Fritze climbed down from the cab of the huge Soviet Army transport, the soldier having pointed at a gleaming sports watch among several on his affluent wrist, to pinpoint the time when he would be returning along highway 96 later that afternoon. Fritze thanked him profusely, using almost all of his twenty words of Russian, and felt in his pocket for a small folded piece of paper.
He moved without crutches, but limped, his injured leg learning to walk all over again. There were children and old people lined up at the corner water pump, carrying off buckets and canisters of varying sizes. On his left, the park looked like the site of a series of Russian Cavalry victory parties. The ground was churned up, the soil littered with papyrossa butts and horse apples, and the charred remnants of campfires. Yet, round red toadstools had appeared under the birches, poisonously, preposterously decorative: nature following its own rules, fortunately.
Before he found the yellow house, he spotted Anna, running along the pond, calling out for someone. Nadja was with her. They were wearing dark scarves around their head. He waited and in time they came across.
“Fritze!” Anna’s greeting was clearly tempered by an emergency.
“I’m sorry, Fritze, we’re looking for my little brother. We can’t find him anywhere — so out of character for him, to just run off.”
He nodded.
“Well, yes, I’d like to help you girls. What do you want me to do? I can’t run or skip, though…”
“Good question. We’ve already searched the whole neighbourhood, back yards.”
“Normally, I would have counseled to call the police, but this isn’t ‘normally’, no phone and no police,” said Fritze, “so we are IT. The water pump up there?”
“Never without one of us. We were sweeping the balcony when we noticed he wasn’t in his sandbox down below. Our mother — we'd better go in. She’s a basket case.”
Just then they spotted the small figure speeding towards them in his bare, scratched feet, and they hugged him and swung him around and carried him inside.
“Remember Fritze. We worked together in the emergency service downtown, last year. He came to Nadja's party.”
Mother gathered her son into her arms and greeted the visitor with an uncertain look. Fritze pulled a small packet from his shirt and handed it to her. “In lieu of flowers,” he said, “the florist didn’t have anything remotely acceptable…” and they roared with laughter, partly in relief. The packet contained green coffee beans, and mother was thrilled.
“Thank you so much, young man,” she said, “there is no coffee ration on the new cards, of course. How kind of you,” and “how did you manage to get out here? Did Anna say you live downtown?”
“Oh? Has she been gossiping about me? I actually got a ride with a Soviet army truck today. My Mom works for the new neighbourhood administration.”
“You did? With a Russian truck?”
“I had a ride in a army truck too,” said Foffie, proudly sitting on Anna’s knees. “A BIG one. The Captain was driving it.”
For a moment there was absolute silence. They didn’t know whether to believe what they had heard. Trucks had been seen driving along the highway all afternoon, and there had been a few up the street, causing the women and girls to disappear in their hiding places, just in case. And then the convoys had left, driving along the sandy road by the woods.
“Who is this Captain?” asked Fritze, realizing the boy was telling the truth.
“Oh, he is a very decent man,” said Mother, shaking all over. “An officer with the troops stationed around here for a couple of weeks. He saw our boy in the sandbox one day and came in to tell me he had had a small son just like him, resembling him. He speaks a very fluent German, this Captain. His child died of typhoid fever, he said. He came a couple of times and brought some bread and chocolate for Foffie, and once even milk. One day he told me he would come and pick the boy up when he was ready to go back home. I laughed, of course. I thought he was joking.”
“Maybe he was,” said Fritze. “So what did the Captain say to you when he came?”
“Nothing,” said Foffie, “he just came to the sandbox, and played with me again. Then he said ‘I have to go now’, and then he carried me to the big truck and lifted me way up to the back. It was empty but there were soldiers in the other big trucks that drove away too. He had to hurry to catch up with them.”
“How far did you go, pumpkin? How long did you drive? What happened next?” Anna asked.
“Well, we drove and then there was a bump and then we stopped. Something was broken in the front. The captain and another soldier came out and they opened a box, and they were working on the truck.”
“And? Did they speak with you? Did the Captain explain anything?”
“No, he was talking in Russian all the time, and he was angry.”
