The Traitor Blitz

by Johannes Mario Simmel

  I sat down on one of the lower steps and saw Chief Sievers bending over the motionless figure. The beam of his flashlight

  560

  fell on a motor boat, tied to the third pillar. "He must have come in the boat," said Lutjens, "and that's how he wanted to get away."

  "Fraulein Skinner, Herr Myrnyi, come here!" shouted Sievers.

  Lutjens let them pass through. They clambered over the floor planks to Sievers. I followed them.

  The man's light coat was slowly being dyed red. The blood flowed out of his back, above the heart. Tamara, Myrnyi, and I were quite close now; the water splashed and flowed over our shoes. The planks were slippery and I held onto one of the pillars.

  "Now," said Sievers, kneeling beside the dead man. "Let's see your face."

  He turned the body slowly on its back and I looked into the face of the servant, Olaf Notung.

  18

  Next morning, at 7:15, I arrived at the Bremen Main Station. Pastor Demel was waiting for me on the platform. We shook hands and walked silently to his Volkswagen. Demel looked exhausted and shocked. He didn't speak for a long time either as we drove off.

  His call had reached me at 3:00 a.m. in the Davidswache, where I happened to be at the time. Hem had advised him to try there when the pastor had called him in a great state of excitement. I was to take the first train to Bremen, which I had done, terribly upset myself after what Demel had told me on the phone.

  We reached the autobahn. Here there was fresh snow, the day was gray, the cloud ceiling was low.

  "You'll want to know how it all happened," Demel said at last.

  "Naturally."

  "I can tell it more or less chronologically, and with very little missing, according to the information we have received in the meantime from various quarters," he explained. "So... chronologically..."

  Last night, at 9:30, Fraulein Louise, in hat and coat, had

  appeared at the gatehouse of the Ludwigskrankenhaus. The gatekeeper, who, like all the employees and doctors, by now knew Fraulein Louise very well, noticed that she looked happier than he had ever seen her—radiant, in fact—and she didn't seem to be in a hurry.

  "I must go out for a moment," she told him. 'The Hen-Professor asked me to. You know, he doesn't sleep very well, and when he can't sleep, he smokes, and he's all out of his favorite cigarettes. I'm going to get him a couple of packs."

  "Very well, Fraulein Louise."

  "How is Elizabeth? With mumps you've got to be careful."

  "She's a lot better, Fraulein Louise. The doctor says shell be all over it soon."

  "I'm glad to hear that. You know, once I had a child ..." and she told him about a very bad case of mumps; then she chatted with him about his other two children. Finally she hurried off into the dark street. It was snowing quite heavily at the time.

  A half hour later, when she hadn't returned, the gatekeeper had called the private sector and reported the incident to the night nurse in charge. The nurse woke the doctor on duty—by coincidence it happened to be Dr. Germela. He berated the gatekeeper for letting Fraulein Louise go out at such a late hour.

  "I'm sorry, Herr Doktor" said the gatekeeper with a false show of politeness, "but I thought since we now have a democratization of psychiatry and are supposed to be getting a patients' parliament soon and all that, that there wasn't much sense in—" with which he wanted to show Dr. Germela, whom he disliked just as much as the rest of the young arrogant "revolutionary" doctors, just what he thought of them. Later that night, when the whole clinic was in an uproar, he was, of course, severely reprimanded.

  The first thing Germela did was to hurry to Fraulein Louise's room, where he saw that she had taken with her her shawl, gloves, hat and coat, and what she had saved from the money Professor Leglund's daughter had given her. Hoping to find out something from the professor, Germela had stormed into his room. The old man was not asleep. "Fraulein Louise?" he asked, astonished. "What do you mean, 'Where is she?' She died twelve years ago."

  Now Germela was nervous and rang the alarm. By this time Fraulein Louise was already riding in the autobahn in a taxi. She had chosen one of the taxis that were always parked near the

  entrance of the hospital. The driver came back to the clinic after this fare, and when the gatekeeper told him what had happened, he told all about his encounter with Fraulein Louise.

