Homeland Read online

  3

  Pauli

  THE OLD LADY LIVED in a one-family brick villa on a quiet street in der alte Westen, the Old West section, near the Tiergarten. Here you found the finest and wealthiest, who didn’t care to exhibit themselves, or their riches, by living in some ostentatious, overdecorated flat in the New West, a rising district out along the Ku’damm.

  Extremely nervous, Pauli presented himself at the front door at three minutes before nine. He’d put on his best jacket and knee breeches, and for once tried to clean his pockets of pencils and other objects. But there was still a large charcoal smudge on his left lapel that no amount of rubbing would remove.

  A butler with a severe face answered his ring. He led Pauli through a succession of large rooms crowded with heavy dark furniture. So much furniture, he thought he was in some nobleman’s palace.

  The old lady awaited him in a wicker chair in a sunny room at the front. A shiny black cane with a large silver knob rested across her knees. Her dress looked hellishly hot; meters and meters of black silk. She had lively brown eyes set amid deep wrinkles.

  “The young gentleman,” the butler said, and retired.

  “Good morning,” the old lady said. “Take this seat next to me. We will have refreshments, I think.”

  A maid appeared almost by magic, bearing a silver tray with a plate of Lebkuchen, dark honey-sweetened cookies stamped out in the shape of stars, lions, hearts, elephants, even a soldier or two. There was a small pewter pot of dark beer for Pauli, and tea for the old lady, into which she poured rum from a decanter to make Teepunsch.

  “Well, now,” the old lady said after she’d sipped. “I am Frau Flüsser, and you are my benefactor. The police told me your name is Pauli.”

  “Pauli Kroner, yes,” he said, clearing his throat in the middle. He held the pewter pot in his left hand, his plate on his right knee, and felt he was in danger of dropping one or both at any moment.

  “You acted quickly and bravely when that rascal tried to rob me, so I feel you are entitled to a reward. You know my son-in-law, Otto, is deputy director of Wertheim’s?” Pauli nodded. “I have spoken with him. Your reward will be your choice of anything reasonably priced from the store. Do you have any thoughts? Any wants?”

  He thought for a moment.

  “Do you have globes?”

  “I beg your pardon? Speak up, please. I’m hard of hearing.”

  “Globes. A small globe. I like to look at other countries and imagine what they’re like.”

  “A globe,” she said. “That is an unusual request, but I believe it can be fulfilled. I will telephone Otto this morning. Where shall we send it?”

  “Müllerstrasse.” Reluctantly, he repeated the number.

  “That is your home?”

  “Right now, yes. I live there, with my Aunt Charlotte.”

  “Do you hope to have a home somewhere else someday?”

  “Yes, that’s what I hope most of all.”

  “Where will it be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “My uncle lives in Chicago, perhaps that’s it. That’s why I like a globe, it shows me all the possible places.”

  Frau Flüsser beamed. “America, that’s a good place, I’d consider it seriously if I were you. My brother Felix lives in St. Louis. My niece Waltraud also. Many Germans live in St. Louis. I might go there myself if I weren’t so old, and didn’t know I belonged here.”

  She gave a glance at her gold watch, whose face was upside down, hanging on her large sagging bosom at the end of a gold pendant. “I will see that you get your globe promptly, so you can continue your search.”

  Kindness softened her wrinkled face. “I am very grateful for your courage and assistance. You may kiss me if you like.”

  He rose and kissed her cheek, wishing she were his own grandmother.

  “Goodbye, Pauli Kroner.”

  “Goodbye, Frau Flüsser.”

  “If your true home isn’t Berlin, I hope you find it, wherever it may be.”

  “Thank you, I also.”

  “Take my word, when you find it, you’ll know. Something unexpected will tell you. When I was nine, my father was a choirmaster in the town of Luchow. He received an appointment as assistant in a church here. On the day we arrived in Berlin, there were beautiful cloud formations in the sky. I saw a cloud shaped like a harp. My father could play the harp exquisitely. I loved the music of the harp. When I saw the cloud I knew Berlin was where I belonged and would live the rest of my life. That was my sign. There will be one for you someday.”

  She blew him a kiss.

  He smiled and squared his shoulders. He left the house and never saw her again.

