CoDex 1962

by Sjón

  When the detectives’ exhaustive search for Bloodfoot began to have an adverse impact on Berlin’s more normal criminal activities, Black Max, king of the underworld, had taken matters into his own hands and sent out word among his associates that whoever delivered the child-killer into his hands would not go unrewarded – and since Black Max was in a position to pity that poor Jew boy Nelson Rockefeller, it’s clear that this offer was not to be sniffed at.

  The boy combed the park as deftly as he did the back pockets of the bourgeoisie, and it wasn’t long before he spotted the priest. And the priest was not behaving in a manner befitting a clergyman; he was crouching behind a hedge, spying on the children.

  Everything happened very fast.

  The street urchin whistled to the other pickpockets in the park, the pickpockets whispered the news in the ears of the burglars, the burglars talked to the whores, the whores nudged the pimps, the pimps got in touch with the book-keepers, the book-keepers passed on the message to the managing director of the casinos, the managing director of the casinos rang the director of the national bank, and the director broke off his meeting with the finance minister to go and see the man who, according to the Communists, held Germany in the palm of his hand.

  Black Max was reclining on a massage table at his headquarters beneath the Reichstag building, listening to one of his catamites reading the latest issue of the adventures of Sexton Blake while the other six smoothed his flesh with Assyrian oils.

  The king of crime was dreaming about what would happen if the detective came to Berlin and they clashed. He himself would fight like a son of a bitch, Blake nobly, and both with great resourcefulness.

  — Why isn’t life like the storybooks?

  He murmured in mellow tones under the boys’ agile hands and a vivid image of the English detective’s physique.

  — The German police are useless, it doesn’t seem to matter how much money I ply the milksops with; they couldn’t find a naughty child if they were pregnant with it.

  It’s not fair that men like Sexton Blake should be fictional, not fair to the public or to me. People would feel better if they knew a man like that existed in real life, and I would have a worthy adversary to spar with.

  Black Max slipped into his favourite daydream:

  It was a dark and stormy night, with thunder and lightning. Black Max and Blake stood face to face on the edge of the Reichstag roof, revolvers in hand. They pulled their triggers simultaneously, but neither gun fired a shot. Both laughed sardonically, flung down their weapons and began to wrestle. Sexton Blake used the oriental method of fighting known as jiu-jitsu while Black Max fought like a termagant, biting and scratching for all he was worth.

  The battle could only have one outcome.

  Blake drove Black Max to the very edge of the roof with well-aimed kicks and hand-chops, and as Black Max teetered on the brink Blake said: “You shall commit no more evil deeds; tomorrow mankind will waken to a new dawn, to a new world in which white slavery will be as unthinkable as the idea that a scoundrel like you should ever have walked this earth!”

  To which Black Max instantly retorted: “Aren’t you stuck in a role, my dear Sexton? Aren’t you confusing me with the crime-queen Stella? I’ve never invested in women – boys are more my thing!” Then, with the last of his strength, he seized Blake and dragged him with him in his fall.

  On the way down they exchanged a lascivious kiss.’

  ‘Have you forgotten about Marie-Sophie in all this nonsense? Wasn’t she rushing home to Gasthof Vrieslander?’

  ‘You wanted to hear the story of Bloodfoot, so shut up and listen!’

  ‘I thought there would be more to it than this.’

  ‘Marie-Sophie shook her head; the street had been closing in while she recalled the story of Bloodfoot: what on earth was she thinking? She didn’t want to get stuck in this part of the magazine, she wanted to turn the page, turn the page, turn the page; but however hard she concentrated, the kind woman’s voice would not reach out to her across time. She had to get out of the street and the story of Bloodfoot before the story finished and she became trapped there; the gap between the gables was now so narrow that Big-head and the crop-haired prostitute – she couldn’t be anything else, the girl saw that now – were standing side by side in front of Marie-Sophie.

  — I’ve got to go!

  Marie-Sophie’s voice was choked with tears.