  "She was very nice," he told Dr. Erkner, who was now conducting the search for FrSulein Louise. "I thought she belonged to some sort of sect."

  "What made you think that?"

  "Because ..."

  "Weill A man your agel You should be ashamed!" Fraulein Louise had exclaimed a few minutes after they had driven off. She was pointing to a copy of Playboy magazine lying between them—open, unfortunately. "Stop all this sinning!" she had told him. "When you reach the other world you'll find out how stupidly youve behaved. You'd do better to prepare yourself for that other world...." ("Really a nice old lady," the driver observed, "but very religious.")

  It had stopped snowing, the cloud ceiling had parted, the moon was up.

  "Please, could you drive faster?" Fraulein Louise had asked the driver.

  "Sure can, lady."

  "You see, I'm in a great hurry."

  "In a hurry? Why?"

  "Well, you know, I've had a simply terrible evening. They kept calling me, my friends did. I was to come. I was to come to them right away. Something really big must be going on."

  "You have friends in Neurode?" the driver had asked, because Fraulein Louise had told him that was where she was heading.

  "Yes. Good friends. The best. I must hurry. Could we drive still faster?"

  "Sure thing," said the driver.

  On the miserable road, however, he couldn't drive fast, but just before they came to Neurode, the Fraulein had asked him to stop. "But we still have a little way to go."

  "I know. But—but I'd like to go the rest of the way on foot. I need some fresh air. What do I owe you?"

  He told her and she paid him from money out of a small paper bag, which he thought odd, and she gave him five marks for a tip. "Thank you, lady. Good luck."

  "The same to you," Fraulein Louise had cried happily as she walked out into the fresh snow. "And sin no more, right?"

  The driver had laughed and driven into the village to turn around. When he had come back, he hadn't seen Fraulein Louise anymore, but then he hadn't been looking for her.

  Dr. Erkner found out about all this at 11:45 p.m., when the driver reported it. He called the Youth Camp at once. At night, camp director Dr. Schall answered the phone. He had one in his bedroom, there was no one at the switchboard.

  He got out of bed at once when he heard what Dr. Erkner had to say, and woke Dr. Schiemann and driver Kuschke and Pastor Demel. Together they ran to the entrance gate and asked the guard there if he'd seen Fraulein Louise. Of course he hadn't. Then, without much hope, they ran to her office, and finally they began calling her name aloud. Grown-ups and young people were awakened by their cries. A Spanish girl came up to them. She was still fully dressed and very excited. Schall spoke Spanish. He talked to her, then he translated for the others. "Juanita says she was in the Skull and Crossbones Tavern today for quite a long time, with a man who wanted to give her a job as a dancer, in Hamburg. The man gave her something to drink—quite a lot, as you can see." The beautiful girl really was tipsy. "Juanita said she got frightened and ran away from the man, back to the camp. She says she looked around all the time to see if he was following her."

  "So?" From Kuschke.

  "He didn't follow her," said Schall. "But a car drove up and turned around in the village—a taxi—and after that Juanita saw a figure in the moonlight. She can tell us exactly where. She isn't sure that it was Fraulein Louise, but she thinks it was. She says whoever it was walked into the reeds just below the village, out toward the moor."

  "Jesus, Maria, and Joseph," groaned Kuschke.

  "And then, Juanita says, the figure walked out on
to the moor. It looked as if she were floating on it," said Schall. "She floated like that for quite a while, then suddenly she was gone."

  "And now let's hurry!" said Kuschke.

  "I'm afraid we can't hurry enough," said the pastor, after which there was a heavy silence. Nobody said a word. The moon shone on the little group. Juanita began to sob. Schall said, "I'll call the fire department. Perhaps they—" He didn't finish the sentence but ran to his barracks.

  The fire department responded quickly," said Pastor Demel. "Three trucks from neighboring villages, with all their equipment and floodlights. They worked all night. They're still working."

  "Did they find the right place?"

  "Yes. Juanita showed us before they came. Fraulein Louise walked from the village out onto the moor on the narrow path she always used when she went to see her friends. We found her footprints. That's where they're looking."

