clubs and the whores.'
'No one?'
'All right. The Americans don't seem to want them. At least not officially.'
'You surprise me. In Cuba they couldn't get enough of the sex clubs. Every night there was a long line outside the most notorious club of all, The Shanghai.'
'I don't know about Cuba, but here we get some very Lutheran Americans. Well, this is Germany, after all. It's as if they think the Russians might use any sign of depravity as an excuse to invade West Berlin. They seem to want to make the Cold War as cold as possible, for everyone involved. Did you know that you can get yourself arrested for nude sunbathing in the parks?'
'At my age that's hardly a concern.' I sipped her coffee and nodded my appreciation.
Elisabeth lit a cigarette. 'So it was you. The person who sent me that money, from Cuba. I thought it must be.'
'At the time I had more than enough to spare.'
'And now?'
'I'm sorting things out.'
'You don't look like someone who's just back from the sun.'
'Like I said. At my age. I was never one for lying around in the sun.'
'Me, I love it. Whenever I can. After all, the winters we get. What sort of things are you sorting out?'
'The Berlin kind.'
'Hmm. That sounds suspicious. This used to be a city of whores. And you don't look like a whore. Now it's a city of spies. So-' She shrugged and sipped her coffee.
'I expect that's why they don't like joy-ladies and sex clubs. Because they want their spies honest. And as for nude sunbathing well, it's difficult being something you're not when you've got your clothes off.'
'I'll bear that in mind. As a matter of fact we get lots of spies in the club. American spies.'
'How can you tell?'
'They're the ones not wearing uniforms.'
She was joking, of course. But that didn't mean it wasn't true. I glanced over at a radiogram the size of a drinks cabinet from which a low murmur was emanating. 'What are we almost listening to?'
'RIAS,' she said.
'I don't know that station. I don't know any of the Berlin stations.'
'It stands for Radio in the American Sector.' She said it in English. Good English, too. 'I always listen to RIAS on a Sunday morning. To help my English. No, to improve my English.'
I pulled a face. On the coffee table was a copy of Die Neue Zeitung. 'American radio. American newspapers. Sometimes I think we lost a lot more than just a war.'
'They're not so bad. Who's paying your rent?'
'The VdH.'
'Of course. You were a prisoner yourself, weren't you?'
I nodded.
'A couple of years ago I went to one of those exhibitions put on by the VdH,' she said. 'On the POW experience. They had reconstructed a Soviet POW camp complete with a wooden watch tower and a four-metre- high barbed-wire fence.'
'Was there a gift shop?'
'No. Just a newspaper.'
'Der Heimkehrer.'
'Yes.'
'It's a rag. Among other things, the VdH leadership believes that a free people cannot renounce in principle the protection of a new German Army.'
'But you don't believe that?'
I shook my head. 'It's not that I don't think military service is a good idea. In principle.' I lit a cigarette. 'It's just that I don't trust our Western allies not to use us as cannon fodder in a new war that some lunatic Confederate American general thinks he can fight on German soil, safely. Which is to say, a long way from America. But which in reality no one can win. Not us. Not them.'
'Better Red than dead, huh?'
'I don't think the Reds want a war any more than we do. It's only the men who fought the last war, not to mention the one before that, who can really know how many human lives were wasted. And how many comrades were sacrificed needlessly. People used to talk about the phony war. Remember that? In 1939. But if you ask me, this war, this Cold War, that's the phoniest war of the lot. Something dreamed up by the intelligence people to scare us and keep us all in line.'
'There's a waiter at the club,' she said, 'who'd disagree with you. He's a former POW, too. He came home last year, still a rabid Nazi. Hates the Bolsheviks.' She smiled wryly. 'I'm none too fond of them myself, of course. Well, you remember what it was like, when the Red Army turned up in Berlin with a hard-on for German women.' She paused for a moment. 'I had a baby. Did I ever tell you that?'
'No.'
'Well, he – the baby – died, so it didn't seem important, I guess. He got influenza meningitis and the penicillin they used to treat it turned out to be fake. That was – God, February 1946. They got the men who sold the stuff, I'm happy to say. Not that it really matters. Made in France, it was. Glucose and face powder dissolved in genuine penicillin vials. Of course by the time anyone knew it was fake it was too late.' She shook her head. 'It's hard to remember what it was like back then. People would do or sell anything to make money.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Don't be, darling. It was a long time ago. Besides, even after I had it, the baby, I was never really sure I wanted it.'
'Under the circumstances, that's hardly surprising,' I said. 'You never said before.'
'Well, you had your own problems, didn't you?' She shrugged. 'And that is the real reason I never sold my body to the Amis, of course. Gang rape. It tends to take away your sexual appetite for quite a while. By the time I did start feeling inclined that way again it was too late. I was on the shelf, more or less.'
'Nonsense.'
'Too late to find a husband anyway. German men are still in rather short supply, in case you hadn't noticed. Most of the good ones were in Soviet POW camps. Or Cuba.'
'I'm sure that's not true. You're a fine-looking woman, Elisabeth.'
She took my hand and squeezed.
'Do you really think so, Bernie?'
'Of course I do.'
'Oh, there have been men, all right. I'm not completely clapped out, it's true. But it's not like it used to be. Nothing ever is of course. But… There was an American who worked for the US State Department at HICOG, in the Headquarters Compound, on Saargemiinder Strasse. But he went home to his wife and children in Wichita. And there was a guy, a sergeant, who ran Club 48 – that's the US Army's NCO club. It was him who helped me to get the job at The Queen. Before he went home, too. That was six months ago. My life.' She shrugged. 'It's not exactly Effi Briest, is it? Oh, I do okay, at the club. Pays well. The customers behave. Good tippers, I'll say that for the Amis. They like to show their appreciation. Not like the British. Worst tippers in the world. Hell, even the French tip better than the British. You wouldn't think they'd won the war, they're so tight with their money. They say that even the mousetraps are empty in the British sector. I tell you this fellow Nasser, I'm on his side. And when Uruguay beat England I think I was even more happy than I was when West Germany won the actual trophy.'
'Talking of West Germany, Elisabeth, do you go there ever?'
'No. I'd have to cross the Green Border. And I don't like to do that. I did it once. I felt like a criminal in my own country.'
'And East Berlin. Do you ever go there?'
'Sometimes. But there's less and less cause to go. There's not much there for those of us who live in West Berlin. Just before Jimmy – my American sergeant – went back to America, we took a trip around old Berlin. He wanted to buy a camera and you can still get a good one for not much money in East Berlin. We got a camera,
