“What can you do?” said Mrs. Charalambides.
“We’ll see. Give me your room key.”
“My room key? What for?”
“Just do it.”
She opened an ostrich-leather bag and handed over the key. It was attached to a big brass oval fob. I threaded the key off the fob and handed it back. Then I turned and walked toward our attackers.
“Be careful,” she said.
Another stone sailed over my head.
“Yidd-os! Yidd-os! Yidd-os!”
“That’s enough,” I shouted at them. “The next boy who throws a stone will be under arrest.”
There were maybe twenty of them, aged between ten and sixteen. All blond, with young, hard faces and heads full of the nonsense they heard from Nazis like Richard Bomer. Germany’s future was in their hands. And so were several large stones. When I was about ten meters away I flashed the key fob in the palm of my hand hoping that, from a distance, it might pass for a policeman’s warrant disc. I heard one of them gasp, “He’s a copper,” and I smiled, realizing my trick had worked. They were just a bunch of kids, after all.
“That’s right, I’m a policeman,” I said, still holding the disc out. “Criminal Commissar Adlon, from the Westend Praesidium. And you can all count yourselves lucky that none of these other police officers you attacked are more seriously hurt.”
“Police officers?”
“But they look like yids. Some of them do, anyway.”
“What kind of cops go around dressed as yids?”
“Secret policemen, that’s who,” I said, and slapped the oldest-looking boy hard on his freckled cheek. He started to cry. “These are Gestapo officers on the lookout for a vicious killer who’s been murdering boys in this forest. That’s right. Boys like you. He cuts their throats and then dismembers their bodies. The only reason it hasn’t been in the papers is that we don’t want to cause a panic. And then you mugs come along and nearly blow the whole operation.”
“You can’t blame us, sir,” said another boy. “They looked like yids.”
I slapped him, too. I thought it best they formed an accurate impression of what the Gestapo was really like. That way Germany might have some kind of future, after all.
“Shut up,” I snarled. “And don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. Got that?”
The members of the Hitler Youth troop nodded sullenly.
I took hold of one by his neckerchief.
“You, what have you got to say for yourself?”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Sorry? You could have had that officer’s eye out. I’ve a good mind to tell your fathers to leather the lot of you. Better still, I’ve a good mind to have you all arrested and thrown into a concentration camp. How would you like that, eh?”
“Please, sir. We didn’t mean any harm.”
I let the boy go. By now all of them were looking contrite. They were looking less like Hitler Youth and more like a group of schoolboys. I had them where I wanted them now. I might have been handling a squad back at the Alex. After all, cops do all the same stupid juvenile things that schoolboys do, except the homework.
“All right. We’ll say no more about it this time. And that goes for you, too. Tell no one about this. No one. Do you hear? This is an undercover operation. And the next time you feel inclined to take the law into your own hands, don’t. Not everyone who looks like a Jew really is a Jew. Remember that. Now go home before I change my mind and run you all in for assaulting a police officer. And remember what I said. There’s a vicious murderer at work in these woods, so you’d best stay away from here until you read that he’s been caught.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ll do that, sir.”
I walked back to the little group of tents on the edge of the lake. The light was beginning to fade. The bullfrogs were opening up shop. Fish were jumping in the water. One of the Jews was already casting a line at a widening ripple. The man with the hat wasn’t badly injured. He was smoking one of my cigarettes to steady his nerves.
“What did you say to get rid of them?” asked the Turk.
“I told them all you were undercover cops,” I said.
“And they believed you?” asked Mrs. Charalambides.
“Of course they believed me.”
“But why?” she said. “It’s such an obvious lie.”
“And when did that ever stop the Nazis?” I nodded at the boat. “Get in,” I told her. “We’re leaving.”
I fetched my last cigarette from behind my ear and lit it from a piece of firewood that the Turk brought to me. “I think they’ll leave you alone,” I told him. “I didn’t exactly put the fear of God in them. Just the fear of the Gestapo. But to them that probably means more.”
The Turk laughed. “Thanks, mister,” he said, and shook my hand.
