‘He isn’t my Führer. It’s bad enough he has to be my Reich Chancellor,’ Charly said. She went to the radio and turned it off. Rath hadn’t seen her this angry in a long time.
‘Quite right,’ Engelbert Rath said. ‘We may have no choice but to accept the man as Chancellor, but going along with this Nazi nonsense and calling him Führer . . . Never!’ He raised his glass and drank.
Rath had never heard his father speak so bluntly about politics. All the better, then, that he was on Charly’s side.
‘All I wanted was to listen to the radio,’ Luise Ritter grumbled.
‘All right, mother. I think that’s enough champagne.’
Erika Rath tried to get conversation around the table going again. ‘It’s not that we don’t own a radio, but we don’t listen to that sort of thing. There’s far too much politics these days.’
‘There can’t be enough politics as far as I’m concerned,’ Charly’s mother responded. ‘Particularly if it gets Germany back on its feet.’
‘That’s just it, though, Frau Ritter,’ Engelbert Rath said. ‘Will it? Those running politics today are not politicians, and they have hounded our most capable men out of office!’
‘Meaning who, exactly? Your Papist party colleagues? What have you Catholics ever done for us?’ Luise Ritter stood up. Suddenly she became the militant Protestant Rath had experienced when, on a previous occasion, discussion had turned to his Church. ‘Making pacts with the Reds, ushering the Social Democrats into power. Your Erzberger was the worst of all the November criminals!’
‘Erzberger!’ Now Engelbert Rath flew off the handle. ‘The man died for his beliefs! Do you seriously believe he gave his signature to the armistice willingly. With those conditions attached. We had no choice!’
‘Ha!’ Luise Ritter said. ‘Had I known my daughter was marrying into a family like this! Never, my child, would I have allowed . . .’
‘Mother! That’s enough! This is my wedding, and I refuse to have it spoiled by you!’
Charly was seething. Any more of this and she’d be throwing her mother out of the window. Which perhaps wasn’t the worst idea.
Before things could get that far, however, Paul rose to his feet, positioned himself behind Charly and grinned a grin that screamed ‘up to no good’.
‘You know what’s customary in the Rhineland?’ he said.
‘What?’ Luise Ritter asked.
‘Kidnapping the bride.’
With that he grabbed Charly, threw her over his shoulder and was out the door.
The quarrelling ceased and everyone looked towards Rath as if expecting an explanation. He hunched his shoulders. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but in the Rhineland it’s also customary for the groom to recover his bride.’
He set down his glass and rose to his feet. Kirie’s tail wagged a greeting as he stepped into the corridor, but he left her where she was, threw on his coat, and went on his way.
‘Wait,’ came the cry from the stairwell.
He came to a halt and turned around. Greta had followed him. Greta, the cold, unknowable blonde who had always treated him like dirt. What did she want? Charly’s friend was smiling at him. Had he ever seen her smile before? By God, but it suited her.
‘Mind if I join?’ she asked. ‘Bride-hunting’s one of my specialties.’
111
Grown-ups were stupid. Each in their own way, but stupid all the same. It didn’t matter if they were beggars in the Crow’s Nest, nurses in Dalldorf, or members of polite society squabbling like tinkers because some man on the radio said something stupid about politics. Grown-ups were always fighting over politics.
She had set down the bottle and cooler and taken refuge inside the kitchen. The only other person there was Lina, the fat maid, who was busy brewing another pot of coffee. Leave the rest to their squabbling.
‘What’s going on in there?’ Lina asked.
Hannah shrugged eloquently. She heard doors slamming. Once. Pause. Twice. Suddenly it was quiet.
After a second pause, the kitchen door opened and Fritze entered looking bashful. ‘Hannah . . . Hannelore, are you coming? I think our guests are leaving.’
She followed him into the hall. Moments ago the guests had been at each other’s throats, now it was all poisonous glances. Only the three parents were left. No sign of Charly, Gereon or their friends. She shot Fritze a questioning look.
