2 Berlin 1947
The streets here used to be safe once, Martin thinks, looking into dark, broken alleyways where even the street lights couldn’t penetrate. The rubble that once buried half the city had almost been cleared away; the Allies forced the people themselves to clean the streets, one brick at a time. Men, women, children, it didn’t matter; if you wanted to eat, you had to work. Punishment by hard labour, and a mandatory tour of the camps beyond the city. It was a punishment well-deserved, as far as Martin was concerned. The people needed to know; they needed to be told—they needed to be shown—exactly what had been done to him, and others like him.
With the National Socialists, you’d be taking your life into your hands walking in the wrong neighbourhood. And then it was the Russians. The Allies weren’t any better from what I’ve heard. God forbid if you’re still a Jew, he thought. Not that he’d known any of them in Sachsenhausen. He wouldn’t know what to say if he met one now; his kind had been kept separated. The pink triangles they wore meant they were to be worked to death—and all he can think of was that he’d somehow managed to escape that.
We should’ve left for Switzerland when we had the chance, he told himself. It was a lie he told himself a thousand times a day. It wasn’t that his life was that much better now—it certainly wasn’t for Dieter, being thrown back into prison to complete his seven year sentence for immorality—but because he’d been living in a displacement camp since the end of the war. He hadn’t realized just how bad things had been.
Berlin belonged to the National Socialists, Dieter had said, and that was the reason he’d wanted to stay. He believed in the vision of Germany Hitler had promised. We were so naïve, he tells himself, looking at the destruction around him. Or was it him? Was he the one who had been naïve? He kept telling Dieter that true Berliners wouldn’t allow the National Socialist agenda to take hold of their lives; it wasn’t right because the National Socialist leadership was morally bankrupt. It was only a matter of time before someone stood up for what was right. But that day had never come, had it?
Not that he’d ever been a part of that Berlin—the Berlin that Dieter lived in—the part of Berlin that danced and sang, and made quick work of it with cocaine and heroin, hurried fucks in dark alleys, or handjobs in the theatre while they watched homo movies.
Martin’s was a different Berlin. His was a city of art and culture—of Wagner, and Mozart, and Beethoven—and that’s Art with a capital A, he reminded himself—where he played the piano in front of a select audience. The women dressed in shimmering gowns dripping with jewels while the men wore military uniforms that made them look like relics of a forgotten age. And while the city descended into a decade of decadence, it was never a part of the city that he knew. It was more than just his mother that saved him from seeing that part of life, he knew. It was his gift, as his mother used to call it.
I was her ‘Kleine Beethoven.’
He made his way through the cold, dark streets, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, his muffler wrapped loosely around his neck. The part of the city he’d been walking through had been spared a lot of the bombing. Not all of it, he’s quick to note. A lot of the houses were damaged during the fighting—the Battle of Berlin, he heard somebody call it—when the citizens fought in the streets and the Russians came through like a merciless scythe mowing down the chaff.
They should’ve burned the place to the ground while they were at it; gone all Scipio on it and salted the very earth itself, he thinks, looking at the houses that had fallen in on themselves.
Some had candles glowing somewhere within their inky depths. They glowed in the darkness where there was almost certain to be families gathered in the gloom, eating whatever rations they had, held over an open flame. They’ve been starving for years, and rightfully so, he told himself. He blames them. He can’t help but think back over the years of starvation he endured because of the choices they made. He knows they’ll blame the Allies and the Russians before they’ll blame the National Socialists—never once stopping to think that they’d brought it all on themselves. They’d had ample chances to say no; they’d had the chance to stand up for what was right, and denounce the terror. They should have strung him up like they did Mussolini, a long time ago.
That’s because they believed what he told them, didn’t they? He promised them a one thousand year Reich, and they believed him because they wanted to. Even Dieter had believed.
And what do they have to show for it?
He was in the neighbourhood where he’d studied with the Maestro. Beck. The house wasn’t there anymore, and for some reason he thought it was a shame. It was little more than a pile of bricks and broken chunks of cement where the chimney once stood. Only the burned out shell of the house’s frame remained. He stopped for a moment, feeling a sense of nostalgia wash over him as he remembered Beck. The old Maestro had studied with Liszt in Rome, and Liszt had given him his blessing: the Beethoven Kiss. Beck had been a ruthless taskmaster, and the last Martin had heard, had been ostracized—threatened with prison—for refusing to denounce the National Socialists.
Then why am I here? he asked himself. Was he thinking the house would still be standing, and that maybe Beck would be sitting in the parlour with his feet up, enjoying a cup of cocoa and the warmth of a large fire? As much as he hated everything Beck stood for later in life, he had to remind himself that it was later in Beck’s life. Martin still had fond memories of the man. Sitting beside him on the piano bench as Beck placed a coin on the back of his hands, and then listening with his eyes closed as his body swayed back and forth with the practiced ease of a metronome.
Was it more than a coincidence that the house he’d lived in with his mother all those years ago, was only eight blocks away? It had seemed like such a long walk when he was younger. How had he never noticed that before? Time has a way of doing that to you, he heard someone say once, and thought how he never believed it when he was young.
But now.
It had seemed like such a long walk back then.
THE TRUTH OF WHO WE ARE