EINHAR KRONBAUER SLOWLY replaced the phone and stared at it for a long time. His tea was growing cold in its Meissen cup, and outside it had begun to snow on the Wilhelmstrasse, but he didn’t notice either of these events.
A watershed moment had just occurred. He found himself paralyzed. He’d been concierge at the Dresdenhof for forty years; his father had run the building before that, his grandfather before that. There had never been a call about apartment 12A. Not one time. Not on anybody’s watch. In that time, bombing rubble had been cleared away, a wall had been erected bisecting the city and finally torn down, diplomats had come and gone, but 12A remained intact. A time capsule. They might have even made jokes about it being the Nazi equivalent of King Tut’s tomb, if his grandfather hadn’t taught them that speaking of 12A was absolutely verboten.
Now someone had called about it.
His stare bore a hole into the ivory-colored phone receiver.
He would have to make his own phone call now. Report the inquiry.
He picked up his pad and tapped into his contacts. The number was in there in case of emergency. His father had handed it down to him like a scepter. There were only three things to remember about 12A, he’d told him: Have it cleaned once a week by the maintenance company that had been managing the building since the Weimar Republic, and call the special number if anyone else showed up connected to it. The third thing was don’t worry about calling the special number because no one was going to show up.
Now someone had made an inquiry.
Kronbauer adjusted his yellow Hermès tie, his shirt collar constricting strangely on its own. There had always been something ominous about apartment 12A, just as there’d been something ominous about his grandfather’s uniform in the war. He suspected it was that trifle of embroidery on the left sleeve. The diamond outline embedded with the letters SD. His grandfather didn’t tell, and Einhar, even as his grandson, knew better than to ask. So the family stuffed the uniform full of mothballs and cedar, stuck it in the trunk with the old photos, and went on with life. After all, it was a very long time ago, and people had had to do what they’d had to do during the war to get by. Berlin was whole again. Germany was thriving. The past was in the past.
But some things just wouldn’t stay buried.
He looked out the window all the way down to the corner of Neiderkirchnerstrasse, where the ruins had been discovered. The notorious address used to be 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. The Gestapo. The city had been bombed to kingdom come and then rebuilt in modern international style, and yet there were those who insisted the ruins be dug up all over again and put on display—insisted there be yet another awful reminder made of Germany’s past.
He watched the snow start to stick to the steel arcade that protected the ruins. The bricks no doubt echoed like conch shells with the screams of the tortured and dying. That the old foundation was still there surprised everyone. It had been uncovered when a postwar building was torn down. Now no new building could be erected because the infamous Gestapo basement ruins had to be preserved for posterity. To show again and again how very horrible the Germans were, ad nauseum.
Taking a deep breath, he punched in the number on the phone. He was shocked at the mundane-sounding ring on the other end. In his imagination he’d always thought the number would ring up someplace unearthly—patched through a satellite circling Mars to an overlord of the ice planet Hoth. Normalcy or not, he was still not sure how to approach the strange subject of an inquiry on an apartment that hadn’t had a visitor since 1942.
“Herr Kronbauer calling,” he said in German to the harsh “allo,” murmured through the receiver.
He explained the inquiry and gave the name of the man who called. Stag Maguire. Yes, that was correct. Stag Maguire.
Then it was over. The voice on the other end thanked him and hung up.
No more to do now. The instructions had been followed. The weekly cleaning of 12A would continue, the illustrious and diplomatically immune tenants would continue to need him to hold open their Mercedes’ doors, and he would remain on call should reservations be needed for the restaurant Borchardt. His duties were exacting and methodical, and he performed them just the way he’d been taught to by his father.
He took a sip of cold tea and grimaced. His routine was going to fall back into place again, just like before. But he couldn’t shake the idea that his phone call had been like a tiny fissure in the bottom of the ocean, one that would give birth to a devouring tsunami once it was felt onshore.