  "And they've found nothing?"

  "Nothing," the pastor said softly.

  After that we didn't speak. We came to the dreadful road with its potholes and passed through the miserable little villages. They looked even more dismal than when I had seen them the first time. The whole area looked eerie. There was snow on the firm ground, but the moor was a black expanse of water except for a few white mounds and hillocks. The branches of the birches and alders were covered with snow, and the bulrushes were powdered with it. The reeds stood alongside the road, straight and stiff, like lances; the moor was shrouded in a miasma of fog. At last we arrived.

  Red fire trucks blocked the way. I saw men with ladders and on planks, far out on the moor; others were sitting on the running boards of their trucks, drinking hot coffee out of paper cups. I spotted Camp Director Dr. Schall, Camp Doctor Schiemann, driver Kuschke, and Dr. Erkner. They were drinking coffee, too. Demel stopped the car and we got out. I greeted the gentlemen. They were pale and unshaven, and looked exhausted. The camp director said, "I think the men will give up soon. They've combed every inch of the moor where she could have possibly sunk. They can't find a trace of her. Nor her clothing. Nothing. She has simply disappeared."

  "Without leaving a trace," said Kuschke, staring down at his big hands.

  565

  Dr. Erkner said softly and bitterly, "This is the second time in three months that a patient has managed to escape. And this time I'm going to do something about it. I'm not going to put up with what's going on at the clinic any longer. And Fraulein Gottschalk was doing so well."

  "She was?"

  "Yes. Why? Don't you agree?"

  I told him that when I had seen her last, she had obviously reverted to her former condition and had evidently managed to keep it secret from the doctors. He asked me, "Why didn't you report it?"

  "I did," I said. "Quite some time ago when I noticed the first signs. I wanted to see you, but Dr. Germela stopped me. So I told him all about it. He told me to mind my own business, said that Fraulein Gottschalk was very well integrated in your therapeutic community, and gave me a lecture on the democratization of psychiatry—"

  "Stop!" Dr. Erkner was furious. "I don't want to hear any more. So it was Germela, damn him! God knows I don't have anything against long hair and beards and new ideas, but I'm going to set that young man straight when I get back. You can depend on it!"

  "Unfortunately, that won't bring Fraulein Louise back to life," I said. The pastor and Dr. Schall joined us. "Happy and gay as never before in her life—that's how Fraulein Louise hurried by, because her friends had summoned her," I said slowly.

  "Yes," said Demel. "That's what the few witnesses say." He thought for a moment, then he spoke as if to himself, "'Let me take leave of it all, not complaining but singing like a swan—' Who wrote that?"

  Nobody knew.

  "I'd like to go out there," I said.

  They gave me a rubber suit like the ones the men with the ladders had on, and a pole to punt with, and I lay down on a ladder and pushed myself out onto the moor beside the narrow, snow-covered path. The snow on it clearly showed the imprint of a woman's pointed shoes, close together, as if Fraulein Louise had hurried across it. Another meter. Another. And then, without warning, the footprints ended. Nothing visible but the untouched snow. I lay on the ladder and stared at that last footprint. A fireman drew up alongside me and watched me for a while, silently, then he said, "This is where she fell in. But we've looked and looked. She's not under here."

  "But she must be!"

  "You'd think so, but she isn't. We'll never find her." And he floated away. I watched him go, but I stayed on a while longer beside the path and that last footpath, and thought of Fraulein Louise. Then I began to feel cold and hurried back to the shore. I took off the rubber suit and put on my coat and asked the pastor if I could go back to the camp and see Fraulein Louise's room once more. He nodded and accompanied me.

  The barracks at the end of the camp, where the fog was collecting again over the moor, looked deserted; there were no voices, no sounds whatsoever coming from the rooms. We entered Fr&ulein Louise's office. It was bitter cold, and everything looked exactly as it had that afternoon when I had come for the first time. I looked around me—the ugly furniture, the files, the papers on the desk; somebody had cleaned the room a long time ago, and the dust had collected again, covering everything. The three cactuses on the windowsill were frozen. Ice flowers covered the window panes. I saw the hot plate which the pastor had repaired.

