Rosa (38 page)

Hoffner loosened his tie, settled in, and pulled a cigarette from his pack. He knew he could have sat like this for hours, a full glass, watching the little dramas play themselves out at the nearby tables: parry, thrust, parry, thrust, and always at a safe distance.

He was taking in one such performance—the muffled pleadings of a heavyset girl to her indifferent lover—when the bottle arrived. Still intent on the scene, Hoffner pulled a few coins from his pocket.

“Very kind, Herr Inspector.”

Hoffner looked up to see Leo Jogiches pouring out the second of two glasses. For an instant, Hoffner thought he recognized Jogiches, not from Rosa’s photographs, but from somewhere else, something more immediate. The sensation passed, and Hoffner returned the coins to his pocket.

Jogiches was no longer a handsome man. His beard, a silky brown in the photos, had grown gray and knotted, as if a cat had been grooming him. Worse was the hairline that rose just too high on one side and made everything seem to droop to the left. His skin sagged as well, especially under the eyes, where sleeplessness and beatings collided in an array of dark blotches and fading bruises. Only the eyes themselves recalled the past: they showed that same deep calculation and fierceness that Rosa had known. This was a man who had lived his life on the run, and the uncertainty of his world—the inherent danger in his very presence—was like an intoxicant to him. Ancient photographs aside, Jogiches was exactly what Hoffner had expected.

“But again, my treat,” said Jogiches. He capped the bottle and took a seat. “To your health, Inspector.” He tossed back the brandy and settled in.

Any sense of validation Hoffner might have felt at seeing the man—the theoretical K, now flesh and blood—quickly fell away. Jogiches’s presence confirmed far more than just good detective work.

Hoffner held up his pack. “Cigarette?” Jogiches took one and Hoffner continued: “I didn’t see you when I came in.”

“You weren’t meant to,” said Jogiches. He lit up and explained, “Two nights. By the bar. To make sure you were as determined as you seemed.”

“And tonight you got your answer?

Jogiches took a deep pull. “We’ll see, won’t we?” The smoke trailed slowly from his mouth as he gazed out into the crowd: “The man there is a thief,” he said with certainty. “The woman there doesn’t want us to know she’s a whore, but she’s a whore just the same. And the couple there”—the indifferent lovers Hoffner had been tracking—“that boy will kill someday. Look at how he crushes his cigarette into the pile of ash, over and over. There’s no satisfaction in it. The wonderful tension in his hand. He wants to crack the girl across the face, but he keeps digging the little butt into the ashtray.” Jogiches’s gaze seemed to intensify. “One day he’ll have the courage.” He watched a moment longer, and then turned to Hoffner. “And then, Herr Inspector, you’ll have to hunt him down.”

“Quick to judge, aren’t you?”

Jogiches’s smile was unlike any Hoffner had ever seen: the mouth conveyed the requisite joy, but the eyes remained cold. It was as if even his face was keeping secrets from itself. “No judge, Herr Inspector, just the accuser. I’ll leave the judging to someone else.”

Hoffner flicked a bit of ash onto the floor. “I enjoyed your article.”

Jogiches poured out a second glass for himself. “Not nearly the entire story, but then someone had to prod your case into life again.”

“And what is my case?”

“Rosa.” He spoke the name as if it were part of some incantation, hushed and filled with meaning. Then, too casually, he added, “You’ve heard, of course, that tomorrow’s
Lokalanzeiger
will say she’s in Russia, plotting with Herr Lenin to overthrow the Ebert government.” Jogiches was too busy reordering the ashtray, table lamp, and salt shaker to allow a response. “‘Where’s the body, Berlin?’ they’ll ask. ‘Rosa dead? Nonsense. Watch yourselves. For she’ll sweep in and rip your hearts out when she brings her revolution back again.’” No less intent on his task, he added, “But then, we both know she’s dead, lying on a slab on the fourth floor of the Alexanderplatz. Still, it’ll make for a good bit of press.”

Hoffner had his glass to his lips when Jogiches let go with this little tidbit; Hoffner wondered how many other items Jogiches might be holding in reserve. He tossed back the brandy and set his glass on the table. “No reason for me to play coy, is there?” said Hoffner.

“No.”

“You have someone inside the Alex.”

“Yes.” Jogiches seemed satisfied with his redecorations: order had been achieved. He sat back.

