Always and Forever Page 3

  “We’ll spend most of our time on deck,” said Kathy.

  “I know. We’ll have classes in German every day.” Rhoda sighed. “Why didn’t I take German in college?”

  “Let’s go down below and unpack,” Kathy suggested.

  “I get claustrophobic down there,” Rhoda said. “And why unpack? There’s nowhere to put anything.”

  “Unpack pajamas and your toothbrush,” Kathy ordered. “And something to read. I have a feeling we won’t fall asleep quickly tonight.”

  “I hope we can get to Paris before we come home,” Rhoda said wistfully. “Wouldn’t you love to stock up on Chanel No. 5?”

  “From what I hear,” Kathy laughed, “we won’t be able to afford it. Not even in Paris. Inflation’s hit Europe like crazy.”

  Though Brian Holmes tried to keep up the spirits of the group, they heard enough from the crew—familiar with Hamburg—to know that conditions were difficult in that city. On the ship they ate in their own private mess, the food plentiful but bland. Some early talk about the excitement of seeing Europe evaporated when Brian used the idle hours aboard ship to stress what was expected of them.

  “Boy, am I glad my mother loaded me up with extra bars of soap,” Rhoda giggled on the night before they were to reach Hamburg. “One of the crew told me the only place to buy soap in Hamburg is on the black market.”

  “Rhoda, we’re not going on a vacation,” Kathy reminded. But for most of them the glamour of seeing Europe had been an incentive to join the group.

  It still amazed Kathy that David Kohn had been born and raised in Berlin. He spoke English as though he’d always lived in America. But wasn’t it going to be awful for him to go back to Germany after losing his family in the Nazi gas chambers?

  Kathy and Rhoda stood at the railing of the deck as their ship approached the harbor at Hamburg.

  “I read somewhere that Hamburg is called ‘Germany’s door to the world,’” Rhoda said. “It’s one of the most important seaports on the Continent.”

  “And not far from the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen,” Kathy said grimly. Their reason for coming to Hamburg was to help victims brought from Bergen-Belsen into relief stations here. “I remember the newspaper reports when the British liberated the camp.” Kathy’s throat was tight in recall. “They found over 10,000 unburied bodies and 40,000 sick and dying prisoners. My Aunt Sophie didn’t stop crying for three days.”

  “Remember Ed Murrow reporting on Buchenwald? The way he begged people to believe him when he talked about what he’d seen? ‘I reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words,’” Rhoda quoted him. “I think more than anybody else Ed Murrow is responsible for my being here.”

  Though they had all seen newsreels that showed the devastation of German cities, Kathy—like most of them—was not prepared for what they saw when they arrived in Hamburg.

  “Remember, Hamburg was one of the main targets of the Allied bombers,” Brian said gently, feeling their shock as they rode through the bombed-out streets. “Over sixty percent of the homes here were destroyed.”

  “Why are those men chopping down the trees?” Kathy asked curiously.

  “There’s no coal to be had,” Brian explained. “They’re trying to pile up firewood for the winter ahead. But we’re not concerned with the Germans.” All at once he was terse. “We’re here to help their victims.”

  Quarters had been arranged for them in a flat in one of the still-standing apartment houses. One double bed and one single occupied most of the space of each of four bedrooms.

  “Cozy,” one of the men labeled these arrangements. “Reminds me of summer camp.”

  “We’ll have to post a bathroom schedule.” Rhoda was determined to be cheerful. “Please, nobody come down with diarrhea.”

  Almost immediately they joined the relief organization which they were scheduled to assist. Kathy’s major skills were her familiarity with German and her typing speed. Before they plunged into the work ahead, they were shown films of the concentration camps at Belsen and Dachau and Auschwitz.

  The room where the films were shown was deathly still until two of the girls broke into sobs. Kathy was terrified she was going to be sick. Unconsciously her eyes moved to David Kohn, feeling rather than seeing his anguish. When the lights came up again, she saw him stumble from the room without a word. The others were suddenly vocal in their recriminations against the Nazis.

