Contents
Copyright © 2020 Christopher P Jones.
About the author
VANISHED IN BERLIN
PART I – ARNO
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
PART II – MONIKA
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
PART III – ARNO
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
ENDINGS
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
FIND OUT MORE
COMING SOON
Copyright © 2020 Christopher P Jones.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental, except where the reference is to public domain information on that person.
Reference to countries, events or locales are used merely to add an element of realism to the story. The use of historical events is based on information in the public domain.
First published 2020.
Thinksheet Publishing
www.chrisjoneswrites.co.uk
Christopher P Jones writes historical, mystery and literary fiction. He is fascinated by the possibility of opening up a window onto the past. He is also an art critic and art historian.
Vanished in Berlin is his second novel. The first installment of the Berlin Tales, Berlin Vertigo, was published in April 2020.
More at www.chrisjoneswrites.co.uk
VANISHED IN BERLIN
By
Christopher P Jones
PART I – ARNO
1
Germany. 1931
Arno Hiller woke to the feeling of sunlight feathering his cheek. Lying next to him in the hotel bed was his girlfriend, Monika Goldstein.
It was summer. The country was in full bloom. Two days before, he and Monika had walked along the Kurfürstendamm and dared to hold hands, if only for a couple of minutes. It was the atmosphere that coaxed them. The way the café terraces brimmed with faces and the sound of music trickled from every doorway. They felt safe enough among the crowds to let their hands meet and link. For once they let their guard down. That’s the bravura of love, he thought at the time.
Today, they were only a train ride away from Berlin, yet to be in this tiny little town felt like another universe. It was a wild kind of liberation, to be nestled in the hidden folds of a rural hotel where nobody could possibly find them, where nobody could begin to prise them apart.
Close the hotel door. Lock it. Climb into the big bed.
It was his idea to come away like this. Who else would be as bold? To spend a weekend in an anonymous village where nobody knew their faces, where they could pretend to be young newlyweds and do more than just hold hands? He would no longer be Herr Hiller and she no longer Fräulein Goldstein. This weekend they were Herr und Frau, just-married and drinking in the pleasures of their fake honeymoon.
They had left Berlin from Anhalter Bahnhof. He remembered the last thing they’d seen at the station, just as they were stepping onto their train carriage: a troop of teenage boys marching in files of three, with short-trousers and socks pulled up to their knees, wearing armbands with the Schutzstaffel insignia. They had mastered the solid clap of their feet against concrete, copied from their Nazi heroes. The boys smacked their boots against the floor as if they were in competition with each other, filling the steel and iron hall with chilling reverberations. That was the way they did things in those boys’ clubs. Just about every activity, no matter how big or small, was turned into a tournament between the members.
Arno used to believe in the cause, but not anymore. He’d once been a member of their ranks. Well, almost. He’d never marched like that, never worn the uniform, but he’d made the raised-arm salute enough times. And before then, the camping trips, the pretend war-games in the woods and the late-night, torch-lit conversations about the excitement of war and the regret of having missed out on the last one.
Politics had lost its shine since then. The way he saw it, everyone hated everyone: the communists, the capitalists, the Jews, the gentry, the army, the landlords, the farmers, the unemployed. It was a binge of loathing, and nobody had any way of bringing it to an end. He was glad to be out of it.
Berlin, the city of sunshine and hatred, was all but forgotten.
In the hotel room, he rolled onto his back and thought proudly about how different he was. He didn’t know anyone else like him. He dared to think for himself and he was proud of that.
He glanced over at Monika. She was his prize for thinking for himself. A Jewish girl? It didn’t matter to him one bit. That’s what set him apart. That’s what the mark of a true man was, to be able to think for yourself and win the prize of making up your own mind.
The morning light through the window dimmed as the sun shifted and a cloud went by. He nudged her by pushing his leg back against the weight of her foot. He would remember the weekend for these secret love games under the bedclothes.
He nudged her harder when she didn’t move. Was she pretending to sleep? Maybe she was still angry with him from the night before and was acting like he didn’t exist.
It wasn’t his fault he’d lost their money. He never said he was reliable. He was carefree and bold, but he never promised to be reliable. Wasn’t that why she loved him, why she said those very words the night before – ‘I love you’ – because he was so exciting?
He remembered the moment. Her voice dropped to a hush as she said it, ‘I love you.’ He reached over and touched her hair that covered the pillow in chestnut ribbons. Then he said it back, ‘I love you too.’
Not more than an hour later, he’d lost their money and all that love-talk went out of the window. How strange life was, that they could be so intimate one minute and then shouting at each other the next? It wasn’t his fault that he was careless. That was part of the deal; she couldn’t have daring without the carelessness thrown in.
