Berlin: A Novel (59 page)

The emblematic bird of Brandenburg itself was the sign above the door of the Red Eagle. A few hungry children surrounded the jeep. Jutta distributed chocolate bars that she had taken out of John's carton. A man in his sixties came out of the house. Jutta hugged him. Vati, this is John Ashburner. John, this is my father Ludwig Reimann.'

In honour of the day, Herr Reimann was wearing his dark-blue suit with a silver-grey tie, and in his buttonhole the little black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross, First Class, from the Great War. He shook hands with Ashburner. 'Pleased to meet you, captain.'

'Just John, sir, please.'

'Come in and let me introduce you to Mother.' He led the guest inside, through the empty bar and straight to the kitchen. Her hair freshly arranged, Frau Reimann stood by the stove lowering large dumplings into simmering water with a perforated spoon. 'Mother, this is John Ashburner. And this is my wife Else.'

Else Reimann wiped her right hand on her apron before offering it to the visitor. 'Do you like braised beef with potato dumplings? And for a starter we have zander fillets from the Muggelsee with shrimp, and a beef bouillon in between. Thank goodness for our old coal-burning stove. The gas connection is wrecked, and you can't get a proper meal cooked on the electric plate. Even if the power's on. My husband has put some Mosel to chill for the fish, and we have burgundy for the braised beef, and then chocolate pudding with vanilla sauce.'

She's excited and rather confused, thought Jutta as she interpreted. Suddenly she realized what unattainable delicacies her mother had been itemizing.

Her father said, in his rudimentary English, 'The bar is closed today. So we're on our own. A glass of sparkling wine, captain - I mean John.' Reimann opened the bottle, with a loud pop. It was not any old sparkling wine, but a 1940 champagne from Duval-Leroy. Where had her parents found all these marvels?

'You're late.' Ludwig Reimann reached for the watch in his waistcoat pocket. But only its pendant was hanging from the gold chain. 'Oh, I forgot, it's being repaired,' he murmured, embarrassed. Then Jutta realized: her father had sacrificed his gold watch to give his guest a proper welcome.

John Ashburner looked round the bar. The worn, wooden tables with clean, shiny ashtrays on them were meticulously arranged. The tablecloths at the back of the room were starched and well ironed. Everything here was simple and clean. Only the window frames didn't fit the picture. They looked as if woodworm had been at them. However, the marks were the pricks of countless drawing pins, a memento of the evening blackouts during the war years, when black paper had to keep any ray of light indoors. Reimann explained it to his guest, concluding gloomily, 'It cost our neighbour his head, because he was acused of giving light signals to enemy bombers. The poor fellow just forgot to black out his toilet window one evening. And that night of all nights he had the trots and kept running to the lavatory.'

'Why are you doing all this?' Jutta asked her mother in the kitchen. 'John and I didn't come to stuff ourselves with food.'

'We have our pride too.' Her mother tasted the broth. 'Jochen brought me flowers when he was courting you. "Jutta and I are for life," he said.' Else Reimann's eyes filled with tears. And now you're being unfaithful to him.'

'I suppose you'd rather I committed suttee.' At the same moment she realized that her irony was beyond her mother's grasp. In a more conciliatory tone, she added, 'Of course I can't forget Jochen just like that. John knows and understands.'

Her mother pursed her lips. And does he know what those brutes did to you?'

'I've told him I was raped twice, and almost raped a third time, and I said I'd no intention of letting that ruin my love life.'

'He isn't even divorced yet.'

'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.'