9
The asphalt, scarred by the tank caterpillar tracks and the rubble-ridden city views soon replaced the pastoral suburban scenery. Tadek pedaled along the somewhat-cleared streets, with Gerlinde perched on the handlebars in front of him. The bicycle used to belong to her brother Götz – the only means of transportation that Frau Hanke took care to hide in time from her own compatriots after the frantic Gauleiter of Berlin, Goebbels’s order was issued to commandeer all bicycles to equip the so-called “tank-hunting division.” It should be noted that such a “division” that was supposed to instill fear in the Ivans consisted of sorry-looking fourteen-year-old Hitlerjugend boys with panzerfausts but the irony was lost on the Reich Defense Commissar for Berlin.
The loyal Frau Hanke was ready to protect the only bicycle from the Soviets as well, as soon as they entered the city but the Neumann villa was miraculously spared the Red Army’s plunder; it was located much too far from the city’s center for their liking and the Russians didn’t get a chance to get to it before the Amis moved into their rightfully allocated sector.
“Make a right here. No, wait. Stop for a second.”
Tadek diligently stopped. Agile like a cat, Gerlinde slipped off the bicycle and for a few moments stood, with her thumbs hooked through the straps of her backpack, trying to make sense of her surroundings.
“Shall we ask someone the way perhaps?” he suggested, adjusting his own canvas backpack, stuffed with clothes, on his shoulders.
“I know the way perfectly! I was a Red Cross nurse, so I know perfectly well where their headquarters are! I took my classes there. It’s just, it’s hard to get my bearings when everything is…” She gestured vaguely around.
In front of them, the entire street lay in a heap of concrete and twisted metal. Tadek had lifted his hand to point at the street sign but then saw that it was in Russian and lowered it again. It was most likely Stalinstraße now or some such. Fat chance it would help his guide, with its Cyrillic wisdom.
“It was across from the hotel. And the hotel was just around the corner from the cinema. And before the cinema was this two-storied department store which they’d remodeled into a hospital in March but…” She looked helplessly around. “Before the department store was this beautiful gothic cathedral and a library. And a restaurant before that. With big arched windows and red curtains in them.”
“I think we had just passed the cathedral. I think I saw a spire over there.” Tadek motioned in the opposite direction.
They retraced their steps, walking the bicycle between them. The spire and a part of the wall still attached to it rose, amid the heap of brick and mortar.
“Does it look like that cathedral?” Tadek probed gently.
Gerlinde only stared at it long and hard. “It must be. I recognized the street leading here so that has to be it.”
“So, that must be the library.” Tadek turned to another obliterated building across the somewhat-cleared street.
“Wait here.” She deposited the backpack at his feet and trotted toward the new heap of rubble.
The sun, uncharacteristically hot for September, warmed the handlebars and Tadek’s dark hair. He lay the bicycle down and lowered next to it, watching Gerlinde pick her way, amid the debris, with great uncertainty. She slipped and Tadek made a move to get up but she waved him off without even looking at him. He smiled to himself. In the course of these past few weeks, they’d grown as familiar with each other as a blood brother and sister would. They didn’t tiptoe around each other any longer, mistrustful and suspicious, as they used to. Tadek rubbed his chest. He was warm there too, but it wasn’t the sun.
“Agnes Miegel, Der Vater!” She cried victoriously from the top of the rubble mountain waving a book in the air. “We were right. It is a library then.”
She clambered down and dusted off her navy skirt, as she trotted back to Tadek. Her knees were scraped but she didn’t seem to notice. In her hand, she still held the book that seemed miraculously undamaged.
“Do you know the author?”
“Everyone knows her. Official state literature.”
“You read it then?”
“It was mandatory, for school. Bored me to tears.”
“What is it about?” Tadek regarded it with interest.
“This?” Gerlinde held the title in front of herself. “About nothing. A dead world.”
After a moment of consideration, she hurled it into the air. The pages fluttered as the book made a great arc, before landing somewhere amid the ruins. Tadek looked at her in amazement. Gerlinde grinned – the act of rebellion must have felt good – and picked up the handles of the bicycle.
They resumed their walk, slowly, careful not to lose their way again.
“Do you know what the most ironic part is?” Gerlinde said. “The Party had the worst taste in literature. In fact, they had no taste at all. They banned and burned all the interesting books and left only garbage like that for people to read. And you know what’s even more ironic? Most Party members had banned books in their libraries. They banned all foreign ones and the ones that the Promi frowned upon. Vati has an entire section of French and British spy novels in his library.”
“I’ve already discovered quite a few.”
She grinned slyly. “You saw where he hid them? Behind the official, most tedious books that he knew no one would ever pull out of the shelf to peruse. Right behind the twelve tomes of Roman history, behind the racial theory books, behind all that Heimat rot. I’ll show you more when we get home.”
We.
Home.
Tadek never thought he’d ever hear those words again. Growing even warmer now, he stopped to take off his jacket. Gerlinde waited for him patiently, still
