Филип Керр - Greeks Bearing Gifts

His own face was a lopsided, almost obscene thing, like a piece of melted plastic, with a permanently wet nose that resembled a very red and stubby cock and balls, and eyes that were almost as dead as his clients.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is in Germany.”

“But while my face might fit your requirements, I don’t have the wardrobe for it. No, not even a tie.”

“That’s not a problem. I can kit you out, suit, coat, tie, just as long as you like black. You might have to get rid of that wispy beard. Makes you look a bit like Dürer. On second thought, keep it. Without it you’ll be too pale. That’s no good in a mourner. You don’t want to look like someone who’ll come back after dark and feast on one of the bodies. We get a lot of that in Germany. So. What do you say?”

I said yes. He was right, of course; quite apart from being almost nocturnal I needed the cash and there was no money to be made staying in bed all day. Not with my figure. So a week or two later found me wearing a black tailcoat and tie, with a shiny top hat on my head, and an expression on my lightly trimmed face that was supposed to convey sobriety and gravitas. The sobriety was debatable: the early morning schnapps was a habit I was finding hard to control. Fortunately for me it was the same expression I used for dumb insolence and skepticism and all the other winning qualities that I possess, so it didn’t require me to be Lionel Barrymore to pull it off. Not that I put much store by my qualities; any man is just made up of some deportment and behavior that have met with the silent approval of a very small number of women.

It was snowing heavily when I climbed out of a car in the Ostfriedhof Cemetery as one of four men employed to carry Bernbach’s casket into the crematorium where, Urban said, the Amis had secretly cremated the twelve top Nazis they’d hanged at Nuremberg in 1946. Less well known was the fact that the ashes of my second wife, Kirsten, were also to be found in Ostfriedhof. When it was all over and Urban came to give me my pay and my tip I said nothing about this, largely out of shame that I hadn’t visited the place in the cemetery wall where the urn with her remains was to be found — not once since her death. But now I was there I intended to remedy that. Suddenly I felt properly uxorious.

“I thought the dead man was a Jew,” I said to Urban as we watched the mourners file out of the neo-Gothic Holy Cross Church where we’d just committed his body to the flames. These included most of the people from the Apollo cabaret, as well as the big irritable detective I’d recognized in the mortuary at the hospital.

“Not practicing.”

“Does that make a difference? If you’re a Jew?”

“I wouldn’t know. But these days it’s not so easy finding someone to conduct an ikey funeral in this town. Last time I did one the family had to send to Augsburg for a rabbi. Also there’s the fact that Jews prefer to be buried, not cremated. And with the ground this hard that makes things doubly difficult. Not to mention that there’s still a lot of unexploded ordnance in the old Jewish cemetery over at Pfersee. There’s no telling what’s buried in that ground, especially under all this snow. So I persuaded his friends, who have very generously paid for everything, that for the purposes of this funeral, the deceased should be buried as a Christian. After all, it’d be a shame to have anyone else blown up by an old American bomb, don’t you think?” He shrugged. “Besides, what does it matter what happens to you when you’re dead?”

“There speaks the undertaker.”

“It’s a business, not a vocation.”

“I’m sure I don’t care what becomes of me.”

Urban looked around. “Besides, there are plenty of Jews in Ostfriedhof already. Many of the prisoners from Dachau were cremated and their ashes scattered here.”

“Along with those top Nazis you mentioned?”

“Along with those top Nazis.” He shrugged. “I’m sure we can trust the Lord to sort out who’s who.” He handed me an envelope. “Can I count on you tomorrow? Same time. Same place.”

“If I’m alive, I wouldn’t miss it.”

“You will be. I’m sure of it. When you’ve been in the trade as long as I have, you get a feeling for that kind of thing. You might not think it but you’ve got a few years left in you, my friend.”

“You should run a clinic in Switzerland. There are people who’d pay handsomely for a positive diagnosis like that.” I lit a cigarette and looked up at the sky. “I kind of like this place. One day I might move here permanently.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Need me anymore?”

“No. You’re through for today. Go home, get into your casket, and get some sleep.”

“I will. But first I have to go and see someone. Dracula once had a bride, you know.”

With my envelope in my pocket I walked away and, after a great deal of searching — some of it inside my own soul — I found Kirsten’s stoic remains. I stood there for a while, apologized profusely for not having visited before — not to mention a host of other things — and generally took a walk to the far end of memory’s rickety and probably unreliable pier. I’d have stayed out there longer but BELOVED WIFE OF BERNHARD GUNTHER was chiseled on the stone panel in front of the urn, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the big detective from the hospital heading my way. By now I’d remembered his name, but I was still hoping to prevent him from discovering mine. So I took off at an angle, lingered in front of another memorial tablet in a pathetic attempt to throw him off the scent, and then headed toward the main gate, only he was hiding in ambush for me behind the tomb of Grand Duke Ludwig Wilhelm of Bavaria. It was large enough, just about. The big cop was even bigger than I remembered.

“Hey, you. I want to talk to you.”

“Well, as you can see, I’m in mourning.”

“Nonsense. You were one of the pallbearers, that’s all. I asked about you. At the hospital.”

“That was kind. But I’m making a good recovery now, thank you.”

“They said your name was Ganz.”

“That’s right.”

“Only it’s not. My wife’s maiden name is Ganz. And I’d have remembered that the first time we met. A long time ago. Before Hitler came to power, I think. Before you grew that beard.”

I was tempted to make a remark about his wife’s maidenhood and thought better of it; it’s not just conscience that makes cowards of us all but false names and secret histories. “Maybe your memory is better than mine, Herr—?”

“It’s not. Not yet, anyway. On account of how I haven’t yet remembered your real name. But I’m more or less sure you were a cop back then.”

“Me a cop? That’s a laugh.”

“Yeah. I remember thinking that, too, because you were a Jew-loving Berlin cop looking for this detective I used to know at the local Praesidium. My old boss.”

“What was his name? Charlie Chan?”

“No. Paul Herzefelde. He was murdered. But as I recall, we had to lock you up for the night because you nobly thought we weren’t doing enough to find out who killed him.”

He was right, of course. Every word of it. I never forget a face and especially a face like his, which was made for denouncing heretics and burning books, probably both at the same time, one on top of the other. Laugh lines as hard and lacking laughs as a wire coat hanger were etched on either side of a nose that looked like the thorn on a halberd. Above the hooked nose were the small, expressionless blue eyes of a giant moray eel. The jaw was unfeasibly wide and the complexion vaguely purplish, although that might have been the cold, while the man’s height and build and white hairs were those of a retired heavyweight boxer. I felt that at any moment he might feel me out with his jab or plant his big right fist deep in what still remained of the solar part of my plexus. I remembered his name was Schramma and he’d been a criminal secretary at the Munich Police Praesidium and while I didn’t remember much more about him I did remember the night I’d spent in the cells.