Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [145]
Chapter Five
ERNESTINE AWAKENED SHARPLY FROM her nightly funk, sweaty, terrified. For hours she fought off sleep, for the darkness brought horror. Then a complete exhaustion drugged her into a semiconscious state far into the night, and she wandered into that torment of blood and ghosts and hollow voices.
She dressed in a half daze, walked pasty-faced into the kitchen, where the family was taking breakfast of a sort of gruel.
None of them had gotten over the shock of the Amis requisitioning their house, forcing them into a bomb-battered set of rooms in Friedenaüof the Steglitz Borough. Bruno and his wife slept in the kitchen, the girls in an oversized alcove with half a wall shorn away.
Bruno bemoaned the latest cruelty of fate, the loss of his house; he, a government official of status; he, who had a chauffeur-driven automobile until late in the war. Now he was reduced to waiting on tables in a French soldiers’ beer hall.
Thanks to Ulrich they were not all in labor gangs and had a few extra grams of ration. However, hatred between the brothers did not waver. Bruno felt his brother could do more. The family was barely staying alive. Hilde could not hold a job. She had always been pampered and her head was filled with illusions of becoming an actress.
Bruno’s pride was damaged at the idea that his wife had to work as a chambermaid in an American officers’ billet. She had never held a job in her life and one could hardly consider her a common hausfrau. Ulrich got her the job. The Americans were generous with the bones they tossed out for her doing their laundry.
In the beer hall Bruno decided the indignities of rowdy Frenchmen had to be borne in order to survive. Soldiers left half-smoked cigarettes, wanted girls, and had access to food; neighbors needed to barter, so he served as an intermediary in small dealings. In spite of the degradation Bruno and his family subsisted better than the starving neighbors around them.
Ernestine sat at the table. Her mother looked from her to Hilde. By contrast, Hilde seemed to show no effects of the times. “You look bad this morning,” Herta said.
“Who looks well in Berlin these days,” Bruno mumbled. “Everyone is a walking ghost.”
“I am just a little tired,” Ernestine answered.
“Your Uncle Ulrich offered you a job at Democratic Party Headquarters. I want an explanation of why you refused,” her father said.
“I would rather not talk about it,” she answered.
“It will be talked about. I cannot bear more drunken Frenchmen—and I don’t like the idea of your mother cleaning floors for Amis.”
“I won’t work for Uncle Ulrich,” Ernestine protested.
“I demand to know why. You are trained as a legal secretary. You worked for one of the finest law firms in Berlin.”
“There is no German law, any more.”
“But you know that your training makes it possible to do a number of things. So long as Ulrich is throwing us a few bones you could think of your family.”
“I have decided against it, Father,” she said shakily.
“Ernestine,” her mother said, “what is disturbing you about Ulrich?”
She tried to eat. It was impossible.
“Can’t you talk at all?” her father demanded.
“It’s those places,” she blurted impulsively.
“Places? What places?”
“The things they are saying about us at Nuremberg.”
A terrible silence followed. At last, Herta took her daughter’s hand. “It is all over. We must forget.”
“But, if what they say is true ...”
“Truth?” Bruno said. “What is truth? Do you believe you can get truth from a Russian radio? You are a German, girl. Do you think your people could have done these things?”
“The pictures ...”
“Ernestine,” her father said testily, “you should be able to recognize propaganda. Our faces are being rubbed in the mud. We have no way to answer back. Even if there was a shred of truth, how can you feel that you and I are to blame?”
“Your father is right, Ernestine. Close your ears, forget the lies. They