Berlin: A Novel (4 page)

It was three in the morning. The basement smelled of formalin and decomposition. Gratefully, Klaus Dietrich allowed the nurse to put a mask over his mouth and nose. The body lay on the marble slab, a well-grown young woman with slender limbs.

Walter Mobius had been a medical officer with the Afrika Corps. 'We had refrigeration problems there too. Your Karin must be buried as soon as possible.'

'My Karin! Heavens, what do you think that sounds like? I never knew her. But I'd like to know how and when she died.'

'Last night, around eleven o'clock. Strangled with a chain about the thickness of your finger. Here, you can see the indentations its links left in her neck. But that's not all.' The doctor pointed to the young woman's vagina. Her blonde pubic hair was clotted with blood. He picked up a speculum and gently opened the dead woman's thighs. The inspector turned away. 'The monster,' said Mi bius, after a brief examination. 'Some sharp object. Forcibly inserted and then moved back and forth.'

A chain with a toggle to lock it in place,' said the inspector, thinking out loud. 'Using a chain like that, he could throttle her with one hand while he used the other to . . .' He stopped. Around eleven at night? Probably just before the last train left at 22.48. The platform was almost empty and half the lights weren't working. The murderer would have been waiting in the shadows. The chain would have stifled her screams. And when he'd finished with her he pushed the body down on the tracks, jumped after it, hauled the corpse out of sight into the bay under the edge of the platform, clambered up again and waited for the last train, cool as a cucumber. It could have been like that.'

The doctor put the speculum in a dish. 'Nurse Dagmar undressed the body. She wasn't wearing any panties. Does anyone know anything about her?'

'Sergeant Franke thinks he might have seen her before, but he can't remember where.'

'I'm going to open up the body now. Want to stay and watch?'

'No thanks. I can't promise not to keel over. One of our men will come and collect your autopsy report later.'

Dr Mi bius looked at the beautiful corpse with pity. 'I wonder who this Karin Rembach was?' He picked up his scalpel.

KARIN

SUMMER SUNDAYS WERE the best thing about Weissroda. The entire village drowsed off after lunch, and you could make off down the path through the fields and walk through the tall rye. If you parted the blades very carefully as you went in, they closed behind you, forming an impenetrable curtain. The wind had made a little clearing in the middle of the rye field. You could undo your plaits there, shake your long hair loose over your shoulders, lie down and daydream, looking up at the sky, and sometimes your hand found its way between your legs, giving you a tingling feeling which was simply unbearable, and felt so nice that you couldn't stop.

Seventeen-year-old Karin liked to be all alone, with no one telling her what she was to do, muck out the henhouse or feed the horse. She had been on the Werneisens' farm for two years now, ever since her mother, Anna Werneisen's sister, died of heart disease. She'd never been married to Karin's father. He was English, a steward on a cruise ship plying between London and Hamburg. When he was in Cuxhaven he spoke English to his daughter. Then he was posted to the Far East, and they never heard from him again. It wasn't that the Werneisens made Karin feel aware of her situation. But if she hadn't closed the pigsty door properly, or she neglected a job, one of them would say she was a city child and didn't belong here. She knew that she wasn't like them: she had a different accent, speaking the pure High German of the north, instead of the local dialect spoken here on the border of Thuringia, which seemed to have a constant undertone of malice. She was blonde, with long, slender limbs, and that too distinguished her from her sturdy relations.

When she had daydreamed enough, she sat up and braided her plaits. She kept the ends in place with little leather straps that closed with snapfasteners, instead of the slides that the village girls wore. She rose, smoothed down her dress, and strolled slowly back along the path through the fields. There was a notice up outside the inn.

THE BLOND-LACE LADY WITH NADJA HORN AND ERIK DE WINTER

It was an advertisement for a theatrical company from Berlin touring the provinces in the summer break. Karin looked for the umpteenth time at the picture of the leading actress, a beautiful lady with blonde hair sprayed into place and a white fox fur stole, and the photo of her partner beside it. He was a good-looking man in tails, really dishy. She couldn't tear herself away.

Hans Gi rke was waiting for her outside the blacksmith's forge. He had washed thoroughly, and only his black fingernails showed that he'd been working at the anvil. Hans was three years older than Karin, a stocky, redheaded lad with heavy arms and big hands.

'I went to pick you up.'

'So?' With pointed indifference, she glanced at the swastika flag flying above the forge. Gorke senior was a Party member.

She was about to go on, but he grabbed her forearm in a firm grip. 'Where you been, then?'

'That's none of your business.'

'It is so, 'cause you're my girl.'

'Don't you get any ideas.' She freed himself from his grasp by unbending his fingers one by one, and he let her. He could easily have held on.

'How's about a trip to Eckartsberga next Sunday? There's a dance on at the Lion.'

'I don't feel like dancing,' she snapped.

'How's about a little walk now, then?'

'I have to help with the milking.'

