“It doesn’t belong here, that’s what’s wrong with it. This is Germany. We’re a Christian country. If they want this kind of thing they should go and live somewhere else.”
“Like where?”
“Palestine. Goshen. Somewhere with a hell of a lot of sand. I dunno and I don’t care. Just not here in Germany, that’s all. This is a Christian country.”
He stared malevolently at the many Jews entering the New. With their long beards and white shirts and black coats and big, wide-brimmed hats and glasses, they looked more like nearsighted pioneers from America’s nineteenth century.
We walked toward the Friedrichstrasse end of Oranienburger, where the more specialized whores I was looking for were given to waiting.
“You know what I think?” said Grund.
“Surprise me.”
“These Friedrichstrasse types should dress more like the rest of us. Like Germans. Not like freaks. They should try to blend in. That way people would be less inclined to pick on them. It’s human nature, isn’t it? Anyone who looks a bit different, who looks like they’re setting themselves apart, well, they’re just asking for trouble, aren’t they?” He nodded. “They should try to look like normal Germans.”
“You mean brown shirt, jackboots, shoulder belt, and swastika armband? Or how about leather shorts and flowery shirts?” I laughed. “Yeah, I understand. Normal. Sure.”
“You know what I mean, boss. German.”
“I used to know what that meant. When I was in the trenches, for instance. Now I’m not so sure.”
“That’s just the point I’m making. Bastards like these have blurred things. Made it less obvious what being German is all about. I suppose that’s why the Nazis are doing so well. Because they give us a clear idea of ourselves.”
I might have said that this was a clear idea of ourselves I didn’t much like, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue politics with him. Not again. Not now.
In Berlin, all special tastes were catered for. The city was one big erotic-and sometimes not so erotic-menu. Provided you knew where to look and what to ask for, the chances were you could satisfy even the most peculiar taste. You wanted an old woman-and I mean an old woman, of the kind that lives in a shoe-you went to Mehnerstrasse, which, for obvious reasons, was also known as Old Maid Street. You wanted a fat woman-and I mean a fat woman, of the kind that has a twin brother who’s a sumo wrestler in Japan-you got yourself along to Landwehrstrasse, also known as Fat Street. Now, if mothers and daughters were your thing, then you went to Gollnowstrasse. That was known as Incest Street. Racehorses, girls you could use the whip on, were most often found in the beauty shops and massage parlors that surrounded Hallesches Tor. Pregnant women-and I do mean pregnant women, not girls with cushions stuffed up the front of their dirndls-were found on Munzstrasse. Munzstrasse was also called Coin Street, because there was a general sense that it was a place where people were prepared to sell absolutely anything.
Unlike Grund, I usually tried to avoid sounding righteous about Berlin’s famous sex scene. What did we expect might happen to women in a country with almost two million German men dead in the war and perhaps as many people dead again-my own wife included-from the influenza? What did we expect might happen after the Bolshevik Revolution-with the country full of Russian immigrants-and the inflation and the depression and the unemployment? What did convention and morality matter when everything else-money, work, life itself-turned out to be so utterly unreliable? But it was hard not to feel a little outraged at the trade going on around the north end of Oranienburger Strasse. It was difficult not to wish fire from the air to purge Berlin of this illicit trade in human flesh when you contemplated the life of the washed-up, stone-faced, outcast prostitutes collectively known as gravel. You wanted a woman with one leg, one eye, or a hunchback, or hideous scars, you went to the north end of Oranienburger Strasse and raked through the gravel. You found them in the shadows-standing in the doorway of the defunct Stork’s Nest, or in the old Kaufhaus arcade, or sometimes inside a club called the Blue Stocking, on the corner of Linenstrasse.
There were plenty of women we could have spoken to, but I was looking for one woman in particular-a whore named Gerda-and, not finding her on the street, I decided we should try inside the Blue Stocking.
The spanner on the door sat on a tall stool in front of the cash office. His name was Neumann and, occasionally, I used him as an informer. He’d once been a runner for the Dragonfly ring that operated out of Charlottenburg, only now he wouldn’t go anywhere near the area, having double-crossed them somehow. For a spanner, Neumann wasn’t all that tough, but he had the kind of beaten, criminal face that made people think he might not care what happened to him, which sometimes amounts to a simulacrum of toughness. Plus (I happened to know) he kept an American baseball bat behind his stool and wasn’t slow to use it.
“Commissar Gunther,” he said nervously. “What brings you to the Blue Stocking?”
“I’m looking for a garter-snapper.”
Neumann grinned a grin so carious his teeth looked more like the discarded butts of twenty cigarettes. “Aren’t they all, sir?” he said. “The fritzes who waltz in here.”
“This one is gravel,” I said.
“I wouldn’t have thought you was the type for that kind of trade.” His grin widened horribly, as he enjoyed what he hoped might be my embarrassment.
“Stop thinking I feel awkward asking about her, because I don’t,” I said. “The only thing I feel awkward about is your dentist’s feelings, Neumann. Her name is Gerda.”
The teeth disappeared behind thin, cracked lips that were all twitchy, like an angler with a hook in his mouth.
“You mean like the little girl what rescues her brother, Kay, in The Snow Queen?”
“That’s right. Only this one’s not so little. Not anymore. Plus, she’s short of an arm and a leg, not to mention a few teeth and half her liver. Now, is she here, or am I going to have to give the lads in E a call?”
E was Inspectorate E, the part of Department IV that dealt with all matters relating to morals-or more, usually, the lack of them.
“No need to be like that, Herr Gunther. Just having a bit of fun, that’s all.” He lifted a dog-trainer’s clicker off a chain on his belt and clicked it loudly, three times. “What happened to that sense of humor of yours, Commissar?”
“With each plebiscite it seems to get smaller.”
At the sound of the dog clicker, the door that led down into the club opened from the inside. At the top of a steep flight of stairs stood another spanner, only this one was wearing muscle.
Neumann chuckled. “Bloody Nazis,” he said. “I know just what you mean, Commissar. Everyone says they’ll close us all down the minute they get in.”
“I sincerely hope so,” remarked Grund.
Neumann shot him a look of quiet distaste. “Gerda’s downstairs,” he said stiffly.
“How does she get downstairs with one leg and one arm?” asked Grund.
Neumann looked at me and then at Grund, with a smile dancing on the cracked playground of his lips. “Slowly,” he said, and let out a roar of laughter that I enjoyed as much as he did.
Grund wasn’t laughing. “Think you’re a comedian, do you?” he said.
“Forget about it,” I told Grund, pushing him through the door and into the club. “You walked right into that one.”
Gerda wasn’t yet thirty, although you wouldn’t have known it. She could easily have passed for about fifty. We found her sitting in a wheelchair within spitting distance of a small stage where a zither-player and a striptease dancer were having a competition to see which of them could look more bored. By my reckoning, the striptease dancer had it won by a couple of droopy tits. On the table in front of Gerda stood a bottle of cheap schnapps, doubtless paid for by the man seated beside her, who, on closer inspection, turned out to be a woman.