At his hotel.
As remembrance flooded back, he jerked bolt upright. He screamed in agony as the whole left side of his body exploded in pain.
There was a sudden hammering on the wall. “Hey, Dummkopf!” a man’s voice shouted. “Shut that hole in your face, or I’ll come shut it for you.”
Hans barely heard it, because images were filling his mind with such rapidity that he could barely take them in. The men waiting for him in the hotel lobby. Karl’s ring slicing his cheek open. Dropping to the floor and curling up in a ball. Boots kicking out at him. The smoldering ruins of the Bayerischer Biergarten.
Moving slowly, Hans raised his right hand and touched his cheek, carefully exploring the seven stitches the doctor had put in the first jagged cut and then the six in the lower one. Even that little movement caused him to groan in pain, but he ignored it. As his hand moved away, it brushed across the stubble on his cheek. He absently scratched at it, a little surprised that it was as thick as it was.
How long had he been unconscious? Had he been out since Karl and the others had left? He turned his head to confirm it was still night outside. So five, maybe six hours? Judging from the sparse traffic outside, it was late at night or maybe early in the morning. For some reason it seemed he had been out even longer than that, but he wasn’t sure why.
Gradually other things began to register. The metallic clanking of the radiator let him know the heat in the hotel was working, not that it was enough to really warm the room. He had a blanket over him, and he was wearing his army shirt and the heavy wool tunic that served as a jacket, but no trousers, nor boots, though he still had on his socks. His body from the waist down was quite cold, and his feet were like blocks of ice.
Raising his head, Hans realized that he had been half holding his breath because of a heavy stench that filled the room. It took him a moment before he registered what it was. In addition to the hotel’s usual smells of dust and mildew and mold and bed bug oil, the air literally reeked of three other things: liquor, urine, and vomit.
The liquor he understood. He remembered now having the taxi driver buy him two bottles of bourbon. But . . .
Hans swore under his breath as he grunted with pain and rolled over onto to his right side. Waiting for the waves of dizziness to pass, Hans pulled himself into a sitting position, gasping audibly as spears of pain radiated through his rib cage. Ignoring them, he looked around, trying to work out what had happened.
Taking a deep breath, Hans stood up. Suddenly, the drummer in his head really put his heart into it, and it felt as though his head might be knocked right off of his shoulders. He closed his eyes, drawing in deep breaths and willing himself to hold on. When the throbbing finally passed, he hobbled over to the door and found the light switch.
The light blinded him at first, so he kept his eyes closed for a few moments. When he finally opened them and looked around the room, he was appalled at what he saw. The few clothes in his wardrobe were scattered on the floor, and it looked like someone had tromped back and forth across them. The contents of his rucksack, which Karl’s men had emptied on the bed, were now scattered across the room. His trousers were wadded up in a ball at the end of the bed.
Shivering violently now, he quickly grabbed them and pulled them on. Then he got his boots and put them on as well. Only then did he continue looking around. Liquor bottles were scattered here and there across the floor. He saw that two of them were the bottles of bourbon. But there were also three other much larger bottles. He hobbled over and stared down at the closest one, recognizing what it was before he could read the label. It was a wine bottle. He was hardly a connoisseur, but he was pretty sure this was one of the cheaper labels. Maybe even watered down somewhat. The other bottle was identical.
Now the stench pressed into his thoughts again. He moved over to the window, and while holding his ribs with one arm, he managed to open it a few inches with his other hand. He stood there for a moment, drawing in the cold, wintry air in deep, hungry gulps. Then he turned back to survey the room. Immediately, he identified the source of odor. In getting out of bed, he had thrown his blanket off to one side. Now the dark stains on the mattress were clearly visible. At almost that same instant, he looked down and saw that the whole front of his tunic was stained from where he had thrown up on it.
The shame coursed through him with sharpening intensity. Had he been so sotted that somewhere along the way he had emptied his bladder without bothering to get up and go down the hall to the toilet? And gotten sick all over the bed and all over himself?
