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all it was.
    Talk in the cellar abruptly dies at the eruption of the Luftwaffe’s air defense guns. Even at this distance, the arsenal of cannons and pom-poms mounted atop the gargantuan Zoo Flak Tower causes a tremble in her heart when unleashed. It is the signal that the RAF bombers have arrived. The dangling cellar light quakes. Faces turn upward to the rafters as the carpet of thunder unrolls.
    “Wellingtons,” one of the old farts announces with a scowl. As if he can tell the difference between the engine of a Wellington bomber and a beer belch, or between a sack of sand and his great fat ass. But whatever they are, Wellingtons or no, they are close. Beside Sigrid, Mother Schröder clicks her tongue mechanically at the fretting baby as the whistling begins.
    It’s said that if you can hear a bomb whistle, then you’re safe. It’s the bomb you don’t hear that rips the roof from your building, pulverizes the walls, and buries you alive in a heap of smoldering slag. Still, the whistling builds up inside you like a scream. You can’t help but hold your breath.
    Sigrid winces as the first explosion shudders through the cellar and the children’s wailing builds in pitch. Fingers of dust filter down from the rafters. People cough and snort. The overhead lamp sways. More bombs fall. More whistling and more bombs and more dust. This is how time passes. Who knows how long? Minutes? Hours? Then, with a deafening thunderclap, the lights black out, and even this tough crowd bellows, because, for a heartbeat, the darkness is solid. Death, Sigrid thinks. This is death. This is how death comes. But then the lamp flickers back to life. Its weak, swaying bulb illuminates the baldly stunned faces. They glare at one another, blinking through the cascades of dust, bewildered, perhaps, by the fact that they are still in one piece. “Well, that was a close shave,” someone observes with a laugh. “Such jokers they are, those Tommies and their bombs.” But the banter stops when the Portierfrau Mundt gives an angry squawk. “Curse that devil Churchill!” she declares. “May he rot in his grave before this war is over!” Typical Mundt performance. And everyone replies with the silence of a well-trained audience. Until a boney black rage rears up from the bench beside the door.
    “Churchill?
Churchill
?” the voice echoes incredulously. “Never mind
Churchill
. Curse that devil
Hitler
!
He’s
the one responsible!” All eyes snap to the rising black-clad figure of Frau Remki. She shakes her skinny fist, her narrow face pinched with rage and ruinous grief. “
He’s
the one who’s murdered my boy with his war lust! My son!
Gone!
” she cries. Eyes as wild as spiders. “He should never have been a soldier, but that devil decreed it!
That
devil
,” she repeats, her breathing growing coarse, but then her face sags. “Anno was such a beautiful baby. Don’t you know?” she asks, though the women around her recoil from the question. “So very
beautiful
,” she explains. “And he slept like an angel, too. Never a night of colic. No trouble at all. But now he’s been torn to pieces, and I have nothing. Not even his body to bury. Not even
that
. Only a broken metal tag with a number on it. That was all our
beloved
Führer saw fit to return of my only child!”
    Another blast shakes the cellar, and the lamps blink frantically. But by this time the rest of the shelter’s inhabitants must welcome a bomb blast or two, if only to silence Frau Remki’s suicidal indictment. And indeed when the light sputters back to a low-wattage glow, the woman has sunk back down to her place like a pile of rags. The thudding explosions grow more distant, but the cellar remains a densely silent place, like a room full of drunkards with painful hangovers. Only the children cry. Finally, as the drone of the attack fades to nothing, the wail of the children is overwhelmed by the wail of a siren. One long, aching howl, signaling that the RAF has