The Night of Shooting Stars

by Ben Pastor

  But what if the magus, the man of the stars, the clairvoyant from the East tells her that no, in her chart there is no reference to Herr Perfection? Disillusionment? Disaster? Will concerns that are more important barge in to trouble her mind and soul? No danger. The Son of Asia will not disappoint a woman in love.

  But who is our snatcher of mystic secrets, the seer who claims a descent we do not hesitate to define as biblical? In our first article, we gave an account of his less than glamorous beginnings. Since then, this writer has sat with him for a week, and can report here only a small part of his countless observations …

  The interview that followed belied the introduction’s sarcasm. Bora found the contents so significant that among all the articles about Niemeyer, tawdry in their nature and useless to him, Kolo’s writing stood out as potentially vital to his investigation. Bora set it aside with care. Meanwhile at the other table, with the complicity of several toasts, the staff officers had reached the stage when merriment gives way to nostalgic sombreness. When he left the dining hall for his room, some had reverted to the jitteriness of the morning, others were resting their foreheads on their clasped hands or sitting back staring into space. No, they definitely did not pass the test, whatever it was: the examination was only postponed, and they will have to face it again soon. Before retiring, Bora asked the concierge for the Berlin phone book, and the first of several home numbers he sought was Max Kolowrat’s.

  10:00 P.M.

  In his room, it took just minutes for him to pack his things, ready for the transfer to the Leipziger Hof in the morning. The evening was airless, but what made Bora uncomfortable was that after weeks of reprieve he felt feverish. It was Stalingrad’s gift. Ever since he’d suffered typhoid pneumonia, his temperature still rose at the close of day, even though he’d officially regained his health. Sitting, still dressed, on his bed, he felt sore, weary and strangely inadequate.

  Reconstruct a man’s life? He, whose job as a soldier was to dismantle, had, in every case entrusted to him, done just the opposite of taking things apart. He rebuilt, from what a victim left behind, the substructure of deeds, relationships and secrets that permitted understanding and the solving of the crime. There had been times when he knew so little, and time was so short, that only his imagination had allowed him to connect the dots and create a picture. This case was a variation on the theme: Niemeyer left not one, but two autobiographies (unreliable, but full of details); stacks of monographs and scientific articles covered the twenty years and more of his public career; he’d met thousands, given countless interviews, and studio photographs and snapshots accompanied him from his cheap vaudeville days to the glitter of his latest performances. Sifting through all that would take months. Bora had one week. No point in wondering if among the crowd of delirious admirers there were one or two dissatisfied enough to kill; the question he had to answer was, why had the murder taken place there and then? Not that it was a guarantee of success: Erik Jan Hanussen, the acclaimed seer who’d supposedly foretold the coming of the Third Reich and paved the way for Niemeyer, was killed at the time of the Reichstag fire; yet no reasons were ever given for his murder, and no culprit found.

  Niemeyer might be too clever for him, even in death. Everything was hazy about the man who went by at least three different names and had credibly “passed himself off” (Grimm’s words) for years as a Polish Jew. Grimm seemed to believe the incident of his unmasking was casual, but someone like Niemeyer was astute enough to realize that the political times were changing. The dramatic revelation in his second autobiography (as fake as the first), that he’d been forced to assume a Jewish identity by post-war circumstances, could paradoxically have worked in his favour. It was risky, however, and perhaps his penchant for living dangerously played a role in his demise. According to the papers, Niemeyer was married two, if not three, times, changed residence often, and during his early career stayed over in countless private homes and dosshouses. In his Jewish incarnation, he wrote that he’d married a Gentile woman and was cursed by his family. Actually, though the girl existed he had apparently never married her, and it was her family who’d disowned her for marrying him.

