The Butchers of Berlin

by Chris Petit

  His mother rolled her eyes. ‘So American. Is he seen talking on the telephone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In uniform or out of uniform?’

  ‘I have no idea. Out, I suppose.’

  ‘Uncomfortable in a civilian suit, I would imagine. He would have been talking to a call girl.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘They’re all call girls there.’

  ‘That’s just another of your sweeping statements.’

  ‘He talks disparagingly enough about you.’

  He couldn’t tell if this was her mischief or true.

  ‘They’re all such terrific intriguers. None is satisfied until things achieve Venetian proportions. Does any of that reach down to you?’

  She was being disingenuous. It was a loaded question. His lack of ambition disappointed her.

  Schlegel was reminded of her remark when he found himself standing soon after in the garden for what was known as one of those little talks. Nebe used a cigarette holder, which he held cupped from underneath, a dandy’s touch.

  Nebe had found him in the morning room and asked for a word. His mother had just gone upstairs to change. Schlegel suspected the timing was deliberate.

  Nebe wanted to speak outdoors, which struck Schlegel as unnecessary.

  They didn’t even walk but stood on the lawn.

  Nebe asked, ‘Do you think it wise that you should be running around with homicide?’

  He made it sound like the choice had been Schlegel’s.

  It was cold, the grass damp underfoot. Nebe’s smoke hung in the still air. A ragged chorus of crows came from the nearby woods. Two gunshots sounded. The crows flew up into the grey sky. Schlegel supposed it was his stepfather seeing what he could bag. The last time he was there his mother said, ‘I would rather starve than eat more rabbit.’

  ‘Tell me about this flayed body,’ Nebe went on. ‘What did it look like?’

  ‘Like something out of a butcher’s shop.’

  ‘Any closer to finding the Jews that did it?’

  ‘No one has got around to compiling their lists.’

  ‘Why don’t the bloody Jews just use the arrests lists?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir, but they were quite adamant about having to do their own.’

  ‘Bureaucracy! Nobody’s happy until everything is done twice. What’s with the other case? Stoffel tells me you are writing the report on that too.’

  Schlegel said the only outstanding feature was why the block warden had been shot.

  Nebe appeared to find that funny. ‘Because most of them are ghastly little tinpot dictators.’

  It was an odd statement. Was Nebe being critical in a wider sense? Was he making a veiled political remark?

  Schlegel saw what his mother meant. Slippery slope.

  ‘Don’t waste time on it.’ Nebe looked at Schlegel archly. ‘It is not as though homicide is your beat.’

  ‘They were short, sir. I had to fill in.’

  ‘Good party, was it?’

  He should have guessed. Nebe had spies everywhere.

  ‘That flaying, are you telling me the suspects are all in custody, even if you can’t find them?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘They’ll be gone soon. Save yourself the paperwork.’

  He gave Schlegel a light touch on the shoulder to signal their chat was done. Casual superiority was the man’s style.

  Nebe paused on the terrace as they prepared to go back in through the French windows. ‘That double shooting.’

  Schlegel said there was a shortage of character witnesses. It was too complicated to explain about the palm-reader. He could picture Nebe’s look of incredulity if he told him how the woman had read his fortune in the middle of a roundup.

  ‘Nevertheless, go easy. The man may have been someone’s agent.’

  Schlegel presumed he meant the block warden.

  ‘No! The Jew. Don’t go digging up skeletons.’

  ‘Can you say whose agent, so I know where not to dig?’

  Nebe became vague. The question went unanswered. His gaze was that of a born dissembler, leaving Schlegel uncomfortable at the prospect of being drawn into his web. The floated initiative, rather than anything resembling a straightforward order, was typical.

  If the old man had shot himself because he had been spying on his own people that changed everything.

  9

  They were on the S-Bahn to Börse for Oranienburger Strasse, passing the giant flak tower, followed by the street camouflage, hung like circus safety nets over main thoroughfares, as if waiting to catch something. Sybil was more than usually aware of the money belt strapped to her waist. Life from now on would become a series of erasures, eaten away by the constant gnawing in the pit of the stomach.

