by Ben Pastor
“Or else someone impelled by an even greater fear. After all, there were those who thought him incapable of dying.”
“They thought he was immortal?”
“Incapable of dying; I don’t know if it’s the same thing.”
One of them would have to lower his eyes eventually, and it would not be Bora.
“Well, sir, he did die.”
“So it seems.” Kolowrat found a credible reason for looking away when the tabby jumped off and slunk out of the room. “He was gifted, privileged, arrogant and powerful enough to disregard critics and those who knew the falsity of his academic claims. For every friend he made, he made an enemy, in and outside the Party. Many owed him large sums, which isn’t surprising. It was the same story with Parteigenosse Hanussen.”
“There seem to be obvious similarities between the two.” Having won the staring match, Bora felt a little ashamed. After all, he was the one imposing on Kolowrat. His long legs, an impediment in the crowded parlour, reminded him of the awkwardness of the circumstances. He, too, looked away, towards the framed photos of faraway lands. “What else can you tell me about Party Comrade Hanussen?”
Kolowrat followed Bora’s glance. He leisurely left his armchair to straighten one of the pictures hanging at a slight angle. “Hanussen was someone I frequented enough to intuit that he’d become undesirable.” He retook his seat opposite the guest. “On many counts. He was Jewish (but remember, even the Jewish press made a big show of despising him); he was an incautious lover; he was an investor, with none of the banker’s discretion. Worse, he predicted the Reichstag fire less than a day before it happened. Grosser Marmorsaal, February 1933. I was there, Colonel, and heard it with my own ears. The question posed to him by the head of the SA in Berlin actually concerned the Party’s odds in the coming elections. So where did the vision of flames come from? Anyhow, his nosedive began that spring, when some of his supporters were temporarily or permanently dismissed from office. Among them were Strasser, Heldorff, Schleicher …”
“The first and the last fell in the Bloody Purge of the SA a year later.”
“Yes, along with their leader Röhm. Though not Count von Heldorff – or Lutze, who died in a car crash last year. We of the press wondered why Hanussen did not warn them of what was coming.”
The evening was warm in the handsome little room, notwithstanding a breath of air from the open window that carried a faint wartime odour of plaster and brick dust. From the garden below – really a courtyard, which the westering sun did not reach and where shadows floated – the luxuriant top of a tall tree quivered lazily. Both men fell silent, each in his own way occupied by thoughts far removed from the subject at hand.
Bora couldn’t shake the impression that tonight he was, if not liked, at the very least tolerated. Having for years craved my stepfather’s recognition, I have huge stores of respect for the general, he reasoned. I feel gratitude towards him for bringing me up as he did. Yet affection was a sentiment that he had never experienced for the old man. And though he loved Peter, his own flesh and blood, the General probably cares for me in his own way. Still, I was from the start his unwitting competitor for Nina’s attention.
“As for me,” Kolo continued, “I’m content to say that I lived by our family’s motto, Et si omnes, ego non. Even though all will do so, I will not. At times, I admit I stuck to it purely in the spirit of contrariness: if all behaved in a certain way, if something was all the rage, I kept away from it, out of principle. My drug of choice has always been risky sports, risky travels. To be honest, I allowed myself the luxury of malicious, biting clear-headedness, and kept myself at the same time in and outside things. Perverse bankers, infamous politicians, charlatans of all sizes, corrupt officials, young actresses pandered to by their mothers, the bourgeois starving for thrills … Niemeyer was simply one of the many numbers performing under Weimar’s big top.”
“Corrupt officials. Meaning …?”
“Exactly what I said. One met them at all levels.”
Kolowrat added nothing else. But the slight emphasis on the adjective “all” suggested that the leadership was not immune. It would be imprudent and rude to insist, so Bora didn’t. “Speaking of Weimar’s big top, did they ever find out what really happened to Hanussen?”
“Aside from the fact that he certainly wasn’t killed where they found him in an advanced state of decomposition, out there in the fields around Zossen? No. And I heard from reliable sources close to the local government that ‘rubbish is disposed of outside the city limits’.”
“I imagine it was not difficult to find volunteers for such services, back then.”
“It was very easy.”
Bora decided to risk it. “Does the name Gustav Kugler mean anything to you?”
“No. Who is he?”
