Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [140]
“Stand up, Hilde!” Frau Falkenstein commanded. “Let your Uncle Ulrich see how you have grown.” She stood awkwardly, bowed stiffly.
“Gerd?”
“He is in a prison camp in America.”
Bruno began to recover his composure, and caught his wife’s eyes to leave them alone. “I am sorry there is nothing to offer you to eat,” she said.
“I am not hungry.”
“This is a great occasion. We all wish to be with you but I know you and Bruno want to speak.” She herded the girls from the room.
The brothers Falkenstein were alone. Ulrich looked at the shambles, the gaunt, stubble-bearded man. “There is so much to say, one does not know where to begin,” Bruno said.
“With general rejoicing to a glorious homecoming,” he answered bitterly. “What have you heard of my wife, Hannelore?”
“You did not know of the divorce?”
“Rumors reached me.”
“She divorced you when the war began, moved to Vienna. It was difficult for her because of your ... opposition. She passed away last year.”
Hannelore, dead without the steel to see it through. It must have been dreadful for her.
“Where is Wolfgang? I have searched high and low.”
Bruno shook his head, his voice broke. “Our brother is dead.”
Ulrich let out one long deep pitiful groan of resignation. “Everything is dead.”
“You must have heard of the July plot to kill Hitler. Wolfgang was involved. There was a terrible revenge.”
“How did he die?”
“He was hanged.”
Ulrich dragged himself to his feet wearily, flopped his arms to his sides. “I shall not wear out my welcome.”
“Ulrich! We are still brothers. Nothing can change that.”
“No, nothing can change it.”
“You don’t know what it has been like,” Bruno sobbed. “You can’t imagine how we have suffered.”
Ulrich’s deceptively drowsy eyes did not conceal his disdain.
“Of course you have suffered too,” Bruno bumbled on. “We all have. I’ve seen my wife and daughter raped before my eyes. Look at me. We are half starved. I am ruined ... I have nothing left.”
“We must get together sometimes and trade horror stories.”
“For God’s sake, all I want to do is forget it happened.”
“You mean the same way you forgot that Wolfgang and I existed?”
“So, we were taken in by Hitler. Just because I held a minor post with the Nazis, am I to go to jail and leave Herta and those poor girls alone? I tell you, we have paid.”
“Not enough, Bruno, not enough.”
How bitter came the destruction of the long dream. Ulrich Falkenstein had come from the blackness of Schwabenwald to an even greater blackness of Berlin.
Wolfgang and Hannelore were dead and the old friends gone.
Berlin was worse than dead. A great, beautiful goddess hacked up, prostrate, gasping for breath ... the last of life’s blood oozing from her body.
The old man was stooped with sorrow as he trudged down the Unter Den Linden, that mammoth boulevard that rumbled under the wheels of Prussian cannons, clicked under the heels of genteel ladies, heard the shouts of protesting workers, the gunfire of insurrection, the boots of pagan rallies, the circumstance of glory.
At Friedrichstrasse he stood and looked down the flattened street.
So long as the old trees bloom Unter Den Linden,
Nothing can befall us,
Berlin remains Berlin ...
The voices that once came from the cabarets of Friedrichstrasse were stilled forever. Sentimental voices, bawdy voices, angry voices ... still... so still. Now a man hacks away at the carcass of a dead horse.
You are my old love,
Berlin remains Berlin ...
Ghastly, ragged men stagger and fall into the streets from hunger. Urchins beg, women barter ...
So long as the old trees bloom Unter Den Linden,
Nothing can befall us,
Berlin remains Berlin.
He stood now near the Brandenburg Gate at the Pariser-Platz at what was the heartstone of his beloved city. The reigning royalty of the thriving culture lived here on the square and watched from their windows as the pageantry of history flowed beneath the Brandenburg Gate.
The Berlin theater songs, the bitter satire of the political cabarets,