[Rampant speculation that the mysterious Spy Noir was retired to his secret headquarters in a large fir tree in the Schwartzenwald or enlisted in the notorious
Légion étrangère has turned out to be unfounded, as this typed mansucript found slipped under the BAZ's door clearly proves. - Ed. ]
He didn't mind the beatings. They came with the territory, and the big Wachtmeister - Manbitz, he was called - tended to go easy for a few weeks after he'd taken it out on some poor bastard's hide. Put some lead in his pants most likely. But the previous week, they'd taken a liberty. The bastards had bathed him.
Into the meat wagon with him and off down Am Nussbaum, the familiar shuddering as they crossed the little metal bridge that spanned the Spree, and he stoically preparing to take the inevitable kicking. But instead they'd hung a left at the junction with Friedrichstrasse that had sent him rattling around the back of the van like a dried pea in a tobacco tin and come to a screeching halt outside the public baths.
A nun with a face like a boiled pudding, her big, raw hands clasping an empty wicker basket, stood in the entrance. The two cops marched him past her, stripped him and, each taking an arm, ran him to the edge of the pool and pitched him in.
The water was cold, and he was out of his depth. He waited for his life to flash before him, but instead all he could think about was a dog with a broken back that someone had thrown into the Spree one day, and how, its life ebbing away, it had struggled still, until its head had disappeared beneath a slick of oil that shimmered on the surface in the late evening sunshine.
Eventually his feet found tiled floor. The cops tossed a large sponge to within a metre of him and ordered him to wash himself. That indignity done with, they dressed him in corduroy trousers and a flannel shirt and took him back to the police station, where they gave him a plate of blutwurst and bread, an enamel cup of ersatz coffee and a cigarette.
"Where's Manbitz?" he'd asked nervously.
"Visiting his maiden aunt," came the reply, accompanied by laughter and knowing looks.
After his lunch, they allowed him to sleep a while in an empty cell, and then they took him up top again to where the nun he'd seen at the bath house was waiting with his clothes - the ragged woollen combinations and his old German Army uniform, damp still, but indisputably clean.
"You may thank Father Hillandale for his intervention," the nun had said.
"Go to hell," he'd replied.
And now here he was, back in his old spot at the rear of the Berlin Alexanderplatz Station, undergoing something of an existential crisis. He was so used to the smell of his own body, the sourness that rose from his clothing, that its absence made him wonder if he were gradually fading away.
Business certainly hadn't been good in the time since they'd taken their liberty. A clean beggar lacked authenticity. A clean beggar lacked essence. And he knew that the few coins in his upturned cap wouldn't keep him in drink for more than a few days. He instinctively felt for the brown bottle in his jacket pocket, felt its lightness, and decided that things were looking serious.
A man and two women, the three fashionably dressed and smoking French cigarettes, passed by his spot, one of the women first stopping then approaching, reaching into her purse for a pfennig.
“I suppose he must be the local colour,” said the man. He was tall and handsome, with dark hair worn slightly longer than was the fashion. “What are you going to give the lady for her coin then? A song? A dance? A tall story? Come on fellow, stir yourself!”
“Oh leave him alone,” said the woman. She was wearing a blue silk dress and a cloche hat. Her face was was obscured by shadow as she was standing with the streetlamp at her back. “Look, he’s an army veteran, and he’s got a bad leg.” She fumbled in her purse again and brought out a larger coin which she placed in his cap. “Sir, is there anything we can do for you?”
“Yes,” he replied, “Get out of my damned light.”
The man laughed. “Just like Diogenes, eh? Well that's all the thanks you're going to get! Come on, let’s go. The night is young, and the only purpose of fellows like him is to allow us to thank God that we’re not them.”
He and the second female made off down Am Nussbaum, he allowing his hand to stray to her behind and she complaining unconvincingly, slapping him away and giggling like a child.
The woman who had given him the coin began to follow, but then stopped and turned, and the light from the lamp shone just for a moment full on her face. Words for him were weapons, designed to cut or bludgeon or unbalance, but the ones he had composed for her seemed to die in his throat in an instant.
He nodded almost imperceptibly and reached for his bottle.