Hoffner said, “So who’s been working for you?”

For the first time, Hoffner was aware that Jogiches was studying him. He wondered which crime Jogiches might be imagining for his own future. Hoffner was about to ask when Jogiches’s eyes suddenly seemed to lose themselves, as if they were looking directly through him.

“You know,” Jogiches said vacantly, “she was much cleverer than all of us.” It was as if he were admitting to some long-held secret. His gaze remained distant.

Hoffner had spent enough time with Rosa now to come to her defense. “Shame you never told her,” he said.

“Yes,” said Jogiches. His gaze refocused and he looked directly into Hoffner’s eyes. “I suppose it was.”

Guilt, thought Hoffner, had an uncanny way of exposing itself. Jogiches, however, had spent too many years denying his own faults to allow any instinct for atonement to take hold for more than a few seconds.

Jogiches said, “You’ve never read any of her work, have you? Her real work, I mean.” Hoffner shook his head. “I didn’t think so. No, no, I don’t mean it that way. I’m sure you could have understood it. She was quite superb in that way. Theories only the geniuses could master, and she made them simple. Marx’s
Capital
—a morass, completely impenetrable, and then Rosa writes her
Accumulation
and suddenly Marxist economics has a place in the twentieth century. She even improved on the old man, with a little help, of course.”

“Of course,” said Hoffner.

Jogiches liked the challenge. “You think she could have done it without me?”

Hoffner had neither the inclination nor the ammunition to take on Jogiches. “That story about the gun,” he said. “Did she really pull it on you?”

Jogiches seemed surprised by the question. His answer came with a bit more bite. “She wrote about that?”

“In great detail,” said Hoffner. “I would have thought that you’d have been the first to read through the journals, cover to cover.”

“Evidently you have.”

“But not you?”

Jogiches tapped out his cigarette. “And slog through an endless tirade of revisionist history, Inspector? I’ll take a pass.”

Hoffner heard the self-rationalization in his tone. “So she never pulled the gun?”

“Of course she pulled it. Why not? She couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t permit her to continue seeing that idiot Zetkin.”

Hoffner could feel Jogiches rising to the bait. “You wouldn’t permit her?” he said.

“Something like that.” Jogiches took a last pull, then crushed out his cigarette; he continued to play with the stub. “She thought she could make him into a novelist or a painter, or something equally ludicrous. You’ve read through it. I forget which. Waste of time.” He let go of the stub and brushed off his hands. “She couldn’t accept the man for what he was, and when she tried to make me into something that was her fantasy—” Jogiches caught himself. It was only a momentary hitch, but it was enough to sour his tone. “Zetkin. When she insisted
Zetkin
could be all of her marvelous romantic ideals—it was pathetic. A woman her age. I told her so. She became very dramatic. Rosa loved the drama. And so out came the little revolver.” He shrugged it off with too much indifference. “She said she never wanted to see me again, which made it even more ridiculous.”

Even now, Jogiches had no idea what the drama had been masking. Hoffner poured himself a second glass and said, “The journals said you promised to kill her if she stayed with Zetkin.”

Jogiches tried an unsuccessful laugh. “That again. The woman was obsessed.”

“She seemed to think it was the other way round.”

“Did she?” Jogiches was now fully engaged. “I’ll tell you something about obsession, Inspector. A nine-year sentence in Mokotw—and we both know what goes on inside those walls—and she thinks
I’m
having an affair with some woman halfway across the country? I don’t see daylight for five months, and I’m the one carrying on. Guilt is a remarkable thing, don’t you think? She should have shot me when she had the chance. Would have served her right.”

Crushing out his cigarette, Hoffner said blandly, “So who’s in Munich?”

For just an instant, Jogiches winced. It was hardly a movement, the recovery as immediate, but it was enough to tell Hoffner that he had hit a nerve. In that moment, Jogiches knew that he had been outmaneuvered. His eyes grew cold. Hoffner said nothing.

“I see,” said Jogiches icily. “You let me ramble on like a fool, and I give you Munich. Well done, Inspector.”

Hoffner had known to hook Jogiches by his pride—Rosa had told him as much in the journals—but he had never expected this level of self-reproach. “I’m not sure I’d have used the word ‘fool,’
mein Herr,
” said Hoffner, “but I think we’re at the point where you can volunteer a little something.”

