Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

A terrible roaring filled my ears, as if a grenade had burst directly in front of my face, and, for a second his fingers seemed to loosen. I lunged at his head and connected with the empty space that was now mercifully signalled by an abruptly terminated stump of bloody human vertebra. A tree, or perhaps a telegraph pole, had neatly decapitated him.

My chest a heaving sack of rabbits, I collapsed back into the carriage, too exhausted to yield to the wave of nausea that was beginning to overtake me. But after only a few seconds more I could no longer resist it and, summoned forward by the sudden contraction of my stomach, I vomited copiously over the dead soldier’s body.

It was several minutes before I felt strong enough to tip the corpse out of the door, with the carbine quickly following. I picked the Ivan’s malodorous greatcoat off the seat to throw it out as well, but the weight of it made me hesitate. Searching the pockets I found a Czechoslovakian-made.38 automatic, a handful of wristwatches – probably all stolen – and a half-empty bottle of Moscowskaya. After deciding to keep the gun and the watches, I uncorked the vodka, wiped the neck, and raised the bottle to the freezing night-sky.

‘ Alia rasi bo sun (God save you),’ I said, and swallowed a generous mouthful. Then I flung the bottle and the greatcoat off the train and closed the door.

Back at the railway station snow floated in the air like fragments of lint and collected in small ski-slopes in the angle between the station wall and the road. It was colder than it had been all week and the sky was heavy with the threat of something worse. A fog lay on the white streets like cigar smoke drifting across a well starched tablecloth. Close by, a streetlight burned with no great intensity, but it was still bright enough to light up my face for the scrutiny of a British soldier staggering home with several bottles of beer in each hand. The bemused grin of intoxication on his face changed to something more circumspect as he caught sight of me, and he swore with what sounded like fright.

I limped quickly past him and heard the sound of a bottle breaking on the road as it slipped from nervous fingers. It suddenly occurred to me that my hands and face were covered with the Ivan’s blood, not to mention my own. I must have looked like Julius Caesar’s last toga.

Ducking into a nearby alley I washed myself with some snow. It seemed to remove not only the blood but the skin as well, and probably left my face looking every bit as red as before. My icy toilette completed, I walked on, as smartly as I was able, and reached home without further adventure.

It had gone midnight by the time I shouldered open my front door – at least it was easier getting in than out. Expecting my wife to be in bed, I was not surprised to find the apartment in darkness, but when I went into the bedroom I saw that she was not there.

I emptied my pockets and prepared for bed.

Laid out on the dressing-table, the Ivan’s watches – a Rolex, a Mickey Mouse, a gold Patek and a Doxas – were all working and adjusted to within a minute or two of each other. But the sight of so much accurate time-keeping seemed only to underline Kirsten’s lateness. I might have been concerned for her but for the suspicion I held as to where she was and what she was doing, and the fact that I was worn through to my tripe.

My hands trembling with fatigue, my cortex aching as if I had been pounded with a meat-tenderizer, I crawled to bed with no more spirit than if I had been driven from among men to eat grass like an ox.

I awoke to the sound of a distant explosion. They were always dynamiting dangerous ruins, A wolf’s howl of wind whipped against the window and I pressed myself closer to Kirsten’s warm body while my mind slowly decoded the clues that led me back into the dark labyrinth of doubt: the scent on her neck, the cigarette smoke sticking to her hair.

I had not heard her come to bed.

Gradually a duet of pain between my right leg and my head began to make itself felt, and closing my eyes again I groaned and rolled wearily on to my back, remembering the awful events of the previous night. I had killed a man. Worst of all I had killed a Russian soldier. That I had acted in self-defence would, I knew, be a matter of very little consequence to a Soviet appointed court. There was only one penalty for killing soldiers of the Red Army.

Now I asked myself how many people might have seen me walking from Potsdamer Railway Station with the hands and face of a South American headhunter. I resolved that, for several months at least, it might be better if I were to stay out of the Eastern Zone. But staring at the bomb-damaged ceiling of the bedroom I was reminded of the possibility that the Zone might choose to come to me: there was Berlin, an open patch of lathing on an otherwise immaculate expanse of plasterwork, while in the corner of the bedroom was the bag of black-market builder’s gypsum with which I was one day intending to cover it over. There were few people, myself included, who did not believe that Stalin was intent on a similar mission to cover over the small bare patch of freedom that was Berlin.

I rose from my side of the bed, washed at the ewer, dressed, and went into the kitchen to find some breakfast.

On the table were several grocery items that had not been there the night before: coffee, butter, a tin of condensed milk and a couple of bars of chocolate – all from the Post Exchange, or PX, the only shops with anything in them, and shops that were restricted to American servicemen. Rationing meant that the German shops were emptied almost as soon as the supplies came in.

Any food was welcome: with cards totalling less than 3,500 calories a day between Kirsten and me, we often went hungry -I had lost more than fifteen kilos since the end of the war. At the same time I had my doubts about Kirsten’s method of obtaining these extra supplies. But for the moment I put away my suspicions and fried a few potatoes with ersatz coffee-grounds to give them some taste.

Summoned by the smell of cooking Kirsten appeared in the kitchen doorway.

‘Enough there for two?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ I said, and set a plate in front of her. Now she noticed the bruise on my face.

‘My god, Bernie, what the hell happened to you?’

‘I had a run-in with an Ivan last night.’ I let her touch my face and demonstrate her concern for a brief moment before sitting down to eat my breakfast. ‘Bastard tried to rob me. We slugged it out for a minute and then he took off. I think he must have had a busy evening. He left some watches behind.’ I wasn’t going to tell her that he was dead. There was no sense in us both feeling anxious.

‘I saw them. They look nice. Must be a couple of thousand dollars’ worth there.’

‘I’ll go up to the Reichstag this morning and see if I can’t find some Ivans to buy them.’

‘Be careful he doesn’t come there looking for you.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll be all right.’ I forked some potatoes into my mouth, picked up the tin of American coffee and stared at it impassively. ‘A bit late last night, weren’t you?’

‘You were sleeping like a baby when I got home.’ Kirsten checked her hair with the flat of her hand and added, ‘We were very busy yesterday. One of the Yanks took the place over for his birthday party.’

‘I see.’

My wife was a schoolteacher, but worked as a waitress at an American bar in Zehlendorf which was open to American servicemen only. Underneath the overcoat which the cold obliged her to wear about our apartment, she was already dressed in the red chintz frock and tiny frilled apron that was her uniform.

I weighed the coffee in my hand. ‘Did you steal this lot?’