Those Damned Whiskers

‘I like this,’ Bruckmeyer announced to no one in particular. Flames billowed in the dark spots of his eyes. ‘I like this too much.’ He laughed. ‘It helps if you imagine the criminals running the joint being barbecued inside it.’ He threw a cigarette butt in the gutter and crushed it with his heel.

The wind blowing down Dorotheen Strasse held onto the chill of Siberia. It was still March and the winter had been bitter. The burning building threw a little warmth our way and, as we watched, there was an almighty roar and with a brilliant shower of sparks against the night sky the roof collapsed. A group of Brown Shirts nearby cheered and champagne corks popped.

I tried to get it all down on paper; the heat, the expectant faces in the crowd, the useless efforts of the Berlin Fire Brigade (someone had turned the water off at the mains), the dirty smoke, reflections off the Spree. But truth is I was mesmerised by the spectacle of it all to write too much that night. The Old Order up in flames.

There was Bruckmeyer from the Völkischer Beobachter, with his superior pencil-thin moustache, Kauer from Country Life – not that I knew what he was there for – and Paula Reinhold, the journalist from Radio DR3. I always thought she had a good face for radio. And me, a freelancer just trying to earn my next crust. We stood in a jaded little huddle as the Reichstag went up in flames.

‘They’ll rebuild,’ Bruckmeyer muttered. ‘And they’ll make it better than ever. Improve on the politics too, I should think.’ He wandered over to chat with the Brown Shirts and cadge a glass of bubbly off them.

*

I heard the rumours. Everyone in the press had, of course, but I chose not to repeat them. If you wanted to be taken for a serious operator you didn’t. You could smell the change in the air, and I was hungry. I wrote a series of sharp stories, biting, censoring Brünning and the old order, critical of their incompetence and how they couldn’t even run a Fire Department, let alone a country. The final touch was suggesting the firebug was the ghost of Guy Faulks, sweeping clean the Weimar Republic’s incompetents. I liked that. The Beobachter published all four articles.

I should make it clear from the start that I have nothing against Jews. I never have. I had a Jewish neighbour once, and he was a good fellow. This is so. But I cannot describe the emotion that sweeps over me as I hear the Führer addressing us. When he speaks of the disgrace of Germany I feel ready to spring on the enemy. His appeal to German manhood is like a call to arms, the gospel he preaches the sacred truth. I know how much he has done for us.

Streicher read my work in the Beobachter, and on the strength of it offered me a job. So I hitched my wagon to his rising star, and it proved to be an astute career move. Paid to write! Even if the paper was horse salami and I could spit out articles with my eyes closed. It was steady money and that meant a lot to me. I’d been freelancing for too long. And Streicher agreed to my remaining in Berlin, too. Goodbye poverty.

Liese argued with me. ‘What have you against Jews?’ she says. I’m surprised; she rarely occupied herself with much outside clothing catalogues and her next audition.

‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘But that’s not the point. I’ll be getting my name out there. I haven’t had anything published for a long time. This is the break I’ve been looking for.’

‘You shouldn’t have taken it, Ullie,’ she says. And she looks at me with her break-your-heart blue eyes, which every man in the Reich grew to be sick over. Then she looks away. ‘It’s a terrible paper. It’s a laughing stock. And it’s dangerous.’

‘So we’ll live on the proceeds of my novel then will we? Or better, on your income as an actress!’ She snorts. ‘What am I supposed to do? I’m a writer for God’s sake. There are so few writing jobs around. Even the Führer reads Der Stürmer.’

She doesn’t speak for a moment and leafs through the copy I’ve brought home. Then she holds it in my face and reads aloud:

‘The sword will not be sheathed.

The Stürmer stands as ever

In battle for the people and the Fatherland.

It fights the Jews because it loves the people.’

‘I wrote that,’ I say with a sheepish smile.

‘What’s happened to you?’

She’s getting my goat. ‘So maybe it’s rubbish!’ I explode. ‘We’ve got to eat, don’t we! I don’t believe a word of it.’

‘And that makes it better?’

I say; ‘It’s been made law now, anyway. It’s official. We’re allowed to discriminate. Jews and other genetic undesirables.’

‘Law?’ she says, eyes wide.

‘Yes. There’s nothing we can do to change the law. We’d better accept it.’ She sighs. ‘And why not profit from it? Maybe it will give you the opportunity to concentrate on your acting. Take some classes. You can give up your day job.’

That argument finally swayed her.

It may have been as far back as then, March ’33, that I started noticing symptoms. I was no March Violet, I’d had my party card already for two years. But after ’33 the restlessness and insomnia increased. That put me on edge, made me irritable. My back was giving me trouble even then. Liese said I was more prone to fly off the handle, smash things around the flat. I hate it when she dissects me like that. It makes me furious.

