she paused at cafés and stared through the glass, and occasionally she approached total strangers from behind and tapped on their unsuspecting shoulders.
A blond girl in a red jacket and a hobbled skirt came out of a music hall and sauntered through the snow.With her handbag swinging and her heels clacking, there was something about her that looked familiar. Lilly followed her. For three blocks they walked one behind the other until the girl slowed down.
“It’s fifteen marks,” she said over her shoulder.
Lilly stopped abruptly.The girl turned round. For a moment they stared at each other. Neither was what the other expected. The girl, despite the lipstick and the swagger, looked about her own age. She composed her face and started to shout in an accent so thick that Lilly could barely understand a word.
A man stepped out of the shadows. He was dressed smartly in a hat and a loosely cut suit.When he saw the two girls standing face-to-face in the snow, one shouting, one silent, he shook his head and lit a cigarette.
“I’ll take you both for twenty,” he offered.
Five blocks later, Lilly slowed to a walking pace. The streets were emptier now that it was getting dark. She passed a bar, a baker’s, a pawnshop. And then there was nothing, nothing but locked doors and shuttered windows. Snow swirled and raced and landed gently on her narrow shoulders, her eyelids, and her lips. The secondhand coat allocated to her the year before was too small. She pulled the sleeves down over her knuckles, held her arms crossed in front of her, and kept walking, but still the icy Berlin air slipped through the gaps.
She had planned to walk until she came to a tram stop and then take one or probably two trams back to Bellevue. A horse and carriage, a droshky, approached and she had to stand back, to push herself against a wall to let it pass. As it disappeared into the whiteness of the storm, she looked around and realized that she had no idea where she was. On both sides were wooden fences. Behind them were construction sites where heaps of bricks, mountains of sand, and stacks of metal pipes lay under a layer of snow. A little farther on, a vacant lot had been converted into a bicycle track, its circuit a perfect lozenge of untouched white surrounded on all sides by piles of black earth.
Lilly turned left and came to a boarded-up alleyway. She turned right and right again and finally reached a wide boulevard that had once been lined with sycamore trees. Most of the eighteenth-century villas and majestic gardens that had once stood there had gone. In recent months, the cobbles had been torn up, the trees had been felled, and there was a huge trench in the middle of the street. The noise of iron striking iron and the intermittent boom of rock imploding came from deep within. Lilly walked across the mounds of frozen mud and peered over a barricade into the hole. A hundred feet below, she saw a shower of sparks and the dull glint of iron rails.They were building another subway line.
She kept walking. There were no tram stops here. The wind howled and blew snow into her face, her eyes, her mouth. She was growing scared now, scared of the approaching night, scared of the cold. But nothing would make her look for shelter in those dark corners or basements, and so she kept going, her eyes tearing, her teeth clenched, her fists in balls. How would she ever get back? How could she go on?
Lilly didn’t see the man until the top of her head hit the second button of his railway man’s coat.When he bowed and begged her pardon, she momentarily forgot the snow, she forgot that she was lost, and she forgot her search for Hanne Schmidt. It was Otto, Otto Klint. But before she had the chance to say a word, he had nodded, stepped aside, and continued walking. He didn’t recognize her.
He could have kept on going, he could have faded into the weather, but he stopped and turned. Maybe he was aware that he could hear only one set of footsteps on
A blond girl in a red jacket and a hobbled skirt came out of a music hall and sauntered through the snow.With her handbag swinging and her heels clacking, there was something about her that looked familiar. Lilly followed her. For three blocks they walked one behind the other until the girl slowed down.
“It’s fifteen marks,” she said over her shoulder.
Lilly stopped abruptly.The girl turned round. For a moment they stared at each other. Neither was what the other expected. The girl, despite the lipstick and the swagger, looked about her own age. She composed her face and started to shout in an accent so thick that Lilly could barely understand a word.
A man stepped out of the shadows. He was dressed smartly in a hat and a loosely cut suit.When he saw the two girls standing face-to-face in the snow, one shouting, one silent, he shook his head and lit a cigarette.
“I’ll take you both for twenty,” he offered.
Five blocks later, Lilly slowed to a walking pace. The streets were emptier now that it was getting dark. She passed a bar, a baker’s, a pawnshop. And then there was nothing, nothing but locked doors and shuttered windows. Snow swirled and raced and landed gently on her narrow shoulders, her eyelids, and her lips. The secondhand coat allocated to her the year before was too small. She pulled the sleeves down over her knuckles, held her arms crossed in front of her, and kept walking, but still the icy Berlin air slipped through the gaps.
She had planned to walk until she came to a tram stop and then take one or probably two trams back to Bellevue. A horse and carriage, a droshky, approached and she had to stand back, to push herself against a wall to let it pass. As it disappeared into the whiteness of the storm, she looked around and realized that she had no idea where she was. On both sides were wooden fences. Behind them were construction sites where heaps of bricks, mountains of sand, and stacks of metal pipes lay under a layer of snow. A little farther on, a vacant lot had been converted into a bicycle track, its circuit a perfect lozenge of untouched white surrounded on all sides by piles of black earth.
Lilly turned left and came to a boarded-up alleyway. She turned right and right again and finally reached a wide boulevard that had once been lined with sycamore trees. Most of the eighteenth-century villas and majestic gardens that had once stood there had gone. In recent months, the cobbles had been torn up, the trees had been felled, and there was a huge trench in the middle of the street. The noise of iron striking iron and the intermittent boom of rock imploding came from deep within. Lilly walked across the mounds of frozen mud and peered over a barricade into the hole. A hundred feet below, she saw a shower of sparks and the dull glint of iron rails.They were building another subway line.
She kept walking. There were no tram stops here. The wind howled and blew snow into her face, her eyes, her mouth. She was growing scared now, scared of the approaching night, scared of the cold. But nothing would make her look for shelter in those dark corners or basements, and so she kept going, her eyes tearing, her teeth clenched, her fists in balls. How would she ever get back? How could she go on?
Lilly didn’t see the man until the top of her head hit the second button of his railway man’s coat.When he bowed and begged her pardon, she momentarily forgot the snow, she forgot that she was lost, and she forgot her search for Hanne Schmidt. It was Otto, Otto Klint. But before she had the chance to say a word, he had nodded, stepped aside, and continued walking. He didn’t recognize her.
He could have kept on going, he could have faded into the weather, but he stopped and turned. Maybe he was aware that he could hear only one set of footsteps on
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