Cesare Read online

  Veronika

  13

  CESARE LEFT VERONIKA WITH A WOMAN in Charlottenburg who hid several submariners while he arranged to deliver her to Lutheran farmers in the Black Forest. But he didn’t want to give up the little girl. He would swipe her from Charlottenburg, where Jewish doctors, lawyers, and dentists had once lived.

  “Mein Herr,” she’d say, “where’s my pony?”

  And he’d answer, “Right here, Princess Veronika.”

  He’d ride her on his shoulders through the Tiergarten, policemen saluting the little girl while they hid their own envy: They, too, wanted Veronika.

  She’d call down to Erik from the heights of her own head. “Herr Pony, you’re much too slow. If you can’t improve, I’ll have to trade you in.”

  He’d gallop with her across the gardens and right into Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, because it was the last place in Berlin where one could still get decent ice cream. The Kranzler served sweetened sawdust. He’d sit with Veronika in the officers’ canteen without a bit of fear. The little girl was a born actress. And who would have dreamt to ask her about a yellow star in this lions’ den?

  It tore at him whenever he had to return Veronika to Charlottenburg. The little girl was never sentimental. She would kiss him repeatedly and sing, “I will give my horse a rest. But I will expect you very soon, Herr Pony.”

  And he would tell the woman who watched over Veronika to guard her with her own life. But the woman grew careless; she let Veronika play with a submariner, who abandoned his hideout one winter afternoon and strolled with Veronika on the Palace Bridge. He shouldn’t have gone out with the little girl into the streets of Berlin. A pair of drunken detectives from Kripo, the criminal police, found him on the bridge, asked him for his papers. The submariner tried to flee with Veronika in his arms. The detectives caught up with him. He struggled, bit one of the detectives. They beat him senseless and tossed him into the Landwehrkanal with Veronika still in his arms. Both of them drowned.

  Erik could imagine her shaping a scream as her body hurtled over the bridge. He could see her arms flail but couldn’t hear the scream. And whenever he dreamt of the little drowned goddess, it was Erik who woke up with a scream, his voice mottled and raw.

  He closed down the woman in Charlottenburg, moved the rest of her submariners to another location. Erik couldn’t stop mourning. He blamed himself. He should have sent Veronika to the Black Forest and not interfered in her life. He had his own informers find the names of the two drunken detectives. He waited two weeks, lured one of the detectives to the Palace Bridge with a fake call to headquarters, cut him from ear to ear, and threw his corpse into the Kanal. He plotted a more elaborate revenge for the second detective, who had a daughter of his own, exactly Veronika’s age. Erik’s mind moved in diabolic twists and turns, but he couldn’t bring himself to harm the little girl. He finished off this detective while he was out walking his dog in Freidrichshain. The dog cowered in the grass even as its master lay dying.

  The papers talked of a Berlin Werewolf—no, Jewish Werewolves in a Jewish cabal. Suddenly a little band of Jewish Reds was unleashing havoc on Berlin. Kripo began gathering evidence. It had to find this Jewish underground that had savagely murdered its own men.

  Erik laughed to himself. It was a bitter laugh. Jewish cabal. But he didn’t laugh very long. Commander Stolz broke down his door on the Dragonerstrasse.

  “Cesare, do you want us all to suffer? I’m putting you under quarantine.”

  Stolz had arrived with two of his assassins from Aktion. But Erik was in no mood to be trifled with. He was still mourning Veronika.

  “And what will you do, Commander? Exile me to Holland, like the Kaiser?”

  “I could break your neck. We’re in danger because of you. They’re not idiots at Kripo. If you can’t promise to sit here for a month, I will break your neck. And don’t you dare run to Admiral Canaris. Not even Canaris can save you.”

  Yes, he can!

  The admiral had arrived with his two dachshunds, pee stains on his cuffs.

  “Helmut, I’d like to be alone with the Berlin Werewolf.”

  The commander left with his two assassins. Canaris looked like a wild man. His face was ravaged.

  “You promised to get my Veronika out of Berlin.”

  “I was selfish,” Erik said. “Alte, I couldn’t bear to part with her. I took her on tiny trips.”

  The admiral perused him with the saddest eyes in Berlin.

  “And where did you go with Veronika? I want all the details.”

  “To the Tiergarten,” Erik said. “I was her pony. And to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.”

