‘I don’t think he’d last the night, sir. Especially if we were to find him something special to wear from his wardrobe. Something artistic, as befits a man of Herr Lange’s sensitivity. Perhaps even a little make-up, eh, sir? He’d look real nice with a bit of lipstick and rouge.’ He chuckled enthusiastically, a natural sadist.
‘I think you had better talk to me, Herr Lange,’ I said.
‘You don’t scare me, you bastards. Do you hear? You don’t scare me.’
‘That’s very unfortunate. Because unlike Kriminalassistant Becker here, I don’t particularly enjoy the prospect of human suffering. But I’m afraid I have no choice. I’d like to do this straight, but quite frankly I just don’t have the time.’
We dragged him upstairs to the bedroom where Becker selected an outfit from Lange’s walk-in wardrobe. When he found some rouge and lipstick Lange roared loudly and took a swing at me.
‘No,’ he yelled. ‘I won’t wear this.’
I caught his fist and twisted his arm behind him.
‘You snivelling little coward. Damn you, Lange, you’ll wear it and like it or so help me we’ll hang you upside down and cut your throat, like all those girls your friends have murdered. And then maybe we’ll just dump your carcass in a beer-barrel, or an old trunk, and see how your mother feels about identifying you after six weeks.’ I handcuffed him and Becker started with the make-up. When he’d finished, Oscar Wilde by comparison would have seemed as unassuming and conservative as a draper’s assistant from Hanover.
‘Come on,’ I growled. ‘Let’s get this Kit-Kat showgirl back to her hotel.’
We had not exaggerated about the night tank at the Alex. It’s probably the same in every big city police station. But since the Alex is a very big city police station indeed, it followed that the tank there is also very big. In fact it is huge, as big as an average cinema theatre, except that there are no seats. Nor are there any bunks, or windows, or ventilation. There’s just the dirty floor, the dirty latrine buckets, the dirty bars, the dirty people and the lice. The Gestapo kept a lot of detainees there for whom there was no room at Prinz Albrecht Strasse. Orpo put the night’s drunks in there to fight, puke, and sleep it off. Kripo used the place like the Gestapo used the canaclass="underline" as a toilet for its human refuse. A terrible place for a human being. Even one like Reinhard Lange. I had to keep reminding myself of what it was that he and his friends had done, of Emmeline Steininger, sitting in that barrel like so many rotten potatoes. Some of the prisoners whistled and blew kisses when they saw us bring him down, and Lange turned pale with fright.
‘My God, you’re not going to leave me here,’ he said, clutching at my arm.
‘Then unpack it,’ I said. ‘Weisthor, Rahn, Kindermann. A signed statement, and you can get a nice cell to yourself.’
‘I can’t, I can’t. You don’t know what they’ll do to me.’
‘No,’ I said, and nodded at the men behind the bars, ‘but I know what they’ll do to you.’
The lock-up sergeant opened the enormous heavy cage and stood back as Becker pushed him into the tank.
His cries were still ringing in my ears by the time I got back to Steglitz.
Hildegard lay asleep on the sofa, her hair spread across the cushion like the dorsal fin of some exotic golden fish. I sat down, ran my hand across its smooth silkiness, and then kissed her forehead, catching the drink on her breath as I did so. Stirring, her eyes blinked open, sad and crusted with tears. She put her hand on my cheek and then on to the back of my neck, pulling me down to her mouth.
‘I have to talk to you,’ I said, holding back.
She pressed her finger against my lips. ‘I know she’s dead,’ she said. ‘I’ve done all my crying. There’s no more water in the well.’
She smiled sadly, and I kissed each eyelid tenderly, smoothing her scented hair with the palm of my hand, nuzzling at her ear, chewing the side of her neck as her arms held me close, and closer still.
‘You’ve had a ghastly evening too,’ she said gently. ‘Haven’t you, darling?’
‘Ghastly,’ I said.
‘I was worried about you going back to that awful house.’
‘Let’s not talk about it.’
‘Put me to bed, Bernie.’
She put her arms around my neck and I gathered her up, folding her against my body like an invalid and carrying her into the bedroom. I sat her down on the edge of the bed and started to unbutton her blouse. When that was off she sighed and fell back against the quilt: slightly drunk I thought, unzipping her skirt and tugging it smoothly down her stockinged legs. Pulling down her slip I kissed her small breasts, her stomach and then the inside of her thighs. But her pants seemed to be too tight, or caught between her buttocks, and resisted my pulling. I asked her to lift her bottom.
‘Tear them,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Tear them off. Hurt me, Bernie. Use me.’ She spoke with breathless urgency, her thighs opening and closing like the jaws of some enormous praying mantis.
‘Hildegard–’
She struck me hard across the mouth.
‘Listen, damn you. Hurt me when I tell you.’
I caught her wrist as she struck again.
‘I’ve had enough for one evening.’ I caught her other arm. ‘Stop it.’
‘Please, you must.’
I shook my head, but her legs wrapped around my waist and my kidneys winced as her strong thighs squeezed tight.
‘Stop it, for God’s sake.’
‘Hit me, you stupid ugly bastard. Did I tell you that you were stupid, too? A typical bone-headed bull. If you were a man you’d rape me. But you haven’t got it in you, have you?’
‘If it’s a sense of grief you’re after, then we’ll take a drive down to the morgue.’ I shook my head and pushed her thighs apart and then away from me. ‘But not like this. It should be with love.’
She stopped writhing and for a moment seemed to recognize the truth of what I was saying. Smiling, then raising her mouth to me, she spat in my face.
After that there was nothing for it but to leave.
There was a knot in my stomach that was as cold and lonely as my apartment on Fasanenstrasse, and almost immediately I arrived home again I enlisted a bottle of brandy in dissolving it. Someone once said that happiness is that which is negative, the mere abolition of desire and the extinction of pain. The brandy helped a little. But before I dropped off to sleep, still wearing my overcoat and sitting in my armchair, I think I realized just how positively I had been affected.
22
Sunday, 6 November
Survival, especially in these difficult times, has to count as some sort of an achievement. It’s not something that comes easily. Life in Nazi Germany demands that you keep working at it. But, having done that much, you’re left with the problem of giving it some purpose. After all, what good is health and security if your life has no meaning?
This wasn’t just me feeling sorry for myself. Like a lot of other people I genuinely believe that there is always someone who is worse off. In this case however, I knew it for a fact. The Jews were already persecuted, but if Weisthor had his way their suffering was about to be taken to a new extreme. In which case what did that say about them and us together? In what condition was that likely to leave Germany?
It’s true, I told myself, that it was not my concern, and that the Jews had brought it on themselves: but even if that were the case, what was our pleasure beside their pain? Was our life any sweeter at their expense? Did my freedom feel any better as a result of their persecution?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized the urgency not only of stopping the killings, but also of frustrating Weisthor’s declared aim of bringing hell down on Jewish heads, and the more I felt that to do otherwise would leave me degraded in equal measure.