by Philip Kerr
“A desk clerk, a violinist, yes, even a house detective help the hotel to run smoothly. Yet they are also relatively anonymous, and it seems unlikely that a guest will be greatly inconvenienced by any of their departures. But Fräulein Szrajbman saw Herr Reles every day. He trusted her. It will be hard to find a replacement whose typing and shorthand are as reliable as her good character.”
Behlert wasn’t a high-toned sort of man, he just looked and sounded that way. A few years younger than me—too young to have fought in the war—he wore a tailcoat, a collar as stiff as the smile on his face, spats, and a line-of-ants mustache that looked as if it had been grown especially for him by Ronald Colman.
“I suppose I shall have to put an advertisement in The German Girl,” he said.
“That’s a Nazi magazine. You put an ad in there and I guarantee you’ll get yourself a Gestapo spy.”
Behlert got up and closed the office door.
“Please, Herr Gunther. I don’t think it’s advisable to talk like that. You could get us both into trouble. You’re speaking as if there’s something wrong with employing someone who is a National Socialist.”
Behlert thought himself too refined to use a word like “Nazi.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I just love Nazis. I’ve a sneaking suspicion that ninety-nine point nine percent of Nazis are giving the other point one percent an undeservedly bad reputation.”
“Please, Herr Gunther.”
“I expect some of them are excellent secretaries, too. Matter of fact, I saw several just the other day when I was at Gestapo headquarters.”
“You were at Gestapo headquarters?” Behlert adjusted his shirt collar to accommodate an Adam’s apple that was going up and down his neck like an elevator car.
“Sure. I used to be a cop, remember? Anyway, this pal of mine runs a Gestapo department employing a whole pit of stenographers. Blond, blue-eyed, a hundred words a minute, and that’s just the confessions obtained without duress. When they start using the rack and thumbscrews, the ladies have to type even faster than that.”
Acute discomfort continued to hover like a hornet in the air in front of Behlert.
“You’re an unusual man, Herr Gunther,” he said, weakly.
“That’s what my friend in the Gestapo said. Something like that, anyway. Look, Herr Behlert, forgive me for knowing your business better than you, but it seems to me that the last thing we want at the Adlon is someone who might scare the guests with a lot of talk about politics. Some of these people are foreigners. Quite a few are also Jews. And they’re a bit more particular about things like freedom of speech. Not to mention the freedom of Jews. Why don’t you leave it to me to find someone suitable? Someone who has no interest in politics whatsoever. Whoever we find, I’ll have to check her out anyway. Besides, I enjoy looking for girls. Even ones who can earn an honest living.”
“All right. If you would.” He smiled ruefully.
“What?”
“What you said just now, you reminded me of something,” said Behlert. “I was remembering what it was like to speak without looking over your shoulder.”
“You know what I think the problem is? That before the Nazis, there was never any free speech worth listening to.”
THAT EVENING I WENT to one of the bars at Europa Haus, a geometric pavilion of glass and concrete. It had rained, and the streets were black and shiny, and the huge assemblage of modern offices—Odol, Allianz, Daimler—looked like a great passenger liner cruising across the Atlantic, with every deck lit up. A taxi dropped me near the bow end, and I went into the Café-Bar Pavilion to splice the main brace and look for a suitable crew member to replace Ilse Szrajbman.
Of course, I had an ulterior motive in volunteering for such hazardous duty. It gave me something to do while I was drinking. Something better to do while I was drinking than feeling guilty about the man I had killed. Or so I hoped.
His name was August Krichbaum, and most of the newspapers had reported his murder, for, it transpired, there had been a witness of sorts who had seen me deliver the fatal blow. Fortunately the witness had been leaning out of an upper-floor window of the Kaiser Hotel at the time of Krichbaum’s death and had seen only the top of my brown hat. The doorman described me as a man of about thirty with a mustache, and upon reading all of this, I might have shaved off my mustache if I had worn one. My only consolation was that Krichbaum had not left behind a wife and family. There was that and the fact that he was ex-SA and a Nazi Party member since 1929. Anyway, I had hardly meant to kill him. Not with one punch, even if it was a punch that had lowered Krichbaum’s blood pressure, slowed his heart, and then stopped it altogether.
