The Butchers of Berlin (34 page)

She was left on her own for several hours to fight her rising panic. She knew waiting was part of the torture. Eventually she was taken back into the space with the two-way mirror.

The room was lit up and empty. Sybil didn’t know what to expect. Her mother again, she supposed. She would have no choice but to do as they ordered. Her reflection off the glass showed her
looking eaten up and older. Whoever she was expecting to be brought in, it wasn’t Schmidt, the photographer, beaten up and very afraid.

While Schlegel waited for Sybil at the Bollenmüller two Gestapo men swept in checking papers. He stared, daring them to challenge him.

He couldn’t decide about Sybil. He wanted to help but he was feeling little more than drunkenly philosophical.

He stuck his foot out as the Gestapo men passed and one had to grab the back of a chair to stop himself from falling. Schlegel held his hands up in mock surrender. The man glared and told him to
watch what he was doing. Schlegel shrugged and said he was waiting for a friend. When Sybil didn’t show up, Schlegel decided he wasn’t surprised and put her down as unreliable.

Sybil jumped at the sight of Gersten’s reflection. He was standing behind her with a manila folder.

‘Quite sweet,’ he said, showing the photographs of her posing in the nude in Alwynd’s apartment, as well as kissing Lore.

‘I am not so sure about these.’

It was the contact sheet taken by Schmidt. Sybil stared, ashamed not of their nudity but her brassy calculation.

‘Like a fallen angel with a nasty look in her eye,’ said Gersten. ‘Such a fine line between survival and corruption, I find. It interests me. I had expected more of you, in
terms of talent and honesty, not this inertia and lack of will.’

How had he found out about the photographs was all she could think to ask.

‘We have been watching Schmidt for weeks. He’ll be lucky to escape with his neck.’

Gersten had been surprised when he saw the stake-out photographs of Sybil going in and out.

‘To be honest, I wasn’t expecting that. Schmidt tells me he was quite friendly with your girlfriend when she was younger and it crossed my mind she might have sent you, rather than
go herself, because she knew the shop was being watched. Not that I am trying to mark your card. You can ask her.’

He gestured with his head for Sybil to look behind her. Schmidt was gone and in his place sat the hunched and stricken figure of Lore.

Sybil was aware of her cry reflected back at her.

‘She wouldn’t be here if you were doing your job.’

Sybil pleaded for another chance, daring to clutch at Gersten’s sleeve, begging him to release Lore. She had a good lead now.

‘From that idiot with the white hair?’

‘How did you know where Lore lived?’

Sybil feared she already had the answer.

‘You, precious. Spot checks to see what you got up to until we could trust you. You went home once too often.’

Had Schlegel reported her?

‘I must say, Francis Alwynd is an irresponsible man. He was looking for an abortionist recently. Not you, I hope.’

Gersten told Sybil he liked her. He had cut her a lot of slack as a result.

‘You don’t want to know about the ones I don’t like. But now this – pornographic photographs, a lesbian lover. The way I look at it, we’re no further forward. You
don’t do enough. I want your girlfriend on the case as part of the team, working as a regular catcher. Same terms apply, but she now has to work for her papers. Do your job properly and I
will let you both go. As an example of my good faith – and do not tax my patience further – you can share a room. Now you can watch while I cut her.’

Lore, perhaps sensing Sybil’s presence, seemed to be staring right at her, though she could not see through the glass. Sybil suspected Gersten would try to split them, out of spite or idle
amusement. Lore struggled when Gersten produced a scalpel. One of the thugs standing back stepped forward and grabbed her, then a quick slash and the clean handkerchief applied. Sybil saw in
Lore’s face the same disbelief as when he had done it to her.

They were driven back to Grosse Hamburger Strasse. Sybil tried surreptitiously to reach for Lore’s hand and sensed her withdrawing it.

An extra bed had already been put in the room. Sybil didn’t know what to say now they were alone. Lore sat mute and flinched as Sybil reached out.

They still had each other, Sybil said.

