Characters of "Cold Victory" : J.B. Baronowsky, one of the Candy Bombers

J.B. Baronowsky is a former B-17 pilot who flew on the Airlift throughout the fall of 1948. He became involved in the candy drops to Berlin's children, but he has been yanked off the Airlift by his fiance's father. His soon-to-be father-in-law is a senior VP at General Motors, who could lean on his Congressman. 

 In this excerpt, J.B. listens to the news from Berlin and it triggers an unexpected conversation with his Dad with serious consequences.

J.B. Baronowsky stood in the living room of his parents’ small, single-level house in Ypsilanti, Michigan straining to hear the news crackling over the airwaves. The man speaking was Colonel Howley, the American commandant in Berlin. J.B. knew his voice well because he’d heard it a hundred times over the Armed Forces Network when he was flying the Airlift. Now, although the static made Howley sound like he was a world away, his elation and triumph had survived the trip across the Atlantic. “…a vote for Freedom! Mayor Reuter’s party has improved its hold on power by almost 16%. The SPD won an absolute majority with 64.5% of all votes cast.”

The reporter asked a question that was garbled by static, but Howley answered clearly. “The SPD is a democratic party, firmly committed to fighting Soviet tyranny and aggression. This is the party, remember, that voted unanimously against Hitler in 1933. Mayor Reuter is a courageous leader, and I look forward to working with him more closely than ever in the days and weeks ahead.”

Again, the reporter’s question was unintelligible, but J.B. hung on Howley’s words, “Absolutely, the Airlift will continue! The people of Berlin have made it 100% clear they do not want to be swallowed by the Russian bear. They don’t want to become slaves of Stalin. They’re willing to go without heat in their houses and live with just two hours of electricity a day and to walk to work and eat powdered potatoes, powdered milk and powdered eggs for as long as it takes to make Stalin loosen his hold. Let me tell you, it isn’t easy to live in the cold and the dark on half the food we Americans are used to, but the Berliners prefer that to being prisoners of a system that denies them the right to think for themselves. We could learn a thing or two from these hardy Berliners!”

The reporter thanked the colonel and the station cut off the connection with Berlin to turn to the sports news. J.B. reached up to switch off the radio altogether.

“What are you doing here, J.B.?” His father’s voice caught him by surprise. “I thought you were out with Patty all day?”

J.B. turned to face his father with a guilty shrug and a sheepish grin. “Yeah, I know, I mean — I don’t know. I wanted to hear what had happened in Berlin, and Patty and her folks don’t care. Besides, I needed to get away from them all for a bit.” He shrugged again uncomfortably and then admitted, “I made up an excuse about your car breaking down and how I had to take you and Mom over to grandma’s.”

His father nodded slowly, his expression unreadable, but his eyes were fixed hard on his son. J.B. avoided them, turning away to pick up the jacket he’d carelessly tossed on the sofa when he came in. He pulled the sleeves straight and folded it over his arm.

The elder Baronowsky watched him for a moment and then said in a low voice, “Look, Jay, I know you’re grown up and you don’t have to talk to me about anything. That’s fine. I don’t want to start running your life. But you ain’t been acting like a man who’s about to marry the girl of his dreams.”

“Dad—”

“Wait!” The older Baronowky held up his hand. “Hear me out, son. It’s true that your mom and I never really warmed to Patty, but before you went over to Germany, we agreed that she made you happy. You were pretty hot for her and glowed with pride when she was beside you. Since you came back from Germany, I don’t sense that same excitement or passion any more. I don’t see much swagger in having such a swanky girl almost in the sack, either. Did something change while you were in Germany?”

“I didn’t have an affair, if that’s what you’re asking!” J.B. snapped back defensively.

“Hadn’t even thought of that. I just asked if anything had changed.”

J.B. couldn’t meet his father’s penetrating eyes. He looked down and then sank onto the sagging sofa. His eyes were fixed on the old coffee table. Stains of countless cold drinks that had perspired into the wood marred the surface, yet all he saw was Kathleen coming out of the fog towards him. For his father, he shook his head and said slowly, “Nothing specific, Dad.”

His father went around to the other side of the coffee table and sat down. “Want to talk about it?”

J.B. drew a deep breath. It would have been easy to brush the old man off, to say it wasn’t any of his business or it wasn’t important. But it was. He’d hoped that being back with Patty again would make him forget Berlin and Kathleen. Instead, the more he was with Patty, the more he missed what he’d left behind. He tried to put his feelings into words his father would understand. “We were doing something good over there, Dad. I was glad to be part of it. Somehow, choosing drapes for our apartment and selecting the music for the band at the wedding just doesn’t seem very important.”

