Then We Take Berlin Read Online Free PDF

accurate to say they knew and have forgotten.”
    “But you haven’t forgotten?”
    “You mean could I find it again? Oh yes. It’s seared into my memory. There are times I feel I spent a year of my life down there.”
    Steve made a circular motion with his right hand, reeling off a list as he did so.
    “The butter . . . and the sugar . . . and the canned fish . . . and the lipstick . . . and the soap?”
    He turned to Frank, a smile on his face. Frank grinned.
    “Yeah. Me and my big mouth. What a good job I’m not paid for my discretion, eh? Of course we used it for smuggling. It’s what we did. It’s what everybody did. Everybody was in the black market. We were just better at it.”
    “And now boys, you get to smuggle a person, a human being. How much more worthwhile than sardines and soap.”
    Steve stood up. The conversation was over.
    “If you boys will excuse me. I must get to Grand Central, or Debbie will meet every train at White Plains until I show up. Enjoy New York, Joe. It’s a feast. A feast for the eye, a feast for the mind, and a feast for the belly. We’ll talk again in a day or two.”
    Frank was still feasting on peanuts as the door closed behind Steve. He set down the empty dish, spoke through the last mouthful.
    “Let’s eat,” he said.
    §8
    They took a cab uptown. Wilderness wondered why they hadn’t walked. When the cab pulled up they were no more than twenty blocks from Frank’s office—but it seemed to him that Frank probably didn’t walk anywhere.
    He looked at the big yellow awning that spanned the pavement to meet any arriving cab in much the same colour. In sprawling italics it read “Elaine’s.”
    “You heard of it?” Spoleto asked.
    “Should I have?”
    “Have I heard of Quaglino’s?”
    “I don’t know, Frank. Have you?”
    Spoleto laughed. Gave him another of the hearty slaps that Wilderness was beginning to find wearing. Frank had always done this . . . expressive bonhomie . . . hail-buddy-well-met . . . but fifteen years ago, he’d weighed a lot less. Now, there was an extra thirty pounds behind every well-meant slap on the back.
    They were early. About a third of the tables taken in a large, dim, brown room, the walls covered in reproductions of Italian masters and the occasional mirror.
    A young woman in her thirties, already running a little to fat, was seated at the bar, sipping a tall glass of white wine. She slipped off the stool, scarcely coming up to Spoleto’s chin and hugged him.
    “Frank, I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me.”
    “Never. I even brought an old army buddy for you to make a fuss over. Elaine, this is Joe Holderness. Elaine Kaufman . . . one of the Big Apple’s success stories. Open less than a year and already you have to queue.”
    “Frank. I have never known you to queue for anything. All the same, any friend of Frank’s . . .”
    “Delighted,” said Wilderness.
    “Oh Frankie, you brought me an Englishman!”
    Now Wilderness got hugged.
    “Only he has no meat on his bones. My God, do they still have rationing over there?”
    A table by the wall, seated at right angles to one another, so they both faced into the room, watching as the tables slowly filled up and the room began to swell with chatter.
    “Everything’s good here. But whatever you have as a main course, don’t miss the cannoli when it comes to dolci . Out of this fuckin’ world.”
    By the time they got to dolci , Spoleto had run the gamut of small talk and got to what Wilderness thought might be the point.
    Spoleto said, “You were kind of coy with Steve. But that I understand. We both have things that we should be discreet about even now.”
    “Of course.”
    “You didn’t say how often you’d been back to Berlin.”
    “A lot. Most years in fact. It would be quicker if I named the years I wasn’t there.”
    “You ever see Nell Breakheart?”
    Breakheart. Always Breakheart. Would he never drop the gag and pronounce her name properly?
    “No