Children of Wrath Read Free

fractured with amusement. “Au contraire ! ”
    A sharp turn onto Dorothean Strasse plunged them into darkness.
    “I ask only because I am a researcher of human nature,” the doctor projected over the roaring 225 horsepower. “Fear is one of the subjects my studies focus most on.”
    “How fascinating.” Vicki flung her head back, letting her bobbed hair fly. “No, we’re not afraid. Are we, darling?”
    The doctor could at least observe the traffic signals, Willi felt like saying.
    “As a scientist of course I work under controlled observation,” von Hessler shouted as they tore around the Reichstag, its glass dome all lit up, the red, black, and gold flag of the republic flapping proudly above. “But some of my most profound insights have been drawn from random surveillance.” When they reached the leafy haven of the Tiergarten, Berlin’s largest park, his volume diminished. You could almost see stars overhead. Which might have been romantic, Willi thought, if the doctor would just shut up.
    “My experiments focus on what I call unconditioning, the breaking down of learned behavior patterns.”
    Von Hessler, however, apparently relished a captive audience and imagined himself now before a university lecture hall, even though Vicki had stopped pretending to listen and Willi had never even started. Concealed beneath his jacket she’d begun tickling his pant leg, sending tingles up his spine, every so often shooting him a smoldering glance.
    In the busiest part of Berlin-West, around the towering Kaiser Wilhelm Church, night seemed to turn into day, everything in motion. Women in helmetlike hats walked with skirts flipping side to side. Men in double-breasted suits waved fedoras, trying to grab cabs. Advertising zipped across billboards: Crème Mouson, for the Lady of Today; Audi, Type M: for the Gentleman in You. In every direction, chic modernity. Stainless-steel doorways. Long, curved windows. The best boutiques. The place-to-be restaurants. The nation’s premier cinemas lined up like chorus girls: the Gloria-Palast, the Capital, UFA am Zoo. Everything swank. Glittering. Frenetic.
    On Kurfürstendamm, Berlin’s Great White Way, the show windows reflected traffic like an avant-garde movie, full of incongruent angles and rushing rivers of light.
    “So you see, this respectability the baroness was raving about is all romantic nonsense.” Von Hessler honked insanely, nearly hitting a couple clutching each other for dear life as they tried to ford the mayhem. “The more we learn, the more we realize what people call order in this universe is actually just conditioning. What street did you say you lived on again?”
    Far from crowds and flashing lights, the quiet avenues around Prussian Park ran past ornamented five-story apartment blocks with attics peaking from high-pitched roofs, plaster gargoyles and Valkyries still reigning over all. On Beckmann Strasse, in front of their solidly respectable building, Willi and Vicki practically flung themselves from von Hessler’s race car, thanking him profusely. “We really ought to do this again,” the doctor shouted after them, his silver eye patch fading.
    “Absolutely.”
    Vicki waved.
    Inside the lobby, with its carpeting and glass chandeliers, she threw her arms around Willi and kissed him hard, penetrating her warm, soft tongue into his mouth.
    “Wow,” he whispered.
    Up the staircase, she slipped from her blue shoes and made him unfasten her dress hooks, all the little beads jingling wildly. What if one of the neighbors should see? he wondered. They’d never live it down. They’d have to move. He’d have to resign from the police force. But so late on a work night … the kids at a slumber party …
    It really was one for the history books.
    Next morning she was humming, kissing him sweetly on the lips when he came in for breakfast. While sausages sizzled, she held up bananas and started swaying her hips in a little hula dance, running her fingers