Lore, eyes downcast, searched for her words. ‘My love for you knows no bounds but I feel my soul has been cast into a darkness where no contact or reassurance is possible.’

Sybil was taken aback by her strange, biblical language, but saw how what once was whole had been split asunder. They had been transformed into damned monsters out of all proportion to what they
really were.

The heat of the moment that had sustained them melted away, passion reduced to clumsy embrace, as if some malignant presence clung to them. They created falsely cheerful cutouts of themselves,
playing table tennis in the day room, laughing self-consciously and making a show of being entertained, under the watchful eye of Stella Kübler, queen of the catchers, whose friendship was
like being brushed by death. Stella made a point of recruiting them into her social circle. Lore told Sybil that the brightness of Stella’s eyes and film-star smile eclipsed everything around
her until she wore a halo of darkness.

Stella was quick to remind Sybil they in fact knew each other quite well from the Feige-Strassburger school of design. She told them she was first arrested in the same café where Sybil
and Lore had nearly got caught. She had lived a life of adventure. Brutal beatings, escape, recapture. Her parents were being held as hostages in the same building, on the other side of the
dividing wall. She sounded quite resigned about it.

Stella insisted Lore come and work with her. She talked of the sexual thrill of catching and how she often needed a man afterwards and being taken from behind was best because it turned fucking
into pure sensation, with none of the usual bother of address. Stella seemed utterly without illusion, saying they were all running scared but why pretend.

Sometimes Sybil looked at Stella in awe.

Lore’s mouth turned into the memory of her mouth, even as they kissed. Blood no longer coursed through them as it once had. They stored their love for whatever fragile future they might
have. They would escape. They would survive. Delivering Lore to Sybil, Gersten had returned the one person he could have held and used against her.

They talked about Grigor. Sybil remembered him, which she had not let on to Schlegel.

Grigor had been older, one of the aloof, arrogant ones, able to take his pick. He had a temper and used his fists. Their only acquaintance had been in a kitchen five years before, after Grigor
had been street fighting during the November pogrom. Sybil remembered days of shock and high drama, of nervous gatherings, and on that occasion the smell of witch-hazel as Grigor’s wounds
were treated by a beautiful young woman who dabbed uselessly at a graze.

Grigor cultivated a look of the French anarchist actor Artaud, a big rebel star for the students. The girl with the witch-hazel looked helpless and Sybil took over. She at least had some first
aid. Grigor complained of his hand hurting. She made him move his fingers and said no bones were broken, which was about the extent of their exchange. He asked her name and said in an ominous way
he’d heard of her. He didn’t thank her afterwards, only looked at her in a smouldering fashion that she remembered and thought he would instantly forget. Afterwards it was said Grigor
had killed one if not two brownshirts and had been forced into hiding.

Based on what Gersten had told her, and her single observation, Sybil supposed Grigor could have become transformed into this dramatic killer. There always had been something uncontrolled about
him. One or two each year used the persecution to fuel delinquent fantasies. Normally it was a pose; with Grigor she was not sure. Perhaps he had become tempered since by all the cruelty. Sybil had
witnessed enough unthinkable change for Gersten’s theory to hold.

She’d heard how Grigor used and discarded women in an animal way that made Alwynd appear sophisticated. Franz had known him slightly and aspired to the same pose. Much late-night
discussion took place, with candles stuck in empty bottles, about the validity of the anarchist soul versus the sterile regimentation of the new order. Sybil noted such talk was always about the
men.

Lore fell into Stella’s bright and amoral orbit, leaving Sybil jealous. Stella had highly developed antennae to anything hidden. Other girls shared rooms but Lore
suspected Stella guessed their secret. Stella encouraged Lore to become more feminine, forcing her to dress in a way Sybil hated.

During the day Stella and her catchers swept through the city, with a checklist of addresses. They hung around cafés, parks, theatres, embassies and cinemas. Stella’s beat was
around the Kurfürstendamm, with its once smart shops. She had the authority to check the papers of anyone she thought Jewish. She taught Lore what telltale signs to look for. Any suspect
should be treated to a friendly approach with an offer to help and given a rendezvous, where police would be waiting. Stella said it was OK to line their pockets with the possessions of anyone they
found hiding.

