Garden of Beasts (24 page)

The waiter brought menus and they ordered: pig knuckles and spaetzle and cabbage and bread (“Ach, real butter!” she whispered in astonishment, staring at the tiny yellow rectangles). To drink, she ordered a sweet, golden wine. They ate leisurely, talking and laughing the whole time. After they’d finished, Paul lit a cigarette. He noticed she seemed to be debating. As if speaking to her students she said, “We have been too serious today. I will tell a joke.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “Do you know Hermann Göring?”

“Some official in the government?”

“Yes, yes. He is Hitler’s closest comrade. He’s an odd man. Very obese. And he parades around in ridiculous costumes in the company of celebrities and beautiful women. Well, he finally got married last year.”

“Is that the joke?”

“Not yet, no. He really did get married.
This
is the joke.” Käthe gave an exaggerated pout. “Did you hear about Göring’s wife? The poor thing’s given up religion. You must ask me why.”

“Please, tell me: Why has Göring’s wife given up religion?”

“Because after their wedding night she lost her belief in the resurrection of the flesh.”

They both laughed hard. He saw that she was blushing crimson. “Ach, my, Paul. I’ve told a naughty joke to a man I don’t know. And one that could land us in jail.”

“Not
us,
” he said, straight-faced. “Only you.
I
didn’t tell it.”

“Oh, even
laughing
at a joke like that will get you arrested.”

He paid the bill and they left, forgoing the tram and returning to the boardinghouse on foot, along the sidewalk that skirted the south boundary of the Tiergarten.

Paul was tipsy from the wine, which he rarely drank. The sensation was nice, better than a corn whisky zing. The warm breeze felt good. So did the pressure of Käthe’s arm through his.

As they walked, they spoke of books and politics, arguing some, laughing some, an unlikely couple maneuvering through the streets of this immaculate city.

Paul heard voices, men coming their way. About a hundred feet ahead he saw three Stormtroopers. They were boisterous, joking. In their brown uniforms, with their youthful faces, they resembled happy schoolboys. Unlike the belligerent thugs he’d taken on earlier in the day, this trio seemed bent only on enjoying the fine night. They paid no attention to anyone on the street.

Paul felt Käthe slowing. He looked down at her. Her face was a mask and her arm began to tremble.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t wish to pass them.”

“You don’t have anything to worry about.”

She looked to the left, panicked. The traffic on the street was busy and they were some blocks from a pedestrian crossing. To avoid the Brownshirts they had only one choice: the Tiergarten.

He said, “Really, you’re safe. There’s no need to worry.”

“I can feel your arm, Paul. I can feel you ready to fight them.”

“That’s why you’re safe.”

“No.” She looked at the gate that led into the park. “This way.”

They turned into the park. The thick foliage cut out much of the sound of the traffic, and soon the
creek-creek
of insects and the baritone call of frogs from the ponds filled the night. The Stormtroopers continued along the sidewalk, ignoring everything but their ebullient conversation and their singing. They passed by without even glancing into the park. Still, Käthe kept her head down. Her stiff gait reminded Paul of the way he’d walked after breaking a rib in a sparring session.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Silence.

She looked around, shivering.

“Are you afraid here?” he asked. “Do you want to leave?”

Still, she said nothing. They came to an intersection of sidewalks, one of which would take them to the left, south, out of the park and back to the boardinghouse. She stopped. After a moment she said, “Come. This way.” Turning, Käthe led him farther into the park, north, along winding paths. They finally came to a small boathouse on a pond. Dozens of for-hire boats rested upside down, nestled against one another. Now, in the hot night, the area was deserted.

“I haven’t been inside the Tiergarten for three years,” she whispered.

Paul said nothing.

At last she continued. “That man who has my heart?”

“Yes. Your journalist friend.”

“Michael Klein. He was a reporter for the
Munich Post.
Hitler got his start in Munich. Michael covered his rise and wrote much about him, about his tactics—the intimidation, the beatings, the murders. Michael kept a running count of the unsolved murders of people who were opposed to the Party. He even believed that Hitler had his own niece killed in thirty-two because he was obsessed with her and she loved someone else.