  After work that night, he couldn’t wait to tell Aunt Lotte about his reward.

  “A globe?” She squinted at him through smoke from one of her strong French cigarettes. “What a silly, stupid request. I told you to ask for money. You already have enough maps and cards to paper a palace. What are you planning to do, become a great Herr Doktor Professor of geography? Not likely.” She lurched away, to the cabinet where she kept her schnapps bottle.

  Frau Flüsser was true to her word. Wertheim’s sent the globe by delivery van, in one of their own boxes, tied with silver ribbon. It was a splendid little wooden globe, painted with bright enamel colors. It sat freely in a four-legged stand of lacquered wood.

  He threw away his paper map and cleared a special place on his shelf. At night he took the globe from the stand and held it close in front of him, where he could survey it in detail. Turn it and touch it at different places, wondering about each. More and more, he found his eye drawn to America, with its green plains, blue lakes, brown mountains. More and more, his finger was drawn to the bottom of one narrow blue lake, which was the location of Chicago; the home of his uncle.

  Posters appeared, on kiosks and walls all over the city.

  Beginn der 1. Vorstellung

  am 24.August

  —Dem Original und Einzigen—

  Buffalo-Bill’s

  WILD—WEST

  “Are you going?” Tonio asked Pauli. It was a welcome change of subject. Tonio had been chattering about the special school in which he would enroll in a few weeks. His poor head looked larger, more swollen, than Pauli remembered.

  “No, I don’t have the money,” Pauli said. They were again seated at a rear table in Konditorei Henkel.

  “Papa said he’d take me. Perhaps he’ll pay for you, too.”

  “No, that’s charity, I don’t take charity. Don’t worry about me, I’ll see the cowboys and Indians some way or other, you can count on it.”

  On the morning of the arrival of the Wild West troupe, he was awake at five. He was dressed five minutes later. He stuffed a plaid cap in his pocket, picked up his drawing materials and tiptoed past Aunt Lotte’s closed door. Reynard was back in town. It had been noisy in the flat until one in the morning.

  He dashed up the steps into Müllerstrasse. A cool mist blurred the roof lines of the four- and five-story flats lining the street.

  He raced into Wöhlertstrasse and went full speed, straight to the Rangier- und Güterbahnhof-—the freight and marshaling yards that sprawled just to the east of Pflugstrasse. He heard the clanking of cars and the hooting of steam engines while he was still several blocks away.

  He crossed a strip of weedy ground to the yards. On the first track in front of him, a devilishly long freight train was departing, effectively blocking his way. He spied an open car, stuffed his drawing paper into his belt and ran along beside the car until things felt just right. He jumped and flung one leg into the open doorway.

  He caught hold of the door with both hands. He was aboard in a second. He rolled back the door on the other side and leaped out, sprawling on gravel. He bounded up and brushed himself off, undamaged save for a small tear in the knee of his pants. There was always a way around an obstacle if you looked for it.

  He ran on across the next two tracks
. To his dismay, he saw that the special train had already arrived. But it must have just pulled in, for the unloading hadn’t yet started.

  The train was long, eighteen cars plus the locomotive. Several of the cars were decorated with large gaudy paintings of frontiersmen firing pistols, Indians howling and flourishing tomahawks, a stagecoach racing away from red-skinned pursuers—and of course there was a portrait of the star, raising his white sombrero in salute as his splendid stallion reared. The image was magnificently heroic; horse, hat, and Cody’s goatee and mustache shone pure white in the sunlight breaking over the yards.

  Pauli waited until a little Borsig switch engine chugged by, then crossed the next track. He wasn’t too late after all. Roustabouts in checked shirts were just starting to lay iron plates between the cars of the special train, while others dropped an iron ramp from the end of the last car. Pauli forgot Müllerstrasse, Aunt Lotte, poor Tonio—everything.

  Activity around the train quickened rapidly. The roustabouts rolled back the doors of livestock cars and pulled canvas covers from vehicles tied and chocked in place on flatcars. The train was arranged in a precise order. At the rear, one livestock car held dray horses, first to be unloaded down the iron ramp.

