Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

42

Borkhausen is Rooked a Third Time

The two men sat down in the ravaged parlour; the ‘super’ is sitting where Klebs had sat and the rat is in Persicke’s seat. No, old Persicke hadn’t been in condition to give any information, but the serenity with which Klebs moved about the flat, the calm with which he addressed Persicke and gave him drink had sufficed to make the ‘super’ a little cautious.

Once more Klebs pulled out his worn imitation-leather wallet, which had once been black but was now reddish at the edges. He said, ‘If I might show the supervisor my papers? Everything’s legal, I have instructions from the Party…’

But the other declined to look at the papers, declined a drink, would agree to accept only a cigarette. No, he wasn’t going to drink now, he could remember too clearly how Enno had fouled up the foolproof Rosenthal scheme by drinking. He wasn’t going to fall for that again. Borkhausen – for it is none other – wonders how to get the better of Klebs. He has seen through him right away – whether he is actually an acquaintance of old Persicke’s or not, whether he is here on Party business or not, it makes no difference: the fellow’s a thief! The stuff in his suitcases has to be stolen goods – otherwise he wouldn’t have got such a shock from the sight of Borkhausen, otherwise he wouldn’t be so timid and fussy. No one on a legal errand would grovel so, as Borkhausen knows from personal experience.

‘Perhaps a little shot of something now, Superintendent?’

‘No!’ Borkhausen all but roars back. ‘Shut up, I’m trying to think…’

The rat shrinks back and doesn’t speak any more.

Borkhausen has had a bad year. Yes, he missed out on the two thousand marks Frau Haberle had sent to Munich. In response to his request to have the money forwarded to him in Berlin, the post office had written back that the Gestapo had laid claim to the money as having been dishonestly come by; if he wanted to, he could take it up with them. Of course, Borkhausen had done no such thing. He wanted no more to do with that double-crossing Escherich, and Escherich for his part seemed to have had no more use for Borkhausen.

So that was a bust. But what was far worse was that Kuno-Dieter had failed to come home. At first, Borkhausen had thought, Ooh, just you wait! Once you get home! Had fantasized about various scenes of chastisement and rudely dismissed Otti’s questions about where her precious darling might have got to.

But then, as week followed week, the situation without Kuno-Dieter had grown increasingly unbearable. Otti turned into a real snake, and made his life a misery. In the end he didn’t care either way, let the bastard stay away for good if he liked – one less mouth to feed! But Otti was beside herself. It was as though she couldn’t live for one more day without her precious darling, and yet when he was around, she had never stinted with beatings and scoldings.

Finally, Otti had gone completely nuts and had gone to the police and accused her own husband of murdering his son. The police didn’t stand on ceremony with characters like Borkhausen. He didn’t have a reputation unless it was a bad one, and they remanded him, pending a trial.

They kept him there for eleven weeks. While there, he had to pick oakum and sew his share of mailbags, otherwise they would have kept back his meals, which were pretty sparse as it was. Worst of all were the nights, when there were Allied bombing raids. Borkhausen had a healthy fear of bombing raids. Once he had seen a woman burning on Schönhauser Allee. She had been hit by a phosphorous bomb – he would never forget that as long as he lived.

So he was afraid of planes, and now they droned ever nearer, and the whole sky was full of their roar, and the first explosions were heard, and his cell wall was reddened by the flickering of fires near and far… no, they didn’t allow prisoners to leave their cells, where they were securely held, those maggot wardens! On such nights, the whole of Moabit prison grew hysterical, the prisoners clutched the bars of their cells and screamed – my God, how they screamed! And Borkhausen with them! He had wailed like a wild beast, he had buried his head in his mattress, and then he had battered his head against the cell door until he collapsed senseless on the floor… it was a sort of self-administered anaesthetic that helped him get through those nights.

When the eleven weeks were up and he was sent home, he was not in a very good frame of mind. Of course they hadn’t been able to prove anything against him – how could they? But he could have been spared those weeks if Otti hadn’t been such a bitch! And now he treated her like a bitch too, for living it up in his apartment (the rent for which she regularly paid) with her friends while he had picked oakum and gone half crazy from fear.

