The Good German - by Joseph Kanon

   CHAPTER 9

 

The next day was hot again. Berlin was literally steaming, the rain that had washed the dust from the air now rising in wisps over the wet ruins, making the smell worse. Emil’s father lived in Charlottenburg, a few streets away from the schloss, in what was left of an art nouveau block of flats, divided into rooms for bombed-out families. The street hadn’t been cleared, so they’d had to leave the jeep on Schloss Strasse and thread their way through the rubble on a footpath dotted with house-number sticks planted in the debris like trail markers. They were sweating when they arrived, but Professor Brandt was dressed, in a suit and a high starched collar from the Weimar era, stiff even in the wilting heat. His height took Jake by surprise. Emil had been Jake’s size, but Professor Brandt towered over him, so tall that when he kissed Lena on the cheek, he bent at the waist, an old officer’s bow.

“Lena, it’s good of you to come,” he said, more polite than warm, as if he were receiving a former student.

He looked at Jake, taking in the uniform, and his eye twitched. “He’s dead,” he said flatly.

“No, no, a friend of Emil’s,” Lena said, and introduced them.

Professor Brandt offered a dry hand. “From happier days, I think.”

“Yes, before the war,” Jake said.

“You are welcome, then. I thought perhaps—an official visit.” A flicker of relief even his composed face couldn’t hide. “I’m sorry, I have nothing to offer guests. It’s difficult now,” he said, indicating the cramped room whose light came in shafts through a boarded-up broken window. “Perhaps you would care to walk in the park? It’s more pleasant, in this weather.”

“We can’t stay long.”

“Well, a little walk, then,” he said, clearly embarrassed by the room and eager to go out. He turned to Lena. “But first, I must tell you. I’m so sorry. Dr. Kunstler was here. You know I asked him to inquire in Hamburg. Your parents. I’m sorry,” he said, his words as formal as a eulogy.

“Oh,” she said, the sound catching in her throat like a whimper. “Both?”

“Yes, both.”

“Oh,” she said again. She sank to a chair, covering her eyes with a hand.

Jake expected Professor Brandt to reach out to her, but instead he moved away, leaving her isolated, alone with her news. Jake looked at her awkwardly, stuck helpless in his role, a friend of the family unable to do more than be silent.

“Some water?” Professor Brandt said.

She shook her head. “Both. It’s certain?”

“The records—there was so much confusion, you can imagine. But they were identified.”

“So now there’s no one,” she said to herself in a small voice.

Jake thought of Breimer looking out of the plane window at the wrecked landscape. What they deserved. Seeing buildings.

“Are you all right?” Jake said.

She nodded, then stood up, smoothing out her skirt, visibly putting herself in order. “I knew it must be. It’s just—to hear it.” She turned to Professor Brandt. “Perhaps a walk would be better. Some air.”

He picked up a hat, clearly relieved, and led them down the hall, away from the front entrance. Lena drifted behind, ignoring Jake’s arm. “We’ll go out the back. They’re watching the building,” he said.

“Who?” Jake said, surprised.

“Young Willi. They pay him, I think. He’s always in the street. Or one of his friends. With cigarettes. Where do they get them? He was always a sneak, that one.”

“Who pays him?”

Professor Brandt shrugged. “Thieves, perhaps. Of course, they may not be watching me. Someone else in the building. Waiting for their chance. But I prefer they don’t know where I am.”

“Are you sure?” Jake said, looking at the white hair. An old man’s imagination, protecting a boarded-up room.

“Herr Geismar, every German is an expert at that. We’ve been watched for twelve years. I would know in my sleep. Here we are.” He opened the back door to the blinding light. “No one, you see.”

“I take it Emil hasn’t been here?” Jake said, still thinking.

“Is that why you’ve come? I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is. Dead, perhaps.”

“No, he’s alive. He’s been in Frankfurt.”

