My Cousin Skinny, page 8
Nowhere in the document was there a street address or telephone number or other contact information. Claims could be filed, it was stated, by sending proof of death of the insured party herein named to ‘the Company’ at the above given post office box.
The desk sergeant didn’t recognize Willi when he came through the station door. He looked like an old man, shrunken, skeletal, and leaning on a cane. Ove Sandheim, the chief sergeant, had the same reaction, and then so did Ludwig Voss, Willi’s partner. ‘Christ, Geismeier, you look older than me. What the hell are you doing here? You should be home in bed.’
Willi said he was only there on a personal matter. To help Eva’s parents collect on her insurance policy, he wanted to find an address for the Royal Bavarian Assurance Company. There had to be a record somewhere of the company’s physical address and the principals involved, the executives and owners. Willi sat slumped at his desk while Ludwig went to get the Münchener Unternehmensregister, the Munich Company Register, a thick binder that was updated monthly with new pages. Royal Bavarian Assurance was not listed in the main volume or in the updates.
‘You want me to call the post office?’ said Ludwig. ‘They won’t want to say who owns the box. But if we need to, we can try for a court order.’
‘I’ll call,’ said Willi.
Just as Ludwig had predicted, the post office declined to help. The man on the phone said the names of the owners of boxes was privileged information that could not be given out.
‘This is a police matter,’ said Willi.
The man on the phone was not impressed.
‘What’s your name, sir?’ said Willi. When the man declined to give it, Willi said, ‘I’ll need it for the court order.’
‘Doctor Hildesheim, postal inspector,’ said the man.
‘Doctor Hildesheim,’ said Willi, ‘as I already explained, I am asking you for the name of the owner of this post-office box as part of a police investigation. We have good reason to believe that the owners of that box are using it to commit insurance fraud. If you force me to get a court order, we will petition for an order revealing the owners of every single box in Munich. It is the only way we can make certain this particular box is the only one these criminals are using.’
Willi waited while Hildesheim considered his options. Finally he said, ‘Blau-Weiß Printing Company.’
‘Address?’ said Willi.
‘29 Lauensteinstraße.’
‘Thank you, Herr Doctor, for your cooperation.’ Willi hung up the phone.
Ludwig laughed. ‘There’s no way you were ever going to get that court order.’
‘I know,’ said Willi.
After telling Ove about what looked like a case of insurance fraud, Willi took the streetcar home. The ruined station where Karlo and his comrades had been camped was boarded up and papered over with posters. One showed Kaiser Wilhelm with a red X across his face. Another showed a map of Germany with a sword sticking out. STAB IN THE BACK, it said. A hammer and sickle had been painted across one wall.
Willi’s mother watched from the window while he struggled with the heavy gate and shuffled up the garden path leaning on his cane. He wanted to go straight up to his room and get in bed, but his mother made him eat first – liver, roasted potatoes, turnips, kraut.
‘He is running on empty,’ said his father once he had limped upstairs.
‘The war, the Grippe, and now Eva, it’s too much for any human,’ said his mother. ‘It has taken the life out of him.’
A few days later, Willi’s mother fell ill and his father the day after that. Doctor Trevelius came, but all he could do was shrug helplessly. ‘There are chains of sickness,’ he said, ‘where it passes through a family like this.’ He spread his hands in a sign of resignation.
Now Willi sat with his parents, fed them, talked to them, held their hands. His father didn’t stop coughing until the moment he died. His mother died silently a short while later. They were buried in the Geismeier family plot in the Nordfriedhof, the North Cemetery.
Willi stood at their grave, leaning on his cane, while a Lutheran minister spoke in vague words about how beloved they were, what good people they were. Willi wondered whether the man had even known them. The Zepps were there with their daughter, Lola. She had come home for the funeral. Many of the men and women from Geismeier Ceramics were there as well. When the ceremony was over and the graves were being closed, everyone passed by Willi and offered condolences, wondering as they did, what would become of Geismeier Ceramics, how long would they still have jobs.
