The stop was right at the exit on the Invalidenstrasse. Although it was still very early there was already a group of people waiting at the stop. Four and a half years after the end of the war they still looked desperate, pale, thin and care-worn. He thought of Elizabeth’s words: “Woe to the vanquished.” There were few men. The two he saw were wearing a Wehrmacht cap just like his. You were lucky to have one. Even the goalkeepers at the soccer games prized them. The women were bundled up so thickly you could hardly guess they had a shape. But maybe they were not women any more, he thought, maybe it’s all overgrown between their legs. Who would ever think of bedding a Trümerfrau, a rubble picker! He wouldn’t. He was used to better things. He thought of the joke Arthur had told them: “A boy and a girl are in an orphanage and are going to be washed. The boy says: “Oh! You don’t have what I have hanging between my legs.” The girl answers: “No I don’t. We are refugees and we had to leave everything at home.”
Five minutes later the streetcar came up from the Sandkrug bridge. The car itself still looked pretty much like a wreck but at least the windows all had glass panes now. No more wood, no more cardboard. Please. Just as he was beginning to feel content, the rucksack of the person in front of him hit him full in the face. The buckle cut the bridge of his nose.
“Hey, watch out, you idiot!” Walter Kusian snapped.
“I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, man.”
“Right. If you did, you wouldn’t be walking around here, they would have taken care of you when we had Adolf…”
“Hey you… I’ll call the police!”
The conductor, a woman, pushed Walter Kusian away. “No fighting in the cathouse! We want to stick to our schedule.”
Walter Kusian swallowed what was on the tip of his tongue, that more people deserved to die in the war. Damn. He could have gotten somewhere if the Führer had won. But now, now he was stuck in this lousy job and he had to live with these low class jerks. He didn’t even have a seat. Oh well, it wasn’t far to the Knie. Someone had already pulled the signal. They turned into Rathenower Strasse. The Moabit Criminal Justice Building stood across the street, dark, massive and threatening; together with the detention center next to it, it dominated the whole area between AltMoabit, Wilsnacker Strasse and Rathenower Strasse. He hated it. He hated everything.
Soon they turned left into Gotzkowskystrasse then drove over the Spree and down Franklinstrasse and Marchstrasse.
“Anybody just got on, anybody without a ticket? Do you need a ticket? Who doesn’t have one?”
Walter Kusian had hoped that the conductor wouldn’t manage to reach his spot in the mass of people but here she was in front of him clicking her change machine. She looked like Claire Waldoff. The same snub nose, the same husky voice: You trying to pull a fast one? He liked that kind of woman, the kind who wouldn’t take any bullshit. Even if it cost him 20 pfennig.
“Knie.” He’d just punched in his ticket and he had to get off. At that time Ernst Reuter had already become mayor of West Berlin but the large esplanade, called “Knie”, where the underground metro ran from the Zoo and Ruhleben and turned from the Hardenbergerstrasse into the Bismarckstrasse, and looked like a knee on the subway map, wouldn’t bear his name for many years. All the buildings in the area had been completely destroyed and the immense expanse was slowly being cleared up. As if they were laying the ground for a city airport. The greatest number of completely destroyed houses was in the Berlinerstrasse, later renamed Otto-Suhr Allee; it led to the Charlottenburg city hall and the Castle. Walter Kusian turned into it. His task was to help clear the ruins at the corner of Cauerstrasse. The number 54 to Spandau/Johannesstift passed by. He would have liked to have a little house out there. And a big retirement pension so he wouldn’t have to work anymore. Live, for once.
A man came up from behind him and turned the brim of his hat down over his eyes. On the hat it said: “Basement prices at HO!” That could only be Arthur, his old companion from better days, who often shopped at HO. HO stood for Handels Organisation or Trade Organisation; the store was in the East and wanted to attract West Berliners. “The intelligent Housewife Shops at HO” said the ad. There were many HO stores all along the border between the sectors. The two friends didn’t talk about what to buy where but about the damage done by the hurricane of December 5th and about the body that had been found at Stettiner station on the same day. The date was December 8, 1949.