  She whispered that she was for abandoning the meeting. They should get off. It was too dangerous. Too much had happened.

  The train stopped at Tiergarten. Most trees were gone, cut down.

  Sybil saw how useless her previous way of thinking was. Untrammelled imagination was of no use now. Everything had to be stripped down. Raw animal instinct was needed. Their bodies had to become like antennae that learned to calculate the exact moment when to cross a road or leave to avoid getting caught.

  Lore whispered, ‘We take a look. Too dangerous, we leave. Don’t worry.’

  They became synchronised after that. Sybil knew Lore would get off a stop early. Lore seemed to enjoy the risk.

  She made them wait at a bus stop across the street from the Association, housed in an old synagogue whose dome was a local landmark. They watched for ten minutes. Those allowed in and out wore a special armband which they didn’t have. When one young man left the building Lore set off after him.

  Once around the corner of Auguststrasse she approached the young man, gave her most charming smile, and explained what they needed.

  He wanted to know what was in it for him.

  Lore pointed at Sybil and said, ‘My friend will show you a nice time.’

  Lore winked at Sybil and Sybil winked at the man.

  Lore said, ‘For two minutes of your time.’

  When he agreed and went off Sybil asked, ‘Why him?’

  ‘He was the first one that looked enough of a mug.’

  The young man returned with an envelope addressed in the name of Hecht, inside of which was an address to the south towards Kreuzberg in Lindenstrasse. Sybil thought it about a thirty-minute walk.

  When the young man asked for his reward, Sybil surprised herself by telling him to fuck off. Her language shocked her as much as her decisiveness.

  Ten minutes later they were laughing about it.

  Lore said, ‘Look at all the couples out on their Sunday stroll. That’s us.’

  The address turned out to be a gramophone shop. This being Sunday, it was closed. Sybil feared a trap. Lore was relaxed.

  ‘Hang around ten minutes, then we go.’

  They left after five. As they did, a tall man of cadaverous appearance approached and pointed down the side of a building to a garage with a door inside a larger one. His gestures were economical. Seeing Sybil hesitate he turned on his heel. She was forced to grab his sleeve to prevent him leaving, which was when she committed them.

  The man ushered them through the door after unlocking it. Inside was an empty space, apart from a motorbike and sidecar stored under a groundsheet.

  Sybil said, ‘There are two of us now. We need papers.’

  He asked if she had money. He ignored Lore.

  She said she had even though he could produce a gun and take everything she had.

  With that he seemed to take pity and asked if she could type. She couldn’t.

  ‘I suggest you learn. We can give you papers that say you are a secretary. Then you will always be able to find work. I only need your photographs now. Regrettably there is a fee.’

  Lore could have taken the photographs. She had a camera and tripod. Not being told anythi
ng seemed to be part of the process.

  The man named his price. Sybil complained it was too much. He said she was free to go elsewhere. He did it this way because the police kept a watch on commercial developers.

  The man looked away while Sybil fished in her underwear. His shoes didn’t quite match. Sybil felt at the limits of her identity, watching two young women on the point of abandoning their previous life, with everything dependent on a squalid and possibly untrustworthy financial exchange.

  The man made a point of smelling the money before taking them to a small studio room with a photographer’s lamp and a camera on a stand.

  Sybil took off her hat and tidied her hair as best she could. There was no mirror. She stared at the lens, trying to look cheerful. Signing away her life, she thought. When it came to her turn, Lore contrived to convey inner amusement.

  The man looked like someone with too much on his mind. Could they even be sure they would see him again? They were like babes in the wood.

  He said, ‘Go to the Café Bollenmüller tomorrow in the lunch hour and I will deliver the developed photographs and tell you where to go for your papers.’

  On the way back Sybil thought about what they were committing themselves to. Flop houses and dives must exist, but she knew nothing about that world. She feared she might have to sell her body. If that were the price of survival, would it be so awful? This new kind of thinking surprised her.

