Last Day
I was to hoist a white flag on the pole out in front that had never known a flag.
“Timing is essential,” said Professor Kreutzer. “There is a possibility that German military still might be retreating through here. If they spot a flag of surrender, they will open fire on us. On the other hand, if the Red Army doesn’t find one, we will all be killed.”
“Scylla and Charybdis,” said the Chief. “If one isn’t smashed on the rock, he will drown in the whirlpool.”
“We will tell you when to raise it,” said Professor Kreutzer. “Have the flag ready and test the pulley mechanism on the pole.” And he and the Chief, that day of my return, having toured all the labs in the Institute to give the final orders for the moment of liberation, returned to their telescope on the roof.
All that day, occasional refugees fleeing the invasion sought brief shelter, reporting that the Red Army was on their heels. From our lab, I could hear tanks and trucks, an occasional cannon firing. The Chief and Professor Kreutzer, on the roof, could see them. They actually arrived at the Institute the next morning, Friday, April 20, 1945, at ten.
“This is it! This is it!” The Chief ran down the hallway, shouting into each lab. “Josef, put up the flag. Now! Put up the flag.”
Krupinsky and I raced down the stairs, out the front doors, tied a white lab coat by the sleeves, pulled it up the virgin pole, and beat a hasty retreat just as a truck with armed Soviets drove through the gate and around the circular drive.
Confusion. Krupinsky and I slammed into the lobby. The Chief, Professor Kreutzer, and Krupinsky were there, and some of the others. The Chief had a liter of vodka in one hand and a broom handle with a white rag attached in the other. “We will greet them on the front steps,” he said breathlessly.
“No,” said Professor Kreutzer calmly. “We will wait here in the lobby. Krup, you take the flag and stand in front, near the door. I’ll open it so they can see you. Talk to them in Russian.”
Reluctantly, Krupinsky relieved the Chief of the broom handle and moved, trembling, to the double doors. Professor Kreutzer opened them wide, then stepped back beside the Chief.
The rest of us huddled directly behind them: Rabin, Ignatov, Bolotnikov, the Yugoslav, the French Physicist François Daniel, the Roumanian Biologist George Treponesco, and I. The other men—the civilian doctors remaining in Brain Research, the two chemists left from Mantle, the custodians and kitchen workers—were told to stay in their work areas and pretend to be busy. The women—Frau Doktor, Sonja, Kirsti, the female lab assistants, and the wives—were hiding in the darkroom or in the various labs. Word had come from the refugees that the troops following the first, elite attack troops were raping all the women. The Security Officer, in civilian dress, was also “working” in one of the labs.
Through the open double doors, we could see twenty soldiers jump from the truck, holding submachine guns and rifles; some running into the park, the others advancing, slowly, toward the building.
“Wave the white flag,” said the Chief. “Go to the door and let them see it. And speak Russian!”
The broom handle advanced, quaking, to the threshold.
We could not see the soldiers. They had flattened themselves against the building. A voice shouted, in German, “Let all German soldiers step outside with their hands up.”
Krupinsky stepped outside.
One could hear the same voice. “Are there more?”
“We are not soldiers,” said Krupinsky in German. My good Lord. He forgot to speak Russian.
“Krupinsky, speak Russian,” hissed Professor Kreutzer through the door.
“You! Tell everyone to come out, slowly, with their hands up.”
Professor Kreutzer nodded for us to obey; in a tight pack, we followed him and the Chief,
“One at a time!” Shouted in German.
We exited onto the stairs, one at a time, with our hands up, and, immediately, were surrounded by ten tense Soviet soldiers, pointing submachine guns and rifles at us. A young officer, followed by an aide, broke through the armed soldiers and addressed himself in German to Krupinsky, who still stood at the head of our little group.
“All soldiers and fascists must surrender. If any resistance is offered, this entire place will be destroyed and everyone become a prisoner. They can be assured of humane treatment by the great Red Army. We have no animosity against the German people. The Hitlers come and go, but the German people remain.”
Krupinsky’s voice was a squeak. “We speak Russian here,” he said in Russian and pointed to the Chief. The broom handle was shaking violently.
The young officer looked toward us: the Chief and Professor Kreutzer standing in front, and the rest of us clustered behind them. Then Rabin shouted something in Russian and came forward very slowly.
When the young commissar saw the pianist, his face registered disbelief and then expressed such joy and amazement. Apparently, the Soviets did not know that Stalin’s favorite pianist—famous all over Russia—was still alive.
“Rabin!”
They embraced.
The Chief came forward, raised the liter beaker of vodka, and said, “To the success of the great Red Army toward victory and peace,” drank deeply, and handed it to the young officer, who said, “To the great Stalin, liberator of all people.” He did not drink but, instead, pushed the beaker into the hand of Professor Kreutzer, ordering, “Drink!”
Professor Kreutzer bowed slightly and drank deeply. Only then did the young officer drink. He scanned the rest of us huddled together. “This young man,” he said in German and pointed to me. “Is he not a soldier?”
“He is a Jew,” said Professor Kreutzer.
“His papers!”
“He has none,” said Professor Kreutzer, stepping forward as he spoke. “He escaped from a labor camp.”
The officer cocked his head to one side and looked at me for an instant, then thrust the beaker toward me. “Drink!”
I did.
“You are lucky,” he said. And at a sharp command from him in Russian, the soldiers pointed their weapons to the floor.
The entire plant had to be searched. Those of us in the lobby were ordered to remain where we were. An armed team took Professor Kreutzer along as hostage and looked into every building, every room, every corner of the park.
The young commissar stayed in the lobby and talked, in Russian, with Rabin, Bolotnikov, and Ignatov. The soldiers relaxed, some sitting on the floor, others standing easy or leaning against the walls, almost all smoking; and when they offered us cigarettes—papirossi with a long mouthpiece and small bit of tobacco, or mahorca tobacco in Pravda newspaper, rolled with one hand in their pockets—we relaxed, too. Krupinsky, the Yugoslav, and I sat on the stairs and were joined by François Daniel and that schlemiel Treponesco. The Chief paced back and forth between the two groups and listened.
“What we need to think about at this very moment,” said Treponesco, “is how we are going to eat for the next year.”
“For Christ’s sake, you shiny ape,” said Krupinsky. “What we have to think about is the welfare of our wives. You heard what’s going on. The Russians are raping and killing.”
“Not these,” said the Yugoslav. “These first troops are elite and disciplined.”
“And the mark will have no value whatsoever,” continued Treponesco. “We need to think about how to get some occupation money.”
The Chief, pacing in our direction, overheard Treponesco. “What we need to be thinking about,” he said, “is how to continue our research.”
