City of Shadows

by Ariana Franklin

  He caught her arm to slow her down. She looked up at him. “So that’s it. My past. Two pogroms. Unlucky, really.”

  “And you’re still standing,” he said.

  “There was Rosa.”

  He delved into her pocket and produced another set of toilet tissue. “Blow.” He sat her down on a log and knelt beside her.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Schmidt,” she said, weeping. “It’s strange when you ought to be dead and aren’t, when you want to be. My life was somebody’s carelessness. A sort of oversight. For a long time, I didn’t know how to fill it. God was irrelevant. Rosa said that was narcissism— well, she didn’t use the word, but that’s what she meant.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. You have to have worked that out long before it happens to you, because it’s been happening always. God has to be fitted into a past of massacre. To believe in God when you’re exempt and then stop believing in Him when you aren’t is not only presumptuous, it’s bad history.”

  “Or a nonexistent God in the first place.”

  She waggled her hands, as he’d seen Minna Wolff do a hundred times. “Maybe. But even if you don’t believe in Him, if you’re a Darwinist, it’s the same thing. Think of the millions of years of your species struggling to give you this amazing accident of life, and how sinful, how bloody ungrateful, it is to throw it away. It’s our duty to the dead not to waste the million-year gift they can’t have by being guilty because they can’t have it. We have to forgive ourselves for being alive.”

  He applied more tissue, and she took it out of his hands and scrubbed her face with it.

  “Or perhaps in my case God just overdid it. He took everything that had mattered and everything that didn’t. It was too massive to take in. I was reborn at sixteen, naked, raped, with a face somebody’d slashed open. Rosa didn’t know who I was—for a long time I didn’t either. Didn’t matter to her. I was hurt and needed mending. Rosa doesn’t fit into Dar-win’s theory, Schmidt. It didn’t help her survival or her children’s to waste time and food and care on me. For part of that awful journey, I slowed her down.”

  “So Rosa is God.”

  “A facet of Him,” she said. “Or Her. God’s what stops you from slitting your wrists.”

  He helped her up, and they walked on.

  He wanted to tell her about Ikey Wolff, but it wasn’t the time. One day, though, he’d talk about Ikey, another aberration of Darwin’s theory, and how Ikey had got him through the war, not by heroism but because the man had been proof that decency was still a human attribute.

  The forest was thinning now, and they could see the Zorawskis’ house in the distance.

  She stopped for a moment. “And there’s you,” she said.

  20

  IN THE TRAIN out of Pinsk, he gave her the two photographs. She saw the killer’s face immediately; now she remembered it. It was coming up the staircase of the Green Hat toward her.

  She forced herself to study it for a long time, knowing it was ridiculous to feel that those flat, dull, vaguely Slavic eyes were watching her. “It’s the same face,” she said. “He didn’t change at all; he just got older. Stolid, secret. You wonder what sort of childhood produced that look.”

  “Lousy, I expect. They generally are. And I don’t bloody care.” He handed her another filched photograph. “These are the ones he butchered—see that young woman there, with the baby in her arms, the one smiling?”

  She handed the pictures back.

  At Warsaw Station the only German paper he could get was Berliner Morgenpost. When he settled back with it in the compartment, another face he knew stared back at him from an inside page. “Good God Almighty.”

  Under a picture of Anna, the caption read “Mystery woman

  claims a share of the Romanov inheritance.” Below was a brief story. He read it to her.

  “ ‘Anna Anderson, the woman claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia’ blah, blah, blah . . . ‘has hired lawyers to begin a fight in the German courts for recognition of her title as heiress to the murdered czar of Russia. ...Mrs. Anderson is at present in the United States.’ Shit. That means she’ll be coming back at some point. Did you know about this?”

  “No.” Esther rubbed her forehead.