  Going forward, the flatcars carrying wagons were next in line, then the rest of the livestock cars whose occupants Pauli both saw and smelled. Saddle horses; mules; three shaggy bison; Colonel Cody’s own milk-white horse, Isham. At the front of the train were passenger cars with doors in the ends, not the sides, and the unfamiliar word PULLMAN blazoned on them.

  The roustabouts shouted and swore in English, a little of which Pauli understood because of his association with men such as Reynard. He took care to stay out of the way of the roustabouts as he gawked his way along the train. He almost collided with a brown-skinned man with long black braids. An Indian! Wearing a suit, stiff collar, tall silk hat.

  Boldly, Pauli nodded a greeting. The Indian scowled and raised his hand, palm out. Pauli grinned and imitated the gesture. The Indian laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.

  He stood for a while by a passenger car bearing the legend BUFFALO BILL’S WILD WEST & CONGRESS OF ROUGH RIDERS—GRAND EUROPEAN TOUR. A tall gentleman with mussed white hair staggered out of the car and down the steps. Colonel Cody! He was world famous; Pauli recognized him instantly.

  Pauli stepped back. He needn’t have bothered; the colonel ignored him. Cody wore old boots, stained pants, and a singlet. Braces hung down over his hips. He waved a whiskey bottle as he stomped to the rear of the train, swearing and shouting orders. Pauli was disappointed with the colonel’s shabby appearance and rough behavior.

  A somewhat more genteel personage appeared a moment later: a little lady, sleepily leading a poodle on a leash. It was Fräulein Annie Oakley, the celebrated sharpshooter. He recognized her from pictures on the posters.

  Men uncoupled the last car, empty now, while others moved the ramp to the car in front of it. A switch engine backed up, coupled, and pulled the empty car away. It all seemed marvelously efficient to Pauli. But it didn’t suit the colonel, who waved his whiskey bottle and screamed, “Get those damned pull-up horses hitched, we’re behind schedule.” Pauli caught his meaning, if not the exact words.

  A team moved alongside the flatcar and was hitched to the first wagon. They pulled it from the ground, while roustabouts guided the wagon off the flatcar and down the ramp. The men led the team and wagon out of the way so a second team could unload the next vehicle, the gleaming lacquered Deadwood stagecoach. Pauli had found an advance flier at the hotel and read all about the various scenes of the show. The rescue of the Deadwood mail coach was the most famous. He still couldn’t afford a ticket into the special show park newly fenced off at the corner of Augsburgerstrasse and the Ku’damm, but he’d imagined the action—the thrilling Indian attack, then the cavalry rescue—many times.

  While the unloading went on, Pauli retired to some boxcars standing on the adjacent track. He rolled open the door of one and took a seat, determined to sketch something. His eye was drawn back to the gaudy painting of Buffalo Bill. He’d try that. He started his sketch with a dark blue pencil.

  All at once a figure appeared from between his car and the next. A man, standing there, staring at him. The man had dark eyes that seemed to glare with an inner fire. For a terrible instant, Pauli thought he was looking into the eyes of Death.

  The man was tall, and he looked underfed. He had a long, narrow face and large white teeth. His skin was the color of oat porridge; perhaps he hid from the sun. He was at least ten years older than Pauli, in his middle twenties.

  He wore spectacles of cheap gold-plated wire, with round lenses no bigger than pfennigs. His clothes were dark and shabby—grimy collar and a cravat with a greasy sheen, a duster that reached below his knees, and a derby that had seen better days. He had a gray spat on his right shoe, a white one on his left. In his nicotine-stained right hand a stubby cigarette burned.

  Poor as he was, the man affected a cocky air as he strolled toward Pauli, drawing on his cigarette with quick little puffs. His eyes were hot, and vaguely accusing—as if Pauli were some kind of lowlife.

  With arrogant casualness, he leaned against the boxcar near Pauli. He glanced down at the sketch of Cody. Sneering, he said, “That’s terrible.”

  Pauli stuck out his chin. “Oh, are you an art critic?”

  “No, a journalist. But I know bad art when I see it, the same as I know sour cheese when I smell it.” The man spoke German with a pronounced but unfamiliar accent.

  Pauli thought the man was lying. “What newspaper do you work for?”