“I think,” said that schmuck Treponesco, “that we should take advantage of the tremendous sexual appetite of the Red Army. How if we get half a dozen ladies from the tenderloin district in Berlin, put them in the empty apartments, and say to the Russian soldiers, ‘Be my guest’—for a slight fee, of course.”
We laughed at this—all but the Chief and Krupinsky, who was too worried about his wife to think anything funny. Our mood was lifting. We were not afraid, at that moment, of the Soviets, and slowly it began to dawn that we may have been liberated.
“There must be another way,” said François Daniel, “short of turning the Institute into a brothel.”
“How if we use the fertilizing concept?” said the Yugoslav.
“What the hell does that mean, Mitya?” asked Krupinsky.
“Use your imagination. The doctors up in Brain Research are sitting on a huge supply of sulfonamides and condoms, and Treponesco has been collecting watches, jewelry—”
“That stuff’s mine,” Treponesco said, petulantly.
“Like hell it is,” said the Yugoslav. “You got it on Institute requisitions”
“Not all of it. I bought and traded.”
“That’s enough!” said the Chief, infuriated. “I am one hundred percent against the idea of selling anything here.”
“But Chief, how will we eat?”
“I will find a way. Max and I. No doubt we will be supplied with what we need for survival. There will be no funds for new experimentation for a while, but we must continue with what we can. There will be no time for commerce. This is a place of serious research!” And he stalked off to listen to the other group.
The search team returned with Professor Kreutzer, and, after a brief conference, the commissar addressed us again in German: “So far all is clear here. But my men have found some interesting things.” He laughed. “The most interesting might be those monkeys on the second floor.”
“This place,” he continued, in good humor, “is so full of women and inebriating substances, some of which may be poisonous, that if the soldiers following us get into it, we might as well stop the Berlin offensive.”
We laughed.
“So I must declare this place off limits to our soldiers, or we would lose the war in Berlin. The attack groups are well disciplined, but those that follow us are disorderly. For your protection I leave an armed guard to keep the Red soldiers out.” He turned to the Chief. “The colonel who will be in charge of the hospitals needs help from any physicians you have here who can speak both Russian and German.”
“Of course,” the Chief said. “Dr Krupinsky here speaks Russian and is a fine medical doctor.”
Krupinsky, at the mention of his name, stepped forward smiling, blushing like a bride.
“Would you mind coming with us now, Dr Krupinsky, to the hospitals?”
“I would be overjoyed to be in a hospital again.” He actually had tears in his eyes. “Can I get my things? My medical equipment—and my wife?”
“Yes, of course. But perhaps your wife would be safer here for a day or two.”
Krupinsky hesitated.
“But you may take her, if you wish.” He turned to the rest of us and said, “One more announcement. This Institute is hereby placed under the jurisdiction of the Commander of the Hospital Section, Berlin-Hagen. Starting tomorrow afternoon or, at the latest, the day after, your personnel will be placed on hospital officers’ rations. Three good meals a day will be brought over.”
We all looked at each other and smiled very much.
“We go now,” said the commissar. “Sergeant Lazar and his guards are here. He will be in shortly to introduce himself.”
It was noon. The young commissar and his troops left. We, still standing in the lobby, “liberated,” were not certain what to do next.
Professor Kreutzer took command and captured our attention by changing from the rimless to the black-rims. We mustered about him to await orders. “My friends,” he said, so softly that one had to strain to hear, “do not forget that there are guards at the gate.”
“But Max,” said the Yugoslav, “it is for our protection.”
“Guards have two functions. One is to keep people out; the other is to keep people in. Do not forget that even under Nazi rule there were no guards at our gate.”
“It is true,” said the Chief. “‘Protection’ is a term common to both Nazis and Bolshevists. The first and foremost purpose of this ‘protection’ is to prevent any of us from leaving. We are under house arrest. Being under the protection of the Red Army is the same as being a prisoner. Correct, Max? Or am I right?”
“You are correct,” said Professor Kreutzer. “Quiet! We have company.”
A Soviet soldier had entered the lobby and was looking, hesitantly, in our direction. An older man, late fifties or so, he approached us, removed his cap, and bowed deferentially. “Hello, will you please excuse me,” he said in what sounded like Middle High German. “I am Sergeant Lazar. My guards have surrounded this place, and you will be safe.” No, it was Yiddish. He was speaking a patois of German and Yiddish.
“How many are you?” growled the Chief.
“We are only fourteen, but with automatic weapons that is sufficient, believe me.”
“Sufficient to keep us locked in as prisoners, you mean.”
“Oh, no, Herr Professor! Not at all! We are not NKVD. You are free to go and come. Believe me. I am not even a real soldier, even though I have been in one army or the other all my adult life; I am a farmer and I never once volunteered. Oh, no, to the contrary, we are here to protect you from the troops that follow. They are . . . let me put it this way: Are you aware of what the Nazis have done to the land and to the people?”
“We have heard of the concentration camps—the atrocities,” said the Chief.
“Whatever you have heard,” said Sergeant Lazar, “it is wrong. It is not enough. No words can describe what I have seen.” He had tears in his eyes and took a great red handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his eyes, blew his nose before he could go on. “You see, it has made the Red Army very angry.” He sighed. “But this place? This place is heaven, and I am very happy to be assigned here to help you, and so are my men.”
“You’re not Russian, are you?” asked the Chief.
Sergeant Lazar smiled. “No, I am not. I am from Galicia.”
“Yet you have been in the Russian army all your life?”
“Did I say that? Oh, no, I said I have been in the army all my life—but not the Russian army. You see, I was in university—agriculture—when the First World War began, and I was conscripted into the Austrian army. After the war, I went back to university and was promptly drafted by the Polish army for several little wars. In 1939, I was taken prisoner by the Reds and was given the option to go to Siberia or to join the Red Army. So here I am. All the time I have distinguished myself by never rising above the rank of sergeant.”
The Chief began to laugh. “Josef,” he said, “give our friend here some vodka.”
“Oh, no, thank you. I don’t drink.”
The Chief turned to Professor Kreutzer. “Max, what do you think? Can we trust this commissar? Is it safe to dig into the supply of cornmeal we’ve been saving and eat all we want?”
Professor Kreutzer shook his head. “Let’s wait! There’s enough for all personnel to have a bowl for each meal for several weeks. We’d better wait and see.”
“Excuse me, Herr Professor,” said Sergeant Lazar, “don’t you worry. If the commissar said there will be food tomorrow, then there will be food tomorrow and plenty of it. This place is heaven,” he said again, rolling his eyes.
And, indeed, the food came the next evening. Stew so rich and thick with meat, mostly meat, with peas and carrots and potatoes; good bread—moist, dark, heavy sourdough—and sausages, as good as before the war; real coffee, cream, and white sugar; Russian cigarettes; and American chocolate bars; all in generous amounts. But the day of our “liberation,” we continued with the rationing, and life went on much as usual. As soon as Sergeant Lazar left us, Professor Kreutzer said, “Josef, it’s time for Latte’s x-ray treatment. Would you give me a hand?”
