Already he felt the cold penetrating deeper in his body, even with the heat of the day still in the air. He’d lost feeling in his legs and had difficulty moving them. The midges were out in force and he shooed them away by waving his arms, until realising that this, too, only made him sink deeper. He was completely dependent on outside help, and had the creeping sense that he’d never been so far removed from a human dwelling in all his life.
‘Help!’ he cried, as loud as he could. ‘Help!’
His cry echoed in the moonlit night. He listened, heard the treetops rustling in the wind, heard an owl screech, otherwise nothing. The owl wasn’t Kowalski. ‘Help,’ he cried again, and there was a swishing sound at the edge of the forest. He turned his head so that he could see better. A massive shadow lumbered towards him.
Were there still wolves here? he wondered. Don’t go attracting any beasts of prey! Before he could make out its contours, however, the shadow disappeared.
His face itched everywhere, but by now he’d given up trying to bat away the midges. He felt himself being stung on the upper lip, and realised he was shivering, could even hear his teeth chatter. By God, it was cold!
He closed his eyes and tried to think clearly, but it was growing more and more difficult. Again, he heard a rustling noise, and opened his eyes wide to see a massive form leaning over him, gazing curiously. A head with a huge set of antlers. He couldn’t believe his eyes. An elk. An elk gawped at him, watching him die.
He couldn’t help thinking of Charly’s words at the airport. Perhaps you’ll see an elk.
Charly. Would that botched goodbye at Tempelhof be their final evening together? Would he really die like this, at the very start of their journey? When he’d been unfaithful to her for the first time. He thought of last night with Hella. Suddenly all this felt like a punishment.
No, there was no meaning to any of it. Death was just as meaningless as life. He remembered the military cemetery at Markowsken. Anyone who spoke of death being meaningful, of laying down one’s life for the Fatherland, of dying a hero’s death, was a goddamn liar. It was all nonsense. Meaningless as it was, he wanted to live, damn it, live.
‘Come on,’ he said to the elk, cautiously, so as not to scare it. ‘Just one more step.’
The large head did indeed draw closer; the beast seemed to trust this man jutting out of the ground. Rath had read somewhere that, unlike roe deer or stags, elks were rarely frightened of people. Not this one, anyway. It was now or never.
Quick as a flash he grabbed for the antlers, thought for a moment he could feel soft skin, when the beast jumped back and jerked its head up. He clutched at thin air as it took another step towards the brush before trotting majestically away, illuminated by the moonlight.
He gazed after it until it’d gone.
Idiot! he thought, driving away your only friend out here.
‘Help,’ he cried again, astonished by the frailty of his voice. Could this mercilessly cold moor really have sapped so much strength out of him? Had he lost his mind?
He thought of his pistol, and fumbled the Walther out of its holster. His hands could barely grip the cold steel, but somehow he managed to release the safety catch and fire. The recoil almost threw the pistol out of his frozen hand but at the last moment he caught it and stowed it back in the holster. Perhaps he would need it again if there really were wolves.
Despair crept inside him, worse than the cold. Hopelessness drowned him like heavy, black, rotten ink, a viscous sludge spreading everywhere. At the same time somewhere deep inside was an irrepressible will to live that fought to get near the surface.
In the meantime the midges no longer concerned him; let them devour him, he wouldn’t resist. And then he thought he must be delirious.
Again a beast emerged from the brush, a huge black dog which reminded him of an illustration from his copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles, a huge, great hellhound. Now was the moment to reach for his pistol, but he couldn’t, his muscles no longer obeyed, only shivered.
He closed his eyes, ready to die. If this hellhound wasn’t the product of his imagination, then it would surely eat him. And, if he had imagined it, it would be gone as soon as he opened his eyes.
He kept his eyes closed, sensing his eyelids were the only muscles still capable of obeying, and when, after a time, he opened them again, he saw that he had not been eaten, and that the dog had, indeed, disappeared. In its place was a figure reminiscent of another illustration from his childhood books. Or, rather, two: Robinson Crusoe, and Leatherstocking.
A man stood there with an unbelievably wild full beard and long, shaggy hair, dressed in leather and hides, bow and quiver across his shoulders; on his head a beaver-fur cap.
Rath stared at the vision and then closed his eyes with his mouth relaxing into a peaceful smile. Even his shivering had ceased. He felt a deep sense of peace, and, all of a sudden, a great warmth in spite of the cold. With that he was plunged, once and for all, into darkness. A darkness no longer reached by the crescent moon.
PART III
Prussia
18th July to 6th August 1932
It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.
63
Black-and-white flags were everywhere, even on the coffin, which, amidst all the rest, seemed strangely incidental. Never had there been so many flags at a police funeral, colleagues said, although, since it was her first time, Charly was no judge. She just knew she hated it. The pomp, the ironed uniforms, the bombastic speeches – if this was what it meant to pay your last respects she wanted no part.
The church was nigh-on empty, with rows of pews unoccupied. These days in Berlin a dead policeman was nothing out of the ordinary; more and more officers were being caught in the fire between Communists and Nazis. Others were killed in cold blood, like Officers Anlauf and Lenk the previous year.
There were few mourners, but the coffin positively drowned in wreaths. Custom dictated that both Police Commissioner Grzesinski and Uniform Commander Heimannsberg should lay one, though neither had appeared in person. Grzesinski’s deputy, Bernhard Weiss, gave the eulogy, an honour usually bestowed upon police officers killed by Communists or Nazis, but the dead man had, like them, died in the line of duty.
Given the treasury’s long-standing money problems, it was no surprise that the floral tributes had nothing to do with the Free State of Prussia. The dead policeman’s brother had ensured events could proceed with the kind of ceremony normally reserved for dead ministers or members of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Most of the wreaths could be ascribed to his financial clout and influence. The Marggrabowa Homeland Service had gifted one, as had the Treuburg Citizenry, but the most impressive came from Gustav Wengler himself: a sumptuous arrangement of white and dark-violet, almost black, asters. In Everlasting Memory, the ribbon read, Your Brother, Gustav.
Charly tried to listen to Weiss’s speech but couldn’t. No matter, she was here to keep an eye on Wengler, who sat diagonally in front of her in the first row with his head bowed. She had encountered him once already, when he’d presented himself at headquarters and answered the questions the Vaterland team had in connection with his brother’s death, and the events of 1924. Afterwards it became clear that Charly wasn’t alone in thinking he might be holding something back.