The army called me up in ’41. Streicher protested on the most vigorous terms, that it was all a mistake, surely? That I’m in a protected industry, that I am indispensable to Der Stürmer. But there is some kind of red tape with the paper work and by the time they are prepared to listen I am in hospital in Crete with a piece of partisan’s steel in my scapula. Or clavicle, I can’t remember which.

I needn’t go into that, suffice to say that Liese was relieved to have me home and she even appreciated the bottle of olive oil I brought back from my Greek parachute holiday. I was elated to be home again. Liese’s awful heavy Biedermeier furniture, so old fashioned, now felt warm and inviting. I was even relieved to hear the opera singer downstairs, who sang Wagner at the top of her voice and ate raw eggs for breakfast.

Liese landed a part in a movie and I wrote her gushing reviews. The paper’s circulation topped two million. Apart from my encounter with the Cretans I spent the rest of the war in Berlin comfortably enough. After Greece Streicher asked me to proof final copy and deliver it to the Ministry for vetting. We didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes, especially after that incident with the Turks in 1940.

But I tired of the paper. It was no longer a challenge. There are only so many articles you can write about racial matters, or denouncing international Jewry.

*

By January ’45 it’s clear it will end in tears. I have finally convinced Liese to go back to her parents’ farm outside Munich. I even accompany her there. And that’s a concession from me. I can’t stand Bavaria. All those forests and foolish hats and the Föhn, the wind that makes you want to pull a gun and start shooting. She is distraught when I leave for Berlin, but I convince her this is the best we can do. I suppose the countryside is an idyllic place to see out the end of the war, where she will drink fresh apple juice and eat sausages and bread and wait for me.

I return home. It will all be over soon and, thank God, I’ll be able to get on with my own work, writing real books.

Berlin is worse than when I left it. It’s flooded with refugees from the east, with their stinking cooking fires in the streets. And although Munich was bombed too, it seemed like a family picnic after Berlin. The skies are black with smoke from thousands of smashed buildings. Roads are like the surface of the moon. I am forced to park my car five kilometres away from home and walk. Streets are barely recognisable. In places I must scramble over smashed piles of rubble. Cats prowl through the ruins. It has become a city of predators. At one place I gash my hand and I curse. I hear bombers overhead and I shout at them, hurl a brick at them that lands in a burning building and nearly dislocate my elbow for my trouble.

Ambulances can’t get through and in places there are dead bodies, legs sticking out from a pile of beams, an arm torn off at the elbow. In one street a woman sits wearing a floral print dress in an armchair in the middle of the road, a soft, cold rain falling over her. A man is standing next to her offering her a bunch of blue flowers. As I draw near them I raise my eyes and am about to speak when I see a shell has blown her head clean off. The man is holding his guts in his hands with a kind of stunned stupor on his face. He looks at me and opens his mouth to speak and I hurry on.

I grow disoriented. I pass several corners where the street signs are all gone. The stench of smoke makes me giddy. I stumble into a bomb crater in the middle of the road and am in bilge water up to my hips. I curse the British. I spit at the Americans and French. I pull myself out of the hole and scream at them from the middle of the road.

Finally I am in luck and I find my street. The bombers apparently haven’t been able to navigate to my apartment block. Several others in my street have been levelled but mine is untouched. I take the stairs and enter my flat. It is cold and dark although it’s only early afternoon. The power is off. I pick up the phone and it’s dead.

The flat feels spare and empty without Liese humming around, chatting about films and clothes. It is freezing and I am awake all night, staring out the window at the fires and pacing in the darkness, restless, watching the anti-aircraft batteries in Kreuzberg splitting the sky and giving the Americans a run for their trouble. One plane comes very close to my window. I swear I see the airman sitting in the cockpit. I curse him. His plane is trailing flames and it explodes down the street. I cheer.

Immediately after that there comes an ear splitting whistling and I hit the floor. There’s a huge explosion and my building rocks. I think I will be dead. I am sprayed with shattered glass. My ears ring. But the vibrations ease and I look up slowly. The windows have blown out and I brush plaster dust off my clothes. I look out the window and the building next door is gone – simply ceased to exist. Where there were bricks and mortar and wooden windowpanes and glass there is now smoke and fire and daylight. Nice view.

I wander into the kitchen and take the carving knife and in the lounge I slash Liese’s sofa. It sits like a great, ugly grey slug in the middle of the floor. I’ve always hated it. The sound of tearing material soothes my jangled nerves.

Truth is by now I’ve stopped bothering to go underground. Professor Speer’s shelter below the zoo has room for ten thousand, but it’s stuffy. Too many children pissing on the floor, and the smell of the chemicals to kill the stink of the urine is even worse.