This, then, was what it was like to be liberated.
There were guards at the gate, a Soviet flag on the pole, and I sat in the small control booth of the Radiation Laboratory, watching the valves and meters, looking through the aquarium of glass and water at the wavering image of the Security Officer, who removed his white lab coat and lay down on the table, and at Professor Kreutzer, who fussed with the equipment. Today the neck. One wondered how long he would go on? It was the same as always, except that now our Gestapo in the House no longer wore the black uniform of the S.S.; Krupinsky and Kirsti were gone; it was more convenient to be advertised as a Jew than as a German; and I was beginning to worry about Tatiana. She should have stayed at the Institute.
When the x-ray treatment was over. Professor Kreutzer told me to shut down the high-voltage generators. The pumps for the linear accelerator had been turned off permanently in January, when the Russians had crossed the Oder. Professor Kreutzer said he could not take the risk of a sudden power failure; besides, there was no money to run anything. So when I shut down the generators, the Radiation Laboratory was silent and dark.
Sergeant Lazar allowed selected Soviet soldiers into the building to shop. The Roumanian Biologist George Treponesco opened his store in Rare Earths and sold the watches and jewelry he had been collecting. The physicians up in Brain Research opened a drugstore in a lab on third and sold sulfonamides and condoms. The French Physicist François Daniel had a couturier shop in Physics: bathing suits, silk stockings—whatever he had been able to get his hands on. The most popular concession of all, though, was the Yugoslav’s. He charged admission to see the masturbating monkeys.
Having been away, I was unable to make such preparations, but the good sergeant from Galicia, Lazar, gave me a brilliant idea when he wandered into my lab and mentioned that he had sent a picture of himself to his wife when he was in the Austrian army in 1914, again when he was in the Polish army in 1920 and 1938, but that in all his years in the Russian army, he had not had a portrait taken.
“Poor woman doesn’t know what I look like anymore.”
“How would you like it if I took your picture so you could send it to her?”
“Like it? I love it.”
“Give me an hour to set it up, and I’ll take your photograph.”
“You come find me. I be out in front—by the door.”
As soon as he left the lab, I ran up the stairs to the darkroom on the third floor, picked up the old box camera, film, and lights, took them back to my lab, arranged the camera and lights, hung a dark blackdrop, pulled up a chair, just so, and then ran down the stairs and out the front door to invite Sergeant Lazar to be the first to have his picture taken, free of charge.
I had a slight problem with the paper. All we had at the Institute was electrocardiogram and electroencephalograph paper made for optical writing. So the pictures not only had too much contrast—stark light, stark dark, and no grays—but also faded rather quickly. By the time the pictures arrived in Russia, they would mostly be faded. My studio was popular, almost fifteen to twenty customers every afternoon—after the sorting of the flies—thanks to Sergeant Lazar, who did an especially good job of soliciting for me.
Still, the Yugoslav’s concession was the star attraction. The Russian soldiers were entranced by the masturbating monkeys and crowded in to see them. They were so popular—in fact, that the young commissar who had “liberated” us in April stopped by on his way back to Moscow, in June, to pick them up.
The Chief summoned us all to the lobby to have a final vodka with our “liberator.” By the time I got down the stairs, there was an intense discussion going on between Professor Kreutzer and the commissar.
“They will not travel,” said Professor Kreutzer. “They have all had delicate brain operations. What he tells you is true. They will not survive the journey. They will all die.”
“Then he is responsible that they live,” said the commissar, nodding toward the Yugoslav. “He will come with us.”
“Let me talk with him,” said the Chief. “I will convince him of the folly,” and he argued with the commissar, heatedly, in Russian, the Yugoslav and Ignatov joining in.
Professor Kreutzer stepped back to where I stood with François Daniel, and began to change his glasses, absentmindedly: that is, he took off the gold-rims he was wearing, wiped them clean, and put them back on.
The Yugoslav, in utter despair, left the discussion and joined us. “It seems they want to give them as a gift to Stalin from the 484th Platoon. If it weren’t for the rest of you, I would kill myself right now and save them the trouble. They will never survive the trip, the primates, and when they die, I will be killed.”
Within an hour, the trucks were loaded—the primates in their cages, the Yugoslav under armed guard.
Ignatov and Rabin went with them of their own free will. There would be no more music.
When they were gone, François Daniel said, “I’m getting out of here.”
“Where will you go?” Bolotnikov asked.
“To the Americans, wherever they are.”
“I go, too,” said Bolotnikov.
Back in my lab, I had time to take one photo before the Chief stormed in, in such a rage that my clients, waiting patiently in line to have their pictures taken, fled in fright.
“Because of this”—he waved his arm at my photography shop—“because of these markets, they have taken Mitya.” He paced furiously.
I turned to my worktable. Because there was no money, no new experimentation was going on, and although I, alone, was left in our laboratory, I continued the routine sorting of the Drosophila for three or four hours a day, putting up cultures, examining them after ten or twelve days, making statistics and analysis. But the Chief was not pleased with this, either. “And you!” He was standing behind me now. “How dare you make only one hundred or one hundred and fifty cultures. Your statistics mean nothing. Statistical analysis requires a large number, a very large number.”
I was silent.
“No one is listening to me,” he said. “Things fall apart.” And he stalked from the lab.
At least I was keeping the flies going by not allowing them to breed themselves to death in the small flasks, clearing out those which were not useful, putting them into the alcohol bottle, the mass grave.
It needed emptying. The Drosophila were heaped well above the level of the alcohol in the wide-mouth jar, the new flies falling onto the heap, dying slowly from the fumes rather than instantly from the liquid itself. But they were gassed, sleeping, and felt no pain.
The last few to be discarded were asleep on a white index card. I uncorked the alcohol jar, tapped the anesthetized flies onto the heap, recorked the jar, and then immediately uncorked. One little fellow on top was moving. I inserted my pencil; he climbed onto it, and I lifted him out onto the white index card. He was wet from the moisture in the jar and quite drunk from the alcohol vapor and the ether. He looked wingless, the wings pasted to his body by the moisture. But he could walk, barely. Stagger, stop, weave. Quite drunk, but living. He stood in one place now, rubbing together his two front legs, rubbing them against his face and head, freeing one wing and then the other. The staggering became less severe; he could walk a straighter line. Hop. He lifted himself off the ground. Hop. Then took a small flight. I made black spots on the white card, then put a small splash of polenta pudding with yeast on the card. And there he was, landing, ignoring the yeast and hopping the spots.
I corked the bottle. Other flies had attempted to escape, but the fumes were too much. They would have had to have been helped.
