Berlintoxication

BERLINTOXICATION

by Stephanie Laimer-Read

Published by Let’s Rock Publishing Limited

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Stephanie Laimer-Read

Cover artwork: Stephanie and Tom Laimer-Read, 2014

SMASHWORDS EDITION, LICENCE NOTES

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

To my family – as always.

To old friends and new friends.

To Tom – of course. With love.

Contents

Author’s Note

Part 1

Chapter 1

In which our hero receives a good dinner, a bad emanation and an odd suggestion

Chapter 2

In which Walter gives up some things and presumably gains much more

Chapter 3

In which businesspeople set to business

Chapter 4

Which describes a devious manoeuvre

Chapter 5

Which is drenched in alcohol

Chapter 6

In which the Kaiser appears at last

Chapter 7

In which a spell is cast

Part 2

Chapter 8

In which New Berlin is born

Chapter 9

Which begins glamorously but soon descends into squalor

Chapter 10

Which is based on pastry and state violence

Chapter 11

In which various things collapse

Chapter 12

In which new plans are made

Part 3

Chapter 13

In which there are an announcement and a death

Chapter 14

In which there is a wedding in Wedding

Chapter 15

In which Walter faces new problems

Chapter 16

Which is full of hot air and biblical quotes

Chapter 17

In which some animals and all hell break loose

Chapter 18

In which things come to an end

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Author’s Note

This novel is pure fiction and should be read as such. It is set in a Berlin which resembles the real city but has never existed in our world.

A few figures that are mentioned in this story actually existed, namely Harfenjule, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Johannes Kunckel, Adolf Stoecker and Dr Henry Faulds. Some of the characters, such as Kaiser Wigbert II, Chancellor von Blistert, Gräfin von Lindenau and Erich Niemand, have historical resemblances. This novel, however, does not imply that the historical figures in question acted similarly to those in the story. The key characters (Walter Busch, Charlotte Schaefer, Gustav Springer, Alexandra Dietrich et cetera) are pure figments of my imagination, and so are the criminal cases described at the end of chapter 6. No libel is intended in any case.

Street, district and institution names (Alexanderplatz, Wedding und Gesundbrunnen, Rotes Rathaus, Maison de Santé, the routes of the horse carriages et cetera) refer to actual places, even though their descriptions are free. The only exceptions are Café Kranz (chapter 9) and the disused match factory on Liebenwalder Straße (chapters 13 -16). These locations are made up and, to the best of my knowledge, have never existed.

S.L-R.

Part 1

CHAPTER 1

In which our hero receives a bad emanation, a good dinner and an odd suggestion

The clouds burst open just before the carriage reached Brandenburg Gate. Rain beat down on the boulevard named Unter den Linden, drenching the people and carriage horses, splashing on the stones and flooding the gutters.

Walter Busch looked out of the dirty carriage window, at the figures, at the houses and at the dim lights shimmering in the dark.

Unter den Linden – ‘under the lime trees’ – was one of the most impressive areas of Berlin, a splendid street from the Stadtschloß, the Kaiser’s palace, to the square named Pariser Platz with the monumental arch of Brandenburg Gate. From here, a wide street called Charlottenburger Chaussee led through the Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichswerder districts to the large Thiergarten park and then to the west of the city.

The carriage went past fancy shops and expensive restaurants, past advertising columns, past placards for chocolate, cigarettes and beer. Outside men and women swaggered, stumbled and showed off; they shuffled and hurried, bumping into one another, stepping in puddles.

The petroleum lanterns and the few recently installed gas lamps were lit already. Newspaper vendors shouted out their news. Steam trams rattled by. Horse carriages passed, splashing water over people’s shoes.

Ghosts drifted past, transparent and silent, whitish-grey shapes in the dark. Everybody knew that they existed: pregnant women who had drowned themselves or died during abortions, morphine addicts who had overdosed, starved beggars. Some individuals could see them more easily than others, but everyone knew that they were there.

A Friday evening in Berlin, dark, crowded, busy November Berlin.

Berlin, the capital of the Deutsches Reich, the German Empire. The capital of Prussia, the largest state in the Reich, famous for its discipline and its army with splendid uniforms. Berlin, city of one million inhabitants. City of industry and art, science and architecture, sewage, steam and gas. City of writers and doctors, workers and beggars, pageants and funerals, slang, splendour and megalomania. City of palaces, slums and mansions.

Home to so many people: people who starved and people who celebrated, people who rioted, people who marched, people who worked every day of their lives without complaining. Soldiers and policemen, thieves and murderers, sometimes all in one.

Berlin, the city where Walter Busch had been born and brought up and where he would have expected to die had he been inclined to think about his own death, which he wasn’t.

Walter Busch – bank clerk in Berlin-Friedrichstadt, twenty-eight years old, respectable, bespectacled and reasonably ambitious – led a proper and decent life. He went to work, and he went home. He socialised but not too much. He kept his head down, his eyes open and his mouth shut because that was wise.

He read the newspapers sporadically because it was good to be able to make conversation about what went on in the world. There were some interesting items in the papers – pleasant things that made you feel good, curious news that gave you a nice thrill, news that were shocking and could only be spoken about in whispers. Walter tried to keep himself informed.

