Ulrich’s deceptively drowsy eyes did not conceal his disdain.
“Of course you have suffered too,” Bruno bumbled on. “We all have. I’ve seen my wife and daughter raped before my eyes. Look at me. We are half starved. I am ruined ... I have nothing left.”
“We must get together sometimes and trade horror stories.”
“For God’s sake, all I want to do is forget it happened.”
“You mean the same way you forgot that Wolfgang and I existed?”
“So, we were taken in by Hitler. Just because I held a minor post with the Nazis, am I to go to jail and leave Herta and those poor girls alone? I tell you, we have paid.”
“Not enough, Bruno, not enough.”
How bitter came the destruction of the long dream. Ulrich Falkenstein had come from the blackness of Schwabenwald to an even greater blackness of Berlin.
Wolfgang and Hannelore were dead and the old friends gone.
Berlin was worse than dead. A great, beautiful goddess hacked up, prostrate, gasping for breath ... the last of life’s blood oozing from her body.
The old man was stooped with sorrow as he trudged down the Unter Den Linden, that mammoth boulevard that rumbled under the wheels of Prussian cannons, clicked under the heels of genteel ladies, heard the shouts of protesting workers, the gunfire of insurrection, the boots of pagan rallies, the circumstance of glory.
At Friedrichstrasse he stood and looked down the flattened street.
So long as the old trees bloom Unter Den Linden,
Nothing can befall us,
Berlin remains Berlin ...
The voices that once came from the cabarets of Friedrichstrasse were stilled forever. Sentimental voices, bawdy voices, angry voices ... still... so still. Now a man hacks away at the carcass of a dead horse.
You are my old love,
Berlin remains Berlin ...
Ghastly, ragged men stagger and fall into the streets from hunger. Urchins beg, women barter ...
So long as the old trees bloom Unter Den Linden,
Nothing can befall us,
Berlin remains Berlin.
He stood now near the Brandenburg Gate at the Pariser-Platz at what was the heartstone of his beloved city. The reigning royalty of the thriving culture lived here on the square and watched from their windows as the pageantry of history flowed beneath the Brandenburg Gate.
The Berlin theater songs, the bitter satire of the political cabarets, the exciting theater, the grandness of the opera ... all the voices were still.
Atop the Brandenburg Gate the Quadriga of Victory once had her chariot drawn by four lusty steeds. The chariot had no wheels, the horses no legs; they lay in a heap and a limp red flag hung over the prostrate shambles. The gate itself remained up only from memory. Great chunks of the massive columns had been bashed away.
He looked back down the Unter Den Linden to the gutted shells of the massive buildings of the opera and the university, the museums and the cathedral, and he walked through and toward other gutted shells of the Reichstag.
The magnificent floral wonders of the Tiergarten were ravaged. The Column to Victory of other wars dismantled and Victory Alee a lane of strewn rocks.
For three days he picked his way across that expanse of three hundred and fifty square miles that once constituted Berlin. Only an ugly scar on the landscape was left in this place of beauty and pomp, ideas and energy. The great forests were in ruin; the hunting lodges of the electors of Brandenburg and the castles were battered beyond comprehension; the workers’ houses were in ashes, and the lakes and rivers putrid.
You are my old love,
Berlin remains Berlin ...
After a number of days, Ulrich was able to locate the first of his old comrades, Berthold Hollweg, who existed in a clapboard hovel on the Teltow Canal below Tempelhof Airdrome. It was a single room, earthen floor, windowless, toiletless. There was a futile attempt to grow a few scrubby vegetables among the rocks and weeds.
In the old days, Hollweg had held a number of high posts in the Democratic Party. He had been chairman of Brandenburg Province and held a seat in the Reichstag until the last free election.
Time and tide had reduced him to the meagerest level of existence. He had aged as Ulrich had aged. The first moments of seeing each other were filled with disbelief, and then Hollweg recounted the past.
“When your trial was over and you were sent away, that signaled our end. Some fled, some disappeared, others blended into the scenery to make themselves anonymous.”
“What about our Jews? Ginsberg, Jacobs, Adler, Davids? They were among the heart and brains of the labor movement.”
Hollweg shook his head. “They are all dead. For a time we made an attempt to hide Adler and his children, but they had to leave.”
“You turned them out?”
“It was next to impossible to hide a Jew in Berlin. Adler understood ...”
Frau Louise Hollweg began to weep at her husband’s recollections.
Tell me about Wolfgang,” Ulrich whispered harshly.
Hollweg lowered his eyes, spoke blankly. “From the moment you were sent away the Gestapo watched him day and night. We knew he was being used as bait. We had to split up. It was impossible to hold a meeting. Spies were everywhere. Things got so bad we couldn’t even recognize each other when we passed on the street. Wolfgang was a contact. Finally ... we had to tell him to stop trying to see us. It was the only way to survive. Ulrich ... spare yourself the rest of this ...”
“Go on.”
“When the plot was made against Hitler, Wolfgang became involved and he got many of the old comrades involved. His job was to print the proclamations that Hitler was dead and to get them posted around Berlin with the announcement of the new government. The plot failed. Hitler went insane with vengeance. Wolfgang was among the first dragged into a People’s Court. You know the procedure.”
“Was there no one who spoke for him? Not a single German voice!”
“In many ways, Ulrich, it was better you were in Schwabenwald. You will never know how totally crushed we were.”
There was no use to berate Hollweg, only pity him. “And what of you, Berthold?”
“We lost our son on the Russian front. Me? I went from one job to another, each time hounded by spies and the Gestapo. I was forced to reduce my existence. In the end I was a doorman at the Adlon Hotel, but even there the Gestapo thought I saw too many important people come and go. I found my true niche in life as guardian of the men’s toilet at the Am Zoo Hotel.”
Ulrich wondered if there was anyone left who could say he was a German who fought Hitler. There were too few to really be counted in the first place. “Maybe it would have been better if I died in Schwabenwald than return to this.”
“No, Ulrich, one by one the Berliners will begin to climb out of the ashes. They will need you if we are to put the pieces together again.”
Ulrich grunted.
“We did the best we could, Ulrich ... the best we could ...”
At last, Ulrich Falkenstein made the last stop of his bitter homecoming. As the light of day faded, he had found his way to the Plötzensee Prison, which bordered on another ravaged woods and stood opposite the destroyed inland harbor. He got out of the military jeep which had brought him and walked alongside the high brick wall. The main gate was guarded by a post of British soldiers. He showed them his papers.
“Do you speak English, sir?” an officer asked.
He nodded.
‘We have received a call from the Americans that you were coming. If you will follow me, sir.”
The gate clanged open. The officer’s hard boots cracked on the stones. They crossed out of the main compound into a dirt courtyard just beyond the main wall and came to a small brick building of twenty by twenty feet.