I walked down to Chemistry to see if one of the girls would like to go to the darkroom. They had given up their apartment in Hagen and were living in the complex in the park, which at that time was mostly empty.
I still had no word from Tanya.
Twice in June and once in July, I walked into Berlin—the trains were not yet running—to Tanya’s western suburb, Dahlem, which was not far from my father’s house. On the first two trips, I found their house occupied by Russian officers; on the third, by Americans, none of whom could—or would—give me any information about the family. I began to imagine that I was in love with her, and I blamed myself for every failure in our relationship—until mid-July, when the Americans restored phone service city-wide and I was able to talk to her.
I was alone in the lab, sorting the flies, when the Chief came in. “We have telephones again,” he said. “See if you can reach Tatiana.”
I thought, at first, it was she who answered.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Tanya?”
“Hello? No, this is not Tanya.”
“I beg your pardon.” My heart was pounding. The Chief stopped pacing and stood beside me. “Is Tatiana Backhaus there?”
“Who is calling?”
I looked at the Chief, who was pacing again, and took a deep, shaky breath. “Josef Bernhardt. Is she there? Is Tanya there?”
“Josef! I told her you would call.”
“Is she all right?”
The Chief, again, stopped pacing and growled, “Well, is she there?”
“Tanya, Tanya,” I heard her mother’s voice call. “It’s Josef. I told you he would call.”
I shoved the phone at the Chief. “She’s there.”
“Hello?” He waited. “Tanya, my dear child, are you all right? . . . Thank God! Your mother and father? . . . That is wonderful . . . I am fine . . . He is fine. We are all fine. Good . . . good. Here is Josef. He will tell you all the news.” The Chief handed me the phone.
I could hear Tanya’s voice calling, “Josef? Josef?”
The Chief, tears in his eyes, smiled at me. “Two children saved,” he said. “That is something, is it not? Two children saved?” And he strode from the lab.
“Tanya, how are you? Are you all right? I’ve been to your house three times.”
“Mother said you would call. I’m fine. How are you? It was terrible, but we are all right, all of us. Josef, I am so sorry I did not dance with you.”
“Where were you? We were really getting worried.”
“Oh, Josef, it was terrible. The Russians.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“No. I was hidden near Königswusterhausen, but there was no food, and it was cold, and when we got back to Berlin there were American officers living in our house, and we had to stay with friends until they moved out. They were very nice, the Americans, when they found out we were not Nazis. They gave us food. We have food. And you? What happened to you? We knew you were taken from Farben, but that’s all.”
“I was forced labor at Wolffs—a factory near Ostkreuz—and I escaped.”
“You escaped?”
Ah, the old chill was back. “Yes, I escaped.”
“How did you do that?”
I did not answer her.
“Josef?”
“Yes? I’m here.”
“Did you call your father yet?”
“No, and I don’t intend to.”
“He is very ill, Josef, and worried about you.”
“And how would you know this?”
“I have visited him. Almost every day, since we got back. Our fathers know each other.”
“He is not well.”
“I can’t come just now, Tanya. The Chief needs me. I’m the only one left to sort the flies.”
“Oh, no. Did something happen to the Krupinskys?”
“They’re all right. He’s working in a hospital nearby. And almost everyone else has left.”
“Professor Kreutzer?”
“He’s still here, and Frau Doktor and Sonja.”
“Is that all?”
“Treponesco.”
“Monika? Is she still there?”
I was silent. Monika had been gone for quite some time, but, at that moment, I did not want to give Tatiana the satisfaction of knowing.
“So! She’s there. You should know that your next-door neighbor has moved into your house to take care of your father.”
“My next-door neighbor? You don’t mean that idiot Baron is living in my house?”
“His was bombed and burned down. You should be grateful. Your father is really helpless, and it is your duty to care for him.”
I sighed. “Does Father have food?”
“Yes. Some American friends sent cartons and cartons of cigarettes—through some colonel they knew—and you can buy anything with American cigarettes. He bought you a motorcycle, a BMW, with four cartons and a sailboat for two cartons. Josef? Did you hear me?”
“Yes, I heard you.”
“So he has food now. But for a while he didn’t. He was more upset about not having food for his dog than for himself.”
“Dritt? How is Dritt?”
“Dead. Your father couldn’t feed him.”
Poor old Dritt. I couldn’t even save him.
“I told your father about us.”
“No, not everything. I told my mother everything, and she understood. She said you would call me. He has given me a ring.”
“A what?”
“Your father gave me a ring—your mother’s diamond.”
“That’s quite nice, Tatiana. I think the two of you will be quite happy together.”
There developed a little inner circle, which was in the habit of having all three meals together at the same table in the cafeteria—the Chief and Sonja Press, Professor Kreutzer and his wife, Frau Doktor, the Roumanian Biologist George Treponesco, and I. Breakfast was at seven thirty, lunch at noon, and dinner at six thirty in the evening. We regrouped again at nine to do some serious drinking and to talk about what lay in store.
Each of us was concerned with his own small life and future. The Chief and Professor Kreutzer dreamed of starting a university in a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the American Sector of Berlin and had actually made several trips to Potsdam to promote their idea. All the others—except for Treponesco—wanted to be on the Chief’s faculty to continue research and to teach. I, of course, had visions of being their student in this imaginary university.
Our self-interested preoccupations continued throughout the summer, until August sixth, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
That night, at shortly after nine, the inner circle was gathered at our table in the cafeteria, settling down with glasses of vodka, American cigarettes, Russian caviar, and Swiss chocolate bars—all but Professor Kreutzer, who generally listened to the BBC at nine and then reported the latest news to us.
He arrived breathless and ashen, and without changing his glasses even once, he said, “BBC reports that the Allies have dropped an atomic bomb on Japan.”
Stunned silence. Then shock and disbelief and everybody talking at once.
Finally, one could hear Frau Doktor say, “Are you certain you heard it correctly?”
And we ceased talking and listened for Professor Kreutzer’s answer.
“I am sure!”
“It’s just a bluff to scare the Soviets,” said Treponesco.
“I don’t think so,” said Professor Kreutzer. His voice was shaking-I had never seen him so profoundly disturbed.
“Did they say anything about uranium in connection with it?” asked the Chief.
“No. They spoke of the bomb as being equivalent to tens of thousands of tons of TNT.”
The Chief began to pace, hands locked behind his back. “My God,” he said. “If they really did it, what kind of an airplane must they have developed to drop that thing.”
“You are assuming that they had to drop a whole reactor,” said Professor Kreutzer.
“What else could it be?” said Treponesco.
“There are many possibilities,” said Professor Kreutzer. “But, fortunately, none that we know of here in Germany.”
“It’s all a bluff,” said Treponesco again, “to scare the Soviets.”