From that time on, blows were the regular currency chez the Borkhausens. At the least provocation, the man let rip. Whatever he had in his hand he flung at her, the bloody bitch who had brought him such misfortune.

And Otti fought back. Never was there anything for him to eat, never any money, never any smokes. Whenever he laid a finger on her, she would scream so loud that all the neighbours came running, and all of them sided with her against Borkhausen, even though they knew she was nothing better than a common whore. And then one day, after he had ripped fistfuls of hair from her scalp, she did the meanest thing of all: she disappeared for good, leaving him with the four remaining brats, none of whom he was at all sure he had fathered. Goddamnit, Borkhausen had had to go to work, regular work, otherwise they would have all starved, and ten-year-old Paula took over the household.

A bad year, it was a fucking rotten year! And he was still consumed with acid hatred of the Persickes, with whom he couldn’t and didn’t dare get even, oh, his helpless rage and envy when it became known in the house that Baldur had got into a Napola school, and finally the small, feeble spark of hope when he saw how old Persicke’s drinking – maybe, maybe after all…

And now he was sitting in the Persickes’ flat, and there on the table under the window was the radio that Baldur had pinched from the old Rosenthal woman. Borkhausen was almost there; all he had to do now was discreetly remove the spy…

Borkhausen’s eyes light up when he imagines Baldur’s fury on seeing him seated at the table in his flat. Cunning devil, Baldur, but not cunning enough. Sometimes patience is worth more than cunning. And suddenly Borkhausen remembers what Baldur planned to do with him and Enno Kluge, that time they broke into the Rosenthal apartment – or rather, it wasn’t even a break-in; they’d been set up… Borkhausen thrusts out his lower lip and looks thoughtfully at this other guy, who has become very fidgety during their long silence, and then he says: ‘All right, why don’t you just show me what you’ve got in those suitcases!’

‘Hold on there,’ the rat tries to resist, ‘that’s a bit much, isn’t it? If my friend Herr Persicke has given me permission – that exceeds your rights as superintendent…’

‘Cut the crap!’ says Borkhausen. ‘Either you show me what’s in the suitcases, or else you and I are going to the police together.’

‘I don’t have to,’ squeaks the rat, ‘But I’ll show you because I want to. The police always make trouble, and now that my Party comrade Persicke has become so ill, it might take days before he can confirm my statements.’

‘Get on with it! Open up!’ says Borkhausen suddenly furious, and he takes a swig from the bottle, too.

The rat Klebs looks at him, and suddenly a wicked smile comes over the spy’s face. ‘Get on with it! Open up!’ With that cry, Borkhausen has betrayed his avarice. He has also betrayed the fact that he’s not the super, and even if he is, then he’s a super who has dishonest intentions.

‘Well, chum?’ says the rat suddenly in quite another tone of voice. ‘What about fifty-fifty?’

A punch floors him. To be on the safe side, Borkhausen clouts him two or three times with a chair leg. There, that’s the last of him for an hour or so!

And then Borkhausen starts unpacking and repacking. Once again, old Frau Rosenthal’s linens change owners. Borkhausen works swiftly and calmly. This time no one is going to come between him and success. He’d sooner kill them all, even if it means risking his own head. He won’t be fooled again.

And then, a quarter of an hour later, there was only a brief scuffle with the two constables as Borkhausen left the apartment. A bit of tugging and stamping, and he was tied and cuffed.

‘There!’ says Judge Fromm. ‘And that, I think, should spell the end of your time in this house, Herr Borkhausen. I won’t forget to hand your children over to the welfare authorities. Though what happens to them probably won’t interest you very much. Now, gentlemen, let’s take a look inside. I do hope, Herr Borkhausen, you haven’t been too rough with the little fellow who walked up the stairs before you. And then we should find Herr Persicke as well, Constable. Last night, I’m afraid, he suffered an attack of delirium tremens.’