The Kraut is the most irregular joint in all of occupied Germany. It serves the odd mixture of both Allied officers, locals, the survivors stuck in the homeless camps and of course the Yids that hadn’t managed to get themselves out of the godforsaken wreck of a country yet. It led to a well-known bohemian ambience that has so far prevented the scuffles and riots that plague the rest of the area. Here’s a place where there is peace in a landscape tired of war. The Kraut is not its real name, but a nickname coined by the Americans. Its owner, an old cancer-ridden half-dead shlemil called Wolfgang, because his mother semi-hoped he’d be a genius, bought the premises just after the bomb, and called it Die Bierstube. After a week nobody called it this.

Two hundred yards down the lane, Eric Goldberg finishes his smoke and stabs the remains into the nearest wall, letting the ashes flutter away in the chilly winter breeze. It is always cold now, and dark. Snow is drifting and it catches in his straggly black hair and beard as he grunts, checks the Luger in the inside left of his jacket, and goes to find some beer.

A jeep is parked haphazardly, its occupants, three young yanks that are gripping their M1 Garand rifles angrily as they argue about something or other with a pot-bellied man in the doorway. Same old, thinks Eric, as he avoids the scene and skirts round the back of the vehicle, wishing he had another smoke. The air is so freezing it corrodes his lungs and he races towards the cracked oak doors, the orange light burning from the windows, the sound of laughter and music and noise.

His hat slips in the wind, and as he corrects it, he catches the eye of a giant man that stands, arms folded, outside the doors of The Kraut. The giant nods and they walk in together. Eric feels like he is walking into a fire, such is the difference between the two temperatures. Immediately the pair stride toward the bar.

Behind the bar Wolfgang flashes a sickly toothless grin. “Eric, you old fotze! I heard you were dead.”

“You first, putznasher. How’s the cancer?”

“It owes me less money than you, so right now it rates higher. Who is your fat friend?” Wolfgang says fearlessly, ignorant of the foot or so difference in height between himself and Eric’s acquaintance.

“This is Dietmar. One time in the war he lost his bayonet and so had to kill three tommies with his bare hands. There’s not much else you need to know about him, except that he likes beer,” Eric says, patting Dietmar on the back. Dietmar smiles.

“As long as he has money, I don’t give a fuck what he can do,” Wolfgang says, and smiles in his disgusting manner, grabs two tankards and fills them to the top with ale so that it froths and spills onto the wooden bar. Eric pays and then flushes the beer down his throat too fast and he is surprised by how cool it is.

“Danke,” Eric mutters, and takes a look around. Plenty of uniforms fill the room, full of too many medals and worn by too happy soldiers. They flirt with the local girls, who are red with laughter. Eric fills up with unnecessary anger, and reminds himself that what he has to do tonight will require patience and calm.

“She is late,” Dietmar says. He is a man of few words, but these are deemed important enough to vocalise. Eric doesn’t reply straight away but takes another angry glance at the tables full of westerners.

“We have plenty of time, my friend,” Eric reassures him. “Plenty of time.”

The building is filled with trinkets and valuables looted or found or collected in the aftermath of the destruction that followed the atomic bombing of Germany, and it is an impressive sight, one that Eric indulges every time he visits this popular ale house. There are swords, rifles, ancient Germanic crests, an assortment of flags and badges, all pinned like deserters waiting to be shot against the walls, high up to prevent any burglary. The crown glory of the assemblage of stolen goods, however, is the triumvirate of paintings above them all, which Eric suspects, no in fact he knows, because before the goddamn war he was an Art student at the University of Berlin, are all by Botticelli, and are therefore the richest artefacts within about five hundred miles.

Eric has reasoned the Americans and the British are all godless philistines for not catching onto what Wolfgang has so bravely advertised on his walls, or perhaps they are too interested in the whores that frequent this haunt to notice great art. Either way, Eric knows his luck, and touches the pistol through his jacket to check it is still there.

He does not know why he picked this night. Maybe he was just too sick of the snow and the dark and the cold, and knows it only a matter of clockwork before he gets cancer like everyone else. Maybe he just wants to feel hard cash in his pocket, even if it is barely worth anything anymore, so he can escape this pretension of a country and live out his days in paradise. Or maybe he just really likes Botticelli.