  In the boxes occupying the small anteroom, Bora had separated the worthwhile from the worthless material. Niemeyer’s autobiographies, of little practical use, were Up From the Shtetl: My Life As a Luftmensch, published during the Republic (which had later seen all copies withdrawn from libraries and bookshops around the country), and Magnus Magnusson: Clairvoyant From the North, which sold like hot cakes and was in its fifth edition. Two magazines founded by him, the monthly Beyond Ostara and the quarterly Siegfried Lives On: Reincarnation in Today’s Germany, could still be found for sale at newspaper stands. Bora sat and dutifully searched through the Prophet’s “visions” (“prediction” was not an acceptable term in Hitler’s Germany): “The Führer will never die but be ‘translated’ into another form, remaining vigilant like Barbarossa on the Kyffhäuser; though that won’t happen until 1984 … Germany will expand, to the extent of creating the United States of Germany, large enough to reach the Pacific Ocean and ‘come to touch the American continent’ through the Aleutian islands …” Bombed-out regions would become particularly fertile, “thanks to the phosphorus in the explosive charges, phosphorus being used as a fertilizer”; this would allow the cultivation of fruit and vegetables never before available in northern climates. “Orange groves will extend from the Oder to the Elbe, Saxon and Pomeranian farmers will make their wealth from mangoes and bananas.” It was an exercise in futility to look for intimations of his death. Niemeyer laboured under the delusion that he would live for ever, or else he was superstitious – or simply very careful not to give anyone any ideas.

  Bora didn’t know what usual proportion of correct answers to a given set of questions might be, but in retrospect Niemeyer, as a clairvoyant, seemed to oscillate between 25 and 30 per cent, which could not be much more than you’d obtain by guessing wildly. It is true he did forecast some events correctly, like the lightning-quick victories at the start of the war, and the rapid collapse of France. I’ll defer judgement on the creation and use of an atomic bomb “by the Japanese thanks to German technology”, on a war between the United States and Russia lasting into the 1970s, and unmanned aeroplanes that will deliver the mail, let alone a new constellation shaped like a German Cross to be discovered in 1965.

  The last issue of Beyond Ostara, from May 1944, was printed on excellent paper, notwithstanding war restrictions (paper weight and quality were something Bora was accustomed to noticing, given his family’s editorial practice), and featured as always a brief note about the Prophet’s person, to the left of the table of contents. Nothing whatever hinted at possible risks, or worries about the immediate future. The cover, printed using the expensive four-colour process, showed a Nibelung of sorts standing on the prow of a long ship under a starry sky. Bora found an article exposing the fraudulent “street magicians” and “circus clairvoyants” intriguing. Niemeyer went so far as to lambast them as anti-German. Since he’d plied both those trades in his “Jewish” days, his gall was incredible.

  The room was stifling, and he was definitely running a fever, but if he opened the window the lights had to be off, and Bora wanted to update his diary. So while the cool air outside drifted freely through the bedroom, he sat on the edge of the bathtub with the bathroom door closed, a torch he’d secured from the concierge casting enough glare for him to write.

  What a full day, this first day of the investigation. Could it also be the last? It appears that the case is solved, and it’s none of my doing.

  The discovery of the “Triplet” rifle deposited at Anhalt station implicates Roland Glantz nearly beyond doubt; and the last shade of doubt will disappear tomorrow, as soon as his fingerprints are matched to those he most likely left on the steel of the three soldered barrels. According to Grimm, Glantz is familiar with big-game stalking, having travelled to Africa when he’s had the means. So it was a
German hunting weapon first designed in the last century, resembling an elegant double-barrelled shotgun with a third barrel flush beneath, that brought death to the Weimar Prophet!

  If everything goes as it should, my Berlin stay will thankfully be short. I might be flying back to the front twenty-four hours from now, and can’t say I’ll regret it.

  Note: regarding the Sauer M30 Drilling, Luftwaffe model. As far as I know, only two or three thousand such combination rifles were produced for our air force; the number 342 punched on its metal means that it was produced in 1942. Glantz will have to explain how he came to have it, but that will be the least of his problems.

  All done, then? Most likely. But – for the sake of precision, and to make a record of it – I would be remiss if I did not mention the two suspects Grimm and I actually confronted.

