‘I did. But when I see what’s happening here… well, I can’t see these people queuing up outside a cinema, can you?
‘But that…’
‘I know,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I’m feeling useless, John. Ever since we got here.’
He opened his mouth to disagree, but thought better of it. He understood where the feeling came from, although ‘useless’ was not the word he would have chosen for himself. Frustrated, perhaps, or uncertain. Lost, even. And the strange thing was, it had almost come as a shock. Who would have thought that peace would prove more difficult than the war? The diminished danger of a violent death was certainly to be welcomed, but what else had peace brought in its train? Chaos, hunger, and corrupted ideals. Ivan the Rapist and GI Joe the Profiteer.
‘We need cheering up,’ he decided. ‘How about an evening at the Honey Trap? Irma said she’d get us in.’
When they entered the nightclub that evening, Russell hardly recognised the place. The lighting was dimmer than before, just a few chandeliers with most of the bulbs removed, and the white tablecloths shone like dull spotlights within each circle of patrons. Tuesday’s bare brick walls were now festooned with posters from Berlin’s pre-Nazi past, along with large portraits of Churchill, Truman and Stalin.
The place was more than full, and they were lucky to be passing a table as a couple stood up to leave. They had barely sat down when a waiter whisked away the empty glasses and demanded to know their order. A bottle of red wine set them back seven cigarettes, the waiter providing change for their pack from a tin case he carried in his inside pocket. The wine proved weak and slightly sour.
Russell and Effi gave their fellow revellers the once over. The male clientele seemed exclusively foreign, and mostly uniformed. The nightclub was in the British Sector, but that hadn’t deterred the Americans and Russians, who were both present in large numbers. The Americans were mostly officers or NCOs, but the Russians ranged from general to private, all bedecked in medals and wearing several visible wristwatches. For the moment at least, the room seemed almost awash with international goodwill.
Almost all of the females were German, and most of them were young. There were many low-cut tops and short skirts on display, but the fashions seemed dated to Effi, as if the girls had been raiding their mothers’ wardrobes. How many were ‘real’ prostitutes, how many girls just trying to get by? Or did that distinction no longer apply? She could see three girls happily chattering away as male hands fondled their breasts.
Up on stage a small orchestra of middle-aged men was offering a lively mixture of jazz and popular music. They’d been playing ‘In the Mood’ when Effi and Russell arrived, but the subsequent tunes had all been around since pre-Nazis days, when these musicians had presumably learnt them. Three couples were dancing on the small floor, two gyrating wildly, the third locked together with almost ferocious insistence.
‘It feels like a trip in a time machine,’ Russell said between tunes.
‘There were German men in those days,’ Effi replied. ‘This feels…’
‘Wrong?’
‘Humiliating.’
‘Yes,’ Russell agreed. There didn’t seem any point in stating the obvious, that victors had always humiliated losers, and fucking their women was just one of many means to that end. At least these women were getting something back, which was more than could be said for most of the Red Army’s victims.
‘Effi!’ a voice cried out behind them. It was Irma, floating on a cloud of expensive-smelling perfume. As the two women hugged, Russell grabbed an empty chair from the next table. For the next few minutes, Effi and Irma swapped tales of Barbarossa-the-musical and brought each other up to date. They were only silenced by the behaviour of a nearby couple, whose tongue-wrestling and under-table groping became impossible to ignore.
‘Where do they go?’ Effi asked, half amused and half disgusted. ‘As least I assume they’re not going to do it here.’
Irma laughed. ‘Does it shock you?’
‘No. Well, yes, a bit. Is it really the only way to survive?’
‘They think so. And to answer your question, there’s an alley out back with plenty of darkened doorways. But most girls like to take the soldiers home — if they give them family as well as sex it’s more likely to last. The parents lie there listening in the next room — they might disapprove, but they’re usually willing to share the spoils.’ She looked at her watch, an American Mickey Mouse model. ‘I’m on in half an hour; I have to get changed. How long are you staying?’
‘What time do the fights usually start?’ Russell asked.
‘Not for a couple of hours yet. The amount of water Geruschke adds, it takes most of the evening to get drunk.’
‘I haven’t seen him this evening.’
‘He’ll be around somewhere — he always is.’
They watched her squeeze her way through the packed tables, responding to each boisterous soldier’s greeting with a wave and a smile. The band started playing ‘Sentimental Journey’.
‘Do you think we’ll get our seats back if we have a dance?’ Effi asked.
Russell looked around. ‘Other people seem to,’ he said, noticing several empty tables with half-full glasses and coat-draped chairs.
They had three dances, and were beginning to enjoy themselves when two British soldiers decided to show off their jitterbugging skills. Effi was nearly laid out by a flailing arm, and decided enough was enough. Their seats were still vacant, but another couple had colonised one side of the table — a Russian corporal and a German girl who looked about fifteen. The former asked in stilted German whether they minded sharing their table, and seemed almost ecstatic when Russell responded in Russian. He spent the next ten minutes complaining how much he missed his wife, children and village by the Volga.
Russell sought escape with a trip to the toilet. In the corridor outside, two men were doing some kind of deal. They both gave him a quick once-over, decided he posed no threat, and went back to their business at hand. In the toilet, Russell detected marijuana among the less agreeable odours.
Back at the table, the Russian was ready to resume his life-story. Russell could think of no polite way of stopping him, but the German girl contrived to alleviate her own boredom, and finally shut him up, by the simple expedient of inserting a hand in his trouser pocket.
He grasped her by the arm, pulled her to her feet, and almost dragged her away towards the rear exit.
‘A darkened doorway,’ Effi murmured.
‘If they make it that far.’ As he watched them disappear, Russell had the sudden sensation that he was being watched. Turning his head, he found Rudolf Geruschke looking straight at him. The nightclub boss raised a hand by way of hello, and turned away.
A few minutes later two glasses of bourbon were delivered to their table. Unwatered. Compliments of the boss.
Why? Russell wondered. The man only knew him as Irma’s friend, and he didn’t seem greatly enamoured of her. And he’d never heard of Effi.
The thought was drowned by a drum-roll, and the appearance of a nattily-dressed MC. He treated his audience to a few jokes — all either rich in sexual innuendo or dripping with amused contempt for the no longer dangerous Nazis — and introduced Irma to rapturous applause.
A spotlight revealed her, now wrapped in a metallic-looking sheath of a dress. The voice was slightly huskier than Russell remembered, but she could still hold a note. She sang a couple of songs in English, then switched to German for a version of ‘Symphonie’ which reduced several of the Russians to tears. One more song in English had the Brits and Americans happily singing along, before she closed the set with a song that Effi knew of but hadn’t yet heard — ‘Berlin Will Rise Again’. It was stately, sad, defiant:
Just as after the dark of night,
The sun always laughs again,
So the lindens will bloom along Unter den Linden,
And Berlin will rise again.
The lights went out as the applause began to fade. Irma had vanished when they came back on, and Rudolf Geruschke was standing by the side of the stage, deep in conversation with an American colonel.
