Unter den Linden was still empty; here and there, a shell struck a façade or a pile of rubble. My ears were still ringing from the Frenchman’s machine-gun volley. I began running toward the Brandenburg Gate. I had to get out of the city at all costs, it had become a monstrous trap. My information was already a day old, but I knew that the only way out was to go through the Tiergarten and then by the Ost-West-Achse down to the Adolf-Hitler-Platz; then I’d see. The day before, that side of the city still wasn’t sealed off, some Hitlerjugend still held the bridge over the Havel, Wannsee was in our hands. If I can reach Thomas’s place, I said to myself, I’m saved. The Pariser Platz, in front of the still relatively intact Gate, was strewn with overturned, wrecked, burned-out vehicles; in the ambulances, charred corpses still wore on their extremities white casts made of plaster of Paris, which doesn’t burn. I heard a powerful rumbling noise: a Russian tank passed behind me, sweeping wrecked cars in front of it; several Waffen-SS were perched on top, they must have captured it. It stopped right next to me, fired, then started off in a clatter of treads; one of the Waffen-SS observed me indifferently. The tank turned right into the Wilhelmstrasse and disappeared. A little farther on, down Unter den Linden, between the lampposts and the rows of shredded trees, I glimpsed a human shape through the smoke, a man in civilian clothes with a hat. I began running again and, threading between the obstacles, went through the Gate, black with smoke, riddled with bullets and shrapnel.
Beyond lay the Tiergarten. I left the road and dove into the trees. Aside from the whirring of flying mortar shells and distant explosions, the park was strangely silent. The Nebelkrähe, those hooded crows whose hoarse cries always resound through the Tiergarten, had all left, fleeing the constant shelling for a safer place: no Sperrkommando in the sky, no flying court-martial for birds. How lucky they are, and they don’t even know it. Corpses sprawled among the trees; and all along the pathways, sinister, swayed the hanged. It began to rain again, a light rain through which the sun still shone. The bushes in the flowerbeds had blossomed, the smell of rose bushes mingled with that of corpses. From time to time I turned around: between the trees, I seemed to glimpse the silhouette following me. A dead soldier was still holding his Schmeisser; I grabbed it, aimed it at the silhouette, pulled the trigger; but the weapon was jammed and I threw it furiously into a bush. I had hoped not to stray too far from the main road, but on that side I saw movement, vehicles, and I moved deeper into the park. To my right, the Victory Column rose above the trees, hidden by its protective coverings and still obstinately standing. In front of me several pools of water blocked the path: instead of heading back toward the road, I decided to skirt round them toward the canal, where I used to go, a very long time ago, prowling the night in search of pleasure. From there, I said to myself, I’ll cut through the zoo and go lose myself in Charlottenburg. I crossed the canal over the bridge where I had had that curious altercation with Hans P., one night. Beyond, the wall of the zoo had collapsed in several places, and I climbed up over the rubble. Sustained fire came from the large bunker, light cannon shots and machine-gun volleys.
This part of the zoo was completely flooded: the bombardments had ripped open the Aquarium and the fish tanks had burst, pouring out tons of water, strewing the lanes with dead fish, crayfish, crocodiles, jellyfish, a panting dolphin that, lying on its side, contemplated me with a worried eye. I waded forward, around the baboon island where babies clutched with minuscule hands the stomachs of their panicking mothers, I wove between parrots, dead monkeys, a giraffe whose long neck hung over a railing, bleeding bears. I entered a half-destroyed building: in a large cage, an immense black gorilla was sitting, dead, a bayonet stuck in its chest. A river of black blood flowed between the bars and mingled with the pools of water. This gorilla looked surprised, astonished; its wrinkled face, its open eyes, its enormous hands, seemed frighteningly human to me, as if it were on the point of talking to me. Beyond this building stretched a long enclosed pond: a hippopotamus was floating in the water, dead, the fin of a mortar shell stuck in its back; another one was lying on a platform, riddled with shrapnel, dying in long, heavy gasps. The water overflowing from the pool was soaking the clothes of two Waffen-SS lying there; a third one rested, leaning against a cage, his eyes blank, his machine gun across his legs. I wanted to go on but I heard bursts of Russian voices, mixed with the trumpeting of a panic-stricken elephant. I hid behind a bush and then turned back to go around the cages across a kind of little bridge. Clemens barred my path, his feet in a puddle at the end of the footbridge, his wet hat still dripping with rainwater, his automatic in his hand. I raised my hands, as in the movies. “You made me run,” Clemens panted. “Weser is dead. But I got you.”—“Kriminalkommissar Clemens,” I hissed, out of breath from running, “don’t be ridiculous. The Russians are a hundred meters away. They’ll hear your gunshot.”—“I should drown you in a pool, you piece of shit,” he belched, “sew you up in a bag and drown you. But I don’t have time.”—“You haven’t even shaved, Kriminalkommissar Clemens,” I bellowed, “and you want to pass judgment on me!” He gave an abrupt laugh. A gunshot rang out, his hat came down over his face, and he fell like a block across the bridge, his head in a puddle of water. Thomas stepped out from behind a cage, a carbine in his hands, a large, delighted smile on his lips. “As usual, I arrive just in time,” he said happily. He glanced at Clemens’s massive body. “What did he want with you?”—“He was one of those two cops. He wanted to kill me.”—“Stubborn guy. Still for the same business?”—“Yes. I don’t know, they’ve gone mad.”—“You haven’t been very smart, either,” he said to me severely. “They’re looking for you everywhere. Müller is furious.” I shrugged and looked around. It had stopped raining, the sun shone through the clouds and made the wet leaves on the trees and the patches of water in the lanes glisten. I could still make out a few scraps of Russian voices: they must have moved a little farther off, behind the monkey enclosure. The elephant trumpeted again. Thomas, his carbine leaning on the railing of the little bridge, had crouched down next to Clemens’s body; he had pocketed the policeman’s automatic and was rummaging through his clothes. I passed behind him and looked to that side, but there was no one. Thomas had turned toward me and was waving a thick wad of reichsmarks: “Look at that,” he said, laughing. “A gold mine, your cop.” He put the bills in his pocket and kept searching. Next to him, I saw a thick iron bar, torn from a nearby cage by an explosion. I picked it up, weighed it, then brought it down with all my strength on the nape of Thomas’s neck. I heard his vertebrae crack and he toppled over like a log, across Clemens’s body. I dropped the bar and contemplated the bodies. Then I turned Thomas over, his eyes were still open, and unbuttoned his tunic. I undid my own and quickly switched jackets with him before turning him onto his stomach again. I inspected the pockets: along with the automatic and Clemens’s banknotes were Thomas’s papers, those of the Frenchman from the STO, and some cigarettes. I found the keys to his house in his pants pocket; my own papers had stayed in my jacket.