Pierre Frei - Berlin - A Novel

'That's enough, Mother. Don't spoil the day for us.'

A couple of pennants of the local football club and a team photo hung on the walls. 'Cheers, boys.' Herr Reimann raised his glass to the picture. 'There's none of them left alive, except the outside left.' John Ashburner looked thoughtfully at the eleven young men in their football strip. Although he didn't like to admit it, the idea of a war in which he had not fought and which was so much more than he could imagine made him feel confused and upset.

'Come and eat!' Jutta took his arm and led him into the room next to the bar. He held her out mother's chair for her, earning a shy smile.

Reimann poured the Mosel. A Wehlener Sonnenuhr. Our German wines have rather flowery names. This one reminds me of the professor who lived in one of the villas at Wendenschloss. Professor Georg Raab, an art historian. He often looked in for a glass or two of Mosel. His wife wasn't supposed to know, he was a diabetic.'

'Jutta, do you remember how he used to draw you?'

'Yes, he did fourteen drawings of me. They were all nudes.' She cast her mother a challenging glance.

Else Reimann, embarrassed, changed the subject. 'They took the poor man away, like most of his kind. They spared his wife. She was only half Jewish. All the same, she insisted on wearing the Jewish star. They let her keep a little room in her villa, and you saw her going about the place looking terrible, half-starved. Half rations were the most those people got. In the end she hanged herself.'

'You could have slipped her something on the sly,' Jutta said soberly.

'What, and put us all in danger? What are you saying, child?'

'The truth.'

Her mother, looking injured, brought in the fish.

'What do you think about the Jews, John?' Ludwig Reimann asked.

At a loss, Ashburner shrugged his shoulders. 'I don't really know. There aren't any back home in Venice.'

'I can't say I particularly like them. Not that I ever wished them any harm. That was Hitler's big mistake, killing them instead of sending them to Madagascar. He roused all the Jewish financiers of America against him, and they put pressure on your President Roosevelt until the United States joined in the war. Without America on the other side we'd have won. I'm an old soldier of the Great War, I know what I'm talking about.' Reimann put his forefinger on the ribbon of his order. 'Cheers, my dear fellow.' He was getting animated. He emptied his glass and refilled it at once.

'Your zander is getting cold, Father,' Jutta said, to get him off the subject.

'Have they caught that dreadful murderer yet?' Her mother turned the conversation in what was hardly a more cheerful direction.

'We're getting close, ma'am. I have a very capable German colleague.' John Ashburner sipped the Mosel. 'Wonderful wine. Many thanks. And thank you for the invitation too. It's very important that you get to know me. After all, I want to take your daughter across the Atlantic.'

Else Reimann gave a loud sob. 'There, there, Mother,' her husband soothed her. 'Better times will soon come, and then we'll visit the two of them. I've always wanted to go to America.'

'Very nice people, your parents,' said John as they left.

He's only being polite, thought Jutta. Mother's tearful, as usual, and Father hasn't really understood the war. But he knows enough to run this place in Kopenick.

John got his long legs into the jeep. 'How long are you going to stay here?'

'Until Wednesday. I want to help Mother a bit in the garden. She has trouble with her back.' She bent down to kiss him. 'You know something? Mrs John Ashburner doesn't sound so bad.'

ROdel tore the sleeve away from the armhole. The ugly ripping sound went right through Ben. He looked at himself in the mirror, clad in a construction vaguely reminiscent of a jacket, with horsehair sticking out all over it. Tacking thread distorted the clear lines of the classic Prince of Wales check.

From the veranda workshop, he could see through the living room and into the bedroom. Heidi, naked to the waist, was sitting at her dressing table, brushing her hair. Her breasts rose and fell with every stroke of the brush. She must have failed to notice that the door was ajar.

The tailor ripped out the right sleeve too. Ben seemed to feel actual physical pain. 'Do you have to?' he protested faintly. The pale, pink-tipped girlish breasts were swaying in rhythm.

ROdel continued his work of destruction, unmoved. Another two fittings and you'll have a suit like something out of Baron Eelking's gentlemen's magazine, Herr Dietrich.' He had taken to calling Ben Herr Dietrich now that he was one of his esteemed customers.

Heidi rose to her feet. She had wrapped a towel around her hips, and it fell to the floor as she stood up. She went over to the chest of drawers. Her buttocks rubbed against each other.

'We'll leave the button at waist height. You don't want to take those dreadful Americans as your model.' Heidi opened a drawer and took out a white sports shirt. She reached her arms up in the air and pulled it over her head.

'What do you have against the Yanks, Herr Rodel?'

'What do I have against the Yanks?' Heidi's breasts disappeared under the sleeveless shirt that barely reached her navel. 'I have something against half savages who want to destroy our culture, that's what. Only you can't say that out loud these days or someone gets straight up and calls you a Nazi.'

Ben didn't know why, but she looked more naked in the short sports shirt than without it. He tried to concentrate on the suit. 'When will it be ready?'

'We'll have another fitting next week. Let's say in two weeks' time.'

Spellbound, Ben stared at Heidi's dark bush, with a glow of pink between the curly hairs. A singing sensation rose in his groin.

'Do you have shoes, gentlemen's socks, a good shirt and a tie?' asked the tailor. 'Without the proper accessories you can forget about the suit.'

Heidi turned her back to the door and bent to tie her gym shoes. Ben's eyes remained glued to the mysterious shadow between her thighs until she put on her black gym shorts.

'I'm getting my suede shoes from the Dutchman, and I have the rest already.'

Heidi came into the workshop, a ball under her arm. She patted it to the floor with the flat of her hand and neatly caught it on the bounce. 'I'm going to play handball. Coming?'

'No time.'

She gave Ben a sly look. 'What a pity. I like to have spectators.' And he realized that she had known that he was watching her.

Herr Muhlberger, in a state of great agitation, propped his bicycle against the fence and stormed into the Zehlendorf CID office. 'He's back!' Sergeant Franke was busy bashing his poor typewriter. Police headquarters had demanded for a full account of all office materials used over the last few months. 'Who's back?' he asked without much interest, and typed:

APRIL: 500 sheets typing paper scattered around the area by pressure blast of a bomb. 64 sheets retrieved, of which 14 intact, 26 slightly soiled, 11 badly damaged, 13 charred. The search for the missing 436 sheets continues.

Mar: box of 100 sheets of carbon paper stolen by looting mujiks. Considering their state of civilization, probably to wipe their arses.

JUNE: 1000 paperclips exchanged for 2 typewriter ribbons.

JULY: 1 typewriter ribbon exchanged for 3 pencils.

'The murderer. The one with a dimple in his chin.' Miihlberger cried. Franke went on typing:

AUGUST: 3 pencils given to the neighbours' children for school. 'Where?' Franke asked when he had finished his task:

SEPTEMBER: 2 sheets typing paper and I envelope wasted on this Goddam list.

'He's prowling round the building. It's clear as day, sergeant. The murderer is drawn back to the scene of the crime.'