Elfie’s long hair is blowing about and bits of paper are sailing through the air after passengers have wrenched down windows on both sides of the old subway car. A very old car and a short train. It is a hot July day, 1943.
The woman in the worn raincoat of uncertain colour is pushing through the crowd once more, eyes red-rimmed and heavy-lidded. She scans the aisles, the bunch at the door, her gaze at shoulder level, shakes a ring of keys.
“Jürgen,” she whispers, “Jürgen.” All the way to the back.
At the next station she leaves and returns to the car just in front. A dignified gait now. It’s a smoker in which the nose detects tobacco additives of the back yard variety. She pushes in, eyes searching. People move aside, give her space. Elfie sees a group of fourteen-year-olds talking.
“Wasn’t she here just a while ago?” says one. “Yes, she was.” She gets off at the next station, changes cars once more.
“Hmmm. Don’t know,” says another. “Why?”
At Savigny Platz there she comes again her expression purposeful, scans the car from the platform.
“Must see Jürgen,” she says urgently and eases herself in as the doors close.
“You know what?” says one of the boys, “I think I’ve seen her before. She just rides the subway mumbling to herself. Tried to open the doors between stations that time. Wonder what she’s on about? Do we know any Jürgen?”
“We’ll never know,” Elfie hears one of the girls. “Would you have the nerve to stop and ask her? And yes, I do know a Jürgen. Takes piano lessons with my teacher. Used to.” “Maybe she’s just a nutter. I’m sorry for her.”
“I don’t know. Earlier, when she was pushing by us, I was thinking some family here in Berlin is wondering what happened to their boy. Did you hear the story about that woman downtown who looked at a bunch of little kids one morning down from her window? No, it wasn’t in the news. They were playing with something big and heavy in this ruin, a basement, and this boy in some uniform was yelling at them not to touch it and get out of there? But only one kid would come? And then she, the woman upstairs, shouted at the kids to get away but they just laughed.
So finally, the boy picks up this large canister and carries it off, away along the street, and when he’s bending down, it just blows up, busts him to smithereens and injures one of the kids too, and shatters the buildings opposite. Apparently, there was nothing left of the boy, nothing to bury. They don’t know who he was. Those poor little kids. They were goners too, of course.”
“Well, yeah, someone was missing that very morning, someone didn’t get home that day or any day,” says a girl.”
“Another Jürgen.”
“Maybe HER Jürgen. Or Horst or Max or —”
“Why did he pick up a dud though? What an insane thing to do. I mean, what was he thinking?”
“I’ll bet he wasn’t thinking, but why insult the victim? We can’t ask him, can we?’”
“I wonder what I would have done?”
“Shooed away those little kids, for heavens sakes.”
“Me? Run like hell. Take off, like the rest of us.”