She shrugged. “To the Gestapo car. They took me in and beat me. Not so bad, not like some of the others, but enough. So I knew I wasn’t German anymore. And the next time would be worse. They wanted to know where my mother was. I didn’t tell them, but I knew I would the next time. And then he did help. He had friends there- friends, the devils he worked for. He said he could make a bargain for me. I could work with him and they’d keep us off the list, my mother too. If I went with him. After this? I said. And you know what he said to me? Tt’s never too late to make a bargain in this life. Only in the next.‘” She paused. “So I went with him. That was the bargain. He got me and I kept my life. The first time I was sent out, we went together. His pupil. But I was the one who spotted the woman that day. I knew the look, you see. And after the first time-well, what does it matter how many, it’s just the first one, over and over.” “What happened to him?”
“He was deported. When he was with me, it was all right for him. We were a team. But then they split us up, and on his own he was not so successful. I was the one, I had the eye. He had nothing to bargain anymore. So.” She squashed out the cigarette. “But you did,” Jake said, watching her.
“Well, I was better at it. And Becker liked me. I kept my looks. You see here?” She pointed to her left cheek, folded up near the edge of her eye. “Only this. When they beat me, my face was swollen, but it went down. Only this. And Becker liked that. It reminded him, maybe. I don’t know of what.” She looked away, finally distressed. “Oh my god, how can we talk this way? How can I describe what it was like? What difference does it make? Write anything you want. It can’t be worse. You think I’m making excuses. It was David, it was Becker. Yes, and it was me. I thought I could do this, that we could talk, but when I talk about it-look at your face-you see her. The one who killed her own. That’s what they want for the magazines.” “I’m just trying to understand it.”
“Understand it? You want to understand what happened in Germany? How can you understand a nightmare? How could I do it? How could they do it? You wake up, you still can’t explain it. You begin to think maybe it never happened at all. How could it? That’s why they have to get rid of me. No evidence, no greifer, it never happened.”
She was shaking her head and looking away, her eyes beginning to fill.
“Now look. I thought I was finished with that, no tears. Not like my mother. She cried enough for both. ‘How can you do this?’ Well, it was easy for her. I had to do the work, not her. Every time I looked at her, tears. You know when they stopped? When she got in the truck Absolutely dry. I thought, she’s relieved not to have to live this way anymore. To see me.”
Jake took a handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to her. “She didn’t think that.”
Renate blew her nose, still shaking her head. “No, she did. But what could I do? Oh, stop,” she said to herself, wiping her face. “I didn’t want to do this, not in front of you. I wanted you to see the old Renate, so you would help.”
Jake put down the pen. “Renate,” he said quietly, “you know it won’t make any difference what I write. It’s a Soviet court. It doesn’t matter to them.”
“No, not that. I need your help. Please.” She reached for his hand again. “You’re the last chance. It’s finished for me. Then I saw you in the court and I thought, not yet, not yet, there’s one more chance. He’ll do it.”
“Do what?”
“Oh, look at this,” she said, wiping her eyes again. “I knew if I started-” She turned to the guards, and for an instant it occurred to Jake that she was playing, the tears part of some larger performance.
“Do what?” he said again.
“Please,” she said to the guard, “would you bring me some water?”
The guard on the right, the German speaker, nodded, said something in Russian to the other, and left the room.
“Write this down,” she said to Jake in English, her voice low, as if it were coming from the back of a sob. “Wortherstrasse, in Prenzlauer, the third building down from the square. On the left, toward Schonhauserallee. An old Berliner building, the second courtyard. Frau Metzger.”
“What is this, Renate?”
“Write it, please. There’s not much time. You remember in court I told you I didn’t do it for myself?”
“Yes, I know. Your mother.”
“No.” She looked at him, her eyes sharp and dry. “I have a child.”
Jake’s pen stopped. “A child?”
“Write it. Metzger. She doesn’t know about me. She thinks I work in a factory. I pay her. But the money runs out this month. She won’t keep him now.”
“Renate-”
“Please. His name is Erich. A German name-he’s a German child, you understand? I never had it done. You know, down there.” She pointed to her groin, suddenly shy.
“Circumcised.”
“Yes. He’s a German child. No one knows. Only you. Not the magazines either, promise me? Only you.”
“What do you want me to do?”
