chapter forty

The Pepper Mill

Mühsam never announced his coming with anything as discrete as a tap on the door. Glassware threatened to topple in response to the crashing entry. Papers spiralled to the floor.

“How is the work progressing, Herr Kørner? Are you managing to isolate the defective genes from the samples?”

“I have some interesting results, but as to which results are more interesting than others I am not yet sure. I really need more samples from confirmed cases,” replied Frank, removing his breathing mask with feigned difficulty in order to give himself time to hide his irritation.

“Well, that is exactly the substance of my visit, Herr Kørner. Intelligence has located a veritable nest of these degenerates, and I have decided that you are the best person to engage in some hands-on research. Field work; empirical evidence; the stuff of science is it not? I am sure you are excited by this prospect.”

Frank was far from excited by the prospect, since he believed that any opportunity he was to be offered here was only an opportunity to make himself a victim of the inhuman processes that were carried out daily in the camp. He had seen the bodies being removed to the ovens and knew that the appetite of the flames was insatiable. Nevertheless his survival depended on living up to the expectations of the authorities.

“It sounds fascinating, professor. I look forward to designing the research.”

“The design is done, Herr Kørner. All you need are some new clothes, which have been already requisitioned for you. The first stage is to get you into the nest itself. Look at these photographs please.”

The professor dropped a thin stack of large prints onto the desk. The first showed a male and female couple standing at a hotel bar. In the next the man was sitting at a typewriter.

“Who is this?”

“This is the son, and that is the daughter, of a celebrated German novelist. He is presently employed as a journalist. Here is some of his so-called work.” A more substantial pile of newspaper clippings followed the photographs onto the desk. “And here are his published novels to date; the latest is, I believe, a kind of autobiography.” Four books flattened the papers.

“Am I to read all this before beginning the project?” Frank had avoided fiction for years, and was sure that Mühsam would frown upon his childish love of Dickens.

“Unfortunately we do not have the luxury of a period of preparation. Just make sure you can recognise him and his sister and can make conversation about his work. You leave for Berlin inside the hour,” and with that Mühsam strode from the office, leaving Frank to come to terms with the fact that he was, in some sense, getting out of the camp. He opened the autobiography and within a few pages had understood two things: the identity of the author and his similarity in many respects to Frank himself.

The Fuhrer had set him to work hunting down people like himself; that is to say the homosexual offspring of genius. It was elegant and terrifying at the same time, but it gave him back his power and it would get him into a less oppressive place than this camp. He went in search of coffee and the promised clothes. The camp coffee caused intense pain in the head and stomach which only abated slowly as the car sped towards Berlin. On the other hand Frank was more than satisfied with his new clothes, generous in fit, sumptuous in fabric and, above all, French. He had also been provided with a wad of fifty million mark notes and instructions to spend them on buying alcohol and drugs for the object of the study. Life had suddenly taken a dramatic turn for the better.

The car stopped outside a cabaret: The Pepper Mill. The driver opened the door for him, giving the appearance of a wealthy businessman and his chauffeur, but the brief conversation was chilling. “We will know when you are ready to be collected, Herr Kørner. You will not be alone in there.”

Frank gathered the city air into his chest, countless fragments of the complex lives of its inhabitants. It tasted good. He lit a cigarette and entered the new world; his old world.

chapter thirty-nine

The Wyckham Arms

The Public Library is a wonderful institution. Founded by a Victorian philanthropist, the one which Kay passed on her way to work had enabled the education and entertainment of generations in this seedy end of South East London. However to Kay it represented something far more focussed than the benevolence of its patron; it had enabled her to discover Frank’s address, and had given her the opportunity of observing him on a daily basis. He would not be there yet; Frank did not arrive until after ten and she clocked on at nine, but she would make it her business to devote some of her lunch hour to watching him sitting at a monitor. At this stage she did not know exactly why she was intent on keeping such a close eye on Frank. He had announced his presence with the grisly remains of her friend in Listowel. She was determined not to be surprised by him as Trisha had been.

Yet behind the logic of that argument she was aware of an uncomfortable, savage pleasure. Like a cat she enjoyed the silent, careful stalking of the prey. Like a cat she anticipated the game of toying with her victim; then the ecstasy of crunching his bones and licking out his entrails.

