Indifference

- Spy Noir

The new Dixi was as black as Fritz Haarmann’s heart, the bodywork buffed to a sheen, the brown leather seats as soft as butter, the chrome wheels gleaming in the spring sunshine. The horn summoned her. Two short blasts. The curtains twitched and seconds later there she was, framed in the doorway.

He drank her in with the thirst of a barfly freed from a night in the cells and reintroduced after long, dry hours to the miracle of hard liquor.

Head to toe. Auburn hair freshly bobbed. Emerald eyes perpetually amused. Red as a blood-rose her cupid’s bow. Neat figure sheathed in a new Morales number. Kitten heels clicking on the cobblestones. All this in a blink.

She drew a single red nail along the paintwork.

“Nice…”

He chided her gently, as in she slid in beside him.

He took the back way, swinging down Friedrichstrasse and along Unter den Linden, the lime trees taking advantage of the early evening breeze to flutter their new-found finery at the revellers gathering already in doorways and outside pavement cafes.

The soft silk of her stockings whispered to him. She took a small mirror from her purse and smoothed an eyebrow. Seemingly satisfied with what she saw, she replaced it and began to hum a tune. ‘Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame’.

“You like Richard Tauber?” he asked.

She turned the brilliance of her smile upon him for a brief moment, and he almost ran down a couple of sailor-suited warm boys, sending them scuttling for the safety of the pavement. They rewarded him with curses and obscene gestures.

He pulled up twenty metres from the Adlon, allowing the engine to idle. He spotted the man instantly. Tall and broad-shouldered, dark with a dark, neatly-trimmed beard, black fedora and a dark grey astrakhan coat, an ivory-handled cane held loosely in his right hand.

“You are a darling!” she cried, and was gone.

When she reached the man, he nodded a question in the direction of the Dixi and her answer drew a smile, laughter.

He imagined indifference, and set about fashioning a garment in its shape, as hard as plate armour, to wear pulled tight against his breast. He drank indifference from the empty space beside him, feeling it surge through his blood, emboldening him. 

He nosed the Dixi forward pulling up level with the two lovers, and peered through the open window. The man raised his eyebrows and smiled expectantly.

“Do you…do you need a lift home later?”

The man laughed. “Oh you ARE a fine fellow! I shall be escorting the lady home myself, but what a fine fellow you are!”

And then the Adlon swallowed them, something by Liszt borne briefly on the spring air before the doors closed behind them.

The car stalled and his ears filled with the sound of blaring horns and the profane street poetry of a Berlin taxi driver. The petrol fumes in the air stung his eyes, making them water.