Professor Brandt stopped. “Alive. With the Americans?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God for that. I thought the Russians—” He started walking again. “So he got out. He said the Spandau bridge was still open. I thought he must be crazy. The Russians were—”

“He left Frankfurt two weeks ago,” Jake said, interrupting him. “For Berlin. I was hoping he’d come to you.”

“No, he wouldn’t come to me.”

“To find Lena, I mean,” Jake said, awkward.

“No, only the Russian.”

“A Russian was looking for him?”

“For Lena,” he said, hesitant. “As if I would help him. Swine.”

“Me?” Lena said, listening after all.

Professor Brandt nodded, avoiding her eyes.

“What for?” Jake said.

“I didn’t ask questions,” Professor Brandt said, his voice almost prim.

“But he didn’t want Emil,” Jake said, thinking aloud.

“Why would he? I thought—”

“He give you a name?”

“They don’t give names. Not them.”

“You didn’t ask? A Russian making inquiries in the British sector?”

Professor Brandt stopped, upset, as if he’d been caught in an impropriety. “I didn’t want to know. You understand—I thought it was personal.” He looked at Lena. “I’m sorry, don’t be offended. I thought he was perhaps a friend of yours. So many German women—one hears it all the time.”

“You thought that?” she said, angry.

“It’s not for me to judge these things,” he said, his voice correct and distant.

She looked at him, her eyes suddenly hard. “No. But you do. You judge everything. Now me. You thought that? A Russian whore?” She looked away. “Oh, why am I surprised? You always think the worst. Look how you judge Emil—your own blood.”

“My own blood. A Nazi.”

Lena waved her hand. “Nothing changes. Nothing,” she said and strode ahead, visibly walking off her anger.

They crossed the street quietly, Jake feeling like an intruder in a family quarrel.

“She’s not herself,” Professor Brandt said finally. “It’s the bad news, I think.” He turned to Jake. “Is there some trouble? This Russian—it’s to do with Emil?”

“I don’t know. But let me know if he comes back.”

Professor Brandt looked at Jake closely. “May I ask what exactly you do in the army?”

“I’m not in the army. I’m a reporter. They make us wear the uniform.”

“For your work. That’s what Emil said too. You’re looking for him—as a friend? Nothing else?”

“As a friend.”

“He’s not under arrest?”

“No.”

“I thought perhaps—these trials. They’re not going to put him on trial?”

“No, why should they? As far as I know, he hasn’t done anything.”

Professor Brandt looked at him curiously, then sighed. “No, just this,” he said, gesturing toward the gutted schloss. “That’s what they’ve done, him and his friends.”

They were approaching the palace from the west, the ground still covered with pieces of glass from the smashed orangerie. Berlin’s Versailles. The building had taken a direct hit, the east wing demolished, the rest of the standing pale yellow walls scorched with black. Lena was walking ahead into the formal gardens, now unrecognizable, a bare field of mud littered with shrapnel.

“It was always going to end this way,” Professor Brandt said. “Anyone could see that. Why couldn’t he see that? They destroyed Germany. The books, then everything. It wasn’t theirs to destroy. It was mine, too. Where’s my Germany now? Look at it. Gone. Murderers.”

“Emil wasn’t that.”

“He worked for them,” he said, voice rising as if they were in court, the case he’d been arguing for years. “Be careful when you put on a uniform. It’s what you become. Always the work. You know what he said to me? ‘I can’t wait for history to change things. I have to do my work now. After the war, we can do wonderful things.’ Space. We. Who? Mankind? After the war. He says this while the bombs are falling. While they’re putting people on trains. No connection. What are you going to do in space, I said, look down on the dead?” He cleared his throat, calming himself. “You agree with Lena. You think I’m harsh.”

“I don’t know,” Jake said, uncomfortable.

Professor Brandt stopped, looking at the schloss. “He broke my heart,” he said, so simply that Jake winced, as if a bandage had been lifted off the old man’s skin, exposing it. “She thinks I judge him. I don’t even know him,” he said, his words seeming to droop with him. But when Jake looked up, he stood as stiffly as before, his neck still held up by the high collar. He started into the park. “Well, now the Americans will do it.”

