Zoo Station by David Downing

believed it. Just occasionally he found himself thinking that love was indivisible, and that loving someone was resenting each hour apart. He did love Effi, from her long raven hair to her small brown toes. He loved everything about her, he thought, looking at his watch, except for her complete inability to arrive anywhere on time.

    It was 12:25 when she finally appeared. She was wearing the black overcoat which almost reached her ankles, a new crimson scarf wrapped around her neck, chin, and mouth, and the Russian fur hat she had bought in Moscow ten years before, yet even trussed up like a mummy she turned the heads of male passersby. Ive got a cold, was the first thing she said once theyd embraced. I need soup.

    Russell suggested that they go inside, but she refused. Fresh airs the best thing for colds, she insisted.

    He got them both bowls of soup and watched her demolish hers. We got in at four in the morning, she said between spoonfuls, and weve got to be in early this evening to discuss some changes the musical director has in mind.

    A new score? Russell asked.

    If only. Itll be nothing. He just has to justify the fact that hes still being paid. She started tearing up a roll and dropping it in the soup. Youll pick me up after the show?

    Of course. Ill come and watch the last half hour if theyll let me in. Its the same man on the door?

    I dont know. But Ill make sure they know youre coming. She spooned a chunk of sodden bread into her mouth. This is good. I feel better already. How have you been? Hows Paul?

    Havent seen him yet. But he sounds all right.

    Danzig?

    Suitably gloomy, he said. He told her about the stamp wars, which made her laugh, and the Soviet request for articles, which drew a raised eyebrow. Its just work, he said. There didnt seem any point in mentioning the oral reports, or in spoiling their reunion with an account of the kindertransport and his day in jail.

    She used the last of his roll to soak up the last of her soup. I feel much better, she said again. And Ive still got three hours before I have to be at the theater. She reached out a slender hand for his. Shall we go back to the flat?

    LATER THAT EVENING, RUSSELL arrived backstage in time to hear the lament for the fallen heroes. It seemed more Wagnerian than ever, and he realized that the musical director had decided to apply the Third Reichs guiding principlenever speak when you can shout. The military widows now had an entire choir of breast-swelling Valkyries to augment their lamentations. The front rows of the audience looked suitably stunned.

    After the show, Russell talked football with the stage-door-keeper while he waited for Effi. She emerged after half an hour or so, still snuffling but full of post-performance energy. It was clear and cold outside, the sidewalks crowded with people. They walked arm in arm past the entrance to the aquarium, and along the southern side of the zoo toward the glowing glasshouse which straddled the elevated lines at Zoo Station. The station buffet was doing a roaring trade, but they managed to find a couple of stools and order a nightcap. This was the last place in Berlin where Jews could still buy a coffee, but there were no obvious Jewish faces in evidence. The city by night was an Aryan preserve.

    As they left the buffet an international express steamed out across Hardenbergstrasse, rumbling the girders of the bridge and pumping bursts of white smoke toward the stars. Russell found himself wishing, if only for a moment, that he and Effi were two of the silhouettes in the necklace of illuminated windows, headed for another life in Amsterdam or Paris or New Yorkanywhere, in fact, beyond Hitlers rancid realm.

    It was almost one when they got back to the flat. Their lovemaking that afternoon had been almost frenzied, but now they took it slowly, luxuriously, taking each other to the brink again and again before finally, joyously, tumbling over it together. Wrapped in each others arms, Effi