Winter of the World

Mother did not react to his rudeness. ‘I was thinking over your comment the other day,’ she said. ‘About how young people imagine journalism is a glamorous profession, and don’t understand how much hard work is necessary.’

He frowned. ‘Did I say that? Well, it’s certainly true.’

‘So I brought my daughter here to see the reality. I think it will be good for her education, especially if she becomes a writer. She will make a report on the visit to her class. I felt sure you would approve.’

Mother was making this up as she went along, but it sounded convincing, Carla thought. She almost believed it herself. The charm switch had been turned to the On position at last.

Jochmann said: ‘Don’t you have an important visitor from London coming today?’

‘Yes, Ethel Leckwith, but she’s an old friend – she knew Carla as a baby.’

Jochmann was somewhat mollified. ‘Hmm. Well, we have an editorial meeting in five minutes, as soon as I’ve bought some cigarettes.’

‘Carla will get them for you.’ Mother turned to her. ‘There is a tobacconist three doors down. Herr Jochmann likes the Roth-Händle brand.’

‘Oh, that will save me a trip.’ Jochmann gave Carla a one-mark coin.

Mother said to her: ‘When you come back, you’ll find me at the top of the stairs, next to the fire alarm.’ She turned away and took Jochmann’s arm confidentially. ‘I thought last week’s issue was possibly our best ever,’ she said as they went up.

Carla ran out into the street. Mother had got away with it, using her characteristic mixture of boldness and flirting. She sometimes said: ‘We women have to deploy every weapon we have.’ Thinking about it, Carla realized that she had used Mother’s tactics to get a lift from Herr Franck. Perhaps she was like her mother after all. That might be why Mother had given her that curious little smile: she was seeing herself thirty years ago.

There was a queue in the shop. Half the journalists in Berlin seemed to be buying their supplies for the day. At last Carla got a pack of Roth-Händle and returned to the Democrat building. She found the fire alarm easily – it was a big lever fixed to the wall – but Mother was not in her office. No doubt she had gone to that editorial meeting.

Carla walked along the corridor. All the doors were open, and most of the rooms were empty but for a few women who might have been typists and secretaries. At the back of the building, around a corner, was a closed door marked ‘Conference Room’. Carla could hear male voices raised in argument. She tapped on the door, but there was no response. She hesitated, then turned the handle and went in.

The room was full of tobacco smoke. Eight or ten people sat around a long table. Mother was the only woman. They fell silent, apparently surprised, when Carla went up to the head of the table and handed Jochmann the cigarettes and change. Their silence made her think she had done wrong to come in.

But Jochmann just said: ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome, sir,’ she said, and for some reason she gave a little bow.

The men laughed. One said: ‘New assistant, Jochmann?’ Then she knew it was all right.

She left the room quickly and returned to Mother’s office. She did not take off her coat – the place was cold. She looked around. On the desk were a phone, a typewriter, and stacks of paper and carbon paper.

Next to the phone was a photograph in a frame, showing Carla and Erik with Father. It had been taken a couple of years ago on a sunny day at the beach by the Wannsee lake, fifteen miles from the centre of Berlin. Father was wearing shorts. They were all laughing. That was before Erik had started to pretend to be a tough, serious man.

The only other picture, hanging on the wall, showed Mother with the social-democratic hero Friedrich Ebert, who had been the first President of Germany after the war. It had been taken about ten years ago. Carla smiled at Mother’s shapeless, low-waisted dress and boyish haircut: they must have been fashionable at the time.

The bookshelf held social directories, phone books, dictionaries in several languages, and atlases, but nothing to read. In the desk drawer were pencils, several new pairs of formal gloves still wrapped in tissue paper, a packet of sanitary towels, and a notebook with names and phone numbers.

Carla reset the desk calendar to today’s date, Monday 27 February 1933. Then she put a sheet of paper into the typewriter. She typed her full name, Heike Carla von Ulrich. At the age of five she had announced that she did not like the name Heike and she wanted everyone to use her second name, and somewhat to her surprise her family had complied.

Each key of the typewriter caused a metal rod to rise up and strike the paper through an inky ribbon, printing a letter. When by accident she pressed two keys, the rods got stuck. She tried to prise them apart but she could not. Pressing another key did not help: now there were three jammed rods. She groaned: she was in trouble already.