Children of Wrath

by Paul Grossman

  “Ach so.” She rolled her eyes, as if the very idea of having to communicate such ideas was exhausting. But, considering it some celestial duty apparently, with great effort she removed the monocle and let it dangle from a chain on her vest.

  “Well…” She dug into a wooden box, returning with a cigar. Lighting it on a candle, she blew smoke at Willi. “Sexual desire, you probably don’t realize”—she scrutinized his reaction—“is linked with electromagnetic radiation emanating from the sun. Ja. When properly aligned through devotional prayer, the gratification of such desire can become … sacred. For us, sex is not merely a pleasurable pursuit but a ritual sacrament through which we achieve union with the All.”

  She waited for his response.

  “Well … er … great.” Willi nodded. “Who wouldn’t be for that?”

  He’d read recently in a magazine that nearly a quarter of Berliners were involved in a mystery sect of one sort or another—a media exaggeration, no doubt. But despite eleven hundred years of Christianity, occult and pagan roots went deep in this country, he knew. To this day grandmas in villages still placed dried animal penises under grandsons’ beds to ensure fertility. Walpurgis Night was still celebrated with dancing around bonfires and straw effigies. All the big cities still had covens of sorcerers and sibyls and God knew how many “mystical” cults with mass followings. Nudists. Naturalists. Sex magicians. Devil worshippers. Even among Christians, millions of Germans belonged to nonconformist sects, many of which had their own insignia, rites, uniforms, cuisines.

  “I’d love to learn more. Might I attend one of your ceremonies?”

  “Not unless you’re invited by a member. Interviewed by us first.”

  “I see. Well, can you tell me … who is your leader?”

  Brigitta spit tobacco from her lips. “What about her?”

  “Oh,” he mumbled. “Is it a her?”

  She put down her cigar, planted her palms on the counter, and leaned right up to Willi’s face, scrutinizing it again through the monocle.

  “You wouldn’t happen to be a private eye, would you?”

  Willi leaned back. “Why ask such a thing?”

  “I’ll tell you why. Because that sick bastard Braunschweig sends every dick he can grab by the balls over here to try and sniff up Helga’s ass. So if you are, mister, then listen close.” She crushed out her cigar. “Helga left that crazy drunk years ago. During the war, that’s how long. Got that? And now she’s spoken for. You got that? So keep your grubby dick paws off.”

  Eight

  The holidays arrived. Willi’s grandmother’s menorah, made in Frankfurt in 1694, cast its merry glow across the living room. The family sang the traditional songs, spun the dreidel. Stefan, miraculously, won all the chocolate money. The saleswoman at KDW may have been an anti-Semite, but she was right about assembling Erich’s model plane: the Fokker Dreidecker was no child’s play. Three cantilevered wings supported by struts, a silk skin stretched across a webbed aluminum frame, brass, leather, and wood parts all requiring delicate finger work. Willi wasn’t sure how much patience he’d have. Perhaps he shouldn’t have let Erich choose it.

  No less vexing those last days of the year were the hurdles at work.

  Helga Braunschweig and her Divine Radiance Mission remained out of reach. Neither the center nor its boutique had listed telephone numbers, and the two times Willi managed to get up to Bleibtreu Strasse, both were closed.

  Christmas week government offices closed, then reopened for a day and a half on Monday, December 30, when, first thing, Willi paid the Ministry of Public Health a visit. The long mazes of halls there were all but empty. Everyone still on holidays. Well deserved, it would seem, given the hard-won victory over Listeria. Frau Doktor Riegler was nowhere to be found. But Heilbutt was. When Willi approached him in the lab, though, the old codger turned off faster than a Bunsen burner. Pretended not to remember a thing he’d said at the Viehof press conference.

  “One of us must have been drunk, Detektiv.” He kept his eyes fixed to a microscope, refusing to even look at Willi.

  Clearly someone had put the clamps on him, Willi saw. Not that he blamed the fellow. No one wanted a wrecked career.

  But it got him angry.

  “You told me to ask Riegler about dog meat in sausages, Heilbutt. Well, let me assure you, as soon as I see her, I’m going to do just that.”

  Heilbutt cast him a fast glance. “I’ll be fascinated to hear Lady Doktor’s reply, Sergeant.”

