“No?”
“No. Just something to make me feel—I don’t know what. I can tell. I always know what you’re thinking. Remember? We wouldn’t have to talk. I’d know.” She glanced up. “I know you better than anybody.”
He met her eyes, another minute, not saying anything, then she turned away.
“So go talk to them. I’ll rescue Matthias from Brecht. It won’t be much longer. Nothing goes late anymore. During the war people wanted to get home before the first sirens, so everything was early. You get in the habit. Imagine, in Berlin, where we used to— Yes, I know, don’t look back. I don’t. It’s just seeing you, I think. You won’t leave without me?” The old voice, ironic, flirtatious.
“I think it might have been true, though.”
She stopped. “That you married me?” She looked down. “Well. But then look what happened. So maybe I wasn’t the best choice.”
* * *
The party went on for another hour, wine and vodka being poured even after the food had run out. Alex had to thank the Kulturbund officers, which prompted another toast. In the smoky room, warmed now by body heat and alcohol, it seemed everyone wanted to see him again—Fritsch at Babelsberg, gentle Aaron Stein at Aufbau, Brecht back at the Adlon bar. Willy would have been pleased. Except Willy was dead. Alex put the drink down, his head already slightly fuzzy, and looked around the room, sweating again. How long before they knew? Some slip, an unexpected witness. Nobody got away with murder. In broad daylight. Irene, over with Fritsch, glanced toward him, her private half smile. I always know what you’re thinking, she’d said, and for a moment Alex wanted to laugh, some perverse release. How about bodies crumpling over, Willy grabbing his sleeve, just do it, running through the streets, Markus checking times with the doorman? He lit a cigarette, steadying his hands. No one knew. All he had to do was be who they thought he was.
The lights dimmed twice, like the end of a theater intermission, and people finally began to leave. Glasses were tossed back, coats retrieved, the noise louder than before, shouting good-byes, and then they were all out in the street, where it had begun to snow, covering the ruined buildings in white lace, drifting down through the open roofs. There were a few official cars, leaving skid marks behind, but most of the guests were walking, their footprints crisscrossing the snow in all directions, like bird tracks.
“I love it like this,” Irene said, lifting her face. “Everything clean. Well, until tomorrow. And listen.” They both held their heads still. Somebody laughing farther down J?gerstrasse, the end of a good-bye, then nothing but the steady hum of the planes heading to Tempelhof, even their drone muffled tonight. “So quiet.” She was tying a scarf over her head, a few flakes landing on her face. “You’ll ruin your shoes,” she said. “Should we get a car from Sasha? I can call.”
“No.”
“Oh, you don’t approve.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No.” She put her arm in his. “So, you know Marienstrasse?”
“Behind Schiffbauerdamm.”
“Yes, but it’s blocked that way. I’ll show you.”
They walked up Friedrichstrasse, lighted only by the snow. At Unter den Linden it was even darker, a long empty stretch without traffic. The city felt like a house shut up for the season, the furniture covered in white sheets.
“You remember Kranzler’s used to be here,” she said. Then, “Nobody approves. So it’s not just you. Maybe I should find an Ami. Would that be better?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You think I don’t hear you? What you think?”
“I wasn’t here. I don’t blame—”
“Sasha was later. It wasn’t for that, to protect me. Nothing could protect you then. Not the women.”
He turned to her, waiting.
“You want to know what happened? I was like all the others. Afraid to move. I was in Babelsberg then. I thought it would be safer. And Enka’s friends disguised me—you know, the makeup department. They made me look like someone dying from syphilis.” She forced a small laugh. “If that’s what they look like.”
“Did it work?”
“No.”
Alex said nothing, the only sound their soft footfalls in the snow.
“They didn’t care. Mongols. Maybe they don’t have it there. Maybe they didn’t give a damn.” She paused. “You know, when it happens you think, well, now I know the worst. And I survived it. And then it happens again and that’s the worst. So you think, what if it doesn’t stop? Every night. They’re drunk, they come looking. If you hide, it’s worse. They get angry, sometimes they shoot. They shot my friend Marthe. She was screaming and it upset them.”
“Irene—”
“Yes, I know.” She shrugged. “It was a bad time. Nothing’s the same after. Even when it happens to everybody, you think it only happens to you.” She looked over at him. “Damaged goods.”
“Are you all right? I mean—”
“Yes. I only meant inside. You want to know everything? I got pregnant, of course. Imagine, a Mongol baby. You see how I can say these things? Before, I never would have told you. I don’t know why—ashamed maybe. And now—”
“Did you have it?”
“Are you crazy? A child of rape. Every time you look at it. And no food. Anything. No, I had it taken care of. They had clinics for that then, there were so many, but it wasn’t safe. Soviet army doctors, sometimes just some orderly, they didn’t care what happened to you. So I went to Gustav, Elsbeth’s husband. The Nazi. He didn’t want to do it. Imagine, all the people he killed and he didn’t want to kill this one. But he was in hiding then, waiting for the Amis. He wanted to give himself up to them, not the Russians. So I said I’d tell the Russians where he was and he did it. No anesthesia, nothing for the pain, but no Russian baby either. So that’s how the war was for me. Another story, just like the rest. You wanted to know.”