The Pieces from Berlin by Michael Pye Read Free Book Online

the professor. She was afraid of need, except for Nicholas, who had a whole life ahead to need to be with her.
    So she stopped suckling her son. She knew she would need currency: her mind, her body, her knowledge. She couldn’t count on powerful men quizzing her about the paintings of Simone Martini, or being impressed by her command of logic. The breasts, then, mattered.
    Everything was becoming uncertain. She never imagined living in Switzerland. She couldn’t go home to Milan. She thought it best to pretend to a feeling of ease in Germany, since she was there; but Müller never bothered with that. He didn’t live in Germany; he was only employed there.
    She wasn’t Swiss, but because of Müller she lived as a Swiss. There was a shortage of skilled workers, factories working overtime, money was good; so there were immigrants out of Switzerland all around them. Müller wanted their company. She didn’t see the point.
    She made the food, brought the bottles. They’d listen to the radio, communally. There was a football game from Paris, the commentators rushing their words, and the men sitting about with their beers, all together, not loud and cheering but desperately serious. It was some kind of championship; she never knew which. It was Switzerland against Greater Germany.
    The game was over, there was a brief silence, then it was obvious: Switzerland won.
    The men didn’t cheer, even then. They were contract workers, signed up to show respect for a fee. They smiled, though, and they stood up like one man and toasted the victory with their half-liter glasses.
    Müller used to read her the letters he got from home; his family all sent short, neat letters at regular intervals. After the game against Germany, they wrote, there was something like a riot in Basel, if you can imagine such a thing: streets full of whooping, shouting fans, glorying in the momentary downfall of the great Third Reich.
    And when Hans Peter read that, he took Nicholas out into the garden, he told him what had happened, he took his boy’s hands and together they danced a rapid, jerky jig.
    A November night, quite cold. She was standing at the bedroom window and she was looking down the path to the road. There were no leaves or flowers. She could see the road very clearly.
    She thought there was some kind of parade. Brown uniforms. It was dark, and they were quiet and they were keeping to the pavement: very orderly, unhurried, as though they were going to work. They didn’t hide but they didn’t have a band.
    They almost all went past the end of the path. Two of them stopped. It was one in the morning and they were in uniforms and they were so quiet. They hadn’t been drinking, obviously. They were under orders.
    One of the boys—they all seemed like boys—stopped just opposite her window. She didn’t know if he could see her. She thought not. He stood there and he stared in, as though he could see foreignness written all over the walls and the eaves of the house. He said something to the boy at his side, gestured at the house, seemed to point out Lucia at the window, and then they all went on.
    The next morning the Jewish shop in town, the little haberdashers, was broken up. The windows had somehow dematerialized, but the street was stuck with glass. The silks and the bales had all been taken down and thrown around. It looked very lovely: all those colors shining in the sun. There were some of the boys in brown uniforms, SA, in and around the shop, and they were tugging out special things—lace things, silk things, embroidered handkerchiefs, rather elegant ties, and they were trying to present them to the passersby, like medals, like rewards. Most people walked by on the other side of the street.
    She was never more conscious of being a dark redhead, a southerner, and very foreign. It suddenly made sense for Müller to go about alone in a town that was mad for blondes.
    She knew there would be a war because of the ration cards. It was a