25

Käthe moved ahead, not knowing whether to be relieved or frightened.

‘Let me go first,’ Thomas said, stepping ahead of her. It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea what they would find inside. Had Erich somehow moved Arno’s body into this apartment – if there was a body at all? Would they find Arno’s corpse sat in an armchair, decomposing from a month of waiting to be found?

The scene that presented itself defied their expectations. At first, no discernible furniture was apparent; instead, there was a chaos of white paper, some of it in piles, some of it bound into batches, most of it scattered across the floor in a kaleidoscope of white tiles that shifted with the breeze from the open door.

The smell was odd. A faded musty air deepened by something recognisable – though not possible to place. Thomas knew it. He knew it from Berlin, from somewhere in the city. Then it came to him – ink! It was the same coagulating smell that he breathed at the newspaper print rooms, the same heavy fog that filled his nostrils each night at the Berliner.

Käthe picked up a bundle of papers. ‘What on earth are these?’ Then she read aloud from one of them. ‘No justice for hero vigilante.’

Thomas reached for another batch. ‘Defend our nation from Communist criminals,’ he read.

They looked at each other. ‘What is this?’ Käthe said.

‘They’re being printed here,’ Thomas replied, at the same moment noticing a small hand-operated press in the far corner of the room. ‘They’re pamphlets.’

‘Propaganda,’ she said. It occurred to her that she’d never used the word before, and it gave her a spike of excitement to do so.

Ahead of them, several rooms led off from open doorways. The hundreds of sheets of paper had momentarily distracted them from the possibility of danger ahead. Thomas’ thoughts cycled between acute hesitation and the question of whether Erich would actually put them in harm’s way.

As it was, Käthe now led, stepping through the drifts and piles of paper towards the first room. Another pamphlet caught Thomas’ eye.

Potsdam Hero Arrested For Murder.

He read the words silently to himself as he passed.

Hero of the nation arrested for throwing criminal boy from building. Communists conspire to destroy German freedoms. Liberate the nation’s hero! Liberate the nation’s protector!

The words swayed and wobbled before his eyes. He could hardly comprehend what he was reading.

Hero of the nation arrested for throwing criminal boy from building!

He let the paper drop to the floor. All at once, the poisons of civilised society seemed to converge on the hallway of that apartment. A stew of confusion passed through him like the ghoulish spirals of a bad dream. Now a window loomed up, and through it he could see the blue Potsdam night. It made him feel a type of embarrassment, a demoralised feeling at reaching the very bottom of something – and still he did not understand.

They turned a corner and went through a panelled door whose white paint was peeling badly. The apartment was in a terrible state. There was a large white sink into which an open copper pipe dripped rusty water. A steel cooking pan with scorch marks on its underside contained the remnants of scrambled eggs. Along the walls, a carved dado rail had furry mould growing on its lower edges. The smell of a coal-powered stove clung onto the walls. Overhead, a piece of string with wooden pegs was pinned across from one wall to another, used as an indoor washing line. On the far wall, a framed print showing Christ with His arms outstretched was faded from too much sunlight. More paper, some of it printed and some of it blank, lay in circles on the dirty floor. A crate of candles and a pile of books lay nearby.

Then, almost unexpectedly, around the next corner, the face of a boy. The face of the boy. He was lying on a sofa with his feet resting on a woven-rush chair. There was a stack of empty clothes piled up over the backrest.

The boy looked up at the intruders. In his hands, he was holding a battered Spanish guitar that, for now, he was paralysed from playing. The beard had been shaved off and his face was fresh now, but it was certainly him. The vagrant in the tavern, the thief-boy on the roof terrace.

‘Arno!’ Käthe called.

The boy swung his feet onto the floor and stood up. His face was a dismal concoction of fear and amusement.

‘My god! What are you doing down here?’ she said rushing over to him. She wrapped her arms around him and said again, ‘What are you doing down here?’

