Jake pointed to the one she was carrying, with the prized fast shutter. “He get you that too?”
“What’s it to you?” She smiled, palms up. “He’s a generous guy.”
Jake grinned. “Yeah, with requisitioned cameras. He say where he got it?”
“Ask him yourself. You coming or not?” She pointed to Ron’s car, an old Mercedes. Two reporters were dozing in the back, legs spread out, waiting for the trip to start.
“Too crowded. I’ll follow.”
“Better stick with me. Look what happened the last time we went.”
So in the end she rode with him. They followed Ron’s car until they reached the Avus, then lost it when it jerked into autobahn speed, weaving in and out of the stream of cars heading out of Berlin. The traffic surprised him. In the bright sunshine it seemed everyone was going to Potsdam-trucks and jeeps and cars like Ron’s, snatched from garages for new owners. Behind them an old black Horch filled with Russians barely kept up, but the others were racing on the open highway, prewar driving, with the trees of the Grunewald rushing past.
When they got into town, the bomb damage he’d missed before leaped to the eye. The Stadtschloss, a roofless ruin, had taken the worst of it, and only sections of the long colonnade were left facing the market square. The Nikolaikirche opposite had lost its dome, the four corner towers looking more than ever like odd minarets. Only the
Palladian Rathaus seemed likely to survive, with Atlas still perched on top of its round tower, holding up a gilded ball of the world, a kind of bad joke-the British bombers had spared the kitsch.
The Alten Markt, however, was lively. A rickety tram was running in front of the obelisk, and the huge open square was crammedhundreds, perhaps a thousand people milling between stacks of goods, bargaining openly, as noisy as the medieval market that had given the space its name. It reminded him, improbably, of the souk in Cairo, a dense theater of exchange, hawkers grabbing buyers by the sleeve, the air full of languages, but drained of color, no open melons and pyramids of spices, just scuffed pairs of shoes and chipped Hummel knickknacks and secondhand clothes, closets stripped for sale. But at least there was none of the furtiveness of the Tiergarten market, one eye keeping watch for raiding MPs. The Russians were buying, not guarding, eager to be back in business after the hiatus of the conference. No one whispered. Two soldiers walked by with wall clocks balanced on their heads. None of this would have been here when Tully came. Jake imagined instead a meeting in some quiet corner. Maybe even in the Neuer Garten, just steps from the water. Selling what?
They left the jeep near the empty space in the colonnade where the Fortuna Portal had been and wandered into the crowd, Liz snapping pictures. Ron’s car was nowhere in sight, probably still headed for Truman’s villa, but Jake noticed, amused, that the Horch had had to squeeze in behind the jeep, the only place in Berlin with a parking problem.
“Where are you meeting him?” Jake said.
“He said by the colonnade. We’re early. Look at this-do you think it’s real Meissen?”
She picked up the soup tureen, gilt-edged handles and pink apple blossoms, the kind of thing you could have found by the dozen in Karstadt’s before the war. But the German woman selling it, gaunt and sagging, had come to life.
“Meissen, ja. Naturlich.”
“What are you going to do with that?” Jake said. “Make soup?”
“It’s pretty.”
“Lucky Strike,” the woman said in accented English. “Camel.”
Liz handed it back and motioned to the woman to pose. As the camera clicked, the woman smiled nervously, holding out her dish, still hoping for a sale, and Jake turned uneasily, feeling ashamed, as if they were stealing something, the way primitive people feared a camera took souls.
“You shouldn’t do that,” he said as they moved off, the woman shouting after them in disappointment.
“Local color,” Liz said, unconcerned. “Why do they all wear pants?”
“They’re old uniforms. The men aren’t allowed, so the women wear them.”
“They aren’t,” she said, pointing to two girls in summer dresses talking to French soldiers, whose red berets flashed like bird feathers in all the khaki and gray.
“They’re selling something else.”
“Really?” Liz said, curious. “Right out in the open?”
But they posed too, arms around the soldiers’ waists, less self-conscious than the woman with porcelain.
They had made a half-circle to the obelisk, past the cigarette dealers and watch salesmen and piles of PX cans. On the steps of the Nikolai a man had spread out carpets, a surreal touch of Samarkand. Nearby a one-armed veteran was offering a box of now useless hand tools. A woman with two children at her side held out a pair of baby shoes.
They found Shaeffer near the north end of the colonnade, looking at cameras.
“You remember Jake,” Liz said breezily. “He’s been looking for you.”
“Oh yes?”
“Find anything?” she said, taking the camera from him and putting it to her eye.