“Then how do you account for the reference to tens of thousands of tons of TNT,” I said sarcastically.
“The Soviets,” said the Chief, thoughtfully. “If it is, indeed, a uranium bomb, I don’t think the Russians are in on it. Max!” He stopped pacing and looked at Professor Kreutzer. “That would explain the disappearance of Heisenberg and Hahn and all the other nuclear scientists in the American and British sectors. The Americans and the British have had a deep interest in the subject, but obviously the Russians have not been thinking about it at all.”
Professor Kreutzer removed from his pocket the black-rims and began a cleaning and changing routine. We waited, silently, for him to continue.
Finally, he donned the rimless and spoke. “The next newscast is at nine o’clock Greenwich Mean Time, which is midnight here—Moscow time. They promise to have more information by then. Let us all listen together and after carefully evaluating this development, let us make our decisions.”
Shortly before midnight, we gathered around the radio in the Chief’s private office: Professor Kreutzer, Treponesco, Frau Doktor, the Physicist of the cyclotron at the post office—who, because of the news, had hurried out to the Institute—the Chief, of course, Sonja, and I. At exactly twelve, the volume was turned up:
This is London. . . . Twenty-one hours Greenwich Mean Time . . . BBC World Service. The news tonight is dominated by a tremendous achievement of Allied scientists—the production of the atomic bomb. One has already been dropped on a Japanese army base.
“I don’t believe it,” said Treponesco. “I just—”
“Shhhh.”
“Quiet, damn you.”
. . . and reconnaissance aircraft couldn’t see anything hours later because of the tremendous pall of smoke and dust that was still obscuring the city of once over three hundred thousand inhabitants. The Allies report that they have spent over five hundred million pounds on the project; up to one hundred twenty-five thousand people helped to build the factories in America and sixty-five thousand are running them now. Few of the workers, it is reported, knew what they were producing. They could see huge quantities of materials going in, and nothing coming out—for the size of the explosive charge is very small.
At this, all in the room exchanged significant looks.
Then came the final confirmation:
The American Secretary for War has announced that uranium was used in making the bomb.
“My God, three hundred thousand dead?”
“They didn’t say that.”
“Madness!”
“There must have been tremendous cooperation among the Americans and the British to do this thing.”
“Thank God Hitler threw all the great physicists out of Germany—Lise Meitner—all of them,” said the Physicist from the post office.
“When Hahn first made his discovery,” said the Chief, “and realized the implications of uranium fission, he wanted to throw all the uranium into the sea just to avoid such a catastrophe.”
“Why didn’t he?” said Frau Doktor.
“Poor Heisenberg.” Treponesco snorted. “It makes him out a failure.”
“Nonsense!” said the Chief. “Don’t you believe for a moment that Heisenberg or Hahn wanted the atomic bomb for Adolf Hitler.”
“What I cannot understand,” said Professor Kreutzer, “is why they waited so long to drop it on the Japanese.”
“Maybe the Allies thought they would surrender right after Germany,” said Treponesco.
“No,” said the Chief. “They didn’t have it any sooner. If they had, they would have dropped it on Berlin.”
My God. We were all silent for quite some time.
Sonja served tea.
“It was political,” said the Physicist from the post office. “It is a warning to the Soviets.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” said Treponesco.
“You said it was a bluff,” I corrected him.
More silence. We drank our tea. The Chief jumped to his feet and tried to pace, but the room was too crowded. Professor Kreutzer took a spectacle case from his pocket, took out the gold-rims, began to clean them, removed the black-rims he was wearing, and put on the gold. We watched him and waited.
“It is obvious,” he said, finally, “that with the dropping of this bomb by the Americans and the British, interest in anything nuclear will be intense.”
All nodded in agreement.
He continued. “The Soviets have the habit of packing up everything and shipping it off to Russia.”
The Physicist from the post office jumped to his feet. “They wouldn’t do that to me,” he said. “Why, the magnet alone, of my cyclotron, weighs some two hundred twenty tons. Even the Russians couldn’t be that stupid.”
“One must not forget,” said Professor Kreutzer, “that the Germans found a working cyclotron in Paris in 1941, took it apart, and shipped it to Alsace-Lorraine, where our colleague is still trying to put it together.”
“Yes, but that was different.”
“In what way different?”
“The post office cyclotron was built only because our transmitter wasn’t in use and there sat idle a huge power plant. It would be sheer folly to try to move it. The Paris move was sabotage.”
“I think I could persuade them,” said the Chief, “that our small atom smasher would not survive the trip, that they would be better off to let us continue our research here.”
“Were you able to convince them that the primates would not survive the trip?” asked Professor Kreutzer.
“You’re right. Max. You’re right. But Max, if I serve them the pure wine, and they know what I’ve done here, surely then—”
“The pure wine, Alex? What is the pure wine?”
“It is the real truth of my loyalty.”
“What loyalty?”
“To Russia rather than to Germany.”
“And tell me, my good friend, as you would tell it to them, of the real truth of your loyalty to Stalin, liberator of all people.”
The Chief threw back his head and rumbled a desperate deep laugh. “If I were to tell them the real truth, dear Max, I would have to lie.”
“I see!” said Professor Kreutzer. “My friends, we must proceed carefully, as before. These Russians—they are no different from the Nazis. Perhaps the sheer magnitude will keep them from moving the cyclotron at the post office. I don’t know. But you, Alex, should take Sonja and leave at dawn. Go to the Americans!”
“No! I will stay. My work is here. But I will hide our small bit of uranium.”
“I wouldn’t do that. That’s the first thing they’ll come looking for. That would be a mistake. A fatal mistake.”
“But you, Max, you should leave.”
Professor Kreutzer sighed. “You are making mistakes. To hide the uranium is a mistake. To stay is a mistake.”
“I will stay,” said Treponesco.
Then the Chief polled each person in the room, one at a time, starting with Frau Doktor.
“Ruth,” he said, “there is no need for you to stay. You can carry on your work in other places. As much as I would miss you, I beg of you to leave.”
“Oh, Alex, you know I have been in contact with our colleagues in Great Britain. But I can’t go. Not quite yet.”
“I think you should leave immediately,” said Professor Kreutzer. “In the morning.”
She shook her head. “I am in the process of gathering my research notes. Even if I hurry, it would take me at least another week before I could put it all together. But then I will leave—in a week or so.”
“Max?” said the Chief.
“I will send my wife away at once. But I will stay,” said Professor Kreutzer.
“Josef,” said the Chief. “You must leave.”
“You must,” echoed some of the others.
I, also, did not want to leave that garden of a graveyard. I did not want to leave them. They were all the family I had.
“I will stay.”
Knowing the consequences, we all made the same choice as Uncle Otto, Aunt Greta, and my mother, the same choice, we were discovering, as millions of others. One lives one’s present naively.
