Филип Керр - Metropolis

I launched myself across Schiffbauerdamm, dodging piles of horse shit — I’d forgotten how many delivery horses were still on the streets of Berlin — before being blasted by the horn of a tour company charabanc whose impatient driver leaned out of his window and shouted at me:

‘Watch where you’re going, you dopey klutz . You’re going the right way to lose your arms as well, do you know that?’

The travel group seated behind him stared at me and one of them even took a picture, as if I was a sight no less interesting than Old Fritz on Unter den Linden or the bronze bear in front of City Hall. I waved at them cheerily and made it onto the street corner, where I waited to cross with everyone else. I was surrounded by the shapely calves of young women who took me for a diminutive pervert spying on their stocking tops and by businessmen who assumed, not unreasonably, that I was a pickpocket and moved quickly away. They had good reason; many klutzes were thieves. No one took me for a person, least of all a person in need. But it was clear that people did take me for what I purported to be: a disabled beggar, and that was just fine. The stocking tops were fine, too. Can’t see too many of those.

Across the Spree in Reichstagufer was a row of houses next to the railway station where I was now headed and behind these, the leafy charms of Dorotheenstrasse and the church where, at the age of nine, I’d once seen the tomb of the king’s son, Count van der Mark, who’d died at the same age, something that had made an enormous impression on me because if a nine-year-old royal prince could die, then so, I reasoned, might I. It was perhaps my first intimation of mortality and I never went near that particular church again.

I crossed the bridge onto Friedrichstrasse, where a lethal sandwich-board man barged me aside. By the time I reached the station, I was feeling battered and my legs and feet were turning numb. I took up a position in an isolated pool of sunshine underneath the overhead rail track. I thought I’d chosen the spot well as none of the shoe shiners and news vendors were too near, the noise from the trains being as loud as it was — as loud as Fafnir the giant dragon breathing into an amplified microphone — and, Friedrichstrasse station being one of the busiest, the arrival of a train every five minutes made most types of commerce all but impossible. I was looking to get shot, not to make new friends.

I lit a roll-up, placed my army cap on the ground in front of me, tossed a couple of coins into it for effect and closed my eyes for a moment. Pushing myself around was harder than I’d imagined and I was already lathered with sweat. I laid my head back against the wall and the advertising mural that was painted there: Telefunken radios: A touch of the hand and Europe plays for you . Listening to the radio seemed a safer bet than sleeping.

Pay attention, I told myself; you’ve more to live for now you’ve decided to stop drinking. I knew it wasn’t just the sight of myself in the mirror that had helped me make this decision. It was also the sight of Brigitte Mölbling. My imagination had been drinking her in for almost twenty-four hours and I was still thirsty. And could I have imagined what she’d said as I was leaving the theatre? That she found me interesting? I was certainly interested in her. And what did interesting mean, anyway? Someone with whom she could discuss the ballet or what was in Harper’s Bazaar , or someone she wanted to go to bed with?

After a while one of the news vendors came my way, squatted down at my side and dropped a small coin in the cap. He was a sturdy, chaff-haired man of about forty with a chin like a boxing glove. His sleeves were rolled up and I could see a tattoo on his forearm that looked like the name of a regiment.

‘My name’s Gallwitz,’ he said. ‘Ernst Gallwitz.’

‘Helmut Zehr,’ I said.

‘Listen, Helmut,’ he said, ‘it’s none of my business where you ply your trade, friend. But where you’re sitting is where another old comrade was shot just a couple of weeks ago. Fellow named Oskar Heyde. According to the newspapers it was that Dr Gnadenschuss who did it. You know — the spinner who’s been murdering injured veterans. Shot between the eyes he was and no one noticed. Least not for a while.’

This was exactly why I’d picked the spot, of course; there seemed to be no reason Dr Gnadenschuss wouldn’t kill underneath the Friedrichstrasse station bridge again. But I wasn’t about to tell this to the news vendor, whose concern would have touched me more if I hadn’t also realized I was going to have to find another place to beg. I cursed silently; the last thing I needed or wanted was someone looking out for me. It was the sort of thing Dr Gnadenschuss might easily notice.

‘Thanks for the warning, comrade,’ I said. ‘I heard about that bastard. As if life wasn’t already difficult enough. But I kind of figured that lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice. That this is as safe as anywhere else in Berlin. Perhaps safer because he’s killed here before.’

The news vendor nodded. ‘You may well be right about that. Anyway, I’ll keep an eye out for you.’

‘Did you know him? The man who got shot?’

‘Oskar? Yes, I knew him. Believe it or not, he was my lieutenant in the war.’ The news vendor showed me his tattooed forearm. ‘That’s us. The 107th Infantry. We were part of the Fiftieth Reserve. We were at Passchendaele, Cambrai and then the Marne.’

I wondered why I hadn’t come across this man before. I was more or less certain that there had been no witness statement from a news vendor near the scene of Oskar Heyde’s murder. And I couldn’t help noticing the other tattoo on his hand: three dots, which usually meant ‘death to cops’.

‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘You look like you’ve seen a bit of action yourself.’

‘Eighth Grenadiers. We were on the Somme. The best half of me is still there, probably, feeding some French worms.’

‘That’s too bad.’

‘Cops got any clues as to who did it yet?’ I asked, changing the subject.

‘No. They’re scratching their arses and sucking their thumbs. Just for a change. But I don’t speak to coppers, no matter what, see?’ His speaking voice, a dark, gravelly tenor, added to the impression of feral animality he conveyed. ‘In this town, the law doesn’t care about the workingman. They’re on the side of big government and can only see out of the eye that’s on the right, if you know what I mean.’

I sighed silently and wished I’d had a mark for every time I’d heard that horse-shit remark.

‘No descriptions of what the bastard looks like?’

‘I only know what’s in the paper. That’s my profession, after all. The killer waited for a train coming into the station, see? The noise covered the shot. Paper said it was a .25-calibre automatic that shot him, which doesn’t make much more of a pop than an air rifle. So I reckon that’s when you’ll have to keep your wits about you, friend. When there’s a train coming in.’

I grinned. ‘That’s every five minutes.’

‘So you want to live forever?’

‘Not like this I don’t.’

‘Look after yourself, will you?’ he said, and went back to his stand, whistling ‘Ain’t She Sweet’ — which seemed to be on every damned radio — but not before giving me a copy of the early edition of the Morgenpost , now rendered superfluous by the recent arrival of the late edition.

As well as wondering why we hadn’t come across Ernst Gallwitz before, I was also wondering how he knew it was a .25-calibre automatic that Dr Gnadenschuss had used to kill Oskar Heyde. I’d persuaded the Berliner Tageblatt to leave out that particular detail from the letter they’d printed. A lucky guess, perhaps? Or something more? Apart from the three dots tattooed on his hand he didn’t look like a murderer; then again, nobody does these days, especially not the murderers; it’s one of the things that makes the job so difficult. All the same, his remarks about the Berlin police helped me decide to put him into my suspect file. After all, there was no one else in it.