“So what did you do?” asked Korinna.
“I couldn’t see anything and I waited, and the ride wasn’t going any more, so I climbed down the back and ran home,” said Foffie.
“Oh God, did they see you? Did anybody call after you?”
“No.”
“Where were all the other trucks then?” asked Fritze.
“They went away already,” said Foffie.
“Did you just run along or did you know the way?” asked Korinna.
“I knowed where it was! A little past the soccer field, you know, and so I ran and ran and ran, but I had to stop at the corner, until Uncle Wernig came and took me across with him.”
“Uncle Wernig? Are you sure it was him? Oh, that’s wonderful!”
“Sounds like a very lucky day to me,” Fritze said gravely. And they nodded, mother holding her head in her hands, sobbing. Nadja went to put her arm around her.
“I wonder if one of the neighbours would keep him inside for the time being,” wondered Anna, “just for the next two or three days. To be sure.”
Mother nodded again. They would speak to Uncle Wernig, if it really was he who had come home.
Fritze got up and walked around the room.
“Got to practise my limp,” he said. “Every time I see one of the less trustworthy types driving by, I limp a little harder.”
Mother was hugging Foffie, and Nadja was mumbling comforting things.
“I’ll take Fritze up to the back balcony,” said Anna, “where we can be heard but not seen.”
“Why would they defecate in my piano?” Mother whispered, with a far-away look. Fritze hesitated.
“They did? The soldiers did?”
Mother nodded.
“Why destroy a beautiful instrument like that? I don’t understand.”
“Um, this is not to excuse anybody, and, of course, I don’t really have any answers,” said Fritze, “but my Mom told us this week that the people in the Soviet Union were always led to believe they lived in Paradise compared to other countries’ populations, who were said to live in squalor and degradation.” He paused. Mother looked at him attentively.
“Well, then when they started to move into the German countryside and saw all the clean farms and towns, they realized they had been lied to, and as they went on the full implication sank in. Betrayed by the Germans, who first violated the non-aggression treaty, remember, and brought them so much grief, as well as their own guys, they are very very angry people. They want big-time revenge for the devastation of their own country, all those war dead, so they punish us, break our beautiful things as we broke theirs.” He shrugged. “That’s how I see it.”
“Yes, that’s how I see it,” said Mother, and she stared at the wall.
“My mother has been doing very poorly,” said Anna, as they made their way upstairs, “for several years now. She just couldn’t cope. But with the collapse of everything, she really fell apart. She’s been through such a lot. In the first place, my mother believes children should grow up in some kind of picture book land, where everything is beautiful and fair and noble. She was always very generous and loving to other folks, but she wasn’t treated the same way, and she became frantic for us kids. Just cried all the time,” Anna said.
“I’ve never met anybody like that before,” said Fritze evenly.
They sat down on cushions and a folded blanket on the rear balcony. Fritze arranged his leg.
“My mother expected everybody to be like Tatyana, the Ukrainian maid who worked for us these past three years. We Couldn’t really communicate very well, but we knew she was a decent, warm, wonderful human being. We loved her. I mean we totally trusted each other,” said Anna.
“What happened with her?”
“She finally left. After three days of waiting for her boyfriend, she apparently climbed on a big personnel carrier. I didn’t see it, couldn’t say goodbye. She had been helping us, but when she couldn’t prevent something terrible, just couldn’t keep the drunken soldiers in check, and my poor mother — she couldn’t take it and ran.”
“Oh God. I’m sorry. No wonder your Mother is in bad shape — and what happened today won’t improve her state of nerves.”
“No. I tell you. Two and a half hours after I came home the night the Russians arrived, I fell asleep on the mattress downstairs in the basement, Nadja tiptoed upstairs to our bedroom and looked out the window — and she saw them. This is the second street from the city limits: BERLIN! THEY WENT CRAZY. They ran along the street yelling, ‘uray, uray, uray’! So Nadja came back in and screamed, ‘they’re HERE, THE RUSSIANS!’ I ran upstairs with her and looked out, and here were these small figures, running, ducking and yelling. So we raced back to the cellar. Someone banged on the basement door and broke a big pane. I looked at my uniform and panicked. I crawled under the shelves. Can you believe it?”