Jogiches answered cagily, “Am I so easily manipulated?”

“I don’t imagine anything of the kind.”

Jogiches was still cold: “And you think I’m eventually going to trust you, don’t you, Inspector?”

Hoffner pulled a second cigarette from his pack. “I wouldn’t want to set a precedent,
mein Herr.
”

“No,” said Jogiches, eyeing him more closely. “That would be dangerous, wouldn’t it?”

A
clarinet had joined the band. There was hardly space between the tables, yet someone had decided that that meant dancing. Luckily, all the bouncing was keeping itself to the other side of the room.

Jogiches said, “It’s when the smoke clears that the trouble begins, Inspector.” He was on his fourth glass of brandy, though as sober as when he had first sat down. “Berlin wants to dictate to the rest of Germany, but the rest of Germany isn’t all that keen to listen. Communists in Bremen, Social Democrats in Hamburg, royalists in Stuttgart, God knows what else in Berlin, and on and on and on. The revolution isn’t over. It’s simply waiting to see who has the will to see it through.”

“And Munich?” said Hoffner.

Jogiches spoke with absolute certainty. “Munich will make all the difference, even if Berlin doesn’t know that, just yet.”

“But you do.”

Jogiches had a habit of staring at the ember of his cigarette as he held it by his glass. “Did you ever ask yourself
why
they’re keeping Rosa’s body on a slab of ice in Alexanderplatz?”

“Every day.”

“Yes, but you’ve been asking for the wrong reasons.” He looked across at Hoffner. “You think it’s something to do with your little Belgian.”

“No, I think it extends far beyond that, but I have nothing to tell me why. Isn’t that the reason we’re having this little chat?”

Jogiches conceded the point. He took a pull on the cigarette. “There’s the obvious answer.”

“Which is?”

“She makes your murder case political.”

Hoffner disagreed. “That’s not enough. She’ll be forgotten the moment these idiots they’re rounding up get a slap on the wrist. You don’t actually think anyone’s going to pay for her death?”

Hoffner was expecting a bit of fire in the answer, but Jogiches was no longer biting. “That would be something, wouldn’t it?” said Jogiches, his eyes drifting for a moment. “Justice for a socialist.” He again stared across at Hoffner. “They’re keeping her so as to use her. This is about taking the reins, Inspector, and the when and the how are what matter. The why is far too obvious.”

It made Hoffner uneasy to see how much pleasure Jogiches took in the prospect of something so far-reaching. Men like him saw conspiracies and revolutions at every turn, but the more Hoffner sifted through the pieces he himself had brought together, the less implausible those possibilities seemed. “Munich,” he said, still unsure why.

Jogiches smiled elusively. “Precisely.”

There was nothing remotely satisfying in the answer. Whatever Jogiches thought he had been making clear was as impenetrable as that insufferable smile. “You know I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Hoffner.

“I imagine you have more than you realize, Inspector.”

Impatience was seeping into Hoffner’s tone: “Then tell me what makes Munich so important.”

For the first time, Jogiches hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said with frustration. “In the same way I don’t know why a Prussian business interest, or a discontinued military ointment, or a substitute madman who was willing to kill himself so as to protect your little Belgian, are involved. But I do know they all revolve around Rosa. The when and the how, Inspector. That’s what you need to find out.”

Hoffner was impressed; Jogiches had mentioned virtually everything except, of course, the design of the Rosenthaler station, but then how could he have known about that? Hoffner was the only one to have put it together. It made the link to Munich even more startling: Stankevich’s letter had come from the engineer; the engineer was the only link to the station. Now Jogiches was mentioning Munich without any knowledge of the engineer.

Hoffner measured out two more glasses. “You seem to be doing fine on your own.”

“That has its limitations,” said Jogiches. “A revolutionary crying foul doesn’t exactly provoke a response, especially when the powers that be already consider him dead.”

“Your article.”

“The final nail, as they say. And dead men don’t have much luck catching trains out of Berlin.”

Jogiches was right. There was nowhere he could turn: the Social Democrats would do nothing to protect him; the right-wing troops would stop at nothing to eliminate him; and the police . . . well, not really their jurisdiction. His only option had been the truth, and that was something Jogiches had never managed terribly well on his own. “Your source is very thorough,” said Hoffner.