Dinner – Hotel am Zoo
Schnitzel à la Holstein
Ideally a veal cutlet beaten very thin, coated in fresh breadcrumbs and fried until golden to browning. Holstein topped with a fried egg or two, crisscrossed with anchovies and finished with a dressing of browned butter, parsley, finely chopped capers and the juice of a lemon.
Not in this case. Eggs overcooked, yolks hard, whites like crisped lace. Strips of fish could have been anchovy but were more likely salted herring. The few wizened capers resembled rabbit droppings. Meat flaccid, pallid, encased in something that had the texture and consistency of a sodden sock.
Edith had only visited Berlin once. She’d travelled on there with Leo after their stay at Scloss Steinhof, just for a day or two while Leo ‘nosed about’. It was a city that yielded little on casual acquaintance, rather like its inhabitants. She didn’t remember it very clearly and had no affection for the place. Of that, she was glad. Fond memories would have been erased, obliterated by Allied bombing and Russian shells, replaced by the ruination she saw now. She’d seen this desolation before, of course. Horrible how one got used to it. The destruction wasn’t necessarily worse than Hamburg or any other city, it was just bigger, just as the city was bigger, more spread out, going on for mile after mile.
Jack dropped her in front of the Hotel am Zoo. She hadn’t expected him to drive her but he had an excuse. A new toy. A cream-and-black BMW sedan had replaced the Humber. ‘Beautiful, ain’t she?’ Jack had said, regarding the coachwork with something between respect and lust. ‘Needs a run. Put her through her paces.’ Was he keeping an eye on her or did he just fancy a trip to Berlin?
They made excellent time. Harry hadn’t arrived, neither had Dori. Which was good. Edith didn’t want to explain where she was going or what she going to do but there was at least an hour to kill before her meeting. Her room was small. Long cracks, like a road map, zigzagged across the walls and ceiling. A skin of paint in a different shade had been applied in an attempt at disguise but that just added to the feeling that the whole building might fall apart at any minute, fracturing along the fissures. It was stuffy in here and smelt faintly of rot and other people. She opened the window. From below, came the steady chink, chink of a trümmerfrau patiently chipping mortar from useable brick.
Edith couldn’t wait in here. The Zoological Gardens were opposite, the Teirgarten behind them. She would go out. Get the lie of the land.
From the ruins of the zoo, a distinct trumpeting suggested that at least one elephant had survived the general destruction. Goodness knows what had happened to the other creatures once kept there. There were stories of lions and tigers roaming the city immediately after the fall. Real beasts replacing their human equivalent. A Russian vet had apparently fought to save a hippopotamus, even sleeping next to it, tending its wounds, feeding it on vodka, while all around people were dying in their hundreds, if not thousands. What a strange world this was, she thought. What a strange species we are.
Beyond the zoo, lay the no-man’s-land expanse of the Tiergarten, pocked with craters and shell holes filled with green-gilded stagnant water, dotted with broken and mutilated trees. Statues of kings and soldiers surveyed the devastation. Many pedestals were empty and broken. One huge plinth held just a foot. Look on my works ye mighty. The wide walks and promenades were churned and rutted, potholed by the treads of tanks and armoured cars. Edith took the crisscrossing tracks made by the surviving Berliners in their search for firewood, the quickest way from one point to another. Edith used the soaring Victory Column at the centre of the Teirgarten as a landmark. It was the only thing that appeared unscathed. The gold figure of winged Victory gleamed in the Spring sunshine. Above her, rippled a French tricolour.
There was beauty here, among the destruction. New growth was sprouting from the boles of the shattered treas. Lime leaves, vivid green and as soft and delicate as newly washed silk handkerchiefs. Women were digging the heavy clay soil, kneeling, hands in the mud, planting, watering seeds from battered enamel mugs, turning the churned mess of what had once been flowerbeds and manicured lawns into Schrebergärten, allotments. Nearby, stood a low cross, lashed branches of silver birch. A grey-green helmet, pitted with rust, dangled from one of the arms.