  A deep furrow appeared in the admiral’s forehead.

  “Uncle Willi, where else could I get her ice cream?”

  “And if those butchers had asked her questions, or seen the outline of a yellow star on her coat?”

  “There was no outline, and even if there had been, she would have talked her way out of it. She was my protector.”

  “Männe,” the admiral said. “I spent two hours with little Veronika, and I think of her night and day. Did you curse them for me when you tossed those two Kripo bastards into the Kanal?”

  “Herr Admiral, I only tossed the first Kripo. I let the other one die on the dead grass in Freidrichshain.”

  “One or two,” the admiral said. “It makes no difference to me.”

  And he stood there while Kasper and Sabine nibbled at his trouser cuffs.

  Fräulein Fanni

  14

  BERLIN WAS STILL FLOODED WITH JEWS. Goebbels blamed it on the Mischlinge. It was difficult to round them up, protected as they often were by Junkers and other pure-blooded Germans in their family. They could go into hiding, sink into Berlin’s tumultuous sea. But the Gestapo had its own weapon to assist Herr Goebbels, informers among these half Jews themselves, Greifer, or grabbers, who could lure other half Jews from their hiding places. And Erik had come to the Mexiko, a whores’ bar near the Alex, to meet the most successful and diabolic of all the Greifer, Fanni Grünspan.

  Fräulein Fanni had lured eighteen mongrels, men and women alike, to the Sammellager at the Jewish Hospital, or to the Rosenstrasse, where another reception center was situated in an old Jewish orphanage—Erik’s orphanage.

  So he had a colossal rage against Fanni Grünspan, the Gestapo’s little siren, who enticed half Jews into his orphanage, now a holding pen for the living dead. What Fräulein Fanni couldn’t have known was that he trained with the SS and sat in on interrogations in the cellars of Gestapo headquarters. He often did favors for the local commander at Französische Strasse. He’d stumbled upon Fanni Grünspan after one such favor.

  He intended to break her neck.

  He wore a wax rose in his lapel—it was the recognition sign for her Gestapo handlers. She wandered into the Mexiko wearing a beret and a silver fox coat. She sniffed about with her nostrils and spotted Erik’s wax flower. He could already feel his fingers on her throat. And then she dug the beret into her pocket and he caught the thickness of her blond hair. Becoming a Greifer hadn’t hardened Fanni Grünspan. She had the green eyes of a startled lady deer.

  “Mensch,” she said in that practiced gruffness of the Gestapo, “will you buy me a beer? I’m parched. I’ve been running down Mischlinge all afternoon, and I’d like a whiskey chaser. I deserve it.”

  “Fräulein, the whiskey is made of fermented sawdust and the beer is nothing but piss.”

  She stared at his long, gloomy face and must have sensed that he couldn’t have been her new Gestapo contact. It was much too complicated a face, with sunken cheeks and the sensual mouth of some dreamer, not a hangman or handler of Greifer.

  “I’ll have what you’re having,” she said.

  He took out his flask and poured some cognac into a teacup. She drank the cognac in one long gulp, her nostrils quivering with all the aristocratic mien of an Arabian mare.

  “Mensch, would you like to dance? It’s d
ark, and no one will notice us in here. I’ll be your slave if you let me go. You’re not my handler … you and your ersatz rose. It’s ridiculous. You’re some gigolo paid by my enemies to ruin me with a kiss. I won’t listen to you. I’ll close my eyes like a good little girl and you’ll go away. You’ll tell your masters that you never saw Fanni at the Mexiko. Poor Fanni’s a wisp of smoke.”

  He had to calm her down, or she would be worthless to him, and he’d have to bury her right under the bar. He touched her blond hair and whispered, “Who am I?”

  She didn’t waver or blink.

  “Cesare,” she said. “You’re a magician. Tell me, darling, do you really sleep in a coffin, or is it just a rumor that the Gestapo likes to spread about its biggest rival? What do you want?”

  This Greifer reminded him of Lisalein, with her wild talk and wilderness of blond hair. She must have been born into that tiny breed of Jews that had once ruled Berlin.

  He poured brandy from his flask. “Fräulein, I will ask the questions. Where did you grow up?”

  She rolled her eyes. as if the Abwehr’s prize magician had turned into a dolt.

