As I climb on the bike behind him, I can tell that Paul is angry. Jealous. Defensiveness rises in me. It isn’t fair of him to blame me for my choices. He was dead, or at least I thought so. It is not as if I chose someone else over him. I am seized once more with the urge to tell him about Rachel. But would the truth just make things worse? Before I can consider the question further, he starts the engine. The motorcycle lurches forward and I grab him quickly so as not to fall backward as we pull onto the road.

An hour later we reach the outskirts of Berlin. It is as if the war ended yesterday, I think as we pass through the residential neighborhoods. The city is a wasteland. The aftermath of the bombings is evident everywhere, street after street of once-elegant houses reduced to rubble. Paul drives more slowly here, weaving between the large craters and debris that litter the roadway. A charred smell lingers in the air. Though it is early evening, the streets are eerily silent. The few houses that still stand are dark and shuttered. Like the Jewish Quarter in Kraków after everyone had been sent away. I remember Jacob and I passing through on our way out of the city, watching his jaw tighten as he took in the once-vibrant neighborhood where Emma had been raised, now an empty shell of its former self. I can still see the curtains blowing through broken windows, feel the shattered glass crunching beneath my feet.

A sense of sick satisfaction rises inside me. So the Germans suffered, too. Good, I think, wrapping my arms more tightly around Paul. We stop at a red light. On the corner sits a house completely destroyed except for the garage. Through the half-open garage door, I see a woman and three small children sitting around an open fire. Nearby stands a man, breaking a wooden chair into pieces for kindling. The smallest child, no older than five, looks out into the street and, noticing us, stands and takes a few steps forward, eyes widening as he takes in the motorcycle, our strange clothes. He is nearly as thin as I had been in prison. For a moment I wonder if he is going to run into the street and beg us for money. But the man hurries forward and pulls him back, scolding him in words I cannot hear. I notice then the rags wrapped around the child’s feet where shoes should have been. Children, like those we had seen so long ago through the window in Paris, those on the boat when I came to England. Like Emma’s children. These were not the Germans I had imagined. My satisfaction disappears, replaced by a lump in my throat.

It is nearly dark now as we near the city center. Here there is new construction, identical concrete houses set too close together, tall apartment blocks being crudely erected amid the grand architecture of old Berlin. The sidewalks are thick with pedestrians making their way home from work, but the streets are strangely empty except for some buses. “Not many cars,” I observe.

“Not many people here can afford to own them now,” Paul replies. “But you make a good point. We should lose the bike so as not to attract attention.” He pulls over to the curb, helps me dismount. “Wait here,” he says, disappearing around the corner with the bike. I stand on the street, watching the people as they pass, thin, pale and silent. They walk by shells of former buildings matter-of-factly, not looking up. “Ready?” Paul asks, walking up behind me. He leads me expertly through the streets, turning right, then left.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I ask in a low voice.

He nods. “I’ve been here a few times in recent months for my work.”

“The devastation…” I gesture upward with my head. “I had no idea.”

“You should have seen it a year ago,” he replies. “At least now, with money pumping in from the West, they are starting to rebuild. But it’s going to take a long time.” We turn another corner. “This is it. Oranienburger Strasse.” The right side of the street is dominated by a massive domed building. “That’s the New Synagogue,” he adds as we approach. I look up, not answering. In our village, the synagogue was a single room, no larger than our house, with a lace curtain separating the area in the back where the women sat. Our synagogue in London is larger than that, of course, but even it is dwarfed by the cathedral-size one now before me. The brown-brick facade climbs high into the air, topped by a wide dome. Two narrower towers, identical in design, flank the main structure. But the building is in a horrible state of disrepair. The entire eastern wall of the synagogue is missing. The arched stained-glass windows have been shattered, reduced to jagged shards. Soot blackens the front doorway of the synagogue, as though there had been a fire.

It is Friday night, I realize. Before the war, the synagogue would have been filled with hundreds, even thousands of Jews, chanting the Sabbath prayers. Instead, the synagogue lies silent, a ghost of its former self. Are there any Jews left in Berlin? I wonder. Sadness rises up in me. “We should keep moving,” Paul says in a low voice, looking furtively over his shoulder. Following his gaze, I see a man walking a dog on the far side of the street watching us curiously. Have we been followed? No, I realize quickly. The man is simply puzzled by the fact that we are interested in the synagogue. Berlin does not have tourists now. We walk farther down the street past the synagogue. “He’s gone,” Paul says.

I turn back. Across the street, as Emma said, is a tiny used bookstore in front of an apartment building. “There it is.”

We cross the street. As we approach the bookshop, Paul grabs my arm. “This way,” he mouths, pulling me into a narrow passageway beside the bookshop, separating it from the adjacent building. At the back of the passage, there is a wood door with a high glass window. Paul stands on his toes, peering through. “Looks like a lobby of some kind. The apartment must be upstairs.”

I notice a button beside the door. “Here goes nothing,” I say, pressing it. There is no response. “Maybe it’s broken.” I push it again.

Paul presses his ear against the door. “It definitely works. I can hear it. Well, no one’s answering. What do you want to do?”

I hesitate. “We can’t give up. We have to find him.” I turn the doorknob and the door opens. Inside, a single bare bulb casts dim light across the tiny foyer. Paint peels from the walls. “Hello,” I call, stepping through the doorway. My voice echoes back at us. Paul points toward a narrow metal staircase leading upward. The stairs groan beneath us as we climb them. At the top, there is a short corridor, leading to an open door. “Hello,” I call again. As we near the doorway, I see that the frame is splintered, one of its hinges ripped away. An uneasy feeling rises in me. Someone has broken in.

Paul grabs me by the shoulder, pulling me behind him. I notice for the first time that he has pulled out his gun, holding it low to his waist. “Wait here,” he mouths, stepping forward. He enters the apartment, then disappears from view around a corner. “No…”

“What is it?” Unable to wait any longer, I race through the door. “Oh, my goodness…” The apartment is in complete disarray. A brown sofa lies toppled backward, its cushions ripped open. In the small kitchen off to the right, shattered glass and dishes litter the floor.

Paul walks to a desk in the corner of the room. The roller top is open and papers are strewn across the desktop, chair and floor. “This is Marcelitis’s apartment,” he says, picking up a piece of paper and scanning it. “My guess is that Marcelitis had a visit from the police.”

I walk to the kitchen table, where a cup of coffee lies spilled. “Still warm,” I say, touching the liquid. “You think he’s been arrested?” Paul nods. An uneasy tingle crawls up my spine. I turn back toward him. “Do you think it was because of…” I begin, then stop again. Paul has opened the desk drawer and begun rummaging through it. Then he drops to his hands and knees and starts tapping on the hardwood floor by the desk, his ear close to the ground. “What are you doing?”