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Автор Филип Керр
A German Requiem
(Bernie Gunther #3)
by Philip Kerr
Philip Kerr was born in Edinburgh in 1956 and lives in London. As a freelance journalist he has written for a number of newspapers and magazines.
For Jane,
and in memory of my father
It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.
It is not your memories which haunt you.
It is not what you have written down.
It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.
What you must go on forgetting all your life.
PART ONE
BERLIN, 1947
These days, if you are a German you spend your time in Purgatory before you die, in earthly suffering for all your country’s unpunished and unrepented sins, until the day when, with the aid of the prayers of the Powers – or three of them, anyway – Germany is finally purified.
For now we live in fear. Mostly it is fear of the Ivans, matched only by the almost universal dread of venereal disease, which has become something of an epidemic, although both afflictions are generally held to be synonymous.
1
It was a cold, beautiful day, the kind you can best appreciate with a fire to stoke and a dog to scratch. I had neither, but then there wasn’t any fuel about and I never much liked dogs. But thanks to the quilt I had wrapped around my legs I was warm, and I had just started to congratulate myself on being able to work from home – the sitting-room doubled as my office – when there was a knock at what passed for the front door.
I cursed and got off my couch.
‘This will take a minute,’ I shouted through the wood, ‘so don’t go away. ’ I worked the key in the lock and started to pull at the big brass handle. ‘It helps if you push it from your side,’ I shouted again. I heard the scrape of shoes on the landing and then felt a pressure on the other side of the door. Finally it shuddered open.
He was a tall man of about sixty. With his high cheekbones, thin short snout, old-fashioned side-whiskers and angry expression, he reminded me of a mean old king baboon.
‘I think I must have pulled something,’ he grunted, rubbing his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said, and stood aside to let him in. ‘There’s been quite a bit of subsidence in the building. The door needs rehanging, but of course you can’t get the tools. ’ I showed him into the sitting-room. ‘Still, we’re not too badly off here. We’ve had some new glass, and the roof seems to keep out the rain. Sit down. ’ I pointed to the only armchair and resumed my position on the couch.
The man put down his briefcase, took off his bowler hat and sat down with an exhausted sigh. He didn’t loosen his grey overcoat and I didn’t blame him for it.