  “In the Grunewald, Herr Cesare. We had our own villa. And I had two nurses, a nanny, and a tutor. I loved living in a forest. I could dream of wild boars.”

  He should have remembered. Grünspan & Co. was once the biggest shoe manufacturer in Berlin, second only to Salamander Shoes. Its flagship store on Alexanderplatz lit up half of Scheunenviertel day and night. The huge dolls in Grünspan’s window would beckon customers with a lewd smile; Grünspan’s mannequins had Fanni’s green eyes, and skin that seemed to undulate in the window like some marvelous human serpent.

  “Fräulein Fanni, did you ever meet the Jewish baron on your walks through the Grunewald?”

  She was irritated with her new handler. “You’re not listening to me, Herr Magician. I dreamt of wild boars. They would eat me alive, and I could watch my own bloody fingers disappear into their mouths. What Jewish baron?”

  “Baron von Hecht.”

  “Oh, him,” she said. “His grandfather bribed Bismarck’s ministers and sank millions into the treasury. Bismarck cursed and had him made a baron, or he couldn’t go to war. And the current baron is no better. He financed the whole Nazi putsch. He has a daughter who married the Nazis.” She stared into Cesare’s gloomy eyes. “But you didn’t bring me here to talk about Lisalein, or did you? She was our captain at summer camp, a million years ago on the Wannsee. It was the most exclusive camp in the world, Herr Magician, composed of Mischlinge heiresses. Our fathers paid the Berlin police a fortune to protect us. We weren’t frightened of the Nazis, but of the Reds. They liked to kidnap rich Jewesses and hold them for ransom. And our captain was kidnapped right out of the water. Her father, the baron, went around like a crazy man until his Lisalein was returned. I hear he paid those Red gangsters half a million marks. But it stank of rotten fish. The Reds returned her after sixteen hours with scratches and bruises all over her body. I tell you, the Reds had touched her up, had modeled her—”

  “Like the mannequins in your father’s window.”

  “Yes, but those mannequins couldn’t breathe. And they weren’t accomplices in any Red plot. Comrade Lisa was more than an accomplice. I’d swear she planned the whole thing to help finance the Red Front behind her father’s back. He was frightened of the Reds. That’s why the baron backed Herr Hitler. He must have hoped that the thugs on both sides would beat one another’s brains out. You’re in love with Lisalein.”

  His face fell in and out of the dimmed light. It was impossible to see much with blackout curtains in the windows of the bar.

  Fanni smiled, her green eyes on fire.

  “Cesare, before you fuck me or kill me, tell the truth. You’re in love with the baron’s little bitch.”

  She felt like his accomplice now, his mother confessor. She would do anything for the magician.

  “Mensch, what is it you want me to do?”

  “Stop feeding half Jews to Französische Strasse.”

  “But there’s not much future for a retired Greifer. They’ll ship me off to one of the women’s camps. I won’t survive a week. The guards are all bull dykes. I’d rather die in Berlin. Make love to me. I mean it. We might not survive another week. You can strangle me while I’m coming … and then I can lie down in your coffin, Cesare.”

  She’d aroused him with her banter. He pressed up against her in a bar of zombies and somnambulists. Berlin had become a city of sleepwalkers, except for the Nazis, who pranced about and tried to pull some order from the disorder they alone had spun. This very month, General Paulus had surrendered the remains of his army inside the tomb the Germans had created for themselves in Stalingrad—the Wehrmacht had lost over 100,000 men in the blink of an eye. And still the Nazis busied themselves building more and more bunkers in Fortress Berlin, an underground city where the Führer intended to roam with his secretaries and his maps. He dreamt of tearing down Mitte—central Berlin—the oldest part of the city, where the Polish Jews had lived in their ghetto without walls, and creating a new Berlin, “Germania.” The war had interrupted his plans. Himmler kept rounding up the Jews, but the ghetto streets still existed with their ghosts. And some of these ghosts were in the Mexiko, Mischlinge who had become whores to pay their bills. The only clients they had were policemen and officers of the Reich—there were no Nazis at the bar tonight, just Mädschen who sat on their stools and drank warm beer out of teacups, since Berlin was short of glassware, and the Mexiko had run out of schooners months ago. The Mädschen never moved. They were half mad with hunger. Erik would raid the Abwehr’s storerooms tomorrow and have a small mountain of marmalade delivered to the Mexiko, if he could ever unglue himself from Fräulein Fanni.

