At six o’clock Nell did not go straight home. Instead she went to Grünetümmlerstraße, to the house she had lived in, all those years ago just after the war, with Joe Wilderness. Two years in that flat above Erno Schreiber. Another lifetime. Joe had moved on—or rather she had thrown him out—she had moved on. Erno had not. Erno had stayed. Erno had grown old in a three-room flat he had occupied since he walked home, slouching not marching, from Amiens on the Western Front in 1918, and decided the best use for his Pickelhaube was as a coal scuttle.
A young woman was poking the fire in the iron stove, shovelling in a few lumps of coal from the steel helmet, as Erno fussed about his tea and teapot. She was blonde, pretty—about the age Nell had been when she had finally moved out—the bloom of youth upon her, worn with a carelessness Nell had never managed.
“You know Trudie,” Erno said, not asking a question.
But Nell did not know Trudie.
“Ach … she has your old room.”
Trudie closed the stove door and stood up.
“I’m Nell,” said Nell. “Nell Burkhardt.”
“Of course,” Trudie replied. “Erno often talks of you and of Joe.”
Nell glared at Erno. It was an unwritten rule. They did not talk about Joe Wilderness.
But Erno merely smiled and set three cups on three saucers, and tore at the wrapper of a stollen cake.
“Not for me, Erno,” said Trudie. “I will leave you to talk.”
A scant exchange of the pleasantries of departing and Nell and Erno were alone.
He put a knitted tea cosy on the pot, eased his backside into a sagging armchair. “So, you think out of sight is out of mind?”
“I don’t want to talk about Joe. I didn’t come here to talk about Joe.”
“You don’t have to come here to talk about anyone. You are welcome even in silence.”
She sat opposite, perched herself on the hard edge of the chaise longue. “But I did come here to talk about someone—Brandt.”
“So—pour tea, cut cake and tell me.”
When Nell had finished, Erno said, “You’ve never lacked ambition.”
“Meaning what?”
“You have been trying to set the world to rights since you were nine years old. Your mother always said to beware your stamping foot and your po-face.”
“I was, I know, a rather serious little girl. Mea culpa.”
“And now you are a very serious woman. Why else did you ever take up with a rogue like Joe or an old rogue like me—because we made you laugh?”
“Let’s not talk about Joe.”
“Ask yourself, Nell—what will serve you best? Following Brandt or not following Brandt? He has the same ambition, the same messianic urge, the same preposterous belief in himself.”
“Preposterous?”
“If Brandt ruled the world, every day might not be the first day of spring, but East would talk to West, North would talk to South and no one would go hungry.”
“As you said, preposterous.”
“You have hitched your wagon to his star.”
“But …”
“But?”
“But Bonn. Erno, it’s the dullest place on Earth.”