  — I don’t belong here.

  They stared through the girl.

  — I’m not one of you.

  A hand was laid on her shoulder.

  — We know that.

  The deep voice raised the hairs on the back of Marie-Sophie’s neck.

  The speaker stepped forward.

  He was a dwarfish man of middle age, dressed in a white suit and lilac shirt, with a hand-painted silk tie round his neck and crocodile-skin moccasins on his feet; in his arms he held a poodle and he was dusting imaginary dandruff from the animal’s curly, pink-dyed pelt.

  The girl let out a gasp: it was none other than Black Max himself.

  — Do you think you might allow us to finish our story?

  He tapped his nose with a ring-bedecked little finger.

  — Then you can do as you like …

  The crime lord screwed up his eyes.’

  ‘See! Everyone has the right to have their story told to the end.’

  ‘Black Max’s eyes widened when the director of the central bank brought him the news that the child-killer had been found. He sprang to his feet on the massage table and stood there with legs apart, penis erect and fist clenched in the air, shouting in his nakedness:

  — I was once a child and it was fun; I was cuddled and coddled, I was bathed and had my botty powdered, I was petted and praised, I was given a flag to wave on high days and holidays and I was spanked until I developed a taste for it.

  Children and child-lovers of this world! I owe you a debt!

  The king of the underworld did not make idle promises.

  The street urchin had started up a conversation with the “priest” and delayed him by asking him to teach him the children’s hymn “O Jesus best of brothers”. And although the lines of the verse wrenched at Moritz Weiss’s heart, he was so afraid of giving away the reason for his presence in the park that he didn’t dare do anything but give the rascal a Sunday-school lesson then and there.

  So you could say that the child-killer Moritz “Bloodfoot” Weiss was almost relieved when Black Max’s henchmen came up behind him and clamped a chloroform-soaked cloth over his nose and mouth as he was quavering the second verse of the hymn in duet with the boy for the ninety-third time.

  They carried him discreetly from the park, put him in a fetid storeroom in the city sewer system and trussed him up like a pig.

  There he was left to stew while Black Max thought up his sentence.

  * * *

  Black Max squinted up at Marie-Sophie between her breasts; the gables of the houses thrust them ever closer together until the poodle was squirming against her belly; they had come to the closure of the story, the closure of the street …

  — And what do you think I did?

  Black Max smiled.

  — It’s none of her business.

  The girl flinched as Bloodfoot’s tepid breath filtered through her dress and cooled on her thigh. The head in the doorway hissed:

  — Let Maximilian Schwartz be the judge of that!

  Crop-hair smacked the cripple on the skull.

  — The papers left out one detail, did you know that?

  Marie-Sophie didn’t want to know and shook her head.

  But Black Max pretended not to understand and continued:

  — First he was stripped – I wanted a photo of the scum in his birthday suit – and what do you think came to light? He had collected the newspaper cuttings and cobbled them together into underclothes – the brute positively rustled as he murdered the tiny tots.

  Well, I thought that since he
was so attached to these news announcements he could hardly be satisfied just by wearing them next to his skin, so what do you think I did?

  Black Max gave Marie-Sophie’s bosom a triumphant look. She closed her eyes and tried to think about something nice instead. He laughed:

  — I had the whole lot stuffed up his arse!

  The prostitutes tittered. The poodle barked. Moritz Weiss howled.

  — After that he was dressed in his sheep’s clothing again and the boys took him to the park where they cut off his legs and hung them in a tree over his head. The police found him later that night after an anonymous tip-off.

  — Dead, don’t forget!

  Bloodfoot’s face was right by the girl’s thigh and he spat the words out of the corner of his mouth.

  — You killed me, you bastards!

  Black Max forced his foot between the girl and the murderer and stamped on the swollen stump where Bloodfoot’s left leg had been. The cripple whimpered:

  — I had a right to a fair trial.

  — Like the children?

  Came a whisper from the doorway.