“The Party and the Stormtroopers threatened him and everybody at the
Post.
They called the paper the ‘Poison Kitchen.’ But before the National Socialists came to power they never hurt him. Then there was the Reichstagfire…. Oh, look, you can just see it. There.” She pointed to the northeast. Paul caught a glimpse of a tall domed building. “Our parliament. Just weeks after Hitler was named chancellor, someone lit a fire inside. Hitler and Göring blamed the Communists and they rounded up thousands of them, Social Democrats too. They were arrested under the emergency decree. Michael was among them. He went to one of the temporary prisons set up around the city. They kept him there for weeks. I was frantic. No one told me what happened, no one told me where he was. It was terrible. He told me later that they beat him, fed him once a day at the most, made him sleep naked on a concrete floor. Finally a judge let him go since he hadn’t committed any crime.

“After he was released I met him at his apartment, not far from here. It was a spring day in May, a beautiful day. Two in the afternoon. We were going to hire a boat. Right here, at this lake. I’d brought some stale bread to feed the birds. We were standing there and four Stormtroopers came up to us and pushed me to the ground. They’d followed us. They said they’d been watching him since he’d been released. They told him that the judge had acted illegally in releasing him and they were now going to carry out the sentence.” She choked for a moment. “They beat him to death right in front of me. Right there. I could hear his bones break. You see that—”

“Oh, Käthe. No…”

“—you see that square of concrete? That was where he fell. That one. The fourth square from the grass. That was where Michael’s head lay as he died.”

He put his arm around her. She didn’t resist. But neither did she find any comfort in the contact; she was frozen.

“May is now the worst month,” she whispered. Then she looked around, at the textured canopy of summer trees. “This park is called the Tiergarten.”

“I know.”

In English she said, “‘
Tier
’ means ‘animal’ or ‘beast.’ And ‘
Garten,
’ of course, is ‘garden.’ So, this is the garden of beasts, where the royal families of imperial Germany would hunt game. But in our slang ‘
Tier
’ also means thug, like a criminal. And that’s who killed my lover, criminals.” Her voice grew cold. “Here, right here in the garden of beasts.”

His grip tightened around her.

She glanced once more at the pond then at the square of concrete, the fourth from the grass. Käthe said, “Please take me home, Paul.”

In the hallway outside his door they paused.

Paul slipped his hand into his pocket and found the key. He looked down at her. Käthe in turn was staring at the floor.

“Good night,” he whispered.

“I’ve forgotten so much,” she said, looking up. “Walking through the city, seeing lovers in cafés, telling ribald jokes, sitting where famous writers and thinkers have sat… the pleasure in things like those. I’ve forgotten what that’s like. Forgotten so much…”

His hand went to the tiny scallop of cloth covering her shoulder, and then he touched her neck, felt her skin move against her bones. So thin, he thought. So thin.

With his other hand he brushed her hair out of her face. Then he kissed her.

She stiffened suddenly and he realized he’d made a mistake. She was vulnerable, she’d seen the site of her lover’s death, she’d walked through the garden of beasts. He started to back away but suddenly she flung her arms around him, kissing him hard, teeth met his lip and he tasted blood. “Oh,” she said, shocked. “I’m sorry.” But he laughed gently and then she did too. “I said I’ve forgotten much,” she whispered. “I’m afraid this is one more thing lost from my memory.”

He pulled her to him and they remained in the dim hallway, their lips and hands frantic. Images flashing past: a halo around her golden hair from the lamp behind her, the cream lace of her slip over the lighter lace of her brassiere, her hand finding the scar left by a bullet fired from Albert Reilly’s hidden Derringer, a .22 only but it tumbled when it hit bone and exited his biceps sideways, her keening moan, hot breath, the feel of silk, of cotton, his hand sliding down and finding her own fingers waiting to guide him through complicated layers of cloth and straps, her garter belt, which had been worn threadbare and stitched back together.

“My room,” he whispered. In a few seconds the door was open and they were staggering inside, where the air seemed hotter even than in the hot corridor.

The bed was miles away but the rose-colored couch with gull-wing arms was suddenly beneath them. He fell backward onto the cushions and heard a crack of wood. Käthe was on top of him, holding him in a vise grip by the arms as if, were she to let go, he might sink beneath the brown water of the Landwehr Canal.

A fierce kiss, then her face sought his neck. He heard her whisper to him, to herself, to no one, “How long has this been?” She began to unbutton his shirt frantically. “Ach, years and years.”

