Lehrter Station Read Online Free PDF Page A

brother Thomas, Russell had tried and failed to find a carrier for his reply. When the restrictions were lifted,Effi knew Thomas would conduct a thorough search for Otto, but in the meantime…
    The school doors opened, and a host of children swept out to the gate, borne on a tide of laughter and chatter. Such a comforting sound, Effi thought, one of those things you never appreciated until it disappeared, as it had in Berlin during the final years of the war.
    Rosa was walking with a blonde girl around her own age. Catching sight of Effi, she almost pulled the other girl across to introduce her. ‘This is Marusya,’ she said. ‘She’s from Russia.’
    ‘How do you do?’ Effi said carefully in English. She was leaning down to shake the girl’s hand when the mother bustled up and seized it instead. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she almost shouted, and tugged the girl away.
    Effi stared after them, feeling more upset for Marusya than herself. Rosa, though, seemed unconcerned. ‘Marusya likes drawing too,’ she confided.
    They started for home, sharing Zarah’s umbrella and taking the usual path across the foot of Parliament Hill. Rosa chatted happily about her day at school. If she was thinking about her father, she was keeping it to herself.
    Back at the flat Zarah was preparing the evening meal and listening to The Robinson Family on the wireless. She was also glancing frequently at the clock, Effi noticed. Lothar had announced the previous week that he was too old to be collected from school by his mother, and the way Zarah’s whole body relaxed when she heard him in the hall was almost painful to behold. He gave his mother a dutiful kiss and an ‘I told you so’ look.
    A few minutes later the neighbours upstairs started one of their loud and increasingly frequent arguments. The demobbed husband had been home for several weeks now, and things were clearly building to a climax – the last time Effi had seen the wife she had clumsily tried to conceal the fact that both eyes were blackened. Effi itched to intervene, but knew it wouldn’t help. She also had vivid memories of the anti-German outburst that the women had directed at her while complaining about Paul’s noisy nightmares.
    Listening to them scream at each other in a language she barely understood, she felt a sudden intense yearning for her real home.
    ‘Is John here for dinner?’ Zarah asked, interrupting her thoughts.
    ‘I think so.’
    ‘Are you two all right?’ her sister inquired in a concerned voice.
    ‘Yes, of course. What makes you ask?’ Effi replied, hearing the defensiveness in her own voice.
    Zarah didn’t push it. ‘Oh, nothing. This is a hard time for everyone.’
    ‘How often do you think about Jens?’ Effi asked, partly in self-defence. Zarah had last seen her husband, a high-ranking bureaucrat in Hitler’s regime, in April. During their final conversation he had proudly announced that he had suicide pills for them both.
    ‘Not as often as I used to. I don’t miss him, but I do wonder what happened to him. And I know Lothar does. He has good memories of his father. I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s better not to know. Other times… well…’
    Through the doorway to the front room Effi could see Rosa drawing. There was so much unfinished business, so many loose ends… She had a sudden mental picture of the blood-soaked operating room in the Potsdam Station bunker, of stumps being tidied up and cauterised. It wasn’t so easy with minds.
    * * *
    Tuesday morning, the fog eventually lifted to reveal a cold and overcast day. Russell caught a Fulham-bound bus in Piccadilly, and was soon glad he had done so. As part of their current dispute, the conductors were still refusing to allow anyone to stand, and the packed bus was soon leaving knots of irate passengers behind. Traffic was heavy in any case, and their conductor’s determination to explain himself at every stop rendered their progress even slower than it might have been.