St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(103)
The shopkeeper put the camera back into its case and then rolled it up in the cloth. ‘Take the camera now and bring me the money when you have it.’
Berlin sensed there was something else he wanted to say and waited. He almost knew what it would be when he saw the man’s face soften.
‘The girl Sarah came to my shop once, to buy a photograph I had taken, a view of the lake. She saw it in the window said it was a very beautiful picture and her mother would appreciate it. One could easily see she was a special child, a child of loving parents. Did she ever send the photograph?’
Berlin nodded. ‘It came after ... it came in December. Her mother also said it was a very beautiful picture, a picture taken with heart. It’s hanging on the wall of our home.’
The shopkeeper turned to a shelf behind the counter and took five small cardboard packets from a neat stack. ‘East German film, ORWO, but not too bad considering. From me, a gift to your wife. She can bring it to me for developing when she has finished it off, or tell her she is also welcome to use my darkroom whenever she wishes.’
***
Berlin left the camera and film on the dressing table in their bedroom but Rebecca didn’t comment on it. In the morning she was gone from their bed as usual but there was no sign of her in the rooftop garden. His rucksack and the Nikon and the film were gone too. It was just on sunset when she got back to the hotel and though they didn’t speak much over dinner he sensed she was different, happier. While she showered in the single downstairs bathroom he found the camera on the dressing table. There was a red filter on the lens and two of the rolls of film were exposed. The third roll was in the camera, half used.
She was gone early and back late for the next four days. On the fifth day he caught the familiar odour of darkroom chemicals on her clothes when she came in but now somehow the smell was a good thing. She touched his cheek with her hand and kissed him softly on the lips. The slightly acrid smell of hypo fixer was in her hair, and it too reminded Berlin of better days.
She slept late the next morning and came to breakfast on the terrace with an envelope for him. The collection of black and white prints inside the envelope showed rolling landscapes and forests, trees and rock formations, the tall stone columns standing among Roman ruins. Always above them was a dramatic, almost black sky with white clouds standing out in stark relief.
She drank coffee and watched as he leafed through the images. The second-last one was a grave – simple, with a name and a Star of David. The last was a picture of him, one he hadn’t realised she’d taken. He was standing on the balcony, one hand grasping the over-head wooden framework that would be festooned with grapevines in spring and summer, looking out towards the horizon in the fading, last light of the day. The picture showed him in profile, deep in thought, and he knew it to be an image made with love. He looked up from the picture at Rebecca and smiled.
She smiled back at him. It was the first time he had seen her smile in such a long time.
‘Seeing you standing there like that, Charlie, it reminded me of the evening you and Sarah buried Pip, under the paperbark tree in the backyard. After she went to bed crying you stood by his little grave just like that, one arm up on a branch, watching the sky.’
Berlin looked down at the picture of the grave she had made. He put his hand on it, feeling the rough texture of the stippled paper under his fingertips.
‘I heard you in her bedroom afterwards. You sat on the bed holding her hand and you told her to be brave, that it would hurt a lot for a little while and a little for a long while. But then one day all she would remember would be running and jumping and rolling about in freshly cut grass with little Pip, with him chasing her, nipping at her and growling and barking until they were both too worn out to play any more.’
For a moment Berlin could smell freshly mown grass and see the long warm twilight of a Melbourne summer evening.
‘I think it’s time for us to go home, Charlie.’
Berlin nodded. ‘I think you’re right. I’d just like to make one last stop, if you don’t mind.’
FIFTY-TWO
The TWA flight from Tel Aviv to Athens left early on Thursday morning. The plane was another Boeing 707 and Berlin was surprised how comfortable he now was with flying. From Athens they flew to Frankfurt Airport, where there was a four-hour layover before the next flight. It was more than twenty years since he had been on German soil – or even 20 000 feet above it. It was longer still for Rebecca, who had few memories of her childhood and Stuttgart, and he hoped none as grim as his of Frankfurt.
After Berlin had been captured they took him by train to Frankfurt, to Dulag Luft, the infamous reception centre for Allied aircrew taken prisoner in the Reich. He was photographed, his flying kit was replaced with a shabby khaki greatcoat, and then they locked him in solitary confinement. His first interrogation was a genteel affair with a Luftwaffe senior officer, who chatted amiably over cigarettes and tea and biscuits. A few days later he was dragged from his cell and dumped in a chair in front of an SS officer. A black leather overcoat was hanging on a hook by the door of the interrogation room. Berlin reckoned it belonged to the man in the black suit sitting quietly in one corner of the room, and he also reckoned the man was Gestapo.
There were no tea and biscuits this time. The two Germans smoked constantly, but never once offered him a cigarette. However, they did threaten to drag him out to a courtyard to face a waiting firing squad, or downstairs to soundproofed cellars, promising that within twenty-four hours he would be begging for them to shoot him, just to end the pain.