Well, he thought, not such a long time in his case. But as he lifted off her dress and slip in one smooth sweep, his hands sliding to the sweating small of her back, he realized that, while, yes, there’d been others recently, it
had
been years since he’d felt anything like this.

Then, gripping her face in his hands, bringing her closer, closer, losing himself entirely, he corrected himself once more.

Maybe it had been forever.

Chapter Nineteen

The evening rituals in the Kohl household had been completed. Dishes dried, linens put away, laundry done.

The inspector’s feet were feeling better and he poured out the water from the tub and then dried and replaced it. He tied the salts closed and put them back under the sink.

He returned to the den, where his pipe awaited. A moment later Heidi joined him and sat down in her own chair with her knitting. Kohl explained to her about his conversation with Günter.

She shook her head. “So that’s what it was. He was upset when he got home from the football field yesterday too. But he would say nothing to me. Not to a mother, not about such things.”

Kohl said, “We need to talk to them. Someone has to teach them what
we
learned. Right and wrong.”

Moral quicksand…

Heidi clicked the thick wooden needles together expertly; she was knitting a blanket for Charlotte and Heinrich’s first child, which she assumed would arrive approximately nine and a half months after their wedding next May. She asked in a harsh whisper, “And then what happens? In the school yard Günter mentions to his friends that his father says it’s wrong to burn books or that we should allow American newspapers in the country? Ach, then
you’re
taken away and never heard from again. Or they send me your ashes in a box with a swastika on it.”

“We tell them to keep what we say to themselves. Like playing a game. It must be secret.”

A smile from his wife. “They’re
children,
my darling. They can’t keep secrets.”

True, Kohl thought. How true. What brilliant criminals the Leader and his crowd are. They kidnap the nation by seizing our children. Hitler said his would be a thousand-year empire. This is how he will achieve it.

He said, “I will speak to—”

A huge pounding filled the hall—the bronze bear knocker on Kohl’s front door.

“God in heaven,” Heidi said, standing up, dropping the knitting and glancing toward the children’s rooms.

Willi Kohl suddenly realized that the SD or Gestapo had a listening device in his house and had heard the many questionable exchanges between himself and his wife. This was the Gestapo’s technique—to gather evidence on the sly then arrest you in your home either early in the morning or during the dinner hour or just after, when you would least expect them. “Quickly, put the radio on, see if there’s a broadcast,” he said. As if listening to Goebbels’s rantings would deter the political police.

She did. The dial glowed yellow but no sound yet came through the speakers. It took some moments for the tubes to heat up.

Another pounding.

Kohl thought of his pistol, but he kept it at the office; he never wanted the weapon near his children. Yet even if he had it, what good would it do against a company of Gestapo or SS? He walked into the living room and saw Charlotte and Heinrich, standing side by side, looking uneasily at each other. Hilde appeared in the doorway, her book drooping in her hand.

Goebbels’s passionate baritone began surging out of the radio, talking about infections and health and disease.

As he walked to the door, Kohl wondered if Günter had already made some casual comment about his parents to a friend. Perhaps the boy
had
denounced someone—his father, albeit unknowingly. Kohl glanced back at Heidi, who was standing with her arm around her youngest daughter. He unbolted the lock and swung open the heavy oak slab.

Konrad Janssen stood in the doorway, looking fresh as a child at holy communion. He looked past the inspector and said to Heidi, “Forgive the intrusion, Mrs. Kohl. It’s unforgivable at this late hour.”

Mother of God, Kohl thought, hands and heart vibrating. He wondered if the inspector candidate could hear the pounding in his chest. “Yes, yes, Janssen, the hour is not a problem. But next time, a lighter touch on the door, if you please.”

“Of course.” The young face, usually so calm, bristled with enthusiasm. “Sir, I showed the picture of the suspect all over the Olympics and half the rest of the city, it seemed.”

“And?”

“I found a reporter for a British newspaper. He’d come over from New York on the S.S.
Manhattan.
He’s been writing a story on athletic fields around the world and—”

“This Briton is our suspect, the man in the artist’s picture?”

“No, but—”

“Then this portion of your story doesn’t interest us, Janssen.”

“Of course, sir. Forgive me. It’s sufficient to say that this reporter recognized our man.”

“Ah, well done, Janssen. Tell me, what did he have to say?”

“Not a great deal. All he knew was that he
is
an American.”

