A Man Lies Dreaming

by Tidhar, Lavie

  ‘I tried to warn you,’ he said. ‘You didn’t want to listen.’

  ‘I heard you loud and clear.’

  Thinking of that nameless club, the man Kramer with his face blown off, Ilse and her whip. ‘Give me a name.’

  ‘You should leave, now.’

  Movement behind me. I stayed sitting down, looking straight. ‘You sold yourself for thirty pieces of silver,’ I said. ‘Oh, Rudolf …’

  ‘We are no longer your disciples!’

  I stared into his eyes and saw nothing but craven greed there. Who was he so afraid of?

  ‘Where do they operate? Give me a name!’

  He sighed. ‘Try Petticoat Lane,’ he said. ‘Ask for Barbie.’

  I nodded. There was that movement again behind me. Hess’s agonised face stared at me. ‘Don’t come back here again, Wolf,’ he said. ‘You put me in danger as well as yourself.’

  ‘The Jew,’ I said, in hatred. ‘Rubinstein. You work with Jews now, Hess?’

  ‘This is out of my hands, Wolf. I’ve given you all I can.’

  ‘How much did he pay you to bring his daughter out of Germany?’

  ‘Wolf!’ He rubbed a weary hand over his face. ‘This is bigger than me, bigger than all of us. Don’t go poking your nose into business that doesn’t concern you.’

  ‘But it does concern me, Hess. It concerns me very much,’ I said. My groin burned with a pain I could barely keep under control. ‘What happened to her?’ I said. ‘What happened to the daughter?’

  ‘I am sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘Now go. We shall not see each other again.’

  He motioned with his head and the big barman, Emil, loomed behind me. I nodded, ceding his warning – or perhaps it was a premonition.

  I stood up. ‘I’ll leave on my own,’ I said. Emil’s ugly mug of a face stared at me without expression.

  ‘Very good, Herr Wolf,’ he said.

  *

  Wolf left the Hofgarten, his shoulder blades tense, half-expecting a cosh to the back of the head, a knife between the ribs. Nothing happened. Hess had always been a follower, not a leader.

  So who was he trying to protect?

  Or perhaps more cynically he was wringing his hands and protesting, all the while steering Wolf in the direction he wanted him to go. You could trust Hess to be untrustworthy, Wolf thought. You always knew where you were with an ex-Nazi.

  He had no intention of staying off the case; not for Hess’s warnings, not for that murderous Jew gangster Julius Rubinstein and his assault. For did not the Jewish Bible itself say, ‘a man who inflicts an injury upon his fellow man, so shall be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Just as he inflicted an injury upon a person, so shall it be inflicted upon him.’

  His thoughts were murderous as he hopped on a bus going to the East End. The advert running along the side of the bus proudly proclaimed that Swan Vestas Were The Smoker’s Match. Wolf sat towards the back, sandwiched between the window and an elderly woman carrying a woven basket filled with something that stank: rotten fish or something even more vile. She was talking all the time, mumbling with a soft, emaciated mouth. ‘Bloody foreigners, coming over here, taking our jobs, taking our homes, pissing in the streets don’t they, the filthy buggers, selling their women cheap, the dirty whores, and their thieving children, a woman isn’t safe any more, not anywhere—’ She clutched the basket to her chest as if afraid Wolf was going to steal it. ‘Nasty buggers the lot of them, things like this would never have gone on in my grandmother’s time, we had proper law and order then didn’t we, not let any Tom, Dick and Kraut into the country, if it was up to me I’d gas the lot of them I would, put them in camps and gas them or chuck them in the sea.’

  ‘Jews?’ Wolf said, interested despite himself.

  ‘Germans,’ the woman said, and gave him a nasty, beaming toothless grin.

  ‘Disgusting old witch.’

  ‘Witch! Did you hear what he called me!’ the woman shouted. Heads turned, then turned away. No one wanted to be too close to that smell. ‘Witch! You people make me sick, you do! That Mosley fellow has the right idea, you just wait, coming over here, taking our jobs, pissing everywhere, bums! Bums!’ and off she went again, in a repeating cycle, while Wolf stared out of the window and breathed through his mouth and tried to ignore her.

