Ruth looked up at this, then retreated, like a timid animal poking its head through the bushes then skittering away, frightened by the scent in the air.
“Yes, and here I am talking and you want to go to your room.” She put her hand on Alex’s arm. “So come see us.” But who exactly? Brecht and Ruth or all three? A hopeless tangle. She smiled shyly. “He’s happy here, you know. The theater. A German audience. That’s everything for him.” Her eyes shining a little now, an acolyte’s pleasure. The same look, oddly, he’d seen in Martin’s, both in thrall to some idea that seemed worth a sacrifice.
“I will,” he said, then noticed the overnight bag at her feet. “But you’re going away?”
“No, no, just to Leipzig. They want to put on Galileo. Bert doesn’t think they’re serious, but someone has to go. One day, two maybe. It’s all right, they keep my room for me here. You can’t make such arrangements by letter. You have to go.” So someone would.
* * *
The room, on the third floor, still had blackout curtains hanging heavily to the floor, and the bellboy, barely in his teens, made an elaborate show of drawing them, then demonstrating the light switches, the candle and matches, in case of power cuts. He nodded to the luggage rack with its single suitcase.
“Are you expecting more bags?”
“Not tonight. In a few days.” The rest of his life, sitting somewhere on a railway siding, waiting for the new flat to be ready. But why wasn’t it? It occurred to him, now that he’d seen the city, that flats must be prizes awarded by the Party. It wasn’t ready because someone was still in it, packing, being shuffled off somewhere else, the way Jews had been told to leave.
“Is there anything else I can get for you?” A bottle from the cellar, a girl, a bellboy’s usual late night services, but offered now without innuendo, vice out of style in the workers’ state, the boy himself too young to know the old code. Maybe one of the boys defending the city with panzerfausts during the last days. Now waiting for a tip.
“Oh,” Alex said, picking up one of the envelopes from Martin, his walking-around money. He handed a note to the boy.
“Excuse me, perhaps you have Western currency?” Then, almost stammering, “I mean, you are coming from there.”
“Sorry. I came through Prague. No West marks. Just these.”
The boy looked at him. “Not marks. Do you have a dollar?”
Alex stopped, surprised. The contact line, sooner than he expected. Not even a day to settle in. The boy was still staring at him. Speaking code after all, a new vice, not too young for this. Or was Alex imagining it all?
He took out his wallet and handed the boy the folded dollar bill, watching as the boy looked at it, then handed it back.
“You are from Berlin? From before?”
Alex nodded.
“Naturally you would be interested to see your old home? A matter of curiosity. It’s often the first thing people want to do. Who’ve been away.”
“Lützowplatz,” Alex said, waiting.
Now the boy nodded. “In the West,” he said, already another city in his mind. “You can walk there. Through the park. In the morning.” Instructions. “Early. Before eight, if you would be up.”
“There’s no trouble crossing?”
The boy looked puzzled for a second. “Trouble? To walk in the Tiergarten?”
“At the sector crossing.”
The boy almost smiled. “It’s a street only. Sometimes they stop a car. To inspect for the black market. But not someone who walks in the park.” He paused. “Early,” he said again. “So, now good night.” He held out his hand. “Excuse me. The East marks? Since you don’t have West? Vielen Dank,” he said, palming the note and backing toward the door, a practiced move, part of the Adlon touch. But did he have any idea what he’d done? Just delivering a message, pocketing a tip, no questions asked. Or something more, already part of it?
Alex took off his coat and lay on the bed, too tired to get undressed, staring at the dim chandelier overhead. They’d told him the most likely places for bugs were telephones and lighting fixtures. Had the chandelier been listening? He thought over everything the boy had said, how it would sound. But what could be more innocent than a walk in the park?
In the silence he could hear the planes again, muffled, as if he were listening from below in one of the hotel shelters. Some of the guests would have been in furs, not wanting to lose them if their rooms disappeared by the time the all clear sounded. Could you actually hear fire, flames licking at walls just overhead? Then the shelter became the cell in Oranienburg, not the barracks, the interrogation cell, airless, the old nightmare, and he willed his eyes open, short of breath, and went over to the windows.
Why have blackout curtains now, live in the dark? In California you could keep the windows open, never be shut in. He pushed the heavy drapes apart, then felt the first draft of cold air seeping through. Still, better than living in a tomb. Anything was better than that.
The view faced the back, the hills of rubble that had been Wilhelmstrasse off to the left, an empty stretch of wasteland ahead, barely visible by moonlight. The new view from the Adlon. Maybe that’s why the curtains. Inside, cocooned, you could still imagine the ministries lined up in their grave permanence, not the ghost town that was actually there, a faint ashy gray in the pale light.