This paltry confirmation was worth a burst heart? Kohl sighed.

But the inspector candidate, it seemed, was only pausing to catch his breath. He continued. “And his name is Paul Schumann.”

Words spoken in the dark.

Words spoken as if in a dream.

They were close, finding in each other a comfortable opposite, knee to back of knee, swell of belly to back, chin to shoulder. The bed assisted; the feather mattress in Paul’s bedroom formed a V under their joint weight and seated them firmly. They could not have moved apart had they wanted to.

Words spoken in the anonymity of new romance, the passion past, though only momentarily.

Smelling her perfume, which was in fact the source of the lilac he’d smelled when he’d first met her.

Paul kissed the back of Käthe’s head.

Words spoken between lovers, speaking of everything, of nothing. Whims, jokes, facts, speculations, hopes… a torrent of words.

Käthe was telling him of her life as a landlady. She fell silent. Through the open window they could hear Beethoven once again, growing louder as someone in a nearby apartment turned up the volume. A moment later a firm voice echoed through the damp night.

“Ach,” she said, shaking her head. “The Leader speaks. That’s Hitler himself.”

It was yet more talk about germs, about stagnant water, about infections.

Paul laughed. “Why’s he so obsessed with health?”

“Health?”

“All day long, everybody’s been talking about germs and cleanliness. You can’t get away from it.”

She was laughing. “Germs?”

“What’s so funny?”

“Don’t you understand what he’s saying?”

“I… No.”

“It’s not germs he’s talking about. It’s
Jews.
He’s changed all his speeches during the Olympics. He doesn’t say ‘Jew’ but that’s what he means. He doesn’t want to offend the foreigners but he can’t let us forget the National Socialist dogma. Paul, don’t you know what is happening here? Why, in the basements of half the hotels and boardinghouses in Berlin are signs that were taken down for the Olympics and that will be put back up the day the foreigners leave. They say
No Jews.
Or
Jews Not Welcome Here.
There is a sharp turn on the road to my sister’s home in Spandau. The sign warns,
Dangerous Curve. 30 Kilometers Per Hour. Jews Do 70.
It is a road sign! Not painted by vandals but by our government!”

“You’re serious?”

“Serious, Paul. Yes! You saw the flags on the houses of Magdeburger Alley, the street here. You commented on ours when you arrived.”

“The Olympic flag.”

“Yes, yes. Not the National Socialist flag, like on most of the other homes on this street. Do you know why? Because this building is owned by a Jew. It’s illegal for him to fly Germany’s flag. He wants to be proud of his fatherland like everyone else. But he can’t be. And how could he fly the National Socialist flag anyway? The swastika? The broken cross? It stands for anti-Semitism.”

Ah, so that was the answer.

Surely you know….

“Have you heard of Aryanization?”

“No.”

“The government takes a Jewish home or business. It’s theft, pure and simple. Göring is the master of it.”

Paul recalled the empty houses he’d passed that morning on the way to meet Morgan at Dresden Alley, the signs saying that the contents were to be sold.

Käthe moved closer yet to him. After a long silence she said, “There is a man…. He performs at a restaurant. ‘Fancy,’ it would be called. That is to say the name of the establishment is Fancy. But it
is
fancy too. Very nice. I went to this restaurant once and this man was in a glass cage in the middle of the dining room. Do you know what he was? A hunger artist.”

“What?”

“A hunger artist. Like in the Kafka story. He had climbed into his cage some weeks before and had survived on nothing except water. He was there for everyone to see. He never ate.”

“How does—”

“He is allowed to go to the lavatory. But someone always accompanies him and verifies that he has had nothing to eat. Day after day…”

Words spoken in the dark, words between lovers.

What those words mean is often not important. But sometimes it is.

Paul whispered, “Go on.”

“I met him after he had been in the glass cage for forty-eight days.”

“No food? Was he a skeleton?”

“He was very thin, yes. He looked sick. But he came out of the cage for some weeks. I met him through a friend. I asked him why he chose to do this for a living. He told me he had worked in the government for some years, something in transportation. But when Hitler came to power he left his job.”

“He was fired because he wasn’t a National Socialist?”

“No, he quit because he couldn’t accept their values and wouldn’t work for their government. But he had a child and he needed to make money.”

“A child?”