“No, but if you loved Patty, you’d still find it all kinda cute,” his father suggested.

“Are you saying I don’t love Patty?” J.B. gasped out.

“Do you?”

J.B. dropped his head in his hands and scratched at his scalp with his fingernails. Without looking up, he muttered, “All she seems to care about is how things look. It’s all about appearances. Does this match that? What’s the latest fashion? What colour is in vogue now? What will the neighbours think of this or that? And the bigger the price tag, the better it is. Is that right, Dad? Is life just about money and fashion and prestige?” He looked up to meet his father’s eyes.

The elder Baronowsky didn’t answer. Instead, he stood, went over to the sideboard, and pulled out a bottle of vodka and two glasses. He filled the glasses, brought them back to the sofa and nudged his son with one hand.  

J.B. took the offered glass but didn’t drink. Instead, he put it on the table and tried to explain, “I’ve tried to tell her about Berlin — the conditions people live in, the way the kids went wild when we dropped the candy, the presents they and their mothers gave us — handmade things like knitted socks or old books and lace napkins, anything that had survived the bombing. They didn’t have enough to eat, but they kept trying to give us presents!” Although he sounded exasperated, what he wanted was for other people to feel the same amazement and incomprehension that he did. Instead, most people just said something meaningless like: “That was nice of them.” Patty, on the other hand, had responded with, “I hope you didn’t keep any of that junk! We don’t want to clutter up our beautiful house with dirty, old stuff.”

His dad’s response took him by surprise. “The Poles would have treated you the same way. In Europe, you never take anything without giving a gift in return. If someone invites you to dinner, you bring them flowers or wine. If someone gives you a birthday present, you offer them coffee and cake. Because you are bringing the supplies in, the Berliners want to give you something back. Otherwise, they would feel humiliated.”

“That’s it! That’s just what it is!” J.B. exclaimed. It was a relief to have the mystery solved and he wondered why he hadn’t talked to his dad about this earlier. “I think the biggest thing I learned is that they weren’t all Nazis. … Most of the Germans — just like most Americans — didn’t care much about politics until it was too late. …  It’s because of what the Nazis did that the Berliners don’t want to bow to Stalin. They know what a dictatorship is, and they’ve had enough. Helping them is the right thing to do. That’s why I’d rather be flying the Airlift than designing trucks for GM.”

His father nodded and asked the question J.B. dreaded, “And Patty? Where does Patty fit into all this?”

“I don’t know! She certainly doesn’t want to hear about Germany or Berlin or what I did there. She doesn’t care about any of it.” J.B. took a deep breath and admitted, “Sometimes, I get the feeling that she doesn’t care all that much about me, either. I’m just part of the furniture. I have the right looks to fit into her living room — yeah, maybe her bedroom too — but is that all I am? A body to put into her perfect home and bring home the bucks so she can live in style?”

“Don’t marry her, Jay.”

Despite his complaining, the answer shook J.B. “Hey, Dad! That’s pretty stiff medicine! She’s made wedding plans — a second time now! Her family has spent a fortune on a wedding gown, shoes, flowers, band, catering and all that—”

“No one asked them to,” the senior Baronowsky reminded his son. “That was their choice.”

“Yeah, I know, but she’s been patient while I was away. If I break up with her now, she’ll go to pieces!” It was a frightening scenario.

“Listen to me, Jay,” his father interrupted his thoughts. “It’s the rest of your life you’re talking about. If you aren’t crazy about her now, you ain’t gonna be crazy about her after she’s gained forty pounds and is spending your money like it was water.”

True, J.B. thought, but if he broke things off he’d trigger a tempest of recriminations.

His father hadn’t finished, “I know divorce is becoming fashionable in some circles, but the Church does not recognise it. In the eyes of God, once you give your vows to Patty and take her to your bed, you are bound to her and her alone — forsaking all others — until death takes one or the other of you. You may sin. A lot of men do. But you will never be free of her to find a woman who could make you happy. She will make you miserable, Jay — your whole life long.”

J.B. dropped his head in his hands again. Then he noticed the untouched vodka, picked up the glass and threw the alcohol down his gullet with one toss. Shaking his head, he addressed his dad, “If I break off with Patty, that snazzy job at GM goes up in smoke, too.”

“I thought you just told me you’d rather be flying the airlift than designing trucks?”

J.B. opened and closed his mouth, swallowed, and then pushed the shot glass across the table, “Can I have some more of that?”

