Cold Angel: Murder in Berlin 1949

by Horst Bosetzky

  “…A glass eye.” Dorothea weighed it in her hand. “My boss has one like this.”

  Ilse became pensive. “Mm, eyes…” What she liked most were the little bubbles of fat that floated like eyes on the surface of chicken broth. “I just hope that I don’t end up with bad eye sight, I can’t see myself pulling the handle wearing a pair of glasses on my nose – I can’t see it.”

  There was a lot to talk about. Love, work, the kids, fashion, how it was still hard to shop and about Berlin, about everything that was happening in the city. At Karstadt in NeuKölln they had started removing the ruins and were planning to start building in the Spring of 1950. The purchase card, section 77, advertised a case of firewood all cut up ready for the stove for 3.30 DM. Through the interzone agreement. In Moabit, the fifth district criminal court had handed down a stiff sentence to a female robbers’ gang. The gang had been operating for years in Neukölln. The leader was Johanna Schulze. Housewives in the western sector refused to buy whale meat imported from Norway even though there was nothing else to put in the stew. “Whale meat always reminds me of cod liver oil – awful!” Dorothea said. Theodor Heuss was against reestablishing a German army. “He better be against it.” Ilse commented. “He voted for Hitler to come to power. That guy’s nothing but an empty suit – only in the West can you have a man like that as President of the Federal Republic.”

  They talked until it was 9 o’clock and then they both made their way back to the Western sector. They took the number 74 together down to Alexanderplatz and from there they each went on their separate ways. Margot disappeared down into the subway on her way to Hermannplatz and Dorothea took the S-Bahn.

  It took her through the landscape of ruins across the center of the city in the direction of Spandau. When she got to Spandau station she decided not to wait for the streetcar: even though it was late, she preferred to walk home. After sitting all that time she felt she needed a little exercise. Klosterstrasse was wide and well laid out, what could happen to her here? On the other hand, very few shop windows were still lit and the street lamps didn’t all work. There were few pedestrians, even fewer cars. It was scary. Soon she regretted her decision. She walked faster and faster and then almost ran. Finally, she tuned into Pichelsdorferstrasse. There had been no bombs here. The houses numbered up to 119 and only five had been destroyed. Number 5 was her house. She rented a two and half room apartment on the fourth floor and had to share it with Rudolf of course. They had been a fairly happy couple for a long time but now love had turned to hate. Each one refused to leave the apartment and they both tried to make living there unbearable for the other.

  Her heart raced with fear as she put the key in the lock. Maybe Rudi would be in bed asleep. He wasn’t. As she opened the door and turned on the light he stood there in the foyer with an axe in his hands.

  “I thought somebody was trying to break in…” The smirk on his face belied his words.

  Dorothea Merten very much feared that one night he would hit her for good. She tried desperately to stay calm. “If you want to kill me … the neighbors will all know you did it. So you better stay away from me.”

  7.

  Herta Stöhr hated coming home so late. It was already 8 PM. Her old mother was probably sitting at home worried to death again. Especially since they had found that corpse. Cut up. And there were still comrades who sang ‘Wait, just wait, Harmann will soon get you too with his neat little axe and cut you up into sausage meat.’ Horrible. Whenever she went past the ruins she walked faster. There could be dead bodies all around her. Maybe the killer was busy right now, killing someone and chopping him up so as to dispose of the body conveniently, in a bombed out cellar for instance. Probably someone who killed for pleasure. That’s how it was nowadays. The war was over and still you had to live in fear.

  Herta Stöhr was a 62 year old war widow. She had retired early because of her asthma. She had worked all her life at AEG, and at the end she was working as a stenographer. Everyone at AEG loved her and they still invited her to the Christmas party. Like tonight. That was the reason why she was out so late.