The morning dawns red and angry. I can’t have bought food for weeks, it seems, so I breakfast in semi-darkness on cheese (hard) and rye bread (mouldy). It makes me gag. I already feel nauseated, but it is either that or starve. We’ve been asked not to use too many bulbs, but I flick the switch and the power’s still off. The base of my spine tingles – the old injury from my parachute drop troubles me in the cold. I spend the day in bed. It is very cold, the wind whistles through the glass, the street below is crowded with brawling refugees who make me sick. I am paralysed by lethargy.

Later the telephone rings. I jump out of bed. Someone must have gotten the local exchange running again. It’s Streicher.

‘Bauer.’ He barks, surprised. ‘You’re still there.’

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘You were expecting me not to be?’

‘No, no, not at all. Where were you?’

‘Munich.’

‘How were the Bavarians?’

‘Loud and badly dressed.’

‘You could’ve stayed there.’

‘I wouldn’t miss the shooting match for all the world, Herr Streicher,’ I say.

He grunts. ‘Bad news I’m afraid. The next edition will be the last. For the time being. That’s how I see it, anyway. You’ve got to put a positive spin on these matters.’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Paper, ink, fucked if I know. That little shit Goebbels will give me any excuse he can. He’s never liked me. He’s a second rate writer and jealous of what I do. Always has been.’

Truth is I’m not surprised about the paper. It’s a dead duck. You can already hear the Russian guns. But I say; ‘I’m shocked. I don’t believe it. What next?’

‘Listen,’ he says. ‘I’m planning to make a last ditch representation to the Doctor. I want you there.’

‘Yes, naturally. When?’

‘Tomorrow. Eleven. Meet me at the Ministry.’

I spend another night pacing the floor. I feel cut off from the rest of humanity. At dawn I witness an aerial dogfight. Two fighters circle each other, their engines screaming, the phat phat phat of their guns roaring through the early hours. I turn my back on it and eat the remainder of my bread.

*

The Ministry is a squat grey building behind the Reichstag. The Reichstag is in ruins again, this time from the criminal Allied bombing campaign. Although I’ve never felt comfortable at the Ministry I have come to look forward to my weekly visits.

‘Hello my sweet button,’ I say to Irmi on the front desk. It’s precisely ten to eleven. She’s wearing an oyster silk dress, low cut and stylish. After the fashions in Bavaria and the solitude of my apartment it’s a relief to see a little élan again. She shows me a mouth full of white teeth and a beautiful smile. ‘Sugar, you’re looking sweet today.’

‘I bet your movie star girlfriend wouldn’t like to hear you talk like that,’ she says, her pink tongue touching her lips.

I shrug. ‘I wouldn’t worry too much on that account, darling.’ I touch her on the arm. ‘That little girl has gone back to Daddy’s farm in Bavaria, and that leaves you and me in the big city, footloose and fancy free. How about dinner?’

‘A dance in the ruins?’ she says, not without her own hint of irony.

‘You look good enough to eat,’ I say. She stifles a giggle. ‘I know a good restaurant in Charlottenburg. Then we go dancing afterwards. And after that I’ll show you my stamp collection. Pick you up at eight?’

‘It’s a deal.’ And she flashes me a beautiful smile. ‘Make sure your rifle’s loaded.’

I can’t believe my luck.

We throw caution to the wind, like the rest of Berlin. In the dying days of the war the nightclubs are booming. It’s dancing on the edge of a volcano. You never know if you’ll get home to admire your own reflection that night.

I was glad of one thing, that I’d never got a job in-house at the Ministry. They’re going through one of their periodic purges – or rather, they are in a permanent state of purge, ever since the von Stauffenberg thing last year. Never know who is going to be pulled out to be strung up. If you’ve got your own best interests at heart at a time like this who’s to argue?

Streicher comes in brushing snow from his collar. He’s a large, imposing man, moustache in the style of the Führer, pudgy face and deep set eyes the colour of winter. His head is completely shaven. The overall affect is not unlike looking on a bull terrier. Rabid.

‘Good to see you,’ he says, and offers me the Deutsche grusse. I return it.

‘Heil Hitler,’ he says.

‘Yes, Heil Hitler.’

‘An historic day, Bauer.’ He slaps me on the back. ‘I have the proofs of the last paper here.’ He indicates a black satchel under his arm.

‘Oh, not the last, Herr Streicher, surely?’ Irmi pipes up. ‘I’ll really miss Fips’s cartoons.’

‘This is not a matter for a little girl like you,’ he says, ogling her tits. ‘The Doctor in?’

‘Yes sir,’ she says, blushing and returning to her work. I feel the hairs rise on the back of my neck. We take the stairs.

‘You shaved today?’ he asks me as he puffs up the first flight.

‘Certainly,’ I say, instinctively reaching for my chin. Damn, I’ve missed at least two patches of bristles. Shaving is not pleasant or easy in cold water.