He whirled around, heedless of the stabbing pain, and moved to the door. He yanked it open and stuck his head out. “Georg! Are you down there?”
The same man’s voice sounded almost instantly. “You stupid oaf. Shut up and go to bed.”
Hans ignored him. “Georg!”
After a moment, he heard a chair scrape across the floor, followed by footsteps. Hans opened the door wider and stepped out into the hall. From there he could look down the stairs. A moment later, the young clerk appeared. “Ja, Herr Eckhardt?”
“I need you. Now!”
Hans moved back into his room, leaving the door open. The pimply-faced boy entered the room and shut the door behind him, without being told. Hans saw his nose wrinkle in disgust; then, as he looked around the room, his eyes grew very large.
“Georg! What’s been going on here?” Hans asked.
“What?” He was suddenly nervous.
“Did those men come back? The ones who beat me up?”
“No, sir.”
“Who’s been in my room?”
“Uh . . . I was this morning. You asked me to come see you when I got off shift.”
“Wait. After the doctor left, you called me a taxi, remember?”
“That wasn’t this morning, Herr Eckhardt. That was yesterday morning.”
Hans’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“It was two nights ago that you were beat up, Sergeant.”
“I’ve been here for two days?” Hans was incredulous.
“Yes.” He was clearly relieved to see that Hans was finally accepting what he was saying.
“But . . .”
Georg came a step closer. “I was off shift by the time you came back, but I sleep here at the hotel. My family owns it. When you came back in the taxi, you were real upset, Sergeant. I mean, real, real upset. You kept mumbling something about a fire. Me and the taxi driver had to get you up to your room. We tried to get you to lie down, but you started cursing and swearing at us. You had already started drinking some of the liquor you had with you. So my father said we were to just leave you alone.”
Rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands, Hans nodded. “Go on.”
“Then early this morning, you called down to me again. When I came up here, you told me to take all the money left in your billfold and go buy as much wine as I could get with it.” He looked down at his hands. “You said I could take one mark as a tip for helping you.”
The mention of his billfold triggered a reaction. He had noticed it earlier on the small night table beside the bed. He walked over and got it, opening it as he came back to join Georg. When he saw what was inside, his eyes narrowed. “There’s only one mark here.”
George fell back a step. “Yes, sir, Sergeant Eckhardt. You gave me all the money you had, which was seven marks. I bought three bottles of wine. They cost me five marks.”
Hans was nodding slowly. Things in his head were very hazy, but that rang true to him. He remembered wanting something more to drink. And there were empty wine bottles in the room. Three full jugs of wine explained a lot—the pounding in his head, throwing up, wetting the bed. He had to look away, unable to bear the pity on Georg’s face.
“So,” Georg was saying, “I took one mark as my tip, like you said, and put the other mark back in your billfold. Honest, Sergeant. I wouldn’t steal from you. Especially after what happened to you the other night.”
Hans was n
odding. “I know, Georg. And I am in your debt.” He thought quickly. “Georg. Would you like to earn some more money?”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
“I know that I’ve only got one more mark left, but I’ll get more tomorrow.” Oh, really? And how is that? He brushed the thought aside.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Well, right now, I need you to strip the blanket and sheets off the bed and get me fresh bedding. You may have to replace the mattress cover, too.”
“Ja, ja. I do the beds as part of our service at the hotel. I was going to do it when I came on shift tonight, but I saw you were sleeping, so I didn’t want to wake you up.”
“That’s all right. And can you clean up the room for me? Get rid of the bottles. Hang up my clothes. I’m going to shave and take a bath. Clean myself up a little.”
“Uh. . . .” Georg was crestfallen. “I’m not allowed to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Clean the rooms for guests. We only change the bedding. Papa is very strict about that.”
“Fine,” Hans growled. “I understand.” He blew out his breath, trying to get his brain working again. “Can you at least get me some more aspirin? My head is killing me.”
Georg started to turn away, eager to please. “Ja, I can do that.”
