutta open the last little window on the Advent calendar. It was 24 December 1944.

Anja Schmitt came at midday, wearing a black cloth coat with a grey astrakhan collar in honour of the occasion, along with fur cap and boots. She looked like a pretty Cossack boy. 'From my Petersburg nights,' she laughed. She had once had an affair with a White Russian princess. Diana Gerold preferred her loden coat and hunter's hat, which made her resemble the mistress of a country estate. Jutta had restored her red fox coat to its former glory with shampoo and a hairdryer. You had to ignore the bare, burnt patches. Pretending was part of survival.

'So let's shut up shop.' Frau Gerold bolted the shop door on the inside and put the security bar in front of it. They left the bookshop through the back door. Here too she closed all three locks, which she never usually did. Jutta watched in surprise. 'Shall we go the long way round through the Fischtal park? We never get any fresh air these days.'

Fresh snow had fallen, giving the area something of a Christmassy look. The fir trees in the park were dusted white. Ice crystals glittered in the late afternoon sun. Children slid down the slope on their toboggans, squealing. A lad of fifteen in the uniform of a 'Luftwaffe auxiliary' passed them on one ski. He had turned up his empty trouser leg.

The sun sank red in the haze. It promised to be a bright, cold night. The three women walked faster. Freezing, Jutta pulled the fur close around her. 'We'll soon warm up at home. I have a little coke left in the cellar.'

An organ rang out from the church by the U-Bahn station. Professor Heit- mann was playing Bach. The interior of the brick building was crammed. Held, the sexton, had opened the main door wide so that those left outside could share the service and the organ music. Pastor Gess was preaching the Christmas sermon. The birth of Our Lord was an innocuous subject: even the Gestapo spy in the third pew couldn't find anything objectionable in it.

Now it was winter Jutta didn't go to the trouble of taking the blackout paper off the windows when she left the apartment in the morning, so she could switch the light on as soon as she got in without having the air-raid warden yell, 'Lights out!' She opened the flap of the boiler in the kitchen and poured in plenty of coke. 'We won't be mean with it today.'

A cherry brandy to warm us up? Find me some glasses, Jutta.' Anja poured the liqueur.

Jutta raised her glass to the others, and turned on the oven. Then they prepared the goose, peeled apples and potatoes, and cut up the red cabbage, which was simmered with the remnants of some bacon rind.

The candles in the living room were generally used as emergency lighting when the power was off. Jutta held a fir twig in their flames. The sharp scent of its ethereal oil had something festive about it, and soon mingled with the smell of the roast. Anja poured more cherry brandy, and Jutta retreated into Jochen's armchair with her glass. She wanted to be by herself for a moment. Then the telephone rang. It was her father with good wishes for Christmas, asking if she wouldn't come round to them. 'It's not seven yet, and you could be in Kopenick at nine if there isn't an air raid.'

'I have visitors here, and a goose in the oven. We're going to drink your burgundy. Happy Christmas, and to Mother too.' She hung up before her mother could take the receiver. She couldn't bear her mournful remarks just now.

Anja was looking at the photograph of the 1938 class expedition beside the balcony door. 'He was good-looking, your husband. Do you miss him very much?'

'It's all so long ago.' She didn't want to talk about it.

'Shall we sacrifice a little of the wine for the gravy?' Diana changed the subject, guessing how she must feel.

'I still have a stock cube. We can dissolve it in boiling water and use that.'

The goose was tough and had no flavour. The red cabbage tasted considerably better. Jutta had put a few cloves in it. 'Happy Christmas,' she toasted the other two.

'Same to you,' said Anja cheerfully.

They enjoyed the full red burgundy and chewed the goose with resignation. 'Could have been worse,' Diana comforted her fellow diners. They had ginger biscuits and coffee for dessert. Jutta switched on the People's Radio, and then switched it off again. The Vienna Boys' Choir singing 'Silent Night' was just too much. Instead, she wound up the portable gramophone and brought some long-forgotten records out of the bookcase. She put on a Charleston and danced skilfully through the room with it. Anja followed her example. Diana watched, smiling. When the gramophone played a tango she took Jutta in her arms and led her through the steps.