Leaving Berlin Read Online Free PDF Page A

said, genuinely angry.
    “Well, how much is left? This house, yes, Berlin. But the country? I know you’ve been selling it off. You think nobody knows, but everybody talks. How much is left?”
    “Enough to feed you. Where do you think the money goes? You think your dresses are free? Food?” His hand sweeping over the long table with the silver carving dishes.
    “So it’s for us. Not the card games. Those women you—”
    “Irene,” Elsbeth said.
    “Oh, what’s the difference? Mother’s dead. Everybody knows.”
    “Alex, you talk to them,” Fritz said, shifting, suddenly embarrassed. “How can someone at this table be with the Bolsheviks? Does that make sense? They kill people like us.”
    “But what is the choice?” Alex said quietly. “The Nazis? They’ll kill everybody before they’re through.”
    “Hindenburg will never accept that man. Von Papen—”
    “Has no one behind him.”
    “I tell you. He will never accept him.”
    “Oh, you know this?” Erich said. “Your friends at the club?”
    “He has to form a government,” Alex said.
    “Not with Communists. Socialists.”
    Alex looked at him. “Then you’ve made your choice.”
    “I don’t choose any of them,” Fritz said, exasperated. “They’re all—” He turned to Erich. “You’ll see. All the same. Keep out of it. Keep your head down.” Alex’s father’s advice too, burrowing in.
    He opened his eyes. A sound, stopping. Not the airplanes, still humming in the distance. Closer, in the hall. Footsteps. He listened, holding his breath. Where had they stopped? Just outside? The way he used to listen after Oranienburg, an ear to the door even when he was asleep. The middle of the night. No, there was a faint light outside the window. Not yet morning but not night anymore. Then the steps started again, soft, not wanting to be heard. He got up and went over to the door, listening.
    But why would they be checking on him at this hour? Suspecting what? We just want information, Don had said. Some ears to the ground. There’s no danger to you. If you’re careful. Hedging. Careful of what? People listening at doors. The hall was still. Alex turned the knob, easing the door open a crack. A dim night-light, empty corridor. But someone had been here. Then he saw the shoes at the next door, just polished, the Adlon overnight service, even in the ruins. He leaned against the doorjamb, feeling foolish. But it might have been somebody.
    And now he was up, restless, the room closing in again. If he lay down they’d come back, not dreams exactly, bits of his life that still hovered in the air here. He should change, have a bath, but he didn’t want to run water now, risk pipes clanging, let everyone know he was up. What he wanted, just for a while, was to be invisible, someone nobody could see. Another ghost.
    He pulled on his overcoat and started down the hall, as quiet as the shoe boy, keeping to the carpet runner. The lobby was deserted except for the night porter, half asleep, whose surprised look Alex had to answer before he’d unlock the door.
    “Couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d take a walk.”
    “A walk,” the porter said. “It’s not safe, nights. It’s the DPs. I know, they’ve had a rough time, still—”
    Alex looked out at the deserted street. “It’ll be light soon.”
    “The kids are worse. Children, you think, and then they’re all over you. They picked me clean. Me.”
    Alex nodded, glancing down at the door lock.
    “Friedrichstrasse should be all right. Police by the station, so the gangs stay away. You don’t want to go into the park, not at this hour.” Hand still on the door, waiting. A concern for Alex’s safety or something to put in a report later? The night porter at the Adlon would see things, be a useful source. Alex looked at him. Well, where? And suddenly he knew.
    “I want to see if something’s still there.”
    Outside he glanced across the square to the Brandenburg Gate, covered in scaffolding,