was having trouble breathing. The two of them turned up at the works — it was the only address they had in Berlin — and I got him admitted to hospital.’ He smiled wryly. ‘As Frau Niebel pointed out, Victims of Fascism get special treatment these days.’
He gave them a troubled look. ‘I also told them everything I know about Miriam, which was probably a mistake. I wanted them to know that she was alive in September 1939, but of course that entailed explaining why she hadn’t contacted them. Leon took it all very much to heart — quite literally, I’m afraid — and Esther is convinced he won’t recover until he knows what’s happened to her. So I’ve promised to start looking again. Some of the Jewish survivors must know what happened to her.’
Russell sighed. ‘I was going to say “she must be dead,” but that’s what I thought about her parents. Maybe she is alive somewhere. Where would you start to look? We’ve got Rosa’s father to look for.’
‘We can look for Miriam while we look for him,’ Effi interjected. ‘We’ll be looking in the same places, won’t we?’
‘I was actually compiling a list this morning,’ Thomas said. ‘DP camps, of course — there’s probably twenty or more in and around Berlin, some big, some small. Some of the Jews are in camps of their own, but not all of them. It seems the Americans believe they deserve special treatment, while the British think separating them out is too reminiscent of the Nazis. The old hospital on Iranische Strasse where you and Rosa were held is one of them, and there are a couple of others. And then there are the old Jewish neighbourhoods. There are messages pinned wherever you look, telling where people have gone, or asking for news of others. Almost everyone seems to be looking for someone.’
‘We’ll start tomorrow,’ Effi said, looking at Russell. ‘I’ll go to Schluterstrasse in the morning, and meet you both somewhere for lunch.’
‘Not me, I’m afraid,’ Thomas said. ‘I have another meeting with the Russians.’
‘How is business?’ Russell asked.
‘A nightmare,’ Thomas said cheerfully. ‘Living in the American zone, working in the Russian — it’s a recipe for trouble. The Russians brought me plenty of work right from the outset, but most of it was propaganda, which didn’t please the Americans. So they told the Russians that I had a suspect past, and that they’d be bringing me up before a Denazification tribunal. They haven’t yet, but they probably will.’
‘You’re joking,’ Effi said.
‘I wish I was. As you both know, I did cosy up to some pretty disgusting people during the war — it seemed the only way to protect our Jewish staff, not that it worked in the end. If it comes to it, I could probably find some Jewish survivors to testify on my behalf, but what a waste of time and energy that would be.’
And embarrassing, Russell thought. Thomas was not someone who liked to publicise his good deeds.
‘Business has become politics, I’m afraid,’ Thomas concluded. ‘But then I suppose it always was.’
‘How did the Russians reply to the Americans?’ Russell asked.
‘Oh, they wouldn’t care if I turned out to be Hitler’s long-lost brother. They shot all the Nazis they came across in the first few months, and then drew a line under it. Now all they care about is how useful anyone might be. It’s almost refreshing, especially when you see the contortions the Americans are going through. But I shouldn’t complain,’ he added with a sudden smile, ‘most Berliners are having a much worse time than I am. You know what the basic ration card is called? The death card, because it doesn’t give you enough calories to live on. That’s the one everyone in this house has, save me and Esther. I get more for running a business, and Esther for being a ‘Victim’. But we both put what we get in the house kitty, not that you’d think so from Frau Niebel’s attitude.’
‘Well, you’ll have two more for the pot now,’ Effi said.
‘And yours will be the most welcome,’ Thomas told her. ‘Artists get the highest-grade card, thanks to the Russians. What a strange people they are. Their soldiers rape half the women in the city, and then they sponsor an artistic renaissance.’
‘Different Russians,’ Russell told him. ‘Think Beethoven and the storm troopers.’
Thomas laughed. ‘I suppose so. Do you know much about your new film?’ he asked Effi.
‘Not a great deal. It seems well-meaning, which will make a change in itself. I’m hoping there’s a script waiting for me at Schluterstrasse.’
‘And you’re back as a journalist?’ he asked Russell.
‘Yes. Sort of.’
‘The Soviets have come back with the bill?’
‘Yes, but we can talk about that some other time. Esther Rosenfeld isn’t here, is she?’
‘No, she spends her days at the hospital. She usually comes back here to sleep, so you might see her tonight.’ He smiled at them both. ‘Now, how about some lunch? There’s a community canteen on Im Dol where the food’s just about passable. And then we can go for a walk in the Grunewald. Just like old times.’
‘That sounds good,’ Russell said, with rather more enthusiasm than he felt. He had last walked the Grunewald at night, in the company of three Russians. Two had died before dawn, the third a few days later. It would be nice to see the forest again, but ‘just like old times’ seemed a trifle optimistic.
Through lunch and a long stroll through the winter trees, through dinner and drinks at a local restaurant half- full of American officers, the three of them talked and talked, catching each other up on four years spent apart. Their time together in April had been short, and Thomas had only scant knowledge of Effi’s years alone in Berlin and of Russell’s long exile in America and Britain. And they knew next to nothing of Thomas’s long losing battle to save his Jewish workers, or the months he had spent back in uniform.
It wasn’t all reminiscences, but Russell couldn’t help noticing that whenever the future cropped up, their conversation soon slipped backwards, as if the pull of the past was still too strong to escape. Later that night, lying, somewhat guiltily, in Thomas’ unusually comfortable bed, he tried to explain this thought to Effi.
She was ahead of him. ‘In London it felt like people were only thinking of the future, that they wanted to put the war behind them. But it’s not like that here. The fighting’s over, but not the war. That poor girl in Joachim’s room — if she started weeping she’d never stop. The fight we saw at the station, Miriam’s father half-killed by Poles, not to mention the Russians’ plans for you. I know the Nazis are gone, but…’
‘The leaders, maybe. But the small fry are still out there, and from everything Thomas was saying, there’s no real acceptance of what happened here. Most ordinary Germans seem to think that the Allies’ concentration camp films were faked. Maybe a few thousand Jews were killed, but millions? And most of those who do accept it claim that there was no way of knowing, that only a few people were involved.’
Effi sighed. ‘At least no one in our family helped them.’
‘Jens?’
‘Oh, Jens.’
‘We sat at his dinner table, we listened to him explain how hard it was condemning millions of Russians to starvation, and we said nothing because we didn’t want to upset Zarah.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘I spent Hitler’s early years writing stories about schnauzers, for God’s sake.’
‘But you did end up risking your life to expose them.’
‘Only when I had to.’
‘And I made movies for Goebbels,’ she said.
‘And you saved a lot of Jewish lives. We both have reasons for pride and shame, like most Germans. And I don’t blame us or them. When it’s your life or somebody else’s it takes a certain kind of bravery — or foolishness — to deliberately put yourself second. And I feel a lot easier praising those that do put themselves second than condemning those that can’t. I don’t envy the Allies’ judges. Those bastards on trial at Nuremberg may deserve all they get, but they’re special cases. And there are an awful lot of Germans — communists, Jews, homosexuals, victims and resisters of all descriptions — who deserve both praise and sympathy. And between those two extremes there are about sixty million Germans who deserve neither reward nor punishment.’
‘When we were at the restaurant,’ Effi said, ‘I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation at the next table. One man was ranting away about the hypocrisy of the Americans and the British in not trying their own war criminals. I imagine a lot of Germans would agree with him.’
‘So do I,’ Russell admitted. ‘People should end up in the dock for Hiroshima and Dresden and a whole lot else. But they won’t. So we have to ask ourselves — hypocrisy or not, do we want Germany’s crimes to go unpunished? And I have to say, I don’t.’