As usual, the Pavilion was full of cloche-hatted stenographers. I even spoke to a few, but there wasn’t one who struck me as having what guests of the hotel needed most in a secretary beyond the ability to type and take good shorthand. And I knew what this was, even if Georg Behlert didn’t: The girl needed to have a little bit of glamour. Just like the hotel itself. Quality and efficiency were what made the Adlon good. But glamour was what made the place famous, and why it was always full of the best people. Of course, this also made it attractive to some of the worst people. But that was where I came in and, of late, slightly more often in the evenings since Frieda had left. Because while the Nazis had closed nearly all of the sex clubs and bars that once made Berlin a byword for vice and sexual depravity, there was still a considerable number of joy girls who worked a more discreet trade in the Friedrichstadt maisons or, more commonly, in the bars and lobbies of the bigger hotels. And upon leaving the Pavilion, I decided to drop in at the Adlon on my way home. Just to see what was what.
The doorman, Carl, saw me getting out of a taxi and came forward with an umbrella. He was pretty good with an umbrella and a smile and the door and not much else. It wasn’t what I’d have called a career, but with tips, he made more than I did. A lot more. Frieda had strongly suspected Carl was in the habit of taking tips from joy girls to let them into the hotel, but neither of us had ever been able to catch him or prove it. Flanked by two stone columns each bearing a lantern as big as a forty-two-centimeter howitzer shell, Carl and I remained on the pavement for a moment to smoke a cigarette and generally exercise our lungs. Above the door was a laughing stone face. No doubt the face had seen the hotel room rate. At fifteen marks a night, it was almost a third of what I made in a week.
I went inside the entrance hall, tipped my damp hat to the new desk clerk, and winked at the page boys. There were about eight of them. They sat yawning on a polished wooden bench like a colony of bored apes, waiting for a light that would summon them to duty. In the Adlon there were no bells. The hotel was always as quiet as the great reading room in the Prussian State Library. I expected the guests liked it that way, but I preferred a bit more action and vulgarity. The bronze bust of the Kaiser on top of a sienna marble chimney piece as big as the nearby Brandenburg Gate seemed to recognize as much.
“Hey.”
“Who? Me, sir?”
“What are you doing here, Gunther?” said the Kaiser, tweaking the end of a mustache shaped like a flying albatross. “You should be in business for yourself. The times we’re living in were made for scum like you. With all the people who go missing in this city, an enterprising fellow like you could make an excellent living as a private investigator. And the sooner the better, I’d say. After all, you’re hardly cut out to work in a place like this, are you? Not with those feet. To say nothing of your manners.”
“What’s wrong with my manners, sir?”
The Kaiser laughed. “Listen to yourself. That accent, for one thing. It’s terrible. What’s more, you can’t even say ‘sir’ with any proper conviction. You have absolutely no sense of servility. Which makes you more or less useless in the hotel business. I can’t imagine why Louis Adlon employed you. You’re a thug. Always will be. Why else would you have murdered that poor fellow, Krichbaum? Take my word for it. You don’t belong here.”
I glanced around the sumptuously appointed entrance hall. At the square pillars of marble the color of clarified butter. There was even more marble on the floors and on the walls, as if a quarry had been running a sale of the stuff. The Kaiser had a point. If I stayed there much longer I might turn to marble myself, like some muscle-bound, trouser-less Greek hero.
“I’d like to leave, sir,” I told the Kaiser, “only I can’t afford to. Not yet. It takes money to set up in business.”
“Why don’t you go to someone of your tribe? And borrow some money?”
“My tribe? You mean—?”
“One-quarter Jew? Surely that counts for something when you’re trying to raise some ready cash?”