  “Well,” he said, “Ryszard must know by now that she’s not going to give him away. Tell the world who he is and she tells the world who she is. She should, but she won’t. She’s been secure for nine years by proclaiming she’s Anastasia. The killer knows that while she’s Anastasia she can’t be Franziska and a witness against him. He’s safe from her. She’s safe from him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. It’s in our man’s interest. If she’s Anastasia and alive, nobody’s going to inquire into the whereabouts of Ryszard Galczynski from Bagna Duze.”

  “You blame her, don’t you?” Esther said. “For not pointing the finger at him. She can’t. I’ve told you, she believes she is Anastasia.”

  Whoever she is, she’s a pain in the ass, Schmidt thought. The woman was a complication he didn’t want to deal with. “What’s she been doing in the States anyway?”

  “Some American millionairess called Jennings was planning to finance an army to invade Russia and put her back on the throne.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No.” She shook her head at him. “Schmidt, you don’t realize how ...she gets taken up by really extraordinary people. Rachmani-noff—I mean Rachmaninoff—was fighting her cause at one point.”

  “And they drop her again,” Schmidt said.

  “Well, she’s difficult,” Esther said. “She can’t help it. God, I wish she wasn’t coming back. I’d hoped the States would suit her, but now I come to think about it, she was beginning to complain at the publicity the American papers were giving her, she didn’t like her hosts, she thought she was being exploited, she’d stepped on her parrot—”

  “Stepped on a parrot?”

  “Some sort of accident when she was having hysterics. I should have known she wasn’t happy from the fact that she phoned at all. It’s only in between patrons that she turns to me.”

  “You’ll take her in, I suppose? If she comes back?”

  “If she wants me to. She’s my responsibility.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Yes she is.” Her eyes got bluer when she was stern.

  Anna Anderson, Schmidt thought. Female. Known to be trailing gunpowder. Four dead so far. Many wounded, including one parrot.

  THEIR TRAIN SLOWED entering Berlin. Esther watched a setting sun slant across the posters lining the railway tracks. Election time again. So far 1932 had consisted of little else. The wrangling of parties without a majority in the Reichstag was reflected by fighting in the streets.

  Sooty terraced windows displayed Communist posters; an enclave of houses with nice gardens was placarded with swastikas. Nearly every party was portraying the German people as a half-naked giant. The Nazi giant towering above a bank, destroying it with a swastika-decorated compressor. The People’s Party giant was in a loincloth sweeping aside soberly dressed politicians. A Social Democrat giant threw tiny Nazis and Communists out of the Reichstag. More swastikas, hammers and sickles, raised fists.

  She thought how violent and masculine it all was. They’ve forgotten women. The Nazis even made a virtue of their refusal to put forward women candidates: “Politics is too unclean for women to participate.”

  Hoardings again. Pictures of President Hindenburg, Chancellor von Papen, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler.

  “What exactly does von Papen stand for?” she asked.

  “Von Papen,” he drawled deliberately, screwing a metaphorical monocle in his eye, “stands for the Good Old Days. Army, Authority, Aristocracy. No nasty democracy. You remember the Good Old Days? When anybody who applied for social benefits wasn’t allowed to vote?”

  “He doesn’t want Hitler in, though, does he?”

  “No, but rather Hitler than the Reds. And the Nazis are now the sec
ond-largest party.”

  “I don’t understand politics,” she said. “We didn’t have any in Old Russia.”

  “Better learn,” he said.

  The train was hissing quietly to itself, having stopped before entering the station. Opposite the window was another Nazi poster on which an anemic-looking angel, depicting the Social Democrats, was walking hand in hand with the usual caricatured Jew—squat, fur-coated, cigar-smoking, hook-nosed. Somebody with a paint pot had enforced the message: KILL THE JEWS!

  Their cab had to take a circuitous route to get to Bismarck Allee; the police had set up a barrier to block Potsdamer Platz and surrounding roads.

  “Kozis and Nazis been fighting down there all day,” the driver said. “Bloody Reds.”

  “Why not bloody Nazis?” Schmidt asked.

