by Philip Kerr
It wasn’t much of a discount, but it was enough to cover the small tip I’d receive from Herr Urban if he got the business. I figured the only way I was ever going to get out of that mortuary was by looking out for my own future.
THREE
–
It was ten o’clock that night when Adolf Urban, the local undertaker, showed up to take Johann Bernbach away to his new and more permanent home. Urban rarely said very much but on this occasion—moved by the sight of the dead man’s face, some new business, and perhaps a few drinks he’d enjoyed before coming to the Schwabing Hospital—he was gabby, at least for an undertaker.
“Thanks for the tip,” he said, and handed me a couple of marks.
“I don’t know that it was such a good one, maybe. You’ve got your work cut out with this one.”
“No. It will be a closed casket, I should think. Be wasting my time trying to make this fellow look like Cary Grant. But your face interests me more, Herr Ganz.”
I almost winced, and hoped I hadn’t been recognized. From previous conversations I knew Urban had cremated some of the less important Nazis the Amis had hanged at Landsberg in 1949. Not that any of them were telling tales but in my experience you can’t be too careful when it comes to a past you’re trying to shake off like a bad cold.
“The fact is I’m short of a pallbearer. I was thinking—you being here on nights n’all—you could come and make a bit of extra cash working for me during the day. Come on. What else are you going to do in the daytime? Sleep? There’s no money in that. Besides, you’ve got the face for it, I think, Herr Ganz. Mine’s a business that requires a poker face and yours looks like it was grown under the felt on a card table. Doesn’t give anything away. Same as your mouth. Man in my business needs to know when to keep his trap shut. Which is nearly always, always.”
His own face was a lopsided, almost obscene thing, like a piece of melted plastic, with a permanently wet nose that resembled a very red and stubby cock and balls, and eyes that were almost as dead as his clients.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It is in Germany.”
“But while my face might fit your requirements, I don’t have the wardrobe for it. No, not even a tie.”
“That’s not a problem. I can kit you out, suit, coat, tie, just as long as you like black. You might have to get rid of that wispy beard. Makes you look a bit like Dürer. On second thought, keep it. Without it you’ll be too pale. That’s no good in a mourner. You don’t want to look like someone who’ll come back after dark and feast on one of the bodies. We get a lot of that in Germany. So. What do you say?”
I said yes. He was right, of course; quite apart from being almost nocturnal I needed the cash and there was no money to be made staying in bed all day. Not with my figure. So a week or two later found me wearing a black tailcoat and tie, with a shiny top hat on my head, and an expression on my lightly trimmed face that was supposed to convey sobriety and gravitas. The sobriety was debatable: the early morning schnapps was a habit I was finding hard to control. Fortunately for me it was the same expression I used for dumb insolence and skepticism and all the other winning qualities that I possess, so it didn’t require me to be Lionel Barrymore to pull it off. Not that I put much store by my qualities; any man is just made up of some deportment and behavior that have met with the silent approval of a very small number of women.
It was snowing heavily when I climbed out of a car in the Ostfriedhof Cemetery as one of four men employed to carry Bernbach’s casket into the crematorium where, Urban said, the Amis had secretly cremated the twelve top Nazis they’d hanged at Nuremberg in 1946. Less well known was the fact that the ashes of my second wife, Kirsten, were also to be found in Ostfriedhof. When it was all over and Urban came to give me my pay and my tip I said nothing about this, largely out of shame that I hadn’t visited the place in the cemetery wall where the urn with her remains was to be found—not once since her death. But now I was there I intended to remedy that. Suddenly I felt properly uxorious.
“I thought the dead man was a Jew,” I said to Urban as we watched the mourners file out of the neo-Gothic Holy Cross Church where we’d just committed his body to the flames. These included most of the people from the Apollo cabaret, as well as the big irritable detective I’d recognized in the mortuary at the hospital.
“Not practicing.”
“Does that make a difference? If you’re a Jew?”