I felt myself fill up with indignation and anger, as if I’d been slapped on the face. I might have said something rude back to him. Like the thug I was. He was right about that much. Instead I decided to ignore his remarks. After all, he was the Kaiser.
I went up to the top floor and began a late-night patrol of the no-man’s-land that was, at this late hour, the dimly lit landings and corridors. My feet were big, it was true, but they were quite silent on the thick Turkish carpets. Except for a small squeak of leather coming from my best Salamanders, I might have been the ghost of Herr Jansen, the assistant hotel manager who’d shot himself after a scandal involving a Russian spy, way back in 1913. It was said that Jansen had wrapped the revolver in a thick bath towel to avoid disturbing the hotel’s guests with the sound of the gunshot. I’m sure they appreciated his consideration.
Entering the Wilhelmstrasse extension, I turned a corner and saw the figure of a woman wearing a light summer coat. She knocked gently at a door. I stopped, waiting to see what would happen. The door remained closed. She knocked again, and this time pressed her face against the wood and spoke:
“Hey, open up in there. You called Pension Schmidt for some female company. Remember? So here I am.” She waited for a moment and then added, “Do you want me to suck your cock? I like sucking cock. I’m good at it, too.” She let out a sigh of exasperation. “Look, mister, I know I’m a bit late, but it’s not easy getting a taxi when it’s raining, so let me in, eh?”
“You got that right,” I said. “I had to hunt around for one myself. A taxi.”
She swung around to face me nervously. Putting her hand on her chest, she let out a gasp that turned into a laugh. “Oh, you gave me such a fright,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No, it’s all right. Is this your room?”
“Sadly not.” I meant it, too. Even in the low light I could tell she was a beauty. She certainly smelled like one. I walked toward her.
“You’ll probably think me very stupid,” she said. “But I seem to have forgotten my room number. I was having dinner downstairs with my husband, and we had a row about something, and he walked off in a huff. And now I can’t remember if this is our room or not.”
Frieda Bamberger would have thrown her out and called the police. And, in all normal circumstances, so would I. But somewhere between the Pavilion and the Adlon I had resolved to become a little bit more forgiving, a little less quick to judge. Not to mention a little less quick to punch someone in the stomach. I grinned, enjoying her pluck. “Maybe I can help,” I said. “I work for the hotel. What’s your husband’s name?”
“Schmidt.”
It was a sensible choice of name, given the fact that I might have heard her use it already. The only trouble was I knew Pension Schmidt to be the most upscale brothel in Berlin.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Perhaps we’d better go downstairs, and then we can ask the desk clerk if he can tell me what room I’m supposed to be in.” This was her, not me. Cool as a cucumber.
“Oh, I’m sure you got the right room. Kitty Schmidt was never known to make a mistake about something as elementary as giving the right room number to one of her joy girls.” I jerked the brim of my hat toward the door. “It’s just that the fleas change their minds sometimes. They think of their wives and their children and their sexual health and then they lose the nerve for it. He’s probably in there listening to every word and pretending to be asleep and getting ready to complain to the manager if I knock on the door and accuse him of soliciting the services of a girl.”
“I think there’s been some sort of a mistake.”
“And you made it.” I took hold of her by the arm. “I think you’d better come with me, Fräulein.”
“Suppose I start screaming.”
I grinned. “Then you’ll wake the guests. You wouldn’t want to do that. The night manager would come, and then I’d be forced to call the polenta, and they’d put your pretty little ass in cement for the night.” I sighed. “On the other hand, it’s late, I’m tired, and I’d rather just throw you out on your ear.”
“All right,” she said brightly, and let me lead her back along the corridor to the stairs, where the light was better.
When I got a proper look at her, I saw that the full-length coat she was wearing was nicely trimmed with fur. Underneath she wore a violet-colored dress made of some gossamer-thin material, opaque shiny white silk stockings, a pair of elegant gray shoes, a couple of long pearl strings, and a little violet cloche hat. Her hair was brown and quite short, and her eyes were green, and she was beautiful in a thin, boyish way that was still the fashion, despite everything the Nazis were doing to persuade German women that it was all right to look and dress and, for all I know, probably smell like a milkmaid. The girl on the stairs next to me couldn’t have looked less like a milkmaid if she’d arrived there on a shell blown along by some zephyrs.
