scraped the floor as reporters leaned forward to hear. The prosecution attorneys and their Allied advisers were crammed together at one table, a lopsided stacking of cards against the defense lawyer and his one assistant, who sat by themselves at another. Along the wall, female Soviet soldiers made transcripts with steno machines, handing them to two civilian girls for translation.
The trial was in German, but the judges, three senior officers shuffling papers and trying not to look bored, evidently understood only a little, so the lawyers, also in uniform, occasionally switched to Russian, afraid to let their points drift away to the steno keys unheard. There was a heavy chair for witnesses, a Soviet flag, and not much else. It was the format of an inquisition, starker even than the rough-and-ready frontier courtrooms of Karl May, not a robe in sight. People were frisked at the door.
Renate stood behind a cagelike railing of new plywood next to the bench, facing the room, as if her expression during the testimony would be recorded as a kind of evidence. Behind her stood two soldiers with machine guns, gazing stolidly at her back. Bernie said she had changed, but she was recognizably the same-thinner, with the hollowed-out look you saw everywhere in Berlin, but still Renate. Only her dark hair was different, cropped close and turned a premature, indeterminate pale. She was dressed in a loose gray prison shift, belted, her collarbones sticking out, and the face he remembered as pretty and animated seemed rearranged-beaten, perhaps, or somehow disfigured by her life. But there were the eyes, sharp and knowing, glancing defiantly around the crowd as if she were even now looking for news items. The same way, Jake thought, she must have hunted for Jews.
She spotted him instantly, raising her eyebrows in surprise, then dropping them in bewilderment. A friend sitting at the table of her accusers. Did she think he was there to testify against her? What would he have said? A girl with a quick smile who liked to take chances, bold enough to cadge a cigarette from a Nazi on a train platform. A sharp eye, trained for snatching prey in the street. How could she have done it? But that was always the question-how could any of them have done it? He wanted suddenly to signal some absurd reassurance. I remember who you were. Not a monster, not then. How can I judge? But who could? Three Russian soldiers on a makeshift platform, whose fleshy faces seemed to ask no questions at all.
They were only minutes into the trial before Jake realized they hadn’t come to establish guilt, just the sentence. And was there any doubt? The Germans had kept records of her activity, more columns of numbers. As the prosecution read out its indictments, Jake watched her lower her head, as if she too were overwhelmed by the sweep of it, all the snatches, one by one, until finally there were enough to fill boxcars. So many. Had she known them all, or just guessed, smelling fear when it walked into one of her Cafes? Each number a face-to-face moment, real to her, not anonymous like a pilot opening the bomb bay.
The method was as Bernie had described-the sighting, the hurried call, the nod of her head to make the arrest, her colleagues bundling people into cars as she walked away. Why hadn’t she kept walking? Instead she’d gone back to the collection center, her room there its own kind of short leash, but still not a prison. Why not just keep walking away? Gunther had moved his wife fourteen times. But he had had papers and friends prepared to help. No U-boat could survive alone. Where, after all, would she have gone?
The Russian prosecutor then switched, oddly, to a detailed account of Renate’s own capture, the manhunt that finally ran her to ground in a basement in Wedding. For a moment Jake thought the Soviets were simply congratulating themselves for the press, now busily taking notes. Then he noticed Bernie in a lawyer’s huddle, heard Gunther mentioned by name as the hunter, and saw that it was something more-the old DA’s ploy, establishing your witness, the good guy in the neat jacket and tie. He needn’t have bothered. The story, with its breathless chase, seemed lost on the first judge, who shifted in his seat and lit a cigarette. The Russian next to him leaned over and whispered. The judge, annoyed, put it out and gazed at the window, where a standing fan was lazily moving the stuffy air. Apparently an unexpected western custom. Jake wondered how long it would take to call a recess.
He’d assumed from the buildup that Gunther would be the star witness. Who else was there? The records supplied the mechanics of the crime, but its victims were dead, no longer able to accuse. Gunther had actually seen her do it. And a DA always started with the police, to weight his case at the beginning. The first person called, however, was a Frau Gersh, a more theatrical choice, a frail woman who had to be helped to the witness chair on crutches. The prosecutor began, solicitously, with her feet.
“From frostbite. On the death march,” she said, halting but matter-of-fact. “They made us leave the camp so the Russians wouldn’t find out. We had to walk in the snow. If you fell, they shot you.”
“But you were fortunate.”
“No, I fell. They shot me. Here,” she said, pointing to her hip. “They thought I was dead, so they left me. But I couldn’t move. In the snow. So the feet.”
She spoke simply, her voice low, so that chairs creaked as people strained forward to hear. Then she looked over at Renate.
“The camp where she sent me,” she said, louder, spitting it out.
“I didn’t know,” Renate said, shaking her head. “I didn’t know.”
The judge glared at her, startled to hear her speak but unsure what to do about it. No one seemed to know what the rules were supposed to be, least of all the defense attorney, who could only silence her with a wave of his hand and nod at the judge, an uneasy apology.
“She did!” the woman said, forceful now. “She knew.”
“Frau Gersh,” the prosecutor said deliberately, as if the outburst hadn’t happened, “do you recognize the prisoner?”
“Of course. The greifer.”
“She was known to you personally?”
“No. But I know that face. She came for me, with the men.”
“That was the first time you saw her?”
“No. She talked to me at the shoe repair. I should have known, but I didn’t. Then, that same afternoon —”
“The shoe repair?” one of the judges said, confusing the past with the crutches now on display.
“One of her contacts,” the prosecutor said. “People in hiding wore out their shoes-from all the walking, to keep moving. So Fraulein Naumann made friends with the shoe men. ‘Who’s been in today? Any strangers?’ She found many this way. This particular shop—” He made a show of checking his notes. “In Schoneberg. Hauptstrasse. That’s correct?”
“Yes, Hauptstrasse,” Frau Gersh said.
Jake looked at Renate. Clever, if that’s what you were after, collecting items from cobblers. All her news- gathering tricks, offered to murderers.
“So she talked to you there?”
“Yes, you know, the weather, the raids. Just to talk. I didn’t like it-I had to be careful-so I left.”
“And went home?”
“No, I had to be careful. I walked to Viktoria Park, then here and there. But when I got back, she was there. With the men. The others-good German people, helping me-were already gone. She sent them away too.”
“I must point out,” the defense lawyer said, “that at this time, 1944, it was against the law for German citizens to hide Jews. This was an illegal act.”
The judge looked at him, amazed. “We are not interested in German law,” he said finally. “Are you suggesting that Fraulein Naumann acted correctly? ”
“I’m suggesting that she acted legally.” He looked down. “At the time.”
“Go on,” the judge said to the prosecutor. “Finish it.”
“You were taken away then. On what charge?”
“Charge? I was a Jew.”
“How did Fraulein Naumann know this? You hadn’t told her?”
Frau Gersh shrugged. “She said she could always tell. I have papers, I said. No, she told them, she’s a Jew. And of course they listened to her. She worked for them.”
The prosecutor turned to Renate. “Did you say this?”
“She was a Jew.”
“You could tell. How?”
“The look she had.”
“What kind of look was that?”