The Reichstag, or what was left of it, was closer now. Edith slowed her pace. She looked at her watch. It was nearly four but she was reluctant to go any nearer. All the way through the gardens, different dialogues and scripts had been playing in her head but she still had no clear idea what she would say to Kurt, or what he would say to her. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to meet him at all. She could go back to Lübeck, to her work with the Control Commission. Be shot of the whole business. Just do the job that she was paid to do.
Then she saw him moving amongst the buyers and sellers gathered under the trees. British and American servicemen, even a few Russians, poking through the contents of bags and bundles held out for their inspection, cardboard suitcases open on the floor.
He seemed to be browsing at random. She lost track of him for a moment, then suddenly he was by her side.
‘Edith! I’m so glad to see you. I was worried you would not come.’
Edith stepped away as he reached to embrace her, kiss her on both cheeks, as he had done at Heidelberg station. There was a fusty, unwashed smell about him. His gabardine raincoat was shiny on the lapels and ill fitting, the sleeves too short, an epaulette missing. His hat was battered, his shoes cracked across the toes. The smile had lost its dazzle. The charm as worn and shabby as his clothes.
‘You will find changes in me,’ he said, uncomfortable under her scrutiny. ‘I lack a woman’s care.’
He rubbed his jaw, in need of shaving. There was a scar on his cheek, recent by the look of it, pink and livid.
‘How did you get that?’ She couldn’t stop herself from staring. ‘You didn’t have that before the war.’
‘Shrapnel.’ He touched it as if it was still tender. ‘It became infected. Took a long time to heal.’
‘Why did you want to see me?’ she asked. Suddenly, she wanted to get away from him. As far and fast as possible. ‘How did you know about me anyway? That I would be in Berlin.’
He ignored her questions.
‘Well, what do you want?’ she demanded in the face of his silence, resisting the urge to run.
‘How do you know I want something?’ He gave his rictus smile.
Edith looked past him towards the trading, the buying and selling, the men following young flesh into the bushes, so sad and so utterly predictable.
‘Everyone wants something.’
‘I want—’ he began but didn’t finish the sentence. He was looking at something, or someone over her shoulder. ‘I thought you would come alone. I wish you a good evening.’ He tipped his hat to her and turned abruptly on his heel.
Adeline was standing right behind her, camera in hand.
‘Edith! I thought it was you. What are you doing here? Do you know that guy?’ She stared after Kurt’s retreating figure. ‘What did he want?’
Edith shrugged. ‘Just a light.’
‘You don’t smoke.’
‘That’s what I told him.’
She turned away, ignoring Adeline, tracking Kurt weaving his way through the crowd milling in front of the ruined Reichstag. She would tell Adeline about him when she was ready, not before. The encounter had shaken her far more deeply than she could have anticipated. Adeline’s appearance was surely coincidence, but it had rescued her from an unexpected storm of emotions: revulsion, loathing, hatred, physical repulsion brought on by everything she now knew about him, everything he’d done. A few seconds more in his company and she’d have lost control, failing Dori, failing everyone.
‘So, what are you doing here?’ Edith forced her attention back to Adeline.
‘Taking photographs. What do you think?’ Adeline looked up. ‘Light’s going. That’s me done.’ She put her camera back in the musette bag slung over her shoulder. ‘Tom McHale’s in town, too. Got an apartment out by the Wannsee. Very fancy.’
‘He hasn’t sent you home yet, then.’
‘Not yet.’ Adeline laughed. ‘I have my uses. He’s basing himself here now. Berlin’s the place to be. Things are hotting up with the Soviets. Tensions rising. There’s been a referendum here on merging the Social Democratic Party with the Communist KPD. Soviets all for it, of course. The Western sectors not so keen. There’s been trouble. People being snatched off the streets. All kinds of dirty tricks. It’ll get worse with the Fall elections. Berlin is turning into two cities. Front line in a new kind of war. West and East. Us and them. Tom wouldn’t want to miss out on that.’
Back at the hotel, they found Dori in the bar, still in her uniform.
‘Drink?’ she asked. ‘I’ve already started, as you can see.’ She indicated to the barman. ‘Three more of these. Your last message,’ she turned to Edith. ‘You have an address for von Stavenow.’