His father got up, poured them both another shot of vodka and handed J.B. his glass. Still standing, he reminded his sitting son, “You never wanted that job, Jay. You wanted the job at the Michigan Aeronautical Research Centre.”

“Yeah, but that job’s long gone, Dad. They gave it to their next best candidate as soon as I turned them down.”

“So, you can go back on active duty with the USAF. I know!” His dad held up both hands as if in surrender. “They pay peanuts! Still, you could volunteer to go back on the Airlift.”

J.B. looked down at the table. Kathleen was coming at him out of the fog, and in the background, the kids were waving wildly in happiness.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” his father drummed the message home.

“Yeah,” J.B. admitted, looking up at him.

“Then don’t let something as inconsequential as a dumb blonde and her temper tantrum get in your way. You’ve got more important things to do with your life, Jay.”

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Characters of "Cold Victory" : Alexandra "Alix" von Feldburg

 Alexandra "Alix" Baroness von Feldburg is the daughter of a German diplomat and the widow of a leading member of the German Resistance to Hitler. Readers of my novel about the German Resistance, Traitors for the Sake of Humanity, will recognize her. She returns in "Cold Victory" in her capacity as a lawyer, who has made her reputation assisting the prosecution at Nuremberg.

 

In this excerpt, she arrives in Berlin for the first time since the war and is confronted with her memories. 

Alix had lived through Bomber Harris’ ‘Battle of Berlin’ — on the ground. For the second half of 1944, when she was on the run from the Gestapo after the failed coup attempt of 20 July, she had spent much of her time hiding in closets and behind false walls, cowering in cupboards and lying under beds sometimes for hours. She was wanted for treason and had been given refuge by courageous men and women who allowed her to hide in their apartments, sometimes for only a few days, sometimes for a couple of weeks. Yet she had to keep moving, and without being registered at any residence, she could not appear in the air raid shelter without arousing suspicion. Staying above ground during air raids, on the other hand, became so dangerous that she decided to leave Berlin. She went first to a pig farm near Dessau, where she had disguised herself as a slave labourer for almost four months. From there, she made her way to Braunschweig where she had been able to turn herself over to American troops in the closing days of the war.

Her last memories of Berlin were of a city in flames. She had intentionally planned her escape from the city during an air raid because the raid disrupted normal traffic patterns and distracted the attention of the authorities. She had hidden herself aboard a supply train bound for the Western Front. The Allies targeted railheads, and the Reichsbahn did not want their precious cargo of munitions to be found by the RAF bombers. So, the train had crawled out of the city at a pace intended to be too slow for detection from the air. That had enabled her to climb aboard unseen — and prolonged the agony of uncertainty as the bombs rained down.

Yet for all the destruction she had witnessed on the ground, she was not prepared for the carpet of destruction spread out before her as they flew toward the city centre. Before they had reached the worst-hit areas, however, they banked to the right and started to follow the Havel. David shouted above the engines that it was time for her to return to her seat and put her seatbelt on. Alix obeyed in a daze. She'd underestimated how traumatic a return to Berlin would be.

Now she found herself wondering if she could cope. She had told Christian from the start that she would not set foot in the apartment house where she had lived with Philip and where he had killed himself. Christian had arranged for her to live somewhere else. But if she was in Berlin, didn’t she have an obligation to find out what had happened to her parent’s home? Both her parents were dead; her mother had died of heart failure while working in a munitions factory early in 1945, and her father had been shot for desertion during the assault on Berlin. However, her sister Grete was living with relatives in Marburg and her brother Rudi had returned from Soviet imprisonment without his legs; he was in a rehabilitation centre near Kassel. They might want to live in the family home in the future or they might want to sell or rent it — if it was still standing. To find out if it had survived, she would have to visit her childhood neighbourhood and face the memories….

And then there was the Bendlerblock where she had worked so many long, hard and yet rewarding hours. There she had met and forged friendships with the most determined and unwavering opponents of Hitler’s criminal regime — Generaloberst Beck, General Olbricht, General von Treschow — and Philip. Someone said there was a small memorial in the courtyard, marking where Olbricht, Stauffenberg and the others had been executed. She felt she ought to lay a wreath or at least a rose on that spot — yet dreaded the thought of treading the cobbles where such honourable men had been shot without trial. How could she stand where their blood had flowed, cooled and then been scrubbed away by some indignant and ardent supporter of Hitler?

Or what if she had business with subsidiary organs of the Allied Control Council and had to visit the building where the so-called “People’s Court” had held kangaroo trials of those involved in the coup attempt? Where Roland Freisler and his fellow Nationalist Socialist ‘judges’ and lawyers had taunted, ridiculed and condemned her beloved Uncle Erich and so many others because they wanted to restore the rule of law and protect human dignity and rights?