We pause at the landing with its grand view over Unter den Linden. Under a weighty sky the city is a mess of fires and smoke and smashed buildings. A light rain of ash or snow, I’m not sure which, drifts down and settles on the roofs.

‘They will pay for this after we win the war,’ he mutters.

Dreamer, I think. I stare for a moment at the billows of smoke, and watch them form into shapes before my eyes. I can almost feel them, taste them. My body seems to be without sensation, lifeless, peculiar.

‘I wonder where it comes from?’ I say.

‘What?’

‘The smoke. Is it sitting there inside the walls waiting for the fires to let it out?’

He mumbles ‘fuck’ under his breath and shakes his head and we continue up the next flight.

‘And how was Nuremburg?’ I enquire at his bulky retreating back.

‘Not so bad as here, I can tell you that. Not half so fucking cold either.’

We wait in silence outside the Doctor’s office, and I sweat. I feel queasy, as if what I’ve eaten has disagreed with me. My back aches. I’m about to excuse myself when we hear footsteps and voices on the stairs.

‘The little fuck always likes to keep you waiting,’ Streicher mutters, and we get to our feet.

Goebbels and another man whose face I cannot see appear at the top of the stairs. SS bodyguards come up with them and stare at us. The two men are locked in conversation. When Goebbels turns we both salute and give him a crisp ‘Heil Hitler’.

I freeze. The man with him is the Führer! He stares at us for a moment then turns to leave. And it is at that moment something goes wrong. I feel a piece of thick rope or a twist in the carpet underfoot, and as I stand on it an exquisite pain climbs up my spine. I expel air and arch my back, one arm still thrust in the air in the Deutsche grusse. I look down and see an orange rope hanging between my legs. It twitches.

Streicher turns to me, one eyebrow raised quizzically. I lower my arm and see that the Führer, too, has stopped and has turned to look at me. So has that horse-face Goebbels. The SS men stare. I reach behind with my left hand and grab the rope and yank it. The pain is intense, and I hiss and stoop over. I stuff the thing into my back pocket and straighten. At the same time I feel my lips dry and have an odd sensation, as of splinters, in my mouth.

‘Streicher,’ Hitler says, approaching us across an ocean of red carpet. The SS men follow. I feel giddy. For an instant the Führer is a fish swimming across the carpet and the SS men are sharks trailing him. I gag and the sharks are gone.

The fat man says; ‘Heil Hitler,’ and he salutes again.

‘Will you be in Berlin long?’ Hitler asks, but his eyes don’t leave me.

‘Only a few days.’

The Führer’s eyes narrow. ‘And you are?’

‘This is the journalist I was telling you about,’ Streicher says before I can speak.

‘Aah, the expert scribbler,’ the Führer says.

‘Ulrich Bauer,’ I mutter. ‘Heil Hitler,’ and I salute again. The thing has unravelled from my pocket, and as I click my heels I catch the tip of it. Electric sparks jump up my back. An angry growl issues from my throat and I quickly put my hand over my mouth and cough.

‘I have an old injury,’ I begin, feeling foolish, grabbing hold of the thing behind me again and shoving it back in the pocket. ‘From the Greece campaign. Crete.’

There is a long pause and the Führer studies me. The SS men’s faces are impassive.

‘That was a mistake,’ the Führer says, and for a moment I am not sure what he is talking about. My mind races. Was it the growl that had been a mistake? Had he seen the thing between my legs? I have a vision of the leader of the July bomb plot hanging on a meat hook.

‘Yes,’ I say at last. ‘Many men lost their lives.’

Something that could have been pain passes before his eyes. ‘Our soldiers let the Fatherland down.’

I say; ‘But the Reich overcame resistance in the end,’ and I smile fawningly. I lick my lips. Sweat trickles between my shoulder blades and down my spine.

I am surprised at his frailty. His skin is oily, hair lank; his lips, fleshy and feminine, quiver slightly as he speaks. His hands, pale as tallow candles, are not steady. A peculiar odour issues from his mouth as he speaks; sweetish, rotten. It could be bad fish. Gills flap briefly around his throat and then they are gone. He makes me hungry and I lick my lips.

The Führer seems to dismiss me and turns to Streicher. ‘Any new articles?’

‘Yes,’ Streicher says, and bristles with self-importance. Arse licker. ‘An interesting piece on how the forces lined up against us are the pawns of international Jewry.’

‘Yes yes,’ Hitler says with an impatient twitch of his head.

‘And a piece on the Jews in power in America.’

‘Anything new, Herr Boettger?’ he says, turning to me.

The flesh falls off his face and I am staring into a huge cauliflower with pink petals, which shake and leer at me. Clustered in the center is a swarm of flies. They smell of stewed tomatoes. Then his face reappears and he is staring at me, eyebrows raised.