‘Yes, it’s here.’ Edith took the piece of notepaper from her bag.
Dori looked at the note, folded it carefully and put it into her bag. She looked tired. Her face was even paler than usual with tiny lines of strain around eyes that had a glassiness to them, an unfocused quality, as if she’d had more than one martini.
‘That’s in the Russian Sector,’ she said, her expression bleak. ‘Makes sense.’ She drained her glass. ‘I’ve just come from that Nacht und Nabel place I told you about in Alsace. Natzweiler. A secret camp,’ she added for Adeline’s benefit. ‘Somewhere for people to disappear. Prisoners sent there didn’t come back. Civilian resisters mainly, spies, foreign commandoes, worked to death in the granite quarries.’ She frowned, picking a strand of tobacco from her tongue. ‘They had a facility there to deflesh corpses. The skeletons were sent to the Anatomy Institute at Strasbourg University for their collection. Four of our girls were taken there. Killed by lethal injection.’
‘They didn’t do that … Surely not …’ Edith stumbled for words to express her disgust at yet another unspeakable horror.
‘No. That didn’t happen to our women. They were incinerated.’ Dori’s laugh was dull, like cracked glass. ‘It comes to something, doesn’t it? When one hears that with something like relief. But they were taken there for a reason. This was a secret camp. No witnesses. A place where they thought that they could do as they liked. But they couldn’t, d’you see? There were witnesses. Hundreds of pairs of eyes, thousands, watching, taking notice. The prisoners were nothing to them, less than nothing, but putting them in jackets marked with a cross and N and N stencilled on them did not erase the human being within. They didn’t all die and they saw what happened. They heard. And now they’re telling us.
‘Women came to the camp. Four of them. Well dressed, young, attractive. This was a camp of men. How would they not notice?’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘We’ve identified three of these women: Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh and Diana Rowden. The fourth may have been Noor Inayat Khan, but we’re not so certain. What we do know is that these four arrived in the afternoon and died that night. They were to be killed immediately. Orders from Berlin. This was unorthodox. There was a reluctance to take responsibility. This was not a moral or ethical dilemma; it was a matter of procedure. This was not how things were done. The executioner didn’t want to hang them; it would create too much drama. It was up to the doctors but they weren’t sure that they had enough of the right kind of drugs to kill four healthy women.’
Dori spoke slowly, her focus inward, as she carefully pieced together the story from the witness statements she’d taken, the reports she’d read. Only the tension about her mouth betrayed her emotion, the way her hand trembled as she lit another cigarette.
‘Anyway,’ she let out a thin stream of smoke. ‘The women were locked in cells. They could have had no idea what was about to happen to them. Later that evening they were taken to the building that contained the crematorium. The other prisoners had been locked up early. They all knew what was about to happen. The camp doctors were nervous, jittery. At this point, it is hard to find out who did what. They all deny it now, of course. What we do know is that whoever administered the injections, botched the job. The listening prisoners heard screaming, someone shouting ‘Vive la France’. There is evidence that at least one of the women was put into the oven alive.’ She stopped long enough to control her voice and than cleared her throat. ‘Anyway, a witness, a Dutch doctor, places someone else there. Natzweiler was one of a select number of camps involved in various scientific and medical experiments involving poison gas, among other things. There was a doctor who came from Berlin to collect the results. He supplied the lethal drugs and assisted with the loading of the women into the oven. In the process, his face was scratched badly,’ Dori touched her own cheek, ‘deeply enough to leave a scar.’
‘It’s there!’ Edith nodded quickly. ‘Looks recent.’ She couldn’t stop the words bursting out.
‘You’ve seen him?’
‘In the Tiergarten.’
‘Why didn’t you say something?’
‘You didn’t ask me.’ And Edith hadn’t wanted to tell. But she did now. She had to.
‘It was him. I knew it!’ Dori’s dark eyes were on Edith. ‘Arrange another meeting. That’s why you’re so important. You’re beziehungen.’ She used the German word. Connected. ‘For Vera, it’s enough to find out what happened to our girls, to bring the perpetrators to justice, where that’s possible.’