As the tyres squealed under her feet at landing, Alix had a moment of panic. She didn’t want to be here!

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Characters of "Cold Victory:" GALYNA NICOLAEVNA BORISENKO

Galyna, a Ukrainian-born WAAF, is playing a dangerous game. When she was still a child, her idealistic and loyal Communist father was arrested for 'treason' and disappeared.  Her mother's second husband, a senior officer in the Soviet Secret Police, helped her to leave the Soviet Union and join her grandmother in exile. Now she is a translator at RAF Gatow, and the Soviet Secret Police think they know how to make Galyna spy for them. Galyna hopes to outsmart them.

 

 

In this excerpt, Galyna meets with her mother and step-father in their home in Potsdam for the first time after being 'recruited' as a Soviet spy.

WAAF Corporal Galyna Nikolaevna Borisenko was so frightened that her hands were trembling. That made the teacup rattle in the saucer, and her stepfather Maxim Dmitrivich Ratanov smiled faintly in satisfaction.

Seeing that he had noticed, Galyna lashed out at him, “Don’t think that betraying my colleagues and my adopted country is easy for me! Say what you like, the British gave me refuge. They gave me an education, training and status. I’ve been happy in the WAAF.” She threw this last remark at her mother, who sat at the head of the low table commanding the samovar.  Lovely if mismatched antiques surrounded the trio. The furnishings had been stuffed into the dilapidated and damp rooms of the Rote Haus am Neuen Garten, which once upon a time had housed the head gardener of the Prussian kings. In May 1945, it had been taken over by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany and, more recently, assigned to Colonel Maxim Dmitrivich of the Soviet Secret Police. The brick house snuggled under willows on the banks of the Heilegen See in Potsdam, and the windows should have revealed the calm waters of the shallow lake. Instead, they were draped in fog.

In the past, Galyna’s mother, Anastasia Sergeyevna, had ridiculed Galyna for her service uniform, saying it made her look fat. Likewise, Anastasia had dismissed the possibility that Galyna could find friends among the ‘cold’ British. Now, she tried to calm her daughter with a patronizing, “Of course, of course, you had no choice but to make the best of things, but now you can do something truly valuable.”

“Don’t talk that Communist rot with me!” Galyna shot back. “I’m not a child or an idiot! I saw with my own eyes what collectivisation did! I know the so-called Kulaks had nothing left, and yet you stole every last crumb from them, even their seed grain! And when you had taken everything, you still demanded deliveries of food! You drove them to cannibalism!” Galyna spoke passionately, causing her mother to recoil and her stepfather to raise his eyebrows. Galyna turned on him to declare in a calmer but more contemptuous voice, “I haven’t forgotten that Stalin was happy to betray millions to Hitler, either. I don’t believe black is white just because Stalin says it is!”

“You can believe whatever you like,” Ratanov answered laconically, his eyes half closed. “But Stalin is always right.” He paused before adding, “Because he silences anyone who says he is wrong.”

“And you are proud to serve a monster like that?” Galyna challenged him.

“You sound just like you did at 15 when I sent you to live with your grandmother in Finland. I’d expected you to have grown up by now.” His tone was cold and derisive.

“I’m only here to help my father. You said that if I cooperated, the terms of his arrest would be improved.”

Ratanov’s eyebrows twitched. Galyna wasn’t sure if he approved her spirit or pitied her naivety. He said nothing.

In accordance with the advice given her by the RAF intelligence officer Ft/Lt Boyd at Gatow, Galyna continued to stress her reluctance to cooperate, “Don’t think I’m an idiot. I’m not going to help you until I’ve seen proof that my father is still alive. I demand to see a recent photo of him!”

Ratanov shrugged and dismissed the request with a bald, “I don’t have one.”

“Then get one.”

“Or what?” he sneered.

“I will return to Gatow and get on the next plane back to England.”

“You won’t get as far as the Glienike Bridge,” Ratanov told her with a shrug.

Galyna had been warned to expect this kind of threat, and she had planned her response. She turned to her mother and asked, “Will you just sit there, Anastasia Sergeyevna? Will you let your husband threaten your daughter? Will you let him seize and torture me as you let him torture and deport my father? Is that the value of your motherly love?”

“Don’t be foolish and cruel!” Anastasia retorted hotly. “Maxim would never harm you. We only want you to understand the importance of being on the right side of history. The forces of Imperialism are doomed. Progress is unstoppable. The Socialist Motherland has conquered Hitler and humiliated the corrupt imperialist powers. All across Eastern Europe, people have been liberated —”

“Enslaved. Shot. Deported,” Galyna shot back in sincere anger.