  * * *

  The last day of the 1920s you could practically feel craziness in the air.

  Firecrackers began going off at dawn, exploding even in the streetcar during the morning commute. By the time he reached Alexanderplatz, Willi felt as if his brain were detonating. Then who pops out from beneath the awning of Aschinger’s Restaurant but Braunschweig.

  “Kraus!” He grabbed Willi’s collar. “God must have put you in my path.” The reverend’s gray eyebrows knit with frenetic hope. “Did you follow up on Helga?” When he learned Willi’d paid a visit to Bleibtreu Strasse, he refused to let him go. “Then it is providence! Come, we’ll talk over coffee.”

  “Coffee,” of course, meant schnapps at a nearby Kneipe.

  “Oh, that dyke,” Braunschweig sneered when Willi described the encounter with Brigitta. “No depths to which Helga hasn’t sunk since Satan got her.” The reverend downed his glass with a flick of the wrist. “I don’t suppose you found out about the top-hat funding the whole sick operation?”

  “The top what?” Willi had real coffee.

  “Some rich pimp.” The reverend wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Who do you think set her up in that mansion? You don’t think she earned it banging a tambourine?” He stared bitterly, allowing the full tragedy of his implication to sink in. “I don’t know anything more about the serpent. She was smart enough to keep it all from me.”

  And from Brigitta, apparently, Willi was thinking.

  “I don’t suppose the dyke mentioned her predecessor, either, that other crazy redheaded bitch? Waiter—another schnapps here. The Shepherdess or whatever they called her. Used to bring them goats and God knew what, for rituals. Oh, yes, Kraus, animal sacrifice. And I’m not just talking one or two. From what I hear, it’s a regular slaughterhouse over there.”

  Braunschweig was on his third “coffee” by the time he got around to the Saturnalia Willi’d heard mentioned that night.

  “Naturally it’s all secondhand.” The reverend checked over his shoulder. “But it’s basically a Roman orgy mixed”—his voice plummeted to barely a whisper—“with the most heinous satanic ritual. Oh, yes. Their wine is made of urine spiked with hallucinogenic drugs. Their wafer—feces, menstrual blood, and sperm. That’s their Eucharist. Instead of Holy Communion they kiss Lucifer’s ass.”

  Willi leaned away, trying to look horrified. He didn’t know who was crazier: Braunschweig or Brigitta.

  “But don’t you worry, I’ll find a way to get you in.” The reverend nodded with a fiendish grin. “If you’re serious, Kraus.”

  The man was totally sloshed at 9:00 a.m. Spewing insanity. But in this game, Willi understood, you played whatever cards you were dealt.

  “Oh, I’m definitely serious, Reverend. Get me in.”

  * * *

  Minutes later, riding the rickety elevator up at the Police Presidium, Willi heard whispers that really made his neck crawl. Bones in a city park. Somewhere in Lichtenberg. His face went instantly hot. My God. He knew there’d be more.

  Freksa was addressing reporters at ten.

  Willi made sure to be there.

  The pressroom was packed. From behind a dozen tripods, photographers were setting off a tempest of flashbulbs. On a canvas tarp below the speaker’s podium were neatly sorted piles of femurs, fibulae, tibiae, clavicles, ribs—not fashioned into designs like the first batch, just stacked, like cords of wood. From the burlap bags laid out beside them, though, Willi hadn’t a doubt: Schnitzler and Son
. Plus they were small bones. Clean. White. Boiled.

  A lot of them.

  When Freksa stepped up, the storm of flashbulbs was aimed at him. Even at murder sites, Kripo’s tall, blond star never hesitated to smile for cameras. Not today. As he stood before the microphones, back straight, chest out, anyone who knew him knew that Hans Freksa sounded grim.

  “Three burlap sacks”—his voice was without the élan it usually exuded to the press—“were found in storm drains out near the Frankfurter Allee S-Bahn station. We believe they’re from the same source as a similar find last autumn at a nearby construction site. Pathologists have confirmed the remains inside are all children’s bones. Boys.” He paused and looked around the room, skipping over Willi. “A total of twenty-three.”

  An audible gasp filled the air, Willi joining.

