The Night of Shooting Stars

by Ben Pastor

  Order and disorder are the only two states of being. By inclination he belonged to the first, yet he repeatedly found himself in the second. In between abided risk, a space he had to cross, back and forth. In the end, I remain equidistant between the two states, forever in jeopardy.

  Now that Nina was safely away from Berlin, he was tempted to believe that the load on his shoulders would ease a little, if he could entrust her to someone in case of an emergency. Of course, he and Max Kolowrat had never breathed her name during their conversation.

  Taking their leave from each other, they had merely shaken hands and exchanged a firm glance, as if passing a baton during a track relay. Both were devoted to the same woman, but they left her free to choose – and this was their quiet way of showing it. Bora could have broken every rule and risked telling him: “If Nina chooses you, love her.” But there was no need.

  Kolowrat loved her already.

  It both pained him and filled him with hope.

  Another meteor came down, small and flickering noiselessly, like a bead of water dropped on a hot surface. Clear, bombing weather.

  Everything moves, comes loose or falls apart. I spent the first twenty-three years of my life in the most absolute certainty. For the next seven years, I increasingly heard tearing noises; over the past two, I’ve witnessed pieces literally falling off, as if the common destiny of us Germans were dismemberment.

  Every day took something away from him. Only principles remained, like spokes of a wheel that kept going – speeding, at times – around a fixed point, the hub sustaining all. He called to mind the words from the Tao Te Ching: Thirty spokes meet the hub, but the void among them allows the wheel to exist. Yes. Only meteors, fragments of pulverized comets, crossed the slow westering transit like dust that rises and falls all around the fleeing wheel.

  For a long time he’d felt alone with his choices. When he presented General Blaskowitz with reports that could cost him his career and his life, when he calmly took it upon himself to disobey criminal orders, when he pulled out this or that human life from the meat grinder of war. Even tonight he was alone, equally removed from those who might be plotting the unimaginable and those who would crush them. It was not true, as Salomon whined, that words like “oath” and “loyalty” had no meaning: they were simply concepts fraught with more ambiguity than one expects.

  To many, equidistance means safety, but for me it has always implied risk. The world of professional loyalty in which I function is made of commanders and subordinates; the private world is one of loyalty to fathers and stepfathers, and of loyalty expected from sons and stepsons. Where do I fit in? I’m a subordinate and a commander, a son and a stepson, but not a father.

  Or – not quite a father.

  The thought was unexpected and painful.

  God, Dikta’s first, unborn child by me would be about five now. If he’d been in my place tonight and I in Kolo’s, he’d have looked at me and judged me – how? The truth is that I was unable to save him or his two siblings, because I did not know about them. I should grieve for my unwanted sons. To this day, however, even after she and I parted on such bad terms, in retrospect my main worry is that Dikta risked her life during the abortions … or at the very least risked being jailed, since the Reich punishes women who terminate a pregnancy.

  Odd, how even as he strove to detach himself from things and people, he occasionally blundered back into needing things and people, into needing her.

  Equidistance could be an illusion, like everything else. In a lonely mood, Bora left the park bench. He followed Freisinger Strasse eastwards, in the direction of the Leipziger Hof. Twice they stopped him, twice he showed his papers, and finally a policeman insisted on escorting him with his torch.

  LEIPZIGER HOF, THURSDAY, 13 JULY

  Bora was already up at five o’clock. Nearly a week after his uncle’s death, he’d awakened with a silly recollection from his childhood in Leipzig. It was in the autumn of ’25, just after his twelfth birthday. While Berlin frolicked to the tune of American jazz, back home he’d evidently had his first erotic dream (if it was erotic – he remembered none of it), and Dr Reinhardt-Thoma was the sole person in the world he ever told.

  Well, Uncle, he thought as he shaved, thank you for not laughing at me that day. You were a fine man. Before leaving Berlin, I promise I will speak to your colleague Olbertz. He owes it to you, if his conscience still holds up, to tell me more about your suicide.