Using metal mine detectors, the day after the second atomic bomb was dropped, on Nagasaki, they easily found the kilo of uranium in the bulky lead cases which the Chief had buried in the earth in the large greenhouse in the park. The buildings and grounds swarmed with green-capped, armed Russians. Sergeant Lazar from Galicia and his friendly guards were replaced with NKVD. Everyone at the Institute was interviewed. We were ordered to continue our scientific work. And we were all placed under arrest—forbidden to leave the grounds.
The next morning, shortly after dawn, as I lay sleeping in my apartment in the complex at the back of the park, I was awakened by a large convoy of trucks pulling into the circular drive at the entrance to the Institute. It was Saturday, August 11, 1945. I dressed and hurried across the park to see what was happening.
They were taking it apart—the Institute—loading everything into the empty trucks: chairs, tables, drapes, dishes. The Bechstein piano, my good Lord, was being carried down the front steps.
The soldiers ignored me as I walked through the lobby and up the steps of the right wing to the lab. Sonja was there, pacing and wringing her hands. “Oh, Josef. Alex wants to see you right away. Hurry.”
I ran up the circular staircase to the penthouse. There were two armed guards at the door to his private office. They allowed me to knock.
I could hear the Chief say, “Enter.”
They allowed me to pass and to close the door behind me.
The Chief was stuffing papers into a small suitcase on his desk. He took my face into his great hands. “Josef, the Soviets take not only equipment but also people.”
I tried to pull my head away. His hands were so large for a man of his height. He looked into my eyes. I knew what he was going to say, and I didn’t want to hear it.
“It would not be good for you in Siberia.” He dropped his hands and turned his back on me.
“I do not want to leave you, Herr Professor.”
He sighed, his back still to me. “During the night, Max and I talked at great length about your future. Also, I have been, for some time, in contact with your father.”
I had not been consulted.
“You must hide yourself and escape through the apples. Go to your father. When you leave me now, you must go immediately to Max. He has certain papers for you and will tell you of our wishes for your future.” He turned again to face me.
I shook my head.
“Your father is ill. He needs you.” Again, he turned his back on me and began to sort papers and put them in the suitcase.
“Herr Professor,” I said.
But he would not look at me. He continued to sort the papers as though I no longer existed.
I left him, walked past the guards, past Sonja Press, who sat weeping at her desk in the reception office, and down the circular staircase to Physics. There were two armed guards by the open door of the lab. They let me pass. Professor Kreutzer was sitting on a high stool at a worktable. I stood, silent, as he changed to the black-rims.
“You are nineteen years old,” he said. “You know that you have missed the boat on mathematics.”
I nodded. Tears filled my eyes, and I wept. He turned from me until I was in control; then, facing me again, he gestured, both hands open, palms up. Then he, too, began to weep and turned away, again, until he was in control. Then, looking at me, he said, “Do you understand why I say this, Josef?”
“Yes, Herr Professor, I do.”
“I offer you a bouquet of dead flowers when I tell you that we, Alex and I, feel that the kind of creativity you were capable of in mathematics reaches its peak by the time one is in his mid-twenties. Newton, by the time he was twenty-four, had made the two fundamental discoveries which have transformed mathematical science, that of the differential, which he shared with his teacher, Barrow, and that of expansion into infinite spheres.
“Pascal published his study of mathematics at twenty-one and then went on to other things—philosophy. Einstein published his theory of relativity when he was twenty-five, but he actually thought it through when he was an adolescent.
“Your teacher in high school taught you all he knew by the time you were fourteen and was unable to arrange for you to move on. And when you came here, not one of us was capable of carrying you on in mathematics. Crucial years wasted. I regret this. I regret this waste more than anything else. The flower of western civilization was slowly wilting, but Hitler and his cohorts ground it to dust beneath their boots.” He removed his glasses, put them on the table, rubbed his eyes. “Sit down, sit down, Josef.” He peered at me. He hardly could see without his glasses.
I sat on a chair and looked up at him.
“It might be years yet before you could be with the right people. We tried. I, myself, went to Potsdam to see if we could convince the Americans to let us open a university in the Kaiser Wilhelm Foundation buildings in their zone in Berlin. But they were using it as a hotel and playground for their officers. He sighed. They are entitled. Furthermore, the best people are gone.”
He wiped his eyes with a handkerchief, cleaned the black-rims, and put them on.
“Alex and I also agree that, aside from mathematics, your creativity lies in practical things. You have a talent for mechanical invention. It is our opinion, and, I might add, our strong wish, that you try to emigrate to the United States as soon as you are able, matriculate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and study nuclear physics.”
I looked away.
“With the breakthrough in atomic energy, I foresee a good future for you. I see that in twenty-five or thirty years, the world will be powered by nuclear energy, which force, at the same time, might be the one thing to keep mankind from war.
“But again, most physicists have done their best work by the time they are thirty or thirty-five. Max Planck published his quantum theory when he was thirty-two. It is imperative that you get to the United States as soon as possible to begin your training.”
He took an envelope from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “Here are two recommendations: one from me, the other from Alex, We are not unknown in scientific circles. With these you should be able, not only to gain acceptance in Massachusetts, but also to be awarded a full scholarship.”
“Professor Kreutzer, I would like to go with you and the Chief.”
“No. It is all over for us. Our hope is in you.”
I sat there, the envelope in my hand, and wept.
“Josef, you must understand that the Soviets will try to put me to work to build weapons. I have decided that under no circumstances will I cooperate in the creating of atomic bombs. You know what that will mean for me?”
“Yes, but I—”
He interrupted me. “Are you aware that the Soviet government has denounced the Darwinian theory of evolution and has gone back to Lamarck, and that the Mendelian theory of genetics is in disfavor also?”
“No, Herr Professor. I didn’t know that.” That meant, of course, that there wasn’t a chance the Chief could continue his work in genetics, and that he, too, would be in disfavor.
“You are aware that the Avilovs fled Russia when Stalin came to power?”
“Yes, Herr Professor, I knew that.”
“No, Josef. It is all over for us.”
“But Herr Professor, I could be of help to you. Excuse me, but because I am younger, perhaps I could make some things easier for you.”
He turned from me. We sat in silence. I held the envelope in my hand. It was sealed. Finally, I rose from my chair.
“Herr Professor, I . . . I thank you.”
He nodded, his back to me.
I left Physics and walked down the dark hallway. There were two guards at the open door to the Rare Earths Laboratory. I waved to Treponesco. He waved back.