Shocked at her thoughts and the dampness in her cunt she looked into the grey London sky before entering the betting shop and clocking on. The pale faced punters were already shuffling about the room, their flesh the colour and texture of the racing papers, their smells tobacco, alcohol and coffee. The lost and hardened losers rarely ate, and seemed to contain famine within their cheap clothes. Kay felt sometimes that she gave out the scraps of paper detailing bets as a priest administers the host: her punters retiring to bars and coffee shops to silently digest their hopes, and to pray for their own salvation.

The odds meant nothing to her. In this way she was immune to the contagious flow of ratio that fed the cancer in her customers. She checked off slips concerning probabilities for horses, dogs, football teams and even aspiring singers without the slightest desire to know of the realities they in some way described. Her only concern was the balance between the chances of her survival or Frank’s. There was no possibility of a no-score draw in this encounter.

Her colleagues had aspirations of understanding the relative prowess of the punters, and when certain customers placed bets would rush to a neighbouring establishment to replicate a wager that was guaranteed to be “golden”. Kay had already learned that this practice was a sign of co-dependency and had made the bet-takers as hollow as the bet-makers. Theirs was a virtual life, fed by half comprehended details of an event somewhere else. She, on the other hand, was living the contest, backing herself to survive, and she was likewise forced to do the study of form that would secure her victory.

But Frank was a horse of a different colour. His ability to survive had been clearly demonstrated to her, and she had seen his ruthlessness and pride at first hand. She would have to prepare thoroughly, and that meant careful observation of his behaviour wherever she could find it.

Thus, at one a.m. she checked out for lunch and, pausing only to pick up a bottle of water and a packet of crisps from a corner shop, headed for the library where she would be sure to find him.

To her astonishment she saw Frank leaving the library and walking rapidly along Brockley Rise. The determination of his step in contrast to the lethargy she had observed over the previous weeks sent alarm bells ringing in her brain. He knew something and was acting. Kay tried to reason that this probably had nothing to do with her, but the images of her customers’ faces told her the truth: he knows something that you don’t. She opened the water and rinsed her mouth. Air came in but she didn’t feel it. She ceased to respire and decided to act.

And Frank entered the Wyckham Arms.

Pubs at lunchtime in south east London were not the natural environment of young women unless they had business to conduct. Kay found that business being conducted along with many others, equally unregulated by the government. Then she found Frank, clear spirit in one hand and Guinness in the other moving to a table near the darts board. His target was an Irishman in his forties, obviously employed in the building industry. She took in the overalls, the spits of plaster on the boots, the heavy hand supporting the forehead as Frank passed in front of him, placed the Guinness on the cheap table and settled himself. She wanted to move closer in a risky, possibly fatal attempt to overhear the conversation, but a sudden jarring bolt of recognition paralysed her. She knew this man. He had been Trisha’s next-door neighbour in the Ash Field.

One glance in her direction an Anthony, for that was his name, would jump up and greet her, whole-heartedly welcome her and invite her to meet his new friend, for she knew his nature. If this happened she would not survive her lunch hour. Striving for South East London anonymity she gently turned and headed for the ladies.

She crouched in a booth helplessly reciting the scratched obscenities on the toilet door and trying minimise her inhalation of excrement and stale supermarket perfumes. The few women in the bar meant that she had a generally solitary residence, although she had to feign illness to avert the concerns of one who used the lavatory as an office to set up her afternoon appointments, the details of which Kay wished she had not overheard. Some men had unusual ways of finding relief. Eventually she accepted the culture of her temporary cell and emptied her terrified bowels into the lavatory.

She stopped breathing for too long, but then refused to gulp in the fetid air. Instead she controlled the passage of gasses, and this produced a glacial calm. She stood, adjusted her clothing and rinsed her face and hands. The bar was quiet now. Frank and Anthony were gone. The bar tender was intent on studying the racing pages, although he must use a rival bookies. The tables had not been cleared and Kay went to the one that Frank had occupied, just to know she could bear to do it. Nestling under the Guinness glass, stained now with the sienna alcohol was a rectangle of decomposing paper. She lifted the glass and gently turned the paper.

It fell apart against her fingers, but that meant nothing. The blood pulsed in her veins, her saliva ran hot and tension dissolved in a suppressed orgasm. It was the voucher for the seaweed baths in Ballybunion; her bait, the first speculative step in her counter attack on Frank. The bait had been taken; now she had to set the trap.