Faber—introductions
Simply known as Faber—he doesn’t reveal his first name readily—this man of reasonably few years acts as our way into the BerliNoir world. Automatically an outsider by virtue of the strange city in which he finds himself (or, more accurately, puts himself—he is an outsider by choice), he is a high-level student/low-level academic whose intellectual interests now finally seem to be manifesting themselves very ‘really’ in this particular endeavour.
Laconic by choice, he has relatively little experience of doing anything and has a Madame-Bovary-tendency to impose the character traits of the characters and authors he is interested in over his own actions, only to feel foolish for doing so. For example, purchasing a tall wide-brimmed fedora at the wonderful Kreuzberg Panama Hat Gallery when all he really needed was a piece of information on Homburg hats from the owners.
Charles DeForest Thornton—introductions
Thornton, circa 1910s—1990s, was a purveyor of pulp with literary aspirations. Born in England, Thornton spent time in the USA whilst a young man, and, for reasons yet unknown to literary historians, moved from east coast America to Berlin shortly after the Berliner Mauer was erected, where he lived until his death in the late 1990s. He wrote numerous short stories in the detective noir genre, influenced by Chandler, Hammett et al, and had a penchant for a simile as biting as an already aggravated bull terrier caught unawares. Married twice in early life, once to a minor film star, Thornton was a widower for the last ten years of his life.
Primarily Thornton was known for his novels based around the private eye character Ray Delaney, whose various adventures stretched to include both the US and Europe, as Thornton’s writing began to reflect his reading of Christopher Isherwood’s novels and the increasing globalisation of all niche fiction genres. There is rumoured to be a lost Delaney novel amongst as-yet-unsorted papers which are now in private hands in Germany.
He was known to have dictated all of his novels to a private secretary, the identity of whom is also not yet known. Tapes purporting to have been made in the last months of Thornton’s life have come to the attention of academics in the UK. The source of these tapes is still not confirmed.
Faber—first steps
A long-time scholar of noir fiction and fan of Charles DeForest Thornton, Faber obtains second-hand copies of the Thornton Tapes, reportedly recorded in the mid-90s by the author himself. He decides—perhaps like a student tracking down the biography of a famous biographer called Destry-Scholes—that he should go to Thornton’s adopted home town with a fiction-inflected view to finding out more about a reclusive and elusive figure, and possibly discovering the lost Delaney manuscript.
There is little coherence or narrative to the tapes, but they express the sentiments of a man who recognises his legacy and his lapsing health. Faber hopes he can use the information in the tapes to trace the last years of Thornton’s life. All the clues he has before leaving for Berlin come from the tapes—mentions of “the man in the Homburg hat”, a neighbour of Thornton’s [see Faber—introductions]; stories of Thornton’s experiences in the Second World War; a few personal details regarding his last secretary, a German woman named Helga.
Dr Niels Never—introductions
Dr Never, a dentist in the east of Berlin, is a man in his mid-40s, short, balding but with a close-cropped head of hear, and teeth that are just too white. His office, in the Friedrichshain area of the city, has a large neon-lit, cream-coloured tooth in the centre in its window, and a golden plaque with Dr Niels Never M.D.—Zahnarzt written on it. He may know something about Thornton, and Faber somehow finds out that Thornton paid him a lot of visits during his last year. Why would a dying writer care about his smile?
Juri Fink—introductions
A low-level criminal whose shady background becomes clear later in Faber’s investigations, Fink is a small man with a constant amount of greying stubble peppering his chin and round-framed glasses. He dresses in smart but cheaply made clothing.
He meets his end in an horrific ‘accident’ during an U-Bahn ride at 4am on a Tuesday morning. The carriage stops between stations. The lights flicker out for a minute. There is a scuffle, of which two of the three other passengers—a drunkenly soporific student returning from a party, and a homeless man only vaguely aware of his own name—are only peripherally aware. When the train reaches the next stop, Alexanderplatz, Juri Fink is dangling indecorously from a wrist strap mounted to an overhead bar. His eyes bulge, his neck grows a deep shade of purple, and his limbs sway to and fro, to and fro, as the automatic announcement hails: “Zurückbleiben, bitte!”
The Poet-Friend—introductions
Given a lead from a rather friendly waitress, Faber meets with a poet who—under the pretence of his own artistic temperament—refuses to give him a name. He claims to have been a friend of Thornton, but Faber cannot determine whether this is the case. He is, after all, pretentious enough when meeting Faber in a café in Prenzlauer Berg to sit waiting for him with pre-crumpled paper, half a stub of pencil, a cigarette packer, a zippo lighter, and a shiny, new-looking mobile phone perched next to his half-finished cup of black coffee. Faber doesn’t trust him, but he may prove useful.
The Buskers/The ‘Ears’—introductions
Shortly after arriving, Faber comes across two men of uncertain profession who supplement their income by busking on U-Bahn train cars during trips. They play 1930s and 40s jazz numbers on a saxophone and a guitar, and within a week, Faber comes across them at least 3 or 4 times. The guitarist is tall, bearded, and wears dark glasses. He has a white cane attached to his guitar strap. The saxophonist is shorter, fat, and has the nervous, unfocussed eyeline of someone born blind. They play, and then slowly feel their way along the carriage after each song with a large paper cup from a fast food restaurant, collecting loose change from those who feel the need to give it to them.
What they do is uncertain—witnesses to the death of Juri Fink, scam artists, or something more sinister?—but their last encounter with Faber proves vital in his determining the truth behind Thornton’s last years in a post-1989 Berlin. Leaving the train car at Alexanderplatz, Faber flicks a coin towards them down the aisle of the U-Bahn carriage. In a moment of foolishness greater than almost any he has experienced, the guitarist reaches out and palms the 50 cents, mid-air. Faber is at first dumbfounded, but just as the doors are about to close, the ‘Ears’ of the particular city-wide operation Faber has become entangled in, disappear onto the platform and up the steps to their right. Faber squeezes his slender form sideways through the automatic train doors, to the annoyance of a guard stood on the platform, and runs in the direction of the two blind men.
This chase-scene through Alex chapter outlined above must be called ‘See How They Run’.
Will Faber catch them? Can he tie the loose ends together? Can he uncover Thornton’s lost years as well as his lost Delaney manuscript? Perhaps after buying a fedora, he can…
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