Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

Goebbels’s passionate baritone began surging out of the radio, talking about infections and health and disease.

As he walked to the door, Kohl wondered if Günter had already made some casual comment about his parents to a friend. Perhaps the boy had denounced someone – his father, albeit unknowingly. Kohl glanced back at Heidi, who was standing with her arm around her youngest daughter. He unbolted the lock and swung open the heavy oak slab.

Konrad Janssen stood in the doorway, looking fresh as a child at holy communion. He looked past the inspector and said to Heidi, “Forgive the intrusion, Mrs. Kohl. It’s unforgivable at this late hour.”

Mother of God, Kohl thought, hands and heart vibrating. He wondered if the inspector candidate could hear the pounding in his chest. “Yes, yes, Janssen, the hour is not a problem. But next time, a lighter touch on the door, if you please.”

“Of course.” The young face, usually so calm, bristled with enthusiasm. “Sir, I showed the picture of the suspect all over the Olympics and half the rest of the city, it seemed.”

“And?”

“I found a reporter for a British newspaper. He’d come over from New York on the S.S. Manhattan. He’s been writing a story on athletic fields around the world and-”

“This Briton is our suspect, the man in the artist’s picture?”

“No, but-”

“Then this portion of your story doesn’t interest us, Janssen.”

“Of course, sir. Forgive me. It’s sufficient to say that this reporter recognized our man.”

“Ah, well done, Janssen. Tell me, what did he have to say?”

“Not a great deal. All he knew was that he is an American.”

This paltry confirmation was worth a burst heart? Kohl sighed.

But the inspector candidate, it seemed, was only pausing to catch his breath. He continued. “And his name is Paul Schumann.”

Words spoken in the dark.

Words spoken as if in a dream.

They were close, finding in each other a comfortable opposite, knee to back of knee, swell of belly to back, chin to shoulder. The bed assisted; the feather mattress in Paul’s bedroom formed a V under their joint weight and seated them firmly. They could not have moved apart had they wanted to.

Words spoken in the anonymity of new romance, the passion past, though only momentarily.

Smelling her perfume, which was in fact the source of the lilac he’d smelled when he’d first met her.

Paul kissed the back of Käthe’s head.

Words spoken between lovers, speaking of everything, of nothing. Whims, jokes, facts, speculations, hopes… a torrent of words.

Käthe was telling him of her life as a landlady. She fell silent. Through the open window they could hear Beethoven once again, growing louder as someone in a nearby apartment turned up the volume. A moment later a firm voice echoed through the damp night.

“Ach,” she said, shaking her head. “The Leader speaks. That’s Hitler himself.”

It was yet more talk about germs, about stagnant water, about infections.

Paul laughed. “Why’s he so obsessed with health?”

“Health?”

“All day long, everybody’s been talking about germs and cleanliness. You can’t get away from it.”

She was laughing. “Germs?”

“What’s so funny?”

“Don’t you understand what he’s saying?”

“I… No.”

“It’s not germs he’s talking about. It’s Jews. He’s changed all his speeches during the Olympics. He doesn’t say ‘Jew’ but that’s what he means. He doesn’t want to offend the foreigners but he can’t let us forget the National Socialist dogma. Paul, don’t you know what is happening here? Why, in the basements of half the hotels and boardinghouses in Berlin are signs that were taken down for the Olympics and that will be put back up the day the foreigners leave. They say No Jews. Or Jews Not Welcome Here. There is a sharp turn on the road to my sister’s home in Spandau. The sign warns, Dangerous Curve. 30 Kilometers Per Hour. Jews Do 70. It is a road sign! Not painted by vandals but by our government!”

“You’re serious?”

“Serious, Paul. Yes! You saw the flags on the houses of Magdeburger Alley, the street here. You commented on ours when you arrived.”

“The Olympic flag.”

“Yes, yes. Not the National Socialist flag, like on most of the other homes on this street. Do you know why? Because this building is owned by a Jew. It’s illegal for him to fly Germany’s flag. He wants to be proud of his fatherland like everyone else. But he can’t be. And how could he fly the National Socialist flag anyway? The swastika? The broken cross? It stands for anti-Semitism.”

Ah, so that was the answer.

Surely you know…

“Have you heard of Aryanization?”

“No.”

“The government takes a Jewish home or business. It’s theft, pure and simple. Göring is the master of it.”

Paul recalled the empty houses he’d passed that morning on the way to meet Morgan at Dresden Alley, the signs saying that the contents were to be sold.

Käthe moved closer yet to him. After a long silence she said, “There is a man… He performs at a restaurant. ‘Fancy,’ it would be called. That is to say the name of the establishment is Fancy. But it is fancy too. Very nice. I went to this restaurant once and this man was in a glass cage in the middle of the dining room. Do you know what he was? A hunger artist.”

“What?”

“A hunger artist. Like in the Kafka story. He had climbed into his cage some weeks before and had survived on nothing except water. He was there for everyone to see. He never ate.”

“How does-”

“He is allowed to go to the lavatory. But someone always accompanies him and verifies that he has had nothing to eat. Day after day…”

Words spoken in the dark, words between lovers.

What those words mean is often not important. But sometimes it is.

Paul whispered, “Go on.”

“I met him after he had been in the glass cage for forty-eight days.”

“No food? Was he a skeleton?”

“He was very thin, yes. He looked sick. But he came out of the cage for some weeks. I met him through a friend. I asked him why he chose to do this for a living. He told me he had worked in the government for some years, something in transportation. But when Hitler came to power he left his job.”

“He was fired because he wasn’t a National Socialist?”

“No, he quit because he couldn’t accept their values and wouldn’t work for their government. But he had a child and he needed to make money.”

“A child?”

“And needed money. But everywhere he looked, he could find no position that wasn’t tainted with the Party. He found that the only thing he could do with any integ – What is that word?”

“Integrity.”

“Yes, yes, integrity. Was to be a hunger artist. It was pure. It could not be corrupted. And do you know how many people come to see him? Thousands! Thousands come to see him because he is honest. And there is so little honesty in our lives now.” A faint shudder told him she was shivering with tears.

Words between lovers…

“Käthe?”

“What have they done?” She gasped for breath. “What have they done?… I don’t understand what has happened. We are a people who love music and talk and who rejoice in sewing the perfect stitch in our men’s shirts and scrubbing our alley cobblestones clean and basking in the sun on the beach at Wannsee and buying our children clothing and sweets, we’re moved to tears by the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, by the words of Goethe and Schiller – yet we are possessed now. Why?” Her voice faded. “Why?” A moment later she whispered, “Ach, that is a question for which, I’m afraid, the answer will come too late.”