virtually useless Reichsmarks only to pay the rent and to buy their miserable ration allowances. For the student of classical economics, Berlin presented the perfect model of a business cycle that was determined by greed and need.
In front of the blackened Reichstag on a field the size of a football pitch as many as a thousand people were standing about in little knots of conspiracy, holding what they had come to sell in front of them, like passports at a busy frontier: packets of saccharine, cigarettes, sewing-machine needles, coffee, ration coupons (mostly forged), chocolate and condoms. Others wandered around, glancing with deliberate disdain at the items held up for inspection, and searching for whatever it was they had come to buy. There was nothing that couldn’t be bought here: anything from the title-deeds to some bombed-out property to
But it wasn’t just Germans who came to trade. Far from it. The French came to buy jewellery for their girlfriends back home, and the British to buy cameras for their seaside holidays. The Americans bought antiques that had been expertly faked in one of the many workshops off Savignyplatz. And the Ivans came to spend their months of backpay on watches; or so I hoped.
I took up a position next to a man on crutches whose tin leg stuck out of the top of the haversack he was carrying on his back. I held up my watches by their straps. After a while I nodded amicably at my one-legged neighbour who apparently had nothing which he could display, and asked him what he was selling.
He jerked the back of his head at his haversack. ‘My leg,’ he said without any trace of regret.
‘That’s too bad.’
His face registered quiet resignation. Then he looked at my watches. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘There was an Ivan round here about fifteen minutes ago who was looking for a good watch. For 10 per cent I’ll see if I can find him for you.’
I tried to think how long I might have to stand there in the cold before making a sale. ‘Five,’ I heard myself say. ‘If he buys.’
The man nodded, and lurched off, a moving tripod, in the direction of the Kroll Opera House. Ten minutes later he was back, breathing heavily and accompanied by not one but two Russian soldiers who, after a great deal of argument, bought the Mickey Mouse and the gold Patek for $1,700.
When they had gone I peeled nine of the greasy bills off the wad I had taken from the Ivans and handed them over.
‘Maybe you can hang on to that leg of yours now.’
‘Maybe,’ he said with a sniff, but later on I saw him sell it for five cartons of Winston.
I had no more luck that afternoon, and having fastened the two remaining watches to my wrists, I decided to go home. But passing close to the ghostly fabric of the Reichstag, with its bricked-up windows and its precarious- looking dome, my mind was changed by one particular piece of graffiti that was daubed there, reproducing itself on the lining of my stomach: ‘What our women do makes a German weep, and a GI come in his pants.’
The train to Zehlendorf and the American sector of Berlin dropped me only a short way south of Kronprinzenallee and Johnny’s American Bar where Kirsten worked, less than a kilometre from US Military Headquarters.
It was dark by the time I found Johnny’s, a bright, noisy place with steamed-up windows, and several jeeps parked in front. A sign above the cheap-looking entrance declared that the bar was only open to First Three Graders, whatever they were. Outside the door was an old man with a stoop like an igloo – one of the city’s many thousands of tip-collectors who made a living from picking up cigarette-ends: like prostitutes each tip-collector had his own beat, with the pavements outside American bars and clubs the most coveted of all, where on a good day a man or woman could recover as many as a hundred butts a day: enough for about ten or fifteen whole cigarettes, and worth a total of about five dollars.
‘Hey, uncle,’ I said to him, ‘want to earn yourself four Winston?’ I took out the packet I had bought at the Reichstag and tapped four into the palm of my hand. The man’s rheumy eyes travelled eagerly from the cigarettes to my face.
‘What’s the job?’
‘Two now, two when you come and tell me when this lady comes out of here.’ I gave him the photograph of Kirsten I kept in my wallet.
‘Very attractive piece,’ he leered.
‘Never mind that.’ I jerked my thumb at a dirty-looking cafe further up Kronprinzenallee, in the direction of the US Military HQ. ‘See that cafe?’ He nodded. ‘I’ll be waiting there.’
The tip-collector saluted with his finger and quickly trousering the photograph and the two Winston, he started to turn back to scan his flagstones. But I held him by the grubby handkerchief he wore tied round his stubbly throat. ‘Don’t forget now, will you?’ I said, twisting it tight. ‘This looks like a good beat. So I’ll know where to go looking if you don’t remember to come and tell me. Got that?’
The old man seemed to sense my anxiety. He grinned horribly. ‘She might have forgotten you, sir, but you can rest assured that I won’t.’ His face, a garage floor of shiny spots and oily patches, reddened as for a moment I tightened my grip.
‘See that you don’t,’ I said and let him go, feeling a certain amount of guilt for handling him so roughly. I handed him another cigarette by way of compensation and, discounting his exaggerated endorsements of my own good character, I walked up the street to the dingy cafe.
For what felt like hours, but wasn’t quite two, I sat silently nursing a large and inferior-tasting brandy, smoking several cigarettes and listening to the voices around me. When the tip-collector came to fetch me his scrofulous features wore a triumphant grin. I followed him outside and back into the street.
‘The lady, sir,’ he said, pointing urgently towards the railway station. ‘She went that way.’ He paused as I paid him the balance of his fee, and then added, ‘With her
I didn’t stay to hear any more and walked as briskly as I was able in the direction which he had indicated.
I soon caught sight of Kirsten and the American officer who accompanied her, his arm wrapped around her shoulders. I followed them at a distance, the full moon affording me a clear view of their leisurely progress, until they came to a bombed-out apartment block, with six layers of flaky-pastry floors collapsed one on top of the other. They disappeared inside. Should I go in after them, I asked myself. Did I need to see everything?
Bitter bile percolated up from my liver to break down the fatty doubt that lay heavy in my gut.
Like mosquitoes I heard them before I saw them. Their English was more fluent than my understanding, but she seemed to be explaining that she could not be late home two nights in a row. A cloud drifted across the moon, darkening the landscape, and I crept behind an enormous pile of scree, where I thought I might get a better view. When the cloud sailed on, and the moonlight shone undiminished through the bare rafters of the roof, I had a clear sight of them, silent now. For a moment they were a facsimile of innocence as she knelt before him while he laid his hands upon her head as if delivering holy benediction. I puzzled as to why Kirsten’s head should be rocking on her shoulders, but when he groaned my understanding of what was happening was as swift as the feeling of emptiness which accompanied it.
I stole silently away and drank myself stupid.
4
I spent the night on the couch, an occurrence which Kirsten, asleep in bed by the time I finally staggered home, would have wrongly attributed to the drink on my breath. I feigned sleep until I heard her leave the apartment, although I could not escape her kissing me on the forehead before she went. She was whistling as she stepped down the stairs and into the street. I got up and watched her from the window as she walked north up Fasanenstrasse towards Zoo Station and her train to Zehlendorf.
When I lost sight of her I set about trying to salvage some remnant of myself with which I could face the day. My head throbbed like an excited Dobermann, but after a wash with an ice-cold flannel, a couple of cups of the captain’s coffee and a cigarette, I started to feel a little better. Still, I was much too preoccupied with the memory