Thomas couldn’t speak. His gaze remained fixed on the boy. A warm flush of relief swept through him as he let himself comprehend that the boy was – thank God – still alive.

Arno lowered his head to hide his awkwardness. He dug his hands into his pockets and was trying to subdue a smirk from rising on his face. He began to justify himself to Käthe, saying that he was just waiting for the right time to explain. Then, after a faltering start, he spoke more rapidly. He said he was living in the apartment and had been so for the last month. He said he was working for Erich, following Erich’s orders. He said Erich had paid for everything.

‘Erich?’ Thomas muttered, asking to hear more.

Arno held up a pile of hand-written letters – these, he said, came once or twice a week. They were instructions. Erich sent crates of food and boxes of candles and clean clothes along with the letters.

Everything the boy said came interrupted with questions from Käthe, who simply couldn’t understand why he would be living in the apartment beneath hers without telling her.

Thomas listened, trying to piece it all together. Then, all of a sudden, he couldn’t stay quiet any longer.

‘How did you do it?’

‘How did I do what?’

‘How did you do it? That trick, out on the terrace? You made it seem as if Erich threw you over the railings? You made it appear that you’d fallen. How did you do it?’

Käthe looked at Thomas. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Let him explain,’ Thomas pointed at the boy, his voice rising in volume. ‘Let your brother explain.’

‘It wasn’t hard.’ Arno replied coolly. ‘We practiced it.’ He went over to the living room window and with a rattle of the handle pushed it open. The window swung back. ‘Up there.’

Thomas went over and together they stuck their heads through the opening. Above, he could see several layers of brick and then the vertical black lines of the patio railings about eight feet above. The apartment in which they were standing was directly beneath the roof terrace.

Arno went on, ‘Erich had this old mountain climbing equipment. I don’t know where he got it from. A metal hook, a rope, a harness. We practiced it, maybe twenty times, until we had it just right. He swung me over and I came in through this window.’

‘That’s not possible,’ Thomas said. ‘I saw you go over. I saw you fall.’

‘We fooled you,’ Arno said, a prideful smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

‘No, that can’t be right. I heard you land. I heard you hit the ground. I swear it.’

Arno shook his head. He took the handle of the window in his hand and pulled in firmly closed. It gave a deep thud as it closed shut.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Thomas muttered. ‘That’s what I heard. A window closing.’

‘We practiced that too,’ Arno said. ‘I came in through the window, then waited, then bang.’

Käthe said, ‘I don’t understand. Why would you do that? When did you do that?’

‘In order to trick me,’ Thomas answered. It was all becoming clear to him now, like snow melting in a city and the streets reappearing after the thaw.

‘We practiced when you were out at work,’ Arno said to his sister.

‘But why?’

‘Your brother and Erich staged it all,’ Thomas answered, but before he could go on, more questions flapped his mind. He turned to Arno. ‘But why all this? You’re printing pamphlets – I can see you want to provoke something – anger among people – but why?’

Arno answered in a single sentence. ‘We wanted the Communists to get the blame for Erich’s arrest.’

‘Erich arrest?’

‘That’s right. For throwing me over.’

Thomas thought for a moment. ‘That’s where I came in. I was meant to lead Erich to the police.’

‘Yes, but you didn’t do it.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘He thought that you were the ideal person. He said you were too honourable to resist. He said it might take you a week or maybe two weeks, but your conscious would get the better of you in the end. So we’ve been waiting. But you didn’t do it. You never went to the police.’

‘You’ve been waiting all this time – for me to act?’

Arno nodded.

‘But Erich’s my friend,’ Thomas said by way of an explanation.

Käthe came forward with a pamphlet in her hand. ‘Is this why these all call Erich a hero?’

Thomas picked up a batch of papers. He hadn’t seen it before, but now Erich’s name appeared all over them, as if the very word was bubbling up across the paper.