  Was that what Mosley was doing? he thought, uneasy. Mosley was right. He could not shift blame to the Jews in England, not easily. But was he really cultivating European immigrants as a whole to take the brunt of the British’s hatred? There were Jews amongst the refugees from the Fall of Germany, but there were also honest, respectable men and women, good Germans!

  He was relieved to escape the bus at last, when it stopped outside Liverpool Street Station. The fresh air revived him, and it was raining in a thin drizzle that stung his face but brought with it relief for his bruises, if not for the fire in his groin where the bastard Jew had circumcised him. He went past bagel shops and pickle vats taller than a man, past black-clad children playing with stones and chalk, and yeshiva boys congregating in murmured conversations, past women with their shopping bags laden with food, apron-clad butchers with naked turkey birds displayed in their windows, fishmongers calling out in Polish and Yiddish, shoemakers and cloth merchants and fences and thieves, and amidst this population of Jewish Londoners the new arrivals, gentiles like Wolf, the refugees of Germany and Austria and of a once-bright dream that had burned to cinder and ashes. He made his way through the narrow crammed streets and pulled his hat low against his forehead.

  He’d first met Jews in large numbers while living in Vienna. In his first few, heady weeks in the city he hardly noticed them. The Jews were a minority, after all, and at the time Vienna was, to the young Wolf, the very centre of the world. There amidst the politicians and artists, rabble-rousers and architects and opera-goers and poor young students not unlike himself, Wolf barely cared about Jews. One day walking down the street he saw one of their number in the black Hasidic garb and he was plain bemused: was this a Jew?

  And yet the longer he resided in that city the more he saw them; wherever he turned, like an alien entity forever embedded in the Germanic population; and more than that he thought them dirty; their very odour made him sick.

  Besides all of which, the Jews were everywhere; manipulating all behind the scenes; and no doubt they were the reason he had been rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts, to boot – was it a wonder that he hated them?

  He had begun to perceive the great conspiracy behind all things; perhaps even then, so early, he knew it was his destiny to fight it; and yet in the final tally, he had lost. The Fall had made a mockery of Wolf. Imagine only if he had succeeded; if Germany was his, its military and its citizens, to wield as he saw fit: what would have happened to the Jewish people then?

  But Wolf had given up what-ifs long ago. And so he made his way amongst the throng of Jews in this alien city, the way he had once walked through the Jewish ghettos of Vienna; and the same hostile alien faces stared back at him. He came to a fishmonger and stopped and said, ‘I am looking for a man named Barbie.’

  The man pursed his lips and shook his head and Wolf moved on. He came to Petticoat Lane where all the Jewish cloth merchants congregated at one end. It tapered slowly towards vegetables and fruit, fish, crockery and badly made toys, and various and sundry merchandise which had happened to fall off the back of carts only to wind up here.

  ‘Barbie. I am looking for Barbie.’

  More heads shaking, lips pursing, Jews cursing: the name resonated but no one wanted to talk. He was almost on the Whitechapel Road where the market became more unruly and the wares more decrepit and less legitimate and for a moment he stopped and admired a gold watch.

  ‘Palestine for the Jews!’ The man was wild-haired and wild-eyed, swarthy and thin, and he was holding an armful of pamphlets and offering them like a priest offering the flesh and blood of Christ. ‘Palestine for the Jews
, comrade! Take one!’

  Without having time to reply the man shoved a grubby pamphlet into Wolf’s hands and moved on. ‘Respect the Balfour Declaration! A homeland for the Jews!’

  Wolf stared after him thoughtfully, his eyes cold. He looked at the pamphlet. The cover showed healthy-looking men and women, the men in khaki work clothes, the women in white dresses, against the background of a clear blue sea and distant mountains. Orange trees grew around them and a group of laughing, happy children stood in a circle, holding hands. Some sort of electric train, brightly coloured, vanished into the distance and high overhead, above the blue-chalked mountains in the distance, there hovered a bad artist’s impression of an airship. The Old-New Land, the cover said, by Theodor Herzl.

  Wolf crumpled the pamphlet into a ball and dropped it on the ground.

  ‘You a Jew?’

  Wolf turned again. The gold watch he had been admiring lay on a none-too-clean blanket on which sat various items pilfered who knew where. There were watches and rings, bracelets and necklaces, silver- and gold- and pearl-handled letter-openers and their like. The man was squatting behind his wares, on the ground. The look he gave Wolf was neither hostile nor friendly; it just was.