  “I thought I was prepared for anything,” Kathy stammered. “But not this. Oh, Rhoda, how could it happen?”

  As Brian had warned, they worked long hours, sometimes against impossible odds. Kathy tried to explain to an emaciated, obviously once very pretty young girl—perhaps thirteen or fourteen and slowly being coaxed back to a semblance of health after two years in Bergen-Belsen—that it would be difficult to track down American cousins in the Bronx.

  “But you come from New York,” Heidi pleaded. “You know about the Bronx. My cousins are there. Before the war when”—she choked back tears—“when my family was alive, they came to spend the summer with us on our farm hear Munich.”

  “We’ll try,” Kathy soothed. “I promise you.”

  Heidi had been through so much, Kathy thought in pain, remembering how she had told them about the women who gave birth and had their babies drowned before their eyes—and then themselves were carried off to the gas chambers. “I was so glad I was too young to have a baby.”

  Because of their fluency in German, Kathy and David became a team. She was touched by his tenderness, his compassion, yet was awed by his strength. She knew that he saw the victims of the camp and envisioned what his family had suffered.

  With a growing closeness they walked about the near-deserted streets of the city to their specific destinations. The people of Hamburg were unexpectedly friendly. When Kathy remarked about her surprise at this, David told her how the British had taken over the city without a shot being fired.

  “That’s one of the reasons the German police have been allowed to keep their guns. You see them,” David pointed out with a chuckle. “They patrol the streets right beside the British ‘Little Red Riding Hoods.’” The British MPs acquired their nickname from their red caps.

  Yet despite the friendliness of the Hamburg citizenry, Kathy thought of this as a dead city. It was possible to walk for an hour without seeing more than a handful of civilians—shabbily dressed, furtive, unhappy over the city’s lack of food and clothing and coal.

  With David—on their off-duty hours—she walked along the Reeperbahn and flinched at the sight of the desperate human beings involved in the black market operations—trying to sell what little they had or what they could steal in order to survive.

  “I remember coming here with my family years ago,” David said softly. “This used to be Hamburg’s Broadway.”

  “You want to sell gloves?” a ragged fourteen-year-old with a persuasive smile approached David. He’d spied the pair of gloves David had stuffed into his jacket. “I have four apples. Very good. See? You will like very much—”

  “Take them,” David said roughly, reaching into his pocket. “And keep your apples.” He handed over the gloves to the astonished young teenager and prodded Kathy down the street.

  “That was sweet of you, David,” she said softly.

  “How can we blame him for the concentration camps?” David countered. Now he reached for her hand. “I’ve been thinking about that girl. The one you’ve been so upset about—”

  “Heidi?” Kathy asked. “The one with cousins in the Bronx?”

  “I’ll write back to my uncle in New York,” David decided. “I know it’s a long shot, but I’ll ask him to advertise every day for a week in the New York Daily News. Maybe a miracle will happen.”

  “David, it would be so wonderful.” Kathy was rapturous.

  “You’re wonderful,” he said, holding her hand in his. “The way you instill hope in people who have seen such pain. I’ve watched you wit
h them.” He hesitated. “I know there’s no one left of my family in Berlin, but I want to go there, just for a day. The trains are running again, not too often and they’re usually packed, but would you like to go with me? You said your aunt had come from Berlin—”

  “Could we go and return the same day?” All at once her heart was pounding. David was someone special. “Won’t Brian be upset if we take time off?”

  “We’ll go on Sunday. It’s something I have to do.” She remembered the day he had taken off to go to Bergen-Belsen, and had returned gray and in shock. He had not joined them for their usual late dinner, closing himself off in his bedroom until morning.

  “Aunt Sophie said to me, just before I left, that if I got to Berlin I must have a cup of coffee at a sidewalk café on the Kurfürstendamm,” she told him.

  “We’ll do that,” David promised. “Now do you suppose we could find a café here somewhere for a beer?” With his free hand he pulled the collar of his jacket close about his throat. “It’s getting colder.”