  While Ida Rüdiger’s high-ranking alibi may remain stuff for the chief to check into, Eppner the watchmaker is slipping to the bottom of the list of suspects. A quick sketch of the man: viscid and supercilious, he has the annoying habit of reinforcing adjectives with emphatic predicates: “working, very much working”, “true, very much true”, “capable, very much capable”. Well, there is no doubt that he is rancorous, very much rancorous about Niemeyer and his cheating wife. According to him, Frau Eppner is a “romantic old girl” who “falls in love every other year” and then comes back to cry on his shoulder.

  “Doesn’t it annoy you?” I couldn’t help asking. It does, but through the years the couple reached a compromise: Frau Eppner’s flings, all told, aren’t to last more than a month. Niemeyer reportedly “bewitched” her by evoking the shade of her first beau, a poet who is supposed to have died of privation at the turn of the century! “You understand, it was unacceptable, very much unacceptable being betrayed by a dead man, especially when his astral body entered the flesh of a charlatan very much alive!” I’d have laughed, had I been in the right mood.

  Once the allotted month of the fling was through, Frau Eppner couldn’t bring herself to leave the mystic marriage, hence her husband’s horn-honking charivari. As it happened, the clairvoyant’s bedroom on Lebanonzederpfad had soundproof walls, so it was the neighbours who bore the brunt of the fracas. Were other rooms in the villa similarly insulated? It would explain why no one heard the gunshots. The Dahlem police records indicate that the rivals refused to file written complaints against each other on each occasion. It was a concerned neighbour (Frau Wirth, who else?) who had signed the grievance I showed Eppner.

  Thus it appears that the conflict between the two men was mainly a ritualized give and take of provocation. Odd, but possible.

  Could the watchmaker kill? It is my opinion that we all could (or do), given the right circumstances, but this former Foot Guards lieutenant is the type who would act from a safe distance or through a hired assassin. I have difficulty believing that you could presently hire someone for that purpose in the capital of the Reich, notwithstanding Frau Wirth’s “awful Russians, Poles, Italians” walking around at night.

  Does this impression in itself exonerate Eppner? Not in the least. His alibi does. He swears he was with his wife and sister-in-law the night of the murder. Not only that; there was company, it being Frau Eppner’s birthday. One of the guests is the esteemed rector of a local parish. Grimm and I drove to his residence, and he confirmed the story, listing the many delicacies scrounged for the occasion. Paulina Andreyevna Issakova, the foreign worker who had to stay up until dawn to clean up after the party, also confirms the account. As for the handgun meant for personal protection at the shop, the excuse is believable, although it gravely violates the law. Grimm was disappointed. Seizing the weapon was all he could do for the moment. If he drags Eppner to Alexanderplatz, it won’t be for murder, but for the concealed gun, and for allowing a Russian national under his roof (they have to return to their camps at the end of the working day).

  My reaction? After the find at the train station, it would appear that the Kripo does get its man.

  PS Regarding my little exploit out there by the depot: I was damn sure there was no charge inside the box, otherwise I’d have never risked my good hand in opening it.

  5

  What is rational is real, and what is real is rational.

  HEGEL, ELEMENTS OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT

  HOTEL ADLON, WEDNESDAY, 12 JULY, 5:20 A.M.

  Early this morning, even before I was fully awake, the concierge rang up my room, with the message that the radio was broadcasting an air-raid warning. In private homes this is followed by a precise routine, which Nina explained to me: turn off the power, water and gas, open the doors and windows, make the necessary preparations for going down to the basement or to the closest air-raid shelter. At the Adlon, within five minutes you could hear the hubbub of those who rushed down the stairs to seek refuge at the Pariser Platz air-raid shelter, easily reachable from here.

  I admit I had no desire to join the herd, partly because I hoped the bombers were not aiming for Berlin. I simply opened the windows (sorely tried by narrow escapes from previous air raids) and walked out into the hallway.