  ‘Do I look like a fucking Jew,’ Wolf said.

  ‘Can’t say as I could tell, mate.’

  The man was speaking German. He spat on the ground. ‘Jews,’ he said. ‘Don’t mind them, myself. Sure got a lot of them around, though.’

  Wolf nodded.

  ‘Live and let live,’ the man said. ‘I come from Dortmund, myself. Got in trouble with the commies, had to make a run for it, didn’t I.’

  ‘Political?’

  ‘Nah. Got caught with some things what didn’t belong to me. You?’

  Wolf shrugged, vaguely. ‘You know how it is.’

  The man nodded. ‘Times are hard for everyone,’ he said. ‘You want to buy that watch?’

  ‘I’m looking for a man. Name of Barbie?’

  ‘Oh, you mean Santa Claus?’ the man said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  The man grinned, a little sheepishly. ‘It’s what they call him, around here, the English. The Jews don’t like him much.’

  Understanding dawned. ‘His name is Klaus?’

  ‘Ja, Klaus. You can find him down that end.’ He gestured towards where the market met the Whitechapel Road. Kept his voice low. ‘Deals in this and that, if you know what I mean.’

  Wolf threw the man a shilling. The man caught it deftly and made it disappear. ‘Cocky looking devil, if you know what I mean,’ the man said. ‘You can find him in the bicycle shop down there. Can’t miss it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Go in peace, my friend. By the way–’ the man jerked his head sideways, ‘did you know you’re being followed?’

  Wolf didn’t turn to look. ‘How many?’ he said.

  ‘Two.’

  Wolf nodded. ‘Black suits?’

  ‘Sure. Friends of yours?’

  Wolf shrugged. ‘Who isn’t,’ he said. The man smiled back but he didn’t look convinced. Wolf walked on.

  The bicycle shop was indeed there. The window was dark and dusty and the bikes seemed to have been sitting there for at least twenty years. A faded poster on the wall showed a young black boy riding a bike while being chased by a lion. Raleigh: The All-Steel Bicycle, the poster proclaimed. Wolf pushed the door open and went inside. It was dark and dusty and smelled of aniseed. There was a wireless on the counter, tuned to Radio Luxembourg, playing the Horlicks Tea Time Hour, which changed into a spirited advert for Brown and Polson’s custard powder as the door clanged shut.

  ‘Waiting for the racing news, see.’ Two men stood in the gloomy interior leaning against the counter. One was tall; one was short. Both had pencil stubs behind their ears. Both turned as Wolf came in. They regarded him with puzzled curiosity. ‘Who’s your money on?’ the tall one said.

  Wolf said, ‘Me.’

  The tall one laughed, dutifully. The short one scowled. ‘Everyone’s a clown,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe he’s a copper.’

  The short one scratched his head. ‘You a copper?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t think so, mate. Didn’t think so.’

  ‘Well what does he want?’

  ‘Yeah, what do you want?’

  ‘Is this a betting shop?’ Wolf said.

  ‘Is this a betting shop, he says,’ complained the tall one. ‘Well, what does this look like to you, friend?’

  ‘Maybe he’s in the wrong place,’ said the short one. ‘Are you in the wrong place, mate?’

  ‘I’m always in the wrong place,’ Wolf said.

  ‘He’s a smartarse isn’t he,’ the tall one said.

  ‘German, isn’t he.’

  ‘Austrian,’ Wolf said, stiffly.

  The tall one waved a hand vaguely. ‘All the same,’ he said. On the radio a woman was trying to convince them of the benefits of Lifebuoy Soap – More than a Good Soap, it’s a Good Habit!

  ‘I only got bad habits, me,’ the short one said. ‘So what do you want, kraut?’

  ‘I’m looking for a man called Barbie. Klaus Barbie.’

  ‘Oh, him.’

  ‘Santa Claus, eh?’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Sure we know him. But does he know you?’

  Wolf saw a shadow move on the other side of the counter. And he was ready when the short man pulled out a nasty looking shiv and made a lunge at Wolf. Wolf grabbed his hand and twisted, breaking the small bones of the fingers with vicious pleasure. The man screamed. The knife clattered to the floor.

