Read Online City of Women by David R. Gillham - Free Book Online
Authors: David R. Gillham
Tags: Fiction, Historical
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GREAT HOUR HAS STRUCK! CAMPAIGN IN THE EAST DECIDED! roared the headlines in the
B.Z
. EASTERN BREAKTHROUGH DEEPENS. THE SPIRES OF MOSCOW ARE IN SIGHT! Reports over the wireless were triumphant. Soviet Army Groups Timoshenko and Voroshilov were encircled! Army Group Budyonny was in chaos! German boys would be coming home by Christmas, and everyone was going to be rich. In the cafés, Berliners leapt to their feet, saluting the radio announcements, and booming out the
“Deutschland” and “Horst Wessel” lieder.
Russian-language phrase books crowded the bookshop display windows for those pioneers soon to resettle in the East, and for practical minds expecting a flood of Russian-speaking servants. But then came winter, with rumors of unbearable cold. Cold that froze engine blocks and turned motor oil to sludge. The phrase books vanished from the shops, along with such items as soap, tooth powder, sewing needles, eggs, and wool socks. And though many boys did return home, they did so missing limbs.
The soldier must hop to one side at the next stop to allow for more passengers, and finally accepts a seat simply to get out of the way. Once he is settled, Sigrid notices that everyone carefully avoids looking at him. But the young man does not appear to notice. He sits, lost in his own stare, as if he is still facing down a frigid wind sluicing off the steppes. She thinks of Kaspar. The letters she receives in the Feldpost from him are flat, oddly factual, and really rather dull.
We had hot soup today. Beans, potatoes, and a bit of ham. It really wasn’t too bad.
Or,
The cough persists. Perhaps I shall ask the Sanitäter for a gargle
. But when she pictures his winter-chapped face, a vast distance fills his eyes, until she allows the routine rustle of an ur-Berliner’s newspaper to sweep the image away. Final victory continues to fill the front page, but the back page is crowded with black-bordered hero’s death notices.
Fallen for Führer and Fatherland
under an iron cross. Black borders to match the number of black armbands worn on Berliner coat sleeves.
She only felt guilt for her infidelity after it had ended. In the heat of Egon’s grip, she was so boiling over that she sometimes transferred her passion to Kaspar’s body in sudden spasms of desire in the bed they shared at 11G. Kaspar’s reaction was always one of surprised participation. He was not a bad lover, her husband. He possessed his own kind of well-rehearsed power, and certainly had always been attentive to her body. She has never had any complaints. And when her brimming desire for Egon would secretly slop over her rim, Kaspar always entertained her instructions. But he never took root inside her. She could always separate herself from him when their coupling was through, and listen to the mild saw of his snore without interest. Without guilt. Only after Egon was gone and Kaspar remained did her betrayal cause her pain. So she tried to camouflage her guilt with the overeagerness of her wifely laugh and her solicitude at the supper table. Or subsume it in the binding vacancy that settled between them as they sat listening to the radio. But it was really only after he was conscripted and the army stuffed him onto a train rolling toward the Eastern Front that her guilt eased. If he was a soldier, then she was a soldier’s wife, and could play that role without torment.
At the following stop, she squeezes past the wounded boy’s crutches, and hurries off the tram. It is not a short trip to her mother’s grave. It’s a train ride to Schmargendorf, and then a tram, and then a long hike. Head down, she walks beneath the bare poplars following the course of an old limestone wall. Like most of Berlin’s cemeteries, this one is an antique, a crowded garden of tombstones and looming marble funerary tableaux from a previous century. Many graves are overwhelmed by weeds, the flotsam growth of ungoverned flora, ancient flat-faced headstones caked with moss, choked
B.Z
. EASTERN BREAKTHROUGH DEEPENS. THE SPIRES OF MOSCOW ARE IN SIGHT! Reports over the wireless were triumphant. Soviet Army Groups Timoshenko and Voroshilov were encircled! Army Group Budyonny was in chaos! German boys would be coming home by Christmas, and everyone was going to be rich. In the cafés, Berliners leapt to their feet, saluting the radio announcements, and booming out the
“Deutschland” and “Horst Wessel” lieder.
Russian-language phrase books crowded the bookshop display windows for those pioneers soon to resettle in the East, and for practical minds expecting a flood of Russian-speaking servants. But then came winter, with rumors of unbearable cold. Cold that froze engine blocks and turned motor oil to sludge. The phrase books vanished from the shops, along with such items as soap, tooth powder, sewing needles, eggs, and wool socks. And though many boys did return home, they did so missing limbs.
The soldier must hop to one side at the next stop to allow for more passengers, and finally accepts a seat simply to get out of the way. Once he is settled, Sigrid notices that everyone carefully avoids looking at him. But the young man does not appear to notice. He sits, lost in his own stare, as if he is still facing down a frigid wind sluicing off the steppes. She thinks of Kaspar. The letters she receives in the Feldpost from him are flat, oddly factual, and really rather dull.
We had hot soup today. Beans, potatoes, and a bit of ham. It really wasn’t too bad.
Or,
The cough persists. Perhaps I shall ask the Sanitäter for a gargle
. But when she pictures his winter-chapped face, a vast distance fills his eyes, until she allows the routine rustle of an ur-Berliner’s newspaper to sweep the image away. Final victory continues to fill the front page, but the back page is crowded with black-bordered hero’s death notices.
Fallen for Führer and Fatherland
under an iron cross. Black borders to match the number of black armbands worn on Berliner coat sleeves.
She only felt guilt for her infidelity after it had ended. In the heat of Egon’s grip, she was so boiling over that she sometimes transferred her passion to Kaspar’s body in sudden spasms of desire in the bed they shared at 11G. Kaspar’s reaction was always one of surprised participation. He was not a bad lover, her husband. He possessed his own kind of well-rehearsed power, and certainly had always been attentive to her body. She has never had any complaints. And when her brimming desire for Egon would secretly slop over her rim, Kaspar always entertained her instructions. But he never took root inside her. She could always separate herself from him when their coupling was through, and listen to the mild saw of his snore without interest. Without guilt. Only after Egon was gone and Kaspar remained did her betrayal cause her pain. So she tried to camouflage her guilt with the overeagerness of her wifely laugh and her solicitude at the supper table. Or subsume it in the binding vacancy that settled between them as they sat listening to the radio. But it was really only after he was conscripted and the army stuffed him onto a train rolling toward the Eastern Front that her guilt eased. If he was a soldier, then she was a soldier’s wife, and could play that role without torment.
At the following stop, she squeezes past the wounded boy’s crutches, and hurries off the tram. It is not a short trip to her mother’s grave. It’s a train ride to Schmargendorf, and then a tram, and then a long hike. Head down, she walks beneath the bare poplars following the course of an old limestone wall. Like most of Berlin’s cemeteries, this one is an antique, a crowded garden of tombstones and looming marble funerary tableaux from a previous century. Many graves are overwhelmed by weeds, the flotsam growth of ungoverned flora, ancient flat-faced headstones caked with moss, choked
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