Wedding Station by David Downing

Author:David Downing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2020-11-29T10:24:24+00:00

If Books Could Kill

The Monday morning rush hour was a damp affair, drizzle turning to rain and back again, Leipziger Strasse a sea of umbrellas as Russell’s tram rumbled across it, the brilliant sparks from the catenary wires reflecting in the shopfront windows. A momentous week was in prospect. Tomorrow in Potsdam Hindenburg and Hitler would co-star in a ceremonial opening of the new Reichstag, and two days after that those elected deputies still at liberty were due to vote on an Enabling Bill designed to short-circuit what was left of German democracy. You could say one thing about Hitler—he didn’t sit still.

In the meantime, like most of the country’s male inhabitants, Russell had a job to do. There were three new stories waiting on his desk: two matrimonial disputes that had ended in hospitalisation, and a fight in a Neukölln bar that had proved even more conclusive. The latter looked less likely to interest his readers, and leaving it till last might give him some free daylight hours in Neukölln to plan his search for Lili.

Needless to say, the two domestic imbroglios had occurred at opposite ends of the city. The first had happened late the previous evening out near the stockyards in Friedrichshain, a few hours after he and Paul had rattled through the area on their train. The unlikely victim was a burly stormtrooper, who according to the local Kripo had been knocked right over by his enraged wife, cracking his skull on their iron stove in the process. He was unconscious in the State Hospital, the wife under arrest. Her motive for the alleged assault, as told to Russell by the neighbour she’d fetched in its aftermath, was her husband never being home. “There’s a fucking parade every other day,” she’d reportedly said. “And after the parade, they drink.”

According to the neighbour, others had seen the Stormtrooper need three attempts to guide his bulk through the block’s front door, and when his wife claimed he had simply fallen down drunk most were inclined to believe her. One exception was the local Blockleiter, who had insisted that service to the fatherland must always take precedence over husbandly duties, and then compounded the insult by advising the childless wife to fill up her days raising a family. “Are you going to give me one?” had been the reported response.

The second violent confrontation had taken place out in Spandau. Two trains and a bus later, Russell found himself outside the new and already decaying block of flats in which a husband had beaten his wife to a pulp for the sin of refusing to give up her job. Or at least, that was the way the already-present Eglhofer told the story. “He’s a National Socialist, and he expected her to be a National Socialist wife. Her getting promoted was the last straw.”

After interviewing what neighbours they could find—all of them women, most of them thinking the man had a point—Russell and Eglhofer went to the local hospital, where the woman in question was still unconscious, but just about holding her own.

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