City of Women by David R. Gillham

be.”
    One shoe hit the floor. “Good. What did he look like?” The other shoe hit the floor.
    “Skinny. Head shaved. A black Homburg and a gray mustache that was waxed.”
    Egon nodded to himself. “Good,” he said again, yanking out the tail of his shirt, then peeling it, still buttoned, over his head.
    “So. What’s in the cigar box? Cigars?”
    “You didn’t look?” he asked. Then shrugged. “Only money. A few marks to get by on.” And then he asked, “Did you enjoy it?”
    “You mean my secret mission?” she asked, unbuttoning her dress.
    “If we were mobsters in Chicago, you’d be called my ‘bagman.’”
    “‘Bagman’?” Sigrid repeats. Incomprehensible. “So we’re mobsters now?
    “Tell me the truth. It didn’t give you a thrill, Frau Schröder, to be disobeying the rules?”
    In fact, it had. Her heart had pumped excitedly as she had made the exchange. It had happened so fast, she had barely realized that it was over when the skinny Berliner disappeared into the crowd on the platform. But all she tells Egon is, “I’m already disobeying the rules. With you, you great monster.”
    Egon grinned, and stood long enough to unbuckle his belt and drop his trousers. “So you’ll do it again?” he asked.
    But Sigrid didn’t answer him. They both knew the answer to his question. So instead she turned her back to him and showed him the clasp of her brassiere. “Undo me,” she whispered lightly.
    •   •   •
    O PENING THE DOOR to her mother-in-law’s flat, Sigrid smells camphor balls. “Frau Mundt has posted a notice from the Party,” Mother Schröder announces as Sigrid removes her coat and scarf.
    “A notice?” she asks, still distracted by her own memory.
    “A collection for the war effort,” the old lady says, “of winter clothing.”
    Sigrid glances at the striped dress box from Tempelhof’s that her mother-in-law is filling. “And do we have any winter clothing left worthy of collecting?”
    “As usual, your attempts at humor are ill placed.”
    There were always collections being made. SA men rattling tins for Winter Relief in the rail stations. Hitler Youth collecting pots and pans door to door for scrap metal drives. Sigrid digs through the pile on the table. Last year it was the same. Scarves, old gloves, some rabbit-fur collars. But this year it’s also the gray-blue houndstooth coat the old lady had worn before the war, and a long black wool cape that Sigrid had bought for herself before she’d quit her job at the telephone company to get married. None of Kaspar’s clothes. Kaspar’s bedroom wardrobe has become something of a shrine to her mother-in-law since he was called up. “And I am contributing my sable hat?” Sigrid asks. It is the only expensive gift that Kaspar ever bought for her. Russian sable. It was their fifth wedding anniversary, after he had been promoted to the position of authorized signatory at the bank. She had picked it out from a shop window in the Unter den Linden.
    Mother Schröder grabs the hat like it’s an old cleaning rag. “You mean
this
?” The old woman shrugs, tossing the hat aside. “Fine. You want to keep it, go ahead. Let our soldiers turn to ice. Forget about the fact that your
husband
is at the front right now, doing his patriotic duty. You must have your important hat.”
    Sigrid takes a breath. “No,” she replies, returning the hat to the heap. “It makes no difference,” she says, and realizes that this is true. Let it return to Russia.
    That evening, per Frau Mundt’s notice-board instructions, Sigrid places the striped dress box and the pair of coats on the landing for official collection by the Portierfrau’s slovenly husband. She notes that across the hall, at the door of the Frau Obersturmführer’s flat, are a pile of coats and a wicker basket full of furs and wools. Also, two pairs of skis complete with poles, which are added to the inventory by a lean, dark-headed man supported heavily by a cane, who