Tadek stood before him at a loss, trembling like a leaf as well, for a reason he couldn’t possibly comprehend. Suddenly, it all surged up in him once again – the occupation, the ghetto, the black market, his father’s gold watch. He wasn’t much older than this little fellow back then. Fourteen only, with the same bare feet and pleading voice.
“I have an official paper to go with it, too. It’s not stolen, Mein Herr, I promise! A real award, for war merit—”
A shrill whistle cut his woeful sales attempts short. A Soviet MP was running across the lawn toward them, shouting something in Russian.
Tadek recognized “natsist” – a Nazi – out of the torrents of curses and quickly shoved the pack, with cigarettes, into the boy’s hand. “Make yourself scarce, if you know what’s good for you!”
The boy was trying to push the award into his hand but Tadek only shook his head vehemently. “Keep it and get going; well?!”
“Danke schön, Mein Herr!” the boy shouted, already running towards the Reichstag where more people mingled with more khaki-clad figures.
The Russian came to a halt before them, seemingly forgetting the boy. “Chego etot gadyonysh natsistky tebe prodal?”
Tadek understood the question – what did that snotty-nosed Nazi sell you? – but didn’t reply anything and showed the MP his empty hands instead and, after a moment, American-issued papers. Gerlinde quickly extracted hers as well.
“We didn’t buy anything from him. I just gave him cigarettes,” Tadek explained, in German, wisely omitting the fact that he spoke fluent Russian.
It would all be much too difficult to explain – both his past and his present – and less than anything he needed to make an acquaintance with the local SMERSH commissars now that he worked with the OSS. Whatever they would make out of such a swift switching of sides was anyone’s guess and Tadek was firmly set on escaping any unnecessary interrogations if he could help it. More often than not, people didn’t return from those and he’d witnessed far too many examples of it to toy around with the Soviets in this manner. A former Red Army soldier working for the Imperialist West? The stern political fellows mightn’t see the joke. Or worse – imagine that he had been a spy all along and try and prove it to them that the entire Auschwitz incarceration wasn’t an American set up.
“Verboten! Verboten…” The MP desperately groped for the right words. “Verboten im cigarety davat!” He satisfied himself with the incomprehensive hybrid of Russian and German and stalked off in the opposite direction, ignoring the crowd into which the boy had disappeared.
“Must be the black market,” Gerlinde remarked, putting away her papers. Tadek noticed that she still moved as though in a dream, slowly and barely comprehending the reality around her.
“If the others are allowed to trade in the open, why did the Ivan chase the boy away then?” he asked, not really counting on the answer.
“Must be because he’s selling what they don’t want to see sold.”
The double-decker buses were running again and women’s hairdos were pre-war, elegant. The dome of the sky was insultingly blue above their heads and even the statue on the Alexanderplatz still had her head. Berlin was living, despite all; perhaps, it would have been worse in winter but now, in sweltering July, everything was so bright and full of hope and beauty once again and even the ruins appeared strangely poetic. On the façades of some buildings, original signs still hung against all the odds. Under their feet, the grass was shoving its blades upwards and to the devil with the gunpowder-poisoned earth.
Yet, next to him, Gerlinde barely forced herself to move her feet, wide-eyed and pale, despite the tan she’d acquired during their morning runs. Out of respect, Tadek kept silent.
It was indeed a market of some sort, now that they approached it. One of the first people they came across, a scrawny woman and the pile of shoes in front of her, some not even matching and almost all lacking shoelaces. The woman perked up at the sight of the couple but then saw Gerlinde’s patent leather shoes and let her shoulders drop again. From Tadek’s US army-provided half-boots, she also turned away in resignation.
Heavily made-up girls laughed shrilly next to the American GIs and eyed Gerlinde with suspicion. Every new face was potential competition and the Amis only had so many cigarettes to be charitable with. They resumed their laugher, with relief, as soon as she passed their little group by without paying them the slightest attention. Her eyes were riveted to the Reichstag. She cared not one curse for their boyfriends or cigarettes.
“Fountain pens. Very good fountain pens, all four for two packs of cigarettes only!”
“Batteries, batteries! Absolutely new!”
“A collection of German classics, twelve tomes, leather-bound!”
“Men’s boots, never worn…”
Gerlinde pushed through the murmuring crowd and Tadek could barely keep her in his sight. When some desperate fellow clutched his sleeve, begging him to buy his grandfather’s pocket watch, he tore himself away and plunged into the whirling sea of undernourished bodies, fearing that he’d lost her to the current. But no, there she stood, on an island of emptiness, in front of the pockmarked columns. Down her cheeks, tears silently rolled.
In spite of himself, Tadek also lifted his head and stared. The skeleton of the dome-shaped roof of the Reichstag stood out against the vast blue sky. The sole tree gently swayed in the breeze in front of the gaping mouths of the windows. The statues on the roof – almost all strangely untouched – grimly observed the devastation
