Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

“They wanted to see the kid humiliated,” she said.

“They wanted to see the kid get killed is what,” I said. “The two meet in July 1933, at the Bock Brewery, here in Berlin. In order to send up the new racial restrictions, Trollmann turns up for the fight looking like a caricature of an Aryan man, with his body whitened with flour and his hair dyed blond.”

“Oh, Lord. You mean like some poor Negro trying to disguise himself in order to escape a lynching?”

“Kind of, I suppose. Anyway, the fight takes place, and forced to abandon the style that had made him a champion, Trollmann stands toe-to-toe with Eder and trades the heavier man punch for punch. He takes a terrible beating until, in round five, he’s battered into submission and loses the fight on a knockout. After which he’s never the same fighter again. Last I heard, he was taking monthly fights against bigger, stronger fellows and taking regular beatings just to make the payments to his wife.”

She shook her head. “It’s a modern Greek tragedy,” she said.

“If you mean that there are not many laughs in it, then you’re right. And for sure, the gods deserve a kick in the ass, or worse, for letting shit like that happen to someone.”

“From what I’ve seen so far, they’ve got their work cut out in Germany.”

“Isn’t that the point? If they’re not there for us now, then maybe they’re just not there at all.”

“I don’t believe that, Bernie,” she said. “It’s bad for a playwright to believe that man is all there is. No one wants to go to a theater to be told that. Especially now. Maybe now most of all.”

“Could be I should start going to the theater again,” I said. “Who knows, it might restore my faith in human nature. Then again, here comes Trollmann, so I’d best not build up my hopes.”

Even as I spoke, I knew that if my faith in human nature had come with a bookmaker’s ticket, then just laying eyes on Trollmann again would have had me tearing it into pieces. Gypsy Trollmann, once as handsome as any leading man, was now the caricature of a ring-damaged pug. It was like clapping eyes on Mr. Hyde immediately after a home visit from Dr. Jekyll, so grotesquely were his features coarsened by his many beatings. His nose, previously small and combative, was now the size and shape of a sandbag on a poorly built redoubt, and this seemed to have shifted his dark eyes to opposite sides of his head, like something bovine. His much-enlarged ears were entirely without contours and might have fallen onto his head from a pork butcher’s bacon slicer. His mouth now seemed impossibly wide, and when he stretched his scarred lips into a smile to reveal several missing teeth, it was like sharing a joke with King Kong’s little brother. The worst of it was his disposition, which was sunnier than a picture wall in a school kindergarten, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

Trollmann picked up a seat as if it were a bread stick and put it down again with its back to our table.

We introduced ourselves. Mrs. Charalambides flashed him a smile that could have lit up a coal mine, and then fixed him with blue eyes a Persian cat would have envied. Trollmann kept on nodding and grinning, as if we were his oldest and dearest friends. Considering the way the world had treated him until now, perhaps we were.

“To tell the truth, I do remember you, Herr Gunther. You’re a cop. Sure, I remember now.”

“Never tell the truth to a policeman, Rukelie. That’s how you get caught. It’s true, I used to be a cop. Only not anymore. These days I’m the carpet creeper at the Adlon Hotel. It seems the Nazis don’t like republican-minded cops any more than they like Gypsy fighters.”

“Hey, you got that right, Herr Gunther. Sure, I remember you now. You came to see me fight. You was with another cop. A cop who could fight a bit, right?”

“Heinrich Grund.”

“Sure, I remember him. He used to work out at the same gym as me. Right.”

“We came to see you fight Paul Vogel, at the Sportpalast, here in Berlin.”

“Vogel, yeah. I won that fight on points. He was a tough customer, was Paul Vogel.” He looked at Mrs. Charalambides and shrugged apologetically. “Looking at me now-it’s hard to believe, ma’am, I know-but I used to win a lot of fights in those days. Now they just want to use me as a punching bag. You know, put me up in front of someone for target practice. I could beat some of these fellows, too. Only they won’t let me fight my own way.” He raised his fists and went through the motions of ducking and diving on the chair. “You know?”

She nodded and laid her hand on top of his welder’s mitt.

“You’re a pretty lady, ma’am. Isn’t she pretty, Herr Gunther?”

“Thank you, Rukelie.”

“That she is,” I said.

“I used to know a lot of pretty ladies on account of how I was a good-looking guy for a fighter. Isn’t that right, Herr Gunther?”

I nodded.

“None better.”

“On account of the fact that I used to dance around so that none of these other fellows could land a glove on me. See, boxing’s more than just hitting people. It’s about not getting hit, too. But them Nazis don’t want me to do that. They don’t like my style.” He sighed, and a tear appeared in the corner of his bovine eye. “Well, it’s all over for me now as a professional fighter, I guess. I ain’t fought since March. Six defeats in a row, I figure it’s time to hang up the gloves.”

“Why don’t you leave Germany?” she asked. “If they won’t let you fight your own way.”

Trollmann shook his head. “How could I leave? My kids live here. And my ex-wife. I couldn’t leave them behind. Besides, it takes money to set up in a new place. And I can’t earn like I used to. So I work here. And sell fight tickets. Hey, you want to buy some? I got tickets for Emil Scholz against Adolf Witt at the Spichernsaele. November sixteenth. Should be a good fight.”

She bought four. After her remarks outside the T-gym, I wasn’t sure she actually wanted to see a fight, and I imagined it was her way of kindly putting some money in Trollmann’s pocket.

“Here,” she said, handing them to me. “You look after them.”

“Do you remember fighting a fellow named Seelig?” I asked Trollmann. “Erich Seelig?”

“Sure, I remember Erich. I remember all my fights. It’s all the boxing I got now. My memories. I fought Seelig in June 1932. And lost. On points, at the Brewery. Sure, I remember Seelig. How could I forget, right? He had a pretty rough time of it himself, did Erich. Just like me. On account of the fact that he’s Jewish. The Nazis took his titles away, and his license. Last I heard, he fought Helmut Hartkopp in Hamburg and won on points. In February last year.”

“What happened to him?” She offered him a cigarette, but he shook his head.

“I dunno. But he ain’t fighting in Germany no more, that’s for a hundred percent.”

I showed Trollmann the picture of Fritz and told him the circumstances of the man’s death. “Do you think perhaps this might be Erich Seelig?”

“This ain’t Seelig,” said Trollmann. “Seelig is younger than me. And younger than this guy was, for sure. Who told you this was Seelig?”

“The Turk.”

“Solly Meyer? That explains it. The Turk is blind in one eye. Detached retina. You give him a chess set and he couldn’t tell black from white. Don’t get me wrong, the Turk is an okay guy. But he don’t see so good no more.”

The place was filling up now. Trollmann waved at a girl on the opposite side of the bar; for some reason she had pieces of silver paper in her hair. All sorts of people waved at Trollmann. Despite the best efforts of the Nazis to dehumanize him, he remained a popular man. Even the parrot on our table seemed to like Trollmann and let him smooth its gray feathered breast without trying to take a piece out of his finger.