Garden of Beasts

that there are times for lovers’ words to end.

IV
S IX TO F IVE A GAINST

S UNDAY, 26 J ULY, TO M ONDAY, 27 J ULY, 1936

Chapter Twenty
    He had been in his office at the Alex for an hour, since 5 A.M. , painstakingly writing out the English-language telegram that he had composed in his mind as he lay sleepless in bed beside peaceful Heidi, fragrant with the powder she dusted on before retiring.
    Willi Kohl now looked over his handiwork:
    I AM BEING SENIOR DETECTIVE INSPECTOR WILLI KOHL OF THE KRIMINALPOLIZEI (CRIMINAL POLICE) IN BERLIN STOP WE SEEK INFORMATION REGARD AMERICAN POSSIBLY FROM NEW YORK PRESENTLY IN BERLIN PAUL SCHUMANN IN CONNECTION OF HOMICIDE STOP ARRIVED WITH AMERICAN OLYMPIC TEAM STOP PLEASE TO REMIT ME INFORMATION ABOUT THIS MAN AT KRIMINALPOLIZEI HEADQUARTERS ALEXANDERPLATZ BERLIN TO DIRECTION OF INSPECTOR WILLI KOHL STOP MOST URGENT STOP THANKING YOU REGARDS
    He’d struggled hard with the wording. The department had translators but none worked on Sunday and he wanted to send the telegram immediately. It would be earlier inAmerica; he wasn’t sure about the time zones and he guessed the hour to be about midnight overseas but he hoped that the law enforcers there would keep the same long shifts as police in most countries.
    Kohl read the telegram once again and decided that, though flawed, it was good enough. On a separate sheet of paper he wrote instructions to send it to the International Olympic Committee, the New York City Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He walked down to the telegraph office. He was disappointed to find that no one was as yet on duty. Angrily, he returned to his desk.
    After a few hours’ sleep, Janssen was presently en route back to the Olympic Village to see if he could pick up any more leads there. What else could Kohl himself do? Nothing occurred to him, except hounding the medical examiner for the autopsy and FPE for the fingerprint analysis. But they, of course, were not in their offices yet either and might not come in at all on Sunday.
    He felt the frustration acutely.
    His eyes dropped down to the hard-worked-on telegram.
    “Ach, this is absurd.” He would wait no longer. How difficult could it be to man a Teletype machine? Kohl rose and hurried back to the department, figuring he would do the best he could to transmit the telegram to the United States himself. And if, because of his clumsy fingers, it ended up being sent by mistake to a hundred different places in America, well, so much the better.
    •   •   •
    She had returned to her own room not long before, around 6 A.M. , and was now back in his, wearing a dark blue housedress, pins holding her hair flat to her head, a little blush on her cheeks. Paul stood in the doorway, wipingthe remnants of the shaving froth from his face. He put the cover on his safety razor and dropped it into his stained canvas bag.
    Käthe had brought coffee and toast, along with some pale margarine, cheese, dried sausage and soupy marmalade. She walked through the low, dusty light streaming into the front window of his living room and set the tray on the table near the kitchen.
    “There,” she announced, nodding at the tray. “No need for you to come to the breakfast room.” She looked at him once quickly. Then away. “I have chores.”
    “So, you still game?” he asked in English.
    “What is ‘game’?”
    He kissed her. “It means what I asked you last night. Are you still willing to come with me?”
    She ordered the china on the tray, which had seemed to him already perfectly ordered. “I’m game. Are you?”
    He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have let you change your mind. It would be Kakfif. Out of the question.”
    She laughed. Then a frown. “One thing I wish to say.”
    “Yeah?”
    “I give opinions quite often.” She looked down. “And quite strongly. Michael called me a cyclone. I want to say, regarding the subject of sports: I could learn to like them too.”
    Paul shook his head. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
    “No?”
    “Then I’ll feel I had to like poetry.”
    She pressed her head to his chest. He believed she was smiling.
    “You will like America,” he said. “But if you don’t, when all this blows over you can come back. You aren’t necessarily leaving the country forever.”
    “Ah, my wise writer-man. You think this will—the expression?—will blow over?”
    “Yes, I do. I think they won’t be in power much longer.” He looked at the clock. The