‘Tell him how upset I was to miss him,’ Russell said, drawing a smile. ‘Thanks for your help.’
Sundays in Dahlem had never been noted for excitement, but the quiet streets offered a welcome corrective to their nightmare arrival at Anhalter Station. It should have been a cold, clear day, but the sun was muted by hanging dust, the freshness of the air compromised by faint odours of damp, decay and human remains. Russell found himself wondering how many bodies still lay unclaimed beneath the rubble.
Walking beside him, Effi noticed how little the population had changed since April. There were hardly any men on the street, and even fewer children. The only youths they had seen that morning had been begging outside the American mess hall.
Turning off Konigin-Luise-Strasse, they could see Thomas waiting by his gate. He hurried to meet them, engulfing first Effi, then Russell, in ferocious hugs. They had last been together in May, when Russell had bought their releases from the Soviet zone with the atomic documents that he and Varennikov had buried in Thomas’s garden. But Thomas had soon set off for the country home of his parents-in-law, where his wife Hanna and daughter Lotte had been living for almost eighteen months. Since that day Russell had only received one letter, confirming that all were alive and well.
The house looked much the same as in April — in sore need of attention. Thomas looked fit enough, but Russell couldn’t help noticing how much the war — and the death of an only son — had aged his friend.
‘When did you arrive?’ Thomas asked, leading them in through the front door.
‘Late last night,’ Russell said. ‘We arrived at Anhalter Station in the middle of a gun battle.’
Thomas was not surprised. ‘That’s a place to avoid after dark. The occupiers don’t have the men to police the city, and they won’t arm Germans. So…’ He shrugged and continued on into the kitchen-dining room. ‘This is the only communal room,’ he told them, pulling out chairs from under the table. ‘You’ll sleep in my bedroom,’ he added; ‘I can use the camp bed in my study.’
‘We can’t turn you out of your bed,’ Russell protested, knowing full well that his ex-brother-in-law would insist. The Americans might offer better accommodation, but Thomas’s company seemed infinitely preferable.
‘Thank you,’ Effi said.
‘You’re welcome. It’s so good to see you both. How is everyone?’
They gave him the news from London — Paul’s possible romance, Rosa’s excellent reports, Zarah’s flirtation with the man downstairs. ‘It seemed wiser to leave them there,’ Russell said, ‘at least until we knew what was happening here.’
‘That was probably the right thing to do. Hanna wants to come back, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea. I want them back, but I can’t help feeling they’re better off where they are. And I wouldn’t have any time to spend with them if they were here — if the Soviets aren’t demanding my presence, then the Americans are.’
‘Your printing works are in the Soviet zone,’ Russell guessed.
‘One street away from the boundary line,’ Thomas said bitterly.
‘Ouch.’
‘Ouch indeed.’
‘So who else is living here?’ Effi asked.
Thomas grunted and shook his head. ‘In the living room,’ he began, ticking off one finger, ‘an old couple named Fermaier. They’re decent enough, but in shock — they’ve survived and their family hasn’t. Their son was killed in the Dresden bombing, their daughter by a Russian shell in Schmargendorf. Two grandsons died in Russia. There’s only a granddaughter left, but she’s joined the communist party, and they can’t decide whether to disown her. I tried to reassure them — I told them that my sister was in the Party once — and they gave me sympathetic looks, as if I’d just admitted a family history of mental illness.
‘In Lotte’s room,’ he continued, ticking off a second finger, ‘there’s a younger couple named Schrumpf — about your age. How he survived the war is unknown — a civil servant of some sort I’d guess, and there’s that tell- tale fading of his jacket lapel where the swastika used to be. They don’t go out much, which might be because he doesn’t want anyone to recognise him. Or he just can’t bear seeing what happened to the thousand — year Reich. She wanders round in her dressing-gown at night, like someone auditioning for Hamlet’s ghost.
‘But it’s the couple in Joachim’s old room who give me the most trouble. A mother and her grown-up daughter. They’re not very nice, though perhaps they have cause. They both seem incredibly angry, and I’d guess that the daughter at least was abused by the Russians. But God knows it’s hard to feel any sympathy. They are so…’
Voices were audible in the hall.
‘Speak of the devil,’ Thomas half-whispered.
Two women came into the kitchen, one around fifty with pinched features and hair in a tight bun, the other in her twenties with blonde hair cut short and the sort of face a smile might transform.
‘Frau Niebel. Fraulein…’ Thomas said, getting to his feet. ‘How are you this morning?’
The woman sighed. ‘That woman kept us awake with her sobbing for half of the night,’ she said. ‘Again. She may be a “Victim of Fascism”’ — a heavy hint of sarcasm here — ‘but we ordinary Germans need our sleep. I’ve been to the Re-housing Office, and they have no record of her, so I assume she’s your personal guest…’
‘She is.’
‘Well, can you talk to her?’
‘I can indeed. But her husband is very ill, so she does have something to cry about.’ He gestured towards Russell and Effi. ‘These are old friends, who’ll also be staying for a while, Herr Russell and Fraulein Koenen.’
Russell and Effi got up to shake hands.
‘Have we met before?’ Frau Niebel asked Effi.
‘You’re the actress, aren’t you?’ the daughter said.
‘I am.’
‘Oh,’ her mother said, bewilderment in her eyes. Effi guessed that Frau Niebel was remembering the newspaper pictures from December 1941, and the story that she’d been kidnapped by her English spy of a boyfriend. The woman’s involuntary glance at Russell seemed to confirm as much.
But the woman quickly recovered. ‘We all have our crosses to bear,’ she said, turning back to Thomas. ‘I lost a husband myself, and not that long ago. But some of us bear those crosses in silence.’
Thomas merely nodded, but it proved enough.
‘What a dreadful woman,’ Effi murmured once the door had closed behind her.
‘Indeed,’ Thomas agreed. ‘But you’ll never guess who she was complaining about.’
‘Who?’
‘Esther Rosenfeld.’
‘Miriam’s mother?’ Russell was astonished.
‘No!’ Effi added disbelievingly.
‘The same,’ Thomas told them.
Six years earlier, in the last summer of peace, two Jewish Silesian farmers named Leon and Esther Rosenfeld had put their seventeen year-old daughter Miriam on a train to Berlin, where a job was waiting for her at Thomas’s printing works. Abducted on arrival, the girl had been in terrible emotional and physical shape by the time Russell and Effi tracked her down. A Jewish family in Berlin had offered care and a bed while she recovered, but when Russell travelled back to Silesia with the news of her survival, he had found the farm in ruins, both parents gone. He had, until this moment, assumed they were dead.
Their survival was wonderful news.
‘What’s Esther doing here?’ he wanted to know. ‘Where have she and Leon been all this time?’
‘A long story. That summer, they were threatened, and they decided to flee. They walked across the mountains, which must have been hard, even in August. Leon had an old friend in Pilsen, a Jew, and he had a Czech friend who was willing to shelter them all. They spent the whole war on a farm in Moravia, and when it was over they decided to go back home.’
‘But by then their home was in Poland,’ Russell guessed.
‘Yes. And as we know, an awful lot of Poles share the Nazis’ fondness for the Jews. The family that had taken their land refused point-blank to give it back, and when Leon tried to get official help he was beaten up. Badly as it turned out, though according to Esther they both thought he was well on the way to recovery. They set out for Berlin, partly to look for Miriam, partly because they had nowhere else to go, but by the time they got here Leon
