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  SHADOW AND LIGHT

  JONATHAN RABB

  Sarah Crichton Books

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  New York

  Sarah Crichton Books

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Copyright © 2009 by Jonathan Rabb

  All rights reserved

  Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First edition, 2009

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rabb, Jonathan.

  Shadow and light / by Jonathan Rabb.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-374-26194-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-374-26194-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  1. Police—Germany—Berlin—Fiction. 2. Motion picture producers and directors—Crimes against—Fiction. 3. Motion picture industry—Germany— Fiction. 4. Berlin (Germany)—History—1918–1945—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3568.A215S53 2009

  813'.54—dc22

  2008045048

  Designed by Ralph Fowler/rlf design

  www.fsgbooks.com

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FOR SUSANNAH AND JEREMY

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About The Author

  SHADOW AND LIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  1927

  THEY SAY IT IS RARE to have good reason to leave Berlin. In the summer you have Wannsee, where the beaches are powdered and cool, and where for a few pfennigs even a clerk and his girl can manage a cabana for the day. The cold months bring the Ice Palast up near the Oranienburger Gate, or a quick trip out to Luna Park for the rides and amusements, where a bit of cocoa and schnapps can keep a family warm for the duration. And always there is that thickness of life in the east, where whiskey (if you’re lucky) and flesh (if not too old) play back and forth in a careless game of halfconscious decay. No reason, then, to leave the city with so much to keep a hand occupied.

  And yet she was empty—not truly empty, of course, but thin to the point of concern. A phenomenon had descended on Berlin in early February, something no one could control or predict. Naturally they could explain it, but only in the language of high science and complexity. For the rest, it was simply Weisserhimmel—white sky—days on end of a too-bright sun without the sense to generate a trace of heat. Every forty years or so, it came as a faint reminder of the city’s Nordic past, but history was not what Berliners chose to see. They were unnerved, their world made too clear, and so they left: businesses took unexpected holidays, schools indefinite recesses. It would all pass in a few days’ time, but in the meanwhile, only the stalwarts were keeping the city alive.

  Still, a few hours on the outskirts of town could do wonders. The sun might have been no less forgiving, but at least the surroundings were unfamiliar for a reason. Nonetheless, Nikolai Hoffner continued to glance into his rearview mirror as he drove. The Berlin he saw seemed compressed, small, her reflection strangely misleading. Even distance was doing little to help. He knew it best not to stare.

  Instead, he opened his mouth wide and chanced a look at his teeth; they seemed to shake with the car’s motion. The tooth, he had been told, would have to come out. Funny, but it didn’t look all that different from the others, a bit thick, crooked, yellowed by tobacco. Hoffner had little faith in doctors, but he believed in pain, and that was enough. He was meant to rub some sort of ointment on his gums every few hours, at least until he could make time for an appointment. He was finding a brandy worked just as well.

  The road to Neubabelsberg—the new road to Neubabelsberg—was straight and smooth, and for the price of a few pfennigs had you out to the film studios in less than half an hour. Someone had had the brilliant idea that Berlin needed a racing circuit, an asphalt totem to Mercedes and Daimler and Cadillac—although no one spoke of Cadillac—that ripped through the satiny pine needles and heavenly green leaves of the Grunwald. There had always been something of an escape when it came to the woods and lakes and beaches of the great, untamed forest. Now even that was gone, or going, eighteen kilometers uninterrupted. It seemed to dull everything.

  With a quick press of the accelerator, Hoffner decided to test the old car. The exhaust roared and a hum rose as the rubber tires heated on the road. That was always the trick: to smell when they had reached their limit. These had the tang of disarmament surplus, the good military stuff that appeared now and then from some unknown warehouse. Everyone knew not to ask.

  A big Buick hooted angrily from behind, and Hoffner checked his mirror again: the car had come from nowhere. He waved the driver on and watched as first the radiator, then the cabin, raced by. The Kriminalpolizei had yet to invest in speed. It would take something else to catch the criminals.

  There was a sudden thud to his undercarriage—a parting gift from the Buick—and Hoffner waited for the agonizing scrape of metal on asphalt, but none came. Still, there might have been a puncture, or something wedged in where it wasn’t meant to be. Not that Hoffner knew anything about a car’s tending-to, but he reckoned he should take a look. After all, he would need a bit of grease on his face and hands to show at least some effort to the boy they would be sending out to tow him.

  He brought the car down onto the grass and reached over for the two yellow flags he kept in the glove compartment. It was a pointless exercise—six meters in front, six meters behind—but someone had taken great pains to devise die Verkehrsnotverfahren (emergency traffic procedures), the totality of which filled a full eight pages in the bureau’s slender handbook on automobile operation: Who was he to question their essentialness? The flags blew aimless warning to the deserted road as Hoffner lay on his back and pulled himself under.

