Rosa

by Jonathan Rabb

  From that moment on, Hoffner and Fichte lived on the front pages of every daily in town. Photographs of Wouters’s body—his chest laid bare, the tiny charred hole where the bullet had entered—sat side by side with images of a beaming Fichte and a less than enthusiastic Hoffner. Präger insisted: Hoffner would be a good little soldier. The last of the interviews dragged on into Saturday.

  What was worse was how the papers were harping on the fact that Wouters was a Belgian: still more reason to cheer. Some speculated that he might have been an agent sent in during the last days of the war to create mayhem in the capital. Others took it as a sign that German savvy—if not for the incompetence of the generals—would surely have gained the ultimate victory in the war. Even Kvatsch managed to write something mildly favorable. To a paper, though, all agreed on one incontrovertible truth: that Hoffner and Fichte now stood for all that was right with Germany.

  Naturally, the directors of Ganz-Neurath invited them to a special luncheon on the following Monday to thank them for their outstanding work. Chancellor Ebert himself put in an appearance to express his faith in the fine men of the Kripo. Ebert, too, needed to align himself with what was right with Germany.

  But the crowning moment came on the Tuesday—one week after all the excitement at the Ochsenhof—when the Kripo whipped together an elaborate promotion ceremony outside the old Royal Palace: Fichte to detective sergeant, Hoffner to chief inspector. The Alex was still a shambles and hardly the image that Präger wanted to convey. More photographs, more beaming from Fichte, and all the while, the Polpo remained curiously silent.

  Martha, on the other hand, was enjoying it all immensely. The neighbors down the hall had sent over a small bottle of kirsch—dreadful stuff, and not even a premium brand—in congratulations. All that business about the flat had been a misunderstanding. No reason to let it spoil things. An invitation to tea was extended. “Certainly,” Martha said. “When my husband can find time in his very important schedule, Frau Rimmler. We should be delighted.”

  Sascha, too, was reaping the benefits. Herr Zessner, his physics teacher, had cited Sascha as “a model for us all” in front of the entire class. Herr Zessner lived alone with his mother, and had been hearing the poor woman’s torments over the “chisel murders” ever since the news had broken: she was the same age as the rest; she spent time outside the flat. “You know the boy’s father, Heinrich. Have him do something!” Detective Hoffner had saved Herr Zessner from an early mental breakdown. Young Hoffner would therefore be finishing the year at the top of his class. Good feelings all around, Sascha even managed to put in an appearance at the air show at Johannisthal: a few cold moments, to be sure, but, all in all, the thaw was progressing quite nicely.

  And Georgi—the dailies spread out on the kitchen floor—was making a habit of pointing out his own last name in the papers every morning. “Hoffner. Like Georgi Hoffner.” He cut out each one—not the articles, just the names—and kept them in a cigar box under his bed. If Hoffner was being kept from the office, at least Kreuzberg was radiating a very comforting mood.

  When Hoffner did finally get back to the Alex in that first week of February, Präger was prepared for him. Cases Fichte would have handled on his own as a detective sergeant suddenly required Hoffner’s expertise. Pimps and whores, bar-front brawls, lowlifes ending up dead, and Hoffner would be called in to clean up the obvious mess. It was a week into it before he began to wonder whether Präger’s intention was to keep him in the papers or out of the office.

  Through it all, the snow returned—again and again—as if it knew that Berlin had something to hide. A hint of grime would peek up through the streets, and a new dusting of white would quickly settle from above. Better not to know what lay beneath. It was a popular attitude.

  All that began to change on the twelfth when Leo Jogiches—from somewhere in hiding—printed his account of Rosa’s death. The article had appeared in the communist Die Rote Fahne almost a week ago. The rest of the city’s papers had failed to pick up on it. Hoffner had seen it for the first time only this morning.

  It was a startling tale of Liebknecht and Luxemburg on the run. Hunted down by members of the Cavalry Guards Rifle Division—those charming soldiers who had taken such joy in beating students to death in the last days of the revolution—Karl and Rosa had been snatched from an apartment on the outskirts of town and then brought to the Hotel Eden near the zoo, where a Captain Pabst and a rifleman named Runge had seen to the killings. Jogiches had even included a photograph of the drinking bout at which the murderers had celebrated the deaths. It was all very dramatic, very shocking, and, as Hoffner well knew, not even half the story.