“In our neighborhood a birch tree fell on the roof of a garden shed.” Arthur had lost his house to the bombs in 1944 and he lived with his wife and two children in the Laube, the garden allotments near Blankenburg station. “But no one died.”
“You were lucky.” In the inner city it was mostly the ruins of buildings that had tumbled to the ground and seven people had been killed.
“You were lucky too…” Arthur looked at his friend. “You still have your lower legs.” He was alluding to the body parts that had been found in Stettiner station. It was all over the newspapers.
Walter Kusian smiled. “The children found what…? An arm, a thigh and two calves. Where do you think the other pieces can be?”
“In the pot on your stove.”
“Right. Like to join me for supper…?”
“They say human flesh tastes pretty good, just a little too sweet.”
“What do you think they put in our sausage?”
Arthur made a face. “We’d better stop joking about it because the guy who did that, he’s not gonna stop any time soon. It could happen to anyone.”
They had reached the spot where they were working. They were employed by a small outfit whose owner had obtained a contract to clear up a section among the rubble to build a news stand. Arthur was wary. “Wouldn’t the surrounding buildings come tumbling down…?” He looked up. The apartment building had been hit by a demolition bomb. The entire façade was gone. It was like a doll house with everything in it emptied or pushed back. The wallpaper was still on the walls. The doors leading to the other floors and the other rooms were also intact and, right after the war, it often occurred that people unaware of the damage to the building, opened a door and plunged into the void. The back part of the building was inhabited. Everyone was desperate for a place to live. If they were unlucky a piece of chimney or a partition wall that hadn’t been secured might fall off.
The boss arrived in his flatbed motorcycle truck, bringing spades, pick axes and crowbars. He warned them: “Be careful, over there in the corner, the basement ceiling has caved in.” He drove off.
Arthur wanted to go down into the cellar to see if the rest of the structure was safe. Walter Kusian was against it. “What do you think could happen, we’re all so underweight. And when we’re done clearing the debris there’ll be even less weight.”
“Still…”
“God, what a coward you are. No wonder we lost the war with soldiers like you.”
That did it, Arthur didn’t go to check the cellar; resigned, he started chipping away. Walter Kusian picked up the bricks, broke them apart, chipped off the mortar that still clung to them and stacked them in neat little piles. “All I need is a kerchief and I’ll be a perfect little ruin frau.”
And so they worked hour after hour. There were very few distractions. Sometimes a girl passed by and they could whistle at her, sometimes the horse drawn carriage came by with the guy ringing his bell and calling out: “Exchange firewood for potato peelings!” Across the street someone had bought a Christmas tree, hanging it upside down from the window to keep it fresh. God, two weeks from now and it’ll be Christmas.
“What will you do for the holidays?” Arthur asked.
“I’ll sit around… I’ll listen to …”
“Christmas songs?”
“No, to silence. I might go to my mother in law’s…”
Arthur rested his pick axe against the little wall that his colleague had built up. “Barman, a beer.”
“Coming, just a second.”
This exchange w
as an allusion to the fact that until recently Walter Kusian had worked as a barman at the Casablanca bar on Augsburger strasse, but that he had been fired. One of the regulars, a wealthy film producer, had recognized him and refused to be served by a Nazi. In the ensuing exchange Walter Kusian had become somewhat aggressive.
Time passed by very slowly. It was foggy, wet and cold. Walter Kusian wouldn’t have minded if a piece of wall broke off and killed him. The best thing in life was to die suddenly without fear. Arthur could at least look forward to the evening with his family out there in the garden colony. But for him there was only an entire evening alone in his little room…Only people who had money, a lot of money could afford to hope. The owner of the furniture store across the street surely had a lot of dough, he made sure that the movers carried his expensive stuff up the stairs without any scratches. ‘GG Furniture: a great idea.’ GG stood for Gregor Göltzsch, Walter Kusian had seen the name in the paper. The thought of killing him, of opening his treasure chest and… That made him warmer even than the mulled wine that the boss handed out when daylight had fallen and he came back to pick up the tools. “Guys, let’s call it a day.”