By the time Diana Ettinghausen graces them with her presence, Eric and Dietmar have drank at least three or maybe four beers, pissed at least twice, lost a game of cards to a few arrogant British officers, and generally waited too long.

“You’re late, Fraülein,” Eric says with a bitter edge. He hates losing at cards, but mostly he hates waiting.

“Fuck you, Goldberg. If you had any idea what it is like to walk around on your own as a woman out there, you might shut the fuck up once in a while,” Diana snaps. She takes a chair from another table without asking and sits down. Her clothes are manly, but her tidy brown hair betrays a feminine side. “Besides, they’re all still here.”

“Yes, I know, some of the bastards just took our beer money. Did you get the stuff?”

“Yes, yes, it’s all in order. All as is as you beautifully planned, sweetheart.” It is her turn to be sarcastic.

“What are you planning, darlin’?” says an American sweetly as he foolishly draws up a chair and sits at their table. Dietmar, who rarely troubles himself with any unnecessary talking or actions, sees fit to raises an eyebrow at the intruder. The soldier has sparkling teeth and a pristine uniform, something that irritates Eric. He is always angry these days. “Don’t worry, I can keep a secret.” The yank stares into Diana’s eyes, before his elbow slips and his face crashes into the table.

All three of them don’t stop laughing for several minutes, and the drunk embarrassed GI slips back to his table of friends, who have simultaneously enjoyed the man’s failure.

“Another American falls flat on his face,” says Eric, waving his arm up, like such a happening is a given in this day and age. “When are they going to stop making marks on our land?”

“Oh no.” Diana rolls her eyes, then reaches into her pocket and takes out smoke and lights it. “Don’t tell me you are going to rant again, because I can go outside.”

“They drop a few big fucking bombs and from then on it’s just calamity after calamity!” Eric speaks in English, loudly, consciously hoping it would be heard at the nearby tables. The alcohol had filtered deep into his system and all sense of cleverness had quickly left. “Drinking our beer, stealing our goddamn women.”

“Too bad it’s cold,” Diana says regretfully.

The fight, when it starts, is not really a fight. The Americans roll back their sleeves and ready their fists, and a group of them are ready for it, hot on their heels, drunk enough to enjoy the opportunity. But then Dietmar stands up and most of them think they would prefer to enjoy the warmth a little longer and retreat back to their original positions. A few remain, but when Dietmar puts him through a chair, and Wolfgang gets out his shotgun, The Kraut goes back to its usual business.

“So what did we learn today?” Diana smiles. “Eric is a lousy drunk.”

“Wolfgang keeps his shotgun on the right end of the bar,” Dietmar adds, nodding mechanically.

“My genius is unappreciated,” Eric slurs. “I uncover a certain impediment on our path to glory, and you sarcastically dismiss it.”

By this time the night is old and the crowd begins to thin. The doors are hardly ever closed as the lucky ones leave with girls and the ugly ones leave alone. The warmth seems to slip away with them as icy air invades. The once roaring fire stutters to a few embers. Eventually the three are almost alone, except for the two British officers that beat Eric and Dietmar at cards, who sit by the dying fire and drink whisky faster than Wolfgang can pour their next one. It is long enough so Eric has sobered up, so now they sit in silence and wait.

“Hey, Eric, you drunk mamzer!” Wolfgang says to crack their slumber. He stands over Eric without smiling this time. “You better pay for that chair, you hear me? I’ll add it to the debt you already owe me. Which reminds me--” he starts, but is interrupted by the drunken calls of the a British captain who demands more whisky. Before Wolfgang can oblige, the gentleman in question slides from his chair and collapses on the wooden floor. His friend bangs the table in amusement, and laughs heartily, before helping him up, tipping his hat to Diana and leaving the building.

“As I was saying,” Wolfgang continues, after cleaning a few tables. “Actually, what the fuck? What are you guys still doing here? You never stay this late, Eric.”

It is as if, someone, somewhere, clicks his fingers. The whole scene changes magically.

All three of them rise in unison. Eric slips the Luger out of his jacket, and points it at the middle of Wolfgang’s forehead. “It’s nothing personal, Wolfgang, although you are fat, smelly, ugly and downright abominable.”