In her bedroom, she took off the thin, flower-patterned dress with its white collar, and her sandals and white socks. She avoided looking in the wardrobe mirror, because she hated the sight of her blue, cotton jersey knickers with elasticated legs and high-necked undershirt. She sat down on the edge of the bed, put on the thick wool stockings lying ready for her, and slipped into the dirty white, cotton-drill overall that was too big for her and had too many buttons.

Anna Werneisen was standing by the stove, cooking oatmeal for supper. The sight of the thick lumps on the surface nauseated Karin. 'Hans was here,' her aunt told her.

'I know.' Karin put on the gumboots standing by the door.

'You don't want to let that Hans get away. He's the lad for you. Plans to go to Kosen and join the cavalry as a farrier. That's as good as a sergeant when it comes to the pay. I heard it from old Riester, he served with the cavalry.' Anna Werneisen was a practical woman.

'Hans has black fingernails and smells of soot.' Karin didn't wait to hear her aunt's reply, but went off to the cowshed, gumboots slapping on the ground. Her cousins Barbel and Gisela were already sitting with the cows. Karin put her stool down to the right of Liese's rear end and placed the bucket under it. She massaged the cow's udder, took hold of two teats and began milking: gentle pressure with thumb and forefinger, let the other three fingers follow one by one, almost as if you were playing the piano, a slight downward tug at the same time, and the milk came splashing down into the empty bucket with a dull, tinny note that rose in pitch as the bucket slowly filled. Liese turned her head, contentedly chewing the cud. The cousins were giggling together about their romp in the straw with two boys from Braunsroda.

Karin carried the full bucket out and poured it into the milk churn through the strainer. Rosa was mooing impatiently. It was her turn next. Each of the three girls milked four cows twice a day. Father Werneisen fed the cows and mucked them out.

After supper they sat around the People's Radio, a black Bakelite box with three knobs and a round, fabric-covered speaker, from which issued the voice of a journalist enthusiastically reporting from Vienna. The Fiihrer had brought Austria home into the Reich. And he ain't finished yet,' prophesied Werneisen darkly.

Karin wasn't listening. She was leafing through a old issue of Die Dame magazine, looking at the glossy photos of beautiful, elegant people and dreaming of blonde Nadja Horn and Erik de Winter, that dishy man in evening dress.

One Friday morning in July, a coach containing the theatrical company and a truck with its scenery drew up in the yard of the inn at Weissroda. Karin was mucking out the henhouse when Barbel burst in with the news. She dropped her pitchfork. This she had to see.

Actors and stagehands got out of the coach, along with the director Theodor Alberti, a gentleman with a leonine mane of hair, a monocle and a Scotch terrier. Erik de Winter the film star got out too.

Karin recognized him at once: dark, wavy hair, soft chin and velvety brown eyes. He was wearing pale flannels and a white tennis sweater, and had a clutch of newspapers under one arm. He laughed and waved: he always laughed and waved when there was an audience in the offing. News of the actors' arrival had not yet spread, so the audience was Karin. Unabashed, she waved back.

Erik de Winter was moved by the sight of the girl's slender figure in an overall much too big for her. her regular features and expressive blue eyes. 'What a young beauty,' he said, helping his stage partner out of the bus.

'You've never fallen for rustic charm before,' Nadja Horn teased him. She bore only the most remote resemblance to the groomed blonde lady in the white fox fur. Her black hair was tied up with a red scarf, and she wore widelegged trousers in the Dietrich style. 'But as usual, your taste is impeccable.' She walked over to the startled girl with long, energetic strides, and offered her hand. 'I'm Nadja Horn.'

'But you're not blonde!' exclaimed Karin.

'Oh, we actors are whatever the public wants us to be. Black-haired, redheaded, blonde, brunette. May I introduce you to my partner? Herr Erik de Winter - this is Fraulein ... what did you say your name was?'

'Karin Rembach.' Karin wiped some chicken shit off her face.

A long look from those velvety brown eyes. 'Very pleased to meet you, Fraulein Rembach.'

'Oh, me too! I saw you in a movie. You played an airman.'

'Yes, it was Storming the Heavens.' He kept on looking at her. Are you coming to the show this evening? We'll leave you a complimentary ticket at the box office.'

Nadja Horn was watching the encounter with amusement. This little country girl seemed to have made a great impression on him. 'Come and see us after the performance,' she suggested. 'Then you can tell us what you thought of the play. Herr de Winter and I would like that.'

'I'll ask Aunt Anna if I may,' she promised, and then could have kicked herself.

By now the yard had filled with curious onlookers. Half the village watched with bated breath as de Winter bent to kiss Karin's hand. Her heart was thudding, but she didn't let it show. 'See you this evening, then,' she said loud enough for everyone to hear, and ran back to the henhouse with a spring in her step.

Later, in the kitchen, she asked her aunt's permission. 'Take them a few roses from the garden, and don't be back too late,' was Anna Werneisen's only comment. 'It won't hurt the child to meet someone new for a change.' she said later, justifying her decision to her husband.

The play was a drawing-room comedy, with witty dialogue that went right over the heads of most of the audience. But Karin instinctively understood its subtle irony and double-entendres, and she loved the actors' elegant costumes. She wanted to be like them too.