Crazy in Berlin Read Free Page A

corporal, a nobody, a silly fellow—”
    She returned his smile in the exact degree of wryness with which it had been given her, aiding him, in tune with him, so that when the exchange was completed he had been purged of self-pity and satisfaction with the vision of himself as uncorrupted by efficacy; and furthermore was not made sore by its loss. He was forgiven all the way down the line, and most of all for thinking it was forgiveness—she was far beyond that, standing there before him on the mound of trash, without vanity, making no judgments, facing facts.
    “Also,” he said. “You will have your job. You have my word.”
    His oath was no doubt meaningless in German; one certainty of alien languages was that each had its own way, untranslatable, for the moral expressions. But its effect was not needed by her, who it could be seen in the clearness of her eye admitted no doubt towards him.
    Marsala was back, seizing Reinhart’s elbow and, this time with unbelievable modesty, whispering in his ear: “You’re not thinking of slipping her the tool? I mean, it’s all right with me, I just wanted to get things straight, no sense for me to stand here, just gimme the sign—”
    “Old buddy,” said Reinhart, “friends may come and friends may go and some may peter out, I know, but I’ll be yours through thick or thin.”
    “Yeah, I know,” came Marsala’s hoarse whisper, which was louder than his normal voice, “ ‘peter out or peter in.’ Well, what will it be? It’s boring to stay here. I mean, for me.” “Boring” was a word he had learned from Reinhart, using it with weak authority and only as a favor to his teacher. It took quite enough effort, however, to have its power.
    “You must come to see me at my organization,” Reinhart told the girl. “Now can you remember this? It is the 1209th—but the number doesn’t matter. We are a military hospital and are in a school building in Zehlendorf, at the corner of Wilskistrasse and Hartmannsweiler Weg. Across the street in a wooden building is headquarters. You come in the door and turn left. You go all the way to the end of the hall, to the last room, and there I am.”
    The language became easier to use as he spoke, and he found himself on better terms with talking than he had been in years; in German even directions were a kind of success, precise and scientific. Still in temper with him, the girl, now three feet away and in deep shadow, said: “You have a good accent!”
    “Now you will remember?”
    “Oh yes! But please, what is your name?”
    He had turned to leave with Marsala, like a monarch—in all the world there are no good departures—and now, kingly, gave: “Carlo.”
    She was stepping towards him in an eager courtesy. “As in Monaco—I shall remember.”
    Marsala grinned like a possum at the traditional repast; honor was being done his old rule: give them only your first name, which cannot be traced. His lack of civilization had suddenly become repulsive.
    “No—Reinhart, Carlo Reinhart. Es ist ein deutscher Name .”
    “Certainly.”
    He shook hands with her and in American fashion held it too long, so that hers wilted and sought to escape.
    They were still a party of three at the streetcar stop. But before one came, if ever it did, a jeep throttled up out of the blackness, bearing MPs on their eternal quest for miscreants. Like all American police, they stayed at their remove of faint hostility even after Reinhart and Marsala identified themselves and proved blameless; indeed, even after the constables took them aboard for a ride to their billeting area, which since it lay off the beat was a considerable favor, it seemed needful for the sake of an institutional pride that all pretend it was a kind of arrest and sit silent on the way. The four men, that is, for the girl had not been considered, had not, properly speaking, been seen, the non-fraternization policy being neither quite repealed nor, beyond the flagrant, enforced.
    She