Walter Kusian walked to the stop to take the streetcar, he got on the number 2; it was completely packed. The car had no doors so he stood on the platform, almost outside and froze. On Turmstrasse he caught sight of two women yapping. They were just walking out of the Robert Koch hospital. Elizabeth Kusian and her friend Anni.
He called out to her: “Hi there, sister in law!”
“Hi, brother in law.”
“Will you have a little time for me tonight?”
Elizabeth Kusian made a big NO sign with her right hand in front of her face, two or three times, as if he were too thick to catch on the first time. “No, absolutely not.”
“You better watch out your bones don’t end up inside a ruin.” Walter Kusian whispered as the streetcar went on its way.
3.
Hannes Seidelmann, an expert mechanic trained in setting up telegraph lines worked as a trouble shooter at the Post Office and as such he was pretty much free to do whatever he wanted with his time. His boss sat at his desk in Skalitzer strasse and could hardly be expected to check how fast the telephone lines were being fixed or to know what Seidelmann did in between assignments – like going back home for a quick cup of coffee, or looking after things in his garden. Or having a quick one with his girl friend. Today though he had asked for a day off. “You know the trouble with my brother Hermann…” They had been waiting for him to come home for five days now. Not a word from him. Hermann Seidelmann had left home on December 3rd. He was carrying over 3000 DM-East. Something terrible could have happened. Still… There was no news from the Missing Persons Bureau in the British sector where they had gone immediately the day after he had disappeared… maybe no news was good news. His brother lived in Saxony, in Plauen but every time he called his wife all she could say was: “No, no sign of Hermann here.” She didn’t seem too keen to see him come back. On the 17th of November Hermann had left for Berlin. He had come to attend their mother’s funeral. But he wanted to take his time coming back. He wanted to exchange some money, East Marks for West Marks and in West Berlin he intended to buy parts for his amusement park business. He was a fairground exhibitor and had carousels, seesaws and shooting stalls in Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz and other places in Saxony. It seemed he had also come to Berlin to have a little fun with the ladies. Although, apparently, he hadn’t had much success, until then.
“He’s a bit long in the tooth at 47.” Hannes Seidelmann said.
His sister disagreed. “There are so few men and so many women willing to take anybody. Take a guy and then take him for a ride, fleece him like a Christmas turkey. As far as Hermann is concerned I wouldn’t feel sorry for him. He’s got four kids and…”
Gerda worked as a ticket lady on the S-Bahn in Berlin. She didn’t trust anybody. First because of her profession: She sat in her ticket booth at Wedding station and punched the yellow cards of the people who were getting on the train but she also had to check the people getting off – to make sure they had payed the right amount for the trip. The “I” ticket was the cheapest, it cost 20 Pfennig but it was valid only on the Ringbahn or inside the Ringbahn limits. And it happened so often that someone had bought an “I” ticket but had started out from say Gartenfeld or Wollanstrasse. Her motto was: “People are capable of anything. And you too Hannes…” What she meant by this was that the two brothers had never got along, quite the opposite as a matter of fact. “Think of Cain and Abel.”
Hannes Seidelmann reacted angrily. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Don’t pretend. When he was called up before you, you immediately started something with his wife Irma. And now that he’s back, he’s a problem.”
Hannes Seidelmann was astonished. “I would never…my own brother.”
“No you would never. But the fact remains that he’s vanished.”
“With a lot of money on him. Money that you’ve always had your eye on…”
Hannes Seidelmann got up, went to the window, pushed the curtain aside and looked down into the street. “Bah, that’s nonsense. He’ll show up any minute and… He’s probably picked up a woman somewhere and can’t tear himself away. He hasn’t been in love with Irma in ages. Or else he’s shut up in a brothel and the girls are keeping him there until he runs out of money.”