Earlier this year, a certain Berta Benz had driven an automobile from Pforzheim to Mannheim, both in the south-west of Germany, covering an amazing forty miles. Theodor Storm, a lyricist and novelist from the north of the country, had died of stomach cancer aged seventy years. Benjamin Harrison had become the new President of the United States. Brazil had abolished slavery, thus becoming the last nation of the western world to do so but not by such a long time – twenty-three years after the United States, forty years after France and fifty-three years after the British Empire. In October the train of the Russian Tsar had derailed in Ukraine, but the Tsar and his family had survived unharmed. A madman commonly referred to as Jack the Ripper was on the loose in London, stabbing and mutilating women.

Walter Busch read the papers conscientiously, taking in the news with a mixture of shock and fascination. The things people were up to… The things science could do nowadays…

However, he rarely ruminated about such matters. It was much easier to concentrate on his flat, on his job, on getting on in Berlin – and there was certainly enough happening in his home city.

The new emperor, Kaiser Wigbert II, had been in power for five months now. His two predecessors, Wigbert I and Frankward III, had died within four months of each other and been mourned appropriately. Wigbert I had died in March, ninety years old. His son Frankward had throat cancer and was already unable to speak when he succeeded to the throne. He died after ninety-nine days. Politicians delivered speeches. The citizens wore black armbands and listened to hymns. Then life went on. The new Kaiser came to the throne.

And now, in November 1888, he ruled proudly and happily: Frankward Wigbert II August Albrecht of Prussia, Emperor of the Reich, King of Prussia. He was famous for an impressively curled grey moustache and fantastic, colourful uniforms that wouldn’t camouflage anything outside a tropical garden.

The best-known fact about the Kaiser, however, was his predilection for even more fanciful – yes – wigs. Considering his name, this was an improbable coincidence, but there it was.

He loved his wigs. Some were curly, some wavy, some straight; some were white, some black, some red streaked with silver; some were larger than his head; some were used to store money or drinks; some had beads and jewels woven into them. There were a few people who found them odd, but then Wigbert was the Kaiser, so he couldn’t be wrong.

The Kaiser with his serious, beautiful wife Alberta Ernestine, known as Thea; with three sons who already looked like soldiers; with a daughter who, one day, would be a beautiful woman, all that a princess could ever hope to be; with his trustworthy supporter, the Chancellor: Kanzler Oskar Dagobert von Blistert. The Chancellor had helped to found the Reich, unifying the southern German states with the association of the northern states led by Prussia. He had created the social security system. He fought valiantly to eliminate socialism and similarly untrustworthy tendencies. He also had an impressive moustache but a bushy rather than a curly one.

Blistert, the Iron Chancellor, the Soldier Chancellor, epitome of the military spirit, sometimes disapproved of Wigbert’s showing-off but remained adequately loyal.

Walter Busch didn’t feel particularly intensely about any of these events and persons. He was dispassionately patriotic, proud and obedient without actually thinking about what that meant. It was part of him; it was the way you were supposed to be.

He had been in the army when he was conscripted because that was what you did. All men in Prussia had to serve in the army, and it was supposed to be honourable. Walter had disliked it, but he had done it. He had pledged allegiance to the Kaiser; he had run through muddy fields; he had learnt how to fire a gun; he had polished his boots, and in hindsight he was proud of having persevered despite the unpleasantness.

When the two previous Kaisers had died, of course he had worn a black armband because it was what you did. He had genuinely mourned. But now? Now it was over, and his life was going well.

It’s not that I don’t care, he thought, feeling a pang of guilt. I do care about the city and about the country. I know that I have duties and should do my best for the country, but I haven’t got a lot of power, and there isn’t much that I can do. I know that there are dreadful things in this world, but I am fine, and I must admit that I’m happy about it.

I’ve got enough money to live a good life, I’m healthy, and I’m going to see my fiancée.

***

The carriage rattled through the district of Friedrichstadt with its shops, banks and government offices, past the Thiergarten park and the Zoological Garden, then down Kurfürstendamm, the other large boulevard of the city.

The horse plodded on through the rain, its mane and tail hanging limply, its coat glistening with precipitation. The passengers spoke softly. Raindrops pattered on the roof.

Walter’s fiancée Charlotte Schaefer lived in the Villenkolonie Westend, a colony of newly built mansions in the west of Berlin. Walter got off the carriage at Spandauer Damm and walked to Kastanienallee, where her family’s house stood.

The rain was falling a little less heavily now. Walter walked on, head bowed and umbrella raised but smiling.

Then a feeling hit him, a sudden stab of despair and rage that was so intense it made him wince. He stopped dead.

From whom had it come?

Walter looked around trying to make out a figure that looked as though it were so desperate, but the people around him just looked as people usually did.

Who had that been? He would probably never find out.

For Walter, saying that you knew how somebody else felt wasn’t just a figure of speech. He didn’t guess other persons’ feelings. He didn’t empathise with them. He actually knew. Other people’s feelings hit him and flooded his brain, and sometimes he couldn’t even tell whether the emotions he experienced were his own or someone else’s.