“Wait. I’m famished. I obviously haven’t eaten anything for two days, and—”
“We don’t keep any food in the hotel,” Georg cut in. “I’m sorry.”
“I know that,” he snapped. “I was going to ask if there are any restaurants close by.”
“Ja. There are several over on Danziger Strasse, which is only about four or five blocks from here. But. . . .” He was suddenly embarrassed.
“But what?”
“Well, begging your pardon, Sergeant Eckhardt, but you don’t have any money.” He fished in his pocket. “Do you want your mark back?”
“No. Don’t worry about it. I’ll work something out.” He glanced at his tunic on the bed and then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “But I’ve got a problem, Georg.”
“What?” He was immediately wary again.
“When I was sick, I threw up all over my tunic.” He retrieved his wallet again and removed the one-mark note. “Is there any way you could get the worst of it off for me while I bathe?” He held out the note. “This will be strictly between you and me. Your father doesn’t have to know.”
Georg was clearly interested, but still hesitant.
“You can do it while I bathe and shave off some of this stubble. As soon as I get some money, I’ll give you two more marks. I’m good for it, you know that.”
Finally, the boy nodded. “Uh . . . I will do it.”
“Great. Thanks, Georg. You are a real friend.” And he meant that. “I know your father turns off the hot water at nine o’clock, so the bathwater is going to be cold—”
“Uh . . . but, Sergeant?”
Hans wanted to throw his hands in the air. The kid was eager to help, but so methodical in his thinking. “But what, Georg?”
“Uh . . . it’s ten past ten right now,” he said. “A couple of the larger restaurants stay open until midnight, but they don’t take new customers after eleven. The smaller cafés and bistros mostly close by ten.”
“Oh.” Hans felt like screaming at the ceiling. Couldn’t anything go right for him? But he bit it back and nodded. “All right. No soaking. And I’ll wait until morning to shave. But can you still get the jacket done for me? It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
“Yes, sir.” Georg walked swiftly to the bed and picked it up with two fingers, holding it out away from him, his nose wrinkling.
“Gut. I’ll start the bath. Bring the aspirin to the bathroom, okay?”
“Ja.” He was out the door and starting down the hall when Hans called after him.
“I am paid up through the end of the month for my room, right?”
“Yes.”
Well, Hans. The bitterness was like bile in his mouth. At least you did one thing right.
10:45 p.m.—Danziger Strasse, Prenzlauer Berg District, Berlin
As Hans turned left onto Danziger Strasse, moving as rapidly as the pain in his side would allow, he saw that Georg had been right. There were cafés, cantinas, bistros, beer halls, and restaurants scattered along both sides of the wide thoroughfare, but most of them were now dark.
He was shivering pretty badly in spite of his exertions. The overhead sky was clear, and the temperature was well below freezing now. To make things worse, the whole front of Hans’s woolen tunic was still damp, and that made his shirt and undershirt damp as well. Even with his hands jammed into his trouser pockets, he could feel the cold seeping into his bones—which did not numb the pain but only exacerbated it.
He passed up two restaurants with French names and settled on a smaller place named Schnitzel and Strudel and walked over to the door. Through the main window he could see that the café was nearly empty. Two couples were at one table. A single man was at another. Hesitating for only a moment, Hans pushed the door open and went inside. He stopped and drew in a deep breath. The blast of warm air was filled with the most delicious smells he could imagine.
A middle-aged waitress in a simple grey dress came over. “One, sir?”
“Uh . . . yeah. But . . . is the owner here?”
She shrugged, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. “That’s him behind the bar.” She eyed Hans up and down, her eyes narrowing as they focused on the yellow and brown bruises surrounding the ugly gashes on his cheek and the stitches that protruded from it like the legs of a caterpillar. Her nose wrinkled in disgust as she sniffed the air, which confirmed Hans’s feeling that while Georg had done a good job in getting the encrusted residue of vomit off of his coat, it was going to take a lot more than that to get the smell out of it. When the odor hit the waitress, she pointed to the door. “Out!”