  Before long, a hotel attendant knocked with the news that the radio was broadcasting an air-raid alert. Bora, who was reading, came to the door in his shirtsleeves to thank him. He then left both doors open (the windows had been open all night because of the heat), but did not rush downstairs.

  While grumpy guests filed past, bound for the cellars or the closest shelter, Bora finished studying Kolo’s reportage on the Weimar occultism craze. Soon the ominous drone of the approaching planes, high and invisible from his corner room, was echoed by the staccato of anti-aircraft cannons around the city. Berlin might or might not be the main target this morning; still, a few bombs fell to the north-east. Through a gap between tall buildings, he saw smoke rising from the central quarters, a vast area that extended from the zoo to Alexanderplatz.

  Still, since he could do nothing about it and did not believe in burrowing below street level, Bora read on. The opening of Kolowrat’s The Lucidity Factor, so apropos, grimly amused him: “Macht euren Dreck alleene” – “Take care of your own muck” – the sneering comment blurted out by the King of Saxony in November 1918, in dialect, when he left Dresden to the revolutionary mob. Definitely, he thought, we’re all taking care of our own muck across the Fatherland.

  In an hour’s time, the raid, anti-aircraft fire and alert were over. The wailing of ambulances and fire engines mounted in their place; smoke rose skyward like fingers from the damaged areas, as if reaching for the last quarter of a pale moon, still on the rise and already fading.

  Downstairs, breakfast in the panelled hall (rehydrated egg yolk omelette) was a rushed affair, among faces weary with sleeplessness and anxiety. People thrown together by war, made meaner by it, grew impatient and rude; some, no doubt, cured their fear by spying and reporting on one another. Bora drank his ersatz coffee with an eye on those clients, sitting at other tables in their uniforms or civilian clothes, who might have been planted as informants, in this as in other hotels.

  It was a nagging thought. Whatever lies behind my orders to investigate, all I’ve exposed so far is myself. For God’s sake, the moment my name was in the paper in connection with Uncle’s funeral, everyone in Berlin who has a bone to pick with me potentially knew that I was here. I should wrap it all up by choosing at random one of the four suspects I was so graciously issued – well, minus Ida Rüdiger, perhaps, who has friends in high places – and presenting him to Chief Nebe. Glantz is the front runner, closely followed by Kupinsky. Kupinsky would be perfect: no one would miss him. Eppner’s alibi is not above suspicion (they were all friends of his at the birthday party); besides, I’m sure I could make the little Russian girl, Paulina Andreyevna Issakova, swear to anything I want, and in so doing scuttle the watchmaker.

  Eight o’clock came and went, and still no Florian Grimm. Bora gave him the benefit of an hour, not knowing whether he was stuck somewhere due to the damaged streets, or the car had been lost in the air raid. Public transport, however, was functioning (a cause of pride for Berliners), so at nine he phoned Kripo headquarters to enquire. He learned that Inspector Grimm’s house was among those hit by enemy bombs. No other information was available regarding him or his family. Unless the worst had happened, it could be hours before he reported for duty.

  Bora hung up. He immediately formulated a way of benefitting from Grimm’s absence. He wanted to see Dr Olbertz, who had never rung back even though his nurse must have given him Bora’s phone number at the hotel. His medical office, however, was in the city centre, and even if it’d been spared in the raid it might be difficu
lt to reach while they cleared the rubble. The other opportune target was Berthold “Bubi” Kupinsky.

  KOPFSTRASSE, NEUKÖLLN, 9:38 A.M.

  Kupinsky did not answer the door. Bora waited a few minutes, then tried the handle. Discovering that it was unlocked, he entered without hesitation. He was met by the same squalor of his visit with Grimm the day before, starker because the open window flooded the front room with light. Nobody around. He stepped over a pair of pyjama trousers lying on the floor and walked into the bedroom. There, put away in a corner, leaned a rake, a shovel and a handful of other gardening tools. A few clothes drooped from coat hangers, the reek of cheap cologne mixed with mustiness and the stench of over-worn shoes. The bed, which had a coverlet with a loud floral print, had clearly been slept in.

