Everybody envied Kurt Muschan. For several reasons. Almost no one had come out of the war and the nazi period as well as he had. Other men of his age group had lost life and limb in the trenches, in panzers and U boats, but he had lived the perfect life throughout the war. He had spent it sitting in an office doing paperwork for a food center. He had lived like a king. And his house… it hadn’t been bombed, no one in his family had died in a bomb shelter. “A Lucky duck,” people thought. His wife Uschi was also one of those rare examples of a perfect mother and a perfect mate, even though she had put on a few pounds of late. And last but not least, Muschan had a job, he’d been hired into the police force right after 1945. His neighbors, his friends and his relatives all said:” God gives to those who have.”
Muschan liked to sit on the window sill and look down onto the rail station buildings. To his left the freight train station stretched all the way to Innsbruck Platz and right in front of him there was Wilmersdorf station. Ever since he was a child he had been fascinated by the yellow and red S-Bahn trains and he would always try to imitate the long ‘tchaaa…’ sound the engine made when the trains started or the hissing sound of the brakes. In the neighborhood around Wilmersdorf station and Kaiser platz there were relatively few ruins and even in 1949, one could still enjoy a whiff of bourgeoisie typical of early turn of the century Berlin. His colleagues called his neighborhood ‘the policeman’s spa’.
The room had been aired sufficiently by now. “Better smelly and warm than fresh and cold.” Such was that year’s motto when wood and coal were so hard to find. Muschan closed the window and turned to his two older children. Twelve year old Manfred was of prewar vintage. He was playing with a Marklin toy train made from salvaged parts. Hannelore, conceived in 1941 during a furlough from the front busied herself with a doll that her grandmother had conjured out of a couple cleaning rags. This Christmas there were finally going to be new toys. You could buy everything again. Helga, the youngest, had just started walking and she was pulling everything off the coffee table and the shelves. Uschi was not rushing over to put the things back in place even though she loved to keep things neat. She was a born administrator and had worked in the Wilmersdorf City Hall where she had overseen the office of standards and measures. The picture frame of their 1936 wedding was dusty. She drew her finger across the glass. They had been the best looking pair by far.
The doorbell rang. Kurt Muschan went to the door. “That’s probably Bernhard, he’s come to pick me up. Tonight’s our skat night, at his house in NeuKölln.” Uschi wanted to know who Bernhard was, he had never mentioned him before. “He’s a guy at the District Attorney’s but he’s working at police headquarters to gain experience.” Once a month, four of them met at a colleague’s house to play skat. The money was put in a common piggy bank and they opened it on Father’s day. Muschan opened the door. “Do come in, unless you want money from me…”
Bernhard Bucheran shook his head. “Please don’t go to any trouble, we’re already 15 minutes late.” Still, he took the time to say hello to Ursula Muschan and to kiss her hand with a slightly ironical formality. She looked at him with the deep sadness of the Fado singer. He took care also to give each child a cream candy. Then they left. When they got to the station they waved to the mother and the children once more. When the circle line came from Papestrasse they were gone. There were six stops to NeuKlln but Muschan got off after two stops at Schöneberg.
Bacheran grinned. “Have fun.”
“You guys too.”
“None of us is going to score like you tonight.”
Muschan smiled at his friend and colleague once more and disappeared down the steps to the Wannsee line below. He felt his conscience weighing down on him… But nature was stronger. What could you do? Kurt Muschan looked like a happy man but there was one thing that oppressed him: his sexual appetite. He had just turned 37 and a man needed to have a woman from time to time. Really have her, not just platonic love. Without that a man wouldn’t feel alive. But after Helga was born, Uschi didn’t want to anymore. Whenever he had managed to convince her, as soon as he penetrated her she would cry out in pain. She didn’t go to the doctor’s, and felt ashamed. “It will come back, we just need to wait a little…” He’d been waiting for two years and now he couldn’t stand it anymore. He didn’t relieve himself, his strict upbringing wouldn’t allow it and he didn’t visit prostitutes. He was afraid of catching something and worried that one of his superiors would find out and they would refuse him a promotion. It was in that state of sexual famine that he had met Elisabeth Kusian. Although their meeting took place at work and not for instance in a dance hall, she had immediately guessed where things stood with him.
They had decided to meet at the Zoo station but he had wanted to surprise her and, after he got off at Friedrichstrasse, he went only as far as Bellevue to wait for her there. Minutes went by. The policeman in him immediately pictured some very precise explanations for her lateness. She was coming from the hospital and if she wanted to take the S-Bahn she would have to walk through the Tiergarten and … all of a sudden a man had run up behind her, slipped a clothes line over her head, dragged her into the bushes, after taking advantage of her and was now busy choking her… he could see it in his mind.
It only dawned on him later, too late, that she had probably taken the tram. The number 2 stopped right in front of the hospital and went to the Zoo. He jumped aboard a train that was just leaving the station hoping he wouldn’t be too late. And there she was, of course, standing under the clock.
“Baby, here you are.” She took him in her arms in front of everybody. “Oh, Elisabeth…” he took advantage of the hustle and bustle and the dim lighting to push his right thigh as high between her legs as her dress and coat would allow and to rub against her with his knee where she liked it.
“Wait, my little bull, calm down.” She was still wearing her nurse’s uniform and she was afraid of attracting onlookers’ attention and an official reprimand. “Tell me about your work.” “Well…” Holding each other tight they walked up the Joachimsthalerstrasse and went across the Hardenbergerstrasse and, after a hundred yards, turned into Kantstrasse. “Thank God I don’t have to deal with the body parts that were found at Stettiner station. Our colleagues in the East are taking care of that. Right now we only have small fry. Scrap metal thieves, break-ins, people robbed after sex…” Just saying that word heightened his urge and he could barely wait until they were in her room. “And I have to write all that stuff down in the logbook by hand, pen and paper. I still don’t have a typewriter… Ah…if I could have a typewriter! My kingdom for a typewriter.”
“Just you wait…” She looked at him with the impish smile of a girl with a secret. “It’ll be Christmas soon.”
“Yes, crazy about you.”
“You can’t possibly give me a typewriter, you don’t make that much money.”
“Don’t worry, my in-laws are very comfortable and they always take care of me. Their clinic in Thuringia brings in quite a lot.”
What could he say? She spoiled him through and through. He sat down on the sofa and she gestured toward the writing desk, opened her pocketbook, took out a key and handed it to him. “Would you like to open it and see what’s inside? No…” She took the key back. “I don’t want to spoil the fun, so you’ll wait.” Instead she opened the armoire and brought out several presents. “For you… from Saint Nicholas, first, a hat.” She put it on Muschan’s head and it fit him perfectly. “That’s from my father in law in the Eastern zone. He still comes by although his son Wilhelm, my husband, has been dead such a long time. And he also gave me these elastic suspenders. Take them and throw yours away: there’s no rubber left in them.”
The doorbell rang. A delivery woman brought in a six piece silver place set. Elisabeth showed him. “This is my present for Christmas so you have something to give your Uschi.”
Kurt Muschan felt overwhelmed. And very scared. He only wanted one thing from this woman…and now, she was crazy in love with him. There wasn’t the slightest chance he would leave Uschi and the kids for this woman. But what if she blackmailed him?
I’ll find a way, he thought, after all I’m with the police… These days if a body is properly dismembered and the pieces hidden somewhere in East Berlin, the risk of being found out is small.