“We didn’t come here to judge anybody.”

“No? Then who else? Do you think we can judge ourselves? Our own children?”

“Maybe nobody can.”

“Then they will get away with it.”

“The war’s over, Professor Brandt. Nobody got away with anything,” Jake said, looking at the charred remains of the building.

“Not the war. No, not war. You know what happened here. I knew. Everybody knew. Grunewald Station. You know they liked to send them from there, not in the center, where people would see. Did they think we wouldn’t see there? Thousands of them in the cars. The children. Did we think they were going on holiday? I saw it myself. My god, I thought, how we will pay for this, how we will pay. How could it happen? Here, in my country, a crime like this? How could they do it? Not the Hitlers, the Goebbelses—those types you can see any day. In a zoo. An asylum. But Emil? A boy who played with trains. Blocks. Always building. I’ve asked myself a million times, over and over, how could this boy be a part of that?”

“And what answer did you get?” Jake said quietly.

“None. No answer.” He stopped to remove his hat, then took out a handkerchief and patted his forehead. “No answer,” he said again. “You know, his mother died when he was born. So there were just the two of us. Just two. I was too strict maybe. Sometimes I think it was that. But he was no trouble—quiet. A wonderful mind. You could see it working when he played—one block after another, just so. Sometimes I would sit there just watching his mind.”

Jake glanced over at him, trying to imagine him without the collar, stretched out on a child’s floor in a jumble of building blocks.

“And later, of course, at the institute, a wonder. Everyone predicted great things, everyone. Instead, this.” He spread his hand, taking in the past along with the torn-up garden. “How? How could such a mind not see? How can you see only the blocks, nothing else? A missing piece. Like all the rest of them, some missing piece. Maybe they never had it. But Emil? A good German boy—so what happened? To be with them.”

“He came back for you at the end.”

“Yes, do you know how? With SS. Do you expect me to get in that car, I said, with them?”

“The SS came for you?”

“For me? No. Files. Even then, with the Russians here, they came to get files out—imagine it. To save themselves. Did they think we didn’t know what they did? How can you hide something like that? Foolishness. Then here. ‘It’s the only way,’ Emil said, ‘they have a car, they’ll take you.’” He switched voices. “‘Tell the old shit to hurry or we’ll shoot him too,’ they said. Drunk, I think, but they did that, shot people, even in those last days, when everything was lost. Good, I said, shoot the old shit. That will be one bullet less. ‘Don’t talk like that,’ Emil says. ‘Are you crazy?’ You’re the crazy one, I said. The Russians will hang you if you’re with these swine. ‘No, Spandau’s open, we can get to the west.’ I’d rather be with the Russians than with scum, I said. Arguing, even then.” The SS voice again. “‘Leave him. We don’t have time for this.’ And of course it was true—you could hear the artillery fire everywhere. So they left. That’s the last I saw him, getting into a car with SS. My son.” His voice grew faint and stopped, as if he were rewinding a spool of film in his head, the scene played out again.

“Trying to save you,” Jake said.

But Professor Brandt ignored him, retreating back to conversation. “How is it you know him?”

“Lena worked with me at Columbia.”

“The radio, yes, I remember. A long time ago.” He glanced toward Lena, waiting for them near the edge of the garden where the sluggish water of the Spree made its bend. “She doesn’t look well.”

“She’s been sick. She’s better now.”

Professor Brandt nodded. “So that’s why she hasn’t come. She used to, after the raids, to see if I was all right. The faithful Lena. I don’t think she told him.”

She turned as they approached. “Look at the ducks,” she said. “Still here. Who feeds them, do you think?” A kind of apology for her outburst, simply by not mentioning it. “So, have you finished?”

“Finished?” Professor Brandt said, then peered at Jake. “What is it you want?”