‘But it’s not for you,’ Edith ventured.
‘No, not for me. Vera was never in France. She never saw active duty. She just sent us there. Some of these girls were picked up straight from the landing grounds. That didn’t have anything to do with Vera, but she feels responsible. She has to discover what happened, bring prosecutions where possible, inform the relatives. When she’s done that, then she’s fulfilled her duty. It can all be filed somewhere, tidied away and forgotten. But these women were my comrades, my compatriots. They were picked up in France, sent to Germany to die horribly. It could have been me being loaded into that oven. I saw it, Edith. I saw the iron door, the metal loader and there was a smell, faint but still there. Burnt offerings.’ She shuddered. ‘Some things you can’t forget. Will never forget. I tell you, I’d want someone to avenge me, if it’d been my fate to die in that terrible place.’
She sighed and sat in brooding silence for a while. Edith and Adeline remained quiet, sensing she had more to tell. ‘We’re picking up traces of von Stavenow in other places.’ She looked at Edith. ‘The girls from Ravensbrück, the women’s camp, had an interesting tale to tell. The women there were from different countries: France, Poland. Some Jewish, but mostly political prisoners, agents, Resistance often as not ended up in Ravensbrück. Among them comrades. Women I knew. Some came in pregnant. The other women would try to keep the births secret. Babies were taken away, you see. But it was impossible. It was impossible to keep anything secret and the mothers were exhausted from the work they were made to do. They couldn’t feed their babies. Crying alerted the guards and the child was taken. We interviewed a nurse, asked her, “What became of the babies?”’ Dori stopped and took a deep breath. When she spoke again her voice was husky, with a slight shudder, her accent stronger. ‘They had orders, she said. The babies were not to be burnt. They were to be preserved. Brains and organs removed and kept. For study. Orders from a Doctor von Stavenow in Berlin.’
Before she could shut off the image, Edith saw babies, coarse-stitched and blind, floating in jars of formaldehyde, the amniotic fluid of the dead.
‘They’re not going to arrest him, we know that much,’ Dori said. ‘It’ll be a tug of war with the Russians as to who can acquire his services.’
‘Don’t forget the Americans,’ Adeline sipped her martini. ‘My turn now. I know why the Americans want him and they want him bad.’
Edith dressed for the evening in the long-sleeved cocktail dress that Dori had chosen in Peter Jones. Strange to think the shop was still there, in Sloane Square, selling elegant clothes to elegant people. Impossible to imagine.
She checked at the desk as she went down to dinner. Telephone message from Harry. He’d been delayed. However much she ached to see him, that might be a good thing. One less complication.
Adeline was alone.
‘Where’s Dori?’
‘Gone to meet someone. We’re meeting her at the Kool Kat Klub. Let’s eat.’
The Soupe Julienne was a flavourless vegetable concoction, heavily favouring the potato. The Schnitzels Holstein were even worse.
‘What is this?’ Adeline speared a sliver of meat.
Edith cut off a tiny piece and chewed thoughtfully. ‘Should be veal but more likely pork.’
‘Isn’t human flesh supposed to taste like pork?’
‘So they say.’
