Филип Керр - Metropolis

‘More Irish pimp, I’m afraid.’

‘Good.’

‘So you’re working then?’

‘In a manner of speaking. In truth I’m just keeping my eyes peeled for someone. But I thought it would be a good idea to invite you along and combine business with pleasure. Especially as the whole evening’s on expenses. Which reminds me. The one subject we never mention in this place is that I’m a cop. Got that? You’ll see why when we get there.’

‘So what’s your name. Just in case anyone should ask.’

‘Zehr. Helmut Zehr.’

‘Nice to meet you, Helmut. But aren’t you afraid someone will recognize you?’

‘I’m a police sergeant, not the deputy commissioner. Besides, I figure by this time most of the patrons at Sing Sing will be too drunk to know me from a leprechaun.’

‘I’ve heard of this place, of course. People say Sing Sing is the most dangerous bar in Berlin.’

‘That’s probably true.’

‘So what makes you think I’d like to go there?’

‘Any girl who wears green lipstick and matching nail varnish strikes me as someone who likes to live dangerously. With a colour combination like that, you should fit right in.’

‘I think we make a good combination ourselves, don’t you? Your looks, Irish. My talent. My green lipstick. Your green suit. People will think we’re a couple. Albeit a couple without much in the way of taste. Mostly on your side.’

‘We are a couple. Seriously. While we’re in Sing Sing we should watch out for each other like we’re two convicts manacled at the wrist. Anything you hear that sounds remotely untoward, you should say so immediately.’

‘You’re scaring me.’

I put my arm around her. ‘You’ll be quite safe as long as you mind what I say, Rosa.’

‘Ah, now I understand your technique, Irish. It’s very sneaky. You aim to frighten me into your arms and, after that, who knows where?’

‘I think we both know where, don’t you?’

I stopped and moved to kiss her green lips.

‘No, wait,’ she said. ‘Do you want to spoil my lipstick? You can kiss me all you want after we’ve been to this place. But for now, I need you to behave like Tannhäuser and treat me like a virgin princess. Does that sound about right?’

‘It’s a deal.’

We walked on. She said: ‘Isn’t Sing Sing a prison in China?’

‘No, it’s in New York. But don’t ask me why it’s called that. More famously they have an electric chair at Sing Sing called Old Sparky. Which is more of a nickname, is my guess. I’m told they have one at the club, too. But it’s just for show.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

We arrived at the rusticated club door. Like everything else in the place, it was designed to look as if it belonged in a prison, with a window grille and a door within a door. I rang the bell, and an eye and then a mouth like a vicious-looking mollusc appeared at the grille and demanded to know the password.

Without much confidence I said, ‘Hitler’.

A few seconds later I heard the door being unlocked and bolts being drawn.

‘Let’s hope it’s just as easy to get out of this place,’ I murmured, and then the inner door swung open, releasing a lot of boozy, smoky noise.

The spanner on the door was part man and part bull mastiff. His nose had a big scar running down the centre so that it looked like it was two noses and one of his ears reminded me of an unborn foetus. He wasn’t anyone’s idea of a reasonable man unless your idea of one was Frankenstein’s monster. Wearing the uniform of a prison guard and carrying a truncheon, he smelled strongly of beer and when he smiled it was like looking at an ancient graveyard. He slammed the door shut behind us, locked it and waved a waiter over. The shaven-headed waiters, all dressed like convicts, with numbers on their backs, were as tough-looking as the spanner. The one who fetched us to table 191819 looked like the rail tracks at Potsdam Station, he had so many scars on his face. I gave him five marks and told him to bring us a bottle of German champagne and two glasses; he was back quickly with a bottle of Henkell and two enamelware cups.

‘No glasses here,’ he said. ‘Only prison mugs.’

He wrote his number on the bill — 191819/22 — and placed it underneath the champagne bucket.

The champagne at least was cold. I poured some out and then toasted Rosa, who smiled at me nervously. She said something, but I couldn’t hear what because the man seated next to us was shouting at a pretty girl dressed in stockings and suspenders, a tight basque, and not much else; they were both smoking marijuana. After a few seconds she spat the chewing gum out of her mouth and began kissing him. Her partner kept calling her Helga, so I assumed that was her name. Just looking at her you knew she was tough enough to survive another Krakatoa.

The champagne tasted a lot better than I’d expected, even in a tin mug. Rosa must have thought so, too, because she downed the mug in one and then came and sat on my knee.

‘At least I can hear you now,’ she said, and let me pour her another.

Using Rosa’s body as cover, I took the opportunity to look around. The place was set up like the mess hall at Plötzensee Prison, with heavy wooden tables, thick iron grilles on the windows, and, at the top of a tall stepladder, an observation guard who, our waiter informed us, was keeping an eye out for pickpockets. The place was full of Berlin lowlife, but I saw no one who fit the description of Prussian Emil I’d been given by the veteran outside the aquarium.

Up front, there was a small stage with a black curtain and I kept thinking a cabaret performer was going to show up and entertain us, but even as I thought this a man came to our table and did just that. In his hands were a set of manacles.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Look at these bracelets. Genuine coppers’ clinkers, they are. Go on, folks. Check them out.’

I took hold of the handcuffs and examined them carefully.

‘They look like the real thing,’ I said.

‘Look like? Of course they’re the real thing. Go on, love, snap them on my wrists. Tight as you like. That’s it. Go on, you’re not putting on bandages, you know. There you are. Now what do you think? Am I your prisoner, or what?’

Rosa nodded. ‘I’d say your goose is cooked and no mistake.’

I didn’t see how he did it, but it took him less time to get out of the handcuffs than it took to take off his cap and solicit a coin, which I duly provided.

We drank some more champagne and settled in. The man next to us was telling Helga about his time in Moabit Prison; in another place it was something you might have kept quiet about, but in Sing Sing it was like telling someone at the German Opera House that you were a trained tenor from Milan.

‘How long were you in the cement, Hugo?’ she asked.

‘Five years.’

‘What for?’

‘Writing poetry,’ he said, and laughed.

‘There’s a lot of poets who deserve to be in prison.’

I couldn’t disagree with that, but I kept my eyes and my opinion to myself. Keeping your opinions to yourself was essential in Sing Sing; some of the patrons seemed likely to take offence at the slightest remark. A fight was already breaking out on the other side of the club but the spanner quickly broke it up by the simple means of breaking the heads of both the combatants with his truncheon, to loud cheers and applause. They were carried insensible to the door and thrown unceremoniously into the gutter.

We’d been there almost an hour when desire for Rosa began to take precedence over my desire to find Prussian Emil; it seemed unlikely that he was going to show up now. I was about to pay the bill when a man dressed like a prison guard and wearing lots of make-up arrived onstage and blew a whistle. Some of the audience seemed to know what was going to happen and gave a loud cheer, and gradually the place fell silent.