“I wouldn’t know. But these days it’s not so easy finding someone to conduct an ikey funeral in this town. Last time I did one the family had to send to Augsburg for a rabbi. Also there’s the fact that Jews prefer to be buried, not cremated. And with the ground this hard that makes things doubly difficult. Not to mention that there’s still a lot of unexploded ordnance in the old Jewish cemetery over at Pfersee. There’s no telling what’s buried in that ground, especially under all this snow. So I persuaded his friends, who have very generously paid for everything, that for the purposes of this funeral, the deceased should be buried as a Christian. After all, it’d be a shame to have anyone else blown up by an old American bomb, don’t you think?” He shrugged. “Besides, what does it matter what happens to you when you’re dead?”
“There speaks the undertaker.”
“It’s a business, not a vocation.”
“I’m sure I don’t care what becomes of me.”
Urban looked around. “Besides, there are plenty of Jews in Ostfriedhof already. Many of the prisoners from Dachau were cremated and their ashes scattered here.”
“Along with those top Nazis you mentioned?”
“Along with those top Nazis.” He shrugged. “I’m sure we can trust the Lord to sort out who’s who.” He handed me an envelope. “Can I count on you tomorrow? Same time. Same place.”
“If I’m alive, I wouldn’t miss it.”
“You will be. I’m sure of it. When you’ve been in the trade as long as I have, you get a feeling for that kind of thing. You might not think it but you’ve got a few years left in you, my friend.”
“You should run a clinic in Switzerland. There are people who’d pay handsomely for a positive diagnosis like that.” I lit a cigarette and looked up at the sky. “I kind of like this place. One day I might move here permanently.”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Need me anymore?”
“No. You’re through for today. Go home, get into your casket, and get some sleep.”
“I will. But first I have to go and see someone. Dracula once had a bride, you know.”
With my envelope in my pocket I walked away and, after a great deal of searching—some of it inside my own soul—I found Kirsten’s stoic remains. I stood there for a while, apologized profusely for not having visited before—not to mention a host of other things—and generally took a walk to the far end of memory’s rickety and probably unreliable pier. I’d have stayed out there longer but BELOVED WIFE OF BERNHARD GUNTHER was chiseled on the stone panel in front of the urn, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the big detective from the hospital heading my way. By now I’d remembered his name, but I was still hoping to prevent him from discovering mine. So I took off at an angle, lingered in front of another memorial tablet in a pathetic attempt to throw him off the scent, and then headed toward the main gate, only he was hiding in ambush for me behind the tomb of Grand Duke Ludwig Wilhelm of Bavaria. It was large enough, just about. The big cop was even bigger than I remembered.
“Hey, you. I want to talk to you.”
“Well, as you can see, I’m in mourning.”
“Nonsense. You were one of the pallbearers, that’s all. I asked about you. At the hospital.”
“That was kind. But I’m making a good recovery now, thank you.”
“They said your name was Ganz.”
“That’s right.”
“Only it’s not. My wi
fe’s maiden name is Ganz. And I’d have remembered that the first time we met. A long time ago. Before Hitler came to power, I think. Before you grew that beard.”
I was tempted to make a remark about his wife’s maidenhood and thought better of it; it’s not just conscience that makes cowards of us all but false names and secret histories. “Maybe your memory is better than mine, Herr—?”
“It’s not. Not yet, anyway. On account of how I haven’t yet remembered your real name. But I’m more or less sure you were a cop back then.”
“Me a cop? That’s a laugh.”
“Yeah. I remember thinking that, too, because you were a Jew-loving Berlin cop looking for this detective I used to know at the local Praesidium. My old boss.”
“What was his name? Charlie Chan?”
“No. Paul Herzefelde. He was murdered. But as I recall, we had to lock you up for the night because you nobly thought we weren’t doing enough to find out who killed him.”