  She lived on Kantstrasse, 154a, a house on the south side of the street, almost at the corner of Fasanenstrasse, very close to the ruins of the Synagogue and directly opposite the Delphi cinema and the Theater of the West. It was a bourgeois neighborhood, that had even been aristocratic and she and her husband had been able to afford it because he made good money working in a bank. Good enough at least for an apartment on the fourth floor where the rent was a little cheaper. But still, it had three and a half rooms plus a kitchen and a bathroom. Her mother’s place on Bayerischen Platz had been bombed so she was living with her now, in what used to be the main room. Herta slept in the small bedroom and they shared the big living room. She rented out what used to be the master bedroom. That way, they made out quite well.

  She finally reached her door. Before taking the key out of her handbag, she looked around just in case some fiend was getting ready to pounce. But there was no one. She opened the door and hit the light switch. Thank god there were no more power cuts. Four flights up. With her asthma. Never mind that she was overweight. Even during the lean years she hadn’t lost much weight. She could turn any food into fat. So she feared the painful climb. How she would have liked having an elevator! On the landing between the second and third floors she had placed a chair to sit and catch her breath. This was the third chair she had put there, the previous two had been stolen so this one was fastened to the wall with a chain.

  On the stairs she met Frau Schütz, the concierge, the ‘Portjesche’ in Berliner dialect. Maria Schütz lived on the first floor and people said that every time she heard footsteps she would rush to the peep hole to see who was coming or leaving. Men who wished to invite ladies late at night covered the glass spy hole and children enjoyed gluing it shut again and again. Others were glad to be protected so vigilantly. Especially now with all that was happening. “Those who have nothing to hide don’t complain.” Unfortunately, the concierge was not entirely in her right mind, many even thought she had long ago started down the path to lunacy. “She’s been soft in the head ever since the war when she sat for a whole day in the building while it was jolted by the bombs.” Because of that, the tenants of 154a Kantstrasse gave her a ‘free pass’ whenever she went off her rocker and told them wild stories: somebody was stealing, she would say, or was constantly drunk or lured children into his apartment or was a top Nazi in hiding.

  “Good evening Frau Schütz. How are you today?” Herta Stöhr was always very careful how she treated the concierge. “I’m sure you had a lot of work again today. Thankfully, the snow isn’t too bad this year.”

  The concierge first sang a few bars of Little snowflake, little white dress and then said that she loved nothing more than fresh snow. “That’s when footprints are the clearest, they tell me who has come in and who has gone out.”

  “Yes indeed. Thank you so much for watching over us so well.”

  “Especially now, with the killer on the loose in Berlin.”

  “Please!” Herta Stöhr shook herself.

  “Just imagine lying in the ruins, cut up in pieces. How that must feel.”

  Herta wanted to get away. “Well, have a good evening.” At least the little conversation with the concierge had given her time to catch her breath and this time she didn’t need to sit in her little resting spot. Her mother, who had just turned eighty that year, was waiting on the landing; she had opened the door long before Herta had reached the top of the stairs.

  “Herta, is that you?”

  “No, it’s only my ghost” she panted.

  “Have you been drinking again?”

  “Just two bottles of schnapps.”

  “Child!”

  Herta sighed softly. Her mother always forgot that her ‘child’ was now retired and she scolded her every day. Herta gave her a quick peck on the cheek and attempted to slip by her mother to go in and hang up her coat. But her mother took
hold of her.

  “Herta, look at me. Have you been with that awful Walter Kusian again?”

  “Mother, I was at the AEG Christmas party.”

  “That Kusian is a bad man. You can see it in his eyes. I can tell who a person really is when I look him in the eye.”

  “And if you see his ID card you can also tell his name.”

  “What?” She didn’t understand. “Didn’t I expressly tell you not to get involved with that Kusian?”

  “Mother, I’m not involved with him, he only brought me some firewood. Beams from the ruins where he’s helping clean up.”

  “And what did you give him in return?”

  She took her mother by the arm. “Well, of course, I gave him what always makes men happy.”

