City of Women by David R. Gillham Read Free Book Online

lifted her eyes to his face “I don’t care.”
    “No? You are so eager to become a blood traitor to your race?”
    “I already have become.”
    “That was in the dark. This is in the light. You know what happens if we are found out. An Aryan female fornicating with a
Jew
, much less a
criminal
Jew who doesn’t wear the Judenstern? It could mean prison for you,
if you’re lucky
. If you’re not, they’ll drop you into a camp, where you’ll be breaking up rusted batteries with a wooden mallet.”
    A small breath inhaled and then exhaled. She had seen the newsreels of labor camps, for the work-shy, for politicals and habitual criminals. They weren’t exactly a secret. For an instant she tried to imagine such a fate. Tried to imagine herself in a rough barracks, smashing those batteries. A prisoner in a striped smock. A race criminal. But the heat she felt rise up in her simply scorched the image from her mind. “Then we must not be found out,” she answered, and dropped her coat onto the floor.

THREE
    B UILDINGS ALONG THE BROAD AVENUE of Unter den Linden are veiled by acres of camouflage netting festooned with artificial branches to fool Tommy into thinking he’s flying over the Spreewald instead of the middle of the city. But the area around the Hallesches Tor is much like it has always been. It’s a glum working-class slice of Kreuzberg known for its rowdy beer halls. Not a place she’d ever walk at night, but during the day it’s not so bad. Off-duty soldiers loiter about the U-Bahn station, smoking and calling to the girls. Berliners troop off to work across the Belle Alliance Brücke, which bridges the Landwehrkanal’s slow, murky green current. The U1 exits its underground tunnel and rumbles up a long stretch of elevated track toward Rummelsburg, throwing off sparks from its wheels. Only the tangy smell of smoke betrays the recent visit by the RAF bombers. A smell that will linger for days.
    She enters the patent office building through the Alexandrinenstrasse door. On the wall there is a dark bronze memorial plaque listing the names of all those patent officials killed in the last war. Across the hall, one of the building porters is tacking up a poster. A leering green face with a hooked beak and drooping, malevolent eyes wears the six-pointed star on his lapel like a boutonniere.
This is the enemy of our blood!
the caption decries.
Show him no mercy!
She gazes at the poster blankly, then joins the queue to have her identity card checked by the aging policeman at the desk.
    •   •   •
    T HE STENOGRAPHIC DEPARTMENT is a drab and cavernous affair of flat gray paint and hardwood floors worn smooth. Footsteps can boom into the high ceilings like cannon fire. A photograph of the Führer is hung without irony beside the official air raid alarm instructions.
Stay calm. Obey the warden. Keep gas masks ready.
    Fräulein Kretchmar arrives, clapping her hands together like the village schoolmistress. “Come, come! No time for frivolous chitchat. To work!” she scolds the roomful of women. “Think of our troops fighting the Bolsheviks.
They
have no time to waste with such twaddle, and neither do we!”
    Sigrid adjusts her chair and removes the hood from her typewriter, easing herself into her standard position in front of the keys. Then, from across the room, she gets a seductively conspiratorial wink from a dusky-eyed brunette. This is Renate Hochwilde, the closest thing she has to a friend here, or anywhere else, for that matter. During their midday break, she recounts the tale of Frau Remki’s outburst. Renate shakes her head and sighs. “She’s a goner.” They are sitting outside in the grass above the Waterloo Ufer on the lower bank of the canal.
    “Her husband was in the last war. He was decorated,” Sigrid tells her. “An Iron Cross, First Class.”
    But Renate only shakes her head. “Makes no difference. The last war? That’s ancient history. It’s
this
war that counts. And you don’t