“Propaganda. Lies and propaganda. Only reactionary elements have been shot, and of course, the Germans had to be deported along with the Poles. We’ve seen how untrustworthy ethnic minorities are. They stab you in the back as soon as they get the chance.”

“Including the Ukrainians?” Galyna asked, lifting her eyebrows.

Her mother frowned. “Ukraine is a Soviet Republic, and it should be the home of all Ukrainians. There is no reason for Ukrainians to live in Poland or White Russia or Russia. Besides, that is not the point. Socialism brings prosperity —”

“Is that the term you use for famine?”

“Stop acting like a stupid fool!” Ratanov interrupted the exchange. “You are here to give us information about Gatow, not talk back to your mother like an impudent teenager.”

“Not until I know my father is still alive and that my treason will serve a purpose,” Galyna countered, her voice was firm even if her face was red and her hand still trembled.

“Your treason serves the Socialist Motherland and Progressive forces all over the world.”

“I don’t care. I care only about my father. I will not assist you unless you provide proof that my father is still alive.”

“Very well,” Ratanov snapped. “I will request a photo from the appropriate authorities. You will see it next time we meet. For now, I would urge you to think more realistically about your situation. We have discarded the German puppets of the Western warmongers who claimed to govern Berlin, and we have replaced them with reliable men loyal to us.”

“The Berliners do not recognise your Opera government. They plan to elect a government two days from now.”

Ratanov snorted and made a dismissive gesture. “The Western warmongers may try to gain legitimisation for their terror tactics by staging these so-called elections, but it will do them no good. We have things under control. Most people will stay at home. What do they have to gain by voting? They now have a competent and reliable city government determined to improve living standards rather than starve them to death! The Berliners want bread, peace and unity — not terror bombers day and night and isolation from their brothers and sisters in the surrounding countryside.”

Galyna glared at him. She didn’t know any Germans and had no way of knowing what the Berliners wanted, much less if or how they would vote.

“And don’t think your employer,” (Ratanov turned the word ‘employer’ into a term of derision) “will be saved by the Amis either. Colonel Howley and General Clay will soon be sent home in disgrace.  The American president understands that he must come to terms with Stalin, and he wants hotheads like Clay and Howley to disappear—”

“Although I can’t expect someone like you to understand,” Galyna interrupted him, “that doesn’t happen in America. Texas isn’t Siberia. American generals don’t get shot or ‘disappear’—”

“Believe that if you want to, but they can still be withdrawn from Berlin — and they will be. You can’t be so stupid as to believe your bankrupt and weary old Empire will remain here after the Americans have left, can you?” He snorted to show the question was rhetorical.

Galyna got to her feet. “If the Airlift is about to be called off, then Gatow is of no value and you don’t need my services, so I think I’ll leave now.”

“But you only had one piece of cake!” Anastasia protested.

“You keep telling me how fat I look,” Galyna countered with a saccharine smile, “It’s better if I eat less.” To her stepfather, she added. “When you have that photo of my father, let me know. I’m not coming again until I know my father is still alive and my cooperation with you has a purpose that I care about.” She snatched up her handbag and greatcoat from the chair near the door and disappeared into the fog.

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Characters of "Cold Victory" : CHARLOTTE WALMSDORF

 Charlotte Walmsdorf is a victim of the war. Her brothers were both killed fighting for Hitler, and her fiancee went missing. Her parents were killed by a strafing Soviet fighter. The family home was overrun by the Red Army and turned over to Polish refugees. She was gang raped by Soviet soldiers in the closing days of the war. Yet she survived and struggled to make a living, first as a journalist, then teaching English, and finally running the office of Air Ambulance International. She also fell in love with David Goldman and everything seemed to be getting better -- until her fiancee returned from Siberia.

In this excerpt, Charlotte drags herself through another day, which seems to her like everyday of the rest of her life.  She is living with her cousin, Christian, in his apartment in the American Sector in Berlin; her fiancee Fritz has moved into the guest bedroom since his unexpected return from a Russian prison camp.

Waiting in line for rations had taken five hours and forty minutes today. Charlotte was chilled to the bone despite wearing her dead brother’s Wehrmacht greatcoat over her mother’s thickest jumper and woollen underwear. Her feet were sore from standing so long, too. As she dragged herself back in the direction of the apartment house, she shuffled more like a woman in her sixties than in her thirties, and she did not want to think about the future.

