I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin

The year is 1932 and Michael Renner is en route from Halifax to Berlin to oversee the affairs of his ailing grandmother. Reluctantly abandoning his unrequited adoration of the boy next door, Michael has given in to familial pressure and boarded the General von Steuben, where he meets his first Berliner, an odd little man named Tristan who instantly pronounces Michael a dear sweet country boy whom Berlin will eat alive.

Staying with his faltering grandmother who has been reduced to letting rooms in her once grand home, Michael is witness to the crumbling edifice of Berlin aristocracy. The house is home to a rag-tag assemblage, including Dr. Linder and his niece Hélène, both Jews. The beguiling Hélène takes Michael under her wing and introduces him to Berlin’s high society, as well as its many lows. Upon his grandmother’s death, Michael’s cousin and her husband quickly move in, dispatched to protect the family assets. When they discover that Michael is engaged to Hélène, they break up the union, expose her as a Jew and summarily send her to Austria as the fascists tighten their stranglehold on Berlin. Michael is strategically married off to the dutifully pious Lonä, and before he knows it he is a father, working for his father-in-law auctioning the property of persecuted Jews.

Years pass as Michael leads a double life, once again enthralled in unrequited love for a young man, the beautiful and mercurial Jan. From the relative safety of his respectable lifestyle, Michael despairs at Jan’s unconcealed promiscuity. After Jan is nearly killed during a stint in prison under the Nazi-revised Paragraph 175 targeting sexual deviancy, Michael risks everything to become Jan’s caregiver, siphoning money from his father-in-law’s business to cover Jan’s expenses in hiding. When their secret is exposed, Michael in turn is rescued by Peter, a dashing SS officer who has a habit of assisting Michael in desperate times, though not without expectation of returned favours.

Through it all, Michael continues his peculiar friendship with Tristan, who as it turns out is the wizard behind the mind-blowing displays of debauchery at the most decadent of the legendary Berlin cabarets. Miraculously protected in a disused factory complex and underground abattoir, Tristan’s club cranks out nihilistic amusements for Berlin society, including many Nazi officers, a fun-house mirror of the horrors above.

As madness swirls about them, Michael and Jan come to rely on each other for comfort and safety. But Michael is haunted by the removal from his life of his son Billy, the only part of that “respectable” life that he loves. When Peter provides Michael with an escape route from the ruin that inevitably will snare him and all who remain in Berlin, Michael finds he cannot abandon Jan and Billy. Because of his love for them, he must walk back into the doom of the holocaust, marked by horrors never before imagined on earth.

Exhaustively researched and ablaze with searing detail, I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin is a literary monument of unflinching compassion, glittering with the decadence of Berlin cabaret society, resonant with the horrors of the holocaust, and giving form and voice to the ghosts of the tens of thousands of people murdered because of their sexual orientation. This important book carries a warning for all generations to come, of the deadly stealth of fascism in whatever form it may take.

Stephens Gerard Malone has been a mortgage clerk in Calgary, a silver-service waiter in New Zealand, an envelope stuffer in Toronto and a sex-advice columnist. His first novel, Miss Elva, was a finalist for the Dartmouth Book Award. He lives in Nova Scotia.