Coffee short story excerpt
August 25, 2008
NEWS: I just received the cover art for MISSING, the anthology where my short story COFFEE will appear in October 2008. Today instead of more SMOKE, I decided to paste in a bit of COFFEE. Hope you like it! Comments, as always, are welcome.
COFFEE EXCERPT:
It was the summer of 1946, barely a year since the Allies had won the war. When Alexander climbed into the Berlin streetcar, the conductor flashed him a frightened smile. Alexander nodded in return. Free rides if he wore his American army uniform. Free food at the mess while children starved. Free to go home at the end of his tour and escape the devastation. Privileges of the occupying army.
Jagged stumps lined the wide street. The trees themselves had been destroyed by bombs or cut down for firewood. Probably a posh neighborhood once, with leafy branches shading women in floppy hats pushing prams. Boys crouching in the dirt playing marbles. Girls pouring tea for well dressed dolls.
Houses and apartments once stood proudly on this street. Now few remained. Most were reduced to piles of rubble. Others mere vacant lots, as if an angry God had reached down and carried buildings away whole.
Wind blew through the broken streetcar window, bringing with it the fetid smell of death. He thought he’d grown used to it, but his throat tightened. He poked his nose into the bag looped over his shoulder, the scent of coffee warring with the smell of corpses buried under rubble.
He remembered his mother bringing a bowl of milk with a dollop of coffee and a dash of cinnamon to their round table in Brooklyn. To act like an adult, he’d swallowed the bitter brew.
Had he brought enough coffee? A few pounds. Bars of chocolate. A carton of cigarettes. Cigarettes were currency in Berlin since the end of the war.
Wind ruffled the blue airmail paper in his other hand. Elegant letters danced across the page. He rubbed his dry eyes with his knuckle. He hadn’t slept more than a few hours a night in months, perhaps years.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 13
August 18, 2008
“I apologize in advance if there’s anything inaccurate. My editor has a leaden touch.”
Kommissar Lang handed me a pen. “Come to my office and sign it.” He gestured back down the hallway, past the photograph of Ernst. If I followed him, I knew that he would regale me with tales of his arrests and later be offended that I did not write each one for the Tageblatt. I had been through that with countless police officers, and afterward they were never much use as sources.
I placed his newspaper against the wall and signed it. “I must be at the courthouse early. It is best to watch the accused come in and sit down. One learns so much.”
He nodded. “One can determine a great deal from watching someone walk.”
I handed him back the newspaper and walked out the front door, trying not to let the wobble in my knees betray me.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 12
August 11, 2008
I turned and marched back down the hall, willing myself not to glance at the photograph. If I did not look, perhaps it would not be true.
“Fraulein Vogel,” called Kommissar Lang. I heard him sprinting after me.
Something was amiss. Would he demand to see my papers again, papers I still did not have? I envisioned myself bolting through the front door of the police station, but instead I turned to him, ready to concoct a story of lost papers.
“You forgot my autograph,” he panted.
“I do apologize.” Relief flooded over me. “It slipped my mind. I am so late for the Becker trial.”
Kommissar Lang nodded. “The rapist who targeted schoolgirls in the park?”
“That one.” Any other day I would have asked him about his involvement in the case, but today I needed to get away before I broke down.
He thrust the paper at me.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 11
August 4, 2008
“You have such insight into the male mind,” Kommissar Lang said. “You and your husband must be very close.”
“She’s never been married,” Fritz said. The corners of his mouth twitched with a suppressed smile.
“Might you autograph an article for me?” Kommissar Lang clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward. “Do you have an article in today’s paper?”
I had not yet read today’s paper. “I am not certain.”
“Yesterday’s,” Fritz said. “Front page.”
“I will procure a copy.” Kommissar Lang hastened out of the room. Fritz returned to his desk without saying a word. His shoulders twitched with laughter, but he kept a serious face. It cost me, but I gave him the expected warning smile.
When I glanced down at the reports, I saw gibberish. Lines of black type ran along the paper, but my mind could not turn them into words. My hand shook as I pretended to take notes, but I hoped Fritz could not see that from his desk. I willed myself to think of nothing but numbers and stared at the second hand of my watch, silently counting each tick. When three minutes elapsed, I put the unread reports down on the counter. “You are correct, Fritz,” I said. “Not much there.”
I would find no report of a sensational murder or string of robberies for Peter Weill’s byline today. And the murder I most wanted to research I could not ask a single question about. No attention dared fall on Ernst or me. If Sarah and her son were still underway, they might be arrested. Because of her political activism, she had been denied emigration to the United States three times. But it was becoming harder for even apolitical Jews to leave Germany. If the National Socialists, the Nazis, were to gain the majority in the Reichstag, I shuddered to think what would happen. Anti-Semitic scapegoating ran deep everywhere in Europe. As disgusting as I found it, I had to admit that Hitler was far too clever at using it for his political ends. Things would get worse before they got better.