“Forgive me, but if you don’t know or recall, I prefer not to say. I’d rather not influence you, in case his name comes back to you. And Walter Niemeyer, in those days …?”
“One might well wonder. Just then, as the Republic was ending, Walter Niemeyer broke the uncomfortable chrysalis of the Son of Asia to become Magnus Magnusson. As Hanussen’s star faded, his began to rise. He published his second autobiography, where he revealed himself as a pure Aryan and blamed Hanussen for having had to pretend Jewish ancestry in order to succeed on stage! The gamble could have gone badly for him; instead, the book was a hit. Have you read it? Cleverly worded – every line exudes Heimat and a Northman’s pride.” He dismissed his own comment with a wave. “Where Hanussen left off, the still comparably obscure Magnusson took over: prophesizing, miracle-working, moneylending … Some even fancied that Hanussen had never died, or else his soul had transmigrated into his colleague, the new star. As late as this June, despite the ban on fortune telling, many Berliners would go hungry rather than not be able to pay for Niemeyer’s advice.” The tabby silently re-entered the parlour, leaped back into its master’s lap, and gave itself a thorough grooming. “You don’t believe in any of these phenomena, Colonel. Do you?”
Bora had expected the question. “I believe in God.”
“And in miracles?”
“I believe in God. Which is not equivalent to saying that I am rationally convinced that he exists. It only means that I believe in Him.”
“But you set no store by prophecies …”
More than you imagine, Bora thought. But this is neither the place nor the time to say that Remedios’s prediction of my own end has weighed on me these seven years. “Suffice it to say, sir, that as a soldier I have a strictly functional relationship with the future. My opinion of Niemeyer’s talents counts for nothing in this investigation. My duty is to discover who killed him.”
“And why.”
“That, too. However, in the first instance who. The rest is up to prosecutors and judges. I must return to the front, and there’s more than enough left for me to accomplish during my stay here as it is.”
“Point well taken, Colonel. I knew Niemeyer’s entourage better than most in Berlin, yet have no answer for you. I visited his villa on several occasions, on my own and when his parties lit up the night. Stop it, Krüger.” Suddenly amused, Kolowrat waved the tabby’s tail away from his face. The tabby then jumped on the table and busied itself with the sheet hanging from the typewriter. “Friends and admirers expected that he’d give his residence an exotic name, like ‘The Garden of Delights’ or ‘Shangri-La’. Instead, he prosaically named it ‘Villa Gerda’, in honour of his mother. Even prophets have these philistine weaknesses, it seems. Women? Well, he was promiscuous. The mode of his death was not disclosed in the press, so I cannot hazard any theories regarding a culprit. A woman would likely use a small calibre, poison, a heavy object … Or a hired killer.”
Bora kept mum about the details. “On the subject of Fritz Todt and his untimely death – were there other seances or stage performances where Niemeyer’s insights assumed politically dubious contours?” The question was loaded with meaning, so he str
ove to mitigate it. “I ask because such visions would unquestionably draw people’s attention.”
“Unquestionably. Given his clientele, every statement could be construed as political. Until war was declared, there circulated in Niemeyer’s milieu crazy whispers about this or that domestic or foreign plot against the Führer, whose miraculous escape every time was ascribed to timely predictions. What do I think?” Kolowrat shook his head. “I think the showman himself initiated the bold rumours, by drenching his audience in alcohol, girls and cocaine at the Katakombe on Bellevuestrasse. I stopped attending his lavish home parties in ’38, when, in my opinion – make what you will of this – the world began to need something other than conjurors and stage tricks. As you’ll agree, the rumours in themselves were dangerous: for the gossipers as well as for the diviner.”
Bora watched the cat play. “In view of this, can you suggest anyone familiar enough with Niemeyer for me to —?”
“Forgive me for interrupting: none who would talk, Colonel. No – that is a route precluded at this time, in this city. No lover, no servant, no client will tell you more than they feel safe to report. Remember, Niemeyer the social climber, bestselling author and trickster had little to do with the gifted sage. You could deride the first and dread the second. This is as close as you will come to hearing that the Weimar Prophet courted calamity, notwithstanding what befell his predecessor and rival Hanussen. Has anyone solved that blood-curdling murder? No. Eleven years ago, I uselessly tried to interview one Inspector Albrecht, routinely assigned to the case. All I was able to learn is that Hanussen was arrested just before one of his stage performances, and not by the police.”
Bora kept up the appearance of impassibility, but wondered. ‘Not by the police’ – indicating what? The Gestapo, SA, a veterans’ association? All equally conceivable. During his service with the Abwehr, rumours and predictions of conspiracies against the regime had surfaced constantly; he was peripheral to them, because of his work in counter-espionage, but as far as he knew – contrary to sarcastic comments in the international press – Hitler set no store by prophesies. Himmler, however, along with Rosenberg and others in high places, did. Yet the link between Niemeyer and those in power had existed for over twenty years, seamlessly extending from the Weimar Republic to National Socialism. During those two decades – like Hanussen – he could have been silenced many times. “Niemeyer was killed by a hunting rifle,” he told him, on an impulse. “Possibly a Luftwaffe model.”
Kolowrat’s eyes migrated to the windowsill, onto which Krüger had jumped to perilously take up his grooming again. “Really? That is extraordinary! Discard a female culprit, then. No wonder he preached against hunting. At one of his parties at home, the Prophet literally kicked out a retired air force colonel because he habitually frequented a game reserve south of Grodno … No, I do not recall the veteran’s name, but I wager he and his family left for Poland in the autumn of ’38.”
Autumn of ’38? A Jewish officer forcibly expelled after the Kristallnacht was an unlikely murder suspect. Bora had been interested for a moment, but gave it no further thought.
“Here.” Kolowrat pushed the magazines towards him across the coffee table. “These are all the articles in the series Stars over Berlin. They may or may not be of help to you, but they faithfully portray a moment from our recent past. This long editorial, which – quoting The Threepenny Opera – I entitled ‘Eat First, Moralize Later’, will give you an idea of the world in which stage magicians moved at the height of the economic crisis. Finally, this is a copy of The Lucidity Factor, my book exposing Weimar society, where I claim that diffusion, drunkenness and drug abuse created a ‘floating world’ in which the nation lost its way. Marginally interesting for you, maybe. Vitriolic, I’m afraid, but as a veteran I was undergoing an ungenerous phase.”
Bora carefully stored the material in his briefcase. “I appreciate your time and observations, Doctor Kolowrat.” He rose to his feet. “Should anything else come to your mind regarding Niemeyer …”
“Of course.”
After taking the fat tabby down from the sill, Max Kolowrat closed the window. He then dug out a bottle and two cognac glasses from a glass-topped cabinet packed with gramophone records. “Before you go,” he said, “unless you’re on duty …” When Bora replied that he wasn’t, he poured two glasses. “It’s an old vintage. The last of its race. I’d share plum brandy from back home if I had some left, but Krüger here knocked it off the table three weeks ago.”
Yes. It was not in France that Kolo had served as a war correspondent earlier in the war, but on the risky Balkan front. Bora cradled the cognac in his hand. The impression of a certain indulgence towards him on Kolo’s part had only grown. Not fatherliness, but indulgence. Why? Does he see in me a hopeless detective, a doomed officer of the front line, or – given my age and who I am – the offspring he could have had with Nina, if only she’d said yes? I’m wary of liking him, but he’s not afraid to like me.
Standing with the glass in his hand, he had a better view of the lush head of green outside – a linden tree, it was – whose leaves trembled in the evening breeze. Closer up, he noticed a deep fissure in the wall by the window; concealed from where he’d been sitting by the curtain, it ran from ceiling to floor as if a giant knife had tried to slice the room in two. If I knew that Nina loved the general (that is, felt more than a dutiful and perhaps tender obligation towards him), my standing here tonight would be close to unbearable. The fact that my visit feels anything but unpleasant must mean something.
Kolowrat corked the bottle. Seeing Bora’s attention on the structural damage, he amiably conceded, “A bit of a close call in late June. Less space, less comfort, fewer friends … We must move with the times, whatever happens. Unless unprecedented circumstances intervene, I will share Berlin’s fate in this interesting phase of its history, and of the war.” Again, he shrugged. “I’m an adopted Berliner, Colonel, there’s nothing left of Austria-Hungary in me but a certain mocking affability.”
Bora nodded. Nina is the unprecedented circumstance he longs for. If I hinted to him that she needs him – I don’t know if it’s true, I surmise it as I’m surmising almost everything about this strange turn of events – something tells me he’d leave for Leipzig tonight, or on the first train that takes you there. But I won’t say anything of that sort – because even with my mother I hold back, by replying “I’m fine”, and in Russia, “Khan” Tibyetsky and I pretended to be no more than a Soviet general and an Abwehr interrogator, when in fact we were related to each other. Although he accepts me because I’m her son, I will not let Max Kolowrat know what I think Nina feels. I wouldn’t do that to my stepfather.
“To better days, Colonel von Bora.”
“To better days, Dr Kolowrat.”
Bora touched the mellow drink with his lips. It was excellent, smooth and consoling even on a warm night, and he sipped it carefully. Outwardly, he seemed to be paying a compliment to the preciousness of that last bottle of imported liquor. In fact, though, he was suddenly anxious that his visit would inevitably be misinterpreted. If he could have, he’d have said, Please understand that I’m not here for pathetic reasons of jealousy or male control – we Bora men are not like that. But I had to come here, being the only one who knows Nina’s secret, and you must appraise and gauge me as Friedrich’s son, as General Sickingen’s stepson, and especially as Nina’s champion.
All he actually said was, “My thanks for the loan, sir. I will return the material in good order as soon as I can.”
“At your earliest convenience. I regret not to be able to help you more, Colonel. If I may suggest one thing, however: I doubt the stars have anything to do with Niemeyer’s death.”
“I agree. Should I phone before I come next time?”
“No.” Kolowrat smiled, as if surmising why Bora had asked. “No need. Come directly, any time.”
When he left Kolo’s flat, Bora felt something that resembled tipsiness, something between
melancholy and euphoria, impossible to ascribe to a single drink. He walked the short distance to Barbarossaplatz and found a bench, where he sat down as much to calm his confusion as to study the material he’d been given.
He remained there until it became too dark to see. Little by little, out of the gloom, the phosphorescent lines marking pavements and street corners emerged, near and far. In the spectral geometry that allowed Berliners to orient themselves across the blacked-out city, trams with shaded windows crossed the night, letting out a blue-green glimmer like ignis fatuus or the trail of glow-worms.
Bora put away Kolowrat’s articles. He fully expected a police officer or a nightwatchman to walk by inquisitively, so he kept his documents and excuse ready for them. Out of light-headedness he’d come to a nearly unforgiving clarity of mind, which made him feel exposed and vulnerable.
Evoked by the reporter’s intransigent, ironic pen, the 1920s let out small silent bursts in his mind, like soap bubbles whose iridescence leaves nothing behind. Red-clad pageboys at the Kaiserhof, the Adlon’s slick-haired gigolos, caviar, pink gin, lesbian trysts at the Silhouette, underworld gangs known as Ever-Faithful or The Harmless Thirteen … How much Kolo had actually partaken of that drunken bliss was impossible to fathom; he’d surely frequented places where excess was on the menu, but the clinical vein of his notes about illusion, crassness and spurious joy read like a list of diseases. I have sat, he reasoned, in squalid mess halls and officers’ clubs with the same quiet contempt, feeling adrift and alone. Kolowrat instead … it does not gall him to remember. He is like Polaris, fixed and untouched, and is capable of grinning at his own scorn.
Overhead, so unusual in once-glittering Berlin, the sky was black and immense. Recognizable constellations – Aquila, Cygnus – soothed the eye with their apparent immobility. There is no such thing as a fixed star, Bora reminded himself. It is a fiction of antiquity. In reality, everything in the universe travels, rotates, and only the slow interplay of orbits gives the illusion that we stand still. Even the word “Kolowrat” originally means “Wheel”. When, from a particularly dusky quadrant of the sky, a meteor detached itself, lighting up – it seemed as if a hand had tossed it like a rock into a pond – Bora watched its brightness as it grew in intensity, traversed the atmosphere and waned. That was it. Nothing more. To protect himself, he forbade himself all nostalgia, all recollection. Every day is a day and I am who I am. If I had a choice I would be with my men in the Italian mountains, but I don’t have that option. Six weeks ago I was in Rome … no. He turned away from recent actions, recent thoughts. Regrets. Many things had happened since Rome.
