Free Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon

court by the drinks table, obviously just waiting to leave. Dymshits gave a formal toast, welcoming Alex home to build the new Germany. “As we know,” he said, “politics follows culture,” and people nodded as if it made sense to them. Alex looked at their bright, attentive faces, Brecht’s cynicism as out of place here as it had been in California, and for the first time felt the hope that warmed the room. Shabby suits and no stockings, but they had survived, waited in hiding or miraculously escaped, for this new chance, the idea the Nazis hadn’t managed to kill.
    Nothing was being asked of him. He acknowledged the toast with a few words of appreciation, thanking everybody for the welcome, but no one expected a speech. It was enough that he was here. Dymshitswanted lunch, some literary conversation. Aaron Stein hoped that he would help Aufbau by giving an opinion now and then on an English book. Martin wanted him to make the Kulturbund a kind of second home. But all he really had to do was collect his stipend and work as he pleased. In America there had never been enough. Without Marjorie’s paycheck, how would they have managed? And now here in the Soviet zone, of all places, he was comfortable, even prized. Everyone seemed oddly grateful that he had come. There were polite questions about America, whether he thought they would accept a neutral Germany or try to rearm their zone, asked hesitantly, fearing the answer, and it occurred to him, an unexpected irony, that despite the blockade it was they who felt besieged, that his welcome was that of a soldier who’d managed to get through the lines and rejoin his unit.
    “I hope you won’t mind.” Someone speaking English. “I just wanted to tell you I think it was great what you did, standing up to them. It’s about time .” A woman holding a plate heaped with salami and potato salad, the voice New York quick. “I’m Roberta Kleinbard,” she said, motioning with the plate as a substitute for a handshake. “God, it’s such a relief to speak English. You don’t mind, do you? Herb says I’ll never learn German if I keep falling back on it. But it’s hard. You read the papers and that’s all right and then somebody wants to really talk and half of it just sails over your head.”
    “You’re living here?”
    She nodded. “We figured it was just a matter of time back home. You know, like you with the committee. Herb was in the Party. Nobody’s going to hire him once that comes out.”
    “What does he do?”
    “Architect. And what’s an architect supposed to do if he can’t do that? Work at Schrafft’s?” She waved her hand in dismissal. “They won’t be satisfied till they hunt us all down. It’s not illegal, but tell that to the boss. The client . Anyway, he was from here originally and Godknows they could use architects.” She cocked her head to the invisible ruins outside. “So I thought, it’s better than sitting around waiting for some sub poena . I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.”
    “And how has it been? For you, I mean.”
    “Well, it’s not New York, let’s face it. Try and get a decent lipstick. They’re going through a rough time. You know, just keeping warm . But Herb’s working. He’s not sitting in some jail for taking the Fifth. He likes it. And the plans they’re working on—like starting over. But this time you build it the way you want it to look. You’re not going to do that in New York. So it’s good for him.” She looked around. “I know he’s dying to meet you. He wanted—did you know Neutra? Out in California? Neutra’s like a god to him.”
    “No, never met him.”
    “But you were in Los Angeles, right? I just thought, you know, Germans, they’d naturally know each other.”
    “Neutra’s been there a long time. He probably thinks of himself as American. Anyway, he was Austrian. Vienna, I think.”
    “And not German, there’s a difference, and everybody here would know that, right?