  Surprisingly, everything looked to be in working order. Various metal shafts stretched across at odd angles. Metal boxes to hold other metal things were bolted to iron casings, and while there were two or three wires hanging down from their protective covers—each wrapped in some sort of black adhesive—nothing appeared to be torn or strained or even mildly put out. The wood above was worn but whole, and the tires looked somehow thicker from this vantage point. Hoffner imagined much the same might have been said of his own fifty-three-year-old frame: shoulders still wide even if the barrel chest was relocating south with ever-increasing speed. He caught sight of a line of blurred handwriting on one of the tires and slowly inched his way over. Closer in, the scrawl became Frankreich, Süd, 26117-7-6, Vichy.

  Hoffner smiled. These had been slated for reparations, not surplus, and yet somehow—just somehow—they had failed to make it across the border. In fact, very little these days was making it to the French or English or Belgians or Italians—how the Italians had managed to get in on the spoils, having sided with the Kaiser up through 1915, still puzzled him—except, of course, for the great waves of money. There, things were decidedly different. The French might have been willing to turn a blind eye to a few tires ending up in the service of Berlin’s police corps, but if so much as a single pfennig of repayments, or interest on repayments, or interest on the loans taken out to pay for the interest on those repayments went missing, then came the cries from Paris for the occupation of the Rhine and beyond. It was a constant plea in the papers from the ever-teetering Social Democrats to keep our new allies happy, keep the payments flowing out, no matter how many times the mark had to be revalued or devalued or carted ar
ound like so many reams of waste tissue just to pay for a bit of bread. Luckily, the worst of it was behind them now, or so said those same papers: who cared if Versailles and its treaty were beginning to prompt some rather unpleasant responses from points far right? Odd, but Hoffner had always thought Vichy in the north.

  He slid out, planted himself on the running board, and flipped open his flask. The Hungarians, thank God, had remained loyal to the Kaiser up to the bitter end: little chance, then, of a shortage on slivovitz anytime soon. He took a swig of the brandy and stared out into the green wood as a familiar burning settled in at the back of his throat. A trio of wild boar was digging up the ground no more than twenty meters off. They were a dark brown, and their haunches looked fat and muscular. These had done well to keep the meat on during the winter. The smallest turned and cocked its head as it stared back. No hint of fear, it stood unwavering. Clearly, it knew it was not its place to cede ground. Hoffner marveled at the misguided certainty.

  He tossed back a second drink just as a goose-squawk horn rang out from the road. Hoffner turned to see a prewar delivery truck pulling up, its open back packed with small glass canisters, each filled with some sort of blue liquid. Hoffner wondered if perhaps he might have failed to hear about an imminent hair tonic shortage, but the man who stepped from the cab quickly put all such concerns to rest. He was perfectly bald, with a few stray wisps of black matted down above the ears. Hoffner stood as he approached.

  “ ’Twenty-two Opel?” The man spoke with an easy authority. “They’ll give you a bit of trouble on a road like this.”

  Hoffner nodded, although he couldn’t remember whether the car was a ’21 or a ’22. “I thought I’d caught something underneath,” he said. “Didn’t see anything.”

  “High frame,” said the man. “Not meant for these speeds.”

  “You know your cars, then?”

  “I take an interest. So nothing up in the housing?”

  Hoffner motioned to the car. “You’re welcome to take a look.”

  The man stepped over, released the catch on the metal bonnet, and raised it. “You keep it well.” He leaned in and jiggled a few bits and pieces.

  “Yes,” said Hoffner, never having once opened the thing up himself. He noticed the baby boar still watching them. “Cigarette?”

  The man stood upright and refastened the bonnet. “Very kind.”

  “I’m the one who should be thanking you.”

  “For what? Your car is in perfect order.” They both lit up and leaned back against the bonnet. “Unless it’s for the company?” Hoffner held out the flask. “No,” said the man. “I’m not much good with that.”

  Hoffner nodded over to the truck. “You’ve an interesting load.”

  “Toilet-washing liquid,” said the man. “Very glamorous. I’m heading out to the studios. Same as you.” It was an obvious point: Who else would be taking this road? “I shouldn’t, of course. Slows everyone down, but then, why not? I choose my times well enough. Eleven on a Monday. Very little traffic either way. If you’d really been unlucky, you’d have been here for quite some time.”

  “Depends on what you mean by luck.”

  The man smiled absently. “Fair enough.”

  “And here I thought the studios would have had—”

  “A bigger outfit running their toilet-washing-liquid interests?” The man had evidently run through this before. There was an odd charm to it all. “Of course, but then I’m an inside man. I was owed. Favors and so forth. Highly confidential stuff.”

  “The intricate world of toilet-liquid syndicates.”

  “Exactly.” The man nodded over at the boars. “They’ll make someone a nice bit of eating.”

  “That would be a shame.”

  “You don’t like eating?”

  Hoffner took a pull on his cigarette. “So how does one become an ‘inside man’?”

  “The usual course. A producer, director—I don’t remember which—one of them had an eye for my daughter. Got me the contract. On a limited basis, of course. One man, one truck. Enough liquid for the small buildings. More if she spread her legs.”

  “Imagine if she marries him?”

  “I don’t. She ran off to Darmstadt with a butcher’s apprentice two years ago. I think the studio felt sorry. Old widower abandoned by his only daughter.”

