The welcome lunch and bad roads had made the trip longer than they’d expected, and it was late now, their car lights stronger than the occasional streetlamp shining a pale cone on the rubble. On the side streets there were no lights at all. Alex leaned forward, peering, oddly excited now that they were really here. Berlin. He could make out the scaffolding of a building site and then, beyond a cleared, formless space, the dark hulk of the palace, singed with soot, the dome just a steel frame, but still standing, the last Hohenzollern. Across from it the cathedral was a blackened shell. Alex had expected the city center, the inevitable showcase, to be visibly recovering, but it was the same as Friedrichshain, more rubble, endless, the old Schinkel buildings gutted and sagging. Unter den Linden was dark, the lindens themselves scorched clumps. There was scarcely any traffic, just a few military cars driving slowly, as if they were patrolling the empty street. At Friedrichstrasse, no one was waiting to cross. A sign in Cyrillic pointed to the station. The city was as quiet as a village on some remote steppe. Berlin.
All the way in Martin had talked about the Adlon, where Alex was to stay until a flat could be arranged. It was for Martin a place of mythic glamour, of Weimar first nights, Lubitsch in a fur collar coat. “Brecht and Weigel are there too, you know.” Which seemed to confirm not only the hotel’s status, but Alex’s own. But now that they were almost there, with no lights visible up ahead, no awning or doormen whistling down taxis, he began to apologize.
“Of course it’s only the annex. You know the main building was burned. But very comfortable I’m told. And the dining room is almost like before.” He checked his watch. “It’s late, but I’m sure for you they would—”
“No, that’s all right. I just want to go to bed. It’s been—”
“Of course,” Martin said, but with such heavy disappointment that Alex realized he’d been hoping to join him for dinner, a meal off the ration book. Instead, he handed Alex an envelope. “Here are all the papers you’ll need. Identity card. Kulturbund membership—the food is excellent there, by the way. You understand, for members only.”
“No starving artists?”
A joke, but Martin looked at him blankly.
“No one starves here. Now tomorrow we have the reception for you. At the Kulturbund. Four o’clock. It’s not far, around the corner, so I will come for you at three thirty.”
“That’s all right. I can find—”
“It’s my pleasure,” Martin said. “Come.” Nodding to the driver to bring the suitcase.
The functioning part of the Adlon was in the back, at the end of a pathway through the gutted front. The staff greeted him with a stage formality, bowing, their uniforms and cutaways part of the surreal theatrical effect. Through a door he could see the starched linen on the dining tables. No one seemed to notice the charred timbers, the boarded windows.
“Alex?” A throaty woman’s voice. “My God, to see you here.”
He turned. “Ruth. I thought you’d gone to New York.” Not just gone to New York, been hospitalized there, the breakdown he’d heard about in whispers.
“Yes, but now here. Brecht needs me here, so I came.”
Martin lifted his head at this.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said, introducing them. “Ruth Berlau, Martin—”
“Schramm. Martin Schramm.” He dipped his head.
“Ruth is Brecht’s assistant,” Alex said, smiling. “Right hand. Collaborator.” Mistress. He remembered the teary afternoons at Salka’s house on Mabery Road, worn down by a backstairs life.
“His secretary,” Ruth said to Martin, correcting Alex but flattered.
“I’m a great admirer of Herr Brecht’s work,” Martin said, almost clicking his heels, a courtier.
“So is he,” Ruth said, deadpan, so that Alex wasn’t sure he could laugh.
She seemed smaller, more fragile, as if the hospital had drawn some force out of her.
“You’re staying here?” he said.
“Yes, just down the hall. From Bert.”
Not mentioning Helene Weigel, his wife, down the hall with him, the geography of infidelity. He imagined the women passing in the lobby, eyeing each other, years of it now.
“Of course a smaller room. Not like the great artist’s.” An ironic smile, used to servants’ quarters. “They’re going to give him a theater, you know. Isn’t it wonderful? All his plays, whatever he decides. We’re doing Mother Courage first. At the Deutsches Theater. He was hoping for the Schiff, but not yet, maybe later. But the Deutsches is good, the acoustics—”
“Who’s playing Courage?”
“Helene,” she said simply. Now finally Brecht’s star as well as his wife. Alex thought of the wasted years of exile, keeping house for him, ignoring the mistress, an actress without her language. “You’ll have to come to the theater. She’ll be pleased to see you again. You know Schulberg is here?” Wanting to gossip, California in common. She jerked her head. “In the army. Over in the West. Which is lucky for us. Food packages from the PX—he’s very generous.” Alex felt Martin shift position, uncomfortable. “Not for Bert, of course. They give him anything he wants. But for the cast, always hungry. So Helene gets food for them. Imagine what they would say if they knew they were flying in food for Weigel?” She looked up at him, as if the thought had jogged her memory. “So tell me, what happened with the committee? Did you testify?”
“No.”
“But there was a subpoena?” Asking something else.
Alex nodded.
“So,” she said, taking in the lobby, his presence explained. “Then you can’t go back.” Something else remembered, glancing behind him. “Marjorie’s not with you?”
Alex shook his head. “She’s getting a divorce.” He raised his hand. “We should have done it years ago.”
“But what happens to Peter? The way you are with him—”
“He’ll come visit,” Alex said, stopping her.
“But he stays with her,” she said, not letting go.
“Well, with the way things are—”
“You like a fugitive, you mean. That’s what they want—hound us all like fugitives. Only Bert was too clever for them. Did you see? No one understood anything he said. Dummkopfs. And what? They thanked him for his testimony. Only he could do that. Outfox them.”
“But he left anyway.” His bridges burning too. “So now we’re both here,” Alex said, looking at her.
“We’re so happy to have our writers back,” Martin said before she could answer. “A wonderful thing, yes? To be in your own country. Your own language. Think what that means for a writer.”