It had taken him quite a while to work out that most others couldn’t do it. As a child, he hadn’t been aware that those around him didn’t just look at somebody and heard (or saw? or felt? He couldn’t explain it) their thoughts, like he did.

There had been plenty of misunderstandings and embarrassing moments until Walter realised that this was quite a special quality that he didn’t really want others to find out about.

His parents had admitted after persistent questioning that yes, he had a sort of supernatural ability, and it was nothing to be ashamed of, but could he please act as if it weren’t the case?

He could. If he shut down deliberately, he could just about ignore the thoughts that whirled around him all the time. Some of his acquaintances thought that he was reserved and unemotional because he was quiet. In fact he was merely trying his hardest to conceal the fact that he knew what they thought. The things people worried about! The problems they had! The joy, fear and sadness that radiated from them, washing over him if he didn’t concentrate!

If he was in a room full of people, their feelings came from all sides. Sometimes he needed all his energy to simply talk and smile. He would much rather shout: ‘Shut the hell up!’, but of course he couldn’t do that.

He could probably have made more of it, he knew that. He could have been a businessman who knew his opponents’ next move. He could have been a spy or a great lover. However, he wasn’t like that, and it would have been so difficult anyway. Yes, all right, he occasionally used his ability in his job or with acquaintances: to know what a customer wanted, to find the right words, to avoid touching any sensitive issues. He didn’t do it regularly – that would have been bad manners.

Walter didn’t want the ability to be an important part of his life. He didn’t want it to control him and make him different from others. It was much better to suppress the skill, to try to forget about it, to pretend that it didn’t exist. Walter could do that, and he did.

He managed to shake off the feeling. No, he wouldn’t find out who that emanation had come from, and even if he did, what would that mean? It wasn’t as if he could have helped the person, was it?

Walter could accept that there were mystical and magical powers that caused such things to happen, but he didn’t understand why they had to happen to him, rather than to somebody who was willing and able to use magic.

Someone like Harfenjule, Jule with the harp, the blind woman who was always roaming the streets playing songs. Walter knew people who believed that she could see the future, but nobody would admit it openly. Yes, he could imagine someone like her having magical powers – or the wealthy and clever persons, professors and generals, those who were wiser than him and knew how to use their powers. That would fit.

Why him? After all, he was just an ordinary person, an upstanding citizen, loyal and proud, hard-working, polite, clean and very much in love. Why did he have to put up with all those feelings?

***

Seeing Charlotte was good. They had been engaged for three months now and would get married next year, presumably in March. Walter entered the mansion and had his coat removed by an inconspicuously efficient servant, and when he saw his fiancée coming down the stairs, he gasped because he was still easily impressed. Charlotte was beautiful with her dark honey-coloured hair held up with pins, with her brown eyes, with the train of her moss green dress trailing behind her.

They kissed very quickly and smiled at each other.

‘Good you’re here.’

‘Good I’m here.’

And it was. Walter used to feel uneasy here, but he did not now.

Charlotte’s family was rich, and sometimes that was intimidating. Their mansion was vast and lavishly decorated. There were gilded waste-paper baskets, tulle curtains and oriental carpets. Servants tiptoed through the house elegantly and demurely. There was a tiger fur lying in the entrance hall, glassy eyes staring into space, mouth gaping open to show enormous teeth. It could give an unprepared visitor a major shock.

Walter lived in a rented flat in the Mitte district in the city centre, an old-fashioned house with many columns and mirrors, a house that smelled of mothballs, a house with statues that could frighten your knitted woollen socks off you if you walked into them in the dark and a landlady who could do the same even during the day. It wasn’t quite as noble as this place, but it was most respectable.

Walter had nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of. He had a good job and was moving upwards. No, he didn’t feel awkward any more when he came to see Charlotte’s family.

Glancing at himself in a gold-framed mirror, Walter was fairly pleased. He was wearing his best sport coat and his new navy blue cravat; he was well shaven, and he could honestly say that he looked good.

He went to the salon to see his future in-laws. They exchanged greetings and had drinks. After some conversation, they were served dinner.

They – that was, the couple, Charlotte’s parents and her brother – had bouillabaisse, then beef with horseradish, followed by cheesecake. They watched one another across the table, smiling in between polite conversation. Walter gave the right answers nearly automatically, thinking happy fleeting thoughts and feeling pleased with the world in general.

His life was going to be good, he knew it. He loved Charlotte; she loved him, and he was doing well. He had a good job and would find an even better one. They would get married; they would have children; they would have a good reputation and live up to it. They would have a house; they would have servants; they would have lace curtains and other beautiful articles. They would have the right things; therefore they would be someone. And they would be happy.

Walter had never told Charlotte about his ability because, after all, it was something strange that had to be hidden. He occasionally used it on her family so that he could say the sentences they wanted to hear and avoid what was inappropriate. He wanted to please them. Perhaps reading their minds wasn’t morally right, but it was easy to do. Everybody wanted to make a good impression, didn’t