Read Online The Pieces from Berlin by Michael Pye - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Pye
Tags: Fiction
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and he heard crackling in the air.
There was suddenly blue, bright lightning in the street, earthed to its wheels, shocks of light in the quiet dark. Nicholas, very still on the sidewalk, could make out the shape of the tramcars. He saw their windows where people sat in iced cold light, very faint, that made them look as though they were already dead and their faces had started to fade.
Then the dark came together where the electric flares had torn it.
Nicholas had seen the store at the corner of the street; he knew at last where he was. He listened to the tram going away.
He heard a kitten bawling under a pile of fallen stones. He pushed the stones away and picked it up and it squirmed in his hand and then settled. He put it under his coat and it peed on him.
He managed to hide the animal for a couple of days. He saved bits of meat from Sunday dinner. He cut little pieces of cheese. He wished Lucia would bring oysters, because there were always too many oysters, one of those curiosities of war, although he didn’t know if cats ate oysters. He cleaned up after the kitten, and the kitten kept wonderfully quiet, except that it purred so loudly when it was lying warm against him that he thought the apartment would shake.
But then Lucia got a maid, like everyone else, and she had to know.
He sometimes made an inventory of what he must have known. He didn’t know the proper rules of soccer, but he knew about fire, flares, bombs. He knew what they meant. He never learned to throw a ball, because ball games would have been disorderly on the streets, but he knew how to pitch a stone to bring down the plaster from a falling wall. He saw uniforms, and also dead people.
Lucia got herself a job out at the film studios, UFA, the Universum Film AG, taking the train out each day. He never discovered why she wasn’t at the embassy anymore; he thought he would ask her one day. She told him her job was to make sure there were cartoons in the cinemas, which seemed like quite a good idea, except that he was never very impressed with all the kisses in
Snow White
. He said she should leave those bits out of her films.
The maid’s name was Katya. She came from somewhere to the East. She didn’t speak much German. She had a pudding face, she didn’t smile. She had a wonderfully big bottom, an epic of solid flesh. She fascinated Nicholas when she sat down, or when she walked away.
She never seemed to have time off. She was allowed to go off for a few hours on Fridays, and he assumed she might go to the cinema, but when he asked if she was going to a film, she said: “
Verboten.
” He didn’t ask again.
He found a name for the cat: Gattopardo. He’d much rather have given it the sort of name a friend might have had, but Katya took him to the zoo one afternoon—she always wanted to take him to the zoo, because it was an excuse to be out and see other people—and he saw an ocelot which had just the same markings as his cat. Katya pointed out the label and he asked his mother what it was, and she told him in Italian. So the cat became Gattopardo.
He watched Katya for the sake of watching some other person. She washed out the apartment with a mop, a soft, sluicing sound that he could follow from room to room. It didn’t seem to make the apartment much cleaner. He remembered her food, heavy and with potatoes, always potatoes: potato dumplings, potato cakes, a dozen different thicknesses of potato soup.
One afternoon, when she was out, Lucia said Katya didn’t know everything about potatoes. Lucia took three potatoes out of the store and she juggled them, then she peeled them and cut them and then she said, “Shhh, you must never tell anyone,” and she took the iron out of the cupboard, heated it up, and put the cut potatoes on it. “Fried potatoes,” she said, and she gave Nicholas one. It was a bit raw in the middle, but it was gold and it was perfect to him. “Remember that,” she said.
Nicholas laughed more when his
There was suddenly blue, bright lightning in the street, earthed to its wheels, shocks of light in the quiet dark. Nicholas, very still on the sidewalk, could make out the shape of the tramcars. He saw their windows where people sat in iced cold light, very faint, that made them look as though they were already dead and their faces had started to fade.
Then the dark came together where the electric flares had torn it.
Nicholas had seen the store at the corner of the street; he knew at last where he was. He listened to the tram going away.
He heard a kitten bawling under a pile of fallen stones. He pushed the stones away and picked it up and it squirmed in his hand and then settled. He put it under his coat and it peed on him.
He managed to hide the animal for a couple of days. He saved bits of meat from Sunday dinner. He cut little pieces of cheese. He wished Lucia would bring oysters, because there were always too many oysters, one of those curiosities of war, although he didn’t know if cats ate oysters. He cleaned up after the kitten, and the kitten kept wonderfully quiet, except that it purred so loudly when it was lying warm against him that he thought the apartment would shake.
But then Lucia got a maid, like everyone else, and she had to know.
He sometimes made an inventory of what he must have known. He didn’t know the proper rules of soccer, but he knew about fire, flares, bombs. He knew what they meant. He never learned to throw a ball, because ball games would have been disorderly on the streets, but he knew how to pitch a stone to bring down the plaster from a falling wall. He saw uniforms, and also dead people.
Lucia got herself a job out at the film studios, UFA, the Universum Film AG, taking the train out each day. He never discovered why she wasn’t at the embassy anymore; he thought he would ask her one day. She told him her job was to make sure there were cartoons in the cinemas, which seemed like quite a good idea, except that he was never very impressed with all the kisses in
Snow White
. He said she should leave those bits out of her films.
The maid’s name was Katya. She came from somewhere to the East. She didn’t speak much German. She had a pudding face, she didn’t smile. She had a wonderfully big bottom, an epic of solid flesh. She fascinated Nicholas when she sat down, or when she walked away.
She never seemed to have time off. She was allowed to go off for a few hours on Fridays, and he assumed she might go to the cinema, but when he asked if she was going to a film, she said: “
Verboten.
” He didn’t ask again.
He found a name for the cat: Gattopardo. He’d much rather have given it the sort of name a friend might have had, but Katya took him to the zoo one afternoon—she always wanted to take him to the zoo, because it was an excuse to be out and see other people—and he saw an ocelot which had just the same markings as his cat. Katya pointed out the label and he asked his mother what it was, and she told him in Italian. So the cat became Gattopardo.
He watched Katya for the sake of watching some other person. She washed out the apartment with a mop, a soft, sluicing sound that he could follow from room to room. It didn’t seem to make the apartment much cleaner. He remembered her food, heavy and with potatoes, always potatoes: potato dumplings, potato cakes, a dozen different thicknesses of potato soup.
One afternoon, when she was out, Lucia said Katya didn’t know everything about potatoes. Lucia took three potatoes out of the store and she juggled them, then she peeled them and cut them and then she said, “Shhh, you must never tell anyone,” and she took the iron out of the cupboard, heated it up, and put the cut potatoes on it. “Fried potatoes,” she said, and she gave Nicholas one. It was a bit raw in the middle, but it was gold and it was perfect to him. “Remember that,” she said.
Nicholas laughed more when his
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