Face burning with embarrassment, Hans slunk out as everyone turned to look at him.
11:40 p.m.
Retracing his steps, Hans tried the two French restaurants. The results were the same. The first one gave him a flat no. The second one saw him coming and hurriedly locked the door just as he reached it. By that time, few places were still open. Those that were open refused to even talk to him.
The utter bleakness of life settled down on Hans as he watched the lights in the last of the eating establishments on Danziger Strasse go out. He was cold, wet, hungry, aching with pain, and utterly exhausted. He had a few Pfennige in his pocket, but other than that he had no money, no identity card, no ration book, no railway pass.
Even if he put aside his pride and went to either Emilee or his family for help—which he was not yet ready to do yet—he had no way of contacting them to let them know he was in trouble. He didn’t have enough for a phone call. And even if he did, it was beyond his capacity to walk to the nearest telephone exchange.
Too weary to continue, he sat down on the curb and put his head in his hands. How quickly things can turn. Sunday night, he was waving two thousand marks under Emilee’s nose. Now he was a battered drunk who wet his pants and threw up on himself.
But the hunger in him was too desperate to allow him wallow in his self-pity for very long. He had to have food. The combination of bitter cold, prolonged pain, and no food was sapping the last of his strength rapidly. Did he even have the stamina to hold off until morning, until he could find another Fritzie Kharkov who would let him clear tables and turn his back when he pilfered the scraps from the plates?
His head came up slowly at that last thought. He had once done exactly that. Scavenged the leftovers from others’ plates and then sneaked into the back alley to eat them before he was discovered. Biting back the pain, he got to his feet and began looking around. Maybe he hadn’t hit rock bottom quite yet.
11:48 p.m.—Wedermeyer Gasse, near Danziger Strasse, Berlin
With his strength ebbing fast, Hans moved pretty slowly, but eventually he sa
w an unmarked passageway between two buildings. He turned into it, barely daring to hope. Fifty feet further in, it came to a T. Peering up at the street sign, he was gratified to read “Wedermeyer Gasse.” In the near darkness, it looked like one side of the alley was lined with apartment houses that butted right up against the street. But the other side? Hans actually smiled. He could see the small loading dock of the nearest building. Barely visible was a sign painted on the bricks: Danziger Café. He shuffled forward, jaw set in a tight line.
He knew he would be lucky to find anything. Food rationing was still in effect, and food shortages were virtually everywhere. Fewer people were eating in commercial establishments, and those that did were less likely to leave anything on their plates. But human nature being what it was, he hoped that his search would not be entirely unsuccessful. He headed for the loading dock.
There was one street lamp near the far end of the alley, but it didn’t give much light this far away. So, careful to not make any noise, Hans spread newspapers and pieces of cardboard on the ground and then dumped the trash out a little at a time. He would paw through it slowly. What few edibles he did find were cold—in some cases even frozen—and were typically mixed with the scrapings from the plates. Twice as he bit into what he found he nearly gagged because the food was spoiled. In those cases he threw it aside, not daring to risk food poisoning.
It didn’t matter how bad it was. It was food. Disciplining himself, he ate slowly, fighting the urge to wolf it down. And all the while he forced himself to ignore the fact that instead of cold, greasy gravy or soggy bread or slivers of gristle and fat off of a discarded ham bone, he could be eating his mother’s Bavarian Leberkäse—liver meatloaf—or her Weisswurst—veal and pork sausage flavored with onions and fresh parsley. And then he would top it all off with torte and fresh whipped cream.
He thrust the thoughts aside. Graswang was an option that was looking more and more attractive, but tonight, his focus was twofold. Get enough food to fill his stomach, and watch out for such things as half-eaten apples or discarded rolls that he could put in the pockets of his greatcoat to take back with him to the hotel. Then he had to get back to the hotel so he could collapse in exhaustion.
Fire and Steel, Volume 2 Page 25