“Yes. Sure thing.” Fritze nodded vigourously. “Why were you in your uniform? Where did you come home from? Emergency service?”
“Home Guards. We had been looking after over a hundred Hitler Youth boys. For about a month. Not far from here. Lilly and Emma were there too.”
“How are they? What happened to them?”
“I haven’t been in touch with Emma. Don’t know where she is. Lilly— I’ll tell you another time. I want to know what are you doing? Have you seen the guys from the bunker?”
“You bet. Graumann, remember him?”
“Of course, I remember Picco Graumann. He came to the party!” Anna said. “Well, he’s working at Treptow Fair Park, collecting tickets at the merry-go-round. Gets free rides.” Anna grinned, picturing Picco and his long legs on a horse or a swan.
“And the guys in my neighbourhood and I got into the coal business right away. We’re a thriving operation.”
“But Fritze, there isn’t any coal. How do you—”
“That’s the point. Lots of demand. Right after dark a dozen guys with rucksacks make for the railway yards, the supply depot, and secure the necessary product, then head back to my basement. One man goes along to create a diversion, should it become necessary.”
“Have you ever been caught?” Anna raised one eyebrow.
“Naw. We’re faster than those guys. They can’t imagine anyone going out after curfew.” “And?”
“That’s a scream. Some nights it’s like a zoo out there.”
Anna laughed.
“Have you heard that they opened the Renaissance Theatre? ‘Raub der Sabinerinnen.’ Feel like going?”
“I would love to go, but how am I going to get downtown and back again at night?” said Anna.
“Let’s take the matinee. There’s a regular train going every hour or so, and then you transfer to one of the buses. In the old days I would have picked you up with my Daimler, but you know how it is these days. The help is just hopeless.”
They sat in silence for a while, avoiding eye contact.
“The worst thing, Fritze, isn’t the hunger, or the uncertainties about the future, the corruption, the feeling that there’s no ground under your feet, no law, no one to uphold it — the worst thing is not to have lost the war, but to learn that we SHOULD have lost the war. Deserved to. That the others, those bastards, were the good guys. Right now I can’t imagine ever getting over it. That God was on THEIR side.”
“I doubt that God had anything to do with it. If I were him, I’d stay out of that mess.”
“Of course, you’re right. I don’t believe in God any more anyway. But what about my grief, our mourning so many, many decent, innocent, beloved people? Where do I go with that?” said Anna, cupping her face in her hands.
“My grandmother knows a family who lost four sons. FOUR SONS. What are they to do? How can they live on?”
“We lost when Hitler won, Anna,” said Fritze. “A lot of people left the country right then.”
“I hope they are alive to come home, IF they want,” said Anna. She straightened up. “I wanted to tell you there are some good stories too.
Across the street, this brand-new mother was sitting right in the living room, in a soft chair, just in her nightgown and robe, trying to nurse her new baby. Just two hours old. Her parents and younger sister were hiding in the basement. But she said she would stay upstairs with the boy. And so when the first Russian soldiers came in, they saw this eighteen-year-old new Mom and her infant. They took one look, turned around in the door and ran off. Twenty minutes later, these same guys reappeared bearing cans of condensed milk, toffees and a kind of zwieback, all obtained at the corner store’s basement storage. They piled all of their gifts on the dining room table, grinned at her in wild approval. Then they gently, gently closed the door behind them.”
Anna smiled.
“And at your house?” said Fritze.
“Back at our house, Tatyana’s teeth were chattering. So she stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth. But then the soldiers didn’t come in. We heard voices outside in Russian and they actually went away. It turned out our next-door neighbour, who speaks a few words of Russian, had come out in the twilight, when he too saw those dark figures approaching the houses, and had spoken to them! He told them there were no soldiers in the neighbourhood. In full view of the enemy, he walked the length of our back yard to protect us in the middle of the night. Have you ever heard of such courage?”
“Did they shoot him?”
“No, but—”