"Are you planning to stay long?"
"No. I have a taxi waiting."
"Then you can sit down."
He hadn"t expected a warm welcome, but her coldness was truly shocking. He sat on the sofa and smiled at her, hoping to warm her.
"What do you want here?" she asked him, clearly not warmed at all.
"I"m being posted out of Berlin, he said, "and I don"t know when I"ll be coming back. I came to say goodbye. I also came because I was worried about you and the children."
"Were you, indeed?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because of the air raids, for a start."
"They"ve been bombing Berlin for a long time and you didn"t worry before."
"I did. It was you who left me. You do remember that, don"t you?"
"Yes, Ernst, I remember. And I also remember why. It was because I found out about your whoring and so turned to another man. A good man, Ernst, a very good man, whom you sent to Russia."
"At the insistence of the Reichsfhrer," Ernst lied. "He thought it best you were parted."
"d.a.m.n the Reichsfhrer! And d.a.m.n you for being a liar! Eberhard wasn"t sent to Russia on the word of Heinrich Himmler. It was you, Ernst, who came up with that idea. You. You alone. You had him sent to Russia because you knew he probably wouldn"t survive and I haven"t received word from him since the Russians captured our troops. Either he"s dead or he"s rotting in a Russian prison camp. Either way, I won"t see him again. You"re a b.a.s.t.a.r.d! I hate you!"
She turned away from him, picked up a packet of cigarettes, tipped one out into her hand, then reached for the matches.
"You"re exaggerating the whole affair," Ernst said, though he knew that she wasn"t.
"Please leave," she responded, then struck a match, lit her cigarette, and exhaled a thin, nervous stream of smoke from shivering lips.
"No matter what you think of me," Ernst said, struck by her beauty, cut by her vehemence, "I"m seriously worried about you and the children. You"ve survived the air raids so far, but they"re going to get worse, and sooner or later either the Soviets or the Allies, maybe both, will march into Berlin. What happens then..." He tried to put it into words, but could find none, so just shrugged. "I simply don"t know."
Ingrid blew a cloud of smoke, watched it intently, then turned unhappy green eyes upon him and said, "You haven"t told me anything I don"t know except that if the Allies or Russians come, you probably won"t be here."
"I can"t tell you where I"m going, but it"s safer than here. We"re still married, so I can probably take you with me, and I think you should come."
"No, thanks."
"Please, Ingrid. For the sake of the children, if not yourself."
"You murdered the man I love if he"s not dead, he might as well be so I"m not going to share my future with you for the sake of the children. You"re not the man I once loved. You"re not the father I wanted for them. You could have been that man you almost were but then you threw it away. Now look at you, Ernst! A leading light of the SS. A man who fornicates with wh.o.r.es, collects the victims for the torture chambers, rounds up the unfortunates for the concentration camps, and generally lends his support to the bloodiest dictatorship on Earth. And a man who once wanted to be a scientist, or, at least, an engineer! No, Ernst, you"re not the man I married and you"re not the man for my children. I"d rather they died in an air raid than grow up with you. If you want to say good-bye to them, you may do so. But that"s all you can do. After that, you can leave."
Ernst drank her in, recalling what she had once meant to him, then filled up with unutterable grief at what he had lost. Though drawn and anguished, she was still attractive to him, but he"d lost her as well... Ingrid... the children... his whole world. How had it happened?
He sighed. "All right. Where are the children?"
"Upstairs in their bedroom."
"Can I go up now?"
"Yes, but don"t make your departure sound definite. As far as they"re concerned, you"re just off on another trip. Is that understood?"
"I do hope to be returning to Berlin," he told her.
"Nothing"s certain these days."
He went up the stairs and found the children in the bedroom they shared, Ula still blonde and lovely, though now ten years old, Alfred nearly seven years old and no longer chubby. They greeted him warily, as they always did on his odd visits, but he welled up with emotion and clung to them so long he embarra.s.sed them. Eventually he let them go, gave them some money, kissed them on the cheek. Then, regaining his composure, he returned to the living room to say goodbye to Ingrid.
Her mother had come back in and Ernst was shocked when he saw them together. Ingrid now looked like her mother had looked only ten years ago. There were streaks of gray in Ingrid"s blonde hair. Her formerly bright-green eyes had darkened. She still had a good figure, but it had filled out in the wrong way, and Ernst noticed, with a shock, that she was wearing one of her mother"s old dresses. Her face, though still attractive, was closed against him.