Philip Kerr - A Quiet Flame

“Maybe. Only those two weren’t left on a hillside because they were sick but because their mother was a Vestal virgin who had violated her vow of celibacy.”

“Well, I wouldn’t even know how to spell that,” said Nebe.

“Besides, Romulus and Remus survived. Haven’t you heard? That’s how Rome was founded.”

“I’m talking about the general principle, that’s all. I’m talking about wasting money on useless members of society. Did you realize that it costs the government sixty thousand marks more to keep a cripple alive in this country than the average healthy citizen?”

“Tell me, Arthur. When we talk about healthy citizens, are we including Joey Goebbels?”

Nebe smiled. “You’re a good cop, Bernie,” he said. “Everyone says so. Be a shame to stall a promising career because of a few thoughtless remarks like that.”

“Who would say such a thing? That these are just thoughtless remarks?”

“Well, aren’t they? You’re no Red. I know that.”

“I put a lot of effort into my detestation of the Nazis, Arthur. You of all people should know that.”

“Nevertheless, the Nazis are going to win the next election. Then what will you do?”

“I shall do what everyone else will do, Arthur. I’ll go home and stick my head in the gas oven and hope to wake up from a very bad dream.”

IT WAS ANOTHER FINE, unusually warm evening. I threw Heinrich Grund’s jacket at him. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go and do some detective work.”

We went downstairs and into the central courtyard of the Alex, where I’d parked my car. I turned the key and pressed the button to operate the starter motor. The car rumbled into life.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Oranienburger Strasse.”

“Why?”

“We’re looking for suspects, remember? That’s the great thing about this city, Heinrich. You don’t have to visit the nuthouse to seek out twisted, disordered minds. They’re everywhere you look. In the Reichstag. In the Wilhelmstrasse. In the Prussian Parliament. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were even one or two in Oranienburger Strasse. Makes the job a lot easier, don’t you think?”

“If you say so, boss. But why Oranienburger Strasse?”

“Because it’s popular with a certain kind of whore.”

“Gravel.”

“Precisely.”

It was a Friday night, but I couldn’t help that. Every night was a busy one on Oranienburger Strasse. Cars stopped outside the Central Telegraph Office, which was open day and night. And, until the previous year, Oranienburger Strasse had been the location of one of Berlin’s more notorious cabarets, the Stork’s Nest, which was part of the reason the street had come to be popular with the city’s prostitutes. It was rumored that quite a few of the girls on Oranienburger had previously worked at the Stork, before the club’s manager had brought in some younger, cheaper nude dancers from Poland.

On Friday nights there was even more traffic than usual, because of all the Jews attending shul at the New Synagogue, which was Berlin’s biggest. The New’s size and magnificent onion dome were a reflection of the confidence the city’s Jews had once felt about their presence in Berlin. But not anymore. According to my friend Lasker, some of the city’s Jews were already preparing to leave Germany should the unthinkable happen and the Nazis be elected. As we arrived, hundreds of them were streaming through the building’s multicolored brickwork arches: men with large fur hats and long black coats, men with shawls and ringlets, boys with velvet skullcaps, women with silk headscarves-and all under the watchful, slightly contemptuous scrutiny of the several uniformed policemen who were positioned in twos at intervals along the length of the street, just in case a group of Nazi agitators decided to show up and cause trouble.

“Jesus Christ,” exclaimed Grund, as we got out of the car. “Look at this. It’s like the bloody Exodus. I’ve never seen so many damn Jews.”

“It’s Friday night,” I said. “It’s when they go to pray.”

“Like rats, so they are,” he said, with obvious distaste. “As for this-” He stared up at the huge synagogue, with its central dome and the two smaller, pavilionlike domes flanking it, and shook his head sadly. “I mean, whose stupid idea was it to let them build this ugly thing here?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It doesn’t belong here, that’s what’s wrong with it. This is Germany. We’re a Christian country. If they want this kind of thing they should go and live somewhere else.”

“Like where?”

“Palestine. Goshen. Somewhere with a hell of a lot of sand. I dunno and I don’t care. Just not here in Germany, that’s all. This is a Christian country.”

He stared malevolently at the many Jews entering the New. With their long beards and white shirts and black coats and big, wide-brimmed hats and glasses, they looked more like nearsighted pioneers from America’s nineteenth century.

We walked toward the Friedrichstrasse end of Oranienburger, where the more specialized whores I was looking for were given to waiting.

“You know what I think?” said Grund.

“Surprise me.”

“These Friedrichstrasse types should dress more like the rest of us. Like Germans. Not like freaks. They should try to blend in. That way people would be less inclined to pick on them. It’s human nature, isn’t it? Anyone who looks a bit different, who looks like they’re setting themselves apart, well, they’re just asking for trouble, aren’t they?” He nodded. “They should try to look like normal Germans.”

“You mean brown shirt, jackboots, shoulder belt, and swastika armband? Or how about leather shorts and flowery shirts?” I laughed. “Yeah, I understand. Normal. Sure.”

“You know what I mean, boss. German.”

“I used to know what that meant. When I was in the trenches, for instance. Now I’m not so sure.”

“That’s just the point I’m making. Bastards like these have blurred things. Made it less obvious what being German is all about. I suppose that’s why the Nazis are doing so well. Because they give us a clear idea of ourselves.”

I might have said that this was a clear idea of ourselves I didn’t much like, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue politics with him. Not again. Not now.

In Berlin, all special tastes were catered for. The city was one big erotic-and sometimes not so erotic-menu. Provided you knew where to look and what to ask for, the chances were you could satisfy even the most peculiar taste. You wanted an old woman-and I mean an old woman, of the kind that lives in a shoe-you went to Mehnerstrasse, which, for obvious reasons, was also known as Old Maid Street. You wanted a fat woman-and I mean a fat woman, of the kind that has a twin brother who’s a sumo wrestler in Japan-you got yourself along to Landwehrstrasse, also known as Fat Street. Now, if mothers and daughters were your thing, then you went to Gollnowstrasse. That was known as Incest Street. Racehorses, girls you could use the whip on, were most often found in the beauty shops and massage parlors that surrounded Hallesches Tor. Pregnant women-and I do mean pregnant women, not girls with cushions stuffed up the front of their dirndls-were found on Munzstrasse. Munzstrasse was also called Coin Street, because there was a general sense that it was a place where people were prepared to sell absolutely anything.

Unlike Grund, I usually tried to avoid sounding righteous about Berlin’s famous sex scene. What did we expect might happen to women in a country with almost two million German men dead in the war and perhaps as many people dead again-my own wife included-from the influenza? What did we expect might happen after the Bolshevik Revolution-with the country full of Russian immigrants-and the inflation and the depression and the unemployment? What did convention and morality matter when everything else-money, work, life itself-turned out to be so utterly unreliable? But it was hard not to feel a little outraged at the trade going on around the north end of Oranienburger Strasse. It was difficult not to wish fire from the air to purge Berlin of this illicit trade in human flesh when you contemplated the life of the washed-up, stone-faced, outcast prostitutes collectively known as gravel. You wanted a woman with one leg, one eye, or a hunchback, or hideous scars, you went to the north end of Oranienburger Strasse and raked through the gravel. You found them in the shadows-standing in the doorway of the defunct Stork’s Nest, or in the old Kaufhaus arcade, or sometimes inside a club called the Blue Stocking, on the corner of Linenstrasse.