Read Online The History of History by Ida Hattemer-Higgins - Free Book Online
Authors: Ida Hattemer-Higgins
Ads: Link
beyond the end of the post office, wasteland stretched farther, partitioned off with falling-down sections of barbed-wire fencing. The Queen Anne’s lace sprouted unhindered; nothing had happened here for years. Through the metal grill, the back of the building could be seen. It was an unadorned pink lump of rotting flesh.
And just as Margaret had promised, a bomb crater filled with water, a great pond, sat in the crook of the L, like a welt of saliva before receding gums.
“What does this building have to do with Nazis?” It was the man from Florida.
Margaret grabbed the wire lattice of the fence with both hands, peering through to the back entrance of the building. The door of the back entrance to the post office was missing. The empty hole was alluring to Margaret, like the entrance to a cave: a windy, unprotected void, unbelievably dark. Why did it appear as if wind were blowing from it? A memory came to Margaret of a cave she had once visited in South Dakota as a girl. In that place, there is a vast underground cave, with many miles of subterranean tunnels, but on the surface of the earth, almost no trace: only one tiny hole, no bigger than a rabbit’s burrow. Margaret stared at the dark entrance to the building, where the weeds outside were bobbing, laden with air, bowing and swaying in the artificial wind. Margaret was quiet.
“What does this have to do with anything?”
That was the Floridian again.
“In the basement of this post office was the central bureau of the Berliner pneumatic dispatch,” Margaret said. “Before the war, there was a total of three thousand kilometers of vacuum tunnels connecting every post office in Berlin. A dispatch could be sent through the vacuum tubes from Ruhleben in the south to Hiddensee in the north in twelve minutes.”
“Does it still work?”
Margaret made a descending whistle: a bomb falling. “Almost everything was destroyed,” she said. “But the bureau was connected by a tunnel to the New Reich Chancellery and the Führer’s bunker. If Hitler had made an escape at the end of the war instead of killing himself, as some people believe he did, then he would have come here, to the basement of this post office.”
The tourists nodded, and Margaret turned away sharply. She began to lead the group back toward Potsdamer Platz.
She did not turn around and speak to them the entire way. When they got to the S-Bahn station, she told them simply the tour was over. Some of them muttered within earshot that it had been a disappointment of a tour. No one tipped her.
Later that same day , Margaret went back to Schwäbische Strasse. She went into the courtyard. When she got to the little door in the back leading up to the doctor’s office, there was a note pinned to it. “Thepractice of Dr. Gudrun Arabscheilis will be closed for the holiday, from 11-11-04 to 11-20-04.”
Today was only the eleventh. And then Margaret thought of something else. There was no holiday to speak of. She ripped the note off the door. And now that she considered, what sort of practice could the old woman possibly have, blind as she was?
SIX • Magda’s Face
T he next day it rained. Margaret did not set foot outside. Several times, however, she went to her window and looked down the Grunewaldstrasse, and each time there were the buildings, softly puckered, pink and tan and breathing under the raindrops. She threw open the window as the sun went down; she looked for the cool shadow. The chill, wet, autumn air blew into the apartment. Winter was coming. Some of the younger buildings had become pinker with edges chapped; older buildings—that was the majority—looked red in harsher tones, as if they were bursting into flame. The vague, soft scent of flesh, stronger than the smell of coal dust, had already become easily recognizable.
Yesterday was repeating in a flashing loop in her mind. It was drawing her into a repetitive circle. Instead of swaddling her memory in sleep and slipping it
And just as Margaret had promised, a bomb crater filled with water, a great pond, sat in the crook of the L, like a welt of saliva before receding gums.
“What does this building have to do with Nazis?” It was the man from Florida.
Margaret grabbed the wire lattice of the fence with both hands, peering through to the back entrance of the building. The door of the back entrance to the post office was missing. The empty hole was alluring to Margaret, like the entrance to a cave: a windy, unprotected void, unbelievably dark. Why did it appear as if wind were blowing from it? A memory came to Margaret of a cave she had once visited in South Dakota as a girl. In that place, there is a vast underground cave, with many miles of subterranean tunnels, but on the surface of the earth, almost no trace: only one tiny hole, no bigger than a rabbit’s burrow. Margaret stared at the dark entrance to the building, where the weeds outside were bobbing, laden with air, bowing and swaying in the artificial wind. Margaret was quiet.
“What does this have to do with anything?”
That was the Floridian again.
“In the basement of this post office was the central bureau of the Berliner pneumatic dispatch,” Margaret said. “Before the war, there was a total of three thousand kilometers of vacuum tunnels connecting every post office in Berlin. A dispatch could be sent through the vacuum tubes from Ruhleben in the south to Hiddensee in the north in twelve minutes.”
“Does it still work?”
Margaret made a descending whistle: a bomb falling. “Almost everything was destroyed,” she said. “But the bureau was connected by a tunnel to the New Reich Chancellery and the Führer’s bunker. If Hitler had made an escape at the end of the war instead of killing himself, as some people believe he did, then he would have come here, to the basement of this post office.”
The tourists nodded, and Margaret turned away sharply. She began to lead the group back toward Potsdamer Platz.
She did not turn around and speak to them the entire way. When they got to the S-Bahn station, she told them simply the tour was over. Some of them muttered within earshot that it had been a disappointment of a tour. No one tipped her.
Later that same day , Margaret went back to Schwäbische Strasse. She went into the courtyard. When she got to the little door in the back leading up to the doctor’s office, there was a note pinned to it. “Thepractice of Dr. Gudrun Arabscheilis will be closed for the holiday, from 11-11-04 to 11-20-04.”
Today was only the eleventh. And then Margaret thought of something else. There was no holiday to speak of. She ripped the note off the door. And now that she considered, what sort of practice could the old woman possibly have, blind as she was?
SIX • Magda’s Face
T he next day it rained. Margaret did not set foot outside. Several times, however, she went to her window and looked down the Grunewaldstrasse, and each time there were the buildings, softly puckered, pink and tan and breathing under the raindrops. She threw open the window as the sun went down; she looked for the cool shadow. The chill, wet, autumn air blew into the apartment. Winter was coming. Some of the younger buildings had become pinker with edges chapped; older buildings—that was the majority—looked red in harsher tones, as if they were bursting into flame. The vague, soft scent of flesh, stronger than the smell of coal dust, had already become easily recognizable.
Yesterday was repeating in a flashing loop in her mind. It was drawing her into a repetitive circle. Instead of swaddling her memory in sleep and slipping it
Similar Books