I struggle to speak intelligibly. Everything I see wavers and twists as if I am looking through a curved mirror. I have the sensation that I cannot move. ‘No, my Führer,’ I say at last. ‘We believe it important to get the message across as many – ’

‘No doubt we shall meet again,’ he says, and he turns and leaves by the staircase. The goons follow. I stare at the staircase then I say;

‘Will you excuse me, gentlemen? I shall rejoin you shortly.’

I turn and pad unsteadily down the hall to the bathroom. The floor swims beneath my feet. When my hand is on the door, Goebbels calls out;

‘Bauer!’

I turn and the men are watching me.

‘Don’t hang yourself with your tale!’ and they burst out laughing.

 

The bathroom is unoccupied. I run the tap, splash water on my face. I am unbearably hot but I recoil from the touch of water. I peer at my reflection and wonder what is staring back at me. My face has altered. I have a heavy five o’clock shadow on my chin that has spread all over my face. Standing out on either side of my mouth are two clusters of heavier, white bristles. I am unbearably hot. I loosen my tie. I feel a strange, fur-like sensation beneath my fingertips. I undo two buttons and peer at my chest in the mirror. Fur!

I have grown fur.

I blink and shake my head. I yell and punch the mirror. It shatters and blood spatters over the glass and patters down into the basin. Shaking, I throw off my jacket and tear off the shirt. The fur extends all the way down. I peer back into the mirror and grimace. My teeth, now, have changed. More widely spaced than they have been, they have sharpened, turned to needle-like canine incisors. Or – feline. The changes are taking place as I watch. I hear footsteps outside.

‘Ulrich Bauer!’ someone calls.

‘Just a moment!’ I yell back. I poke my tongue out and it is coated in pink bristles. I grab my jacket and shirt and gallop into a cubicle, bolt the door behind me. My hands are coated in fur.

‘Scheisse,’ I spit. I am quivering. My muscles are tensed as if an explosion is coming. Inside the cubicle I slam the toilet seat down and jump up on it. Just above head height is a large window, and I catch a glimpse of the rooftops outside and the orange glow of fire. I fumble with my belt and drop my trousers. The thing hanging off me is a tail.

It is a tail. It is a tail. This is so.

I crave to drink milk.

I scream silently and thrash my palms into the walls. This is not happening to Ulrich Bauer. I kick the door. I do the Deutsche grusse over and over in the toilet cubicle.

‘Heil Hitler!’ I yell. ‘Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!’ The words grow hoarse in my throat.

My fingers recede into my palms before my eyes and a set of clean, white claws takes their place. My smart gold ring with the swastika falls off, chinks on the tiles and rolls away.

The bathroom door opens and I steal a look under the cubicle. I see three sets of black boots. I see a wire noose dangling in someone’s hand.

‘Where is he?’ a voice asks.

‘Bauer! Come here, pussy!’

They laugh.

‘They say you are tired of life.’

‘Puss puss puss!’

They laugh again, evidently greatly amused at their cleverness. One of them belches.

‘Not me, boys,’ I say, but the words twist in my throat into a fierce, feline growl. The advancing boots stop.

‘What was that?’ a third voice asks. ‘What’s going on here?’ They are looking at the basin with the smashed mirror covered in blood, the trail of blood on the floor.

They hesitate for a moment and I hear one of them clearing his throat.

‘Screwed if I know. Let’s get this over with. My fucking head hurts.’

‘You drank too much last night. Told you.’

‘What are you, my fucking nursemaid?’

The third man laughs. He says; ‘Shut up you two. Let’s just get this little fuck strung up and get the hell out of this shit hole. I’d rather be snoozing in a Polish brothel than hanging around this joint.’

‘Just wait a second. I have to take a dump.’

Another of the cubicle doors opens and I hear one of them dropping his trousers, then farting and splashing in the toilet bowl. The other two laugh.

‘You been eating beans, Mühlmann?’ one of them says.

‘Go get yourself fucked,’ Mühlmann replies with a grunt.

A sinuous energy punches through my veins. I feel better than I have in years. The pains in my shoulder and spine have gone. I have a new life. I tense to spring up and away.

With a tremendous crash and splintering of wood the cubicle door slams open, narrowly missing my head. I turn and snarl. The kicker is a tall man with coiffed blonde hair, a jagged scar down his left cheek, his Luger pointed at me. He wears the double lightning bolts on his black jacket, the red and black swastika on his arm. I stare into his eyes and he shakes his head, lowers his pistol.

‘You can’t touch me now,’ I spit at him, but the words distort and come out as a terrific snarl. I spring at his chest and rake my claws across his eyes. He screams. I bite his nose. I smell pickles, beer and onions on his breath. The other man yells, backs off, pulling his gun. I snarl at them and bound off the man’s shoulders, up to the window ledge. The man I’ve attacked is screaming, holding his face, stumbling, blood streaming down his hands and chest.

