caught sight of him. ‘Herr Russell!’ he exclaimed with what sounded like pleasure, and walked across to meet him.
It was Albert Wiesner.
Russell should have been surprised, but he wasn’t, not really. In these circumstances, running across Albert was not such a great coincidence — there couldn’t be many young Palestinian men better versed in the whys and wherefores of fleeing a hostile Europe.
Almost seven years earlier, in March 1939, Russell had helped smuggle the seventeen-year-old Albert out of Germany. Originally employed by Albert’s doctor father to teach English to his daughters Ruth and Marthe, Russell had quickly become a friend of the family, and when Frau Wiesner had begged him to talk to her son — whose angry outbursts were putting them all in jeopardy — he had reluctantly agreed. Albert was certainly prickly, but few of Berlin’s Jews were brimming with good humour in March 1939. At their meeting in Friedrichshain Park, Albert had calmly predicted the death camps. ‘Who’s going to stop them?’ was the question he’d posed to Russell.
Then his father Felix Wiesner had been beaten to death in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and Albert had gone into hiding after braining a Gestapo officer with a table lamp. As part of a convoluted deal with British and Soviet intelligence, Russell had managed to arrange the boy’s escape to Czechoslovakia and the rest of the family’s emigration to England. Albert had gone on to Palestine, and had been there ever since.
He was now in his mid-twenties. He looked bigger and healthier than Russell remembered, with shorter hair, a permanent tan and the same intelligent eyes. ‘It’s good to see you,’ Albert said. ‘The last time Marthe wrote to me, she said you’d all had dinner together in London.’
‘In early November,’ Russell confirmed. It seemed months ago. He explained his and Effi’s return to Berlin as best he could, given the need not to mention spying.
‘So what are you doing here?’ Albert asked.
‘Telling these people’s story. Someone thought I’d be a sympathetic witness.’
‘And are you?’ Albert asked with a disarming smile.
‘How could I not be?’ Russell replied in kind. ‘But what are you doing here?’
‘I’m a sheliakh. You know what that is?’
‘An emissary.’
‘Yes. I’m here to find out how things are going — the camps, the transport, all the arrangements. There’s more trouble in Poland, and that means more people we have to move. So I’m travelling back up the chain, checking that everything’s working smoothly.’
‘Do you feel like company?’
‘I thought you were travelling south.’
‘I don’t think so. I have all I need at this end — I’m much more interested in the early stages of the journey. There’s a place called Nachod — are you going there?’
‘Ah, Nachod.’
‘Do you remember, in the car on the way to Gorlitz, you said that cruelty was easy to understand but that kindness was becoming a mystery?
‘Did I really say that?’
‘You did. I was impressed.’
Albert shook his head. ‘How wise I was at seventeen!’
On Saturday evening, Effi asked Thomas to accompany her to the Honey Trap. ‘If I go on my own I’ll spend the whole evening fending off drunken Russians — they won’t care that I’m almost forty. And you need a break,’ she insisted.
He told her he spent his weeks watching Russians behaving badly, and doing so at weekends hardly constituted a break.
‘But you’ll come anyway?’
‘All right. But only because Frau Niebel has invited friends over for dinner.’
The latter were arriving as they left, two women who stared at them with almost indecent interest. Frau Niebel must have been gossiping overtime.
On their walk to the bus Effi asked Thomas exactly how badly the Russians were behaving at the Schade print works.
‘Oh, no worse than anywhere else. They’ve brought in extra presses for the school books, but no one will tell me whether I’m expected to pay for their hire. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whose business it is — I sometimes think it would make more sense if they confiscated it, and then hired me to run things. I know it’s Lotte’s inheritance, but…’
His voice trailed off, and Effi knew he was thinking about his son, who should have inherited the works, but had died in far-off Ukraine.
They didn’t have long to wait for a bus, and there were even seats to spare. Across the aisle a woman was sitting beside a pile of Christmas shopping. Where she’d found gifts worth giving, let alone the beautiful paper and ribbons, was something of a mystery, and half the passengers were staring at her with the same perplexed expression.
‘Are you going to Hanna’s family for Christmas?’ Effi asked Thomas.
‘I’m negotiating with the Russians. They think the works should only close for Christmas Day, and they don’t believe anyone else is capable of running things if I’m away. But there are several who could — I just have to convince them.’
‘You must miss Hanna terribly.’
‘Of course.’ He paused. ‘It sounds ridiculous, I know, but when we’re together there seems more of a point to life. To all of it, I mean. Eating, sleeping, anything.’ He looked at her. ‘You had more than three years apart.’
‘We did. It was different, though. Or for me it was. The life I was used to just vanished, and normal feelings seemed almost beside the point. And then of course there was Ali — once we joined forces I was never alone.’
The tram was on the Ku’damm by this time, the sidewalks full of Germans scurrying home and soldiers in search of excitement. The Honey Trap was already doing good business, but tables were still to be had. A six-piece band were pumping out American boogie music, and two GIs were teaching their German partners to jitterbug on the small dance floor, while a group of British soldiers offered loud disparaging comments. Most of those drinking at the tables and bar were Anglo-German couples, with the girls even younger than Effi remembered. There were, as yet, very few Russians.
After buying two beers, Thomas surveyed the scene with obvious disapproval.
‘We don’t have to stay long,’ Effi said, looking at her watch. ‘Irma should be here in ten minutes, and she’ll be singing not long after.’
‘I want to hear her,’ Thomas said. ‘And don’t mind me, I’m just getting more conservative in my old age.’ He grimaced. ‘I’m afraid I look at all these young women…’ He hesitated. ‘I was going to say — this could have been my Lotte. But it’s more than that. First we have the rapes — 80,000 of them, someone told me the other day — and now we have half the women in the city prostituting themselves. For the best of reasons, I understand that. But still. What will the outcome be? What is it doing to us all — to the women themselves, to the men in their lives? And it’s not just sex — everything seems for sale. Everything has a price, and only a price.’ He saw the look on Effi’s face. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll shut up. Next thing you know I’ll be feeling nostalgic for Hitler.’
‘No,’ Effi said. ‘I know what you mean, but… who was it said you can still see the stars from the gutter?’
‘It wasn’t Goebbels, was it?’
Effi laughed, and caught sight of Irma slinking her way through the tables towards them.
The singer ordered them all complimentary drinks, and recounted a long talk she’d had the previous day with a visiting American film producer. ‘They’re worried that the Russians are making all the running,’ she reported, ‘and next year they’re going to start making films here themselves. American money and German talent. He mentioned a couple of ideas for musicals, and said I’d be ideal. He was probably trying to get into my knickers, but that’s okay. I told him to look me up again when he had a contract for me to sign. He wasn’t bad looking. And neither is your friend,’ she added, once Thomas had gone off to the toilet.
‘He’s married,’ Effi told her. ‘And he loves his wife,’ she added in response to the raised eyebrow.
‘No harm in asking,’ Irma murmured.