  “I’d like that.” She liked David Kohn. She had never felt so drawn to any man.

  Phil leaned back on the rear seat of the Cadillac limousine while the chauffeur held open the curbside door.

  “I called your mother and told her you were coming home with me for dinner,” Julius Kohn told his son while he maneuvered his Brooks Brothers-suited bulk into the car. “She was pleased.”

  “She won’t be pleased when she hears I’m headed back overseas.”

  “She’ll carry on.” Julius was unperturbed. “For a few minutes. There’s no war on now. You tell her about your roving photographer assignment.” He smiled smugly. “I knew if I leaned hard enough on the magazine, they’d go along with this. You know what my billing with them amounts to every year?”

  “A lot.” Phil nodded with the expected air of respect.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.” Julius inspected his son with some unease. “I’m giving you thirty thousand to buy a pig in a poke.”

  “It’s not a pig in a poke,” Phil reproached. “It’s like I told you. This French couple with the little house outside of Paris has been hiding these two paintings since the Nazis were run out of the area. Sure, they belonged originally to a museum; but the Nazis took them over. They left in such a rush they forgot to take them along. They’re worth close to a million. I can buy them for thirty thousand.”

  “If they haven’t disposed of them already—”

  “I told you. They’re waiting for me. They trust me. I had a little thing going with the wife when we landed in Paris.” He gave his father a knowing wink. “They’re holding the paintings for me. They’re sure I can get them out of the country.”

  “Don’t go to Paris first,” Julius warned. “You’ve got to handle this just right.” His eyes gleamed with anticipation. The old boy was dying to have two old masters to hang in the house up in Greenwich, Phil thought with amusement. Especially if he could brag about what a bargain he got. “Don’t give anybody any ideas.”

  “I’m going to Germany to do a photographic layout on Hamburg,” Phil reminded him.

  He’d chosen Hamburg because David was there. David might be useful. The two of them could go off to Paris together for three or four days. That was a good cover in case anybody got curious. Two Americans out to play in gay Paree. David wouldn’t have to know he was there to dig up two paintings he’d buried in the garden of that creepy little house, where he and Chuck had been billeted for a few days. He and Chuck found the paintings hidden away in the attic; the Nazis had taken off so fast they’d left them behind.

  Chuck had come though the war without a scratch only to die in a car smash-up on a weekend pass in Texas. So the two old masters belonged to Phil alone. And the old man was handing over thirty thousand for them, he congratulated himself.

  “I don’t like you walking around with that much cash,” Julius complained. “It’s dangerous.”

  “I’m taking it over in traveler’s checks,” Phil soothed. “No danger at all.”

  He’d take a couple thousand or so with him for the trip. The rest would go into a New York bank account. His nest egg. The old man would brag about the great deal he’d made, smuggling two old masters out of France. And Paris in peacetime should be a ball.

  Chapter 3

  HAMBURG WAS STILL WRAPPED in gray dawn as Kathy dressed in the bathroom in the dank November cold. She relished the scent of David’s shaving cream that hung in the air. He’d had first use of the communal bathroom. Rhoda thought she was out of her mind to get up at this ungodly hour to catch a train to Berlin. “The one morning in the week when we can sleep, Kathy!”

  She was eager to see Berlin, not just because of Aunt Sophie, but because until now she had never been farther away from Brooklyn than Washington, D.C. But often it was painful to move among the German streets and ask herself which of those people she passed had been Nazis. Equally painful was the sight of those who had managed to survive the horrors of Bergen-Belsen.

  She started at the faint knock on the door.

  “Yes?” She opened the door a crack. She was ready except for brushing her hair.

  “Dress warmly,” David told her. “It’s cold put.”

  While the others slept in the silent flat, Kathy and David tiptoed down the hall and out the door.

  “We may have to stand on the train,” he warned as they emerged into the empty street.

