City of Women Read Online Free PDF Page A

songstress.
Sing, nightingale, sing—a song from the old days—touch my weary heart.
Until the broadcast cuts out with a spurt of static and is replaced by a sharp, syncopated beep. Quickly Sigrid is up and tuning the dial on the wireless, until she catches the strident warning voice of the Flaksender announcer.
A large force of enemy bombers has entered the territory of the Reich, on course for grid square G/H. To repeat: Enemy bombers currently on course for grid square G/H, Gustav/Heinrich
.
    It’s the signal that the British bombers have crossed the line into the Mark Brandenburg, and are coming for Berlin.
    Sigrid gazes bleakly at the wireless, but Mother Schröder is already bustling about, firing off orders. “Turn off the gas line, and see to the fuse box, daughter-in-law. And the
blankets
. Don’t forget the blankets. I’m sure those dreadful benches haven’t gotten any softer on the backside.”
    •   •   •
    T HE TENANTS PACK themselves into the cellar with grumbles and rubber-stamped frowns, but without any embarrassing panic. They have learned to soldier through the routine. They are armed with their air raid bags, their Volksgasmasken, their water jugs, and heavy blankets. They pick up the same vinegary prattle, as if they had left it behind during the last raid, but it’s easy to tell from their faces that the return of the bombers in strength after so many months has soured their stomachs. This is not supposed to be happening. They have been
assured
by the proper authorities that Berlin’s air defense rings have now been so well armored that they are simply impenetrable. So how
is it,
then, that the British Air Gangsters have regained such traction in the skies? It’s an unanswered question that hangs in the cellar air like the stink of mildewed sandbags and mice droppings.
    Sigrid is impatient for the bombers to come. To finish their business and allow her to be on her way. Around her, the tenants hem her in with their stale bodies, their stale complaints. If she hates the Tommies at all, it is because they have forced her down into this goddamned hole again. A wail from Frau Granzinger’s infant closes in on her. Trapped. How did she ever become so trapped?
    To her left, her mother-in-law is darning the toe of a stocking while griping to a trio of her kaffeeklatsch women about a recent injustice. A rude grocery clerk or a shop girl’s poor grammar. Some damned thing. Even as they are squeezed into this dank basement, awaiting the onslaught of the British bombers, the old lady can’t manage to shut off her spout. Her cronies nod in frowning agreement with baggy chins as they tend to the mending in their laps. They cluck their tongues in sympathy and bite off loose threads.
    Sigrid turns inward. Certainly she no longer thinks of the future, because every day the future proves itself to be a duplicate of the present. So instead she roots through the past. She spots him for a moment in the corner of her mind. Not on their last day together, in a sweaty flat in Little Wedding. But on their first day. His voice preserved in her head.
    Do you feel that?
he said.
    Yes.
    Then you know what it’s for.
    The dangling light in the cellar flickers, then dims, a signal that the main event is coming closer, but no one comments. It’s said that air raid shelters develop their own personalities. Some timorous, some fatalistic, some raucous, some prone to panic. It’s a tough crowd in the bottom of 11 Uhlandstrasse. No raid hysterics here. Someone has tacked up a sign: CRYING FORBIDDEN . Across the room, Frau Mundt’s husband offers Sigrid a lascivious wink as he chews the stem of his pipe. The Herr Hausleiter Mundt. He is the porter and the Party’s Hausobman for the building. An Old Fighter who once a month dresses up in his dun brown Sturmabteilung getup and cycles off to get soused with his chums at the local SA beer hall. He’s set up a game of Skat on a card table with a pair of his drinking