Every Man Dies Alone (39 page)

Hetty leaves her house with the suitcase in her hand. The fair-haired boy is no longer playing on the street—perhaps he’s gone in to his squinting mother. She makes for the pub on the Alex where she’s arranged to meet Enno.

Chapter 30

EMIL BORKHAUSEN AND HIS SON

Yes, Borkhausen felt exceedingly comfortable in that nice express train in the fine second-class compartment in the company of officers and generals and exquisitely perfumed ladies. It disturbed him not at all that he was neither elegant nor exquisitely perfumed, and that his fellow travelers cast no kindly looks his way. Borkhausen was used to being looked at unkindly. Hardly ever in the course of his wretched life had a fellow being favored him with a kindly look.

Borkhausen took care to enjoy his good fortune, because he knew it would be brief. It didn’t last till Munich, even as far as Leipzig, which had been his first thought, but only as far as Lichterfelde, because the train happened to make its first stop at Lichterfelde. That had been the mistake in Hetty’s calculations. If one had money to collect in Munich, one didn’t have to go there right away. One might do it later, once one had seen to more urgent business here in Berlin. And the most urgent business he had was to report Enno’s whereabouts to Escherich and collect his five hundred marks reward. Anyway, perhaps he didn’t have to travel to Munich at all, perhaps it was enough to ask the post office to wire the money to Berlin for collection there. He didn’t feel up to a journey to Munich just at the moment.

So—not without a subtle regret—Borkhausen got off at Lichterfelde. He had a short, spirited debate with the stationmaster about the plausibility of his having reconsidered a journey to Munich between
Anhalter Bahnhof and Lichterfelde. Borkhausen struck the stationmaster as a most suspicious individual in any case.

Borkhausen remained adamant: “Just call the Gestapo if you like, ask for Inspector Escherich, and you’ll soon see whether I’m spinning a line or not, Stationmaster! But you’ll get in plenty of hot water, I’m telling you! I’m here on official Gestapo business!”

Finally, the official shrugged his shoulders, and allowed him to claim reimbursement for the ticket—it was no skin off his nose. Anything was possible nowadays, and that such dubious characters were running around on Gestapo business was well within the bounds of possibility. So much the worse for everyone!

Emil Borkhausen then started looking for his son.

He couldn’t see him outside Hetty Haberle’s pet shop, though the shop was open and customers were coming and going. Hidden behind a poster pillar, his eyes fixed on the door of the shop, Borkhausen wondered what could have happened. Had Kuno-Dieter gotten bored and simply left his post? Or had Enno gone away—maybe back to the Also Ran? Or had the little fellow moved on and left the woman all alone in the shop?

Emil Borkhausen was just wondering whether to appear brazenly in front of the outwitted Frau Haberle and demand information from her when a little squirt of nine or so addressed him: “Hey, mister! Are you Kuno’s dad?”

“I am! What is it?”

“You’re s’posed to give me a mark!”

“What would I give you a mark for?”

“For me to tell you my information what I know!”

Borkhausen made a swift grab at the boy. “First the goods, then the money!” he said.

But the boy was quicker, and slipped through the man’s arm and shouted: “Forget it! Keep your moldy mark!” And he rejoined his playmates outside the petshop.

Borkhausen couldn’t follow him there: he preferred not to show himself after all. He shouted and whistled for the boy, cursing him—and himself too, for his own inappropriate economies. But the boy proved not so easy to lure; it was another fifteen minutes before he turned up beside Borkhausen again, standing carefully some yards away from the irascible fellow and announcing cheekily, “Price’s gone up! Two marks now!”

Borkhausen felt a keen desire to grab him and give him a good hiding, but what was he to do? He had to do what the boy said, because he couldn’t chase him down. “I’ll give you a mark,” he said grimly.

“No! I want two!”

“All right, you’ll get two!”

Borkhausen took a bundle of money out of his pocket, peeled off a two-mark note, stuffed the rest back in his pocket, and waved the bill in the direction of the boy.

The kid shook his head. “I know you!” he said. “If I take yer money, you’ll make a grab at me. No, lay it down on the ground!”