  He was caught in her trance—she was the magician, with her own labyrinth of garter belts and stockings. Then the air raid sirens wailed, and Erik could feel the shiver in his spine, as if the sound had crept into him like some dybbuk from Scheunenviertel. He had to shout at all the Mädschen who sat with their teacups.

  “Children, you’ll have to go into the shelter—now!”

  None of them moved, and he appealed to Fräulein Fanni.

  “Help me, please. We can’t leave them here. They’ll all be buried in the rubble if there’s a direct hit.”

  Fanni traveled from stool to stool and pulled on the left ear of each prostitute. Her body shone in the blinking light. She went down into the cellar with all the Mexiko’s girls. But Erik remained aloft.

  “Cesare, where the hell are you?” Fanni growled.

  Erik was already gone. He’d vowed never to climb down into a shelter. He wasn’t frightened of the dark—it was the closeness of unwashed bodies mingled with the strange perfume of fear. He went out onto Alexanderplatz. An air raid warden screamed at him.

  “Scheisse, get the fuck out of here, or I’ll have you locked up.”

  But the warden must have recognized the outline of Erik’s sleek leather coat and assumed he was shouting at the SS or a Party man. The Party ruled Berlin. A gold Party pin was greater capital than Himmler’s death’s-head insignias. Erik had never joined the Party, but even Gestapo commandants believed that Cesare the somnambulist could pull a gold Party pin out of the air.

  Searchlights swept the sky. It was the only light in Berlin. Every window had been blacked out. And the sky itself had a sweetness that Erik had never seen until now. The cluster of stars overwhelmed him—a bitter February wind had washed away the yellow smoke of military vehicles. And there was so little coal left in Berlin that citizens had to live with the cold or burn their own debris.

  The sirens continued to wail. There wasn’t a soul out on the Alex except for the wardens and a few stragglers rushing toward the bunkers at the U-Bahn station. So he had the Alex all to himself, like some reborn Kaiser. The line of roofs was already ragged from the bombs that the British Mosquitoes had dropped on Berlin. War or no war, he admired the Mosquitoes and their wooden hulls t
hat were like galleons in the black skies, beautiful floating pirate ships.

  He couldn’t hear the grind of motors. The Mosquito was practically a silent plane. Its engines didn’t bark like the heavy bombers that flew right over the flak. There were three enormous antiaircraft bunkers in the heart of Berlin—one near the zoo, another in the north, and a third east of Alexanderplatz—but the gun girls who were amount these deadly batteries couldn’t seem to solve the riddle of a low-flying plane that had all the pestilence of a glider with bombs and machine guns.

  A Mosquito glided over the Alex and headed toward the Tiergarten. Last month, another lone Mosquito had bombed the zoo, and now tigers suddenly roamed the streets. Hungry as they were, they didn’t bother Berliners. One had wandered onto the Alex with glassy eyes; it was the tamest tiger Berlin had ever seen. It nuzzled air raid wardens and allowed women and children to feed it ersatz tapioca pudding. The police lured it into a Black Maria and returned it to a barren zoo.

  Erik heard the muffled sound of flak and that curious, teasing whistle of a bomb that fell somewhere in the factory land of north Berlin. These British “air gangsters,” as the Luftwaffe called them, seldom found their targets. Wehrmacht engineers had built decoy factories with the help of movie sets from the studios in Babelsberg. The decoys were marvels of construction that managed to fool these air gangsters, but streets still burned, rubble began to collect, and tigers were still missing from the zoo.

  Erik wandered into Scheunenviertel while flak continued to explode and create orange gashes in the northern sky. It was the only part of town that comforted him. Himmler’s secret police couldn’t have known the back alleys of Scheunenviertel. They might venture onto the Oranienburger Strasse with their own Black Marias and pluck Jews from some apartment that faced the street, but they couldn’t have penetrated Scheunenviertel without a Greifer such as Fanni Grünspan. And like a fool, Erik almost rutted with Fanni near the Mexiko’s zinc bar and hadn’t even bothered to strangle the life out of her. The Gestapo strangled men and women with piano wire. Erik had been taught to do so at the SS officers’ training school, but he couldn’t have wrapped wire around Fanni’s beautiful throbbing throat. It would have been like strangling Lisalein.