Stattin Station

He kissed his son's head, and went back down to Ilse. 'We just nod our heads and look humble,' she told him as they started down the street towards the school. 'No arguments, no smart replies. And no jokes.'

'You'll be saying he gets it from me next.'

'Well he does, doesn't he? But I'm not blaming you. I like it that he doesn't believe most of what they tell him.'

'What does Matthias think?'

'He's angry. But then these days he's angry about anything that reminds him of the government we've got. He'd rather just wake up when it's all over.'

It was the first time Russell had ever heard his ex-wife criticise her current husband, and he felt rather ashamed of enjoying the moment.

They walked through the school doors and down the corridor to Paul's classroom, where his teacher, a grey- haired man in his fifties or sixties, was marking a pile of exercise books. A large map of the western Soviet Union adorned one wall, complete with arrows depicting German advances. Russell wondered if the teacher knew that he and Ilse had met in Moscow, two young and eager communists out to change the world. No jokes, he reminded himself.

The teacher's name was Weber. He proved stern and apparently humourless, but also surprisingly reasonable. It turned out that one boy had repeated Paul's jokes to his own parents, and the father had turned up at the school in a rage that morning. The boy had not named Paul as the source, but once the matter had been discussed in class, Paul had privately informed Herr Weber of his guilt. The teacher had no intention of divulging Paul's name to the complaining parent, a man, he implied, who was somewhat over-zealous in ideological matters. Paul had an excellent record in the Jungvolk, Herr Weber went on, and had started out well in the Hitlerjugend, but, like many spirited boys of his age, he clearly felt the urge to test the boundaries of what was permissible. Which was all perfectly normal. But in days like these, such testing could have disproportionate consequences, and it was highly advisable for both teachers and parents to clarify those boundaries wherever they could.

Ilse and Russell agreed that it was.

Herr Weber gave them one wintry smile, and thanked them for coming in.

It was gone seven when Russell reached the Halensee Ringbahn station, and dense layers of cloud hid the moon and stars, promising one of the deeper blackouts. Accidents were common on the S-Bahn in such conditions, with passengers opening doors and stepping out onto what they mistakenly hoped was a platform.

Russell got off to change at Westkreuz, and stood on the Stadtbahn platform in the near complete darkness for what seemed like ages, listening to the murmur of invisible people and watching the patchwork of glows as passengers on the opposite platform dragged on their cigarettes. He would be arriving late at the Blumenthals, not that it mattered Jews were not allowed out after 8pm, which certainly simplified the task of finding them at home. Especially now that their telephones had all been disconnected.

The Blumenthals were one of several Jewish families that he - and often Effi as well - visited on a fairly regular basis. At first this had been work-inspired, part of Russell's attempt to keep track of what was happening to Berlin's Jewish community as the war went on. It quickly became clear that they could also help in many ways, some small, others increasingly significant. Ration tickets could be passed on, and news of the outside world did something to lessen the sense of helplessness and isolation which many Jews now felt. There was also the sense, for him and for Effi, that they were keeping the doors of their own world open, refusing to be trapped in what a German colleague had once called 'the majority ghetto'. And some of the Jews had become friends, insofar as true friendship was possible in such artificially skewed relationships.

A train finally rattled in behind its thin blue light, and Russell had no trouble finding a seat in a barely-lit carriage. Several Jews were standing together at one end of the carriage, presumably on their way home from a ten-hour shift at Siemens. They were not talking to each other, and he could almost feel their determination not to be noticed.

Leaving Borse Station, he picked a path up the wide Oranienburgerstrasse with the help of the whitened kerbs and an occasional tram. The Blumenthals - Martin, Leonore and their daughter Ali - had a small two-room apartment in one of the narrow streets behind the burnt-out ruins of the New Synagogue. This was reasonably spacious by current standards, but something of a come-down for the family, who had once owned a large house in Grunewald and several shops selling musical scores and instruments. Martin now worked in a factory out near the Central Stockyards, cutting and treating railway sleepers. He was the same age as the century, a year younger than Russell, but he looked considerably older. Hook-nosed and with protuberant lips, he looked like a caricature Der Sturmer Jew; by contrast, his wife Leonore was simply dark-haired and petite, while his seventeen year-old daughter Ali, with her fair hair and green eyes, could have passed an audition for Tristan's Isolde.

Leonore answered the door, apprehension shifting to relief when she saw who it was. Martin leapt up to offer his right hand, his left clutching the copy of Faust he seemed to be forever reading. 'Come in, come in,' he urged. 'It's good to see you. I'm fed up with talking to other Jews - their only topic of conversation is themselves, and how terrible everything is.'

'Everything is terrible,' Russell said, refusing Leonore's armchair and sitting himself down at the table. As if to prove his point, she picked up the coat she'd obviously been working on and continued with her task of re-attaching a yellow star.

'Yes, but it serves no purpose to talk of nothing else. Everything passes, even these... gentlemen. America will enter the war, and that will be that. It's strange - the last war they entered, I was a boy shooting at them. This time I shall invite every last one of them around for dinner.'

Russell laughed. 'I think Leonore might have something to say about that.'

'Chance would be a fine thing,' Leonore said. She was upset about something, Russell thought.

'It will happen,' Martin insisted. 'Tell me, what's the news? Since they took our radios away we have no idea what's actually happening.'

Russell gave him the edited version, as seen from London and Washington - the Russian war in the balance, the looming breakdown in Japanese-American relations.

'Surely the Japanese won't attack America?' Martin mused. 'How could they hope to win such a war?'

'Most people think they'll attack the British and the Dutch, and hope that the Americans stay out,' Russell told him.

They went over the Japanese options until even Martin's curiosity was exhausted. 'Where's Ali?' Russell asked Leonore, seizing his chance. It was Ali who had introduced him to her parents, after Thomas had taken her on as a bookkeeper at his Treptow factory.

'At the cinema,' Leonore admitted.

'Without her star,' Martin added proudly.

'Without her star,' Leonore echoed. 'My Aunt Trudi was taken,' she went on. 'I think you met her once. She lived in Wedding on her own, insisted on it, and her health's been good for a woman over seventy. She got the notification last week, and she left the day before yesterday as far as we know. I wanted to see her off, but she refused; she said she didn't want a big fuss, but I think she was afraid they'd take me too.'

'A train did leave the night before last,' Russell said, but thought better of admitting that he'd watched it go.

'Then she's gone.'

'Many things are terrible,' Martin said, 'but not everything. Frau Thadden, the woman upstairs, is a real friend to us - she doesn't think any less of us because we are Jews. And a few nights ago a policeman banged on our door. We feared the worst, but he wanted to tell us to pull our blackout curtain tighter - some light was showing. If some of his colleagues saw it, he said, then we'd be in trouble, and he didn't want that. You see,' he said, turning to his wife, 'there are many good Germans.'

'I know there are,' she said. 'But Aunt Trudi is still gone.'

Seeing his stricken expression, she relented, and gave him a wonderful smile. After all, Russell realised, the heart that clutched at straws was the heart she'd fallen in love with.

'Have any of your friends heard any more from those who've been sent East?' he asked.

'Yes,' Leonore said. 'Two of them. I wrote it down as you asked,' she added, taking down a recipe book. 'It seemed a good hiding place,' she explained, leafing through the pages. 'Here we are. Two letters from Lodz. One