“And needed money. But everywhere he looked, he could find no position that wasn’t tainted with the Party. He found that the only thing he could do with any integ— What is that word?”

“Integrity.”

“Yes, yes, integrity. Was to be a hunger artist. It was pure. It could not be corrupted. And do you know how many people come to see him? Thousands! Thousands come to see him because he is
honest.
And there is so little honesty in our lives now.” A faint shudder told him she was shivering with tears.

Words between lovers…

“Käthe?”

“What have they done?” She gasped for breath. “What have they done?… I don’t understand what has happened. We are a people who love music and talk and who rejoice in sewing the perfect stitch in our men’s shirts and scrubbing our alley cobblestones clean and basking in the sun on the beach at Wannsee and buying our children clothing and sweets, we’re moved to tears by the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, by the words of Goethe and Schiller—yet we are possessed now. Why?” Her voice faded. “Why?” A moment later she whispered, “Ach, that is a question for which, I’m afraid, the answer will come too late.”

“Leave the country,” Paul whispered.

She rolled about to face him. He felt her strong arms, strengthened from scrubbing tubs and sweeping floors, snake around him, he felt her heel rise and find the small of his back, pulling him closer, closer.

“Leave,” he repeated.

The shivering stopped. Her breathing grew more regular. “I cannot leave.”

“Why not?”

“It’s my country,” she whispered simply. “I can’t abandon it.”

“But it’s
not
your country any longer. It’s theirs. What did you say?
Tier.
Beasts, thugs. It’s been taken over by beasts…. Leave. Get away before it gets worse.”

“You think it will get worse? Tell me, Paul. Please. You’re a writer. The way of the world isn’t my way. It isn’t teaching or Goethe or poetry. You’re a clever man. What do you think?”

“I think it will get worse. You have to get out of here. As soon as you can.”

She relaxed her desperate grip on him. “Even if I wanted to I cannot. After I was fired my name went on a list. They took my passport. I’ll never get exit papers. They’re afraid we’ll work against them from England or Paris. So they keep us close.”

“Come back with me. I can get you out.”

Words between lovers…

“Come to America.” Had she not heard? Or had she decided no already? “We have wonderful schools. You could teach. Your English is as good as anyone’s.”

She inhaled deeply. “What are you asking?”

“Leave with me.”

A harsh laugh. “A woman cries, a man says anything to stop the tears. Ach, I don’t even know you.”

Paul said, “And I don’t know you. I’m not proposing, I’m not saying we live together. I’m just saying you have to get the hell out of here. I can arrange that.”

In the silence that followed, Paul was thinking that, no, he wasn’t proposing. Nothing of the sort. But, truth be told, Paul Schumann couldn’t help but wonder if his offer wasn’t about more than helping her escape from this difficult place. Oh, he’d had his share of women—good girls and bad girls and good girls playing at being bad. Some of them he’d thought he’d loved, and some he’d
known
he had. But he knew he’d never felt for them what he felt for this woman after such a short period of time. Yes, he loved Marion in a way. He’d spend an occasional night with her in Manhattan. Or she with him in Brooklyn. They’d lie together, they’d share words— about movies, about where hemline lengths would go next year, about Luigi’s restaurant, about her mother, about his sister. About the Dodgers. But they weren’t lovers’ words, Paul Schumann realized. Not like he’d spoken tonight with this complicated, passionate woman.

Finally she said dismissively, irritated, “Ach, I can’t go. How can I go? I told you about my passport and exit papers.”

“This is what I’m saying. You don’t have to worry about that. I have connections.”

“You do?”

“People in America owe me favors.” This much was true. He thought of Avery and Manielli in Amsterdam, ready at a moment’s notice to send the plane to collect him. Then he asked her, “Do you have ties here? How about your sister?”

“Ach, my sister… She’s married to a Party loyalist. She doesn’t even see me. I’m an embarrassment.” After a moment Käthe said, “No, I have only ghosts here. And ghosts are no reason to remain. They’re reasons to leave.”

Outside, laughter and drunken shouts. A slurring male voice sang,
“When the Olympic Games are done, the Jews will feel our knife and gun….”
Then the crash of breaking glass. Another song, several voices singing this time.
“Hold high the banner, close the ranks. The SA marches on with firm steps…. Give way, give way to the brown battalions, as the Stormtroopers clear the land….”