Chapter 40 The Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin
Berlin
Helene contemplated the ruins of the city she had so loved. It was her place in the world. Smoke still rose from the rubble.
The Russians had taken full possession of the place, and Berliners emerged from their hiding places.
The facades still standing were like abandoned dollhouses. Their formerly proud walls were as weak as the famished bodies
of those who crouched behind them. The air reeked of gunpowder, burning wood, and decomposing bodies. Berlin was on its deathbed.
Yet there was an odd sense of joy in the midst of the defeat, the hope that something new might rise instead.
As she picked her way through the streets she could hardly recognize, Helene heard the sound of shovels and picks, the clanging of metal buckets getting filled with debris to clear the streets.
It brought her an unexpected calm. She wanted very badly to believe that most people had not wanted the events over the last many years to have happened, that the shouting from the maniacal few had been so loud that it drowned out the beating of all the good hearts in her land.
Helene reached the Brandenburg Gate. Miraculously, it still stood. The symbol of the city was intact. And so was most of her
old apartment building. She walked through her mangled front door and went up the stairs. She reached her apartment, and the
door was open. The furniture was covered in dust, and cool air poured in from the windows—but it was her home.
She sat at the window. Kaiser had already died, but her hands stroked his invisible fur as she stared into the distance. She
would wait there for Derek. He would know to find her there. Her children might not recognize her anymore, but she would win
their love once again.
Helene took a book from the floor, dusted it off, and started reading while Berlin tried to rise from the ashes and become
the freest city on earth again.