Grimly, without a word, Borkhausen did as the boy said. “Well?” he said, straightening up and taking a step back.

The kid slowly inched toward the note, keeping a watchful eye on the man. When he stooped to pick up the money, Borkhausen was barely able to restrain himself, he so badly wanted to grab the little squirt and teach him a lesson. He could have got him, too, but he withstood the temptation—maybe he would have got no information then, and the brat would scream the whole place down.

“Well?” he asked once more, menacingly this time.

The boy answered: “I could play silly buggers and ask for more money, and keep doing it again and again. I could. But I’m not like that. I know you wanted to make a grab at me again this time, but me, I’m not such a silly bugger!” Then, after thus clearly establishing his moral superiority over Borkhausen, he quickly said, “You’re to go home and wait for a message from Kuno!” And with that the boy was gone.

The two solid hours that Borkhausen had to wait in his basement flat for Kuno’s message did nothing to diminish his rage; if anything they exacerbated it. The kids were howling, and Otti was on the warpath, not sparing him her usual remarks about lazy sons of bitches that sit around all day, not doing anything except smoke cigarettes, and leave all the work to their wives.

He could have pulled out a fifty, or even a ten, and changed Otti’s foul weather into the sweetest sunshine, but he didn’t feel like it. He didn’t want to be spending yet more money, having just wasted two marks on a useless piece of information he could have got by himself. He was enraged with Kuno-Dieter for having planted a little shit like that in his way. He must have fouled up himself in some way. Kuno-Dieter, Borkhausen decided, was going to get the punishment that other little rat had oiled out of.

Then there was a knock on the door, and instead of a messenger from Kuno-Dieter, it was a man in civilian clothes who had all too obviously been a corporal in another life.

“Are you Borkhausen?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Inspector Escherich wants to see you. Get ready, I’ll take you there.”

“I can’t now,” said Borkhausen, “I’m waiting for a messenger. You can tell the inspector I’ve caught his fish.”

“I’m to take you to him,” said the ex-corporal stubbornly.

“Not now! I’m not letting you mess this up. Not the likes of you!” Borkhausen was angry, but mastered himself. “You can tell the inspector I’ve got the bird, and I’m coming to see him later.”

“Will you not make a fuss, and come along now!” the other repeated stubbornly.

“I suppose you’ve learned that by heart and they’re the only words you know: ‘Come along now!’ Don’t you understand what I’m telling you?” Borkhausen yelled. “I’m waiting here for instructions, I have to sit here, otherwise our quarry will slip the noose! Is that too hard for you to grasp?” He looked slightly breathlessly at the man facing him, and added grouchily, “It’s the inspector’s rabbit I’m catching, you understand?”

The ex-corporal said implacably, “I don’t know anything about any of that. The inspector said to me, ‘Fritsche, get me Borkhausen!’ So come along, will you!”

“I don’t believe it!” said Borkhausen. “You’re too stupid for words. I’m staying here—or are you going to arrest me?” He could see by the other’s expression that that was an impossibility. “Well, get lost then!” he shouted and slammed the door in the corporal’s face.

Three minutes later he saw the old corporal shuffle across the courtyard, having reconsidered his “Come along with me!”

As soon as the man had disappeared through the entryway of the front house, Borkhausen started to worry about the consequences that his cheeking the representative of the all-powerful inspector might have. It was purely his rage with Kuno-Dieter that was to blame. It was shameless to leave his father sitting there for hours on end, possibly far into the night. Everywhere you looked, on every street corner, there were boys you could send with a message! But he would show Kuno what a view he took of such behavior. He wasn’t to think he could get away with it!

Borkhausen luxuriated in fantasies of chastisement. He saw himself thrashing the childish body, doing it with a smile on his face, but not a smile of diminishing fury… He heard him cry out, and he placed
one hand over the kid’s mouth while continuing to thrash him with the other, thrash him and thrash him until he was shaking from top to toe, whimpering…

Borkhausen never tired of rehearsing such scenes to himself. As he did so, he stretched out on the sofa and groaned lustfully.

