Nights in Berlin

by Janice Law

  The little girl had a sharp, pinched face and knowing eyes. Just how knowing, I was soon to discover. Nightly we heard the sounds of the tango, the Charleston, and the Black Bottom issuing from her family’s flat, which blossomed with pink-tinged lights at sundown and attracted a bevy of cabs and a good deal of foot traffic. There was laughter and shouts and sometimes applause. When I asked Lisl, she made a face and told me they put on shows.

  Fritz was a little more forthcoming. The Schmitts were a bourgeois couple with two grown daughters, as well as Lisl and a handicapped son—a big blond lug with a cast in his eye. Owners of a shop that had gone under in the hyperinflation, they chose not to starve, as Fritz put it, and turned their front parlor into a venue for specialized sex shows: customer’s choice. They keep it in the family, Fritz said. Safer that way, don’t you think? And there’s no one else to pay.

  Uncle’s welcome circus of depravity, indeed. I didn’t feel that creative, so I gave Fritz the silver-mounted brushes to sell. He undoubtedly cheated me in the process, but we enjoyed some good dinners that cheered me up immensely. I kept the Leica in reserve, locked in my case. He surely knew I had it, and he would possibly filch it if he had a chance. I would in his place, so I could certainly add to my letter that I am getting to know the real Berlin and the real Berliners. Although not the worst part of the city, most residents of the district were a pretty sorry, shivering, underfed, and overworked lot. I wanted to avoid joining them.

  And I had good prospects of doing so. Thanks to Fritz, I had my evening clothes and some makeup. As soon as I stopped seeing vengeful nationalists and suspicious coppers behind every lamppost, I sallied out to the clubs, where there was almost always a gentleman in need of company and in the possession of a comfortable hotel room. I can rough it on Fritz’s floor if I have to, but I quite enjoy luxury. And if I stayed out all night, I could come back and collect Fritz’s bed in the morning. The mattress was thin and dubious, of course, but better than the floor. I reckoned that I could survive in Berlin.

  Things were going well, and I was thinking that I could put aside a little money, sell the Leica, and depart for London, when Fritz brought in a copy of Arbeiter-Illustierte-Zeitung, spread it out on his bed, and pointed to a story. I shook my head. While, thanks to his father, my grasp of Deutsch army profanity was improved, the narrow columns and Gothic script of the papers were still beyond me.

  Fritz translated the headline: More on the White Cat Murder. And gave me a significant look. I tried to seem interested instead of alarmed.

  The police today announced that they are seeking to question a young foreigner, English or American. The youth, aged probably 17 or 18, arrived at the bar much favored by right-wing fighters just before the incident last Tuesday night, when Hans Baasch, age 38, was murdered and his companion, Ernst Dittner, age 35, seriously wounded. The shooting occurred after what the bartender at the White Cat described as an argument between them and a tall, heavyset foreigner, probably British. The assailant is described as speaking fluent German and having a military bearing.

  No reason is known for the attack, but the shooting occurred after the mysterious young man stopped at the bar. Police believe that he signaled to the assailant in some way because the shooting occurred immediately after he abruptly left the establishment.

  The man police wish to question is lightly built, 5’9” or 5’10”, with dark brown hair and a fair complexion. He may be related to the assailant, who operates under a number of aliases, including Laurence Marsdon, and Luc Pinot.

  “Is maybe you, Francis?”

  This was serious. I put on as bland a face as I could and said, “Certainly not. And I’ve never heard my uncle called anything but Lastings. He’s a con man, not a killer. Most likely the man they’re looking for just stopped by for a drink.”

  Fritz gave me a look. His English has progressed by leaps and bounds, and he anticipates a better job and useful connections and maybe a chance to travel. He’s ambitious, I’ve discovered, and it crossed my mind that there might be a reward, that Fritz might have omitted to read that information, that he might turn me in. I started to tell him about Uncle Lastings, who was—and I really did believe this at the time—about the last person in Berlin to go around shooting rightists. “He runs the Society for a Christian Europe for God’s sake.”