  Not surprisingly, the government was showing little interest. They preferred the original reports from mid-January: that an angry mob had ambushed the Reds and killed them in a wild frenzy, a tragedy of the revolution, to be sure, but not all that much of a tragedy. “The proper expiation for the bloodbath that they unleashed,” the Tgliche Rundschau had written at the time. “The day of judgment on Luxemburg and Liebknecht is over.” Ebert and his cronies were more than willing to agree. They had no intention of dredging it all up again. There was mention of a possible trial, but no one was all that keen to pursue it, especially as the accusations were coming from the people who had started all the trouble in the first place.

  Meanwhile, the Polpo—still silent, and still with Rosa’s body somewhere up on the fourth floor—continued to say nothing. They seemed happy enough to let it all fall at the feet of Pabst and Runge. The Wouters case was closed. Weigland even made a special trip down to the third floor to remind Präger of proper jurisdiction. Luxemburg was a Polpo matter. The men of IA would handle it as they saw fit.

  Präger had nodded. He liked a victory—along with the good press—as much as anyone else. However, he also liked his victories clean. Two minutes after Weigland had scuttled back upstairs, Präger called Hoffner into his office.

  The photograph that Jogiches had printed now stared up at Hoffner from his desk. It was a dreary affair, twenty or so men in gray uniform, another few in black, one little barmaid in white standing at the center with a tray in her hands. Hoffner had been studying the faces for almost an hour. It was the first such block of time he had been able to devote to the case in almost three weeks.

  They had let him see the bodies on that first Friday after he returned to work: the woman inside the trunk had been no different from the others, another lonely seamstress with no family to claim her; Wouters had not been much of a surprise, either, except for his hands. Even lifeless, they had shown remarkable strength, especially on so small a man.

  More than that, however, was no longer available. The bodies were in the ground; Weigland had made sure of that during Hoffner’s extended absence. It seemed only appropriate given the speed with which the case had resolved itself: Tamshik’s single shot, all discussion closed. Why bother with the evidence?

  Hoffner’s eyes continued to drift to the girl in the photo. It was clear that she had been persuaded to pose with the men: she seemed uncomfortable in their presence. The soldiers, however, needed a symbol for what they had been fighting to protect. The entire group stared grimly into the lens, except for one fellow who was seated at the front. He was sporting a tight smirk, with one hand in his coat pocket, the other around a thick cigar. His had been a job well done.

  Rifleman Otto Runge and his cohorts looked to be the perfect dupes, posed over a few buckets of beer, and without a spark of intelligence among them. Runge himself had the air of a halfwit, with his drooping moustache and narrow eyes: not difficult to see that the best these men could have managed was a quick crack on the head, or a bullet to the ribs. Hoffner had no doubt that they had killed Liebknecht and Luxemburg, but the etchings on Rosa’s back—and her connection to Wouters and beyond—were clearly far too involved for their simple minds. Like Tamshik in the pit rooms, someone had set them on their task. The question remained: Who?

  And yet, the m
ore Hoffner studied the photo, the more he realized that Jogiches was trying to tell him something with it. There was a certain arrogance in the assumption, but Hoffner had not been wasting all of his time in recent weeks. Stealing a few minutes here and there, he had begun to dig deeper into Herr Jogiches’s past. Last Thursday, while rummaging through it, Hoffner had stumbled upon his K.

  Naturally, it was Rosa who had led the way: her 1912 journal had held the key. Several of the entries detailed a period during which Jogiches had been living under an assumed name somewhere in the city. Rosa, of course, had never given up the name—Hoffner had admired her discretion—but she had let slip the address of a hotel in two of the passages. Hoffner had paid a visit to the hotel: what he had unearthed was a story worthy of a Rossini libretto.