  “That’s different. Wasn’t for them, we’d have bloody Bolshies in power.”

  It was dark by the time they got home. Marlene had left a note with the day’s date in slashing green ink on the kitchen table: “Tell the inspector that little Marlene of Scotland Yard solved his case yesterday! All shall be revealed! What DID you get up to in Poland?”

  At three o’clock in the morning, the phone rang. She handed it to him. “For you.”

  It was Willi. “You left this telephone number, boss.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just thought you might be interested, knowing you and Prince Nick and Munich. Probably nothing to do with it but . . .”

  “What?”

  “One of his old clubs, boss, the one for queers. There’s a riot. Call’s just come in from one of my lads.”

  Jesus. “The Pink Parasol?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Send a car. I’m at 29 Bismarck Allee.”

  She was sitting up in bed. “What is it? The Pink Parasol. Is it Marlene?”

  “No, just a disturbance. Homo club, there’s always some sort of trouble.” He dragged on his trousers.

  “Oh, God,” she said. “It’s Marlene.”

  When he got there, the Parasol’s bouncer was being put into an ambulance. He’d slammed the street door on the truckload of storm troopers that had pulled up outside and given fight when they broke it down. As the stretcher was carried past him, Schmidt glimpsed a cauliflower ear sticking out from what was otherwise a bloody mess.

  Willi had turned up in a traffic car. Tudjmann of Vice, under whose aegis this was, stood on the pavement among a ring of uniformed police, watching his men collect wooden clubs and truncheons from storm-troopers as they came down the stairs and hurried off into the night.

  “Aren’t you going to take their goddamn names?” Schmidt demanded of him.

  Tudjmann shrugged. “What for?”

  “Well, I am.” He made for the stair, yelling, “Police!” with Willi behind him herding descending Nazis back up. One or two pushed past him, but the rest retired in front of him to the first landing where a door read JUSTUS MARCKS. THEATRICAL AGENT. The Pink Parasol was another floor up.

  The storm troopers gathered on the landing were uniformly young and sated. They stared at Schmidt with curiosity, almost affront. He demanded, “Who ordered this?”

  “What do you care?” one of them asked, and another said, “We’re doing your job for you. Cleaning Germany of vermin.”

  “Take their names, Willi,” Schmidt said. “Check every identity card.”

  He went up the next flight of stairs.

  The Pink Parasol was like hundreds of clubs in Berlin described as “intimate,” meaning small—a room with discreet lighting that kept its clientele in near darkness and focused pink spotlights on the small stage at the far end, where some storm troopers were still doggedly smashing up the band’s instruments and music stands. Splintered chairs and tables littered the floor among broken glass.

  Some men in business suits were gathered together in one corner of the room, fearful but, as far as Schmidt could see, unharmed. The assault had been on the staff and entertainers. A black man lay facedown on the floor with blood coming out of his head, a dented saxophone thrown on top of him. A young man hung by his tied hands from a light fixture. His glittering leotard had been ripped down to his ankles, and his back was scored like a slashed painting. Two more were unconscious on the floor, others were staggering on their feet, one was retching and trying to catch his teeth as the effort sent them out of his mouth.

  Schmidt gestured to the businessmen in the corner and then to the hanging figure. “Get him down.” He walked up to the stage where the storm troopers were still too busy to notice him. “Police,” he said, clearly, without shouting.

  One by one they lowered weapons and turned to face him. A couple were smirking. Not one of them was older than twenty.

  “Who put you up to this?” Schmidt asked conversationally.

  The smirk on one face grew wider. “Decency.”

  Schmidt looked at the wooden club in the boy’s hands and knew he could take it from him and smash his face with it and knew, too, that if he did, he wouldn’t stop.

  He heard Willi’s voice behind him giving orders. “Send these men to the Alex. And get the medics up here.”

  He looked around. The Parasol boys were either too shocked or too injured to be coherent. He went up to their customers. “Was the one they call Marlene here tonight?” he asked.

