entertainment — American soldiers and German girls enjoying varying degrees of drunkenness and physical togetherness. The girls’ mothers and grandparents were seemingly sequestered in their homes, eking out their meagre rations and trying to stay warm on a few bits of wood, while their daughters bought in extra food and fuel with what had once been considered their virtue.
In Steglitz centre they turned left onto the Hindenburgdamm. A drunken melee was underway beneath the railway bridge, but a quarter-moon hung above the straight and empty road ahead. If it hadn’t been so cold, it might have been an evening to treasure. Effi pulled the coat tighter around her, and narrowed the gap between hat and collar.
The street lights became sparser, and when the Hindenburgdamm segued into Goerzallee they disappeared altogether. Annaliese slowed the jeep down and followed the headlights into the suburban murk. A few minutes later they came to the sought-after junction, Goerzallee heading off to the right, a smaller road running straight on. Annaliese pulled the jeep to a halt and they both peered forward, down what seemed a factory-lined cul-de- sac.
‘It doesn’t look very inviting,’ Annaliese said, almost indignantly.
‘No,’ Effi agreed. ‘How long have we got?’
‘Almost ten minutes. I think I’ll drive in and turn round. I’d rather be facing out than in.’
She drove the jeep slowly down between the factory facades, finally emerging in a wide open cobbled space at the head of a long canal basin. A bomb-broken line of factories extended along the northern bank, dimly lit by the sinking quarter-moon. The wind-rippled water lapped against the exposed belly of a half-sunken barge.
Annaliese turned the jeep and brought it to a halt. She left the headlights on for a few seconds, the twin beams vainly searching the road ahead, then thought better of the idea. Staring out along the darkened road Effi had a mental image of cars lined up at the end of the AVUS Speedway, waiting for the starting gun.
Which reminded her of the one in her pocket. She gingerly took it out, and saw the surprise on Annaliese’s face. ‘Just in case,’ she said, placing it down between her feet.
‘Maybe we really should rob them,’ Annaliese suggested.
‘They’d know where to find us.’
‘True.’
Two headlights were approaching in the distance, but they eventually swung away.
‘How’s your love life?’ Effi asked Annaliese.
‘What love life?’
A luminescent beam filled the intersection, and then two more headlights appeared, turning towards them. Soon they could hear the rumble of a lorry engine above the purr of their idling jeep.
Annaliese flicked their lights off and on again. The lorry slowed to a halt some twenty metres in front of them. If the driver wanted to block their escape he had failed — the street was too wide, and there was still enough space for the jeep to squeeze past.
There were two men in the cab, the driver already opening his door, the other man shielding his eyes with a raised hand.
‘Turn your lights off,’ the driver shouted as his feet hit the ground. His German was perfect, but the accent suggested another origin. Polish, Effi thought. He didn’t sound Russian.
‘After you,’ Annaliese shouted back with her customary combativeness.
He hesitated for a second, then reached an arm back into the cab to douse the lorry’s headlights. The other man instantly raised his hands to shield his face, and it crossed Effi’s mind that he feared recognition.
Darkness ensued when Annaliese turned off the jeep’s headlights, but only for a second — the lorry driver was now waving a torch in their direction. ‘Women!’ he exclaimed, as if he couldn’t believe it.
Annaliese clicked on her own torch, and shone it straight back at him. In the cab the hands shot up again, but not quite fast enough. The face was familiar, Effi thought.
‘We’re nurses,’ Annaliese told the driver, in a tone that suggested it should have been obvious. Still shining the torch straight at him, she got out of the jeep. ‘Shall we point these at the ground?’
He followed her lead. ‘Doctors scared of the dark, are they?’ He was young, not much more than twenty.
‘Something like that. Where are the medicines?’
‘Where’s the money?’
Annaliese pulled the bag out from under her seat and set it down on the bonnet.
He started forward.
‘The medicines first,’ Annaliese insisted, laying a protective arm across the bag.
He hesitated for a moment, and Effi reached down a hand for the gun. The butt was cold to the touch, and she had the strange sense of time standing still. Could she shoot him?
She probably could.
She didn’t have to. He laughed, turned and walked to the rear of his lorry. They heard the door latch clank open, and a few moments later he was on his way back with two large cardboard boxes piled up in his arms.
‘Put them in the back,’ Annaliese told him, stepping back a few paces to keep a safe distance. Effi, still grasping the gun, kept one eye on the driver, one on the shadowy figure in the cab.
He placed them on one of the back seats.
‘How many are there?’ Annaliese asked.
‘Six. Another four.’
‘Does that sound right?’ Effi asked softly as he went for more.
‘More or less.’ Annaliese was opening the uppermost box with a fearsome-looking pocket knife, then shining her torch at the contents. ‘It looks all right,’ she muttered.
The driver returned with two more, and placed them on the other seat. ‘You don’t need to check them,’ he said indignantly, as if his integrity as a black marketeer had been called into question.
He collected the last two boxes, and wedged them between the others. He ran his torch up Annaliese, starting with the boots and ending with the blonde curls peeking out from under her hat. ‘Maybe next time we can combine business with pleasure.’
‘In your dreams,’ Annaliese told him contemptuously.
Effi’s grip tightened on the gun, but the man just laughed. ‘We’ll see,’ he said, sweeping up the bag and turning away.
Annaliese got in, handed Effi the torch, and turned the headlights back on. As Effi had expected, the man in the cab was ready, his face well covered. But would he lower his guard once the headlights had swung past? As Annaliese aimed the laden jeep through the gap between lorry and factory wall, Effi aimed the torch at the lorry’s cab and took her masking hand from the beam. She was treated to a close-up of a furious face, and a clear recollection of where she’d seen it before.
‘It was towards the end of 1943,’ she told Thomas. They were alone in the kitchen, the rest of the house having long gone to bed. The Russian bus would be picking her up in about five hours, but after all the evening’s excitement she felt far too restless to sleep. ‘I collected a Jewish boy from a house in Neukolln — Erik had told me the boy was fourteen, but if so he was big for his age. He was going to stay with us at Bismarckstrasse for a few days while Erik arranged his exit from Berlin. I was carrying the forged papers of an imaginary nephew in case we were stopped on the U-Bahn. I used those papers whenever I had a young man to move.
‘Anyway, the boy was nervous. More than nervous — he seemed almost hysterical, in a quiet sort of way. He’d been living in a room not much bigger than a cupboard for almost a year, and he’d lost all his family and friends, so I wasn’t surprised to find him in bad shape. But I didn’t realise how bad until it was too late.’
‘What was his name?’ Thomas asked.
‘Mannie,’ she said after a moment’s reflection. ‘I don’t think I was ever told the family name.’
‘Go on.’
‘On the walk to the U-Bahn station he kept looking round to see if anyone was following us, and I had to tell him he was making us both conspicuous. That seemed to calm him down, and once we reached the station he managed to sit and wait without drawing attention to himself. He insisted on sitting several seats away from me once we boarded the train, so I wouldn’t be implicated if anyone recognised him. He had this horror of running into one of his old non-Jewish schoolmates, and being denounced.