  “That’s a bit rough.”

  “Not really. They let me keep the contract. Don’t know why. I never liked her much. She’s probably fat now. Fat like that big one there. With a child. A fat little boy. He probably beats her. The butcher, not the child.”

  Here it was, thought Hoffner. The man had lived through the Kaiser, the war, unemployment, a daughter, and none of it mattered, not so much at its heart as in its passing. Berlin’s saving grace had always been her incessant movement forward. Only a real Berliner understood that.

  “Quite a sky,” said the man. Even the briefest of conversations had to make mention of it. “It’ll pass.”

  “I imagine it will.”

  The man took a last pull, then flicked his cigarette to the ground. “Bit early for a cop to be heading out to the studios.”

  All this certainty in the Grunwald this morning, thought Hoffner. “Highly confidential stuff.”

  The man exhaled as he pushed himself up. “Yah. I’m sure it is.” Inside the cab, he leaned out the window. “Watch where you piss out there. Make my life a little easier.” He put the truck in gear and headed off.

  Hoffner crushed out his cigarette and noticed all three of the boars now looking back. For some reason, he bent over and picked up the man’s cigarette; it was still moist. He then opened the door, tossed the butts onto the passenger-side floor, and pressed the starter. The sound sent the boars darting into the wood, and Hoffner turned to see them disappear. This they were afraid of.

  Settling in, he pulled the door shut and headed up onto the road.

  . . .

  THE FIRST OF THE STUDIO buildings emerged on the horizon like a caravan of turtles. The film men had bought the land before the war, an abandoned factory stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Safer that way, they reasoned: no apartment complexes nearby to go up in flames should the reels catch fire. The place had grown in the intervening years. Under a vacant sky, the sprawl seemed even more desolate.

  Hoffner pulled up to the gate and waited, a walled fence stretching off in either direction. The Ufa emblem dangled precariously above. To the side, a large billboard advertised the most recent studio triumphs: posters of Emil Jannings and Asta Nielsen, Conrad Veidt in some menacing pose, along with the warnings APPALLING! DANGEROUS! DAUGHTERS BEWARE! Veidt’s shadow was especially well placed—obscuring the crucial E and W in BEWARE!—and informing the casual reader that, perhaps, the daughters might be nude in this particular film. Hoffner appreciated the designer’s ingenuity.

  He reached for his badge as the guard approached.

  “No need for that, Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissar.” The man’s easy grin seemed at odds with the long coat, braiding at the shoulders, and equally impressive hat. He might have been a doorman at the Adlon or Esplanade if not for the Ufa logo on his lapel. “Bauer,” he continued. “Oberwachtmeister Anders Bauer, retired. I was at the Alex with you, last posting before my thirty-five came up.”

  “Bauer.” Hoffner nodded as if he recalled the man. “Of course.” It was nothing new for an old Schutzi sergeant to find himself a night watchman or gatekeeper around town, especially when everyone’s pension had blown up with the inflation. Why not out at the film studios: more exotic, Hoffner imagined. “You’ve landed yourself a nice bit of work.”

  “Can’t complain, Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissar.” He handed Hoffner a yellow card that read “Day Pass—Grosse Halle.” “Hot meals at the commissary. Good uniform.” Bauer’s expression hardened. “Naturally you’ve come about that business with Thyssen, Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissar.” He brought a clipboard up and pointed to where Hoffner was meant to sign.

  Hoffner en
joyed the dedication: it was still in the old dog’s blood. “Business,” he said as he scrawled his name. “I was told suicide.”

  “You hear things, Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissar. That’s all.” Bauer gave an unconvinced nod. “But if they say suicide, then it must be suicide.”

  Hoffner placed the card in his coat pocket. “Well then, you hear anything else, you let me know. Just between the two of us—Herr Oberwachtmeister.”

  The man’s eyes flashed momentarily. “Absolutely, Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissar.” And with a sudden Teutonic precision, Bauer returned to the gate, pulled up the barrier, and motioned Hoffner through. Not wanting to spoil the man’s performance, Hoffner took the car in without the slightest idea where he was going.

  AS IT TURNED OUT, every road seemed to lead to the Grosse Halle. Hoffner followed the signs past a series of bungalows and out into an open area where a stone wall with turrets rose in the distance. At its side, a dragon’s head peeked out from behind a bush. For anyone who had stepped inside a movie palace in the last two years, this would have been exhilarating: images meant to be seen only in flickering light now made real, if perhaps less epic. Hoffner’s son Georgi had explained it all to him, angles and lenses and lighting, but what was the point in knowing when it reduced it to this? Even so, Hoffner barely noticed them as he turned down a narrow lane, past a row of flat, soulless buildings and up toward the Great Studio.

  The papers had been full of it last year when the massive thing had gone up, this many meters long, that many meters wide, “as tall as ten men to the catwalks!” and with an entire wall made of glass for natural light. Had the sky shown even the slightest hint of color there might have been something ominous in its stare. Instead, the place simply looked brown.