‘I seem to have entirely lost my appetite.’ Adeline pushed her plate away. ‘There’s a story doing the rounds here in Berlin. Heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who works for the New Yorker, so it must be true. Anyway, this is how the story goes. There’s a guy walking down Kurfürstendamm, or it could be Knesebeckstrasse, depends on who’s doing the telling. The guy’s thin and kind of bent over, dressed in an old Wehrmacht jacket, broken boots, baggy trousers, an old soldier, you know the kind, you see ’em all the time. He’s blind, wearing dark glasses, has a white stick and one of those yellow armbands with the black dots on it that blind folks have here. He’s tapping along through the crowds when he stops this young fraulein, she’s a good-looking well-built kind of girl. He asks her for help. He has a letter to deliver. Is he on the right street? “Oh, no,” the girl says, “you’re going the wrong way.” They start to walk back together but it’s slow going and the address is quite a distance. “Tell you what,” the Fraulein says, “why don’t I deliver it for you?” “Would you?” He’s very grateful. Not so nimble after Stalingrad and what with the blindness … “Certainly.” She takes the envelope and off she goes. After a while she looks back, worried about how he’s doing. He’s doing pretty well, thank you. Just about to cross the road, looking right and left to see if there’s a tram coming. The glasses are gone, so’s the armband. She thinks, that’s strange. She’s suspicious, takes the letter to the nearest cop shop. They go straight round to the address, thinking it’s maybe black market. It seems to be a shoe shop but something rings phoney, so they decide to search the place. In the cellar, they find spots of blood on the floor leading to a hidden door. Behind it they find a cold store and a whole load of fresh meat. Definitely black market but there’s something funny about the cuts. By the shape and the skin, it looks to be human. Up until that point, no one has thought to look inside the envelope. When they open it, they find a note. It says: This is the last one I shall be sending today.’ Adeline sat back. ‘Good story, huh?’
‘Apocryphal, surely?’ Edith had put down her fork, even though she didn’t quite believe the story. Too like Sweeney Todd.
‘Yeah, most likely,’ Adeline prodded the pale, flaccid schnitzel. ‘But you gotta admit, it could be true. Ever wondered how these places have always got everything when people on the street are starving? True or not, says something, doesn’t it? I’m figuring out ways of getting it into the piece I’m writing. It works as a metaphor and readers love that kind of thing.’
‘Everything to your satisfaction?’ The waiter was back to clear the plates.
‘Perfect,’ Adeline smiled up at him.
‘Anything for dessert?’
‘No thank you.’ She turned to Edith. ‘Ready?’
The entrance to the Kool Kat Klub was crowded with young women waiting for dates, or simply waiting. They stood around talking to the men entering or leaving, while their little brothers hovered, watching for discarded cigarette butts. The door was not much more than a hole in the wall. Ghost letters above the door, set at zany angles, announced that it used to be the Krazy Kabarett. Most of the cabarets had been closed by the Nazis, or by the war. Now they were coming back. In a city that seemed to be dead or dying, they were thriving, like the fruiting bodies of some long-dormant mycelium erupting into life.
Narrow, dark stairs led down to a cellar. The walls were painted purple and black; the low ceiling was tented tarpaulin to keep out the rain from the ruined upper stories. Under the stench of sweat and cigarettes, Edith caught the bombed-out undertone of burnt timber, rottenness and damp. The cellar extended like a long cavern to a small stage and a tiny dance floor. Tables filled the rest of the space occupied mostly by servicemen, some in civvies, some in uniform: Americans and British, even a few Russians in breeches and high polished boots. The men were accompanied by young women, scantily clad and highly made up, laughing and flirting, hectic with free drinks on empty stomachs. Other women and boys glided through the throng, delivering drinks and collecting orders.
‘Dori’ll be somewhere,’ Adeline said as they elbowed their way through the throng at the bottom of the stairs. ‘She knows the guy here. They go back pre-war.’
They threaded through tables, moving towards the tiny dance floor where a few couples swayed to a quartet playing an approximation of American jazz.
‘There will be cabaret later,’ a voice said in carefully enunciated English. Edith turned to a man in evening dress, white tie and stiff collar. His brilliantined hair gleamed like patent leather. His thin cheeks were chalky with powder, his lips painted violet, his eyes rimmed with black. ‘Welcome, Ladies.’ He bowed. ‘Tonight we are very crowded …’
‘We’re with Dori.’ Adeline smiled.
‘Ah, Dori. Her table is over there, I think. Can I get you something to drink?’ He clicked his fingers at a passing waiter. ‘On the house as friends of Dori’s. Vodka, gin, bourbon, brandy, Champagne? Our friends in the Four Powers are most obliging. I will send it over.’
He bowed again and left them to welcome two Red Army officers in fluent Russian.
‘That’s Rudi,’ Dori had come up behind them. ‘Looks exactly like he did before Hitler shut his old place down. Funny who made it through and who didn’t. God knows how he survived. Our table is over here. Along with Tom McHale.’ She waved to the American who was leaning against the bar, smoking a cigar and looking bored. ‘The gang’s all here.’
