Zoo Station Read Online Free PDF Page B

his mail. Pauls postcard began Dear Dad, but seemed mostly concerned with the Christmas presents hed received from his stepfather. The boy did say he was looking forward to the football game on Saturday, though, and Russell took another look out of the window to convince himself that the weather was warming up and that the game would be played.

    The envelope from America was indeed a Christmas card from his mother. It contained one cryptic line: This might be a good year to visit me. She was probably referring to the situation in Europe, although for all Russell knew she might have contracted an incurable disease. She certainly wouldnt tell him if she had.

    He opened the business letters. The one from his American agent contained a check for $53.27, payment for an article on Strength Through Joy cruises which a dozen US papers had taken. That was the good news. The Berlin letter was a final, rather abusively written demand for payment on a typewriter repair bill, which would account for more than half the dollar inflow.

    Looking round the room at the all-too-familiar furniture and yellowing white walls, at the poster from Effis first film, the tired collage of photographs, and the dusty overloaded bookshelves, he felt a wave of depression wash over him.

    THE CITYS LARGEST WERTHEIM department store occupied a site twice the size of the late-lamented Reichstag, and a frontage running to 330 meters. Inside, it boasted 83 lifts, 100,000 light bulbs and 1,000 telephone extensions. Russell knew all this because he had written an article on the store a year or so earlier. More to the point, the restaurant offered good food and service at a very reasonable rate, and it was only a five-minute walk from the British embassy on Wilhelmstrasse.

    Doug Conway had already secured a table, and was halfway through a gin and tonic. A tall man of around 35 with sleek blond hair and bright blue eyes, he looked custom-made for Nazi Berlin, but was in fact a fairly decent representative of the human race. State-educated and low-born by embassy standardshis father had been a parks superintendent in Leedshe had arrived in Berlin just as the Nazis seized power. His pretty young wife Mary was probably brighter than he was, and had once confided in Russell that she intended to torch the Blau-Weiss Club before she left Berlin.

    Conways taste in food had not traveled far from his roots. He looked pained when Russell ordered the pigs knuckle and sauerkraut, and plumped for the pot roast and mash.

    Ive got some teaching work for you if you want it, he told Russell while they waited. Its a Jewish family called Wiesner. The father iswasa doctor. His wife is ill most of the time, though I dont know what withworry, most likely. Their son was taken off to Sachsenhausen after Kristallnacht and hasnt been seen since, though the family have heard that hes still alive. And there are two daughters, Ruth and Marthe, who are both in their teensthirteen and fifteen, or something like that. Its them youd be teaching.

    Russell must have looked doubtful.

    Youd be doing me a real favor if you took them on, Conway persisted. Felix Wiesner probably saved Phylliss lifethis was back in 1934there were complications with the birth and we couldnt have had a better doctor. He wasnt just efficient; he went out of his way to be helpful. And now he cant practice, of course. I dont know what he intends to doI dont know what any of them can dobut hes obviously hoping to get his daughters to England or the States, and he probably thinks theyll have a better chance if they speak English. I have no idea what his money situation is, Im afraid. If he cant earn, and theres all the new taxes to pay . . . well. . . . But if he cant pay your normal rate then Ill top up whatever he can afford. Just dont tell him Im doing it.

    He might like the idea that somebody cares, Russell said.

    I dont know about. . . .

    Ill go and see him.

    Conway smiled. I hoped youd say that. He pulled a