  “Any one that will buy my paragraphs. I am independent. There is an interesting new term for that, I heard it in Zurich last week. Free lance. I travel, I write, I observe, I predict—” The young man shrugged. “Sometimes prophecy isn’t popular, especially if the prophet dispenses anything other than candy and dreams. They killed some of the Old Testament prophets, you know. I’m often forced to leave a city on a moment’s notice. I thought there might be a story possibility here.”

  “You’re foreign—”

  “According to you,” said the man, with another sneer. But it was banter he seemed to enjoy. “My name is Mikhail Rhukov. At least in Russia. In this country you would say Michael, I suppose.”

  He lounged against the boxcar, pulling out a second cigarette which he lit from the stub of the first. “Amazing people, these Americans. They’re going to own the earth, I think. I wish they’d export a little of their democracy to my country. It’s an astounding time we live in, don’t you think? Old governments, old ways, old orders going down in blood and fire. Anarchism on the rise. The red banners of socialism flying high. Tsars and kings trembling, proletarians marching—exciting.”

  “I don’t know a thing about it,” Pauli said, in what he hoped was a hostile tone.

  Rhukov eyed him with that burning gaze. “Look, I’m only being friendly.”

  “Oh, is that what you call it?”

  Rhukov laughed. “Cheeky little shit. I like you.”

  “Fine, leave me alone,” Pauli said, no longer frightened, merely annoyed. Unfortunately, he seemed to have found a new friend, or at least a new companion, whether he wanted it or not.

  Rhukov pulled a cheap notebook from his duster and wrote a few lines with a pencil.

  Pauli jumped down from the freight car and walked toward the train. The Russian followed him. Pauli wished the obnoxious chap would find someone else to befriend.

  Startled by the sound of men speaking German, Pauli turned to the right. He was surprised to see a group of six army officers standing near the iron ramp. Four were older, with the broad red stripe of the general staff on their trousers of feldgrau, the army’s standard field gray. Their matching tunics had red epaulets and piping.

  The two young lieutenants wore gray trousers and dark blue tunics, signifying that they belonged to a particular line regiment. Pauli couldn’t immediately identify t
heir collar insignia. He sidled closer, hands in pockets, trying to look casual. All but one of the officers were busily writing in small leather-bound notebooks or comparing the time on pocket watches.

  Up close, Pauli recognized the metal insignia worn by the lieutenants. They belonged to the newest and most modern unit in the army, Eisenbahn-regiment 1, the railway regiment. Both lieutenants wore the Pickelhaube, the spiked helmet seen throughout the army.

  “I have heard about these people,” Rhukov remarked to Pauli. “They follow Herr Cody everywhere in Germany. They are studying his methods. A sneery lot, aren’t they?” Pauli thought the Russian had a lot of nerve to criticize someone else’s arrogance. Besides, German officers, especially the Prussians, were always haughty, because they were revered throughout the fatherland, and feared throughout Europe, for their steely professionalism.

  The senior officer, a stout Brigadegeneral, studied the train through a monocle held in front of his eye. “I have read reports of this procedure but have not had a chance to observe it before. They move quickly.”

  “And as you notice, sir, everything comes off the train in correct order for their parade,” said a stoop-shouldered major. “They have a written plan for loading and unloading. I have examined it. It covers the smallest items, down to the personal trunks of the performers, and describes where everything is hung or placed within each. It’s a marvel of efficiency.”

  “I am surprised that Americans are capable of such clear thought. Very impressive.”

  “Perhaps Büffel Bill is German,” the major said. The officers laughed, but not until the brigadier laughed first.

  One of the young lieutenants from the railway regiment tapped his notebook. “They are twenty-eight minutes behind schedule.” Leaning against a trackside signal, Pauli studied the man. He was of medium height, trim and erect, very fit-looking. No doubt he practiced his gymnastics and calisthenics daily. What struck Pauli most was a certain contrast. The lieutenant’s features were not especially strong; his jawline formed a moderate V; his nose was ordinary; his cheeks strewn with light freckles. But his eyes commanded. Gray eyes, large and widely spaced, cool and hard. A smile seemed about to spring to the young officer’s lips any moment, but that pleasant aspect of his face could never reach into his chill, darting eyes.