Small Mercies
Eighty seats, six nights a week, and a file in a policeman's own handwriting.
- ~100 min
- 16688 words
- 44 scenes
- 5 branch points
- 5 endings
- Weimar Germany, Berlin-Neukölln, winter 1931 to summer 1932
2 recorded plays (one per visitor per day)
Cover art · generated placeholder backgrounds and character art in-game · licensed music, credited in the build · listing metadata: listing.json · counts: authored
About
Neukölln, winter 1931. Trude Haffner sings at the Kleine Gnade, a cellar club with eighty seats, a coal stove that only works if you kick it, and a licence that survives at the discretion of the district police. She is genuinely good and genuinely using: morphine since a hospital stay in 1928, from a supplier who is relaxed about money and about nothing else. Emil Brandt works her door and organises for a Red Front cell out of the back of a bicycle shop. Kommissar Alwin Kessler of the political police has kept her club open for two years, buys her breakfast at four in the morning, and listens. He has also been writing it down. Not to hurt her — to build a file that explains her, that makes her a witness rather than a suspect, that keeps the licence renewable. Eleven months of things she said while high, in his own careful hand, in a department that is about to change masters. What was written as protection becomes the most dangerous list in the district, and the only two people who can get it out of the building both want something from her. A Weimar cabaret story with the glamour off: unpaid coal bills, four elections in fourteen months, a boxer with a detached retina, a policeman with a bad heart who believes his job is worth doing, and a singer who is very funny about all of it until she isn't. Desire is frank and cuts away at the door. The street violence is close, ugly and quick. Five endings, and the file survives in four of them.
Content notice
- opioid addiction and withdrawal, non-instructional
- street violence and murder, graphic
- political extremism and fascist violence
- police surveillance and betrayal
- sex work referenced
- sexual content implied, cuts away
- suicide
- antisemitic and political persecution depicted through behaviour
If this is close to home: findahelpline.com lists free crisis lines by country.
Cast
- T Trude Haffner protagonist; singer at the Kleine Gnade no portrait yet
- E Emil Brandt doorman, former welterweight, Red Front organiser no portrait yet
- K Kommissar Alwin Kessler political police; the man who has been writing it down no portrait yet
- L Lotte Feld club owner, pianist, keeps the licence and the debts no portrait yet
- V Vogel Trude's supplier; a pharmacist's dispenser with an arrangement no portrait yet
- H Hanne Brandt Emil's sister; works a laundry, holds the cell's money no portrait yet