‘My coat please, Fräulein,’ said the woman who had started all the trouble.
Hannah took the heavy coat from the stand and held it while the woman slipped it on. ‘Thank you,’ she said, leaving the apartment without another word.
‘I think we’ll be heading back to our hotel now too?’ said the man with the white moustache. ‘Any idea where the young people might have gone, lad?’
Fritze grabbed the gentleman’s overcoat. ‘No idea. Kidnapping the bride? First I’ve heard of it.’
‘Better Herr Wittkamp gets it out of his system before Saturday,’ the woman said. She turned to Hannah. ‘Please let my son know we’ll be staying at the Savoy. He can give us a ring once he’s found his bride-to- . . . his wife.’
Hannah curtseyed and, with that, the last of the grown-ups had gone. She looked at Fritze. He was grinning.
‘Good thing it’s over,’ he said, pulling at the collar of his elegant suit. ‘I’ll be glad to get out of these clothes. How about you? Fancy slipping into something more comfortable?’
The black dress itched under her arms and, with the frilly apron and white bonnet perched on top of her dyed-blonde hair, she felt as if she were in fancy dress. Which, in a way, she was.
Kirie wagged her tail expectantly. ‘She needs to be walked,’ said Fritze.
‘Now?’
‘A few weeks ago we were out in weather like this all the time!’
‘All right then.’
Five minutes later she was in the clothes they had given her in Freienwalde, the red-white spotted dress, red shoes, woollen stockings, warm coat and beret, while Fritze sat at the table, also in his coat, eating a piece of cake. Kirie waited on her lead, ready for action. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.
‘Right you are, Hannelore, and don’t forget your umbrella.’
She grimaced in response. Hannelore sounded so staid, but the men in Freienwalde had said it was better to choose a name similar to the old one. If need be you could mask a slip of the tongue. In her case: an identical first syllable and the same initials.
H.S. Hannah Singer. Hannelore Schneider. It might sound similar, but it was also completely different.
It wasn’t such a bad idea to bring the umbrella. It was bucketing down as they emerged onto Carmerstrasse. May at its worst. On Steinplatz they waited until Kirie had performed her business. ‘I think I know where they are,’ Fritze said.
‘Who?’
‘All of them.’ He pulled Kirie away from a puddle. ‘Aunt Charly has been talking about Hanne Sobek for days, how she hopes the wedding guests will be gone in time.’
‘Hanne who?’
‘Do you live on the moon or something? Hanne who do you think? Hanne Sobek, half-back for Hertha. German champions in ’30 and ’33.’
‘Hertha, right. Football. They’re playing today?’
‘Sobek’s playing today, but not for Hertha. For a German invitational eleven against Glasgow Rangers.’
‘Glasgow what?’
‘You really don’t know much about football, do you?’
‘Well, you know how it is. Back in Dalldorf they were always packing us off to the opera, the theatre, Lunapark . . . there just wasn’t time for football.’ She nudged him in the side. ‘I’ve never been to a stadium.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Would you like to?’
‘Ask a silly question.’
‘Where are they playing?’
‘The Poststadion.’
‘In Moabit, right?’ She produced a twenty-mark note from her pocket. ‘How about it? It’s on me.’
Sh
e still had to get used to the fact that she had money. Compensation for what Huckebein and the rest had done to her, Charly said.
They left Kirie with the porter in Carmerstrasse. Fritze said he enjoyed it; the man even kept a dog bowl in his lodge. On Steinplatz they waved a taxi over. The driver looked at them suspiciously, but seeing Hannah’s twenty started the meter and drove off to arrive in good time for kick-off. The stadium was gradually filling, though puddles had formed on the playing surface. Under the large advertisement for Trumpf chocolate above the back straight, Hannah spotted a white woman’s hat. The four of them, as if they had arranged to meet in advance. She gave Fritze a nudge and pointed. The boy grinned. ‘See, told you so!’
When they made their way across Charly looked surprised. ‘You two?’
