which enraged Zarah. What did he have to be depressed about? - he had something worthwhile to do. And, whenever Effi tried to describe how she felt about making films for Goebbels' propaganda machine, she received short shrift from her older sister. What was Effi, a film star for heaven's sake, complaining about? She had a wonderful career and a man that she loved who spent time with her; how much better could it get?
Effi, for her part, felt bad that she could no longer confide in Zarah. Before the war they had told each other everything, had in fact been more honest with each other than they were with their respective partners. But all that had ended for Effi when she and Russell had decided on resistance. A safe-as-they-could-make-it kind of resistance, admittedly, but beyond anything that Zarah would understand or want to share. She had never been interested in politics, and Jens, though a decent husband and a doting father, was also a long-time Party member with an important job in the Nazi administrative machine. The things that kept Effi awake at nights were no longer things she could share with her sister, and these days their conversations revolved around less essential topics - Lothar's progress at school, their aging parents, the latest shortages, the movies that Zarah saw in her thrice-weekly trips to the cinema.
This particular meeting was no different. Lothar was loving school, their mother was already worrying about Christmas, the dentist down Zarah's street had started using aluminium for fillings. How was Jens? She hardly ever saw him, and when she did his mind was somewhere else. This war was having a terrible effect on family life.
Effi loved Zarah, but sometimes she wanted to shake her.
As he wiled away the hours in a Press Club armchair waiting for the Promi briefing, Russell overheard one of his colleagues offering long odds on them all still being around at Christmas. The man was probably right, he thought. If he was going to get presents for his son, then now was the time to do it. Christmas shopping, moreover, seemed a much better use of his time than listening to Goebbels gloat over the capture of Rostov.
In pre-war days Paul's favourite toyshop had been Schilling's on Friedrichstrasse, just beyond the station. Last time they had visited the spacious emporium - just before his son's birthday the previous March - the shelves had been almost empty, but Russell could think of nowhere better to try.
A tram got him there just before closing time, but he was soon wondering why the shop had bothered to open. The only items suitable for boys of Paul's age were cheaply-made board games with names like 'Bombs over England' and 'Panzers to Moscow.' The Third Reich might be short of most things, but cardboard was obviously plentiful.
Disappointed, Russell walked back under the bridge and climbed the stairs to the elevated platforms. With no toys, no meat and precious little alcohol, a merry Christmas seemed somewhat unlikely, although Goebbels' hacks had done their best to evoke the true Christmas spirit, re-writing 'Silent Night' as a paean to the Fuhrer.
The Stadtbahn train rattled in over the bridge, full of rush-hour passengers and smelling as bad as usual. Russell clung to a strap as it crossed and re-crossed the wintry-looking Spree, and wondered whether Effi would be there when he got home. Stepping out onto the platform at Zoo Station, the first thing he noticed was the sound of barking dogs.
There were two of them, both Alsatians, slavering and straining at their leashes. Two young
Treason, Russell thought. Punishable, like so many things in the Third Reich, by death.
The youth was a head shorter than his captors, with tousled blond hair and gold-rimmed glasses. He looked like he belonged in a Grunewald academy for the sons of the privileged. He was no more than seventeen.
The train pulled out. Most of the alighting passengers had disappeared down the stairs, but some, like Russell, were finding it harder to tear themselves away. One leather coat tried an intimidatory stare, and several Reichsbahn officials made coaxing motions towards the exit, but all to little effect. Across the tracks, a large crowd of waiting passengers watched from the other local platform.
The young man shrugged himself free of the one man still holding him. In lunging to refasten his grip, the Gestapo man lost his footing and went down heavily on his back, evoking several cheers from the audience on the opposite platform.
This was too much to bear. As his colleague grabbed the boy, the leather coat pulled a gun from his coat pocket and crashed it into the side of the boy's face. Russell expected the young man to go down, but he was wrong. The boy staggered, but then hurled himself at his attacker, pulling him to the ground. After a second's hesitation, the other two leather coats joined the fray, kicking and punching like men possessed, while the Orpo men just stood there, unable to release their hysterical dogs for fear that they might shred the wrong victim.
Barely a minute or so later, the three Gestapo men were back on their feet, breathing heavily. The young man lay still on the ground, his glasses a few feet away. They looked broken, but just to make sure one of the leather coats ground them under his shoe.
There were no cheers now, only an accusing silence.
A Gestapo man said something to the Orpo officers, who both shrugged their shoulders at him. Russell guessed they had been asked to carry the victim down and were pointing out that someone had to hold the still- slavering dogs. Acting as bearers was obviously beneath the dignity of the Gestapo, who began scanning the platform for likely 'volunteers'.
The young man must have heard it before Russell, the sudden shift of his spread-eagled body anticipating the sounds of the approaching train by a few seconds. As Russell turned to look, it passed the end of the platform, the locomotive steaming furiously, the line of laden flatcars still snaking round the curve above Kantstrasse. Turning back, he found the youth already in motion, running, half stumbling, away from the screaming Gestapo.
Oh no, Russell thought.
The young man ran diagonally across the platform and launched himself into the face of the oncoming locomotive. A silent flurry of limbs, a splash of crimson, and he was gone.
The locomotive thundered by, the unknowing driver on the other side of the cab. The long line of flat-cars rattled through, their draped loads bound for the East and other, less accidental, encounters with death.
The platform was full of stunned faces. Even the dogs seemed shocked.
As the train cleared the platform, Russell found himself drawn to the edge. A headless body was lying between the rails about twenty metres on from where the youth had jumped. The head was nowhere to be seen.
The dogs were whining now, the three leather coats staring down at the mutilated corpse. Even they seemed subdued by the turn of events. Russell was probably imagining it, but their expressions seemed those of children, up early on a Christmas morning, who had just broken a much-anticipated toy.
He turned on his heel and made for the stairway. Half-way down he found one of the leaflets the youth had been distributing. 'In whose name?' was the headline; that of the German people, the text insisted, had been taken in vain.
Too true, Russell thought. But who gave a Fuhrer's fuck for the wishes of the German people?
Back home that evening, Russell listened as Effi recounted her depressing lunch with Zarah, and decided against making things worse by sharing his experience at Zoo Station. Thinking the BBC might raise their spirits, they risked a joint listening session, seats pulled up close beside the wireless. But for once the Oxbridge-vowelled spokesman sounded strangely unsure of himself. They scoured the German wavelengths for some cheerful music, but all they could find were variations of central European gloom. The idea of going out was swiftly abandoned when the rain began beating on the blacked-out windows.
'A day to forget,' Effi said, as they settled for an early night.
Which was easier said than done. As Russell lay there unable to sleep, the train thundered on in his mind.
Next morning at ten, they met Paul at the main entrance to the Friedrichstrasse Station. Since his fourteenth birthday that March, Russell's son had been allowed to navigate his own way across Berlin, and the novelty had obviously not worn off - he clattered down the stairs from the elevated platforms in his