Frau Doktor’s Biology Laboratory was next. Although there were no guards at the door, two Russian soldiers inside her small lab were “packing”; that is, they were tearing her lab apart and throwing everything, indiscriminately, into a large crate: books, papers, test tubes, the two binocular microscopes, and even the incubators with the Drosophila. She, crumpled on a chair in the corner, was in a state of such absolute shock that she was unable to respond to my greeting. Usually immaculate and in control, she was now disheveled, her lab jacket open, her blouse half-buttoned, locks of her abundant dark hair—always pulled back severely into a bun—hanging loose.
I continued my walk down the hallway. There were two guards at the open door to my lab, and inside at the worktables sat Krupinsky and Kirsti with their suitcases.
“It seems,” said Krupinsky, “I am no longer needed as an interpreter and order clerk at the hospitals, but now I am needed for my great nuclear knowledge. They won’t believe me that I know nothing about it.”
I could think of nothing to say.
“I am not a physicist or a great mathematician like you, Bernhardt, but I was doing some good work in my specialty when they let me. It would be hard for a person like you to understand that all I ever wanted to be was a mere medical doctor.”
“Abe, please.” Kirsti took my hand. “Josef, he doesn’t mean what he says.”
“Do you have any idea what they have had me doing? I am an endocrinologist; I keep telling them that. But all I’ve been is a goddam purchasing agent, ordering rubber gloves and gauze in Russian, German, and English. I wasn’t even allowed near a patient.”
I had no words. I left the lab and walked across the hall to take a last look at the Radiation Laboratory—at the linear accelerator.
NKVD were dismantling our patched, homemade machine, created by Professor Kreutzer from bits and pieces of the junkyard. The Security Officer stood watching, more stooped than ever, ghastly thin, his face gray. There was much swearing in Russian and much ill humor. I watched. When the soldiers tried to disconnect the huge pumps, oil began to pour out all over the floor. The officer screamed, “Sabotage! Sabotage!”
I ran from the cement-block room, slipping and sliding on the flood of oil, back into my lab. Krupinsky sat with his head in his arms at a worktable. I opened the drawer of my table, and, after a quick survey of the three-year accumulation of junk I’d collected, stuffed my mother’s potato peeler, four chocolate bars, and the Fromm’s Akt into my pants pockets, then picked up a wire basket and the map of the park.
“Take my wife.” Krupinsky’s voice was muffled, his face still buried in his arms.
Kirsti said, “No.”
Krupinsky swung around in his chair. “Here, send this telegram as soon as you are able.”
I looked at the words he had scrawled on the paper:
Dear Herr Stalin:
Fuck you. Strong letter to follow.
Abraham Morris Krupinsky, M.D.
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
Berlin-Hagen
11 August 1945
I carried the basket and the map of the park into the little greenhouse kitchen off our lab, burned the “telegram” over the gas flame, filled four bottles with water and put them in the carrier; and then I went down the hall to the laboratory of Frau Doktor. She sat as before, only now, with a dazed look on her face, she watched the two Russian soldiers actually removing the panes of glass from her windows.
“Frau Doktor. It is time to collect the Drosophila melanogaster Berlin wilds in the park.”
She looked at me.
“Come!” I said. “It is time to collect.” I took her arms, pulled her to her feet, and picked up her handbag, which was on the floor beside her. The soldiers were intent only on their panes.
My hand on her arm, we walked from the lab and down the hall to the bathrooms. “Frau Doktor, go in there and relieve yourself. Take your time. Then comb your hair and arrange your clothes.”
She seemed loath to let go of my arm. Gently, I detached and gave her the handbag. “I will be waiting right here. Now go.”
She obeyed me as one in a dream. As promised, I waited at the door for her, and when she emerged ten minutes later, her hair was combed neatly, her face powdered, and her lab jacket buttoned. She followed submissively, allowing me to take the lead, enough in control to cooperate fully, but trembling and terrified. Somehow her helplessness brought out the strength in me and gave me courage. We walked down the hallway together, I carrying the wire basket and she the map of the park. On the staircase of our right wing, we were stopped by a Russian guard, who jabbed me in the side with his rifle butt.
“What do you do, you Nazi?” he said in German.
I pointed to the wire basket. “We pick up bottles of fruit flies from the trees and bushes in the park.” I nodded toward the map in Frau Doktor’s hand.
She opened it and showed the guard. “There, there, there, there.” She pointed.
He shoved me again with his rifle butt. “Do it!” And he followed us down the stairs to the main entrance in the lobby and pushed me out the double doors with his rifle and a boot on my ass.
Under the scrutiny of the guard, who watched us from the entrance, we consulted the map and picked up two bottles which were on bushes near the front door, then began working our way into the park, picking bottles off trees and bushes, until, toward the back of the park, we came near the willows guarding Mitzka’s tunnel to the apple orchard.
We stayed in that area until there was absolutely no one in sight. Frau Doktor first, then I, slipped behind the trees and into the shrubbery, crawling on our hands and knees partway through the hole to the little area Mitzka and I had cleared, where we used to lie, side by side, our bodies touching, plotting the destruction of Adolf Hitler and his Thousand Year Reich. There was very little room, and Frau Doktor and I had to sit very close, touching. As soon as she felt we were out of immediate danger, her entire body began to shake and she was racked with sobs. I put my finger to my lips, cautioning silence, and took her in my arms, letting her bury her face in my chest, my lab coat and shirt becoming soaked from her tears. I had a genuine affection for this woman who had been so kind to me from the very beginning. We were quite good friends, despite the difference in our ages.
Even this far back in the park, we could hear the racket those Russians were making with their “packing,” and we knew, without saying it, that we could not make any noise whatsoever. All the while, I felt certain that they would not find us. Mitzka had chosen well, and as far as I could tell, these units had no dogs with them. Tracking dogs would be the only way they could find us; that is, by smell. Furthermore, we would not be missed. I wasn’t considered important enough, and Frau Doktor’s research had nothing to do with neutrons.
After an hour, I suggested we stretch out and try to get some rest. It was unusual weather for Berlin, sunny and warm. I cleared away twigs and stones, then lay on my back, making it possible for her to rest partly on my body, with her head on my shoulder. I admire her for not pretending to be compromised, as Tatiana would have done. It was an obligatory intimacy. There simply was no room. We rested and slept quietly, with careful changes in position, until when darkness came she was calm, all was quiet, and we felt safe enough to converse in whispers.
“What will happen to them?” she asked, a rhetorical question requiring no answer. “I am so angry with myself,” she continued. “I am so greedy. I should have left at once as Max suggested.”
“You had a good reason. Your work. Years and years of work—gone.”
“What does it matter now?”
“It will matter. You know that.”
A tremulous sigh and she began again to weep—quietly.
“I have some chocolate bars and a little water, and I’ll crawl through the fence and get us some apples.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Oh, yes. I’ll be right back.”