The second one raises his pistol and fires but I twist at the last instant and a tile shatters by my face. I squirt piss onto them and squeeze through the window and out onto the roof.

*

It is colder out there but the fur keeps me warm. I sniff the air. Smoke drifts by lazily from buildings burning on Unter den Linden. A light snow falls. I lope along the spine of a roof slick with ice, eager to put distance between my old and new lives. All the buildings on the other side of the river are down.

I leap alleyways here and there, clamber past jagged holes in roofs till I’ve put the Ministry behind me. I sit down out of the wind and snow in the lee of a chimney pot. Smoke billows out of the chimney and a faint warmth issues from the bricks. At least somebody still has coal. I hear water pipes gurgling, footsteps crossing a room below. My hearing is more acute, more attuned to movement. I hear the family sitting there, old men, women, children, huddling around their fire, bewildered, trapped, their dingy faces pinched by hunger. I smile at my new freedom.

A family of four pigeons alights with a squeaky flutter a few metres from me and I realise how hungry I am. They haven’t noticed me so I flatten into the slate of the roof and watch them, lick my lips. They don’t seem bothered by the distant explosions – Russian artillery or British Lancasters, I’m not sure. Not even the dogs bark any more at the bombers. I edge a little closer to my pigeons and am ready to pounce on the nearest. Its feathers glisten pink and green around its throat, and water comes to my mouth as I can almost taste it. I tense and edge a little closer.

A flash of silver from right to left startles me and I blink. Three pigeons take to the air in a panicky flurry; the fourth flutters its wings vigorously against the slate, its head clamped between the jaws of a silver cat. Her green eyes are wide and she holds its body with her front paws. I breathe for a moment, then stand, yawn and look up the rooftop as if I’m not interested. I shake snow off my back. She gives me a warning growl.

‘Nice bit of footwork, Sugar,’ I say. I edge closer, smelling blood. Pigeon bones crunch in her mouth. Once it stops moving she releases it, licks her bloody lips. She’s beautiful, and somehow familiar. I’m sure I’ve met her before. Another life, perhaps.

‘Who are you?’ she asks.

‘I’m Ulrich. Ullie to my friends. And you?’

‘Katarina,’ she says, and sneers. ‘You can call me Katarina.’

I watch the pigeon. A wisp of steam rises from its torn throat.

‘That’s my bird you’ve got there, Katarina,’ I say, and lick my lips. ‘But if you’re nice to me I’ll let you have some.’

She laughs. She smells good.

‘Cocky aren’t you?’ she says. She looks at me and I see a glimmer of recognition pass before her eyes too. ‘You know, your angle was all wrong,’ she says. ‘If you’d attacked from where you were you’d have fallen off the roof.’

I shrug. ‘I’m new to this game. But I saw old brown eyes first.’ I nod at the pigeon. ‘I think we should head inside somewhere. It’s a little too cool for dining out here. What do you think?’

‘We?’ she says.

‘I thought you might like to come along.’

She laughs again. ‘You’ve got more front than the Reichstag. If you’re hungry follow me.’

She leads me to a lair under the roof of the old opera house. Most of it is burned and gone, but the framework and a good portion of the roof and ceiling are still intact. It’s dry inside and keeps out the wind. She’s even decorated it with bits of posters from old shows. It’s cosy.

The pigeon is very good. Kat is in oestrus, and after stuffing my belly I stuff hers. She growls and squeals while I’m at it, pumping her fluffy silver haunches against my stomach.

Her growling reminds me of my first lover, a platinum blonde I’d lost my virginity to one day at Schöneberg in 1930. Her name had been Katarina too. But that Katarina was a Communist, and definitely human.

‘That was fun,’ she mutters as we clean up afterwards. The expression is familiar.

I could do with a cigarette about now.

‘Are you Katarina von Godesberg?’ I ask her, a paw paused behind my ear.

‘This is a coincidence, Ullie,’ she says and looks at me, turning her head just how Kat used to.

*

I’d given her the flip in ’31 or ’32, turned off by her talk of international brotherhood and the unity of peoples and the need to avoid war. I thought we’d gotten that out of our system in Round One. I’d also just joined the Party, and it wouldn’t do for me to be hanging around with a Red.

‘You’re yesterday’s child,’ I’d told her.

It had hurt, but by then I’d met Liese, a radiant aspiring actor who didn’t think much beyond her wardrobe. If I remember correctly I’d already slept with her by then, too. I hurt Kat, but I heard soon after that she’d married a fellow from her cell, a Jew named Hans. He was a second rate writer who wrote pieces critical of the Party. That damaged my ego for all of ten seconds. When she and Hans were shipped to Dachau in ’34 it was just an addendum to the news. I was already rising fast with Der Stürmer.