‘The others have gone,’ Fritze said. ‘No way we were bringing them.’
‘I’m just glad they didn’t kill each other,’ Charly said. ‘It’s much better like this. Finally, we can celebrate getting married in our own way!’ She sent the two men off to buy sausages and mustard while the teams were warming up.
‘That’s Sobeck there,’ Fritze said, pointing to a player in black-and-white. The men returned as the referee sounded his whistle.
112
The landscape held a strange fascination for Rath. He parked the black sedan and got out, looking across a thriving green expanse towards the horizon. It was still over twenty kilometres to Cambrai, but this was where it started: a wide strip, extending further than the eye could see, on which there were no trees and scarcely any houses. Once a lowland plain and flat, undulating coastland, it was now perforated by trenches and hollows of various sizes, the lunar landscape left by German and British artillery fifteen and more years ago. Nature had, by and large, reclaimed its territory. Pea-green grass covered the pock-marked countryside like a furry down, between bushes and young birch trees stretching their slender trunks towards the skies.
He reached for Charly’s hand. She looked enchanting in the light summer dress she had bought in Paris. Following a path, they strolled across the pitted terrain like honeymooners exploring the Lüneburg Heath, coming upon the remains of an old trench, with wooden beams jutting out of the earth, moss-covered like tree stumps. Rath looked inside and spotted an abandoned spade.
‘Do you think it’s German or French?’ Charly asked.
‘German probably. It’s what we used to dig all the trenches here.’
Charly nodded pensively. ‘And to kill one another.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘They were supposed to go after each other with their bayonets, but these quickly proved useless in the context of trench warfare. A spade was easier to handle. You didn’t have to pull it back out of your enemy once you’d stabbed him, you could just keep on fighting. Striking your opponent between the shoulder and neck was most effective. A sharpened spade was more than capable of decapitating someone, and if you missed the head you caught the artery.’
Rath was horrified. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘Remarque.’
‘Remarque? That’s propaganda, isn’t it? Roddeck never mentioned anything like that in his novel.’
‘First, Roddeck is a liar. Second, as a lieutenant he wouldn’t have much cause to defend himself in hand-to-hand combat.’
‘Perhaps he just chose not to write about it.’
‘Well, Remarque did, but no one in Germany will read him.’
‘If that’s the sort of stuff he writes, maybe it’s better that way.’ He took her hand and they strolled on. Gazing into the spring landscape he tried to dispel the terrible images she had planted in his mind.
By now they had four carefree days in Paris behind them. The church wedding as well as the party afterwards had gone without a hitch. No rows, no political discussions, and no bridal kidnappings. Without Greta’s help that day, Rath would never have known where Paul and Charly had gone. Instinctively she had guided him to the Poststadion, where they saw the runaways getting out of a taxi. Football, of course. Even Fritze understood that Charly wanted to watch the game. As usual, Gereon Rath had been the last to know. It had turned into a lovely evening, even if the German eleven, having competed well enough to take a first-half lead, had been trounced 5-1 by the Scots.
Like the civil ceremony, the reception that followed the church wedding in St Norbert’s (a no-frills affair thanks to Pastor Warszawski) saw the newlyweds make an early departure, although on this occasion it was planned. At Charly’s request they celebrated in the Tiergarten, in the Charlottenhof restaurant, and the two witnesses, Paul and Greta, accompanied them to Bahnhof Zoo. They spent their wedding night in a sleeper cabin belonging to the Compagnie Internationale des Wagon-Lits, trundling across the Rhine to alight from the Northern Express on Sunday afternoon in Paris Gare du Nord, a city devoid of swastikas.
Only in Paris did Rath realise how much Berlin had changed. Savouring their time, they were almost able to forget everything that had happened in Germany. Then, without having particularly discussed it, they hired a car from a garage near the Canal Saint-Martin, a pitch-black Citroën Rosalie that gleamed like a huge insect in the daylight, and took to the road.