  Lore said, ‘I have an idea.’

  10

  Nebe was back at Schlegel’s mother’s that afternoon, which was no surprise, for one of her Sunday dos. These select parties, for all their impromptu air, were rigorously planned. Nebe came in uniform again and sat drinking mint tea, chatting to a contingent of select wives, who were allowed to be attractive but not as beautiful as Schlegel’s mother.

  This time Nebe was the master of cordial distance, raising his tea cup in acknowledgement of Schlegel. They spoke briefly, not about work, as was the form. Nebe’s talk was along the lines of ‘How are you, dear boy?’ as if they hadn’t seen each other in months, and ‘Doesn’t your mother look wonderful?’ She did. Svelte and feral, with her perfect figure, however much she complained of being flat-chested.

  Francis Alwynd also came. The Irish poet was seen as a big social catch, being wild and mystical, with a romantic background that included republican insurrection and internment by the British.

  Schlegel hadn’t seen him in a while. He turned up with an attractive young woman.

  Alwynd greeted him with a knowing smile and a mock salute. ‘It has been far too long. Fine nights we had.’

  Schlegel had once been deputed to look after him because he had English when Alwynd spoke no German, other than a phonetic nonsense. They had knocked around together, listening to jazz and getting drunk, until Schlegel decided Alwynd was more interested in his students, bedded in quick succession. The university was almost all girls, and it let Alwynd teach writers banned in Ireland. He told Schlegel he thought he had died and gone to heaven.

  He came to the party dressed as usual in a fisherman’s polo neck and corduroys. After looking around at the assembled dignitaries he announced in his usual roguish and tactless way that these days you had to go to concentration camps to hear the best jazz.

  ‘Fritz Weiss plays regularly in Theresienstadt and I am reliably told the Ghetto Swingers offer an outstanding form of Nigger jazz without objection from the SS.’

  Alwynd grinned and recalled long drunken nights they had spent at his apartment playing and trading jazz records, which young soldiers on leave brought from abroad.

  ‘One came from Amsterdam, remember?’ Alwynd reminisced in his distracted way. ‘He told us of first-class jazz clubs, with a black music scene from Surinam. Mike Hidalgo was the musician’s name, that’s right. He had a big German following.’

  They had played his records and clicked their fingers, and drunkenly argued over whether Surinam was in the Dutch East Indies or the Caribbean.

  Alwynd made a point of including the young woman in his stories. The talk was just skating, Schlegel saw. The real conversation lay in the meaningful looks passing between Alwynd and the girl. He was jealous.

  Schlegel thought of the flayed body, the dead man’s medal, as he listened politely to Alwynd explain to her how they used to dine together.

  ‘Sometimes we went to Stockler’s and sat among the prosperous businessmen and their well-dressed wives.’

  Schlegel supposed there was little for Alwynd to do except fuck and Berlin offered plenty of opportunity with its men away.

  ‘You used to complain about everything being slathered in mustard sauce.’

  ‘Mea culpa. Never again. Even the embassies these days are pushed to turn out a decent meal. Alas, no more. Such fine nights.’

  His expression grew dreamy. He put his arm around the young woman.

  ‘Time for Francis to lie down. My fondest to your mother. She’s busy. We’ll slip away.’

  His mother was having one of her floating afternoons. Whatever combination accounted for her heightened state, it was a fine balance. Schlegel listened to his stepfather making a date with Nebe to attend the Arc de Triomphe. His horse had come fifth the year before.

  ‘We’ve never gone much for rice, on the whole,’ said one of the wives.

  The voice in his head said: Pick up the gun. It makes more sense than this.

  His stepfather announced he had a stallion with a terrific tool he was putting out to stud. His mother said the Hungarians were all right if you got enough drink down them.

  Later she said, ‘You seem more cheerful these days.’

  Schlegel could not be bothered to disagree. His diffidence so annoyed her that he made a point of it. ‘Your dress looks nice. New?’

  ‘Not so new.’

  ‘I seem to have lost my hat.’

