Prague Fatale Read Online Free PDF

had some of her dresses and sometimes, when I’d managed to overcome the shortages and have a drink or two and I was feeling sorry for myself and, more particularly, for her, I’d get one of her old garments out of the closet and press the material to my nose and mouth and inhale her memory. For a long time after she was gone that was what I called a home life. When she’d been alive we had soap, so my memories were all pleasant ones; these days things were rather less fragrant, and if you were wise you boarded the S-Bahn holding an orange stuffed with cloves, like a medieval Pope going among the common people. Especially in summer. Even the prettiest girl smelled like a stevedore in the dog days of 1941.
     
    At first I figured on giving the two Fridmann sisters the yellow dress so that they could use it for making yellow stars, only there was something about this I didn’t like. I suppose it made me feel complicit in the whole horrible police order. Especially since I was a policeman. So, halfway down the stairs with the yellow dress draped over my arm I went back to my flat and fetched all of the dresses that were in my closet. But even this felt inadequate and, as I handed over my wife’s remaining wardrobe to these harmless women, I quietly decided to do something more.
     
    It isn’t exactly a page from some heroic tale as described by Winckelmann or Hölderlin, but that’s how this whole story got started: if it hadn’t been for the decision to help the Fridmann sisters I’d never have met Arianne Tauber and what happened wouldn’t have happened.
     
    Back inside my apartment I smoked the last of my cigarettesand contemplated putting my nose in some records at the Alex, just to see if Mikhail and Efim Fridmann were still alive. Well, that was one thing I could do, but for anyone with a purple J on their ration cards it wasn’t going to help feed them. Two women who looked as thin as the Fridmann sisters were going to need something more substantial than just some information about their loved ones.
     
    After a while I had what I thought was a good idea and fetched a German Army bread-bag from my closet. In the bread bag was a kilo of Algerian coffee beans I’d purloined in Paris and which I’d been planning to trade for some cigarettes. I left my flat and took a tram east as far as Potsdamer Station.
     
    It was a warm evening, not yet dark. Couples were strolling arm in arm through the Tiergarten and it seemed almost impossible that two thousand kilometres to the east the German Army was surrounding Kiev and slowly tightening its stranglehold on Leningrad. I walked up to Pariser Platz. I was on my way to the Adlon Hotel to see the maître d’ with the aim of trading the coffee for some food that I could give the two sisters.
     
    The maître d’ at the Adlon that year was Willy Thummel, a fat Sudeten German who was always busy and so light on his toes that it made me wonder how he ever got fat in the first place. With his rosy cheeks, his easy smile and his impeccable clothes he always reminded me of Herman Göring. Without a doubt both men enjoyed their food, although the Reichsmarshal had always given me the impression that he might just have eaten me, too, if he’d been hungry enough. Willy liked his food; but he liked people more.
     
    There were no customers in the restaurant – not yet – and Willy was checking the blackout curtains when I poked mynose around the door. Like any good maître d’ he spotted me immediately and quickly came my way on invisible casters.
     
    ‘Bernie. You look troubled. Are you all right?’
     
    ‘What’s the point of complaining, Willy?’
     
    ‘I don’t know; the wheel that squeaks the loudest in Germany these days usually gets the most grease. What brings you here?’
     
    ‘A word in private, Willy.’
     
    We went down a small flight of stairs to an office. Willy closed the door and poured two small glasses of sherry. I knew he was seldom away from the