Wunderland(54)
* * *
The crossing into West Berlin took longer than out of West Germany, though only because of the backed-up traffic: once their turn came the harried guards barely glanced at either of them before waving them on their way. As they left the East behind, the scenery shifted with the same through-the-looking-glass instantaneousness: the roads once more freshly tarred, the cars shiny and large, the buildings taller and seemingly freshly minted. Even the pedestrians seemed cleaner and better fed, their clothes newer, their strides longer and more energetic. As Ulrich squeezed between a bright red bus and a Gevalia delivery truck sporting a coffeepot-style handle and spout, Ava took it all in with widened eyes and a pounding heart. To the left she spotted a palacelike movie theater with enormous posters advertising Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments.
“Seem familiar?” he asked.
“We saw it together last week.”
“I mean the city.”
She shook her head. “But I haven’t been here since I was five.”
“You really don’t remember anything at all?”
What she remembered were less memories than age-blurred flashes of image: the blue muslin coverlet on her old bed in her grandparents’ house. The green kitchen table where she’d made her first drawing and spent hours every day, drawing more. The suffocating blackness of the collapsing cellar as the Allied bombs rained upon them; the chalky rubble she woke up to after they’d pulled her out.
The white sheets covering the battered bodies of Oma and Opa.
Her Oma’s slipper-shod foot, poking out.
She shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Not a thing.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later they were at their destination: an imposing redbrick structure on Eichborndamm Avenue in Reinickendorf. A blue-framed sign by the door somewhat pompously identified it as the Archives for the Notification of the Next of Kin of the Fallen Members of the Former German Wehrmacht. Reading it twice, Ava felt her chest contract. This was the organization the Census Department had suggested she contact to find out more about the man who was her father. “If he’s a soldier,” the woman had said, “they should have the basics, at least. It may take a few weeks for them to find the file, but as long as you can prove you’re family they’ll show it to you.”
Family, she thought now. As a word, it had always felt foreign to her: it didn’t fit her and Ilse’s small, tense unit of two. Which was strange, since it seemed to fit Ulrich and his father, who were just as alone and (thanks to Doktor Bergen’s schedule) together even less frequently.
She felt Ulrich’s hand on her shoulder.
“Not to push the point,” he said. “But it’s still not too late to turn around and go home. I won’t say a word about it.”
She looked up at him; the amiable, ironic face. The close-cropped dark hair that he refused to grow out and wear slicked back like most boys did, because he said it looked absurd on anyone who wasn’t American. I love you, Ava thought, but this time too it felt less like a declaration than a quiet reminder.
“No,” she said. “If I don’t do this, I’ll hate myself for it.” She straightened her coat. “I hate myself enough as it is.”
* * *
Inside the building a burly attendant at the enormous Auskunft desk directed them up the stairs to the records room, a windowless space that smelled of dust and old paper and was lit by buzzing yellow fluorescent lights. Behind an even larger desk, a mannish woman with hair shorter than Ava’s (but better cut) was typing furiously on an antique-looking Adler typewriter. Ava retrieved the two forms from her notebook. Smoothing them out, she slid them across the worn wooden surface.
“Tag,” she said.
“Yes?” The woman looked up, waiting.
Ava cleared her throat. “I’m Ava von Fischer. We had an appointment for some research.”
The woman scanned the forms, then glanced at her watch. “You are half an hour late.”
“The crossing took longer than we’d expected.”
“It always does,” the woman informed them. “I’ll have to see whether the results of your search are still available.”
Ava suppressed a pulse of panic. “If not, we can wait.”
“I’m afraid that’s not an option. If they’ve been returned to the archives you’ll need to file a new request, resend payment, and return another time.”
Picking up the forms, the woman hurried back between the file-filled shelves as Ulrich gave Ava a sidelong glance. “Six-hour drive back,” he murmured. “We can’t wait very long.”
“I’ll take the bus back,” she snapped, knowing full well that she wouldn’t need to, that he’d stay with her for as long as she needed him to stay.
Fighting back a faint wave of claustrophobia, Ava returned her gaze to the records area. The boxes, she now saw, didn’t only contain forms and files. Some were filled with objects: old, tarnished pocket watches. Brass buttons and pins. One contained a tangle of what at first looked like jewelry but which she quickly saw were old, rusted dog tags. She tried to guess how many soldiers they’d been stripped from, how many bodies they’d done their grim job of identifying. In her mind’s eye, she saw a shuffling crowd of grimy-faced men in helmets, staring balefully back from the other side of their shared, blackened history. What were their final thoughts as they lay bleeding in the snow or mud? Had they died proud of their sacrifice? Or had they realized by then that it was all nothing more than a vicious trick; a foolish fable concocted by a madman whose only legacy would be the rest of the world’s loathing and revulsion?