‘All of it? How could you?’ she said. ‘You’re not a man!’
The words came out in a terrible hiss. She flung open the door to the hotel room and disappeared into the bathroom. She cancelled him out with lashings of running water. He could hear the bath running, pulsing, malign, noxious.
He was twenty-three years old. He felt too young for scenes like this. That’s what he told himself. At their age, they should be able to laugh about what happened, perhaps even turn it into an adventure. They’d have to run from the hotel without paying, smuggle themselves onto a train back to Berlin without a ticket. To him, that sounded like fun. They would be comrades on a mission: two lovers against the world. That was his idea of living.
He lay in the bed and felt their skins tou
ch beneath the sheets. He closed his eyes. Sometimes he liked it when they argued; it gave him something to work against. What is a man supposed to look like anyway? he thought to himself as he gently fell asleep in the dangling rays of sun.
When he woke next, Monika had vanished.
2
None of her clothes were missing and he felt sure she had no money with her. The hotel room looked just as it had when they went to bed the night before, with the small satchel-case left on a chair and their few possessions strewn about the room.
He got out of bed and put on his wire-framed glasses. It just wasn’t like her to leave without warning. He tried to piece it together, where she might have gone, what she might be thinking. Her hairbrush was still on the dressing table. He checked her clothes again, and once again decided there was nothing missing.
He went into the bathroom. Nothing strange there. The only thing he noticed was that her toothbrush had been used. It was still in its place, stood up in a glass tumbler, but its bristles were wet.
He got dressed and put on his coat. He thought twice about leaving the room in case she came back, but after twenty minutes there was still no sign of her.
He left the room and scouted the corridors of the hotel. He went to the foyer and into the little paved courtyard where they’d taken a drink the night before. Monika was nowhere to be found.
Next, he took to the streets of the town. It was a tumbledown place, with narrow passageways and crooked houses made of timber beams. Every hour, the clock in the main square chimed and a little wooden man holding a trumpet wheeled out mechanically. There were plenty of passageways and shadowy corners to hide in, plenty of medieval nooks to lay-low if she was trying to remain invisible.
He tried to imagine where she might choose to go. She was punishing him. That was obvious. She wanted him to taste the bitter salt of panic. He expected her to jump out at any moment, and that gave the search an edge of uneasy excitement.
The town was smaller than he realised and he quickly covered the entire length without finding any sign of Monika. Without expecting it, he passed beneath a stone wall and found himself at the very edge of the village looking out over fields. He turned around and went back into the town, already beginning to feel that the game had gone on long enough.
It was so hot that morning that the sunlight above seemed to tremble with brightness. As the day passed, he started to feel terribly hungry. He had no money to buy anything, so he tried to find a bakery that might have thrown out some old bread or cakes from the morning, something he could snatch that nobody would miss. For a whole hour he hunted for food, but at the end of it was no closer to filling his aching stomach than when he began. Of the few restaurants and cafés that dotted the town, most were closed. Some boys in short-trousers were kicking a stone around the main square, chasing after it and laughing. A man in a cap reprimanded them and they ran away. An old church loomed overhead, its three spires rising like a devil’s fork in the sky.
He went back to the great stone wall at the end of town and looked out across the empty stretch of farmland that led to a forest in the distance. Could she have gone that far? The forest was dark and huge. Could she be lost inside it right now, trying to find her way out after taking a wrong turn?
He decided to go back to the hotel. By now she may have returned there. Yet when he reached it, the thick wooden door was sealed shut. Ringing the bell that hung by a metal rod came to nothing. A notice on the door said it was closed until seven that evening. He hunted his clothes for a few seconds, gouging through his empty pockets for the room key he knew he’d forgotten to pick up. He hoped that another guest might arrive and allow him to slip in with them, but nobody came. Nothing stirred inside the building, no simper of life, just the reverberations of his fists against the big wooden door.
Damn! He was feeling it now. Monika had what she wanted. She had ruined his high. She had played the joke. Now it was time to finish the game. ‘Where are you?’ he began to say out loud, as if she might be following him and would hear him calling. He hadn’t eaten since the night before and his head was beginning to pound.
The afternoon passed. He found a drinking fountain and slurped water from its green spout. Then he went to the train station, the only place in the whole town he really trusted. The station was empty except for a pair of women smoking on a bench and a small stray dog curled up in the opposite corner. The board showed no arrivals and just a single departure: to Berlin in two hours’ time. He asked one of the women for a cigarette. She gave him two.