He was right, of course. Every word of it. I never forget a face and especially a face like his, which was made for denouncing heretics and burning books, probably both at the same time, one on top of the other. Laugh lines as hard and lacking laughs as a wire coat hanger were etched on either side of a nose that looked like the thorn on a halberd. Above the hooked nose were the small, expressionless blue eyes of a giant moray eel. The jaw was unfeasibly wide and the complexion vaguely purplish, although that might have been the cold, while the man’s height and build and white hairs were those of a retired heavyweight boxer. I felt that at any moment he might feel me out with his jab or plant his big right fist deep in what still remained of the solar part of my plexus. I remembered his name was Schramma and he’d been a criminal secretary at the Munich Police Praesidium and while I didn’t remember much more about him I did remember the night I’d spent in the cells.
“That’s what was funny, see? Nobody liked Paul Herzefelde. And not just because he was a Jew the way you thought. People thought he was a crook. On the take. You could have seen that just looking at his clothes. It was strongly suspected that one of Munich’s biggest fraudsters—a fellow named Kohl—had bribed him to look the other way. People thought it was Nazis that killed Herzefelde but it probably wasn’t. My guess is that, not satisfied with the bribe, Herzefelde tried to squeeze Kohl for more and he didn’t like it.”
“I think you’re mistaking me for someone else. I’ve never met anyone by that name. And I was never a policeman in Berlin. I hate cops.” I thought about the résumé I’d been writing for myself and chided myself for neglecting the Weimar Republic years. “I did work in Berlin for a while. But I was a doorman at the Adlon Hotel. So maybe that’s where you saw me. Herr—?”
“Schramma, Criminal Secretary Schramma. Look, friend, it doesn’t bother me if you’ve got yourself a new Fritz Schmidt. Lots of people have these days and for all kinds of smart reasons. Believe me, a cop who lives in this town needs two simultaneous telephone directories just to know who the hell he’s talking to. But if you were looking for a job, then maybe I can help you. For old times’ sake.”
“I don’t think you really mean to help me, do you? My impression is that you’re trying to shake me down in the hope that something might fall from my pockets. But I’m a man with two jobs, which means I’m broke, see? That should be obvious. And any apples left on my branches are probably half-eaten or rotten by now.”
Schramma grinned sheepishly. “Knowledge is power, right? I don’t know who said that but I bet it was a German.”
I didn’t contradict him. Nor did he see the irony in his last remark.
“Look, what the hell do you care who I am? I’m so down on my luck I have casinos offering me a job to come and jinx their high rollers. I tell you again, I’m nobody, you big ape. You’re wasting your time. There are blackboard monitors in school classrooms who are more important than me.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But I can promise you this. As soon as I figure out who you really are, Ganz, you’re mine. Like you, I have to do one or two other jobs just to make ends meet. Security work. Private investigations. Most of the work is tedious and time-consuming but sometimes it’s also dangerous. Which means I can use an ex-copper like you in all sorts of ways I’m quite sure you can easily imagine.”
I could see that was true. I wasn’t sure what he had in mind but I’d intimidated enough lowlifes as a policeman in Berlin myself to know that none of this was likely to be to my own advantage.
“And don’t even think of disappearing. If you do that I’ll just have to name Christof Ganz as a suspect in some old case that nobody gives a crap about. You know I can make you fit all kinds of descriptions. Probably done that shit yourself.”
I flicked my cigarette butt at the smooth green ass of the angel who was looking out for the soul of the Grand Duke and gave an exasperated sigh, which sounded a lot less exasperated than I was actually feeling.
“Go ahead and do your worst, copper. But I’m leaving now. I’m late for an appointment with my favorite barman.”
It was all a bluff, of course. I might have been possessed of a poker face but I had nothing in my hand.
FOUR
–
I’d finished work at the hospital. I went to the washroom beside the mortuary to clean up but while I was there I examined my face without much enthusiasm. What I had against it was its air of disappointment and its lived-in look, the shifty red eyes and furtive expression, as if it was always expecting the tap on the shoulder that might usher its shy owner to a car and then a prison cell for the next ten years.