  “As may be,” said Fritz, “but much of Berlin is Red. Our district, too, Father being the exception,” he added under his breath. “Whoever shot that reactionary militarist—a Freikorps vet and now a National Socialist fanatic—would be welcome here. He is, how you say”—he groped for words for a moment—“a helper of the public?”

  “Public benefactor,” I said, and I thought how surprised Uncle Lastings would be.

  “Public benefactor,” Fritz rolled the words around in his mouth as if to taste them. He is clever, and he has not just a talent but a love for languages. If I am not out for the night—which I am fairly often, needing, as Uncle would say, to replenish the exchequer—we sit on his bed. I read a Dickens novel aloud to him, stopping whenever he does not understand a word or a reference or when the verbs confuse him.

  “Right,” I said. “What were the names again, Marsdon and Pinot? Whoever—he’s no connection to me. Though,” I added when I saw he was still dubious, “it’s admittedly a coincidence. There could be some confusion.” And some danger for me.

  Fritz looked thoughtful. From then on, I was extra careful to lock my suitcase before I went out for an evening. I kept a close eye on the comings and goings in the seedy hallways and in the dank and dirty courtyard below and bribed my little friend Lisl with chocolates so that she would be alert for strangers as well.

  Then the blow fell. Fritz was late coming back one evening, and I was already dressed to go out. “Should we get a chop, maybe? A bottle of wine before I head out?” I had been treating us to decent meals nearly every night in an effort to keep him firmly on my side.

  “Not in that outfit,” he said, and he shook his head.

  “What’s happened?”

  He put his hand on my shoulder, and we sat down on his bed. “The police were at the hotel today.”

  “Well, I’m hardly surprised. Uncle Lastings must have run up a terribly big bill.”

  “They were many,” Fritz said. “Plainclothes and some that did not smell like cop.”

  That did not sound good.

  “There was a search of the room. The management is unhappy. Sealed rooms aren’t useful.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I hung around the hallway. As if ready, if needed, you know.”

  “And?”

  “They were looking for something in the case.”

  “Well, we ate the silver brushes, but I did leave them a good pair of shoes and all Uncle’s clothes. What cops need with gold cufflinks is beyond me, because even the whole lot couldn’t have settled the bill.”

  Fritz shook his head and gave me a close look. “Maybe a camera?” he said.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I heard them talking, Kamera and Fotoapparat and Kamera-film. Something they want badly.”

  “That camera will get me back to London. I’m keeping the camera.”

  “Has it film?” Fritz asked carefully.

  “Haven’t a clue. Not much good without it, though.”

  “I think they want that film,” Fritz said. “And they think you have it.”

  “Why?”

  “Questions about you. They want your suitcase. They would like to know how it left the hotel. If it left.”

  “Are you in trouble?” I asked, feeling guilty.

  “I said you were always using stairs. This is—what is the word?”

  “Eccentric.”

  “Yes, a good word. Eccentric. So the case could be on any floor. They will search.” He shrugged. “Anyone could have found it. Taken it t
o the luggage storage. Guests do leave bags. Forget bags. A lot is possible.”

  That was an understatement.

  “But, Francis, still there is trouble. We were all asked for descriptions. Natürlich, Albert gave a good one.” He gave me a look. “What could I do?”

  “Of course,” I said. “And last seen wearing a black dinner jacket?”

  “They will be looking in the clubs and the fancy cafés. And I think they will draw a picture. For the press.”

  A portrait! I would be famous. I felt rather sick. In this district, my name means nothing, but a picture would be both a danger and an inconvenience. To share Fritz’s floor when I can be out and about most of the time was one thing. To be stuck in his flat day and night would be intolerable.

  “I must leave here. You could come under suspicion.”

  “Yes,” he said, crumpling the page and putting it beside the stove for the fire. “But people will not talk to the police here. Is good thing.”

  “A very good thing,” I said and then added cautiously, “but could there be a reward?”

