deliberation, wondering what small percentage of all this might be on the level.
‘Well, what do you say?’
‘I can’t do it,’ I said eventually. ‘I’ll give you the polite reason first.’
I stood up and went to the window. In the street below stood a shiny new BMW with a Russian pennant on the bonnet; leaning on it was a big, tough-looking Red Army soldier.
‘Colonel Poroshin, it wouldn’t have escaped your attention that it’s not getting any easier to get in or out of this city. After all, you have Berlin surrounded with half the Red Army. But quite apart from the ordinary travel restrictions affecting Germans, things do seem to have got quite a lot worse during the last few weeks, even for your so-called allies. And with so many displaced persons trying to enter Austria illegally, the Austrians are quite happy that journeys there should be discouraged. All right. That’s the polite reason.’
‘But none of this is a problem,’ Poroshin said smoothly. ‘For an old friend like Emil I will gladly pull a few wires. Rail warrants, a pink pass, tickets – it can all be easily fixed. You can trust me to handle all the necessary arrangements.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s the second reason why I’m not going to do it. The less polite reason. I don’t trust you, Colonel. Why should I? You talk about pulling a few strings to help Emil. But you could just as easily pull them the other way. Things are rather fickle on your side of the fence. I know a man who came back from the war to find Communist Party officials living in his house – officials for whom nothing was simpler than to pull a few strings in order to ensure his committal to a lunatic asylum just so they could keep the house.
‘And, only a month or two ago, I left a couple of friends drinking in a bar in your sector of Berlin, only to learn later that minutes after I had gone Soviet forces surrounded the place and pressed everyone in the bar into a couple of weeks of forced labour.
‘So I repeat, Colonel: I don’t trust you and see no reason why I should. For all I know I might be arrested the minute I step into your sector.’
Poroshin laughed out loud. ‘But why? Why should you be arrested?’
‘I never noticed that you need much of a reason.’ I shrugged exasperatedly. ‘Maybe because I’m a private detective. For the MVD that’s as good as being an American spy. I believe that the old concentration camp at Sachsenhausen which your people took over from the Nazis is now full of Germans who’ve been accused of spying for the Americans.’
‘If you will permit me one small arrogance, Herr Gunther: do you seriously believe that I, an MVD palkovnik, would consider that the matter of your deception and arrest was more important than the affairs of the Allied Control Council?’
‘You’re a member of the Kommendatura?’ I was surprised.
‘I have the honour to be Intelligence officer to the Soviet Deputy Military Governor. You may inquire at the council headquarters in Elsholzstrasse if you don’t believe me.’ He paused, waiting for some reaction from me. ‘Come now. What do you say?’
When I still said nothing, he sighed and shook his head. ‘I’ll never understand you Germans.’
‘You speak the language well enough. Don’t forget, Mara was a German.’
‘Yes, but he was also a Jew. Your countrymen spent twelve years trying to make those two circumstances mutually exclusive. That’s one of the things I can’t understand. Change your mind?’
I shook my head.
‘Very well.’
The Colonel showed no sign of being irritated at my refusal. He looked at his watch and then stood up.
‘I must be going,’ he said. Taking out a notebook he started to write on a piece of paper. ‘If you do change your mind you can reach me at this number in Karlshorst. That’s 55-16-44. Ask for General Kaverntsev’s Special Security Section. And there’s my home telephone number as well: 05-00-19.’
Poroshin smiled and nodded at the note as I took it from him. ‘If you should be arrested by the Americans, I wouldn’t let them see that if I were you. They’ll probably think you’re a spy.’
He was still laughing about that as he went down the stairs.
5
For those who had believed in the Fatherland, it was not the defeat which gave the lie to that patriarchal view of society, but the rebuilding. And with the example of Berlin, ruined by the vanity of men, could be learned the lesson that when a war has been fought, when the soldiers are dead and the walls are destroyed, a city consists of its women.
I walked towards a grey granite canyon which might have concealed a heavily worked mine, from where a short train of brick-laden trucks was even now emerging under the supervision of a group of rubble-women. On the side of one of their trucks was chalked ‘No time for love’. You didn’t need reminding in view of their dusty faces and wrestlers’ bodies. But they had hearts as big as their biceps.
Smiling through their catcalls and whistles of derision – where were my hands now that the city needed to be reconstructed? -and waving my walking-stick like a sick-note, I carried on until I came to Pestalozzistrasse where Friedrich Korsch (an old friend from my days with Kripo, and now a Kommissar with Berlin’s Communist-dominated police force) had told me that I could find Emil Becker’s wife.
Number 21 was a damaged five-storey building of basin-flats with paper windows, and inside the front doorway, smelling heavily of burnt toast, was a sign which warned ‘Unsafe Staircase! In use at visitor’s own risk’. Fortunately for me, the names and apartment-numbers that were chalked on the wall inside the door told me that Frau Becker lived on the ground floor.
I walked down a dark, dank corridor to her door. Between it and the landing washbasin an old woman was picking large chunks of fungus off the damp wall and collecting them in a cardboard box.
‘Are you from the Red Cross?’ she asked.
I told her I wasn’t, knocked at the door and waited.
She smiled. ‘It’s all right, you know. We’re really quite well-off here.’ There was a quiet insanity in her voice.
I knocked again, more loudly this time, and heard a muffled sound, and then bolts being drawn on the other side of the door.
‘We don’t go hungry,’ said the old woman. ‘The Lord provides.’ She pointed at her shards of fungus in the box. ‘Look. There are even fresh mushrooms growing here.’ And so saying she pulled a piece of fungus from the wall and ate it.
When the door finally opened, I was momentarily unable to speak from disgust. Frau Becker, catching sight of the old woman, brushed me aside and stepped smartly into the corridor, where with many loud insults she shooed the old woman away.
‘Filthy old baggage,’ she muttered. ‘She’s always coming into this building and eating that mould. The woman’s mad. A complete spinner.’
‘Something she ate no doubt,’ I said queasily.
Frau Becker fixed me with the awl of her bespectacled eye. ‘Now who are you and what do you want?’ she asked brusquely.
‘My name is Bernhard Gunther – ’ I started.
‘Heard of you,’ she snapped. ‘You’re with Kripo.’
‘I was.’
‘You’d better come in.’ She followed me into the icy-cold sitting-room, slammed the door shut and closed the bolts as if in mortal fear of something. Noticing how this took me aback, she added by way of explanation: ‘Can’t be too careful these days.’
‘No indeed.’
I looked around at the loathsome walls, the threadbare carpet and the old furniture. It wasn’t much but it was neatly kept. There was little she could have done about the damp.
‘Charlottenburg’s not too badly off,’ I offered by way of mitigation, ‘in comparison with some areas.’
‘Maybe so,’ she said, ‘but I can tell you, if you’d come after dark and knocked till kingdom come, I wouldn’t
