Read Online Lehrter Station by David Downing - Free Book Online

of their reach? America. Australia even. It’s not as if anything’s holding you here in England.’
    Russell shook his head. ‘I doubt there’s anywhere on earth beyond the reach of the NKVD. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting for them to turn up.’
    ‘Neither do I,’ Effi said. ‘I’m going back too.’
    ‘Why?’ Zarah asked. ‘I mean apart from wanting to be with John?’
    ‘I’ve been offered a movie as well.’
    ‘That doesn’t sound like a coincidence,’ Paul said.
    ‘It isn’t. The Soviets have fixed it up somehow, but the film is being made by Germans, and I know a lot of the people involved. My problem is whether or not to take Rosa. I mean, there’d obviously be practical difficulties – I’ll be on set most of the day, and God knows what our living conditions will be like. But even if most of that could be sorted out, I’d still be taking her out of school, and back to a place full of terrible memories. And if I am going to find out what happened to her father, I’ll need to visit every Jewish refugee centre I can. Which would mean taking her from one dreadful place to another, raising and dashing her hopes over and over again.’
    ‘You sound like you’ve already made up your mind,’ Zarah said.
    ‘Perhaps, but I’m ready to be told I’m wrong. What do you think, Paul?’
    ‘I think she should stay here. As long as Zarah’s happy with that. I’ll do all I can, of course, but unless I give up my job most of the burden will fall on Zarah.’
    ‘It’s no burden,’ Zarah insisted. ‘If I had to I could manage on my own, and if Paul’s here as well… But I do think you should talk to Rosa,’ she told Effi. ‘Just in case. She’ll be upset, of course, but as long as you make it clear that it’s only for a few weeks, I think she’ll take it in her stride. If I’m wrong, and she gets hysterical, then perhaps you should think again.’
    ‘I will.’
    ‘And while you’re there,’ Zarah went on, addressing both of them, ‘can you try and find out what happened to Jens? I think he must be dead, but… well, I can live with the uncertainty, but Lothar… I think he needs to know what happened.’
    ‘What if he’s alive and we find him?’ Russell asked her.
    ‘Tell him… oh, I don’t know what to say. I don’t want him back, but Lothar does miss him, and we’ll be all going back eventually, won’t we?’
    ‘Probably,’ Russell said. It seemed the likeliest option.
    ‘Then if you see him, tell him Lothar and I are alive, and that when we come back Lothar will want to see him.’
    ‘Okay.’
    ‘But I think he’s dead,’ Zarah insisted.
    ‘If he isn’t, he’s probably in prison,’ Russell said.
    ‘Yes, of course. Poor Jens.’
    Poor Jens, Russell thought. One of the bureaucrats who had organised the deliberate starvation of Soviet cities and Soviet POWs. A mass murderer by any other name. And yet, somehow, ‘poor Jens’ seemed apt.
    ‘And then, being practical,’ Zarah added, ‘there’s the house in Schmargendorf. If it’s still standing, we should reclaim it. It is ours, after all. Mine, if Jens is dead.’
    ‘And my flat on Carmerstrasse,’ Effi said. ‘Thank God I only rented the one in Wedding. That’s just rubble now.’ She was, she realised with some surprise, beginning to feel excited at the prospect of seeing Berlin again.
    ‘And you must try and see Papa and Muti,’ Zarah told her.
    ‘I’m not sure I want to,’ was Effi’s retort. Both their parents had behaved appallingly when told of Zarah’s ordeal at Soviet hands, and Effi still found it hard to forgive them.
    ‘We have to try and set things right,’ Zarah told her sternly. ‘They’re old. And they don’t know any better.’
    * * *
    Russell and Effi’s imminent departure cast a shadow across the weekend, which cold wet weather did nothing to dispel. On Saturday morning Effi took Rosa aside, and told her, in as matter-of-fact a manner as she could manage,