Erich nodded, looking at the paper Alex had given him.
“Just introduce yourself, who you are, and take it from there. Use the questions if you need them. To keep things going. It’s really what you want to say. What it was like for you there. Here we go,” he said, switching on the recorder.
For a second, Erich said nothing, watching the spools turn, the machine a fascination in itself. Alex pointed to the mike.
“My name is Erich von Bernuth.” Alex made a lowering motion with his hand. Erich nodded. “I’m from Berlin. All my life, until I joined the army in 1940. I was not a Nazi, but Germany was at war, so I thought it was the right thing to do. The army. My family had always been in the army.” Alex raised his hand, steering him back. “Now I don’t know, what was the right thing. I saw terrible—But I was a soldier, so you do what a soldier does.” Now a circling motion with Alex’s hand, move on. “But I want to tell you about what happened after. What is happening to other German soldiers. So many years later. I was captured, taken prisoner, at Stalingrad. We were sent to a camp, I don’t know where, we were never told. Many died, of course, in the transport. The wounded.” He stopped, waiting for Alex to nod. “The conditions in the camp were very hard. So more died. Typhus, other diseases. The work. But this was war, you don’t expect— Maybe they thought we deserved this treatment, for everything they had lost in the war, their own men. Then the war ends. Those of us who had survived, we thought, now it’s over, they’ll send us home. Such conditions in wartime, it’s one thing, but now— Of course you know they didn’t. Your sons and husbands are still there. Slaves. Or they are back in Germany. Slaves here. I was one of these. I was sent to the Erzgebirge, to work in the uranium mines. Maybe some of you have heard of this. Have heard rumors. But now you hear the truth. I was a prisoner there and I escaped. This is what it was like, this is what I want to tell you.”
Alex was nodding, clear sailing now. Erich had found his voice, unaffected, sure of itself, the quiet authority of a survivor. It would be a good radio voice, personal, artless. The barracks. The radioactive slime. The sick, sent back to work. The despair of knowing you would never be released, would be worked to death. The voice picked up speed, a steady rumble through the little office, unprompted now. Everything he had come to say.
By the door, Irene was watching, her face clouded over, near tears. What was she seeing? The boy he’d been? The prisoner dodging rat bites? A man at a microphone, no longer young. Maybe some daydream of what might happen next. Remember who you are.
And then he stopped—not abruptly, not fading away, just finished, an affidavit ready for signing. Alex glanced at the tape—almost near the end. Everything Ferber could want, questions spliced in, wrap-up added, the best kind of interview. More than airfare out. Propaganda that was true.
“That was perfect,” he said to Erich, putting the reel into an envelope and replacing it with a fresh one on the machine.
Erich nodded, coughing, his body suddenly folding in on itself, as if the talk had exhausted him.
“Now let’s get you out of here.”
“Cargo,” Erich said between coughs, a wry smile. “For the airlift.”
They took Friedrichstrasse, safety in numbers, but there were only a few cars and nobody trailing behind. They were almost at Leipziger Strasse before they saw the roadblock farther along. Alex pulled over to the side, watching.
“They stopping everybody?”
“I can’t tell,” Irene said. “Maybe a random check. They do that sometimes.”
“But why tonight? Let’s try somewhere else.”
He headed west and turned down Wilhelmstrasse, past Goering’s Air Ministry, standing alone in the rubble, unscathed, a Berlin irony.
“They’re here too,” Alex said, idling again by the curb.
“Someone just crossed. Walking. They didn’t stop him,” Irene said. “Only the cars. Look, not all. They just waved that one on.”
“We can’t take the chance. Here, you drive and I’ll walk him across.”
“A woman driving? If they’re after us, they’re looking for a couple, no? Not two men. Not you.”
Alex looked at her.
“And then he’s safe,” she said, nodding to Erich, slumped in his seat. She opened her purse. “Here, give me the tape.”
“What if—?”
“And what if they find it on you?”
She took the envelope, not waiting for an answer, and opened the door.
Alex moved the car into the street. Two cars in front, the first being held up, guards looking at papers. The second pulled up, a quick check with the flashlight, another wave. Their turn.
“Papers?” a guard said, bored, shining his flashlight into the back.
Alex handed him his ID card.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Drunk. Let me see if I can find—” Beginning to fumble with Erich’s coat.
“Never mind.” He looked down at the ID card, making a show of reading it carefully, then handed it back. “Go.” He motioned with his hand.
Irene was coming up on the sidewalk, slowing a little, trying to see if everything was all right. Alex watched her as she passed, purse clutched under her arm.
“Fr?ulein, out alone? All dressed up,” the guard said, the voice of a soldier in a bar. “Where to?”
Irene shrugged. “Meeting a friend. At the station,” she said, cocking her head toward the Anhalter Bahnhof down the street.
“Be careful there. An American friend?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t met him yet.”
The guard grinned. “How about a Russian friend?”
“For free?” Irene said, playing, then turned, beginning to move off.
“Worth it,” he called to her back. She wriggled her hand, almost out of sight now.