  — Like the children?

  Echoed Crop-hair.

  The atmosphere in the street grew fraught, and Marie-Sophie would have witnessed a second execution of Moritz Weiss – whores are resourceful, they would have found some way to perform in the cramped conditions – if Maximilian Schwartz, better known as Black Max, hadn’t given them a sign to shut up.

  A film of sad world-weariness formed over the yellow eyes of Berlin’s crime lord; he stroked the poodle thoughtfully before looking up, taking a light hold of the knot of his tie and saying softly:

  — Didn’t we all have a right to a fair trial?

  Without waiting for an answer Black Max jutted his jaw and loosened his tie and the button of his collar so the slit in his throat gaped at the girl.

  His voice descended to a mocking rattle.

  — I demand a trial for myself and my dog.

  Black Max held up the dog; across its middle lay a deep tyre mark.

  — I want a trial!

  The wig slipped off the head in the doorway; the skull was smashed, showing a glimpse of brains.

  — So do I!

  Crop-hair pulled up her dress; her belly was covered with stab wounds.

  — Can I join in?

  The street urchin leaned out of a window above them, noseless and waving his genitals.

  — And me? I was raped.

  Whispered Marie-Sophie, who had begun to assume that she would spend the rest of eternity with these people. Moritz Weiss gave an ear-splitting screech:

  — Raped? You were lucky, look at me!

  Crop-hair slapped his face and stroked the girl’s cheek with the same sweep of her hand.

  — No, love! You don’t belong here – Maximilian said you could go.

  Black Max nodded; the story was over.

  The street closed up.

  For a moment Marie-Sophie felt like a dried lily, pressed in a book.

  Marie-Sophie was alone; Black Max and Moritz Weiss had vanished along with the whores and the street urchin. She drew a deep breath.

  The street was a magnificent boulevard leading to a spacious square.

  On the other side of the square stood a grand hotel:

  Gasthof Vrieslander.’

  15

  ‘Marie-Sophie set off across the square towards Gasthof Vrieslander, hoping she wouldn’t meet anybody, that no one would see her arrive, that everyone in the guesthouse would be too busy shirking their duties in the owner and Inhaberin’s absence. She wanted to slip up to her room unseen and lock herself in, then wash and have a good cry in the powerful shower – so no one would hear a thing.

  She prayed that the owner and Inhaberin were still on their egg-jaunt; the woman was quite capable of behaving like a reformed prostitute and he was about as convincing in his morality as a lecherous priest.

  Marie-Sophie hurried past the statue of the chick, darting it a murderous look.

  — I’ll throttle you if you squeak: “Can I see?”

  But it wouldn’t have mattered if the chick cheeped or squeaked; all eyes rested on her, she was on everyone’s lips: “There goes that Maya-Sof! Look how the shame clings to her like a drunken shadow … So it’s true what they say about girls who allow themselves to be raped…”

  The imagined gossip weighed the girl down and she dragged her feet the last steps to Gasthof Vrieslander, bowed beneath her shame. The guesthouse door stood open, the gloomy reception area awaited within and beyond it the stairs – the top steps vanishing into darkness.

  Marie-Sophie caught her breath, bending over, resting her hands on her thighs and gathering strength for the final sprint up to the attic. An out-of-towner sat at one of the tables, eating smoked wurst from the point of his knife. He looked shiftily at the girl and began to pack up his picnic.

  She almost smiled: the Inhaberin and the owner were not back. The woman usually ordered her husband to order the servant boy to order anyone who didn’t buy their refreshments from the guesthouse to clear off the pavement. The Inhaberin was convinced they were uncouth farmers to a man and that it was down to her to teach them city manners – they couldn’t tell the difference between quality pavement-café furniture and fence-posts: “How would they like it if we marched our guests into the countryside and sat them down on the fences around their miserable hovels?” But Marie-Sophie had more important things on her mind than some unknown peasant’s picnic: in a poky garret on the second floor of a house on Spülwasserstrasse was a man who loved her; she needed to wash off that love.