“You promise you’re not going to hand me over to the bulls,” she said on the way downstairs.
“So long as you behave yourself, yes, I promise.”
“Because if I go up before a magistrate, he’ll put me in the tobacco jar and I’ll lose my job.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Oh, I don’t mean the sledge,” she said. “I just slide a bit when I need a bit of extra money to help my mother. No, I mean my proper job. If I lost that, I’d have to become a full-time joy lady, and I wouldn’t like that. It might have been different a few years ago. But things are different now. A lot less tolerant.”
“What ever gave you that idea?”
“Still, you seem like a decent sort.”
“There are some who might disagree with you,” I said bitterly.
“What ever do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re not a Jew, are you?”
“Do I look like a Jew?”
“No. It was just the way you said—what you said. You said what a Jew says, sometimes. Not that it matters a damn to me what a man is. I can’t see what all the fuss is about. I’ve yet to meet a Jew who looks like one of those silly cartoons. And I should know. I work for a Jew who’s just the sweetest man you could ever hope to meet.”
“Doing what, exactly?”
“You don’t have to say it like that, you know. I’m not sitting on his face, if that’s what you mean. I’m a stenographer, at Odol. The toothpaste company.” She smiled brightly as if showing off her teeth.
“At Europa Haus?”
“Yes. What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. I’ve just come from there. As a matter of fact, I was looking for you.”
“Looking for me? What do you mean?”
“Forget it. What does your boss do?”
“Runs the legal department.” She smiled. “I know. It’s quite a contradiction, isn’t it? Me working in legal.”
“So, what, selling your mouse is just a hobby?”
She shrugged. “I said I needed the extra money, but that’s only part of it. Did you see Grand Hotel?”
“The movie? Sure.”
“Wasn’t it wonderful?”
“It was all right.”
“I’m a bit like Flaemmchen, I think. The girl Joan Crawford plays. I just love big
hotels like that one in the movie. Like the Adlon. ‘People come. People go. Nothing ever happens.’ But it’s not like that at all, is it? I think a lot happens in a place like this. A lot more than happens in the lives of most ordinary people. I love the atmosphere of this particular hotel. I love the glamour. I love the feel of the sheets. And the big bathrooms. You’ve no idea how much I love the bathrooms in this hotel.”
“Isn’t it a little dangerous? Joy ladies can get hurt. There are plenty of men in Berlin who like to dole out a little pain. Hitler. Goering. Hess. To name but three.”
“That’s another reason to come to a hotel like the Adlon. Most of the Fritzes who stay here know how to behave themselves. They treat a girl nicely. Politely. Besides, if anything went wrong, I’d only have to scream, and someone like you would turn up. What are you anyway? You don’t look like you work on the front desk. Not with those mitts on you. And you’re not the house copper. Not the one I’ve seen before.”
“You seem to have it all worked out,” I said, ignoring her questions.
“In this line of work it pays to do the algebra.”
“And are you a good stenographer?”
“I’ve never had any complaints. I have shorthand and typing certificates from Kürfurstendamm Secretarial College. And before that, my school Abitur.”
We reached the entrance hall, where the new desk clerk eyed us suspiciously. I steered the girl down another flight, to the basement.
“I thought you were going to throw me out,” she said, glancing back at the front door.
I didn’t answer. I was thinking. I was thinking, Why not replace Ilse Szrajbman with this girl? She was good-looking, well dressed, personable, intelligent, and, if she was to be believed, a good stenographer, too. Something like that was easy to prove. All I had to do was sit her down in front of a typewriter. And after all, I told myself, I could easily have gone to the Europa Haus, met the girl, and offered her a job, completely unaware of the way in which she chose to earn a little extra money.