  “Child!” Adelheid Nanendorf, a former catechism teacher, was horrified. “I’m truly ashamed of you. I know you’re a grown up, but to do such a thing! What a shame. I would rather freeze to death.”

  “How can it be a shame to pay someone with cigarettes. I don’t smoke, you don’t smoke…”

  “Really, just cigarettes?”

  “Mother, I swear.” This put an end to the controversy. But there would be many more. “Come into my room, I’ll make some tea and we can make ourselves comfortable. We can listen to the radio…”

  “Yes, let’s listen to Play along” Play along was a lively quiz show presented by Ino Veit, and everybody listened to it.

  “That’s on tomorrow, Sunday evening.” She leafed through the Telegraph, the daily they subscribed to. But her mother had used the page with the radio programming as kindle to start the fire. “I’ll try all the stations later.” On medium wave radio they could get RIAS and North German radio (NWDR) from the West and from the East they got Radio Berlin which as a matter of fact also broadcast from the Western sector, from Radio House on Masuren Allee underneath the radio tower. “Maybe we’ll find something interesting.”

  “No, it’ll just make me scared. Maybe we too have a corpse in our cellar.”

  “True, there’s a female body down there… I already asked Frau Schütz yesterday to get rid of it.”

  “A dead woman in the cellar?”

  “Yes, a dead female rat.”

  There was a death announcement card on the side table. On November 12, their new lodger had moved in and had given it to them shortly afterwards. “Our dear mother has passed away suddenly… She is survived by Elisabeth Kusian, Doctor Charlotte Kühnel nee Kusian, Headmaster Dr. Karl-Hermann Kusian, Professor Johannes Kusian.” Herta asked her mother why she kept taking the black edged card out of the drawer. Because, her mother said, these people are such respectable folk.

  “Really Herta, Frau Kusian is a good catch for us. Having a nurse in the house is worth a pound of gold. When I had my angina attack a little while ago, she gave me a shot immediately and maybe saved my life. I was almost gone, I was choking to death. And she did that spontaneously, she brought me what I needed from the hospital. Such a goodhearted angel.”

  Her daughter also found it very helpful to have Elisabeth Kusian as a lodger – what else could they do, they had to have a lodger since her pension wasn’t enough. When Mrs. Kusian was at home and looked after her mother, she could venture again to the Walterchens ballroom. Not that she was some kind of merry widow but maybe she could still find herself another man. Her husband had been dead six years. And she missed him. Then again… the odds of finding a man to warm her heart were smaller than the odds of winning at Lotto. The best ones had died in the war. Most of the time she had to be content with dancing with other women her age. Why wasn’t she born fifty years earlier? “Then you’d be dead by now.” What a comforting thought.

  Herta went into the tenant’s room to add a coal briquette. It had been the main room separated from the living room by a set of double doors. Now, on either side they had set up an armoire and the carpenter had also nailed up what they called ‘sauerkraut’ plywood to muffle any sounds coming from next door. Her mother had insisted on them. “I would be so ashamed to have to listen in on somebody’s love life.” Herta would have enjoyed it on the contrary, but she had given in for the sake of peace. In any case, it still was a hidden door.

  The room was not particularly grand. The wallpaper – a flower pattern against a yellowish beige background - had faded, the tea rose colored drapes were so washed out they looked grey. There was a small chair and a pull out couch. A closet, a washbasin, a desk – it all dated from the first years of her marriage and was all pretty worn out. The only fresh addition was a branch of fir with a red candle. The tenant was a very neat woman. Everything was in its place, the rug was spotless. Mrs. Kusian had brought almost nothing with her. Just an alarm clock, a little radio, a photograph of a doctor standing in front of a large clinic with a dedication that read: “For my dear daughter Elisabeth.” She had brought clothes and shoes of course but not many and she didn’t need much since she mostly wore her nurse’s uniform. “A simple woman with a big heart,” the concierge said and Herta’s mother quoted the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the meek…” Herta felt somewhat shabby taking money from her every month.

