'Kind of odd, though, wouldn't you say?' I remarked. 'I mean, I haven't heard of anyone else who's got the flu.'
'As a matter of fact,' he said, 'we've had several cases. There's a case on the next ward. We're very concerned that it will spread. I'm sure I don't have to remind you of the last serious outbreak of flu, in 1918. And of how many died. You remember that, don't you?'
'Better than you,' I said.
'For that reason alone,' he said, 'the occupation authorities are anxious to contain the possible spread of any infection. Which is why we'd like to seek your permission to order an immediate cremation. In order to prevent the virus from spreading. I appreciate that this is a very difficult time for you, Herr Gunther. Losing your wife at such a young age must be dreadful. I can only guess what you must be going through right now. But we wouldn't ask for your full cooperation in this matter unless we thought it important.'
He was giving it plenty of choke, as well he needed to after the master class in cold-blooded indifference exhibited by his stiff-necked colleague, Dr. Effner. I let him rev some more, hardly liking to intercept his continuing effusions of sympathy with what I was really thinking, which was that before being a spinner in the Max Planck, Kirsten had been a real blue, always drunk, and before then, something of a slut, especially with the Americans. In Berlin, immediately after the war, I had suspected that she was little more than a snapper, doing it for chocolate and cigarettes. So many others had done the same, of course, although perhaps with a little less obvious enjoyment. Somehow it seemed only appropriate that the Americans should have their way with Kirsten in death. After all, they'd had their way with her often enough while she had been alive. So when the doctor had finished whispering his pitch, I nodded and said, 'All right, we'll play it your way, Doc. If you think it's really necessary.'
'Well, it's not so much me as the Amis,' he said. 'After what happened in 1918, they're really worried about an epidemic in the city.'
I sighed. 'When do you want to do it?'
'As soon as possible,' he said. 'That is, immediately. If you don't mind.'
'I'd like to see her first,' I said.
'Yes, yes, of course,' he said. 'But try not to touch her, okay? Just in case.' He found me a surgical mask. 'You'd better wear this,' he added. 'We've already opened the windows to help air the room, but there's no point in taking any risks.'
NINE
The next day I traveled out to Dachau to see Kirsten's family lawyer and give him the news. Krumper had been handling the sale of the hotel, but so far without success. It seemed that nobody wanted to buy a hotel in Dachau any more than he wanted to stay in one. Krumper's offices were above the marketplace. From the window behind his desk there was a fine view of St. Jakob's and the town hall and the fountain in front of the town hall that always put me in mind of a urinal. His office was very like a building site except that there were piles of files and books on the floor instead of bricks and planks.
Krumper was bound to a wheelchair because of a hip injury he had received during one of Munich's many air raids. Monocled and grouchy, with a cartoon voice and a pipe to match, he was shabby but competent. I liked him in spite of the fact that he had been born in Dachau and lived there all his life without ever having thought to inquire what was happening east of the town. Or so he said. He was very sorry to hear the news of Kirsten's death. Lawyers are always sorry to lose a good client. I waited for the expressions of sympathy to subside and then asked if he thought I should drop the price of the hotel.
'I don't think so,' he said carefully. 'I'm sure somebody will buy it, although perhaps not as a hotel. As a matter of fact there was a woman here just yesterday asking about the place. She had some questions I wasn't able to answer, and I took the liberty of giving her your business card. I hope that was all right, Herr Gunther.'
'Did she have a name?'
'She said her name was Frau Schmidt.' He put aside his pipe, flipped open the cigarette box on his desk, and invited me to take one. I lit us both as he continued. 'A good-looking woman. Tall. Very tall. With three little scars on the side of her face. Shrapnel scars probably. Not that she seemed at all self-conscious of them. Most women would have grown their hair a bit so that you wouldn't notice. Not her, though. And not that it really spoiled her looks at all. But then it's not every woman who would feel confident of that, is it?'
Krumper had just described the woman who had turned up at my office the previous evening. And I had an idea that she wasn't interested in buying a hotel.
'No indeed,' I said. 'Maybe she's in a dueling society, like the Teutonia Club. Bragging scars to make her more attractive to some lout with a rapier in his hand. What was that crap the kaiser used to say about those old clubs? The best education a young man can get for his future life.'
'You paint a very vivid picture, Herr Gunther,' said Krumper, fingering a small scar on his cheekbone as if he, too, had enjoyed the kind of education favored by the kaiser. For a moment or two he was silent, opening a file that lay on his overcrowded desk. 'Your wife left a will,' he said. 'Leaving everything to her father. She hadn't made a new will since his death. But as her next of kin you inherit everything anyway. The hotel. A few hundred marks. Some pictures. And a car.'
'A car?' This was news to me. 'Kirsten owned a car?'
'Her father's. He kept it hidden throughout the war.'
'I think he was probably quite good at keeping things hidden,' I said, thinking of the box his SS friend had buried in the garden. I was certain he must have known about it, contrary to what the American who dug it up had believed.
'In a garage on Donauworther Landstrasse.'
'You mean that old Fulda tire place on the road to Kleinberghofen?' Krumper nodded. 'What kind of a car?'
'I don't know much about cars,' said Krumper. 'I saw him in it before the war. Very proud of it, he was. Some sort of duo-tone cabriolet. Of course, business was better then and he could afford to run it. At the beginning of the war he even buried the wheels to stop anyone requisitioning it.' Krumper handed me a set of car keys. 'And I know he looked after it, even though he didn't drive it. I'm sure it will be in good running order.'
A few hours later I was driving back to Munich in a handsome-looking two-door Hansa 1700 that looked as good as it had the day it left the Goliath works in Bremen. I went straight to the hospital, collected Kirsten's ashes, and then drove all the way back to Dachau and the Leitenberg Cemetery, where I had arranged to meet the local undertaker, Herr Gartner. I handed over her cremains and arranged for a short service of remembrance the following afternoon.
When I got back to my apartment in Schwabing, I tried some of the anesthetic again. This time it didn't work. I felt as lonely as a fish in a toilet bowl. I had no relations and no friends to speak of other than the guy in the bathroom mirror, who used to say hello in the morning. Lately even he had stopped speaking to me and seemed, more often than not, to greet me with a sneer, as if I had become obnoxious to him. Maybe we had all become obnoxious. All of us Germans. There were none of us the Americans looked at with anything other than quiet contempt, except perhaps the party-girls and the snappers. And you didn't need to be Hanussen the clairvoyant to read the minds of our new friends and protectors. How could you let it happen? they asked. How could you do what you did? It's a question I had often asked myself. I didn't have an answer. I don't think any of us will ever have an answer. What possible answer could there ever be? It was just something that happened in Germany once, about a thousand years ago.
TEN
About a week later she came back. The tall one. Tall women are always better than short ones, especially the kind of tall women that short men seem to favor, who really aren't that tall, they just seem that way. This one wasn't quite as tall as the hoop on a basketball court, but a lot of her was just hair and a hat and high heels and hauteur. She had plenty of that. She looked as if she needed help as much as Venice needed rain. That's something I appreciate in a client. I enjoy being pitched at by someone who's not used to words like 'please' and 'thank you.' It brings out the 'forty-eighter in me. Sometimes even the Spartacist.
'I need your help, Herr Gunther,' she said, sitting down very carefully on the edge of my creaking green