He quivers with fear, sweat forming like raindrops on his skin. The establishment is hit with a pervading silence, odd after an evening of noise. Dietmar goes to the bar and grabs the shotgun and has a strange look of enjoyment in his face as he wields it almost like a club. “Wh-what exactly do you want? Is it this silly little debt? I forget already!”

“Cut the dribble. We’re here for the paintings, and if possible, anything else you’re hiding in here. We all know you’re a rich goyim. You made good from the war, so now we want in. And then maybe I’ll think about not blowing your useless brains out.” Eric looks lustfully towards the masterpieces of Botticelli resting peacefully on the wall above.

Diana nods and walks round the back of the bar and behind, disappearing into the room behind. She emerges with car keys, a pistol and a large sack, before going back and retrieving a ladder.

“Don’t call out or do anything stupid, Wolfgang.” Eric keeps the gun trained at the scared man’s head. Wolfgang curiously looks up at his art on the wall and then shrugs.

“You come for the paintings?”

Eric doesn’t answer. He jerks his head upstairs, and Dietmar follows the cue, taking the staircase and breaking the door down to Wolfgang’s personal living quarters. Diana climbs the ladder and begins to wrestle the loot from the wall.

“Be careful,” Eric growls, his love and care for art unabated by eight years of long and horrible war and six months of disastrous peace.

It takes longer than anticipated but Diana eventually secures the paintings into the bulging sack, and Eric takes one last look at their classical facades before their fade into darkness. Dietmar materialises back on the landing upstairs, with a collection of notes and coins, which he pockets happily.

“Very good,” Eric says, and Diana and Dietmar both nod, and escape away to the car, the keys jingling in Diana’s hands. As Dietmar passes, he raids the money collected that evening from the counter. “And now it’s just you and me, Wolfgang.”

But there is something changed about the landlord. He is no longer quivering, or sweating so profusely, or in any way concerned about the fact a highly dangerous weapon is being aimed at his skull. Instead there is something horribly unsettling about the manner in which Wolfgang is presenting himself. At first he simply smiles, and then he begins to laugh, quietly, and then with the full force of his throat, so it becomes rasping and vigorous.

“You fucking stupid Jew,” he says. “If you shoot that pistol, the Americans will come and get you and your friends. Maybe not tonight, but a dozen people will know you were in this joint till late. And that’s not even the funniest fucking thing.”

Eric’s heart pounds like it is about to burst. “We will be far away from here, you fat old man. Across the border and far away.” The words seem fragile even as he says them, and he realises it is a tenuous dream. These are desperate times that require similar measures, he muses, and there is always a chance. “You, however, won’t be so lucky.”

Wolfgang does not stop laughing.

Eric does not find anything funny, and rams the pistol into the man’s temple, throwing him to the floor and spilling blood, which streams onto the oak floor. Somehow the laughter keeps going. Eric is angry now and kicks his ribs again and again.

“What is so funny, you fat fuck?”

He stops laughing to cough blood. “You fucking Jews. Sometimes I wish Hitler had not died so early on, then we might have cleansed you from society. Taken all the stupidity away with you. Hahaha.”

This drives Eric into a frenzy and he kicks until his legs ache. He jams the pistol into Wolfgang’s neck as far as it will physically go, and his finger rests on the trigger. “Tell me what is so funny.”

“Okay, okay, I will tell you a little secret. Those paintings you so love, those paintings you stole, they are not originals. They are copies. Fakes. Not the real deal. You have stolen nothing but a little bit of money from my room. You stupid fucking Jew.”

Eric pulls his trigger and paints Wolfgang’s brains all over the front side of the bar. He drops the pistol and then begins to laugh. The futility of it all, the pointless of everything, suddenly becomes clear to him. Outside, a car rumbles to a start and tires screech as it leaves. He does not blame them – the Americans or the British will be upon him presently, and they do not want to be caught. They have been punishing criminals so severely, these days, to stop the riots. Instead he wonders how his life got to this point, he analyses all the patterns and the paths that took him to this unlikely end, and in the end blames the Americans. “Fucking atomic bombs.”

When the soldiers enter The Kraut, the most irregular joint in the whole of occupied Germany, they find two dead bodies.