On the blank brick wall exposed by the collapse of the house in an air raid, two young men were busy tearing down the SPD posters that had been put up the day before. Charlotte looked at them warily, prepared to make a run for her apartment building, but they were too thin and shabby to be Russians. She relaxed enough to watch them roll out a new poster and affix it to the wall with their glue-soaked brushes. It was a photo of Berlin burning after an air raid. In large red letters dripping red drops to suggest blood, it read: “Voting strengthens the warmongers! Voting means more night bombing!”

As if Hitler hadn’t started the war! As if Stalin hadn’t been his friend!

She had watched the youths for too long. One of them noticed her. “Hey! Frau! Do you live around here?”

“What business is that of yours!” She answered, turning to hurry away.

He shouted after her. “This block of houses has already been allocated to the Red Army. They’ll move in before the New Year. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to make them feel warmly welcome!” He and his companion laughed.

Charlotte fled, trying to tell herself it was just empty threats and intimidation. “Bullying” was the word David would have used.

The thought of David almost made her stumble. David, David, David. He had given her the practical, thick-soled, warm shoes on her feet and the soft woollen gloves on her hands. Most of all he had given her back the will and a reason to live. Charlotte had hoped this Christmas would be filled with thankfulness and joy for the first time in five years, but that dream had shattered with Fritz’s return.

She paused before the door of her apartment house and looked up toward the top floor. Fritz was up there now, waiting for her and the rations. She wished she didn’t have to go up to him. Even queuing in the cold was better than being with Fritz. He watched her every move and his eyes seemed to take her clothes off and seek to penetrate her soul at the same time. He pressured her to tell him everything that had happened since they parted in the autumn of 1942.

She’d told him what she could: what it had been like in Silesia on her father’s estate with only women and prisoners of war as labourers. She’d tried to describe what it was like as the front came closer and the refugees swept through, full of horror stories about Russian atrocities.  She informed him of her brothers’ deaths and explained her father’s decision to flee by horse-cart. She’d forced herself to recount how the strafing Soviet fighter had killed both her parents, her mother’s maid and one of the horses. She’d attempted to convey how numb and hopeless she’d felt when she arrived in Berlin. She’d tried to make him understand her relief at being given refuge in her cousin’s house. Yet when she admitted that her cousin had been part of the plot against Hitler, Fritz had spat out “treasonous filth!” and she had said no more.

That didn’t stop Fritz from trying to drag more information out of her. He’d asked her what happened after the war, but she kept her answers vague. She claimed she’d survived as a freelance journalist, which was partially true, but she hadn’t breathed a word about Air Ambulance International — or David, of course.

What was the point? She’d broken off with David, admitting to herself that her hopes for a life with him had been a fantasy. He didn’t know about the rapes. He would never have married her after he found out.

Drawing a deep breath, she put down the string bag with the rations, took out her key and unlocked the front door. Once inside, she started wearily up the shallow stairs. In the dark of the unlighted interior (there would be no electricity in this part of the city until six am tomorrow), fear closed around her like a stagnant fog. Those young men had said the Red Army would move in as soon as the Western Allies withdrew. Everyone queuing for rations had been talking about how the Amis and Brits would pull out after the election. Not enough planes were getting through. Food reserves were running out. Rations could not be cut any more. Some people claimed that the announced evacuation of children and chronically ill was a sham. What was really happening, they said, was that the Allies were sending their own children home. The Allied troops would be on the last planes out, and then all of Berlin would belong to the Ivans again.

Charlotte stopped on the landing to get hold of herself. Her heart was pounding not from exertion but from fear. She would not let them do it to her again. Her cousin Christian had given her a pistol, one of several he’d bought on the black market. She had a dozen bullets as well. She would kill herself rather than let them touch her again.

Sometimes, she indulged in imagining what it would be like to kill one or two of them first. She would aim for their faces. Once upon a time, when she had been the daughter of a count with a large estate and had gone hunting with her brothers, she had been a good shot. She was not unfamiliar or uncomfortable with guns. If they were trying to come in the front door, she could position herself in the doorway of the corner room, just three or four metres away. From there, with them confined in the hall and silhouetted against the light on the landing, she thought she could hit them in the face. Out of hate. Out of revenge.

But she mustn’t think about it, she told herself. It was bad enough that her thoughts rotated around this final moment of her life in the dark of her sleepless nights.

She continued up the stairs to the fourth floor and again put down the bag of rations to let herself into the apartment. The interior was dark, silent and icy cold. They did not have enough coal to heat anything except the kitchen oven, and that for only a couple of hours a day. Charlotte could see her breath.