Jake took the photograph of Tully out of his breast pocket. “Has this man been here? Have you seen him?”

“An American,” Professor Brandt said, looking at it. “No. Why? He’s looking for Emil too?”

“He may have been. He knew Emil in Frankfurt.”

“He’s police?” Professor Brandt said, so quickly that Jake looked up in surprise. What was it like to be watched for twelve years?

“He was. He’s dead.”

Professor Brandt stared at him. “And that’s why you want to see Emil. As a friend.”

“That’s right, as a friend.”

He looked at Lena. “It’s true? He’s not trying to arrest him?”

“Do you think I would help with that?” she said.

“No,” Jake said, answering for her, “but I’m worried. Two weeks is a long time to be missing in Germany these days. This is the last man who saw him, and he’s dead.”

“What are you saying? You think Emil—”

“No, I don’t think. I don’t want to see him end up the same way, either.” He paused, taking in Professor Brandt’s startled expression. “He may know something, that’s all. We need to find him. He hasn’t been to Lena’s. The only other place he’d go is to you.”

“No, not to me.”

“He did before.”

“Yes, and what did I say to him? That day with the SS,” he said, running the film again. “‘Don’t come back.’” He looked away. “He won’t come here. Not now.”

“Well, if he does, you know where Lena is,” Jake said, putting the picture back.

“I sent him away,” Professor Brandt said, still in his own thoughts. “What else could I do? SS. I was right to do that.”

“Yes, you were right. You’re always right,” Lena said wearily, turning away. “Now look.”

“Lena—”

“Oh, no more. I’m tired of arguing. Always politics.”

“Not politics,” he said, shaking his head. “Not politics. You think it was politics, what they did?”

She held his eyes for a moment, then turned to Jake. “Let’s go.”

“You’ll come again?” Professor Brandt said, his voice suddenly tentative and old.

She went over and put her hand near his shoulder, then brushed the front of his suit as if she were about to adjust his tie, a gesture of unexpected gentleness. He stood straight, letting her smooth out the material, a substitute for an embrace. “I’ll press it for you next time,” she said. “Do you need anything? Food? Jake can get food.”

“Some coffee, perhaps,” he said, hesitant, reluctant to ask.

Lena gave his suit a final pat and moved away, not waiting for them to follow.

“I’ll walk a little now,” Professor Brandt said, then glanced toward Lena’s back. “She’s like a daughter to me.”

Jake simply nodded, not knowing what to say. Professor Brandt drew himself up, shoulders back, and put on his hat.

“Herr Geismar? If you find Emil—” He stopped, choosing his words carefully. “Be a friend to him, with the Americans. There is some trouble, I think. So help him. You’re surprised I ask that? This old German, so strict. But a child—it’s always there, in your heart. Even when they become—what they become. Even then.”

Jake looked at him, standing tall and alone in the muddy field. “Emil didn’t put people on trains. There’s a difference.”

Professor Brandt lifted his head toward the scorched building, then turned back to Jake, lowering the brim of his hat. “You be the judge of that.”

When they got back to the jeep, Jake took a minute to look into Professor Brandt’s street, but no one was there, not even young Willi, keeping watch for cigarettes.

 

Nothing had changed at Frau Dzuris’—the same dripping hallway, the same boiling potatoes, the same hollow-eyed children watching furtively from the bedroom.

“Lena, my god, it’s you. So you found her. Children, look who’s here, it’s Lena. Come.”

But it was Jake who drew their attention, pulling out chocolate bars, which they snatched up, tearing off the shiny Hershey wrappers before Frau Dzuris could stop them.

“Such manners. Children, what do you say?”

A mumbled thanks between bites.

“Come, sit. Oh, Eva will be sorry to miss you. She’s at church again. Every day, church. What are you praying for, I say, manna? Tell God to send potatoes.”

“She’s well, then? And your son?”

“Still in the east,” she said, dropping her voice. “I don’t know where. Maybe she prays for him. But there’s no God there. Not in Russia.”

