“Not a bad idea at that, Gunther.” She pulled away from my embrace and started to make us coffee. “I don’t much like living on my own. To be alone in Berlin is not like being alone anywhere else. Even the trees here look isolated.”
“You mean you really would like to be married?”
“Why not? You were kind to me, Gunther. Once in 1931. Again in 1940. A third time in 1946. And then a fourth time last year. That makes four times in twenty-three years. My father left home when I was ten. My husband—well, you remember what he was like. Very free with his fists was my Ulrich. I have a brother who I haven’t seen in years.” Elisabeth took out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “God, I hadn’t realized it until now, but you’ve been one of the only constant figures in my life, Bernie Gunther. Perhaps the only one.” She sniffed loudly. “Shit.”
“What about your Americans?”
“What about them? Are they here, drinking coffee in my kitchen? Are they? Do they send me money from America? No, they don’t. They fucked me while they were here, the way Amis do, and then they went home to Wichita and Phoenix. Oh, yes, there was another one I didn’t tell you about. Major Winthrop. Now, he did give me money, only it wasn’t like I asked for it or wanted it, if you know what I mean. He used to leave it on the dresser, so that when he went back to his wife in Boston, it meant he went with a clear conscience because we’d never had a proper relationship. At least, not according to him. I was just some little choco-lady he saw when he wanted someone to suck his pipe.” She blew her nose, but the tears kept on coming. “And you ask me why I want to get married, Gunther. It’s not just Berlin that’s an enclave, it’s me, too. And if I don’t do something about it, soon, then I don’t know what’s to become of me. You want an ultimatum? Well, there it is. You want to me to help you? Then help me. That’s my price.”
I nodded. “Then it’s lucky I came prepared.” I handed her the ring box Vigée had given me. Bought, he said, from a secondhand shop in Göttingen, but for all I knew, he might have stolen it from the dwarf, Alberich.
Elisabeth opened the box. The ring was not Rhinegold, but it did at least look like something valuable, although in truth I’d seen better diamonds on a playing card. Not that it seemed to matter to her. In my experience, women like the idea of jewelry no matter what it looks like. If they like you, then they’re almost always pleased to see a ring of any size and color.
She gasped and snatched it out of the box.
“If it doesn’t fit,” I said lamely, “then I suppose there’s a way of fixing that.”
But the ring was already on her finger and seemed to fit well enough, which was her cue to start crying again. There could be no doubt about it. I had a real talent for making women happy.
“Just so you know,” I said. “My wife died, twice. The first one after the first war and the second one soon after the second. That’s not a record you can be proud of as a husband. If there’s another war, you should probably take the precaution of divorcing me quickly. But frankly, I’ve always been better at finding other people’s husbands or sleeping with their wives. What else? Oh yes, I’m a born loser. That’s important for you to know, I think. This, at least, explains my current situation, which is not without its hazards, angel. I daresay you’ve gathered that. A man doesn’t work for his enemies unless he has little choice in the matter. Or no choice at all. I’m just a cheap paper knife. People pick me up when they need to open an envelope, and then they put me down again. I don’t have any say in the matter. As far back as I can remember, that’s all I’ve been when I thought I was more than that. The truth is that we’re just what we’ve done and what we do, and not what we ever want to be.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what we’ve done or what we do. What matters is what others think we are. If you’re looking for meaning, then here it is. Let me supply that for you. To me you’ll always be a good man, Gunther. In my brown eyes, you’ll always be the man who was there for me when I needed someone to be there. Maybe that’s all any of us need. You want a plan or a purpose, then look no further than me, mister.”
I grinned, liking her resilience. You could tell she was a Berliner, all right. Probably she’d been one of those women with a bucket who’d cleared the city of rubble in 1945. Raped one day, rebuilding it the next, like some Trojan princess in a play by some marble-headed Greek. Made of the same stuff as that German aviatrix who used to fly missiles for Hitler. You could say that’s why I kissed her—properly this time—but it might just as easily have been because she was as sexy as black stocking tops. Especially when her eyes were fixed on me. Besides, most German men prefer a woman who looks like she has a healthy appetite. Which is not to say Elisabeth was fat, or even large, just well-endowed.
“I expect you’re wondering if there was a reply to your letter,” she said.
“It was beginning to itch a little.”
“Good. At the very least, I want to see some scratch marks for what you put me through to get this. I’ve never been so scared.”
She opened a kitchen drawer and took out a letter, which she now handed to me. “I’ll finish making that coffee while you read it.”
33
To the west there was the town; to the east there were just green open fields; and in the middle was the railway line. The station, immediately south of the refugee camp, was—like every other building in Friedland—unremarkable. It was made of red bricks and had two red roofs—three if you counted the wizard’s-hat roof on top of the square corner tower that was the stationmaster’s house. A neat little flower garden was laid out by the front door of the house, and at the two upper-floor arched windows a neat set of flowery curtains hung. There was also a clock, a notice board with a timetable, and a bus stop. Everything was neat and orderly and just as sleepy as it should have been. Except today. Today was different. The capital of West Germany might have been the unlikely town of Bonn, but today—and no less unlikely than that—all German eyes were focused on Friedland in Lower Saxony. For today saw the homecoming of one thousand German prisoners of war from Soviet captivity, aboard a train that had left its remote destination more than twenty-four hours earlier.
The late-evening mood was one of high expectation, even celebration. A brass band was assembled in front of the station, and it was already playing a selection of patriotic music that was at the same time politically acceptable to the ears of the British, whose zone of occupation this was. Of the train there was as yet no sign, but that autumn evening several hundred people were assembled on the platform and around the station to greet the returnees. You would have thought we were expecting to see West Germany’s FIFA World Cup team arriving home, victorious, from the “miracle of Bern” and not a train carrying SS and Wehrmacht, none of whom had expected ever to be released from Russia and who were all of them entirely ignorant of the fact that Germany had won the World Cup or even that Konrad Adenauer, the former mayor of Cologne, to whom they owed their freedom, was now chancellor of another German republic—this time the Federal Republic of Germany. But some local men, keen to remind the returnees of the chancellor’s crucial role in their delivery from captivity, were carrying a sign that read “We Thank You, Doctor Adenauer.” I wouldn’t have argued with that, although it sometimes seemed to me that the Herr Doktor was intent on becoming another uncrowned king of Germany.
Other signs were much more personal, even pathetic. Between ten and twenty men and women were carrying signs on which were written details of a missing loved one, and of these, that of an old bespectacled lady who reminded me of my own late mother, seemed typicaclass="underline"