It was about three hours before the landscape between Amiens and Cambrai changed, and Rath started seeing familiar-looking village names. Then at some point, the sign: Neuville 3km. He parked. They got out.
Now, strolling across this war-marked landscape, they sought to gain their bearings. The descriptions from Roddeck’s novel were out of date, but, all of a sudden, in the midst of this scarcely populated terrain, far from the nearest village, they realised where they were. The stone was visible from afar, though the forest Roddeck had written about must have fallen in the final two years of the war. Here, too, they found only furry down, a few bushes, young birch. It would be decades before nature reclaimed its territory, but it would. In the end, nature always won.
The stone, a huge erratic boulder, would have withstood any artillery fire in history and was the perfect marker for a hoard of gold. Silently they scouted the terrain. Rath couldn’t help thinking about what had happened here sixteen years before, how many versions there were, and how all the witnesses but one were now dead.
Back in the car they drove to Neuville. The village was smaller than he imagined from Roddeck’s description. The church that had been destroyed by British artillery fire had been rebuilt, and houses again stood on top of the old cellars and foundation walls. There wasn’t a single pre-war building that hadn’t been at least partly repaired, or, in some instances, completely restored. This place, truly, had been made good, just as nature all around the village stood in defiance to the ravages of war. They saw many fertile fields, even the odd fruit tree.
The village school was housed in a new building. Rath parked outside, suspecting it had been built on the foundations of its predecessor, in which Roddeck’s unit had been billeted. The lieutenant himself had stayed in a bank director’s villa on the edge of the village. Engel, contrary to the novel’s claims, had taken up quarters with his driver in a little house next to the school.
There was no longer any trace of the building Thelen had described. Only the cellar remained, spilling over with debris and anything else that couldn’t be used for rebuilding. Signs warned against entering the site, but Rath climbed down anyway. His French had always been lousy.
Charly looked around anxiously, but it was lunch time and there wasn’t a soul to be seen save one or two curious faces at their windows. No one took exception to a stranger descending into the cellar and working his way through the rubble. The Citroën was brand new and had Paris plates. Possibly some official from the capital was at work.
Rath tried to imagine how the house might have looked prior to its destruction, when stairs would have led down to the cellar. Then he saw the half-landing protruding from a mound of bricks. If this was the remains of the old staircase then . . . yes . . . here was the charred beam!
Thelen’s
description: a brick under the cellar stairs, that’s where he stowed everything before we set off on our rounds.
Rath pulled the beam aside and cleared more debris, until he could access the brickwork under the stairs. He jolted each brick until, at last, one yielded. Pulling it out he discovered a hollow space and reached inside, thinking it had all been in vain as he grasped something cool, hard, metallic.
Removing the tin can from its hiding place he opened it, finding an unfinished, handwritten letter and a dark notebook like those he had seen weeks before in a villa on the banks of the Rhine.
He heard footsteps and started, and saw Charly’s quizzical face. She had overcome her reluctance to ignore the No Trespass signs. He showed her his find, she opened the book, and together they leafed through to the final page, the final entry.
17th March 1917, early morning
What a night! I haven’t slept a wink. There is no time to relate everything that has happened in the last twelve hours, but I will make up for it once we have effected our retreat and reached the Siegfried Line. When calm has been restored at last. The loyal Thelen has made coffee, and now I see Staff Sergeant Grimberg, our demolition expert, approaching from the other side of the road in his usual high spirits. It is time to inspect the trenches he has prepared, which we will now cede to the enemy, a final, deadly greeting from the German Reich! For now I must lay down my pen. I will write again soon.
The inspiration for the hit TV series
1929: When a car is hauled out of the canal with a mutilated corpse inside, Detective Inspector Gereon Rath claims the case. Soon his inquiries drag him ever-deeper into Weimar Berlin’s underworld of cocaine, prostitution, gunrunning and shady politics.
‘The first in a series that’s been wildly popular cleverly captures the dark and dangerous period of the Weimer Republic before it slides into the ultimate evil of Nazism.’
The March Fallen Page 46