  “Unfortunately, we have no leads regarding a perpetrator. So we’re asking for the public’s help. Anyone with any information must step forward.” Freksa’s blue eyes stared unblinking into the flashing lights. “Gentlemen of the press—there’s just no way to sweeten it up. One of the most fantastic mass murderers in German history is on the loose in Berlin. And we don’t know a thing about him.”

  Which wasn’t true, Willi thought. We know several things.

  We know he’s able to turn human muscle into thread—hardly a common skill. We also know he feels some relation to the biblical phrase children of wrath, associated with an obscure doctrine called Total Depravity. Based on the fastidious manner in which the first bones were bound, we can safely speculate he’s driven to remedy some kind of psychological chaos through compulsive organizing.

  Willi swallowed.

  Did Freksa not realize these things? Or was he using a game plan Willi couldn’t comprehend? The man had just laid his career on the line, saying he had nothing to rely on other than the public. A seemingly humble, maybe even admirable gesture. But why then omit key details the public needed if it was truly supposed to help? Such as that the bones had all been boiled. Twenty-three boys, for God’s sake.

  Somebody must have smelled it.

  Even before the news conference ended, Willi was out the door.

  It was a cold, sunny day, people already walking around in funny hats, blowing party horns. He didn’t wait for the streetcar but took a taxi directly to Berlin Municipal Waterworks, where his Kripo badge gained him access to the map room.

  He gave himself a quick tutorial. Berlin was divided into twelve drainage areas laid out on a radial system. Sewage was pumped through concrete pipes into treatment plants before being released into one of the rivers, shipping channels, or lakes that surrounded the city. Rainwater was collected in a vast system of brick tunnels called canals and drained into the same waterways. Tracing his finger south along the storm canal that ran under the S-Bahn station at Frankfurter Allee, where these new bones had been found—Sturmwasser Kanal Fünf—he could see it emptied into the Rummelsburger See and from there into the Spree River. Tracing it north, his heart rate quickened. It ran directly under the construction site where the first bag of bones had washed up. The farther north his finger ran, the faster his heart beat. Until he broke into a cold sweat.

  Sturmwasser Kanal Fünf, he realized, originated under the Central-Viehof.

  He grabbed a taxi back to the Police Presidium and hurried up to Freksa’s office.

  The door was open but he paused outside.

  Someone was in there with Freksa.

  “All our units will be alerted. If we can’t find him, nobody can. The important thing, Freksa, is that one way or another we’ve got to parlay this into an ideological victory. Remember that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Willi heard Freksa reply. And then Willi thought he heard him call the man Herr Region-Leader.

  Out the door came a dwarfish figure lost under a fedora and trench coat. Despite a badly deformed foot, he limped past Willi briskly with a quick sideswipe of his fierce black eyes. Willi was confused. Who was this guy? Was Freksa taking orders from him?

  Knocking, he entered his collegeaue’s office, addressing him formally although they were the same rank. “Pardon me, Herr Sergeant-Detektiv.”

  Freksa looked genuinely shocked. Darting his blue eyes out the door, he appeared to fear the little trench coat might return and find Willi there. “Are you insane?”

  “I have a lead. An important one.”

  “Oh, yeah, Bible stories. Thanks but no thanks.”

  “I thought you needed leads, Freksa. Have you traced the storm canal? The two sites are connected. And the line originates up at the—”

  “Listen, Kraus, when I need your help, I’ll ask for it.”

  Willi noticed a small pin emblazoned with a twisted black cross on Freksa’s lapel. Since when was it permissible for officers to wear such emblems, spiritual, political, whatever, at work?

  “No, you listen to me, Freksa,” Willi fired back before retreating. “Follow that canal—all the way to the Viehof. Sturmwasser Kanal Fünf.”

  * * *

  By midafternoon, the news was on the lips of every Berliner:

  Homicidal maniac on the loose. Mass killer. Child murderer!

  By late afternoon, the papers were competing to outdo each other with new details, hideous and almost entirely fictitious, about how the bones had been chewed, roasted, burned, charbroiled. So that with the last light of 1929 the Child Murderer was put to sleep. And to haunt Berliners into the new decade, when the first evening editions appeared, an even more ominous bogeyman was born:

  Der Kinderfresser. The Child-Eater.

