In Berlin immediately after World War II, gangs of homeless, rapacious children roamed the rubble, living by their wits, their fists and any other way they could. Unscrupulous, nearly feral and as morally adrift as the boys in William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies,” they were neatly limned in Frederick Taylor’s 1991 novel, “The Kinder Garden.”
Now these enfants horribles are recalled to life as a central element in Dan Vyleta’s both impressive and disappointing debut novel, “Pavel & I.” Led by a 14-year-old nasty piece of work called Paulchen, they are part of, and caught in, a spy-and-crime web woven by a tubby and vicious British colonel named Fosko.
It is the brutal winter of 1946-47. Fosko lives with a prostitute, Sonia, in an apartment above that of Pavel Richter, an American soldier who has stayed in Germany for reasons that are as unclear as his past.
Pavel’s sometime companion is a pre-adolescent boy, Anders, a reluctant member of Paulchen’s gang, who has attached himself to Pavel out of a kind of familial love. Between Sonia and Pavel a love develops that is considerably more heated than familial.
When Pavel’s friend Boyd shows up at his door with a trunk containing a dead midget, we know we are off to the races. Later we learn that the midget — that’s the word used throughout — was a randy little ex-Nazi thug named Söldemann whose life and enterprises were no more savory than anyone else’s in this clutch of nasty villains. Not long after, Boyd also turns up dead.
At the center of all this there is of course a Big Secret, something that Söldemann had and that Fosko wants — as do the Soviets. Fosko, however, is not trying to obtain it for king and country, but to enrich himself.
There is a lot to admire about “Pavel & I.” As a thriller, it is highly admirable. Like most mysteries, literary and cinematic, this one grows complex nearly to the point of irritation; but unlike most, this one is entirely logical, and every dead body is accounted for.
The author vividly re-creates the brutal winter of 1946-47, one of the coldest on record. “A winter of death,” he writes, “people freezing in their unheated flats, impoverished, hungry, scraping together something less than a living from the crumbs that fell from their occupiers’ tables.” Icicles form on the insides of streetcars.
The book gives off a miasma of misery, danger and filth. Everyone, everywhere, stinks; it is difficult to wash when the only water is frozen.
Time-evocative details are nicely chosen. As an example: “88” daubed on walls by Berliners to express anger that conditions are worse than during the war. It stands for the eighth letter, H. Double H: “Heil Hitler.”
Unfortunately, more than a few shortcomings spoil the telling of the tale. The narration is split, not entirely successfully, between an omniscient narrator and Fosko’s chief enforcer as a first-person narrator (the “I” of the title). The inherent problem of first-person narrators — we wonder how this guy can be privy to so many intimate details he cannot possibly know — is exacerbated when contrasted so closely with an omniscient one.
Nevertheless, most readers in search of a good story will find one here.
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Fiction
Pavel & I, by Dan Vyleta, $24.95
Roger K. Miller is a freelance writer and author of the novel, “Invisible Hero.”
