Leaving Berlin Read Free

streetlamp shining a pale cone on the rubble. On the side streets there were no lights at all. Alex leaned forward, peering, oddly excited now that they were really here. Berlin. He could make out the scaffolding of a building site and then, beyond a cleared, formless space, the dark hulk of the palace, singed with soot, the dome just a steel frame, but still standing, the last Hohenzollern. Across from it the cathedral was a blackened shell. Alex had expected the city center, the inevitable showcase, to be visibly recovering, but it was the same as Friedrichshain, more rubble, endless, the old Schinkel buildings gutted and sagging. Unter den Linden was dark, the lindens themselves scorched clumps. There was scarcely any traffic, just a few military cars driving slowly, as if they were patrolling the empty street. At Friedrichstrasse, no one was waiting to cross. A sign in Cyrillic pointed to the station. The city was as quiet as a village on some remote steppe. Berlin.
    All the way in Martin had talked about the Adlon, where Alex was to stay until a flat could be arranged. It was for Martin a place of mythic glamour, of Weimar first nights, Lubitsch in a fur collar coat. “Brecht and Weigel are there too, you know.” Which seemed to confirm not only the hotel’s status, but Alex’s own. But now that they were almost there, with no lights visible up ahead, no awning or doormen whistling down taxis, he began to apologize.
    “Of course it’s only the annex. You know the main building was burned. But very comfortable I’m told. And the dining room is almost like before.” He checked his watch. “It’s late, but I’m sure for you they would—”
    “No, that’s all right. I just want to go to bed. It’s been—”
    “Of course,” Martin said, but with such heavy disappointment that Alex realized he’d been hoping to join him for dinner, a meal off the ration book. Instead, he handed Alex an envelope. “Here are all the papers you’ll need. Identity card. Kulturbund membership—the food is excellent there, by the way. You understand, for members only.”
    “No starving artists?”
    A joke, but Martin looked at him blankly.
    “No one starves here. Now tomorrow we have the reception for you. At the Kulturbund. Four o’clock. It’s not far, around the corner, so I will come for you at three thirty.”
    “That’s all right. I can find—”
    “It’s my pleasure,” Martin said. “Come.” Nodding to the driver to bring the suitcase.
    The functioning part of the Adlon was in the back, at the end of a pathway through the gutted front. The staff greeted him with a stage formality, bowing, their uniforms and cutaways part of the surreal theatrical effect. Through a door he could see the starched linen on the dining tables. No one seemed to notice the charred timbers, the boarded windows.
    “Alex?” A throaty woman’s voice. “My God, to see you here.”
    He turned. “Ruth. I thought you’d gone to New York.” Not just gone to New York, been hospitalized there, the breakdown he’d heard about in whispers.
    “Yes, but now here. Brecht needs me here, so I came.”
    Martin lifted his head at this.
    “I’m sorry,” Alex said, introducing them. “Ruth Berlau, Martin—”
    “Schramm. Martin Schramm.” He dipped his head.
    “Ruth is Brecht’s assistant,” Alex said, smiling. “Right hand. Collaborator.” Mistress. He remembered the teary afternoons at Salka’s house on Mabery Road, worn down by a backstairs life.
    “His secretary,” Ruth said to Martin, correcting Alex but flattered.
    “I’m a great admirer of Herr Brecht’s work,” Martin said, almost clicking his heels, a courtier.
    “So is he,” Ruth said, deadpan, so that Alex wasn’t sure he could laugh.
    She seemed smaller, more fragile, as if the hospital had drawn some force out of her.
    “You’re staying here?” he said.
    “Yes, just down the hall. From Bert.”
    Not mentioning Helene Weigel, his wife, down the hall with him,