  Naturally he turned up at the Gottmans’ New Year’s Eve party.

  “We know you can’t reveal secrets, but is it really all the papers are saying?” Vicki’s sister, Ava, a twenty-two-year-old university student, pressed. With her high cheekbones and long neck, her sparkly chestnut-colored eyes, she was almost as pretty as Vicki and every bit as sharp.

  “Maybe not all,” Willi teased.

  Despite the newspapers’ “inside” scoops, he knew from off-the-record talks with Dr. Hoffnung, for instance, that while the bones had been boiled, no direct indication existed of actual cannibalism. Still, questions completely outnumbered answers at this point, and Willi could only hope Freksa’d follow through on that damned storm canal. It might not tell them who or why but at least, perhaps, where.

  “One can’t help but wonder who these children are.” Bette Gottman, Vicki’s mother, toyed with her colored beads. She was especially stylish tonight, in a shiny black dress edged with fringe. “Where are their parents? Why hasn’t anyone come forth to claim their remains?”

  “There are so many homeless kids in Berlin, Mother,” Ava said.

  She was highly stylish too tonight, her freshly bobbed hair short in the back and hanging over one eye. The Gottman women were seamlessly fashionable. Willi had a sister every bit as pretty, he thought, but far more concerned with politics than clothes. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising Greta’d joined a Zionist youth movement and emigrated to work on a dairy farm in Palestine. Four years ago now.

  “I see these poor kids every day on my way to classes.” Ava pushed the hair from her eye. “They wander over from the Alex or God knows where, sit around Unter den Linden under the trees smoking cigarettes, some no more than Erich’s age. It’s heartbreaking.”

  Bette wrung her hands dramatically, turning to Vicki. “Maybe Stefan and Erich ought to stay with us until they catch this madman.” Bette had been an actress in her youth and, in Willi’s opinion, never entirely abandoned the stage.

  “Mother,” Vicki said. “Don’t be silly. They have school.”

  Not that the kids would mind being out here, Willi mused. Vicki’s parents lived in a beautiful house in suburban Dahlem, with a huge garden out back, a veritable forest all around, and two golden retrievers the boys could never get enough of—Mitzi and Fritzi. Max Gottman had made a great deal of money in the lingerie business. If Vicki had married the kind of man her mother preferred�
��one of the scions of Berlin’s Jewish dynasties, a department store heir such as Wertheim or Tietz, or a publishing magnate, Ulstein or Mosse—she could have lived a lot better than in a two-bedroom apartment on Prussian Park. But Vicki had wanted Willi. And Bette Gottman could not complain that her eldest daughter was unhappy.

  “Well, thank goodness your husband isn’t assigned to the case.” Bette readjusted her beads. “How awful. A child killer.”

  “Willi has nothing to do with it.” Vicki looked at her mother as if she was becoming annoying, then shot Willi a weary eye roll as if exhausted by the melodramatics.

  Willi, with a handful of peanuts in his mouth, sank back in his chair slightly, glad he didn’t have to respond. He’d never told Vicki about that day Freksa stole the case from him because he didn’t like complaining about the indignities he suffered on his job, even though he could have used her comfort. Now he wasn’t exactly sorry he’d kept it a secret.

  “Besides,” Vicki went on, explaining to her mother, “the police assign these things very carefully. Detektiv Freksa’s a bachelor. Nobody has to worry about him, and he doesn’t have to worry about anyone else.” She took a rather long sip of champagne.

  “He still has a mother, doesn’t he?” Bette Gottman sighed. “Anyway,” she said, making a conspicuous effort to change subjects, “have you seen the Paris previews?” She yanked a magazine off the coffee table and showed it to her daughters. “Hemlines are dropping lower than stocks.”

  Beneath her dark bangs, Vicki’s eyes winced as she scanned the illustrations. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Three inches below the knee.” Her sister scowled. “Maybe there’ll be a big revolt and no one will wear them.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” her mother advised. “They’re calling it the New Femininity.”

  “New? It’s like they’re turning back the hands of time.”

  “They’ll succeed too. Mark my words—the days of the knee are finis, my dears.”

  “The days of a lot of things are finis,” Max added gloomily. “It’s the end of an era.”