He smiled and started to make his way over.
‘Mind if I join you?’
‘Of course not,’ Dori kissed him on both cheeks. ‘It’s good to see you. Everyone seems to be in tonight.’ She nodded towards the next table. ‘Including our Russian friends.’
‘Hey, honey,’ Tom addressed a passing waitress. ‘Can you get a bottle of bourbon? For my friends on the next table.’ He sat down and gave the Russians a wave. ‘There aren’t as many as there used to be and those are likely to be NKGB. Watching us, watching them.’ Tom McHale looked around. ‘Half the girls in here work for them, trading in pillow talk or blackmail.’
‘In exchange for what?’ Edith asked.
‘In exchange for mom and pop not getting hauled off to the Gulag. The game’s getting dirty.’ He raised his glass to the two Russians. Just then, the telephone in the centre of the table rang. ‘Goddamn! I never knew those things worked.’ Tom grinned and picked it up. ‘Edith. It’s for you.’
Edith took the receiver. Maybe Harry had got here early.
‘Hello?’
She could see a man waving. Not Harry. Jack in civvies with a group of men and a bevy of mädchen. He was getting up, making his way towards them. Edith replaced the receiver.
‘This is Jack,’ she said by way of introduction. ‘He drives for me. Jack, meet Tom, Dori and Adeline.’
Jack nodded at the assembled company but only had eyes for Dori.
‘Were you in SOE during the war?’
‘Well, yes …’ Dori gave a puzzled smile.
‘It’s an honour,’ he said, caught between bashful and eagerness, neither characteristic typical of him. ‘You helped a flyer pal of mine escape through France. We saw you once on Dean Street, coming out of the French House. He told me the story. Knew you straight away. Not a face I’d forget.’
Dori gave him her warmest smile. She liked the awed attention of good-looking men.
‘Why don’t you join us and tell me all about him. We hardly ever heard what happened after people left us.’
Jack didn’t need a second invitation. He took a chair from another table and sat next to her.
‘I can’t believe I’m talking to you.’
Dori laughed and flipped him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t be silly!’
Soon the two of them were deep in conversation. Adeline was talking to Tom. Edith couldn’t hear what they were saying through the rising chatter. Every now and then Tom glanced over which made her think they were talking about her. She turned back to the stage.
The band had gone. A papier maché broken wall was trundled on by a young woman dressed in a shapeless coat, a pair of outsized men’s trousers, her hair tied in a rag, her face streaked with dust. She held a trowel and a brick and clinked them together to gain the crowd’s attention. She sang about the trümmerfrau; the plight of German women in general, their men lost or absent. At the end of the number, she whipped off her scarf, stripped off the coat and stepped out of the trousers. She stood in silk shift and camiknickers to whistles and roars of applause. Her next song was in the languages of the Occupying Powers. It was about sex and took in everything from Soviet rape to Hershey bars and cigarettes. She finished with a bow and a wink for the girls like her. The message was clear. Do you think we’d do this if we didn’t have to? The blades of satire were as sharp as ever. The audience clapped and hooted their appreciation, the women loudest of all. They yelled and whooped for the woman on stage who’d given such lusty, defiant voice to their carefully cloaked anger and despair.
Adeline shouted across the table, ‘Good to see cabaret’s alive and well even if everything else is dead and buried.’
Edith had the feeling that she was making notes.
The band were playing jitterbug. Couples were getting up to dance. Jack was leading Dori off by the hand. Adeline and Tom stood up to join them.
Edith sipped her drink and played with a packet of cigarettes on the table, turning it over and over.
‘Have one of mine.’ A man reached over her shoulder, shaking a cigarette from a pack of Camels.
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘I know.’ He leaned closer. He was now clean shaven, smelling of the Vetiver cologne she remembered. ‘Meet me tomorrow morning. Same place, 9 a.m.’
Then he was gone, moving through the throng.
Arrange another meeting, Dori had said. Now, she’d done it.