  She left the room and went to the kitchen to put the water on for tea. Her mother followed her in. Herta stopped short: “What’s that blood under the cabinet.”

  “I had another nose bleed, Herta. My blood pressure is too high again. I often have the feeling I’m about to burst.”

  “Of course you do; all the rich fatty things you’ve been eating these past years, with you being so overweight…”

  “You slanderer!” In fact the catechist had become as thin as a rail. “Always remember the book of Solomon, chapter 4, verse 24: “Renounce evil words and let the slanderer be no friend of yours.”

  As Herta was going to reply they heard the door shut. Elisabeth Kusian came to the kitchen door, wearing her nurse’s uniform of course. Every one said hello.

  “Would you also like a cup of tea, Nurse Elisabeth?”

  “I’d love one. Do you mind if I sit down for a minute. It’s them legs, you know…”

  “You mean ‘it’s because of my legs’.” The catechist corrected her.

  “Sorry, my mother was a Hungarian countess so we didn’t really learn proper German.” The nurse hung her coat on one of the hangers and took one of the four kitchen stools. She sighed. “We had another emergency operation… A young woman. She didn’t make it.”

  “How can you stand all that pain and misery!” Herta was full of admiration.

  “Think of what we had to endure during the war! Compared to that, what happens at Robert Koch Hospital is child’s play. If I didn’t have my daily drugs, I couldn’t do it.” She opened her bag and took out a pack of cigarettes.

  “Are you going away to visit your family at Christmas?” Herta asked.

  “No, they all get together at my brother’s house in the country, in the Black Forest by lake Titisee. They don’t want me there, I’m not good enough for them.” Elisabeth wiped a tear from her eye. “Maybe my brother in law will visit. Or else my dear Kurt, if he can get off work.”

  “Is he a doctor?” Herta asked.

  “No, he’s a top administrator at Police headquarters.”

  The catechist listened closely. “Is he also investigating the matter of the dismembered corpse at Stettiner station?

  “Yes, that too. He’s got a lot of people working under him.”

  “Do they have a lead?”

  “He doesn’t talk to me about work. He’s a widower and has no children.”

  Herta had a short clever chuckle. “Aha, are we going to celebrate an engagement here under the Christmas tree, maybe?”

  “Who knows…”

  “You can cook and bake all you want here, Mrs. Kusian. We all know that food is the way to a man’s heart, don’t we?”

  “Thank you, I will. If I have the time. I still have to go and buy Christmas presents.”

  “Get your friend tickets for the New Scala on Nollendor
fer Platz,” Hertha proposed. “They’re playing ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ starring Nelson Eddy.”

  “I don’t know. He always likes something useful. I’d like to give him a new suit. They are 68.50 DM at C&A. But then he would have to try it on first and then there’s no surprise.”

  “And what would you like for yourself, Nurse Kusian?”

  “Oh…,” she sighed. “I just wish old times would return. To be young again… To celebrate Christmas the way we used to in those days in Thuringia. When we were still important people. My father had so many grateful patients and at Christmas they always put on little shows. Oh well… nowadays, in the zone everything is being expropriated.”

  “Don’t despair, Nurse Elisabeth.” The catechumen found solace in Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

  “If you need strength…” Herta found it harder and harder to endure her mother’s biblical sayings. “I happen to have some good starch, my cousin owns a drugstore in Schöneberg and she gave me a lot. You’ll find everything in the bathroom.”

  “Thank you so much. You’re very kind to me.”

  Herta laughed: “You always get what you deserve.”

  “Well…” Elisabeth extinguished her cigarette in the ashtray and stood. “I think I’ll say good night.”

  “Come back and play a round of cards with us later if you like.”

  “Thank you, very nice of you, but I want to take a walk around the block. I need some fresh air. I have a headache and I don’t want it to turn into a migraine again.”