  Years ago—long before her move to Berlin—Rosa had told her family that she and Jogiches had been married in Switzerland. It wasn’t true, and by 1911, when the two were no longer together, it had become something of an embarrassment whenever members of Rosa’s family came to visit. While she had been willing to concoct a sham marriage so as to save face, she was not so eager to present her family with a sham divorce. To maintain the fiction, Jogiches had agreed to leave his name on the lease and to rent a room at the Hotel Schlosspark under an assumed name. Unfortunately, Jogiches’s tailor had never been fully apprised of the arrangement. Hoffner had discovered a receipt—still in the hotel files—for a pair of trousers that had been delivered to the room of a K. Kryzysztalowicz, on the fourteenth of March, 1912. The name on the receipt, Leo Jogiches.

  Further proof of the alias came from a much earlier entry devoted to Leo’s brother, Osip, that dated from 1901. According to that journal, Osip had been dying of tuberculosis since the early nineties and, in the last weeks of his life, was advised by his doctors to take a trip to Algiers for his health; naturally, Leo had insisted that he join him. Hoffner had checked the ship’s manifest and, once again, had found meticulous German paperwork up to the task. Osip had indeed sailed for Algiers. Oddly enough, Leo had not accompanied him. A Dr. Krystalowicz, however, had.

  Spelling variations aside, Jogiches was his K.

  More than just the name, though, Hoffner’s digging had begun to lay bare the man himself, one obsessed with hidden meanings and ciphers. Jogiches inhabited a world built on secrecy and intrigue, and, more often than not, used them as tools to test those closest to him. Not surprisingly, Rosa had been his favorite target over the years. Resilient as she was, however, his incessant goading had ultimately torn them apart.

  Why, then, thought Hoffner, would Jogiches treat the recent article and photograph any differently? They were simply the latest pieces in his puzzle: the note to return to her flat; the papers waiting there; the creased letters that had led Hoffner to Jogiches in the first place? Presumptuous as it might sound, Hoffner believed that Jogiches was now testing him, that he had been testing him all along. Jogiches’s inclusion of the photograph—hardly a damning piece of evidence on its own—could only mean that he knew far more than he was willing to print, or that he thought safe to expose. He was simply waiting for Hoffner to contact him. At least that was the theory.

  Unfortunately, Hoffner was now alone in his speculations, for while he had been busy unpacking Jogiches, Fichte had been occupied elsewhere.

  Most nights, Fichte could be found at the White Mouse, drinking too much and allowing himself to be photographed with any number of popular faces. Last week, the BZ had included the young detective sergeant in a candid photo with three of the Haller Revue girls, lots of thighs and teeth, along with a leering grin from Fichte. Fichte had become the new image of the Kripo, vibrant and charming—it was a Fichte whom Hoffner had never known—and Präger seemed only too happy to encourage it. Fichte was now irresistible to the night-crawl crowd. In fact, Fichte could hardly resist himself. Even his knock on Hoffner’s door had grown in stature. Where before, several light taps had signaled his approach, now two rapid-fire raps announced his presence.

  Hoffner looked up from behind his desk. Fichte had been given an office of his own down the hall, but the files remained here.

  “We’re done with this one, yes?” said Fichte. He placed the pages on Hoffner’s desk: a drunk had stabbed his wife and then confessed; it was hardly a case. Fichte already had his hat in hand.

  “New suit?” said Hoffner.

  Fichte glanced down at the jacket. One of the shops along Tauentzienstrasse had given it to him as a gift, the least they could do for a hero of the Kripo. Fichte smiled. He had been working on this particular smile for a week now. “Sure. You should get one for yourself. They want to know when you’re coming in.”

  Hoffner took the sheets and moved over to the filing cabinet. “You don’t think about it anymore, do you?”

  Fichte had trained himself to look mildly amused whenever his old confusion reared its head. A furrowed brow was hardly in keeping with his new image. “Think about what?” he said.

  “I sent a wire to van Acker.” Hoffner flipped through the files. “See if they’ve come up with anything on that body. Wouters’s replacement.”

  Fichte stayed with amusement. “The man’s dead, Nikolai. That usually means a case is closed.”