Lola walked Willi home, her arm in his. Lola had gotten pregnant at seventeen, had married, had lost the child, had then lost her husband, shot through the eye by a sniper in Belgium. It had been six months before Lola found out he was dead. She had worked in a field hospital and now worked as a private nurse in Augsburg. With everything that had happened to them both, they would have had lots to talk about. Still, they walked in silence.
THE BRIDGE
When the will was settled, Willi’s parents had left Lola’s parents enough money to live comfortably. They moved to a small house on the far outskirts of the city, from where, on a clear day, they could see the Alps shimmering white in the distance.
Willi’s father had always said he would leave Geismeier Ceramics to his employees, and he did just that. As instructed, the lawyer held a series of meetings with the new owners and helped them organize the company into a cooperative. Heinz Fritsch had been there longer than anyone else and had already been serving as the president’s assistant for the last months. His fellow employees now chose him to be the new president of the company.
At a memorial gathering at Geismeier Ceramics, Heinz made a speech describing the company as a special place to work, and vowing that it would remain so as long as he was president. The employees had voted to name Willi honorary chairman. Heinz Fritsch shook Willi’s hand and asked him to unveil the portrait they had commissioned of his father. Willi pulled on the golden rope and the black velvet curtain fell to the floor. There, in a gilt frame, was his father in a dark suit, seated on his favorite chair, a cigar in his hand, the familiar half-smile on his face. The painting was hung in the factory’s entry hall. Geismeier Ceramics continued for eleven more years as a bastion of decency and productivity while German society came apart around it.
What started as a mutiny by sailors in Kiel in the far north, exploded into a full-blown revolution and spread across Germany like the plague. The National Assembly organized a republican government as quickly as they could to fill the void. They signed an armistice to stop the war. Even though an armistice had been urged on them by the military high command, they were now accused by the same high command of betrayal, of stabbing Germany in the back.
In Munich, the socialist Kurt Eisner seized power from the Bavarian King Ludwig the Third and declared Bavaria a free state. ‘Can he do that?’ said Count Sigismund Maria von Wittelsbach. The count had survived the war, although his horse Abendstern had not. The count, crippled by arthritis and suffering from the beginnings of dementia, was hustled into a car by his Austrian nephew and driven to Salzburg. ‘Where are we going?’ he wondered aloud. ‘Will there be horses?’ There were horses, but the count was in no condition to ride.
Within four months the new premier, Kurt Eisner, had taken two bullets to the brain at point-blank range. His assassin Count Anton Arco-Valley had waited in the entry to the foreign ministry and attacked Eisner from behind.
‘Arco-Valley?’ said the count, lowering his newspaper. ‘I know that name. Didn’t he serve?’
‘The Royal Bavarian Infantry,’ said the count’s nephew.
‘Infantry? So,’ said the count, ‘not cavalry then?’ After a long pause the count said, ‘And Eisner? A Jew, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said the nephew.
‘So that was it, then, was it?’ said the count. ‘But he was upstanding, I think.’
‘Yes, I think he was,’ said the nephew. ‘A decent man.’
The communists rallied to establish a Bavarian Socialist Republic, which they did, and which collapsed just as quickly under violent attack by roving bands of army veterans, many like Arco-Valley, clinging to lies about a colossal betrayal of Germany’s greatness by Jews, republicans, socialists and communists. There were barricades and checkpoints in the streets, parts of the city were controlled by the communists and parts by the Freikorps, the fascist militias. Munich was riven by violence, shortages, hunger, and of course still the Spanische Grippe.
Willi’s physical strength was returning. But an endless loop of sorrow and despair circled through his brain, trying to convince him in a hundred ways that life on earth was not worth living. It was little more than madness and darkness, sickness and misery. Those he loved were dead. One terrible war had just ended, another was surely on its way.