  Everyone seemed to have fled below, so I sat to wait at the top of the flight of stairs. All the doors were wide open, except the one of the room next to mine, where I assumed a Japanese officer was staying. I’d heard him retire last night, thus I was sure that he was still inside. Worried that for some reason he hadn’t been warned, I knocked on his door. He opened nearly at once. Like me, he wore uniform breeches and boots, but he was in his shirtsleeves. Without a need for explanations, we nodded to each other, and he came to sit with me on the step.

  From the pack he had with him, he offered me a flavoured, incredibly strong cigarette, and while we smoked we began talking. What else was there to do? We could be dead at any time. So, as people do on trains with perfect strangers, he told me titbits about himself, in a flawless German. He is a chusa or lieutenant colonel, and his family name, as I later learned, is Namura; he’s slightly older than me, having been born in the forty-third year of the Meji Era (1910); he studied in Berlin; has served in the 2nd Cavalry Regiment of the 2nd Division (the Sendai), and owns a horse named Shimpei, which in Japanese means “Recruit”. To these mundane facts, he unexpectedly added that his wife died in an air raid three weeks ago. They were married just before he left for an assignment at the Japanese embassy here. He didn’t bat an eyelid while he spoke of his loss, surely unaware that I had heard him sobbing the night before last. Waiting for bombs to fall on our heads, it could have been the right occasion for me to share my troubles with Dikta, but I didn’t. I find it difficult to open up to others; besides, I didn’t want to give the impression that I meant to compete with his grief. I simply listened.

  He is such a committed smoker that his forefinger and thumb are yellow with nicotine. At one point, serene but wholly serious, he told me, “I have every intention to die, which explains my behaviour at present. And you?”

  I knew how to reply, but didn’t.

  He surprised me when, after we finally introduced ourselves and shook hands on the step, he said, “You too wish to die, Lieutenant Colonel von Bora, but have too many things to do first.”

  Is he wrong?

  He isn’t.

  The air-raid alert came to nothing, and “those about to die” in the stairwell had that advantage over everyone else: they only had to wear their shirts in order to begin their working day.

  6:00 A.M.

  Given the fingerprint business to attend to at headquarters, Florian Grimm wasn’t going to report for work before nine o’clock, “or a bit later”. Three hours for Bora to use as he chose. He thought that he could not reasonably expect to find Dr Olbertz in his doctor’s office yet, or Max Kolowrat out of bed (he was wrong on this count); other phone calls would have to wait as well. He began by giving instructions for transferring his things – mostly boxes of Niemeyer material – to the hotel luggage deposit, in anticipation of his move to the Leipziger Hof.

  A
t this early hour, only a handful of guests were up and about in the lobby. Two talkative young pilots waiting for a lift reminded him of his brother, chatty and exuberant in the face of daily risk; the recollection was so painful that Bora had to look away from them. A few steps away, motionless, with his back to the exit and a newspaper under his arm, stood a lieutenant colonel, one of the smug staff officers he’d seen the day before, so tense that his mandible seemed nailed to his upper jaw.

  Bora judged the colourless character sitting in a corner with nothing to do to be the inevitable hotel detective.

  He’d just left his room key at the desk when he heard a voice address him from behind. “’Morning, colleague. Sorry to impose on you: can you tell me what time it is?”

  Bora turned. He had not expected to be approached by the General Staff officer, and in such a harried, husky undertone, too, for a rather mundane request. What made it even stranger was that the wall clock, visible to everyone, functioned perfectly. Yet he automatically replied, “Five minutes after six.” A distracted nod was all the acknowledgement he received. The tight mouth and seamed countenance of the man wheeling away from him could have been Salomon’s: the face of one who lives holding his breath.

  Salomon – right. Had he forgotten about him? After the embarrassing scene at lunch the day before, his former commander had said something about securing a medical certificate and “going back to his room to rest”. Bora decided to leave before he ran into him and had to explain why he was moving out of the Adlon.