He was almost disappointed by the knock of Kuno’s messenger, when it finally came. “What is it?” he asked.

“I’m to take you to Kuno.”

This time it was an older boy, of fourteen or fifteen, in a Hitler Youth tunic.

“But you’re to give me five marks first.”

“Five marks!” spat Borkhausen, not daring to openly refuse this big lout in the brown shirt. “Five marks! You’re dab hands at chucking my money around!” He rummaged through his bills, looking for a fiver.

The big Hitler Youth boy looked tensely at the bundle of money in the man’s hands. “I had to buy a ticket,” he said. “And what sort of time do you think it takes, getting here from the west end?”

“And your time is precious, eh?” Borkhausen still hadn’t found the note he was looking for. “And the west end, whatever that means! That can’t be. You probably mean Mitte, anyway!”

“Well, if Ansbacher Strasse isn’t out west, I don’t know…”

The boy understood too late that he had blabbed. Borkhausen’s money went back in his pocket. “Thanks!” he said with a mocking laugh. “No need to waste any more of your precious time. I’ll find my own way there. The best is probably subway to Viktoria Luise Platz, wouldn’t you say?”

“You can’t treat me that way! You can’t treat me that way!” said the Hitler Youth, and walked up to the man with fists clenched. His dark eyes glowed with fury. “I spent ticket money, I’ve…”

“You’ve wasted your precious time, I know, you’ve told me!” laughed Borkhausen. “Get lost, sonny. Stupidity always costs!” Suddenly his rage boiled over again. “What are you doing, still standing around in my flat? Are you hoping to beat me up in my own parlor? Get out of here, unless you like the sound of your own wailing!”

He shoved the furious boy out of the room and slammed the door shut behind the two of them. And all the way there, till they emerged from the subway at Viktoria Luise Platz, he had a stream of scathing comments for the boy, who never left his side, but who—while still pale with anger—made no more references to money.

Once on Viktoria Luise Platz, the boy suddenly broke into a trot and was soon far ahead of the man. Borkhausen had to follow him
as fast as he could: he didn’t want to leave the two boys talking alone together for any longer than he had to. He wasn’t quite sure who Kuno-Dieter would side with: his father, or this pup.

There they were, in front of a house on Ansbacher Strasse. The Hitler Youth kid was talking nineteen to the dozen to Kuno-Dieter, who was listening to him with his head down. When Borkhausen walked up, the messenger withdrew a dozen paces and let them confer.

“What’s going on, Kuno-Dieter,” Borkhausen began angrily. “How can you send me this stream of cheeky brats, who ask for money before they open their mouths?”

“No one does anything without money, Dad,” replied Kuno-Dieter equably. “As you well know. And I’m waiting to hear what I’m going to make out of this business—I’ve spent travel money…”

“Christ, it’s the same broken record with all of you! No, Kuno-Dieter, first you tell your father what’s going on here at Ansbacher Strasse, and then you’ll see what your father’s prepared to do for you. It’s not my style. This hustling doesn’t agree with me!”

“No, Father,” replied Kuno-Dieter. “I’m afraid you’ll forget to pay me later—money that is. I expect you’ll remember the slaps. You’ve already made loads of money from this business, and you probably stand to make even more, I’m thinking. Now I’ve been standing around all day for you, I want to see some money myself. I thought, fifty marks…”

“Fifty marks!” This impertinence took Borkhausen’s breath away “I’ll tell you what you’ll get. I’ll give you five marks, the five marks that beanpole over there asked me for, and you’ll be grateful for them! I’m not like that, but…”

“No, Dad,” said Kuno-Dieter, and fixed his blue eyes defiantly on his father. “You stand to earn a packet with this deal, and I’m not doing all the work for nothing, so in that case I’ll just refuse to tell you!”

“What have you got to tell me anyway!” sneered Borkhausen. “I don’t need you to tell me the little fellow’s holed up in that building. I can work out the rest by myself. Why don’t you go home and ask your mother to give you something to eat! You can’t make a monkey of your father, not yet! You pair of heroes!”