‘Erich gets arrested,’ Thomas said, half-dazed by what he was hearing. ‘He gets called a vigilante hero. Then the Communists get blamed for protecting the thief.’

‘That’s what we wanted,’ Arno said. ‘We were going to campaign for Erich’s release. Talk up the conspiracy against him. That’s what I’ve been doing here all this time. Printing these. Then after a few weeks, once the interest had died down, I would turn up alive and he’d be set free.’

‘But I didn’t play my part.’

‘Erich was wrong about you.’

‘Do you know where he’s going?’ Thomas asked. ‘He told me he has to leave Berlin. Why? Is he in danger?’

‘I don’t know. All I know is that he’s involved with some Brownshirts.’

‘Nazis?’

‘He was worried about what they’d do if the plan didn’t work out. You’ve no idea what these people are capable of. They’re all ex-military. He has to stay out of their way for a while.’

‘So he failed. And now he has to go into hiding.’

Arno walked away from the window and crossed the room to a metal washbasin on a table, apparently unconcerned about Erich. He splashed water on his face. ‘How did you get in here?’ he asked as he put a crumpled towel to his face.

‘This.’ Käthe held up the key.

‘Erich gave it to me,’ Thomas said.

Arno shrugged. ‘So it’s all over then,’ he said.

‘I confronted him,’ Thomas said. ‘And he gave me the key.’

Arno dried his hands with the towel and seemed to relax, enjoying relief at the end of the game. He sat down on the battered old sofa and said, ‘I haven’t heard from him in a week. At least I can leave this damned apartment now.’

‘Why did you want to do this?’ Käthe said to her brother. Her tone was insistent.

‘This country is a mess,’ Arno replied. ‘Ever since the war, we’ve been taken advantage of. I want to make it great again, and that begins with getting rid of the Communists, and the Jews for that matter.’

‘What do you know about Communists and Jews?’ Käthe said disparagingly. ‘You’re too young to know anything.’

‘I’ve lived! You don’t know what I’ve seen. Just because you’re my sister doesn’t give you the right to lecture me. I know about the Bolsheviks. They only bring war and famine. We have to protect ourselves.’

As they argued, Thomas walked in circles around the room, remembering with vivid clarity the night in the tavern some five weeks before, when he and Erich were approached by the young man asking about Orenstein and Koppel, the same young man who stood before him now. How incredible it all seemed. But Erich? Was he so against the Communist Party that he would risk his own imprisonment? And for what end? The scatter of paper around him gave clues: Erich and Arno intended to stir up resentment within the working classes. Enemy Within! Subhuman Infiltration! It seemed such madness, but then it was all here, all around his feet in these pamphlets, undeniable and frightening.

And then he remembered the story of the prostitute. That whole story of the woman that Erich said had been staying in his apartment… Gina, that was her name. That story was surely a lie too. It seemed so obvious now, looking back. Erich had been laying a trap for Thomas all this time, asking him to feel sympathy for the downtrodden, only to fatally punish the thief-boy. What astonished him was the planning. He thought back to what Erich had said on that day, about looking after vulnerable people. It was all a ploy to prepare him for the roof terrace, to give an impression of Erich, that in his subsequent ruthlessness, he would completely contradict. Was it meant to incite Thomas? To make him see Erich as a changed man, a deranged man, someone whom he could more easily take to the police?

He turned back to face Arno. ‘Did you ever have a fiancé?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When you came to us in the bar. You said you had a fiancé.’

‘No,’ Arno replied.

‘Children?’

‘No.’

‘Then it was all made up. To fool me.’

Arno nodded.

Just then, Käthe called out, ‘It’s here,’ as she took in her hands the crystal decanter that she and Thomas had hunted for those weeks before. ‘To think that my aunt took it. It was you, Arno!’

Thomas came over and took the decanter from her, and placed it gently on the table.

‘It’s over now,’ he said. He glanced between the brother and sister. ‘It’s over now.’