Shadows of Berlin полностью

Another young woman appears at the café’s entrance with a limp. She is alert. Well-­dressed. Olive skin and a thick bush of dark hair.

“Oh no,” Angelika hears herself whisper.

“What is it?”

The girl with the limp searches the room, eyes darting, until she spies the two young people at the table and, with an uneven gait, hurries over to join them. Sitting closely beside the dark-­headed youth. She looks happy. Happy to see them. Happy to be sitting next to this boy.

“I know that girl. The girl with the limp.”

“You know her?”

“We were in the art school,” Angelika says. “Years ago when I was a student at Feige-­Strassburger. Her hair was shorter then, but I remember that goose’s waddle.”

Emil sounds pleased. “Well,” he says, “sometimes the manna simply falls from heaven.” Crushing out his cigarette, he slips on his snap-­brim hat and stands, removing a Walther PPK automatic pistol from his coat pocket. “So are you with me,” he asks her, “or am I working alone?”

The Grosse Hamburger Strasse Lager. Inside the dreary room, her father jumps to his feet as if to rush to embrace her under the gaze of Himmler’s portrait. “Angelika,” he cries aloud, but then he stops dead, stands like he’s nailed to the floorboards. She closes the door behind her, gazes back at his fearful, hopeful eyes.

No embrace is offered. “Sit down, Tatte,” she instructs. But he remains on his feet.

“Your mother,” he says. “She is still abovestairs.”

“Yes,” Angelika tells him. “I didn’t want to deal with her hysterics,” she explains bluntly. “I wanted to speak to you alone. Now, sit.” This time, it’s fully a command. A command he follows, sitting slowly. Carefully.

“You’ve done well, Gelika,” he tells her with a cautious touch of pride. “Managing yourself. Look how beautiful in such clothes. Like a page from a magazine.” Angelika says nothing.

“So?” he asks. “Are we to be released soon?” he wants to know. In other words, has she done her work? Has she done what is necessary—­whatever is necessary—­to rescue them?

“Released?” She swallows the word with a stroke of anger. “No. Not released, Tatte. But you’ll be seen to.”

And now her tatte looks wary. “Seen to? What does this mean, Daughter?”

“It means you’ll both be given work,” she tells him. “There’s a factory in Kreuzberg. It manufactures buttons. You know buttons, Tatte. You and Mamme will be taken there in the morning and brought back here at the close of the day,” she says.

“Buttons?” Her father is trying to smile. “To sell them I know. But to make them?”

“You’ll both learn what is required,” Angelika assures him. “There’ll be food. You’ll be safe from transport. But you’ll—­both of you—­remain on the camp rolls.” At this point, she removes two yellow cloth stars from the pocket of her coat and places them on the table. Yellow cloth edged in black, the dimensions officially proscribed. “Tell Mamme she must sew these to your clothing. Tell her to trade some bread for a needle and thread. If you don’t wear them,” she says, “if you’re seen without the stars, you’ll be put on the next transport and shipped east, and no one will be able to save you from that. Not me, not anyone.”

Her father suddenly has nothing to say. He appears dumbstruck. Blinks at her in pained confusion.

“This is the best I could do, Tatte,” Angelika informs him. Her eyes are suddenly hot with tears, which makes her even angrier. “This is the only deal I could strike.”

“And you?” her tatte asks, looking closely at her now, as if he is only now seeing her. Really seeing her. “What will become of my Angelika? I notice she wears no star.”

Angelika can feel her face harden. “She has her own work to do.”

Herr Kommandant Dirkweiler is also an Obersturmführer in the SS. Forty-­two years of age. Father of four girls. Twenty years in the police services. A middle-­ranked detective with the Kriminalpolizei before transferring to the Gestapo when the war began. Athletic once, obviously, but aging into his body with a certain sag. Fingers stained from too much nicotine as he types at his desk, then yanks the rectangle of green card stock from the rubber roller with a flourish.

A signature is scribbled with his fountain pen before he employs the franking stamp, blots it in a businesslike fashion. GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI BERLIN the stamp reads in a circle around the Reich’s eagle. And the name he has typed on the card? Angelika Sara Rosen. When he hands it over, he says, “Now you’re one of us,” as a joke.

Angelika accepts the gift, gazing at it with a kind of covert exhilaration. Even as a prisoner, she feels truly free for the first time in her life.