  Bora returned to the front room. It was possible that Kupinsky had gone out on some errands, but the hastily discarded pyjama trousers and the key left in the door told another story.

  Looking out of the window (this side of the building faced a paved yard), Bora estimated that even a man with a limp could easily leave the house across the low windowsill. Yet if Kupinsky had sneaked out from there he could only have entered another apartment. No exits leading to external spaces or the street were in sight. Aside from a crumpled cigarette pack and a short stack of bricks against the wall, nothing else occupied the sun-soaked space.

  In a few steps, Bora regained the stairwell. The coloured glass panel of the door opposite Kupinsky’s trembled under his short raps. A strange shuffling noise from inside gave him the impression that someone stealthily crouching by the threshold was shifting back, in order to stand up and then approach the door pretending surprise. This, too, happened in Berlin: civilians bent double to pry unseen through the keyhole before cracking the door open for a visitor.

  “Who’s there?”

  A heavily made-up little woman in her fifties peered out. She must have half-seen Bora’s uniform, first through the hole and then through the opaque panel, so she kept her answers safely concise. The fellow at 17B? Been there only a couple of weeks, she did not know his name. To her, he was 17B. Someone had already come looking for him. Who? Men in civilian clothes. No fuss, though: the young man had followed them of his own free will. How long ago had this happened? Well, at about six in the morning, when her boyfriend went to work. “He’s employed at the slaughterhouse, see. With those trainloads of Ukrainian cattle at seven and at two thirty, he’s working overtime.”

  Bora made a quick calculation. It was out of the question that friends or acquaintances had come for Kupinsky. It could be plainclothesmen, Gestapo, Reich Security Service … What if new evidence had surfaced and Kupinsky had been hauled in for murdering Walter Niemeyer?

  “Very well,” he said. “Thank you.” He waited until the woman’s outline faded behind the glass panel as she withdrew from the door, and returned to apartment 17B.

  For whatever reason they’d seized Kupinsky at six in the morning, they had not searched the premises, which – depending on whether they had no real evidence against him, or needed none – could be a good or a bad sign. Bora took a few minutes to look through the young man’s belongings. He discovered little of interest. A pencilled list of Dahlem addresses itemized garden work done or yet to be done in Niemeyer’s neighbourhood: hedges and shrubs already pruned, flower beds to plant or dig out, upkeep of garden lawns … The affluent Dr Wirth, Bora noticed, was marked as behind in his payments by two months. In the bedroom, among the hanging clothes he identified a good-quality summer suit, possibly one of Niemeyer’s hand-me-downs. A fretwork bookend in the shape of an ibex sat on a dresser containing socks and fastidiously ironed, perfumed shirts. There were photos of actors and actresses cut out from magazines and glued to the wall; inside the drawer of the bedside table lay a quantity of sweets, cigarettes and what seemed to be – if the lessons on drugs and their effects Bora attended at the Abwehr were accurate – morphine suppositories.

  Perhaps, as he’d heard from Grimm (who at this moment might be lying dead in the ruins of his house), Kupinsky truly was still carrying on the risky business for which he’d been arrested in the past. It was conceivable, all the same, that he was an informant, allowed to seduce men about whom the authorities wanted to learn more. The personal items were few. In the bedroom, they amounted to cheap cufflinks and shop-bought ties with Kupinsky’s initials machine-embroidered on them. Bora’s search shifted to another level: less than enthusiastically, he probed beneath the horsehair mattress and inside the pillowcase, behind the wood stove, inside the tins in the pantry, under the table, the few chairs and the worn rug. Nothing but sweet wrappers, ersatz coffee, small change. He ran his fingers along the window frame, in case any papers had been stuck between the wood and the wall. Nothing.

  It was his habit to go beyond appearances that made him straddle the windowsill, step out into the paved yard, pick up the crumpled cigarette pack and look inside. It was empty. He could have ignored the short pile of bricks. Instead, on an instinct, he lifted them one at a time to look underneath.