  Fritz’s face grew serious. “Nothing yet. That would be different. You are foreign, and we are poor.”

  Right. And my uncle, public benefactor though he might be, was an anti-Bolshevik working for the Society for a Christian Europe. I needed a new hiding hole.

  Chapter Four

  With only a couple of marks in my pocket, a final troll through the night cafés was in order, and while a police drawing could be disastrous, I reckoned I had a few more hours of safety and obscurity. I had long adjusted to danger. I’m becoming a real cosmopolitan and nothing about Berlin fazes me now, I wrote to Nan.

  That was an exaggeration, but I no longer feared murderers lurking behind every door. I’d realized that I was nearly invisible in the street crowds and in the noisy, smoky pleasure palaces. Someone at a favorite boy bar or cabaret might recognize me, but I should be safe enough elsewhere, perhaps in a vaudeville crowd. Haller’s or the Wintergarten were not Uncle Lastings’s territory, and I’d only been to vaudeville once with Fritz, as I lack the German for the jokes and have no taste for either music or naked girls.

  So, a vaudeville hall would be the ticket. I put on my evening clothes, made up my face—a difficult thing without a mirror and not nearly so much fun—and ventured out. I scraped up the entrance fee and paid for a good seat. Costumes, music, unintelligible comics—I took my cue from the crowd and laughed in the right places.

  There were lots of young women wearing beads and feathers … when they weren’t wearing sequins and chiffon. There were many old men with opera glasses and many young men who wished they’d brought some: all tedious. Even the famous Tiller Girls, they of the splendid legs and synchronized kicks, who Uncle Lastings would have called the pièce de résistance, didn’t win me over. Polished as they were, I was mostly surprised to learn that they’d been imported all the way from London.

  I didn’t see anyone that I knew, but I’d miscalculated: The gentlemen seeking company were all focused on the stage, and if any of them had an eye for boys, they were taken with the strapping blond tenor or the sly master of ceremonies with his incomprehensible patter. Without a turn in my luck, I saw a dismal future as a Schlafburschen, which is quite as bad as it sounds and means someone who rents a bed for a few hours a day—or night. And not for fun, either. The worst of both worlds, so to speak.

  I hung around the lobby and haunted the bar. Nothing doing. Having optimistically bought a decent dinner, I was too broke to swan into the cafés like a gentleman. Facing a long, dismal, and probably dangerous walk back to Fritz’s, I was in as bad a mood as possible when I left with the last of the festive crowd. Their noise and laugher were so annoying that I turned into the alley that ran alongside the theater.

  A fire escape took up virtually the breadth of the passage, and I was still within the shadow of its steps and supports when I heard an English voice, a London voice at that. I stopped. I hadn’t been homesick until just that moment when my own language sounded unexpectedly sweet, even in anger, even shouted, even, as Nan would have said, in a voice like a fishwife.

  It was coming from a woman, unusually tall and in unusually high heels, standing on the last step down from the stage door. She was slim and dark with short hair and a short dress and a chunky wrap, and she was trying to escape a large man in a homburg and a vicuña coat who had blocked her exit and who was threatening her—I could understand that much—in a low, harsh voice. She was having none of it, but she looked unsteady in her heels, and when he pulled his right hand out of his pocket and something glittered, I grabbed one of the support bars of the fire escape and swung out like Tarzan, yelling Eaaaaaaw! and connected with the man’s back.

  I hit him with both feet. He gave a sound between a bark and a deflating football and tumbled onto the asphalt with me on top of him.

  “Blimey!” she cried and grabbed my hand. I found my feet, and we charged down the alley, my asthma making me wheeze and her high heels clattering on the paving. The woman began shouting, “Taxi! Ein Taxi anhalten,” before we reached the sidewalk. When an empty one appeared, she put two fingers in her mouth and whistled and shook her ruffled skirt to show off her remarkable legs.

