Free News From Berlin by Otto de Kat Page B

got on. But it felt as if they were on the bus in body only, not in mind, for they were children again playing on the embankment until Mrs Hepkema called for them to come indoors.
    *
     
    At long last, the lugubrious man led her via a double-doored lock-chamber into a slightly larger space, as sparsely furnished as the changing room of a public swimming bath. A few uniforms hung from the pegs on the walls, in the middle stood a grey metal desk with a wooden chair on either side. It was deathly quiet; the double doors were soundproof.
    Once the dumb play and trivial opening questions were over, Emma felt her throat tighten, as if all the air were being sucked out of the room. She had to get out of there, do something. She stood up, looked the boxer in the eye and said: “I have nothing more to say. I should like to go now, if you don’t mind, or else please make a telephone call to Herr von Trott at the foreign office.”
    Her tone was clear, almost casual, self-possessed.
    The shoe-tapping ceased, the cigarette was stubbed out in the metal ashtray, the jacket given a tug, the chair pushed back.
    “Your mother …”
    Of the few sentences uttered by the ghoul this was the one that kept coming back to her. A dirty-minded little man being provocative. Or was there more to it? It had sounded almost accusing, about her mother being quite a looker. In the Gestapo’s eyes, of course, the same eyes that had been ogling her breasts during their cosy exchange.
    When she finally stood outside again, her bag slung over her shoulder, she noticed how chilled she felt in the warm air. The June light and the summer heat had been abruptly cut off upon entering the building. A few hours of isolation and bewilderment and exposure to insulting manners were enough to turn her world upside down. She set off along Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, then broke into a run, only to slow down after a few paces because it would attract too much attention: nobody ran like that. She paused to catch her breath, leaning against the wall of a shop with tears running down her face as she wept over Watse, over Carl, over everything. A man passing by eyed her with concern and asked if she needed help, but she waved him off. The show of kindness was exceptional: people tended to shun one another in the street, at least until the next bombing raid, when they would rally together and help each other to their feet.
    *
     
    Carl would be on his train by now, Emma reflected. She was still leaning against the garden gate, absorbed in what she now thought of as her kidnapping. Kidnapped in broad daylight by a couple of upstarts, and subjected to questioning by a loathsome thug. She had made out to Carl that she had slept well. She had not told him how undone she was over the arrest and interrogation, how worried about her father, how Watse’s death had hit her all over again. She did not wish to burden him unnecessarily. She had to think ahead to that evening. Would she manage to get hold of wine for her birthday dinner? And what on earth should she cook, she didn’t have near enough ration cards. Slowly, Emma bestirred herself. Household concerns took over, such as shopping – especially shopping. She wondered how her mother would have dealt with providing a meal for twenty guests. Her mother was experienced in such matters, her parents were always having people to dinner: mixed parties of diplomats, journalists, with some figures from the art world thrown in. She had never seen her mother truly enjoying herself in the role of hostess; even as a child she had felt that it was her father who was behind all the entertaining. Her mother did her bit, but with a certain reserve. Her mother, who was considered quite a looker by the Gestapi, as Carl alwaysreferred to them. That her father was involved in clandestine dealings was not surprising, though it had never occurred to her that the Nazis were having him followed everywhere. But her mother, what could she have to do with