Then it occurred to him. Had Monika left already? Did she get an earlier train? Had she been back in Berlin all this time whilst he was pacing around this forgettable little town in a temper? He felt sure it was the case and grew angry at himself for not realising it sooner. Of course! Then, swept up by the relief, he smiled to himself at how brave Monika was. That was one of the reasons he liked her. She didn’t even wait for him!
At seven o’clock he went back to the hotel and found the big wooden door wide open. A small lady he didn’t recognise was on duty at the reception desk. He explained he’d forgotten his key and asked her to let him back into the bedroom. Nothing had been touched, not a single item disturbed or taken. Monika had not been there. Nobody had.
He wanted to keep moving. He couldn’t stand being inside the hotel anymore, so he gathered up all their possessions and pushed them into the satchel. He left the hotel without paying for the room. Twenty minutes later, he was stood on the station platform waiting for the Berlin train. The sky above was turning a shade of peach. It felt good to be at the station, knowing a decision had been made. He had no ticket, but then again, most of the time on these rural trains there was no guard to check. He would take the risk. That was the sort of person he was. He didn’t mind taking a risk.
The train was a slow-mover and would take all night to reach Berlin. But what choice did he have? Besides, it would be easier to travel unnoticed by night. The journey would be a fine thing, he decided. He could sleep. He could dream. He could probably find some food. And by tomorrow, he’d be back in Berlin with his sweetheart.
3
Arno moved along the corridor silently, wary of being spotted by anyone who might care to notice. He was accustomed to acting in these clandestine ways, used to being in some sort of trouble. It was normal for him. Perhaps he even preferred it.
He found an empty compartment to sit in. He pulled on the sliding door and slipped inside. He felt sure he hadn’t been seen. Inside, the velour seats were worn down to polished black on the headrests. The train started up. He had no company and nothing to read, so he spent the first few minutes watching his reflection in the carriage window.
He was grateful to have found an empty compartment. He lifted his feet onto the opposite bench and put his head back. Soon he would look for food. He didn’t want to think too hard. If he could get to sleep, the journey would be a fine thing indeed.
An hour or two passed and the summer evening turned dark. Outside, bright electric night-lights blossomed and died, spinning orange webs under his eyelids. He looked out to see what the lights were from. Sometimes they illuminated an open tract of land, sometimes they brought the world up close, a brick wall or the sudden mouth of a tunnel. He had no idea where he was and he didn’t really care.
After a few stops, he could see more passengers getting on. Even at this time, it was surprising how many people were on the move. Finally, he watched with disappointment as the door to his compartment slid open and a couple edged in. They brought with them numerous bags, which they took a great deal of time to squeeze through the door and hoist into the luggage nets overhead. Arno tried to ignore them. He lifted his legs off the opposite bench and turned towards the corner.
The man sat down with a thump whilst the woman checked herself in the oval mirror that hung above the seats. He was bulky and tough-looking, with a glum face and a bald head. His eyes were inset with dark hollows, like the deep depressions of te
acup saucers. He wore a suit that was too big for him or else so old it was warped at the elbows and knees.
The woman was obviously more attractive. When she sat down, Arno could see she had fresh skin and wide, arching lips. In fact, there was an extreme difference in looks between the two of them.
Arno began to stare. He couldn’t help but marvel at the disparity. The more obvious the fact seemed, the more ugly he became and the more beautiful she became too. They were such an unusual coupling, it made them almost painful to look at. Arno wished Monika was with him to see it, this injustice, or something else he recognised as unnatural.
The couple settled into their seats and spoke in quick sentences. The man was complaining at the woman for bringing too much luggage. She changed the topic and blamed him for choosing second-class when she would have preferred first. He told her there was no first-class on this train. She dismissed him. Part beauty, part gypsy, Arno thought. Her skin was smooth like buttermilk.
Arno took some pleasure in watching them squabble. He began to wonder how this ugly wretch had gained the affections of such a beautiful woman. What hold did he have over her? What was in it for her? He began to wonder what strange circumstances had brought them together. With this question playing on his mind, he couldn’t sleep now. He half-closed his eyes and just watched the couple opposite, trying to work out their story.
After half-an-hour, the man got up and declared he was bored and was going to walk to the length of the train. He rocked with the swaying of the carriage, tottering in his baggy suit through the sliding doors and out into the corridor.
Something inside Arno began to stir. It was a type of energy that sometimes grabbed him. He didn’t know where it came from, but it rose up in him like an inflating balloon. He opened his eyes and looked over at the woman. He gave her a hard stare as if he could send his thoughts to her. He was beginning to feel tired and foolish and chancy.
Vanished in Berlin: Kidnap suspense mystery set in 1930s Berlin (Berlin Tales Book 2) Page 1