“Kurt’s brother?” His head in her lap.
“Ah, now the bell goes off. The little brother. Maybe you didn’t even notice back then. But of course I knew you. All of Kurt’s friends.” He turned his head. “Comrade Seghers. We haven’t met but I recognized you from your photographs.”
“If only I still looked like that,” she said pleasantly. “Well, I’ll leave you to talk old times.” She took Alex’s hand. “So glad you’re with us. I’ll have Martin arrange the tea.”
Markus watched her go. “A good Communist. There should be more like her.”
Alex looked at him, surprised. “Aren’t there?”
“I mean the exiles. So many years in the West, it changes people sometimes. But not her.” He half smiled at Alex. “Or you it seems. You came back.” He paused. “You didn’t bring your wife, I think? She’s staying in America?”
The third person to ask, but this time a hint of interrogation, something for the file. Alex looked up, alert. Not unkempt and eager like Kurt, controlled, a policeman’s calm eyes, watching.
“Yes,” Alex said.
“Let’s hope, not too long. It’s not good for families to be apart.” Innocuous but somehow pointed, fishing for a reaction. The leverage of family left behind, what Campbell had wanted to know too.
“I’m afraid for good. We’re separated.”
“Oh,” Markus said, not sure where to take this. “And still you come. So a matter of conviction. Admirable. But you know it’s a serious issue, this exposure to the West. Not for you,” he said hastily. “Not the writers. But the Russian soldiers, POWs—it confuses them. Comrade Stalin immediately saw the problem. How it’s necessary to re-educate them if they’ve been in the West.”
Alex looked at him, disconcerted. Re-educate. Kurt’s little brother.
“It’s a long time you’re away,” Markus said.
“So I’m hopelessly tainted.”
A delayed reaction, taking this in. “I see, a joke. I’m saying only that you weren’t here. You’re meeting lots of old friends tonight? Ones you can recognize?” he said, smiling.
“You’re the first.”
“And your old house? Lützowplatz, I remember, yes? It’s still standing?”
Alex looked at him, unable to speak. What did he know?
“Often people do that,” Markus said. “Go to see if it’s still there. An understandable curiosity.”
“Yes, you wonder. So I went this morning.” Something easily checked. Play it out.
“An early riser.”
“Not too early,” Alex said vaguely. “I slept in a little. A long drive yesterday. But what a memory you have. Lützowplatz.”
“Well, I was reminded of it. There was an incident there this morning.”
“Oh?”
“You didn’t see anything yourself?”
“No. What kind of incident?” Keeping his voice steady.
Markus stared at him, then waved his hand. “Traffic accident. Carelessness.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“I think so, yes. Imagine surviving the war and then a stupid accident. A man was seen running away. Maybe the cause, it’s hard to say.” Then, at Alex’s expression, “I thought you might have seen—”
“No. Nothing. Not the house either. It was gone. The whole thing.”
Markus held his eyes for a moment, then decided to move on. “It’s difficult, coming back. I was with the first group in ’45. The streets—I didn’t know where I was. I thought, what city is this? But then, little by little—”
Alex took a breath, half listening, his mind darting. Of course Markus could get times from the Adlon doorman. But they wouldn’t be precise enough to put him there, already on his way back when the traffic accident happened. Why call it that? Why bring it up at all? And then back off. He saw him suddenly as a young boy, maybe even the boy he’d actually been, poking a toad with a stick, toying with it. Toying with him now. Don’t react. Nobody knew. Nobody in this noisy room suspected anything.
“The first group?” he said, picking up the thread. “From the army?”
“No, I was in exile, like you. But east.”
“East.”
“Moscow. At the Hotel Lux.” A name he assumed Alex would recognize.
“A hotel? All during—”
Markus smiled a little. “Not the Adlon. They kept all the Germans there, the German Communists. The SED leadership now, all Hotel Lux graduates. They say it was our Heidelberg. Well, if they could see it. Not so nice as the real Heidelberg.”
“But when—? I don’t know where to start. What happened to everybody? Kurt?”
“He was killed in Spain. It was after that we left for Russia. My mother and me.”
“I’m sorry.”
Markus shrugged. “A long time ago. At least a hero’s death. One of the first, in the International Brigade.”
“I didn’t know.”
“She never told you? Irene? You were so close to them, the family. Always at the house.”
Alex shook his head. “We weren’t in touch. After I left.”
“No, she wouldn’t have time to write. That kind of woman.”
“What kind?”
“The kind she is. She would already have another man by then. Kurt just dead and—” His voice unexpectedly bitter, a grudge he’d nursed for years. “Not that the others in that family were any better. Nazis.”
“The von Bernuths? They weren’t Nazis. They hid Kurt. From the SA. I was there.”
“Oh, the famous night under the stairs? That was for Erich.”
“I went for the doctor,” Alex said slowly, making a point. “For your brother. He needed stitches, not Erich.”
“Yes, and then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Erich. He follows Kurt like a puppy. So, meetings. Leaflets. Illegal then. But what is it for him, politics? A fast car. Maybe a woman he shouldn’t be seeing. It’s exciting and then he comes to his senses and leaves her. And where does he go? Into the Wehrmacht.”