  The girl picked up her skirt and dashed into the guesthouse, looking neither right nor left, passing straight through reception and up the stairs where she ran slap into old Tomas. She turned her face to the wall and side-stepped so the old man could pass: she had nothing to say to this ally of Karl’s. He seized her by the shoulders and cried as quietly as he could: “God, is shocked, God, is shocked!”

  Marie-Sophie tore herself free: she couldn’t care less about the state of the old man’s deity. It served the old fool right for choosing a god in his own image.

  She sprang up the stairs but things got no better on the landing: the waiter and the servant boy were standing by the door of room twenty-three, shaking with suppressed emotion; the former was in a good way to gnawing off his own knuckles, the latter was bouncing up and down like a piston.

  Something dreadful had happened in the priest’s hole.

  — Poor invalid!

  Before the tears could fill the girl’s eyes the old man burst on to the landing, crying in the same low voice: “She’s back! She’s here!” And crashed into the girl who was thrown into the arms of the servant boy who was flung backwards on to the waiter who grabbed the door-handle to brace himself against the blow.

  The door flew open and they tumbled into the room in a heap: the cook was sitting on the bed, where one of the two men was standing over her, watching her cry.’

  ‘What an ugly shambles!’

  ‘Yes, my mother wasn’t given much peace to recover after what that scum Karl Maus did to her.’

  ‘But surely this farce is a bit over the top?’

  ‘To tell the truth, I would have preferred it if the story had featured a more solemn, momentous homecoming, but this is how it was; she was fated to think more about the invalid than about herself on the day of all days when she alone deserved people’s undivided sympathy.’

  ‘I feel for her.’

  ‘Marie-Sophie clawed her way out of the heap: from the priest’s hole came a stream of invective which was answered by the gnashing of teeth.

  The invalid wasn’t dead, then.

  The girl leapt to her feet, tidied her clothes with quick movements of her hands, wiped the mask of humiliation from her face and stormed to the door of the secret compartment.

  The cook turned purple with rage when she caught sight of her:

  — There she is! Oh, mein
Gott, talk to her, not me, she’s confused him, she’s corrupted him …

  The man blocked Marie-Sophie’s path, silenced the cook and gestured to the three men on the floor to get up at once and take her outside. He waited in silence while the servant boy and waiter helped the cook from the room, and once the door had closed behind old Tomas who brought up the rear, trying to cheer the woman up with a piece of scandal that was transparently invented on the spur of the moment, the man stepped aside and let the girl into the priest’s hole. The invalid seemed to have slid out of bed; he was writhing on the Armenian rug while the second of the two men tried in vain to grab hold of him. He wriggled from the man’s grasp, naked and quick as a hare that has come to its senses after being flayed.

  Marie-Sophie bent down to the man and whispered in his ear:

  — Allow me: he’s always so docile when I’m with him …

  The man straightened up and thanked her with mock courtesy for bothering to drop by.

  Pretending not to hear, the girl touched the invalid’s shoulder and he calmed down; she laid a gentle hand on his arm and he stood up; she gave him a light push and he sank down on the bed; she held a cupped palm under his neck and he lay down; she spread the eiderdown and cover over him and he closed his eyes.

  She sat down on the bed beside the invalid, turned to the two men and saw that their anger had evaporated.

  — What happened?

  They glanced at one another, then told her that shortly after she had left the guesthouse the man – who we’ll call “L—” – well, he’d woken up and started behaving in a threatening manner; he was raving, or so the woman who was sitting with him thought, but she soon began to suspect that he was playing with her because every time she approached him he pretended to be asleep, but the moment she took her eyes off him he stared at her and pointed to his nether regions – crudely, she thought. Well, she gave him an earful, she said; told him he’d better behave if he didn’t want the rug pulled out from under his feet; she’d met men a darned sight stranger than him in her time. Does the woman have a theatrical background, by any chance?