  A short, fat man stepped forward, settling his jacket. He sported a mustache and a wing collar; he looked like everybody’s bank manager. “I should make it clear, Inspector, that my friend and I had no idea what sort of club this was. We merely stopped in for a drink.”

  Schmidt smiled, took him by his lapels, and raised him to tiptoe. “And I should make it clear”—he rocked the man back and forth— “that I do not care a fuck about you and your friend. I want to know if Marlene was here.”

  A younger man stepped forward. “They took her. Him, I mean.”

  “Where? Who did?”

  “Two of them. They took her through there.” He pointed to a curtain by the side of the stage. “She was just starting her act.”

  “Thank you,” Schmidt said. “Willi, here.”

  They barged through the curtain into a small corridor, yelling, “Police!”

  Some bolts were drawn back and a door opened, a man peeped out.

  “Who are you?” Willi demanded.

  “Have they gone? I heard the rumpus.”

  “Where’s Marlene?” Schmidt shouted at him.

  “I don’t know. I heard the rumpus and—”

  Schmidt pushed past him, opening doors. A dressing room, smelling of cheap scent with bulbs around a huge mirror. A less fragrant lavatory. A broom closet. And, at the end, a door leading onto a fire escape that descended into a yard made dark by the loom of surrounding buildings. “Get a flashlight, Willi.”

  Light showed an open gate and overflowing trash cans. One was overturned, and there was blood dripped on its scattered contents. “She was struggling.”

  A tiny, rubbish-filled alley raised Schmidt’s hopes. They’d leave her here. Above the rattle of the nearby S-Bahn, he yelled, “You go that way, I’ll go up here!”

  He stumbled to the end of the alley.

  He met Willi coming back. “They took her out the other end, boss. A waiter having a smoke saw a big woman being forced into a Mercedes, a Silver Arrow, he said it was.”

  “Get a description out, Willi.”

  “Who is this Marlene?” Willi asked. “Important, is she?”

  “Yes. I want that car stopped.”

  “Can’t be too many of them about,” Willi said. “Rich man’s auto, that is.”

  “Now, Willi.” But he knew there wasn’t any rush; the transvestite was probably already dead.

  He didn’t say so to Esther when he phoned to tell her. “We’ll find her, darling.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line.

  “We’ll find her,” he said again. Because she still didn’t say anything, he put the phone down so that he
could get on with his job. This was no time to indulge in guilt; she’d flagellate herself enough for the two of them. If it was anybody’s fault, it was his—that’s what came of using unofficial channels. Had he given the photograph to the uniform boys to flash about . . .

  He should have known. Giving Marlene the picture had been lethal. The killer had come for her, and he’d gotten her. The poor old queen had shown the sports-club photograph to somebody who’d recognized the face on it. Recently. Very recently. “Tell the inspector that little Marlene of Scotland Yard solved his case yesterday!” Just now his anger was too great for self-blame; he could feel it licking out of him, lighting up the figure caught in it, scorching it until it shriveled.

  You’re in Berlin now. I’m getting close, you bastard, and you know it.

  IN 29C BISMARCK Allee, Esther continued to hold the phone to her ear long after the connection had been broken. Crazily, the only words in her head paraphrased a line from an English play that had once made her laugh. “To lose one flatmate, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.”

  After a while she put the receiver back—very slowly. I’m a web, she thought. Everyone dies that gets caught up in me.

  She’d heard the fury in Schmidt’s voice and envied it; anger was not an option for her. The massacre of her family would have blasted her apart if she’d given way to it; the crime had been too vast for anger, too impersonal, a political act. She’d disciplined herself to seeing the killing in context, as a legacy of impersonal hatred, czar on Jew, Bolshevik on czar, Red on White, White on Black. And now that it was personal, now that a malformed mind had slithered out of the Polish marshes and was defending its disguise by striking at other people she loved, it was too late for her to resurrect anger; she could feel only shame that she’d helped to lead it to them. And grief that they were dead.