Crushed between mounds of mud is an old bell tower. The major is happy to see there’s no bell inside. We need iron, and all church bells in Germany are confiscated for the war effort. Is this just another clever way for Adi to strike back at the Church?
“Those dead German soldiers you see hanging,” the major says pointing, “are traitors we strung up on tram pylons. Executed as deserters.”
As the last two weeks were warm and dry, the firestorm raids have done more damage. Strong drafts create swirls of heat with smoke three or four miles high. Firemen can’t stop the flames, so they concentrate on freeing people trapped under debris. Searing heat shrinks and shrivels the dead and dying.
“Look at this!” The major points to the scorched remains of a soldier. The lower part of the body is naked, and his sex organ is mummified and grossly extended.
“General Keitel collects these things.” Taking out his handkerchief, he tugs the expanded penis away from the blasted groin. It breaks free as delicately as a lace border pulled from a tablecloth.
“What if it’s one of our soldiers?” I can’t look at this elongated distortion that the major carries on his handkerchief, one end sticking straight out like some awful beastly stump.
“All the better, don’t you think? We’re merely preserving German manhood.”
“What does Herr General do with these things?” Not even latrine gossip has learned of Keitel’s collection.
“He has a personal museum.“
Petrified body parts make me realize there’s no reason now to hunt anymore for Renate. If she was smart, she left weeks ago with her family. If she remained, then she’s dead in her tunnel apartment still holding fast to her kitchen table and her hand-painted dishes, maybe mummified herself. I’ll never get my dress back or be able to tell her that she was wrong. All those days she followed me around Munich laughing as I placed a passionate kiss in the armpit of every statue of the Führer. Well, Renate, I’m marrying Him!
Wrapping it carefully with the pages of a lengthy confidential report, the major puts the calcified organ carefully under his seat. This penis will get him whiskey from the general, maybe even a two-day pass.
“An SS doctor tells me that mummified parts are worse than cutting through stone.”
I don’t want to see such things, but that would be womanly, and he’d start patronizing me again.
Before we begin driving off, I write a note to Renate on a block of concrete that was blasted away from a storefront. I grab a piece of stone with a sharp edge and write, “Renate, I A M T F.”
“What is I A M T F?” Perplexed, his high forehead forms one large crease from side to side.
“I am marrying the Führer.” I proudly emphasize each word.
“Why didn’t you just write that?”
“You of all people ask me that?”
“Jews might read it? Surely there are no Jews left in Berlin.”
Jews like my mother’s cook, Thilde, never bother with gossip though Adi says poor Thilde and her kind could never understand Die Meistersinger. I mean officers’ wives. They’re the worse gossips, eager to look down on me because I don’t have a “von” before my name.
Tugging the strap of a box, an old woman stumbles and falls to the ground. A dead charred baby falls out. Stuffing it back in, she runs through a smoky path when her head is blown off—still holding the box, she continues a few more steps before falling.
Her flowery dress half eaten by fire, a young girl asks us where a first aid station is. Seeping sores line her legs. We can’t tell her where there’s a hospital that hasn’t been bombed, but we take her to a nearby shelter clinic. “I’m so hungry,” she moans, “I use vomit from the dying to trap rabbits and cats.”
A warped C ration can left by a soldier is in the street, and I tell her to take it.
“How can I? It’s American. The Germans will think I’m a spy.”
“Soon you and your friends can eat all the American food you want,” the major says. “Americans will be here shortly.”
On the street ahead, hot asphalt has melted an old man into its porous clutches—up to the neck.
“I should shoot the poor man and put him out of his misery.” The major touches the Luger at his side. “I can’t afford to waste ammunition.”
Untouched by smoke and black soot, a woman wearing a large hat with red poppies approaches the asphalt-planted man and places a gray fedora on his head to shield him from blowing plaster and gravel. Sitting on the ground next to him, she takes out bottles of water and little wedges of cheese.
“The good German Hausfrau to the end.” The major finds the true spirit of his homeland in the smallest detail. If only his brandy flask were not empty, for the asphalt-husband and his wife deserve a drink.
Moving toward us are wounded people crawling at our feet, begging for help—a young girl with torn arms, an old man with blood on his chest, crying children. Will they ever eat strudel again? Feel the weight of a parade flag on their shoulders? Brush their teeth again? I’m privileged by just breathing.
We jump in the vehicle ready to return to the Bunker through the ravaged roads. But a boulder in the street blocks our way after only a few minutes, as streetcar tracks were blown from their beds. The major tries to shove smoldering wood out of our path. To the side of the road, we hear a howl, a creature’s sound but perhaps human, too. Clearing away rubbish, the major lifts out a scrappy dog.
“See what I saved.” Holding up the mongrel proudly, he slaps dust from its brown fur. “Skinny but still alive. The Führer will reward me handsomely for saving a dog.” Giving the cur water from his canteen, he then walks ahead to a girl who is swaying aimlessly around a swirl of fire clutching a half loaf of bread. Stopping her with one broad thrust of his hand, he breaks the bread in half giving the girl a chunk and keeping the bigger part for himself. We get back in the jeep.
He feeds the dog bread as we drive, and it eats hungrily, scattering chunky crumbs up into the air and on my dress like the flecks of plaster and concrete falling outside.
“A survivor, this little bitch.” The major boldly swings around wagons, burning porch posts, and furniture wormed with bullet holes. “What shall we call her?”
“Renate.”
“We’ve found Renate, after all.” Laughing, he slaps me on one thigh. It’s a friendly slap, but what would it be like if he didn’t take his hand away? I blush and feel guilty. In just a few hours, I’ll be a married woman.
Renate puts her nose into the deepest corner of my lap. A stirring moves up to my stomach, and I’m embarrassed. A dog can do that to me? I push her snout away, and she stretches out to sleep, her head on the major’s lap, her hindquarters on mine.
Driving carefully and avoiding every pitfall, the major is silent. Destruction passes by as if it were a movie, as if this were some Goebbels’ newsreel showing the bombardment we’ve unleashed on enemy cities. It’s like the American novel I read about the destruction of the South during the civil war. Scarlett O’Hara. Am I like that? A woman who has to endure war but has a great love?
“Major, have you read Gone with the Wind?”
“You ask that when Clark Gable flies a bomber over Germany? ”
“Gable isn’t in the book. 300,000 copies were sold in Germany. Aren’t you even curious?”
“One is always curious, Fräulein. I own an American stove!”
As we drive over two heavy beer signs, Renate’s leg digs into my groin jolting that locus already so warm and vulnerable. We three bounce up in the air—me with a short climax of quick release—before falling back to our seats.
“Sorry,” the major says. “I’ve no control over all the devastation cluttering the streets, though our long wide boulevards are good fire breaks. We haven’t endured a firestorm. Not like Hamburg or Dresden.”