When Willi tried to argue his way out of it, all he came up with was platitudes – life goes on; someday I will love again; the world will heal; Germans are more decent than this – which only made his despair more profound. Every evening Puck was watching by the window for him to come home and followed him from room to room when he was there. But they didn’t talk much any more.
The big house was Willi’s now, and for the time being he left it as it was. He lived only in the kitchen, the sitting room with the fireplace where his father had loved to smoke his cigar, and in his bedroom upstairs. One day he gathered his parents’ clothes together. He could smell his mother’s lavender water, his father’s cigars as he carried them downstairs. He found a charity at St Martin’s Church that would give them to the needy.
Willi opened the gate and a truck backed up to the house. The two men, who carried out armfuls of clothes, were themselves shabbily dressed. ‘What about the furniture?’ said one, looking around. ‘Any of that going?’
‘No,’ said Willi. ‘Not yet.’
‘OK,’ said the man. You could hear the disappointment in his voice.
‘Those chickens give you eggs?’ said the other man. Willi gave the men that morning’s eggs.
The next morning he went back to St Martin’s and told them they could come take the furniture after all. A truck with two different men came later that afternoon. Willi told them what to take and what to leave. They carried it out into the garden. There it all stood, some of it elegant, all of it part of his story. But now it stood there, lost, without meaning or significance. The men loaded it into the truck and drove it away.
The long walks along the Isar or through the English Garden that Willi had loved before the war were not the same. There were homeless veterans everywhere, either manning barricades or shivering under makeshift shelters. And though the roses were blooming in the English Garden, the garish reds and yellows and their incessant bobbing in the breeze seemed to be mocking him. Their scent reminded him of death.
Crossing the footbridge over the Isar one September morning, Willi was overcome by a coughing fit – this still happened from time to time. He grabbed the iron railing and held on until the coughing subsided. Out of breath, his chest heaving, his throat raw, he looked down into the swollen river, churning brown and foamy. He imagined Ophelia drifting by. He gave her Eva’s face. Her hair drifted around her white face; her mouth was open. Her eyes were looking at him as her dress pulled her under. The image was vivid and terrible, and Willi yearned to join her.
He could get over the railing, be in the water with one leap, and in another minute his pain would be over. But even before he could finish the thought, he knew he wouldn’t do it. As soon as the icy water closed on him, he would be swimming for his life. And, he thought to himself, who will take care of Puck?
Willi felt dizzy. He closed his eyes and held on to the railing. It came down to a choice – didn’t it? – between a hard life and the peace of the river. Eternal freedom or the difficult here and now. ‘To be or not to be?’ He laughed as he said the words aloud.
The outrageous fortune he had suffered in his still short life felt unbearable. And who knew what awfulness was yet to come? For now, though – right now – he could walk the fifteen minutes to Schillerstraße, cross the courtyard, through the door, past the desk sergeant, into the detectives’ room, and sit down at the familiar wooden desk beside the mimeograph machine with the sign on it that said Detective W. Geismeier.
There – right there – a stack of documents connected with an insurance fraud case waited. The next hour would pass as he read through the files for information or leads. He would solve the case eventually; he was pretty sure of that. Or maybe he wouldn’t. But there would always be another case. He would go home, make supper, feed Puck, go to bed. The next day would pass in a similar fashion, and the day after that, and the one after that. That was how it always worked: an entire lifetime would go by, moment by moment by moment.
Willi felt his despair breaking, like the spring ice. The river below him became just the Isar again, a river without implication. He let go of the railing, gathered himself, and continued across the bridge. He walked along Schillerstraße, stopped at the little bar for a cup of coffee. It tasted good; it tasted like the start of something. He crossed the street, went into the courtyard. The Italian florist recognized him and sang, ‘Guten Morgen,’ hardening the t and rolling the r on his tongue so it sounded more Italian than German.
The Blau-Weiß Printing Company was in a large four-story warehouse in Ludwigstadt, not that far from Geismeier Ceramics. The building had been converted into offices and workshops before the war. A textile manufacturer, a book publisher, a distributor of medical supplies, an import-export company, and Blau-Weiß Printing had been there, but now most of those offices were abandoned and padlocked. A communist militia had taken over one end of the building. Of the earlier companies, only the import-export company and the printing company remained.