Jake had expected to stay two minutes, a simple question, but now sat back at the table, giving way to the inevitable visit. It was a Berlin conversation, comparing survivor lists. Greta from downstairs. The block leader who chose the wrong shelter. Frau Dzuris’ son, safe from the army, then trapped at the Siemens plant and hauled off by the Russians.

“And Emil?” Frau Dzuris said with a sidelong glance at Jake.

“I don’t know. My parents are dead,” Lena said, changing the subject.

“A raid?”

“Yes, I just heard.”

“So many, so many,” Frau Dzuris said, shaking her head, then brightened. “But to see you together again—it’s lucky.”

“Yes, for me,” Lena said with a weak smile, looking at Jake. “He saved my life. He got me medicine.”

“You see? The Americans—I always said they were good. But it’s a special case with Lena, eh?” she said to Jake, almost waggish.

“Yes, special.”

“You know, he may not come back,” she said to Lena. “You can’t blame the women. The men made the war and then it’s the women who wait. But for how long? Eva’s waiting. Well, he’s my son, but I don’t know. How many come back from Russia? And we have to eat. How will she feed the children without a man?”

Lena looked over at them still eating the chocolate, her face softening. “They’ve grown. I wouldn’t recognize them.” She seemed for a moment someone else, back in a part of her life Jake had never known, that had happened without him.

“Yes, and what’s to become of them? Living like this, potatoes only. It’s worse than during the war. And now we’ll have the Russians.”

Jake took this as an opening. “Frau Dzuris, the soldier who was looking for Lena and Emil—he was a Russian?”

“No, an Ami.”

“This man?” He handed her the picture.

“No, no, I told you before, tall. Blond, like a German. A German name even.”

“He gave you his name?”

“No, here,” she said, putting her finger above her breast, where a nameplate would have been.

“What name?”

“I don’t remember. But German. I thought, it’s true what they say. No wonder the Amis won—all German officers. Look at Eisenhower,” she said, floating it as a light joke.

Jake took the picture back, disappointed, the lead suddenly gone.

“So he wasn’t looking for Emil,” Lena said to the picture, sounding relieved.

“Something’s wrong?” Frau Dzuris said.

“No,” Jake said. “I just thought it might be this man. The American who was here—did he say why he came to you?”

“Like you—the notice in Pariserstrasse. I thought he must be a friend of yours,” she said to Lena, “from before, when you worked for the Americans. Oh, not like you,” she said, smiling at Jake. She turned to Lena. “You know, I always knew. A woman can tell. And now, to find each other again. Can I say something to you? Don’t wait, not like Eva. So many don’t come back. You have to live. And this one.” To Jake’s embarrassment, she patted his hand. “To remember the chocolate.”

It took them another five minutes to get out of the flat, Frau Dzuris talking, Lena lingering with the children, promising to come again.

“Frau Dzuris,” Jake said to her at the door, “if anyone should come—”

“Don’t worry,” she said, conspiratorial, misunderstanding. “I won’t give you away.” She nodded toward Lena, starting down the stairs. “You take her to America. There’s nothing here now.”

In the street, he stopped and looked back at the building, still puzzled.

“Now what’s the matter?” Lena said. “You see, it wasn’t him. It’s good, yes? No connection.”

“But it should have been. It makes sense. Now I’m back where I started. Anyway, who did come?”

“Your friend said the Americans would look for Emil. Someone from Kransberg, maybe.”

“But not Tully,” he said stubbornly, still preoccupied.

“You think everyone’s looking for Emil,” she said, getting into the jeep to leave.

He started around to his side, then stopped, looking at the ground. “Except the Russian. He was looking for you.”

She glanced over at him. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Trying to add two and two.” He got in the jeep. “But I need Emil to do that. Where the hell is he, anyway?”

“You were never so anxious to see him before.”

Jake turned the key. “Nobody was murdered before.”