  “I don’t mind.” She didn’t mind because she was with David. It was hard to believe she’d known him only a month. The meetings in New York, when they were recruited, then briefed, didn’t count, she thought conscientiously. How could she feel this way about David so quickly? And she knew he felt something special for her. Under the circumstances she couldn’t expect him to put his feelings into words. Berlin was a living nightmare for David.

  As they’d expected, they had to wait almost an hour for the train. Miraculously they found seats in the last car. Though the winter had hardly begun, Kathy was ever conscious of the cold. When she hunched her shoulders against the draft that filtered in through a window, David dropped an arm about her shoulders and drew her close.

  From habit they spoke in German—one of Brian’s rules that was meant to extend their vocabulary. A woman across the aisle smiled, taking David for a German with a foreign girlfriend. German was obviously a second language to Kathy. The people here were all so friendly, Kathy thought with recurrent surprise. Yet for her there was always a wall between them. Whenever she dealt with Germans, all those displaced persons were never far from her thoughts.

  By the time the train arrived at the main station in Berlin, the temperature had risen. A bright sun shone down on the city. The city Aunt Sophie had once loved, Kathy remembered nostalgically.

  “I haven’t been here in ten years.” David’s voice trembled with emotion. “I want to see my father’s hospital. I want to see the house where we lived. If anything remains,” he said with sudden intensity. “Let’s walk, Kathy.” He reached for her arm. “Later we’ll take a bus to our house and to Papa’s hospital—”

  David pointed out the zoo, next to the railroad station.

  “When we were little, Mama and Papa would take us there one Sunday every month.”

  “It must have had a few direct hits,” Kathy surmised, inspecting the bedraggled structure.

  “Cigarette?” an elderly man approached them hopefully. “A butt?” he asked with an apologetic smile.

  “I’m sorry. We don’t smoke,” David told him.

  “You’ve been away a long time,” the man guessed, inspecting their clothes. “But people still come to the zoo, though it looks so bad. And on warm days tea is served on the terrace.”

  “Frock-coated waiters carrying silver teapots,” David guessed, and the man nodded. “I remember from years ago. And music by a Bavarian band.”

  “Life goes on,” the man shrugged. “And with plenty of money you can find a good black market restaurant.” His ey
es glittered. “But everything is so high.” He mentioned the equivalent of $100 for a bottle of “bad beer,” $120 for a pound of butter, $50 for a pound of coffee, $25 for a pair of silk stockings.

  As they walked, Kathy was conscious of the polyglot of languages spoken around them. Russian, English, French as well as German, plus what David told her were dialects of Soviet Asia. Street signs were all in Russian now. Doctors’ and lawyers’ offices and even many private residences bore tacked-up notices that translated their names into English or Russian. Proclamations to the Germans, attached to the walls of public buildings, were printed in the four languages of the Western Allies.

  They were quick to understand that Berlin today was a city of sharp contrasts. While the center of the city had been badly hit by American and British bombers and Russian shells—the devastation was awesome—large areas around the central city and in the outskirts had been untouched.

  “Berlin is not flat on its back,” David said, “though at first sight all I could see was the destruction.”

  Everywhere, it seemed, there were movie houses, hundreds of cafés. The outdoor areas were closed in deference to the weather, but Kathy could visualize them open in a few months and well patronized.

  “This is the Kurfürstendamm,” Kathy suddenly recognized and heard Aunt Sophie’s voice: “If you do get to Berlin, have a cup of tea or coffee at a sidewalk café on the Kurfürstendamm.”

  The next best thing was to have a cup of tea at an indoor café on the Kurfürstendamm, she told herself, and David was happy to oblige.

  Life in Berlin appeared far more normal than in Hamburg, Kathy thought.

  “We’ll take a trolley—” All at once David was unfamiliarly brusque. “I want to see what happened to my father’s hospital. And our house was quite near.”

  They stood in line for forty minutes for a bus, David silent as they rode toward their destination. Kathy knew she must not talk to him. She must not even touch him in sympathy. And then they stood before a pile of rubble that had been the pride of the Kohn family for two generations, the hospital where his father had conducted experiments in nutrition considered valuable by the Nazis—for a while.