I went out the main entrance and walked between two concrete pillars with snakes wrapped around outsized censers on the top; they were much too high up to ask what they were doing there, but I was dimly aware that the ancient Greeks had regarded snakes as sacred, their venom as remedial, and maybe their skin shedding as symbolic of rebirth and renewal, which as an idea certainly worked for me. It might have been early morning but there were still one or two real snakes around and one of them was sitting in a newish BMW in front of the hospital. As I came out the hospital door, he leaned across the passenger seat and, with a cigar still in his face, shouted through the open passenger window.
“Gunther. Bernhard Gunther. As I live and breathe. I was just visiting an old friend in the hospital, and now you turn up. How are you, Gunther? How many years has it been since we saw each other last? Twenty? Twenty-five? I thought you were dead.”
I stopped on the sidewalk and looked inside, debating my choices and discovering what was obvious, which was that I really didn’t have any. Schramma was shouting so that other passersby could hear him and make me feel all the more uncomfortable. He was smiling gleefully while he did it, too, like a man who’d come to collect on a bet he’d won and I’d lost. If I’d had a gun I would probably have shot him or maybe myself. I used to be afraid of dying but now, on the whole, I find I’m looking forward to it, to getting far away from Bernie Gunther and everything to do with him, from his tangled history and uneasy way of thinking, from his inability to adjust to this modern world; but most of all I’m looking forward to getting away from all the people who knew him, or who claim to have known him, like Criminal Secretary Schramma. I’ve tried being someone else several times but who I am always comes back to kick me in the teeth.
“I told you I’d find out who you are. Hey, come on. Don’t be such a sore loser. You don’t know it yet, but I’m here to do you a favor, Gunther. Seriously. You’ll thank me for what I’m going to tell you. So hurry up and get in the car before someone realizes that you’re not who you say you are. Besides, it’s too cold to sit here with the window open. I’m freezing my plums off.”
I ducked into the car, closed the door, and wound up the window without saying a word. Almost immediately I wished I’d left the window alone; Schramma’s cigar smelled like a bonfire in a plague pit.
“You want to k
now how I found out who you are?”
“Go ahead and amaze me.”
“The Munich Police Praesidium came through the war pretty much unscathed. The records, too. Like I said, I knew we met sometime before Hitler. And that meant it was before Heydrich, too. Heydrich was chief of police in Munich for a while and changed the filing system. He was very efficient, as you probably know. All that cross-referencing he did still comes in handy sometimes. So it was relatively simple to find the name of a detective from the famous Alex, in Berlin, who was our guest for the night after assaulting our desk sergeant.”
“As I recall the incident, he hit me first.”
“I’m quite sure of it. I remember that sergeant. A right bastard, he was. It was 1932. Twenty-five years. How about that? My God. How time flies, eh?”
“Not at this present moment.”
“Like I said before, it doesn’t bother me what you did during the war. The Old Man says it’s all ancient history now, even in the GDR. But every so often the commies still feel obliged to make an example of someone, just so as they can distinguish their own tyranny from the fascist one that went before. Could be they want you. Could be they might have you, too. Old Nazis are about the only kind of criminals the West is disposed to send back across the border these days.”
“It’s nothing like that,” I said. “I’m not a war criminal. I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Oh, sure. Christof Ganz is just the name you write poetry under. Your nom de plume, as it were. I get that. I like to move under the radar a bit myself, sometimes. For a cop, I mean. Then there’s Interpol. I haven’t checked with them yet, but I wouldn’t mind betting they have a file on you. Of course, I can’t look at that one without putting a flag up. Once I’ve asked, they’ll want to know why I want to know and maybe they’ll try to take it a stage further. So from here on in it’s your call, Gunther. Only you’d better make sure it’s the right one, for your sake.”