It was true. While Jake waited and worked the crossword puzzle in his head-Tully down, Emil across, trying to fit them together-Lena seemed oddly content, as if she had decided to let things take care of themselves. The news of her parents had depressed her and then seemed to be put aside, a kind of fatalism Jake assumed had come with the war, when it was enough to wake up alive. In the mornings she went to a DP nursery to help with the children; afternoons, when Hannelore was out, they made love; evenings she turned the canned rations into meals, busy with ordinary life, not looking beyond the day. It was Jake who waited, at loose ends.
They went out. There was music in a roofless church, a humid evening with tired German civilians nodding their heads to a scratchy Beethoven trio and Jake taking notes for a piece because Collier’s would like the idea of music rising from the ruins, the city coming back. He took her to Ronny’s, to check in with Danny, but when they got there, drunken shouts pouring out to the street, she balked, and he went in alone, but neither Danny nor Gunther was there, so they walked a little farther down the Ku’damm to a cinema the British had opened. The theater, hot and crowded, was showing Blithe Spirit, and to his surprise the audience, all soldiers, enjoyed it, roaring at Madame Arcati, whistling at Kay Hammond’s floating nightgown. Dressing for dinner, coffee and brandy in the sitting room afterward-it all seemed to be happening on another planet.
It was only when the lush color changed to the grainy black-and-white of the newsreel that they were back in Berlin-literally so, Attlee arriving to take Churchill’s place, another photo session at the Cecilienhof, the new Three arranged on the terrace just as the old Three had been that first time, before the money started blowing across the lawn. Then the Allied football game, with Breimer at the microphone winning the peace and fists raised in the end zone as the British made their unlikely score. Jake smiled to himself. In the jumble of spliced film, at least, they had won the game. The clip switched to a collapsing house. “Another kind of touchdown, as an American newsman makes a daring rescue-”
“My god, it’s you,” Lena said, gripping his arm.
He watched himself on the porch, arm around the German woman as if they had just emerged from the wreck, and for an instant even he forgot what had really happened, the film’s chronology more convincing than memory.
“You never told me,” she said.
“It didn’t happen that way,” he whispered.
“No? But you can see.”
And what could he say? That he only appeared to be where he was? The film had made it real. He shifted in his seat, disturbed. What if nothing was what it seemed? A ball game, a newsreel hero. How we looked at things determined what they were. A dead body in Potsdam. A wad of money. One thing led to another, piece by piece, but what if you got the arrangement wrong? What if the house collapsed afterward?
When the lights came on, she took his silence for modesty.
“And you never said. So now you’re famous,” she said, smiling.
He moved them into the swarm of British khaki in the aisle.
“How did you get her out?” Lena said.
“We walked. Lena, it never happened.”
But from her expression he could see that it had, and he gave it up. They moved into the lobby with a crowd of British officers and their Hannelores.
“Well, the man of the hour himself.” Brian Stanley, tugging at his sleeve. “A hero, no less. I am surprised.”
Jake grinned. “Me too,” he said, and introduced Lena.
“Fraulein,” Brian said, taking her hand. “And what do we think of him now? Very Boy’s Own, I must say. Come for a drink?”
“Another time,” Jake said.
“Oh, it’s like that. Enjoy the film? Apart from yourself, that is.”
They passed through the door to the warm evening air.
“Sure. Make you homesick?” Jake said.
“Dear boy, that’s the England that never was. We’re the land of the common man now, haven’t you heard? Mr. Attlee insists. Of course, I’m common myself, so I don’t mind.”
“It still looks pretty cushy on film,” Jake said.
“Well, it would. Made before the war, you know. Couldn’t release it while the play was on and of course it ran forever, so they’re just now getting around to it. You see how young Rex looks.”
“The things you know,” Jake said. Another trick of chronology.
Brian lit a cigarette. “How are you getting on with your case? The chap in the boots.”
“I’m not. I’ve been distracted.”
Brian glanced at Lena. “Not by the conference, I gather. I never see you around at all. The thing is, you got me thinking a bit. About the luggage and all that. What occurred to me was, how did he get on the plane in the first place?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it was a scramble. You remember. Had to pull strings just to get on the damn thing.”
“So what strings did he pull?” Jake said, finishing for him.
“Something like that. There we were, packed in like sardines. The Honorable and everyone. And then one more. All very last-minute.
