In the cot that night, sleep didn't come easy. I lay with the hum of the barracks around me and the memory of a woman shaking in an alley, and I knew the dragon inside me was as awake as the man. I didn't want the trouble she promised. I didn't want the ache.
But somewhere, under the noise and the restlessness and the stale cigarette smoke, a small part of me had already started to shift its plans.
Berlin —July 1, 1948, Thursday
I woketo the sound of plaster dust settling, soft, like someone sifting flour through their fingers. And for a blissful moment, I was transported in time. Back to when the world hadn't ended, when nobody thought of a war yet. When I was in the kitchen with my mother and she was singing Christmas songs while decorating cookies.
For a long moment, I lay still and counted Klaus's breaths and thought of how sad it was for him that he never got to experience that. He didn't even know what Christmas cookies were, and I told myself that I had to do better. For him. He deserved so much more. He made the little whistle sound he made at the end of each exhale, and my eyes filled with tears before I let myself move.
Morning was always the same list, even when the weather or the rumors changed: sweep, heat water, check the walls, see if the world had remembered us.
I swept first. Dust was a second skin here; it found your lungs and your hair and the cracks in your knuckles. I pushed it toward the hole where a wall used to be, then covered the gap again with our patchwork of boards and cardboard. One of the planks had slipped in the night; I hammered it back with the heel of my shoe until the draft grew smaller.
Klaus rolled over; his hair was sticking up, making him look like a hedgehog. "Food?" he mumbled.
"Food," I promised, and put the kettle on the iron plate we used for a stove. We were down to the last knob of fat and a scoop of barley. I fried a sliver of onion in the pan for the smell, then stirred in water, barley, and a pinch of salt. Steam made the room feel almost kind. I set a cracked mug of ersatz coffee near the hot plate to warm my hands.
While the porridge thickened, I checked our stash: two slices of dark bread, hard as a lesson; a spoon of jam for Klaus's birthday, assuming I could keep it from him another week; three cigarettes wrapped like treasure for trading. On the windowsill, I kept the ration booklet under a stone. I touched it the way some people touch a cross.
We ate sitting on the mattress, sharing the bowl and pretending not to notice the grit between our teeth. "Chew slowly," I said. "Tell your belly it's a feast."
"That's lying," Klaus said, and I laughed because he needed me to.
After, I made him do schoolwork. He dragged his heels like a mule. The book we used had a blackened corner and pages that smelled faintly of smoke. I had found it in a stairwell with the spine scorched, and it felt like a miracle to save any words at all.
"Copy the sums," I said, setting the stump of a pencil in his hand.
He groaned. "Can't we go out? Just for a little? I'll be fast."
"You'll be careful," I corrected. "Fast boys break bones."
He bent to his numbers with a sigh so deep it rattled the window. Outside, a cart clattered over broken cobbles; somewhere, a woman shouted a name as if she could call a person back from whatever swallowed them. In the courtyard, the water pump squealed, then came the cough of someone trying to start a fire with damp coal. Life here was made of small noises and keeping your balance.
When the last sum was done—crooked, but done—I let him go. "Ten minutes," I warned. "And I'm coming. I need some fresh air too," I lied, because the truth was that I couldn't bear not having my eyes on him.
We stepped into the courtyard where the building's stumps bit at the sky. Children drifted in like sparrows from the neighboring ruins. A knot of orphans—Trümmerkinder—rubble kids—were already there, throwing rocks at a bottle and swearing like old men. I didn't like Klaus near them. The world had made them hard tooearly; hardness rubs off like charcoal. I tugged him toward the steps instead.
That's when I saw Axel at the far wall. Ten years old and small as a five-year-old, his left shoe was worn down at the heel where he dragged his bad leg. He watched the others the way a hungry dog watches a butcher's window, trying hard to keep emotions from his face. The boys didn't let him play. They mimed his limp when he looked away or, sometimes, even when he didn't.
I felt the old ache open in my chest. Some days, when we had more food—if we ever had more—I let him sleep on our floor with Klaus, two small bodies curled like commas in the same sentence. Not tonight, though. I had no idea what we would eat tonight yet.
"Can I run to the fence?" Klaus asked, bouncing on his toes. "Please?"
"Stay where I can see you," I relented. "If you lose sight of me, you freeze. You remember?"
"I'm not a baby," he said, already grinning.
We went out to the street where a strip of sky showed between the broken roofs, pale and low. The first plane announced itself with a long, throaty hum that set a ripple through the children like wind through grass. They pointed, shouted, forgot to pretend they weren't excited. A C-47 slid into view, belly fat with sacks, coming in low for Tempelhof. Klaus ran to the edge of the rubble pile and waved both arms like a semaphore. I waved, too, because: why not? Some habits are older than war.
I told myself not to think about last night, about the Russians in the damp dark and a hand on my elbow like a trap. I told myself not to think about the American with the clean blond hair and the serious blue eyes who'd saidyou're safelike he believed he could make it true.
But my mind pried at the memory anyway, in much the same way one can't stop picking at a loose scab. He had looked like a poster—what the Reich used to promise us a man should look like—and I'd spent years hating that face. It should have made me cold. Instead, his jacket had been warm on my shoulders, and something in me I thought ruined had…loosened. Kindness was dangerous. Kindness got you to open a door better kept locked tight. I had learned that under the ground, while the boots hammered the stairs. Still, when he wrapped his coat around me, some brittle piece gave way. Not love. Not even hope. A simpler hunger I hadn't let myself feel: the need to be held without being taken.
Another plane came in low, the sound deep enough to press against my ribs. Klaus jumped and shouted up at the sky. Across the yard, Axel stared like he wanted to swallow the whole airplane. The other boys shoved past him, whooping; one cuffed the back of his head as if to test whether he'd fall. He didn't. He just tilted, then straightened, mouth set.
I thought of the Americans who wagged their wings and dropped sweets on little parachutes. I thought of the Russians who traded Lucky Strikes for dignity. I thought of the way the American—Gideon, he'd said his 'was—had held me while I shook like a child and remembered the way his heartbeat felt under my cheek, steady as the new timetables the Allies pinned up wherever people gathered.
"Can I go closer?" Klaus asked, already inching toward the fence that used to be a garden gate.