  The cab braked with a squeal, and, although there was a shout from the alley, she jumped in with me right behind her. “Schnell, schnell!” she told the driver. We shot away from the curb as her assailant reached for the door.

  She called out an address, then turned to say, “Dankeschön.” I told her in English that she was welcome.

  “My knight in shining armor.” She gave me a close look and added, “Or is it in blusher and lipstick?”

  “Mascara, too,” I said, for I want my efforts appreciated. “But strictly for evening.”

  “Without a doubt, dearie,” she said. “Moderation in all things, my old father used to say. Thank the Lord he never came to Berlin.”

  “It’s for a certain taste,” I said, for though I needed to leave, I was really not at all tired of the city.

  “Give it time. The thing is,” she added in a confidential manner, “one accumulates people here. And then one longs to be rid of them.”

  I knew just what she meant. Only mine at the moment were of a quasi-official nature.

  “I’m Muriel, by the way.”

  I shook her hand. “Francis.” No last names required.

  “Where can we drop you, Francis?”

  I hesitated. I wanted to spend as little time as possible at Fritz’s. I particularly disliked returning in the night and passing his father’s “sentry post.” When disturbed, the old man was apt to reach for his bayonet, and while he was barely mobile without his crutches and his wooden foot, his reach was long enough to be alarming. There had already been a couple of incidents when Fritz had to convince him that it was not time to go over the top. He should have met my father.

  “I’m rather at sixes and sevens at the moment.”

  “A Berlin malady. Need a place for the night?”

  I nodded.

  “I owe you. But no funny business.”

  “Furthest thing from my mind.”

  She laughed then and said, “You know how to flatter a girl. But it’s all right, dearie. Enough excitement for one night.” She tapped on the glass, and the cabbie drew up to an old stone building with shuttered windows.

  Once inside, my curiosity got the better of me. “You must get a lot of hopeful blokes. After hours I mean.”

  “Stage-door johnnies. Worst type, though a girl I know found herself a baron—a penniless one. Here we go.” She unlocked the second door down the hallway and switched on a light. The room was nearly as small as Fritz’s, with a metal bed, a single chair, a sink, and a tiny counter with a one-burner stove. There was a strong odor of perfume, sausages, face powder, and mildew.

  “No, I stay away from them; you
should, too,” she continued. “But Bruno’s our dealer.” She sniffed eloquently.

  I must have looked surprised.

  “You can’t get through three numbers a night, a Saturday matinee, and morning rehearsals on beer and schnapps. Believe me, you can’t.”

  “Did I make things worse?”

  “This clever bloke I know told me that things naturally go from bad to worse. Law of physics, he told me, not that I would know. But no regrets, dearie. Bruno was out of line. I pay him regularly, even if I can’t always pay him on time. He was thinking of a different arrangement,” she said and added, “I’d sooner get a dose of the clap.”

  She took off her coat. “Loo’s down the hall. Give me five minutes.”

  When I returned, she was smoking in bed. I was about to take the chair when she patted the quilt. “No use freezing. And without the lipstick you remind me of Will.”

  I took off my shoes and lay down beside her. “Will?”

  “My brother. First Battle of the Somme,” she said.

  I leaned my head on her shoulder, which must have been the right thing to do, because Muriel talked quietly about her brother, whom she had loved, until I fell asleep.

  She was up all too early the next morning, fiddling with coffee and doing some exercises that required a lot of thumping and stamping. “Rehearsal at eleven,” she said, doing something complicated with her left leg. “You don’t just jump out of bed and put your foot above your head. Have some coffee.” She brought me a cup and sat down beside me with hers.

  “You on the run?” she asked when we were reasonably caffeinated.

  “Rather.”

  “Get out of Berlin.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you have any money?”

  “I’ve a camera I want to sell. A Leica.”

  “Worth something, but the street vendors will steal you blind. You take it to Mort, Mort Grünberg, the Jew who runs the pawnshop off the Alexanderplatz. Tell him Muriel sent you. He’s a nice old fellow, and as honest as you’ll get in the trade.”