I retrieved a lab coat full of apples, and we sat unavoidably close, our bodies, of necessity, in sustained contact. As we munched on chocolate bars and sucked the sour apples, we discussed our escape, deciding it would be safer to wait until morning. To be found wandering at night was far more dangerous than walking, openly, in the fields in daylight. And our discussion inevitably led to our plans—when and if we made the escape. She would make her way to friends in Great Britain. I had no idea where I would go the next day.
I pulled the sealed envelope Professor Kreutzer had given me from my pocket and put it in her hand.
“What is this?”
“Letters of recommendation from the Chief and Professor Kreutzer to M.I.T. They want me to go to the United States and study nuclear physics.”
“Do it. With their recommendations you will be accepted. You will have to begin at once to get a visa. Your father will be able to help you.”
“I do not want to go to my father’s house!”
“Where else could you go?”
“I don’t know. Things happened so fast today, I haven’t had time to think where I’ll go or what I’ll do. What would you say if I told you I’ve been considering medicine?”
So close, her body resting against mine, her mouth so near my ear, I could feel her negative reaction. “My dear,” she said, “with your aptitudes, your intelligence, that would be a tragic mistake which you would regret forever. Do as the Chief and Max advised. Use all your power to get to America. Max is always right.”
“If he is always right, why did he let himself be caught by the Russians? Why didn’t they leave when there was still a chance?”
“I think perhaps he has had enough. He is tired. Both of them—Alex, too. But you are young, you have a life before you. Don’t waste it.”
“My mother wants—wanted—me to be a physician. I was thinking about anesthesiology.”
“Anesthesia! That isn’t even a specialty in Germany.”
“Krupinsky said that it is in England and Canada. I could go to Canada or to the United States.”
“And Tanya?”
“Are you going to do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Josef, listen to me. I care for you too much not to say this to you. at least once. Medicine is not for you. Tanya is not for you.”
I was silent.
“I know. She worked with me, in my lab, for six months—from the time George Treponesco had to move into Rare Earths until she left. We spent ten hours a day together for six months, and never once did she share anything with me.”
“What should she have shared?”
“Oh, how can I say this. There are some people who are unable to make a bridge to another person. No, let me try it this way. Friends share personal thoughts. Tell things about themselves, trusting.” She was silent, for a moment, thoughtful. “All the while she worked with me, Tanya was polite and correct, but this politeness and correctness was never broken by one instant of sharing, of warmth. I think that Tanya may be incapable of intimacy. Intimacy and sex are not the same thing. Surely,” she said, “you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I know what you mean.”
“Ah, well. Enough! You do not need all this motherly advice. You will work it out for yourself, when the time comes. Tell me, Josef, how do you happen to know about this hiding place?”
I thought for a moment before answering. Frau Doktor sat quietly, comfortably molded into my body.
“I know about this place because I was dropped from my high school rowing team when I was twelve years old.”
“You must admit, that is a curious answer.”
“Yes. But it’s true. Because I was dropped for no good reason for the rowing team, Mitzka befriended me. That was quite wonderful for me. Mitzka Avilov was the school god.”
“I see. It was his secret place, and he showed it to you to cheer you up.”
“Yes, more or less. My school activities were curtailed then—it was 1939—and I began to divert myself by building a secret cave in my own back yard, which gave Mitzka the idea to make this one.”
“Tell me about your secret cave.”
There flashed into my mind the image of my father’s feet—his shoes and gray spats—at the edge of the hole Petter and I dug in my back yard. I pushed it away and changed the subject. “Excuse me, Frau Doktor, I think it would be safe for you to crawl through the fence into the orchard to relieve yourself. There are bushes on the other side, too. And then, perhaps, we should settle for the night.”
She agreed, and I held the cut wires of the fence as best I could. She was only slightly scratched crawling through. When she returned, I made my trip; then we settled for the rest of the night. It was cool now, and I had her nestle spoon-fashion into my arms, covering her with both our lab jackets, holding her very tight, my arm under her breast. I could feel her heart beating rapidly, and she could not help but feel my erection pushing against her.
She reached around and held it in her hand. The only problem was her corset, an armed guard around her vital parts. She detached the garters from her hose and we tried bending it upward, but the metal stays stabbed her so, she gasped in pain. “I’ll have to take it off,” she whispered. But there was so little room, she couldn’t maneuver in our little space, and finally, I had to crawl halfway through the hole in the fence to give her room to stretch flat and wiggle out of that thing.
“I have a condom,” I said.
“No,” she whispered. “I want to feel you.”
I was so ready, I shot off like a gun—would ejaculatio praecox be impotencia coeundi or merely impotencia Josefus, the inability to satisfy a real woman?
“Never mind,” she said. “It just means that you find me desirable. Stay where you are.”
I did, and she kissed me, warmly, and moved in such a way that within five or so minutes everything was all right—more than all right. Her response was so deeply passionate that I actually had to put my hand on her mouth to keep her from crying out. And she moved in waves and convulsions. I mean she actually enjoyed it, tremendously.
She lay panting and warm and sweating in my arms for twenty minutes, and we did it again and again . . . and again.
Toward dawn, we fell into a deep sleep, and I dreamed a new dream—of my father’s feet, with shoes and spats, standing beside my secret cave in our back yard. I awakened, thinking I was in the hole in my own yard, but when I opened my eyes, I realized that I was lying on my back, with Frau Doktor in my arms, her nose shoved into my neck, in Mitzka’s secret place, thinking, again, about the feet of my father.
Our actual escape through the apples was anticlimactic. Leaving behind the wire basket, the map of the park, and our white lab coats, we crawled through the fence and walked, as we’d planned—slowly, hand-in-hand through the orchard and the fields—hoping to look like lovers. She wore her long hair free to complete the picture.
“We are lovers,” I said.
“Even though I’m old enough to be your mother.” She said it ruefully.
“Only if you were married at ten.”
“Fifteen. I am thirty-four years old,” she offered.
“I hope you’re not sorry.”
“That I am thirty-four?”
“You know that isn’t what I meant.”
“Not at all, my dear. I feel so lucky to have known you in this way before we parted.”
“I am the lucky one, Frau Doktor.”
“Ruth.”
“Ruth.”
By design, we bypassed the S-Bahn station in Hagen, walking the five kilometers to the next stop. The train was jammed beyond capacity and went only as far as Gesund-brunnen. The underground tunnels had been flooded during those last days of the war and were not yet in use, and the rail lines circling the city above ground—the Berlin Circle—were, in parts, still hopelessly torn up. So we walked through the dust and rubble that was once Berlin—at its best it was an ugly city—ten or so kilometers, from the Russian Sector, through the French, stopping, finally, in the vicinity of the zoo—Zoologischer Garten—which was well within the safety of the British Sector. We then stopped to make love one more time, before parting, in a basement under a house which had collapsed.