It turned out Katarina had always maintained her interest in me.

‘I kept a lot of your articles,’ she says. ‘The subject matter was hideous. I couldn’t believe what kind of a creature could write that poison. I could pick a Bauer article at a hundred paces. Even when you ghost wrote for Julius Streicher. I dreamed of tearing your eyes out.’

‘I’m flattered,’ I say. We are curled up together in the attic, the wind and the bombers from America howling over our heads.

‘What attracted you to those chumps in the first place?’ I ask her. ‘Those Communists?’

She bristles for a moment and then relaxes. ‘Honesty,’ she says after a pause. ‘Their lack of guile. Look at you, working for a whole Ministry devoted to lies and arse kissing.’

It’s my turn to bristle, but I let it drop.

‘With the Communists it was what you see is what you get,’ she says. ‘Truth. International brotherhood.’

‘Don’t bet on it, kiddo,’ I say, licking her ear.

‘You asked me what I saw in those chumps,’ she says sleepily. ‘That’s what I saw. Now I’m not so sure. And you either.’

‘Hmm?’

‘They don’t come after their golden haired boy with piano wire do they?’

‘Right.’

‘Too many shades of grey,’ she says.

‘Something like that,’ I say. I am silent for a moment then I tell her what I have told no one else. ‘I wrote an article for an underground newspaper,’ I whisper. ‘I still can’t believe I did it. I was getting bored with Der Stürmer. I wanted a little creativity.’

‘About?’ she asks.

‘Hitler. About how he has Jewish blood. It was a joke. I meant it as, what if he had Jewish blood, would he be sent East like the others. It was meant to be a laugh. That’s all. Just a laugh. They caught the people editing the rag. I presume they gave me up.’

I hear a curious buzzing noise and look around the gloom of the ceiling for its source. Then I realise I’m purring, and so is she.

‘And you did this for fun? A little creativity? That’s all?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hmmm.’

I enjoyed the purring for a moment.

‘How did you escape Dachau?’ I ask her.

‘My parents paid a lot of money,’ she says. There’s a silence.

‘And Hans?’ I ask.

She stops purring and says; ‘They sent me his bloodied glasses in lieu of a death notice. No amount of money could get him out.’

We listen to the wind for a while and the distant whistle and krump of bombs. Kreuzberg is taking a pounding by the sound of it. ‘And how’d you get like you are now?’ I ask as we drift off to sleep.

‘Feline?’ she says.

‘No,’ and I yawn. ‘Drop dead gorgeous.’

*

I learn the game quickly, mice, pigeons, rats and sparrows, the occasional squirrel or blackbird from the Olympic Stadium or the Tiergarten.

We don’t let ideology come between us and we have a litter, five little beauties, just as the Ivans close in. You can almost hear the Mongolian hordes of them whooping it up on the edge of town. We have three boys and two girls, a great contribution to the Fatherland, I think. We are so Kindersegen, so blessed by children. But then I remember we are cats and the Fatherland has no use for us any more. Two of the kits are orange like me, one silver like her mother, and the other two a beautiful blend of the two colours. No parrot beaks or genetic undesirables there. Kat’s very proud of them, and so am I. I feel I have produced something beautiful out of the rubble. I want to give them German names like Hilde and Volker, but she insists there’s been enough ‘tribalism’ in Europe for the next thousand years and, with Russian steel raining around our whiskers, I see her point. So we call them Mary, Susan, Stephen, Joshua and Collin. My work is cut out just keeping her fed so she keeps up her milk. She eats like a Bavarian draught horse. The opera house ceiling is full of snuffles and squeaks and the smell of warm milk as the little ones grow and open their eyes.

It’s not long before I’m romping around with the kits. They’re great fun, full of life and mischief. It’s demanding getting food but I manage; the Tiergarten offers good pickings, and so do bombed out buildings, where you can catch the occasional big rat. I surprise myself; I realise I am the happiest I’ve been for twelve years or more. So we aren’t eating chicken and strudel, but that doesn’t matter. We don’t feel like going out much, and are content with each other’s company.

And slowly the weather warms. With the Soviets now so close I decide we should move somewhere safer, perhaps underground, and determine to do it soon. I’m returning one day from Oranienburger Tor with a beautiful fat squirrel. I know Kat loves squirrel. She’s told me about it often enough, and I caught this one as it foraged through a bush at the roadside. I can’t wait to see the look on her face when she sees it. The kits are up to solids too, and I can as good as hear them squealing with delight. It’s so big I have to stop three times to rest.

I round a corner and my jaw drops. The squirrel falls to the pavement with a thunk.

The opera house is gone. It’s taken a direct hit. One post remains standing but the rest is history. Show’s over. Where it had stood is a crater three metres deep. I can’t believe my eyes. I sniff the wind and smell my family vaporised. Not so much as a hairball left.