  Hoffner replaced the file and closed the drawer. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Präger’s satisfied. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  Hoffner nodded indifferently. He found something else on his desk. “Off to Maxim’s?”

  “White Mouse,” said Fichte as he watched Hoffner shuffle through more pages.

  “With your Lina?”

  Fichte hesitated before answering. “She doesn’t like the crowds.”

  Hoffner was still focused on the papers. “And you’re a magnet for them, are you?”

  There was a momentary crack in Fichte’s otherwise effortless stare. Just as quickly the lazy smile returned. “Can’t help it if they want to meet me.”

  Hoffner looked up. There was no point in prodding at him; Fichte was too far gone. Hoffner only hoped that the boy would survive the road back. Not that Hoffner was encouraging him to find it any time soon. There was still the pull of Kremmener Strasse, and Hoffner had been taking full advantage of Fichte’s inattention. Lina had become something of a regular indulgence, high times in Kreuzberg notwithstanding. She had even started allowing him to smoke in her flat. It was an intimacy Hoffner had yet to give much thought to. “No, I’m sure you can’t,” he said. “You tell that shop of yours I’ll be coming in for my suit, all right?”

  Fichte’s eyes widened. “Naturally.” He spoke with the enthusiasm of a first infatuation. “They’ll be very pleased, Nikolai.”

  Hoffner bobbed his head once.

  It was all Fichte could have hoped for. “You have a good night, Nikolai.” He placed his hat on his head.

  Hoffner kept busy with whatever it was that was on his desk. “Good night, Hans.”

  She was a “word city.”

  Hoffner had heard it, or read it, somewhere. Not just in her newspapers, but in her advertisements, her signs, her schedules, and most important, in her Litfassulen—those pillars that appeared on almost every corner of every neighborhood—Berlin breathed as a metropolis of language. It was the pillars, however, that stood apart. They were the modern town criers, filled with the chaos of endless messages: sell a bed, post at the corner; workers’ meeting tonight, post at the corner; find a girl, post at the corner. Capped by their crowns of green wrought iron, the pillars rose two meters higher than anything else on the street, and thus demanded attention. Even the figures in their posters were more garish than anything to be found in a window or on a billboard. Couples decked out in glaring reds and greens screamed out in aggressive poses to passersby: everything angular, sharp, and desperate for recognition. The pillars indulged their own disorder and thus mirrored the life of the streets even as they catered to it.

  Find K, post at the corner.

  Hoffner had used the Alex’s hectograph
to make copies of a single sheet of paper, which he had plastered throughout the Mitte district over the last few days. His two index fingers were still stained with the aniline dye from the ink. It was always something of an adventure using the machine, pressing the sheet to the gelatin pad, waiting the few minutes for the page to absorb the ink, and then hoping not to smear anything in the removal. Hoffner could stomach only forty or so such tries. His patience and the dye usually gave out at about the same time. He was trusting that the simplicity of his note, and not its beauty, would make it stand out among all the more elaborate postings:

  Krystalowicz. Café Dalles. 10 o’clock. I’ll bring the brandy this time.

  Hoffner had been at the café for the past two nights. Jogiches had yet to make an appearance.

  In the meantime, Hoffner had decided to track down the one living link he still had to the diameter-cut: the engineer from the Rosenthaler station, the man who had helped to design the site under the tutelage of the great Grenander himself. In the last week, Hoffner had stopped in at three of the city-run shelters for the homeless. So far, no Herr Tben or his wife and two boys. Hoffner scanned the new map he had hung on his wall. He had been making his way east. Tonight it was Frbelstrasse, and the heart of Prenzlauer Berg.

  Durable and cold was how the red brick of state institutions always announced themselves to Hoffner. Situated next to a bit of open ground, with a few trees planted about—not by nature, but by a bureaucrat’s pen—the shelter and its adjacent hospital showed little in the way of life. Even the long line of huddled bodies waiting for admission gave off nothing that might have been construed as flesh and blood. They were cracked faces, etched by hunger and resentment, and buried beneath the dust of decades. The snow seemed a starker white in their presence. Hoffner moved past them and up to the main door.