Neither Willi nor his badge impressed the communist guard who had stationed himself just inside the front door. He wore a red armband and a hat that he imagined made him look Russian. He sat with his feet on the table and slid his finger down a page. ‘Your name’s not on the list. You can’t go up,’ he said.
‘I didn’t ask for permission. I asked where their offices are,’ said Willi.
The guard put an astonished look on his face. ‘Don’t you understand German, Kamerad?’ he said. He took his feet off the table and stood up, as though he meant to stop Willi from going any further. This was how things were now; in a society coming apart, everybody thinks they’re in charge.
‘Whatever you’re thinking of doing,’ said Willi, ‘think again.’
The guard, not a big or courageous or astute man, looked at Willi. Willi didn’t look like much. Young, tall, thin, glasses, holding a badge toward him. But for reasons he didn’t himself understand, the guard said, ‘Fourth floor.’
Willi climbed to the fourth floor. At the top of the stairs was a heavy steel door with a sign that said Blau-Weiß Printing. Willi opened the door and was met by the rhythmic racket of a printing operation and the pungent smell of printers’ ink. Spring sunlight slanted in through the tall windows. Willi asked a clerk to direct him to the person in charge. The clerk pointed to an enclosed cubicle. A man in a printer’s apron stood behind a man sitting at a desk peering through a loupe. Willi knocked on the door and went in.
‘Yes?’ said the man without looking up.
Willi held up his badge. ‘I’m from the police, Detective Geismeier,’ he said. ‘This post-office box is rented in your company’s name.’ The man looked up and Willi gave him a slip of paper with the box number on it.
‘What’s this about?’ said the man.
‘Is this your post-office box?’ said Willi.
The man looked at Willi.
Willi looked back. The man sighed, got up, went to the door, and waved for one of the clerks to come in. ‘Is this our PO box?’ he said, handing him the paper.
The clerk found a ledger, opened it and slid his finger down the page. ‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘But I thought we’d got rid of it.’
‘We got rid of it?’ said the boss to the clerk. ‘Well, who was supposed to get rid of it?’
‘Gabek,’ said the clerk, checking the ledger. ‘Gabek was supposed to close it out.’
‘Get Gabek in here,’ said the boss.
Gabek claimed at first that he had canceled the box. There must be some mistake. But he soon wrapped himself in a web of lies, and finally confessed that he hadn’t canceled the box. Someone had offered him money to let them use the box for unknown purposes.
Willi stood with Gabek while he cleared out his locker. Gabek swore he didn’t know the person, didn’t know who he was, had never even seen him. He said he had answered a classified ad in the paper. ‘AGENT NEEDED. Payment for service rendered,’ followed by a classified ad box number.
Gabek said he didn’t even know what the box was used for, had never seen the insurance forms. When Willi showed him one, Gabek looked away. ‘Read it,’ said Willi.
Gabek studied the form. ‘Out loud,’ said Willi. Gabek tried to sound out a few words. He couldn’t read.
‘How’d you read the classified ad?’ said Willi.
‘A friend read it to me. From the Kurier.’
Willi followed up with the newspaper, but they didn’t find the ad. Gabek was charged and convicted of fraud which the prosecutor called noxious and disgusting – running an insurance swindle and stealing money from the fearful and the grieving. Gabek swore up and down he had nothing to do with the swindle, but the judge said that didn’t matter. He had been a participant, knowing or unknowing. He agreed with the prosecutor that the swindle was evil and gave Gabek three years in Stadelheim Prison. Gabek wailed that his life was over. ‘You should have thought of that before you got involved in crime,’ said the judge, and Gabek was led off in shackles.
TWO CASES
Ludwig came to Willi with a case. ‘A drug case,’ he said. ‘Trouble is, I’m not sure it’s even a case.’