The sound of the door clunking shut behind her provoked a growl from the far end of the hall. “Is that you, Lotte? Where have you been?” Fritz demanded, adding in a self-pitying tone, “I’ve been waiting for you for hours!”

“Yes, Fritz, it’s me!” Charlotte answered, trying to sound cheerful. “I told you I was going out to get our rations.”

“That was hours ago!” Fritz complained, limping to stand in the doorway of the “Berliner Room” that occupied the corner of the house. “Don’t you realise I can’t do anything without your help!”

It was too dark to see more than his shape, but Charlotte could picture him all too well: the way his left eye couldn’t stay focused and drifted off to the side; his mouth with only half his teeth and the others rotting and stinking horribly; the mutilated right hand with only two remaining fingers with perpetually filthy nails. Christian and she had found clothes to replace the rags he’d arrived in, but they had no hot water to give him a proper bath. Although Christian had made him strip down and stand in the tub to be sponged off with water heated in the kettle, the stink of the Gulag clung to him.

“The lines are very long,” Charlotte explained. “I had to wait five hours and forty minutes.”

“Arrogant bastards,” Fritz snarled.

“They’re doing the best they can,” Charlotte reminded him.

“Really? In that case, they’re incompetent fools. Bumbling idiots! We could organise things much better!”

“What do you mean?” The question cracked like a gunshot from Christian, who stepped out of the front salon. He lived there now that Fritz had moved into the second bedroom.

“People never had to wait in long lines for rations in German-occupied territory. Everything was properly organised and went like clockwork!” Fritz bragged.

“Right into the gas chambers!” Christian flung back, adding, “Nobody stood in line for rations because we killed or deported them instead.”

“I should have known a traitor like you wouldn’t be proud of his country!”

“You’re proud of murdering millions?”

“Stop it!” Charlotte shouted. “Stop it!” It was directed at both of them.

“This is my house,” Christian answered in a tone of voice his subordinates in the Luftwaffe would have recognised. “I’ll say what I please.”

“Don’t, Christian! Please don’t!” Charlotte pleaded, tears forming in her eyes. She dropped the rations and, pushing past Fritz, ran to her room at the far end of the hall, slamming the door. Behind her, the angry voices of Christian and Fritz exchanging insults continued. She flung herself onto the bed, covered her head with her pillow and started sobbing. Part of her wondered if she should bother waiting for the Ivans to come. Maybe she should just shoot herself now? 

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Characters of "Cold Victory" : DAVID GOLDMAN

 David Goldman, a German-Jew with a Canadian passport and a wartime record with the RAF, has invested the fortune inherited from his father in the establishment of an aviation company. His firm is not only flying freight into Berlin as part of the Berlin Airlift, it is also flying patients out in an air ambulance. But while the business is doing well, David's private life is a shambles after the German woman he fell in love with, Charlotte Walmsdorf, rejects him to marry her returned fiancee.

 

During the war, David was badly burned while flying a Hurricane in combat, and his face was 'reconstructed' by the famous plastic surgeon Dr McIndoe -- just as was the face of the young man in the portrait above, Wing Commander Bob Doe. 

This excerpt from the start of "Cold Victory" depicts his state of mind at this low point in his life.

Sammy licked David’s face to wake him. As the dog’s rough tongue brought him back to consciousness, he groaned. His shoulder was killing him from lying on it for too long on the floor. He dragged himself upright and looked around. He was in a small, old-fashioned sitting room with an empty wine bottle beside him and a dirty wineglass on the table. Where was he and what day was it?

Gradually things started to come back to him. After the police had failed to arrest the man living in his uncle’s gracious house on the Havel, he’d been slipped the keys with the hint that no one would object to him re-occupying family property while his restitution claim worked its way through the bureaucracy. He’d collected Sammy from the Priestman’s home in Kladow, taken all his personal belongings out of the apartment over the company office on Kurfuerstendamm, and moved into the house here on the Schwanenwerder. The main house with its high ceilings and large windows, however, was freezing and lonely.  So, he’d set himself up in the housekeeper’s old apartment at the back of the house instead. It was small, cosy and could be heated more easily. In addition, the windows were nearly overgrown with vines, making it harder for people to look in. He could also come and go by the back door, avoiding the main entrance that the police had boarded up.

David had made himself quite comfortable, but then the nightmares started. He dreamt of his childhood, fleeing his father’s contempt and the ridicule of the other children. He heard again his parents’ whispers about bankruptcies, dismissals, terminated contracts and suicides. The memories merged with films of concentration camps and photos of mass graves in the forests east of Warsaw. They mutated into his own melted face, the patchwork of skin, the stitches and swelling, the smell of pus and disinfectant.