I untied the rope and climbed into the boat alongside Mrs. Charalambides. “That’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few years,” I said, starting the engine. “To lie like you mean it. As long as you can convince yourself of something first, no matter how outrageous, there’s no telling what you can get away with these days.”
“And I thought you had to be a Nazi to be that cynical,” she said.
I think she meant it as a joke, but it didn’t feel good hearing her say it. At the same time, I knew of course that she was right. I was a cynic. In my defense I might have told her I was an ex-cop and that being a cop is to know but one truth, which is that everything you’re told is a lie, but that wouldn’t have sounded good, either. She was right, and it was no good brushing it off with another cynical remark about how the Nazis probably put something in the water, like bromide, that made all of us Germans believe the worst about everyone. I was a cynic. Who wasn’t that lived in Germany?
Not that I could have believed anything bad about Noreen Charalambides. And I certainly didn’t want her to think anything bad about me. There wasn’t a dog muzzle handy, so I folded one lip under another to keep my mouth under control for a while, and then pushed the throttle forward. It’s one thing biting your enemies. It’s quite another when it looks like you might bite your friends. To say nothing of the woman you are falling for.
WE RETURNED THE BOAT and got back into the car. We drove east, into Berlin, along streets full of silent people who probably wanted nothing to do with one another. It had never been a particularly friendly city. Berliners are not known for their great hospitality. But now it was like the town of Hamelin after the children had left. We still had the rats, of course.
Respectable men in well-brushed felt hats and cake-box collars were scurrying home after yet another day spent trying, respectably, to ignore the uniformed and licensed louts who persisted in resting their dirty boots on the country’s best furniture. Bus conductors leaned precariously off their platforms so as to avoid any possibility of conversation with their passengers. These days nobody wanted to speak his mind. They didn’t put that in Baedeker.
At the taxi rank on the corner of Leibnizstrasse, the cabbies were putting up their checkered hoods-a sure sign that the weather was getting cooler. It wasn’t yet cold enough, however, to deter the trio of SA men bravely continuing with their vigilant boycott of a Jewish-owned jewelry store next to the synagogue on Fasanenstrasse.
With their brown leather boots, brown leather cross belts, and brown leather faces, and lit up by the green neon of the Kurfurstendamm, the three Nazis looked prehistoric, reptilian, dangerous, like a bask of hungry crocodiles that had escaped from the aquarium in the Zoological Gardens.
I felt vaguely cold-blooded myself. Like I needed a drink.
“Are you sulking?” she asked.
“Sulking?”
“As in silent protest.”
“It’s the only kind that’s safe these days. Anyway, it’s nothing a drink can’t fix.”
“I could use a drink myself.”
“Only not at the Adlon, eh? Someone will ask me to do something if we go there.” As we neared the junction with Joachimstaler Strasse, I pointed. “There. The Cockatoo Bar.”
“Is that one of your regular haunts, Gunther?”
“No, but it’s someone else’s. Someone you should speak to for your article.”
“Oh? Who?”
“Gypsy Trollmann.”
“That’s right, I remember. The Turk said he’s the doorman at the Cockatoo, didn’t he? And he’s the one who fought Erich Seelig.”
“The Turk didn’t sound like he was one hundred percent positive that Seelig is our Fritz. So perhaps Trollmann can confirm it. When you spend time in the ring with a fellow who’s trying to hit you, you probably get to know his face pretty well.”
“Is he really a Gypsy, or is he just a Gypsy the way Solly Mayer is a Turk?”
“Unfortunately for Trollmann, he is the real thing. You see, it’s not just the Jews the Nazis don’t like. It’s Gypsies, too. And pansies. And Jehovah’s Witnesses. And communists, of course, we mustn’t forget the Reds. So far the Reds have had it toughest of all. I mean, I haven’t yet heard of anyone who’s been executed for being Jewish.”
I thought about repeating Otto Trettin’s story about the falling ax at Plotzensee and rejected the idea. Since I was already going to have to tell her about Gypsy Trollmann, I figured one sad story was all she could handle that evening. Stories certainly didn’t come any sadder than Gypsy Trollmann’s.