  ‘Not the one from Jermyn Street?’

  It had been shipped from London via Switzerland, probably picked up by his stepfather on one of his visits to Zurich. Schlegel wondered why when he couldn’t see the difference between a hat from Jermyn Street and one by Mühlbauer.

  As for ending up in the RKPA Financial Crimes Office, he dimly suspected his career had been taken care of by unspecified spheres of influence and if forced he would say his stepfather had gone to his old pal Nebe and asked him to help out with his troubled stepson. As a teenager Schlegel had gone through what was referred to as his delinquent phase, culminating in arrest for shoplifting in KaDeWe, which his mother considered not quite beneath her as a department store.

  Prison was avoided. He was ordered to get a proper haircut and be examined by a psychiatrist. He was sent away to construct roads and learned to cope with being picked on and beaten up because he was thought Jewish, being circumcised.

  He was supposed to enlist in the cavalry after that but failed the medical.

  When he told his mother he was working in financial investigations she tried not to sound disappointed. ‘I suppose you always were good at figures,’ she said, which was not true.

  That afternoon, as he was leaving, a woman said to his mother, ‘I have a seamstress near Savignyplatz. I suspect she’s a Yid.’

  ‘Can you tell?’ his mother asked in her most offhand manner.

  ‘I couldn’t care either way. It’s not my job to catch them but she does lovely work and I would be sorry to lose her.’

  11

  Francis Alwynd’s visitors were a surprise, to say the least. The girl Lore had been one of his brighter students, keen on Lawrence and Joyce. She spoke good English and professed to share his love of poetry. She remained one of the few he hadn’t had. Her sexual preference did not extend to men, which made her all the more desirable. The other young woman he knew only enough to assess her as amenable.

  He was drily amused to find them standing like a couple of waifs on his doorstep. Because he encouraged students to drop round he was used to the unexpected. To most he appeared an exceptionally privileged figur
e, with his own large apartment overlooking Hochmeisterplatz.

  For all his otherworldly air, Alwynd viewed his sexual liaisons as commercial transactions. Frequent food parcels from Ireland were a luxurious booty that gave him bartering power in his conquests. He dressed the transactions with good manners and consideration. The rich English woman with the dull manufacturer husband, redeemed by his love of racing, whose guest he had just been, called him a soft predator, offered in admiration.

  Lore knew the back of Alwynd’s apartment had a servants’ room, with its own stairs. Alwynd was casual about letting people stay, for reasons of loneliness, she suspected. She also had a hold over him because those he used were quickly discarded. He had confided to being homesick, in spite of loathing everything about the old country. He said the Germans had produced nothing of note since the nineteenth century. The current regime accommodated him well enough as it let him teach writers banned in Ireland. His own references, he cheerfully told Lore and anyone else who would listen, lay in pagan myth, early Christian mystics and the sexually explicit.

  He was a head taller than his visitors. He stood barefoot, in a shirt hanging out and trousers. He could see the other woman had guessed he had a visitor in his bed. He was done with her for now, which left him in the mood to entertain.

  ‘Well, it has been a long time. Come in. There may even be some real tea. I have supplies from home.’

  Because he always spoke English, which Lore had to translate, Sybil tended not to go when Lore and Alwynd met, thinking herself a burden. There was something else. Alwynd was a tall, big-boned man with a shock of dark hair, handsome in a brooding Celtic way, whose faraway look occasionally snapped into a gaze of blatant sexual demand.

  Lore had told Sybil they should come clean with Alwynd, admit they were Jewish and ask if they could stay a few days. She suspected Alwynd had guessed anyway. In discussions on Joyce’s Ulysses he had repeated several times, ‘Of course, Leopold Bloom was a Jew. Yes, that’s right.’ He said it took a brave man to make a hero of a Jew in Ireland.

  Furthermore, Alwynd accepted that he and Lore had poetry in common, which he considered rare, and declared he cared nothing for social convention. The man marched to the beat of his own drum, Lore said, on top of which he was always laughing at Germans as sticklers for social observance.