“Oh, Sammy,” David gasped out and pulled the blond collie mix into his arms. He’d adopted Sammy when his face was at an early stage of reconstruction. The dog had diligently licked his regenerating skin night after night in an obsessive determination to help his new master recover.

Sammy was skinny, he noted with shock, and sat up more completely. How long had he been lying here? Why on the floor rather than the bed? When was the last time he’d fed Sammy? There was a dog door, and Sammy could get out to drink from the lake, but unless he’d managed to catch a bird or a rabbit for himself, David didn’t think he’d been fed in several days.

David dragged himself to his feet. He was wearing four layers of jumpers, corduroy trousers, thick socks and fleece slippers. His head ached, his mouth tasted foul, and his stomach rumbled. He hadn’t fed himself either. He made his way to the lavatory, relieved himself, and then went into the staff kitchen. He opened cupboards randomly until he found some cans of spam and emptied the contents into Sammy’s bowl. While the dog ate ravenously, he returned to the bathroom to strip down and wash himself, brush his teeth and change into clean clothes.  

When he was dressed again, he returned to the kitchen, gave Sammy a second can of spam, and cut the contents of a third can into slices that he laid on slabs of stale bread. It was dry and unappetizing but temporarily filling. He washed it down with tap water, left the plate and glass in the sink with a stack of other dirty dishes, and sank onto the chair to stare out of the window.

There was nothing to see but fog and desultory moisture dripping from the eaves. Then he noticed a sparrow clinging to a dead vine. A microcosm of his life perhaps? Sammy leaned against his leg and whimpered, begging for his attention, so he bent to scratch him behind his ears and massage the back of his neck, murmuring apologies. “Sorry, old boy. I didn’t mean to neglect you. I promise to improve. I should not have come here. It was a colossal mistake. I should have left the ghosts alone. I don’t need anything here. It’s a ball and chain around my ankle holding me back, stopping me from flying. We ought to be flying, Sammy. Above the clouds. Soaring again.” The thought of a Spitfire on the wing brought the faintest of smiles to his lips, and Sammy reached out with his tongue to express approval.

“At least that Nazi bastard is gone. I can turn the house over to the city and let them relocate homeless people here.  Whatever.” He shrugged as he registered that most of those homeless people would also have shouted “Heil Hitler,” rejected their Jewish neighbours, thought of themselves as ‘supermen’ and gloried in the conquest of half of Europe. But he couldn’t find the energy to be outraged any more. He just wanted to get away. To leave Berlin and Germany behind and start his life over again.

He had a Canadian passport, after all. His mother, one sister and his brother were still there. He could go to the New World and start over again.

But he didn’t move. He just stared out of the window and watched the moisture on the tip of a naked vine fatten until it was heavy enough to fall with a soft ‘platsch’ onto the windowsill. He also heard faint laughter echoing in the rooms overhead. His cousins were giggling as they played some silly game. His uncle called out that he was home, and his aunt urged, “Come girls, your father’s home.”

“It’s so peaceful here,” Charlotte said timidly in his brain. “It’s as if there never was a war.  Are those lilacs? They must be glorious when they bloom. And look! Is that a peacock? Do you think it escaped from the Pfaueninsel?” Charlotte was always so timid and hesitant in his presence. “Is that a stable? Oh, David, could we have horses? I would so love to have horses in my life again.”

David put his hands to his face. Desperate to explain why Charlotte had left him, he’d searched his memory a million times for some trace of disdain, contempt, superiority, arrogance, or a hint of antisemitism. Instead, all he heard was Charlotte’s shy, breathy voice as she expressed her thanks for every little thing he did for her. His memories revealed only uncertainty when she talked of business matters and diffidence towards every decision he made. He was haunted by the rare tinkling of her laughter and her smiles like rays of sunshine piercing the fog. How could Charlotte, of all people, reject him?

Christian had said it was because of the rapes, but David’s brain refused to go there. He simply could not cope with the thought of Charlotte being ravaged — much less six times. He did not believe it. Christian had been trying to manipulate him into forgiving her. Or maybe Christian believed it. But David didn’t. Charlotte could not have survived being gang raped. She was too fragile. An experience like that would have destroyed her. She would have gone mad or killed herself. Ergo it could not have happened at all, and that meant she had some other reason for rejecting him. There had to be something about him that she could not accept....

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Find out more about the Bridge to Tomorrow series, the awards it has won, and read reviews at: https://helenapschrader.net/bridge-to-tomorrow/