She blotted her lips. “You just missed Lena. She’s at Frau Hinkel’s. You should go too. You can’t imagine what she knows.”
“She went to a fortune-teller?”
“It’s not like that. Not a gypsy. She knows things, she really does.”
Jake looked out the window toward Wittenbergplatz, searching the street. Windows fronting the square, exposed, the wonderful light suddenly a liability. “Hannelore? Have you noticed anyone hanging around outside? A Russian?”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, gathering her purse. “He went back. He’s not looking for me.”
“No, I meant—” he said, then stopped. Why would Hannelore notice anything?
“Come on, I’ll show you,” she said. “It’s behind KaDeWe.”
He locked the door behind them and followed her down the stairs. “Your friends,” he said. “Anyone know about another flat?”
She turned, stung. “You want me to leave? This is my flat, you know. Mine. Just because I’m kindhearted —”
“No, not for you. For Lena. Her own place. It’s an inconvenience for you like this.”
“Oh, I don’t mind really. I’m used to it. It’s cozy, you know? And you’re so good about the food. How would we eat? And where would she go? Nobody has a flat unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Unless she has a friend. You know, important.”
“Not like me,” he said, smiling.
“No. A general, maybe. Someone big. That’s who has flats. And the whores.” A world of difference in her mind.
A work party was clearing one edge of Wittenbergplatz, women in army trousers loading carts. In the hot sun, everything smelled of smoke.
“He’s from London,” Hannelore said as they crossed the street, her high heels wobbling on the torn pavement. “Would I like it there, do you think?”
“I did.”
“Well, but it’s all the same now.” She spread her hand to take in the ruined square. “All like this.”
“Not like this.”
“Yes, they said so on the radio. During the war. Everything was bombed.”
“No. Just a few parts.”
“Why would they lie about that?” she said, sure of herself, Goebbels’ audience. “There,” she said when they reached KaDeWe. “In the next street. There’s a sign with a hand. How do I look?”
“Like an English lady.”
“Yes?” She fluffed her hair, looking in the shard of plate glass, still there, then waved him off. “Oh you,” she said, laughing, and teetered away toward the west.
The sign was a crudely drawn palm with three lines sketched in-Past running along the top, Present through the middle, and a spur with Future snaking across the heel. How many wanted the upper part read now? Frau Hinkel was on the second floor, marked with a zodiac, and he opened the door to a crowd of women sitting quietly in chairs like patients in a doctor’s waiting room. Berlin had become a medieval city again, black markets to transmute watches into gold, witches to glimpse the future in a pack of cards. A few years ago they had measured the curve of light.
But what did it matter? There was Lena, a surprised smile spreading across her face as he entered. A woman happy to see you, he thought, like nothing else, even better than good fortune. “Jacob,” she said. The others looked up at him, frankly interested, then lowered their eyes, the familiar reaction to a uniform. The woman next to Lena moved, making a place. “How did you know I was here?”
“Hannelore.”
“I know it’s silly, but she kept after me,” she said, still smiling, leaning close in a whisper, away from the others. “What’s wrong? You look so—”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Just the day. I went to a trial.”
“What trial?”
But it was the smile he wanted, not another terrible story. Not Renate, not Gunther, not any of them. Blue skies. He glanced at his watch. “Let’s get out of here. Someone found me a boat. It’s still light-we could go for a sail.”
“A boat,” she said, delighted, then frowned. “Oh, but I can’t. We’re expecting some children at the nursery. I have to help Pastor Fleischman. Don’t be disappointed. Tomorrow, all right? Look how dusty you are,” she said, brushing his arm, proprietary. “What?”
“Just looking.”
She flushed, then busied herself again with his sleeve. “You should have a bath.”
“Hannelore’s just gone out,” he said, an invitation. “We’d have the flat to ourselves.”
“Ssh.” She glanced over at the others.
“You could take one with me.”
She stopped moving her hand and made a face, mischievous, darting her eyes to signal that they were being overheard.
He leaned closer, whispering. “I’ll tell you your fortune.”
A small laugh, tickled by his breath in her ear. “Yes?” she said, then grinned. “All right. I’ll come some other time. It’s such a wait here.”
But as they got up, a small boy, presumably a little Hinkel, darted behind the curtain into the other room, and before they could reach the door Frau Hinkel herself appeared, holding back the curtain and looking at Jake. “Come,” she said. “You.”
Jake looked at the line of customers, embarrassed, but no one said a word, resigned to ceding place to soldiers. Lena pulled him toward the curtain, eager.
The room, like Frau Hinkel, was plain and ordinary-no beads, no turbans and crystal balls, just a table with some chairs and a worn deck of cards.
“The cards can tell us what is and what might be, but not what will be. Do you understand?” she said as they sat, a seer’s insurance policy, but simply delivered, her voice soft and comforting. She held the deck out to Lena to shuffle.
“You go first,” Lena said, nervous, not touching the cards.
“I don’t—” Jake started, but Frau Hinkel had put them in his hands. An old deck, slick with use, the face cards looking like Hohenzollerns.
When she started laying them out in rows, he felt an unexpected prick of apprehension, as if, despite all reason, they might actually reveal something. He knew it was just theater, a fairway con, but he found himself wanting to hear good news whether it was real or not, a fortune cookie’s message of happy journeys and long life, cloudless. But didn’t everybody? He thought of the tired faces outside, all hoping for a lucky sign.
“You have lucky cards,” Frau Hinkel said, as if she had heard him. “You have been lucky in life.”
Absurdly, he felt relieved. But was anyone unlucky here for twenty-five marks?
“Yes, it’s good. Because you have been close to death.” A safe guess after years of war, he thought, beginning to enjoy the act. “But protected. Here, you see? By a woman, it seems.”
He glanced up at her, but she was laying out more cards, covering the first set, absorbed in them.
“A woman?” Lena said.
“Yes, I think so. But perhaps simply by this luck, I can’t tell. A symbol. Now it’s the opposite,” she said, staring at the fresh row. “Now you are the protector. A risk, some danger, but the luck is still there. A house.”
“The newsreel,” Lena said quietly.
“There, again. The protector, like a knight. A sword. Perhaps a rescue. You are a warrior?” she said easily, the archaic word natural to her.
“No.”
“Then a judge. The sword of a judge. Yes, that must be it. There is paper all around you. Lots of paper.”
“There, you see?” Lena said. “He’s a writer.”