“Hannes please!” Gerda Seidelmann was very sensitive and hated such coarseness.
“We’ve got to do something. At least go to the Missing Persons Bureau again.”
“Somehow I don’t like the idea.”
“Well then let’s look through his things and see if we find anything.”
Gerda refused. “That’s useless, we’ve already looked and looked again so many times.”
“Maybe we still missed something.”
“Oh well why not…”
The pull out bed that Hermann slept on stood in a small half room that the family called a bedroom. It had been the servant’s room before, now it served as a store room. Hermann’s trunk stood open: in it were his long underwear, badly ironed shirts and rolled up socks. Above the trunk a suit hung off a nail planted in the wall. The suit still smelled strongly of beer, sweat and smoke.
Hannes asked his sister: “Did you search the suit?”
“Of course I did, what do you think.” She couldn’t help it if she sounded rude. “Look at the lovely ties our Hermann has.” She held up two of them.
“But the prettiest was the one he was wearing when he left, the blue one with the yellow and red stripes. He always tied that one round his neck when he had a rendez-vous. Gee…” All of a sudden Hannes remembered that as soon as he arrived his brother had asked him where to buy the best condoms in Berlin. “Condoms…? Get them at the barber’s when you get a haircut.”
And where did men hide them from their wives before they went out on the town? In the little secret pocket inside the trousers’ waistband on the right side under the belt. He checked it. And sure enough, there was something. But it wasn’t a condom; it was a small piece of paper torn from a newspaper. There were five words on it: ‘beautiful woman at the zoo.’ He was sure it was Hermann’s handwriting. He turned to his sister. “Look at this…”
“It’s obvious he wanted to get together with some chick. Let’s go, now. Bring a picture of him.”
They left. The number 21 streetcar stopped close by and so they took it to Gotzkowskystrasse where they changed for the number 2. It took fifteen minutes to get to Zoo station. That section of Berlin was already almost as madly busy as during the Golden Twenties. It wasn’t so much because of the number of long distance travelers since most people only traveled daily on the remaining five or six interzone trains from the old head stations, but because of its legendary fame: “Chia, chia, cho, sharp guys cheat you at the Zoo…”
Since the end of the blockade and after the currency reform black market activities were basic
ally a thing of the past but the money changing business was stronger than ever, it was really flourishing. Apart from that, tens of thousands of people switched trains or trams here, it was a hub for several S trains as well as streetcars and the A subway line. Add to that the people who came to the nearby ‘garden’ to see if any of their old friends the animals, elephants, wolves, bears and monkeys, had survived after the end of the war. As they themselves had survived. The steel skeleton of the train station had withstood the bombs, only the glass was missing. But it looked like the odd man out among all the ruins. Not all ruins though, the administrative high court was relatively unharmed. But both cupolas of the Zeiss planetarium and the Ufa Palace were burnt out and many of the other buildings were reduced to rubble.
Where did people meet then? They met under the big standard clock next to Dr. F. Kuhlmann’s perfume shop. Brother and sister went into the shop to show the saleslady their brother’s picture. “Was he by any chance in your shop and did he buy a bottle of perfume for a pretty woman…? He was born in 1902, he’s heavy set and he talks like someone from Saxony, he often uses the East Prussian dialect.”
She shook her head.” I’m sorry, I can’t remember.”
They weren’t really disappointed. It would have been a real coincidence if he… They figured they stood a better chance with the money changers.
But no, it was the same thing. “He was carrying a lot of money…” These words were met with a smirk. “He probably unloaded all that with some babes.” They were advised to look in the cafes on the Kudammm and the boarding houses on Augsburgerstrasse.
Hannes Seidelmann shook his head. “The note with ‘Beautiful woman at the zoo’ seems to indicate that Hermann wasn’t out to buy sex.”
His sister did not entirely agree. “It could still be that she was one of those… And even if she wasn’t, in any case he must have gone to a café or a bar with her.”
Cold Angel: Murder in Berlin 1949 Page 2