“Hal went back to the States,” he began, confused, watching her. “At least, he was on his way the last time I saw him.” She nodded, encouraging him to go on. “Remember Hannelore? She’s here, in Berlin. I saw her. Thinner. She kept his flat.” The small talk of catching up. What did the guards make of it, standing under Stalin?
Renate nodded, taking another cigarette. “They were lovers.”
“So she said. I never knew.”
“Well, I was a better reporter.”
“The best,” he said, smiling a little, involuntarily drawn back with her. “Nothing escaped you.” He stopped, embarrassed, in the room again.
“No. It’s a talent,” she said, looking away. “And you? What happened to you?”
“I write for magazines.”
“No more radio. And your voice was so good.”
“Renate, we need to-”
“And Lena?” she said, ignoring him. “She’s alive?”
Jake nodded. “She’s here. With me.”
Her face softened. “I’m happy for you. So many years. She left the husband?”
“She will, when they find him. He’s missing.”
“When who finds him?”
“The Americans want him to work for them-a scientist. He’s a valuable piece of property.”
“Is he?” she said to herself, intrigued by this. “And always so quiet. How things turn out.” She looked back at him. “So they’re all still alive.”
“Well, I haven’t heard from Nanny Wendt.”
“Nanny Wendt,” she said, her voice distant, in a kind of reverie. “I used to think about all of you. From that time. You know, I was happy. I loved the work. You did that for me. No German would do that, not then. Even off the books. I wondered, sometimes, why you did. Not even Jewish. You could have been arrested.”
“Maybe I was too dumb to know any better.”
“When I saw you in the court-” She lowered her head, her voice trailing off. “Now he knows too, I thought. Now he’ll only see her.” She tapped the right side of her chest. “The greifer.”
“But you still asked to see me.”
“There’s no one else. You helped me once. You remember who was.
Jake shifted in his chair, awkward. “Renate, I can’t help you. I have nothing to do with the court.”
“Oh that,” she said, waving her cigarette. “No, not that. They’ll hang me, I know it. I’m going to die,” she said easily.
“They’re not going to hang you.”
“It’s so different? They’ll send me east. No one comes back from the east. Always the east. First the Nazis, now them. No one comes back. I used to see them go. I know.”
“You said you didn’t know.”
“I knew,” she said, pointing again, then to the other side. “She didn’t. She didn’t want to know. How else to do it? Every week, more faces. How could you do it if you knew? After a while she could do anything. No tears. A job. It’s all true, what they said in there. The shoes, the Cafe Heil, all of it. And the work camps, she thought that. How else could she do it? That’s what happened to her.”
Jake looked up, nodding to her real side. “And what happened to her?”
“Yes,” she said wearily, “you came for that. Go ahead, write.” She sat up, darting her eyes sideways to the guards. “Where shall we start? After you left? The visa never came. Twenty-six marks. A birth certificate, four passport pictures, and twenty-six marks. That’s all. Except somebody had to take you, and there were too many Jews already. Even with my English. I can still speak it. You see?” she said, switching. “Not a bad accent. Speak for a while-they’ll think I’m showing off for you. So they’ll be used to it.”
“The accent’s fine,” Jake said, still confused but meeting her gaze, “but I’m not sure I understand everything you’re saying.”
“Any change of expression from them?” she said.
“No.”
“So I stayed in Berlin,” she said in German. “And of course things got worse. The stars. The special benches in the park. You know all that. Then the Jews had to work in factories. I was in Siemenstadt. My mother too, an old woman. She could barely stand at the end of the day. Still, we were alive. Then the roundups started. Our names were there. I knew what it would mean-how could she live? So we went underground.”
“U-boats?”
“Yes, that’s how I knew, you see. How it was, what they would do. All their tricks. The shoes-no one else thought of that. So clever, they told me. But I knew. I had the same problem, so I knew they would go there. And of course they did.”
“But you didn’t stay underground.”
“No, they caught me.”
“How?”
She smiled to herself, a grimace. “A greifer. A boy I used to know. He always liked me. I wouldn’t go with him-a Jew. I never thought of myself as Jewish, you see. I was-what? German. To think of that now. An idiot. But there he was, in the cafe, and I knew he must be underground, too, by that time. I hadn’t spoken to anyone in days. Do you know what that’s like, not to talk? You get hungry for it, like food. And I knew he liked me and I thought maybe he would help me. Anyone who could help-”
“And did he?”
