Leaving Berlin

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They were still A few miles out when he heard the planes, a low steady droning, coming closer, the way the bombers must have sounded. Now loaded with food and sacks of coal. After Köpenick he could make out their lights in the sky, dropping toward the dark city, one plane after another, every thirty seconds they said, if that were possible, unloading then taking off again, the lights now a line of vanishing dots, like tracer bullets.

“How does anyone sleep?”

“You don’t hear them after a while,” Martin said. “You get used to it.”

Maybe Martin had, new to Berlin. But what about the others, who remembered huddling in shelters every night, waiting to die, listening to the engine sounds-how near? — the whining thrust as the nose was pulled up, free of the weight of its bombs, now floating somewhere overhead.

“So many planes,” Alex said, almost to himself. “How long can they keep it going?” Die Luftbrücke, Berlin’s lifeline now, with little parachutes of candy for the children, for the photographers.

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