Phantoms of Breslau (14 page)

“Indeed, Manzke, you’re right.” Mock slipped the note into the waiter’s waistcoat pocket. “But I don’t know which waiter it was … Will you help me find him?”

Manzke nodded stiffly and moved away between the tables. The musicians bowed to the audience and blew on their trumpets. Several dance-hostesses – including a dark-haired woman who smiled broadly at Mock – began to sway to the music without leaving their tables. Three elderly men who, like Mock, had in the meantime taken their seats on the second tier overlooking the dance floor eyed the girls through coils of smoke. Eventually one of them made up his mind and approached the dark-haired hostess. She stood up slowly, and did not spare Mock a look of disappointment.

The Criminal Assistant settled down to his goose-liver pâté. He was interrupted in his consumption of this delicate cold meat by Manzke the waiter, who placed a napkin on the table and quickly disappeared. Beneath the napkin lay a clean strip of cash register ribbon on which was written: “Kiss my arse.” Mock rubbed his eyes and lit a cigarette. He looked at the scrap of paper once more and heard a ringing in his ears. He stubbed out the cigarette, stood up and made his way through the tables. He entered the bar and, guided by his instinct for alcohol, soon
found the serving counter. There stood Manzke, collecting slim, frothing glasses of beer from the barman. When he saw Mock he made towards the flapping kitchen door, but Mock was faster. The waiter did not manage to open the door of his own accord, but did so involuntarily when the weight of Mock’s body shoved against his. He tumbled into the kitchen, but there, instead of running from the enraged man, he stood behind a table at which a bald waiter sat in his shirtsleeves counting his tips. Manzke glanced meaningfully at his colleague, who was surprised by the commotion, and apologized to Mock for not bringing him his bottle of gin in good time. Nobody said a word. The Criminal Assistant left the kitchen lobby and made towards the toilets. In the cubicle he tore off a scrap of toilet paper and wrote: “The bald, fat waiter.” He went out, paid his bill and discreetly gave Manzke a considerable tip. He also handed him the piece of toilet paper and with his eyes indicated Smolorz, who was sitting in the bar. Manzke drifted over to Smolorz, and Mock towards the exit. “That Manzke ought to be employed by the police,” he thought. “As an informer, for the time being; I liked the way he pointed out that waiter to me.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919
EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

Waiter Helmut Kohlisch finished work at eight o’clock that day. He was tired and angry. Crossing the kitchen, he climbed the narrow inner staircase which led to the stores and pantries. His mood was not improved either by the beer stain on his shirt or by the thought of what awaited him in his dank, one-room lodgings on Büttnerstrasse, squeezed between a delicatessen and a printers: Lisbeth, his heavily pregnant eighteen-year-old daughter, her unemployed husband Josef, a communist agitator who aroused the suspicions of every policeman, and his
own consumptive wife, Luise, ladling soup into their bowls. The meal would have been nutritious had it consisted of something more than water, a few pieces of potato and some pitiful strips of cabbage. All would sit there slurping the soup as their eyes bored into his pockets for the tips.

Kohlisch entered the staff room and undressed down to his vest and long johns. He carefully folded his uniform tailcoat and hung up his trousers only once the creases had been perfectly pressed together. He crumpled up the shirt stained by the copper and stuffed it into his bag. He opened the wardrobe, and inside it saw one of the customers he had served that day. Before he had time to be surprised, he had received his first blow. His assailant hit him on the jaw and he flew through the air towards some empty crates, trying to tense his muscles to soften the impact on his back. But this proved unnecessary. Someone grabbed him hard beneath his arms and wrapped him in a double Nelson. He felt the muscles in his neck weaken, the pressure making him bend his neck towards the floor. The red-headed customer clambered out of the wardrobe, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his freckled and flushed face. Kohlisch thrashed this way and that, trying to tear himself away from his assailant. This only made the latter increase the pressure, forcing Kohlisch to contemplate his own darned socks. At that moment, