Shadow and Light

by Jonathan Rabb

  As she drew up, the syphilitic dots on her face, along with the pinpricks on her arms, came into focus, blue veins crisscrossed by an intermittent threading of skin. Hoffner guessed heroin. It was the easiest narcotic to come by, even in its most impure form, best to inject the stuff directly into the arm. He could still remember the none-too-distant advertisements for the lozenges and pastilles—heroin salts and elixir—the miracle cure for asthma, bronchitis, consumption. The great chemists at Bayer AG had promised no addictive quality to it. That had been the opium. Even the image on the packaging had stayed with him: a lion and a globe. This, they had said, would save the world. Hoffner wondered which of those men might be taking the woman now standing in front of him to his Nobel Prize gala.

  She reached into the man’s coat pocket and pulled out a few coins. He shook his head, and she dropped half of them back in. He shook his head again, and she held up a single coin. When he nodded, she tossed the rest into the pocket and reached into his trousers.

  “We’ll have a chat while he gets it going,” she said to Hoffner. Her voice came as a complete shock, low and inviting. She might have been thirty. She might have been fifty. When she spoke again, her teeth seemed to be fighting against each other at odd angles. “He can’t talk, no tongue, but he likes it when you do it as if he isn’t there.”

  A low gurgling began to rise in the man’s throat, and Hoffner did what he could to ignore it.

  “I can do more than this, you know,” she said. “Even the tools, if that’s what you want. You look like you can pay.”

  This far at the edges, no one recognized a cop. No one questioned who might be walking through the door or what they might be in need of. Hoffner tried not to imagine what “the tools” entailed.

  “He’ll be wanting something more in a minute,” she said. “And then he’ll have to pay and I won’t have time to chat so pretty with you, so what’ll it be? You won’t get much better in here. You wouldn’t have a cigarette?”

  Hoffner reached into his coat and held the pack out to her.

  She looked at him as if he might be crazy. “Not the whole thing, idiot. You want to get me killed?” She snorted a laugh. “A girl with a whole pack. They’d rip my arms off if they knew. Just tear one in half and light it.”

  Hoffner did as she asked.

  It was nearly gone in a single pull. “You didn’t come to buy, did you?” Smoke streamed from the side of her mouth. “You like to look. That costs, too.”

  Hoffner again reached into his pocket, but this time her face turned to abject terror. “Not me,” she whispered viciously, trying not to look at him. “Goddamned idiot. I’m done with you. Don’t look at me again. Just move on.”

  Hoffner watched as she dug her face into the man’s chest. Her hand continued to work, but it was as if she, too, had disappeared.

  He stepped away. There was a hierarchy even here. Why should it have surprised him?

  Across the room, a man had taken an interest: apparently, this was where the money went. Dressed in a weathered soldier’s tunic, he was standing in a doorway that led off into the rest of the flat. He kept the top buttoned tight to the neck, his woolen pants tucked deep into a set of workman’s boots. Again age was a mystery. The hair was cut short in the style of a young recruit, but the bulbous nose was too many years in a bottle to make them much of a match. At least from this distance he was still sporting all his vital parts.

  Hoffner made his way over. The room beyond them was darker still.

  “You’re new,” said the man. The grain in his voice had him long past forty. “I won’t make you regret that. In the future, you come to me. We work things out. Girl, boy, pills, needles.”

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “That’s nice for you.”

  The man needed a little prodding. Hoffner reached into his pocket for his badge, but the man stopped him with a dismissive laugh. “And that’s going to make a difference in here?” he said. He snorted something in his nose and spat to the side. “What are you—Kripo, Polpo? I’ve a director of yours who likes to beat a girl before he buggers her, every Tuesday. Means I have to have two or three girls in rotation, but better that than the commandant who makes me round up boys so he can have them beat him to a pulp. Twice they’ve almost killed him. Not the hands, though. Those he makes sure they never touch. He needs them in good working order for the boys he likes to fondle. Hairless boys. And you think you impress me?”

  Hoffner drove his fist into the man’s abdomen and watched as he doubled over, choking for breath. Leaning in, Hoffner said, “I’m not here to impress you. I’m here to find someone.” He then tilted the head up and brought his fist across the chin. At once he felt a sharp pain in his hand. Hoffner had never been any good at this—all the more reason not to understand the sudden eruption—but all he could do was continue to land blow after blow. He saw the blood on his knuckles, his own confusion, when a sudden burning drove up through his lower back. The man had found a hidden reserve and was letting go into his ribs and kidneys with an equal abandon. For a few moments, Hoffner tried to ignore it, but too soon he felt his arms pulling in, his head lower, all of it too late as his legs were kicked out from under him, leaving only the cold scrape of the floor to dig into his cheek with each blow.

  There was a sudden pause, and the scent of rancid breath hovered just above him: “Did you find your someone, Kripo?” Hoffner could smell the blood on the man’s lips. “I’m betting no.”

  Hoffner tensed for the final barrage.

  “Enough.” A voice came from somewhere behind them. Hoffner tried to find it, but the room was too dark. “You’ve had your fun. Step off. He’s come to see me.”

  A warm mixture of blood and spit landed near Hoffner’s cheek before the legs retreated. Half a minute later, a second pair appeared in front of him.

  “That was stupid, Nikolai.” The man squatted. Hoffner lifted his head as best he could and saw the gaunt face of Zenlo Radek staring back at him. “You could have just asked.”

  Hoffner felt a hand under his arm. Radek was surprisingly strong for so thin a man. He brought Hoffner to one of the couches and sat down next to him. “You usually have to pay if you want a beating like that.”

  Hoffner was working his tongue around his mouth. At some point, the fists had taken on his face. He felt something dislodge at the back and he pulled out a tooth. He stared at it. At least now he could forget having to make that appointment. He tossed the tooth to the corner and sat back.

  Radek said, “You’re not a happy man, are you, Nikolai?”

  “So you’re a philosopher now.”

  “A Freudian. I like those Austrian Jews.”

  Hoffner checked to see if he had broken anything.

  “What did you do to deserve it?” said Radek. “You knew he’d thump you.”

  The ribs would be sore, along with the lower back, but everything else seemed to be in working order. “Did I?”

  “Subconsciously, Nikolai. Subconsciously. That’s why I’m such a bad man. No one loved me.”

  A boy emerged from the back room. He was in tight shorts and nothing else. He lazed against the wall and stared at Radek, who ignored him. Hoffner said, “You seem to be doing all right by it now.”

  “That’s not love, Nikolai. That’s something far more useful.”

  Hoffner was never sure if Radek fully understood the words he chose. The clipped tone made them seem all the more unkind. “Pimm doesn’t think much of it, does he?”

  “No. He doesn’t.”

  “But he turns a blind eye. That’s love, isn’t it?”

  Radek laughed quietly. “You know, I could have let our soldier friend kill you.”

  “Yes—but then you would have had to kill him yourself, and that can be so messy.”

  “He’s more resilient than you think.”

  “Pimps are pimps. They die as easily as anyone else.”

  Radek swept an inordinately long finger across the room, tickin
g off the bones and skin like so many entries on a page. “He saved all of these. Didn’t save them for much, but he saved them.”

  “Then my apologies. He’s quite the hero.”

  “Unhappy and bitter. It’s not an attractive combination, Nikolai.”

  Hoffner leaned forward and spat a wad of blood onto the floor.

  Radek said, “You’ve no idea who these are, do you?” Hoffner spat again. “Most of them—not all—but most were frontline whores. Maybe a kilometer from the shelling, nice little brothels, bombedout houses, widows, young ones who got pregnant—or raped—then tossed out by families, even when the boys who’d gotten them there promised to make good on the deal. You didn’t know that, Nikolai? I’m so surprised.” Hoffner sat back and tried to swallow the taste of blood from his mouth. Radek continued, “The boys died, naturally—what else were they going to do out there—then the babies—”

  “I remember the war.”

  “Do you? Not this one. These weren’t your Berlin or Paris fucks. No glamour here. Not even your inflation girls, who had to lift their skirts to pay the rent. At least those had some class. These were country girls. Too fat, too thin, too stupid. And the boys they fucked were the ones who somehow didn’t die—all those frontline hospitals to keep them alive. For what, no one knows. Maybe for this—to stand in the shadows so a girl could work through the wires and metal clasps crisscrossing their arms and legs and asses to give them a bit of pleasure. Your pimp brought them here. When the fighting stopped. They probably thought they’d be dead by then, but they weren’t. Maybe that’s why they seem to make pain so much a part of it.”

  Hoffner was hoping Radek had brought a drink. He hadn’t. “So he makes his money off the living dead. I’m even more impressed.”

  Radek’s jaw tensed. “That’s across town, Nikolai. We both know that. Here they live on what they need.”

  “Or die on what they need.”

  For some reason Radek smiled. “We all do that.” He ran a finger along the little dots running up his arm. “I’ve been waiting a long time on mine, but it never seems to come.”

  “There are easier ways.”

  “But none with such promise.”

  Years ago, Hoffner had found himself oddly comforted by Radek, a strange source, to say the least. It was just after Martha’s death, so maybe Herr Freud had gotten something right after all. For Hoffner, it had simply been the distraction of a nihilist with hope.

  This, however, was new. Radek had grown impatient. The attic rooms and the heroin were his way to accelerate the process.

  “All that scum in the west.” Radek was so easy with his venom. “They think we’re all just racing up and up and up.”

  Hoffner bobbed his chin. Radek never needed more by way of encouragement.

  “All their sudden freedoms and clubs and willingness to life—their chance to be corrupt with everyone cheering. But there isn’t an ounce of genuine pain among them. And they’d all collapse in on themselves if they had to admit it.” Radek gazed out. “They want to know where Berlin is going? Take a look and see this. Berlin isn’t running toward anything—she never is. She’s simply giving in to the weight of what’s behind her.”

  Hoffner glanced over at the man on the crutch. His business done, he had made his way into a grouping with a bottle. Hoffner nodded in his direction. “He seems to be holding himself up.”

  Radek looked over. “You’re a prick to find hope in that.”

  “I don’t really believe it, but if he’s willing to see it, isn’t there something in that?”

  Radek pulled a Luger pistol from his belt loop and pushed himself up. He walked over. He placed the gun on the man’s forehead and cocked back the lock. The man simply stared at him.

  For several seconds, nothing happened. The sounds of the place hardly shifted. Slowly Radek brought the gun down. He placed a few marks in the man’s hand, then headed back to Hoffner and sat. “That was his moment of hope, Nikolai. Don’t let yourself think it was anything else.”

  The first wave of stiffness drove up through Hoffner’s hands and he did what he could to flex them. “That makes you even more of a bastard, doesn’t it?”

  Radek stared out silently. “Gives him something to think about.” He took in a long breath. The lesson was over. “I never thought you’d put in an appearance here.”

  “I must have been missing all these uplifting little chats.”

  “You’re better in a bar, Nikolai.”

  “A minute ago I would have said the same of you.”

  “What do you want?”

  A woman laughed somewhere, a throaty, unnatural sound. Farther off, the phonograph needle found an old war song and a young voice began to crackle, “There comes a call like thunder’s peal . . .”

  Hoffner said, “The sex films.”

  Radek settled for another lazy laugh. “Pimm told you he’d found nothing.”

  “I know what Pimm told me. He also thinks the world is still an ordered place. You and I know it isn’t.”

  “I’ll tell him you said so.”

  Hoffner pulled a cigarette from his pocket. His hands were now in a good deal of pain. “He should be smarter than that, shouldn’t he? And that worries you.” He lit up. “Tossing things into the river for him, things he doesn’t want to see. Not a good sign.”

  Radek’s face hardened. “He’ll always be cleverer than you think. Trust me.”

  Hoffner let go with a stream of smoke and said, “I think you wish you actually believed that.”

  Radek continued to stare straight ahead. “As I said, what do you want?”

  Hoffner knew he had pushed far enough. “The films,” he repeated. “It’s studio money but not their talent. I need to know where they’re getting their actors, cameramen, whatever else they’re using.”

  “Any girl on the Kufu can spread her legs for a film.”

  “They’re after a different kind of thing here. More desperate.”

  “Or more expendable,” Radek said bitterly. He motioned over to the pimp. The man had been watching them and began to make his way over. Radek continued to speak to Hoffner. “There’d be no reason to put any of these on film, Nikolai. Who’d want to watch them?”

  “Then somewhere between these and the girls on the Kufu. Pimm doesn’t have access to that. Or at least he doesn’t want to.”

  The man drew up. He had a cut over one eye and his lower lip had split. Aside from that, he looked fine. He said nothing.

  Radek asked, “What have you heard about films, sex films?”

  The man seemed just as ready to take another swipe at Hoffner as answer. “There’s no real money in them,” he said.

  “Yah. What about the rough ones?”

  This seemed to confuse him. He shot a glance at Hoffner. He was liking him less and less. “Cops having trouble with something like that?”

  Radek said, “What have you heard?”

  The man continued to stare until Hoffner raised his hands in mock surrender. “My apologies, mein Herr. It was my mistake. I evidently wanted the beating. You have my thanks.”

  This only added to the confusion.

  “Shut up, Nikolai,” said Radek. He kept his eyes on the man. “Studios are putting money into it. I know you. What have you heard?”

  The man shrugged, and the tunic dug into the fleshy part of his neck. “There’s been some noise, camera boys, and new money. Not Berlin money.”

  “Working through Ufa,” Hoffner said impatiently. “Yes, I know.” The man obviously had the information on who and where they were filming.

  The man stared a moment, then shook his head slowly. “Ufa wouldn’t do anything with this.”

  Hoffner sat back in frustration. “Then you’re obviously not as well informed as you think.”

  It was clear the man had learned to contain his rage over the years; it seemed to deaden him completely. He looked at Radek. “If he knows so much, why does he need to ask?” Hoffner said nothing, and the man
turned to him. “I’ll throw you a bone, Kripo. For Herr Radek, here. Phoebus is fronting them. I don’t know why, and I don’t really care. They haven’t done anything to my people, so none of my business. See what you can do with that.” He nodded once to Radek and started to move off.

  “You do know why,” Hoffner said after him, not backing down.

  The man stopped. He was staring across the room. He took a moment and said, “The sun’s coming up. You’ll want to see this.”

  Hoffner said, “And if they were doing things to your people?”

  The man continued to gaze out. “Then I’d know a bit more.” He waited before moving off.

  Hoffner was ready to go after him when he felt Radek’s hand on his arm. With barely any movement, Radek shook his head. “He’s right. You’ll want to see it, Nikolai.”

  “Why wouldn’t he say?”

  Radek spoke easily. “Because he doesn’t know. And that worries him.” He gazed past Hoffner. “It really is quite lovely.” Without waiting, Radek stood and made his way over.

  It was only then that Hoffner realized that the entire room was on its feet—or whatever else was propelling them along—moving toward the windows. They had emerged from the dark pockets like an unspeaking chorus, a single mass to fill the void brought in by the light. Hoffner stood and followed.

  Pulling up at the back, he watched as the first lines of pink began to break through. There was nothing particularly stirring in it. Sunrise in Berlin came like anywhere else, with a reverent silence for the vanishing gray. Here, however, the colors that followed slid too quickly into the wash of faceless buildings and barren streets. As bright and unforgiving as the sun quickly became, its arrival brought a heaviness from which the night seemed oddly freed. The only word for it was joyless.

  Even so, there was something to inspire in the grotesqueries of the half eyes and lips, the haggard folds of skin on the almost smiling faces. Nothing childlike or eager in them—no one would have been stupid enough to call it hope—but for a few moments each of them seemed to stake a claim to belonging, a worth, that quickly gave way to the thought that maybe today would see it all finally come to an end.