Read The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] for Free Online Page A

birthday and German holidays, raids following notable Allied victories, and the like. The English relish civilian targets. That’s only tit for tat. Hitler tried to make a pyre of London. By comparison, the American B-17 morning raids are punctual and careful; they’re always at work in the skies by 9 A.M. and are aimed at factory districts, often in Spandau and the northern reaches of the city. The message from the Americans has no black hidden laughter, it is simply: “Berlin, stop the war.”
     
    This evening the church shelter filled in minutes. By law, Berliners in every part of the city are to be off the streets until the all-clear signal; anyone other than diplomats caught aboveground can be shot as a looter or spy. The raids have been a part of Berlin life for more than four years now, since September of 1940, when the first British bombs rained on Reinickendorf, Pankow, and Lichtenberg districts. In the intervening years, Eisenhower and “Bomber” Harris have teamed up to destroy forty percent of the city’s buildings, over half a million flats, displacing millions of Berliners, killing fifty thousand. But on nights like tonight, after enduring years of destruction and close escapes, when the neighborhood people of Pariser Strasse see a new face crowding on their bench, they are less afraid of bombs than they are of speaking to one another.
     
    At times like this, when there is a stranger in their shelter, when a single offhand comment, a grouse, even idle speculation about the war, can be lethal, Lottie plays the cello. With Lottie here, no one will forget themselves, grumble, and go missing tomorrow. Her music enforces silence.
     
    Lottie resents the new man’s presence. She takes his measure, crammed between two big-reared women who will not look at him. He has not spoken either, all night. He is balding, dark-haired, and fair-skinned, with a long neck and sunken cheeks stippled by a day’s growth of black beard. The man is bug-eyed, though that may be his distaste at being treated like a pariah. He seems to be between thirty-five and fifty. In Berlin nowadays, hunger makes everyone look older. His gray suit has some shine at the knees and sleeves, his brown tie is pulled up tight, the knot shows chafe, as does his white shirt collar. Lottie thinks he has worn this outfit for some time. There is a keenness to his glance, and something feral, as though he knows important and wild things the rest in the shelter do not.
     
    Of course, he does know one thing they do not: who he is.
     
    Lottie sees her mother lift her lids and make eye contact with him. Freya smiles. The man blinks.
     
    Freya clears her throat. Lottie’s chest squeezes.
     
    Her mother says to the man, “Did you enjoy my daughter’s playing?”
     
    Lottie licks her lips. The others in the shelter glare at Freya. One does not speak with a stranger.
     
    Lottie scoops her mother’s hand into her own. “Mutti, stop fishing for compliments for me.” Lottie flashes the man a quick and cheap smile.
     
    Freya pats Lottie’s wrist. “She plays beautifully. Doesn’t she?”
     
    The man’s face is graven. His eyes seem to look far past Freya and Lottie, even into the cold earthen walls. Lottie wants to look away from him there on the bench, the way all the others in the shelter have, but she cannot, the way one cannot look away from a ghost.
     
    Lottie tightens her grip on her mother’s hand. She mumbles, “Mutti.”
     
    The man’s lips part. Nothing of him moves, not his teeth, his lids, only his lips and tongue when he breathes, “Yes.”
     
    Freya nods. She has moved the stranger to speak, and smiles at him. Lottie glances between the two, sees that some business of Freya’s has been concluded, and lowers her head. Her blond hair curtains her eyes. She stares into her lap at her mother’s hand in hers. The hand is not old, still smooth. A man might still want Mutti—she’s only fifty-two—though Lottie is uncomfortable