  He glimpsed a sealed envelope, neatly placed to fit into the shape of the bottom brick. On it, he read the typewritten initials of the receiver – E. D. No address. No heading, no mention of a sender. The high-quality hand-made paper resembled that of Niemeyer’s correspondence with his publisher, found in Glantz’s office after his failed suicide. Instinctively, Bora pocketed the envelope, climbed back into Kupinsky’s apartment, and used the razor blade he habitually took along for a quick shave to slice open the flap along the crease.

  Single, startling words can leap out of a text feverishly skimmed; and so they did now, to Bora. It was the double underlining of two sentences in violet ink, nearly tearing through the high-quality paper, that made his mouth go dry: “Immediate attention … Reich Security Central Office … the army … vital interests of the State …” Fear lay behind the impersonal neutrality of typed characters. He wondered how far into the chasm they had all fallen, if a soldier could break into a cold sweat on a summer’s day because of something he read.

  Niemeyer himself must have been in a funk while writing the text (there were typing errors and corrections), yet vengeful enough to plan to take everyone down with him if he fell. Bora could only imagine the recipient’s reaction, if it ever reached him.

  Was E. D. a friend, a solicitor, a notary? He hadn’t come across the initials in Niemeyer’s folder.

  He replaced the letter in the envelope, folded it twice and slipped it out of sight into his left sleeve. For several minutes he paced around the room calming himself, trying to postpone unnerving conclusions until he felt collected enough to leave the apartment.

  He’d barely stepped out when the sound of rough voices and a crowd of shadows darkening the door to the sunlit street froze him to the spot. Three hard-faced, hefty men, every one of them in an overcoat of the type that conceals the carrying of weapons, barged into the stairwell together. Caught short by the presence of an army officer, they paused, and their hesitation gave Bora the audacity to take the initiative and ask at once if they were here for the resident named Kupinsky.

  The bulkiest of the three – all but a stand-in for Florian Grimm – grumbled, “What’s your business with Kupinsky, Colonel?”

  Bora took the calling card with Nebe’s name on it out of his breast pocket, and showed it without a word.

  The men looked at one another. “We’re not here for Kupinsky,” added the one who’d first spoken. “Please let us through.”

  Meanwhile, from upstairs came turmoil and noises; doors slammed, someone ran through the flat, a girl’s strident voice rose and was immediately silenced. The three moved past Bora and ran upstairs; in the commotion that followed, it was safe to say that the doors to all the lodgings in the house but the one in question remained bolted. And even the door to the apartment in question, judging by the crash of broken glass, was yanked open by force.

  The episode had nothing to do with him; Bora could sim
ply walk away. Instead, he waited at the foot of the stairs for the conclusion of what seemed to be a full-scale arrest. Minutes later, the three scrambled downstairs dragging a man in an undershirt, whose nose someone had just fractured. He was white as chalk, and blood flowed onto his sweaty undershirt. He took a terrified look in the direction of the impassable officer while, lifting him by his armpits, they hauled him outside.

  “I swear, Köpenicker Landstrasse 76 is all I was told,” Bora heard him wail on the doorstep.

  Unhurriedly – he meant to show neither an interest nor a total lack of it – he followed the foursome to the street door. Black cars were stationed up and down the street, manned by thugs wearing overcoats and felt hats low on their foreheads. In days of scarce fuel, the operation was too massive to concern a simple breach of the law, such as a robbery. Unless the man was a Jew, he must be wanted as a subversive: a pacifist, a communist, an enemy spy … Now they were shoving him into a saloon that took off at once, followed by the other vehicles. The third car passed in front of Bora at a lower speed, and both driver and passenger stared closely at him as they went past.

  For a minute or two he lingered on the lonely street, thinking This could happen to any of us. This could happen to me. As early as the start of the war, when thousands daily gave themselves up as prisoners to us, I reasoned that this could happen to me. He could imagine the dreadful lowing of cattle about to be slaughtered north of the river, how they must be rushing to finish off this batch before the second trainload came at two thirty. The asphalt was growing soft under the sun.