One night they trooped off to the theatre where Stella spotted people in the audience and made the necessary telephone call during the interval, and afterwards they were arrested. When one tried
to run away Stella shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Stop him! Jew!’ They all travelled back in one of the Gestapo removal vans, catchers and caught alike, and Lore burned with shame
under the fright and contempt of those they had snatched. Stella was chatty and cheerful, saying she thought the play quite good.

On the first day Lore was out with Stella, Sybil had nothing to do until the evening. She tried to sleep. She visited her mother again and asked her to do a reading. Her mother refused, saying
it was all nonsense. She wore a housekeeper’s coat. She said she was well looked after, all things considered, although her host made physical demands.

Perhaps her mother was smarter than she thought, selling her placebo to gullible power brokers. They sat undisturbed in a comfortable kitchen in Dahlem where the bigwigs lived. She was touched
and surprised when her mother took her hand and asked if she was all right. They had never been close. Yes, she said, not meaning it any more than the insincerity of the question. It was just
another rehearsed gesture. Sybil said nothing of Gersten.

Sybil wanted only to be honest but lacked Stella’s forthrightness and said nothing about her and Lore and love and what she thought about life and all the things people were supposed to
discuss. She decided she probably would be capable of betraying her mother after all, for the sake of Lore. It would take perhaps as little as a few weeks to become as hardened and polished as
Stella. Sybil recoiled from Stella’s naked gaze, knowing it was only a matter of time before she acquired that look.

Sybil introduced herself to Herr Valentine, the manager at Clärchens, as told to by Schlegel. The waiter didn’t show. She waited two hours, refused invitations to
dance and went home, a short walk of a few minutes. Lore appeared to be asleep. Sybil told her to stop pretending but Lore refused to budge. It was barely nine. She was too tense to go to bed but
could not face the Kübler woman downstairs. She lay down and the night stretched ahead, her world closing down.

Gersten had talked of the killings as a virus. Equally, he had infected them by the act of cutting them, turning them into his contaminated creatures.

The next night the waiter was at Clärchens. The man clearly expected a favour for his information. Sybil felt good and bad showing her card that said she worked for the Gestapo. It was
pitiful. Flash a card and they backed down. She experienced some of the Kübler woman’s contempt: honour and loyalty were indulgences; animals took evasive action to survive and morality
had nothing to do with it.

Her dislike of the waiter grew so she could barely question him. Was the information she came away with any use? Grigor worked part-time as a cinema projectionist. Sybil thought it pathetic, the
great rebel reduced to showing phantom images.

Lore didn’t come back until late. This time Sybil was the one pretending to be asleep even as she lay awake listening to Lore’s near silent crying.

Otto Keleman telephoned Schlegel in the office for an apparently inconsequential chat until, sounding scared, he hinted at information that made what they were talking about
last time look like child’s play.

They met, both already drunk, at the bar with the green door, where, in a hoarse whisper, Keleman told such an outlandish story of bribery and corruption that Schlegel told him to ignore it.

Too late, he said. Someone had already tried to push him under a train.

Schlegel wasn’t sure whether to believe that either. It sounded more like being jostled on a crowded platform, which happened every day.

Keleman’s extraordinary claim was almost every single Party member of consequence was paid a monthly tax-free bribe out of a slush fund. This extended to top military as well. The size of
the bribe depended on seniority. Minister of Propaganda Goebbels received 7,500 marks a month.

‘No fucking around with the revenue. Now someone is saying every single one of these cases should be investigated for unpaid back taxes!’ Keleman gave a sharp bark of disbelief.
‘It is impossible to say whether this is mischief on the part of the paymaster, to embarrass those taking the bribe, or a campaign against those making the payments.’

‘Who is pushing you?’

‘I don’t know! And equally someone seems to want me dead for even knowing.’

‘How is the information being fed to you?’

‘A combination of letter and telephone calls in the middle of the night.’

‘What is your reading?’

‘As before. Power struggle at the top.’