  I walked slowly into the bedroom. It was cold here, too. There was the braided rug, the floor lamp, the wardrobe, the bookshelf, the wall with the six pictures painted by children, and on the bedside table the radio and the book I had leafed through. The bed had been made up again after Fraulein Louise had got up, on a night that now seemed very far away, and hurried to her friends on the moor before taking off for Hamburg.

  "Why did you want to come back here once more?" asked Demel.

  "I want to know what's left of such a human life," I said.

  "Well," he said sadly, "now you know. Not much."

  "I don't know about that," I said.

  I picked up the book on the bedside table. It lay open between the alarm clock and a vial of sleeping pills, the book with the passage marked in red that I had begun to read once. Shakespeare, Collected Works, Volume III. This time I wanted to read the entire passage she had marked. T,.e Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1. Prospero speaks: "Our revels now are ended—"I read, then I handed Demel the book. He took it, and in the icy room, in a soft voice, he read the lines that might have been a necrologue for Fraulein Louise.

  "Our revels now are ended, these our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

  Are melted into air, into thin air;

  And, like the baseless fabric of this vision

  The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

  The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

  Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

  And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

  Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

  As dreams are made on, and our little life

  Is rounded with a sleep "

  "We are such stuff as dreams are made on "

  Again and again I had to think of the line as I sat in the train from Bremen to Frankfurt crossing the snow-clad countryside. And in my thoughts I said farewell to Fraulein Louise, who had touched me in a way no one had ever touched me before. At the time I didn't know that I was never really to say farewell to Fraulein Louise, that she was always going to be with me, around me, in me—

  From the station I took the streetcar to Hem's apartment in the old house on Fiirstenberger Strasse, beside Griineberg Park. I took the elevator. As I unlocked the door, the lock seemed unusually loose, as if it was worn out, but I paid no attention to it at the time.

  It was warm in the apartment. I knew Hem was at the office and Irina at her job, and that Bertie was working on my manuscript. I called out to him, but there was no answer. I walked through the long, dim pas
sage to the two rooms Hem had given Irina and me, and opened the door to the one in which I worked. On the desk, beside the window I saw Bertie's body, slumped over, his head on the desk, his arms hanging down on either side. He had taken off his jacket. The back of his shirt was bloody. Blood had dripped on the floor, a lot of blood. Shuddering with horror, I walked over to him. At least five bullets had been fired into his back. The murderer must have worked fast. Bertie doubtlessly had suspected nothing, had heard the door open and thought it was me coming home. He

  probably hadn't even turned around. So there he sat; a pencil that had slipped out of his hand was lying in a pool of blood on the floor; his head lay sideways on the desk. His eyes were open, his face was white, but his lips were upturned in a smile. He had died smiling.

  The entire apartment had been ransacked, drawers torn out of the desk and cupboards, their contents scattered on the floor. My entire manuscript, with copy, was gone. I couldn't see any of the tapes, nor the recorder, and none of my copied notes. In a panic, I searched for them but found nothing. I called the police and told them to come at once. It was all clear to me, and I was filled with helpless rage and indescribable sorrow.

  "What's the matter?" asked the officer on the phone.

  "There's been a murder," I said. "My friend Bertie—my good friend Bertie is dead."

  "Who has been murdered, Herr Roland?"

  "I have been murdered," I said, beside myself with grief, because it was absolutely clear to me—Bertie had been shot by mistake. The one whom they had meant to silence was myself!

  "You—you have been murdered? Are you crazy?"

  I couldn't speak and hung up. Five minutes later the first car from homicide arrived.

  The police agreed with me—Bertie had been shot by mistake; I was the one they were after. After all, the manuscript and tapes were gone. The investigation of the case was carried on in as great secrecy as possible. When Irina and Hem came home, Bertie's body had already been removed, and I had washed away all traces of blood.

  Irina wept when I told her what happened. Hem said only, "The pigs! The goddamn' pigs! Who do you suppose did it?"