  Wolf kneed him between the legs and kicked him when he was down. He felt much better now. The tall man watched them mournfully. ‘Everyone’s a clown,’ he said. ‘Come on.’ He knelt and tugged at his friend, who cried with a soft whistling sound. Wolf came round and helped him drag the man outside. At the door he stood and watched them both, the tall one and the short. The tall one pulled out a note from his pocket. ‘Put a tenner on Bogskar for us, will you?’ he said.

  Wolf took the money and they walked off, the one tall, the other limping and hunched. On the corner of Petticoat Lane and Whitechapel, Wolf saw a man in a black suit he thought he recognised. The man raised his hand and smiled in apparent greeting. He had very even, white teeth; like an American’s. Wolf went back inside and shut the door.

  ‘You Barbie?’

  The man was good-looking with sharp Aryan features and a cruel sensuous mouth. He leaned on the counter. His sleeves were rolled up. He said, ‘You’re not good for business.’

  ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘I know who you were.’

  Wolf had to hand it to him: the man was cool. He said, ‘I hear you can get things.’

  ‘What sort of things.’

  ‘Girls,’ Wolf said. Barbie shrugged. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Plenty of girls all about.’

  ‘Young girls.’

  Barbie looked at Wolf. His eyes were clear and he didn’t blink much. ‘Never had you pegged for one of those.’

  ‘What did you have me pegged for?’

  Barbie shrugged. ‘What do I know,’ he said.

  ‘Sell many bicycles?’

  That made him smile. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘You’d be surprised.’

  ‘Who owns the betting book?’

  ‘A man.’

  ‘Has he got a name?’

  ‘Sure,’ Barbie said. ‘Everybody’s gotta name.’

  ‘Do I know his name?’

  ‘If you did, you wouldn’t be asking, now, would you?’

  Wolf didn’t like the man’s attitude. ‘So what can you get me?’

  ‘It depends. You got money?’

  Wolf took out a roll of notes. ‘I don’t suppose you’d take a cheque.’

  Again the man smiled. ‘I don’t suppose you’re wrong, at that,’ he said.

  ‘I’m looking for a Jewish girl.’

  ‘Jews,’ Barbie said. ‘Th
e world’s got too many damn Jews in it.’

  ‘And Jewish girls?’

  ‘Sure. Girls, boys … whatever you like.’

  ‘This one would have been out of Germany a few weeks ago,’ Wolf said. ‘Family paid to have her delivered safely. She never made it.’

  ‘All families pay,’ Barbie said, and shrugged. ‘Who cares if a Jew goes missing.’

  ‘I care.’

  ‘You want to fuck her? I can get you a Jew girl to fuck six ways from Sunday.’

  ‘I want this girl.’ Wolf took out the photograph Isabella had given him. Laid it flat on the countertop. ‘Know her?’

  Barbie was still looking at Wolf. ‘Don’t seem familiar,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not looking.’

  ‘I’ve seen all I need to see.’

  ‘Look at her,’ Wolf said. The man was staring at him. ‘I said, look at her.’

  Barbie looked down. Wolf grabbed Barbie’s head and slammed it against the countertop. There was the crunch of breaking bone. Wolf lifted Barbie’s head and slammed it down again, and again, until the man’s face was a mess of blood and snot and the photo of the girl was unrecognisable with blood. At last Wolf released him and Barbie slid slowly down to the floor. Wolf went and opened the hatch in the counter and passed to the other side. He pulled up a chair and sat down.

  ‘You’re just a fucking follower,’ he said, though Barbie couldn’t hear him. Wolf looked through the man’s clothes. He found a set of keys and a little black book. He opened the book. It was full of lists, numbers in an ascending serial order and amounts next to each one. ‘You supply them,’ Wolf said. ‘Clubs like the one on Leather Lane, or men who come to you wanting something special, little girls, little boys. But you’re still only a middleman. You’re a nobody.’ He straightened up and then kicked Barbie hard in the ribs. There was something thoroughly satisfying about the sound of breaking bones. Barbie didn’t make a sound. Wolf rather expected that he would choke on the blood. Eventually. He kicked him in the head just for good measure and then went to the back of the store. There was a safe and one of the keys opened it. Inside was a fat brown envelope. Wolf took it out and put it in his coat pocket and closed and locked the safe again. There was a door and it too was locked. He tried the keys until one worked. He opened the door and saw steps leading down to a basement. He had a sense of déjà vu. He switched the light on and went downstairs.