Фолькер Кучер: Babylon Berlin

‘You don’t sound too good, old boy. A few too many last night was it?’

‘First night for a week I haven’t been in Hermannstrasse.’ Rath had spent the previous six nights in the musty Neukölln flat, observing the comings and goings in König’s studio, a shift that no-one else had wanted.

‘True. In that case you’ve earned a day off.’

‘You’re more use to me rested,’ Wolter said. ‘Stay at home today.’

Rath didn’t object. He hung up and was just about to turn round and get back to sleep when something warm under the bedclothes gave him a start.

Had he brought a woman back yesterday? For the life of him he couldn’t remember. He remembered the dream and the strange Russian who had smashed his wardrobe, the tea with his landlady… the rum… the toast to friendship… He hadn’t…

Rath pulled back the covers slowly, expecting the worst. The arm belonged to a set of blonde locks with a silvery tinge. Elisabeth Behnke was lying in his bed.

The last thing he could remember was the moment she had said to call her Elisabeth, after they had emptied the bottle of rum and started on the Danziger Goldwasser. They had kissed, he knew that. That was the custom when you toasted to friendship. But what had happened afterwards? Questions he couldn’t answer. The only person who could was his landlady, who was currently stretching her ample and naked body beside him. She blinked into the light and pulled the covers over her breasts.

‘Good morning,’ he said, making every effort not to sound sarcastic.

‘Good morning,’ she said, almost shyly. At least she’s embarrassed too, he thought.

‘My God!’ The alarm clock now showed nine o’clock. ‘So late already. I should have made breakfast ages ago. Weinert’s sure to complain.’

She used the bedclothes to cover herself until she realised that she was exposing Rath’s manhood. She was still somewhere between getting up and sitting back down when there was a knock on the door. Quick as a flash, Elisabeth Behnke jumped back into her tenant’s bed and disappeared under the covers.

‘That’s Weinert now,’ she whispered.

The door opened slowly and Berthold Weinert poked his nosy head into the room.

‘Good morning, sleepyhead,’ he said and gave Rath a knowing wink. ‘You couldn’t lend me a few marks could you? There’s been no sign of old Behnke this morning, otherwise I’d have asked her. Seems to be ill, hasn’t even made breakfast, but I need to head into the office…’

‘Help yourself.’

Rath pointed towards his jacket, which was folded neatly over the clothes stand, in sharp contrast to the dressing gown that, along with his pyjamas, formed a confused tangle on the floor somewhere between the door and the bed. Rath only hoped that Weinert wouldn’t notice the blue chemise lying on the other side of the bed.

‘Has your girl gone?’ the journalist winked, as he searched the inside pocket for Rath’s wallet. The conspiratorial glances were beginning to get on Rath’s nerves. ‘Behnke’s like a hawk. I always send my girls home in the evening. Better safe than sorry. You were still going long into the night… and then the music! To think what old Behnke said about that Negro racket during the day!’ He looked round, afraid that she might hear. ‘You should tell your girl to be a little quieter. I’ve never heard a dirtier laugh! Not only that…’ He fished a ten mark note from the wallet. ‘Not that I minded, of course, just don’t let her next door hear you!’ He winked for a final time and left the room.

When he pulled the covers away, Rath saw that Elisabeth Behnke was blushing. ‘I hope that blabbermouth didn’t smell a rat,’ she said.

‘Didn’t sound like it,’ he said. ‘Were you really laughing that much, Frau Behnke?’

‘Call me Elisabeth.’

‘Isn’t that how all this started?’

‘We’re both adults, Herr Rath! I mean Gereon,’ she said, more like her old self. ‘I’m as keen to keep last night a secret as you are, but what’s done is done. We don’t have to go back to pretending we don’t know each other.’

‘Sorry,’ he said. Her outburst had given him an erection. He pulled the covers tighter.

She stood up, having obviously decided she could live with his seeing her naked. Her voluptuous curves only intensified his erection, even once they had disappeared under her chemise. He turned over on his back.

‘I’ll make breakfast,’ she said and left the room.

He lay in bed thinking. Elisabeth Behnke was almost ten years older than him. Her husband had fallen at the Second Battle of the Aisne in 1917. Rath remembered, back in the summer of 1918, after they had completed their basic training and awaited the call to the front, how they had felt that they were entering the final days of their lives. In the delirium of that time a zest for life was borne out of the fear of death. Sweating bodies writhed in bed with women who had all been older by ten years or more. Most had been married, their husbands either fighting on the front or already fallen.

Rath had just turned eighteen when he was called up by the Prussians and the draft had felt like a death sentence. He couldn’t help thinking about Anno. He couldn’t know that the war had entered its final year. His mother had cried, not wanting to lose another son. Her oldest had fallen during the first days of war. Anno the infallible, the eternal role model, but on this score Gereon had no desire to emulate him.

At the garrison they had felt like prisoners awaiting execution, and then all of a sudden the war was over. Before they fired a single shot in anger news of the mutiny at Kiel spread through the ranks and soldiers’ councils were formed. As soon as it had become clear that no-one would arrest him as a deserter, Rath simply removed his uniform and went home to Cologne. Some of his comrades continued to play at war, joining the Freikorps as they crossed the country fighting communists. Private Gereon Rath listened to his father and joined the police. They too had given him a gun, as well as the desk that Anno Rath had occupied before the war.

He banished the memories and gazed out of the window where the sun was shining: the first day of spring to merit the name.

Rath’s hangover finally dissipated in the fresh air. He took a deep breath and dug out the sheet of paper Elisabeth Behnke had given him. Luisenufer. Alexej Ivanovitsch Kardakov’s new address was in Kreuzberg.

The street name had endured down the ages. Only a few years before, the Luisenstadt Canal had flowed between Urbanhafen and the Spree. Now there were children playing in the massive expanse of sand that the city had used to fill the harbour basin. Their shouts and laughter filled the clear skies. After the endless winter, spring had finally arrived. Rath had hated the Berlin winter, ever since he had stepped off the long-distance train at Potsdamer station to be greeted by a flurry of snow and traffic at Potsdamer Platz. The cold was entrenched in the streets until well into April.

His gaze wandered along the house façades to a pub, a hair salon, a dairy. He glanced at the sheet of paper again to check the number.

Breakfast with Elisabeth Behnke hadn’t gone as badly as he’d feared. Neither of them breathed a word about what had happened, what could have happened, or what might have happened afterwards, but he had promised to take Kardakov to task over the outstanding final rent payment, over the junk in the cellar and the wardrobe.

The house he was looking for was beside the dairy. A train rattled across the elevated railway at Wassertorplatz as he entered the main house. He checked the mailboxes, including out back, but couldn’t find the name Kardakov anywhere, or any name that sounded even vaguely Russian. He glanced again at the piece of paper. The address was correct, as was the house number.