I can’t breathe. I am cast adrift in a world of fire. I scream into the abyss. My heart races and I feel dizzy. Everything in the street spins. A tree assumes a grotesque, threatening shape, waving its limbs at me as if driven by some strange inner life of its own. A pile of bricks becomes a malevolent, insidious demon. I see all this beyond myself, but worse than this is what is happening inside my body. A vampire has invaded me, taken possession of my body, mind, and soul. I am about to throw myself into the burning crater when a Russian tank creaks into view down the end of the road.

I haven’t realised they are on us. Its canon probes the air. The noise of it raises my hackles. Instinctively I run. I run through shattered streets, demolished neighbourhoods, the detritus of a hundred thousand lives. I hide in craters full of water and mountains of bricks. I climb shattered walls and dead bodies. The smell is nauseating. At some stage I rest fitfully in a pile of sandbags.

The city has turned on itself. The purges have grown worse, and corpses – men, women, children – dangle from trees and lamp posts, turning in the wind, everywhere, military and civilian, ordinary citizens executed by a small band of fanatics.

I watch a group of Ivans demolish a corner grocery store and throw its contents – flour, sugar, rice, a few manky vegetables – out into the street. They stand guard so no one dares come and pick up food. Even cats aren’t safe. I witness them shoot a pretty little Siamese for fun. They loot a bank and come out yelling like wild men of Borneo, draped in jewellery from safe deposit boxes, their hands full of worthless German bank notes. Hand to hand fighting rings out in the streets. I hear men grunting at each other. I’m keeping just ahead of it, aiming for the centre of town. I run until I am beyond exhaustion. I totter along Dorotheen Strasse and reach the Reichstag. I lurch inside.

It has been heavily shelled and the interior is blackened and jumbled, full of smashed furniture and littered with papers. I’m out of breath, terrified, can scarcely put two thoughts together.

A shell explodes nearby and I run wildly through the charcoal and ash until I smack my head against a post. I careen around in pain, in hysteria. I have no control of my limbs. My thoughts are scattered. I sense blood on my whiskers. I shake my head and when the stars clear I see a wall, relatively untouched by the bombing. A portrait of the Führer hangs there at a crazy angle, the glass shattered. Instinctively I give it the Deutsche grusse.

‘Heil Hitler,’ I say, but it comes out as a mangled growl.

‘Heil Hitler!’ I scream it this time. The Führer stares down quietly at me.

A bookcase full of heavy bound volumes stands there, and next to that is a drinks cabinet, the doors shattered and hanging off their hinges. Many of the bottles are intact.

I pick my way over to the bookcase and sniff the leather-bound volumes. I can’t read them, but I smell Mein Kampf, treatises on the Aryan race, a history of the Jews, The Doctrine of Lebensraum, The Inferiority of the Slavs and other Slave Races, bound volumes of Der Stürmer. I sense the bile rising out of them.

I vault up onto a high shelf of the bookcase and piddle down onto the sacred texts of the Thousand Year Reich.

From up there I can lean over and sniff the bottles. The gin bottle is full of promise. I reach out with my paw and knock it over. It topples to the floor and shatters. The noise startles me. The only sounds inside the Reichstag are the wind and rats scuttling away. I jump down, careful to avoid the broken glass, and lap up the warming liquid. My throat and stomach burn. The world goes fuzzy. The shelling eases. My pains recede and I want to dance.

Liese is there and I take her in my arms. She’s wearing her smart Arctic fox jacket, her black hat with the red silk poppies, and her face is flushed. She’s telling me about her latest picture. I breathe in the perfume of her throat. We are so stylish on the dance floor, everybody looks at us. Then I dance with Irmi, who looks at me with her bedroom eyes and giggles in my ear then sticks her tongue in. Her body melts close next to mine. Irmi goes to sit by the bookcase as Kat joins me. She looks so tired I am overwhelmed with love and pity for her. We embrace and purr and lick each other’s chins. We whiz around the empty dance floor together, our claws making a glorious clattering duet in the ashes. Then I look up and all my little ones are there; Stephen, Susan, Collin, Josh, little Mary. And they are mewing at me and jumping on my back and nibbling my ears. And Mary with her big green eyes and her coat glowing silver and gold, looks up at me and asks me why I couldn’t stop the bombers.

The world spins around me and lights shine bright. A Russky film crew has entered the building while I was dancing. My family is gone. The director shouts at the soldiers and they rehearse raising their flag, the red one with the hammer and sickle on it. He steps in two or three times to discuss little points of technique, and they run through it all again until they have it down.

A cameraman sees me and calls ‘puss puss puss’ in Russky and I snarl at him and go to the spilt gin to drink, to get drunk, to lie down, to forget.

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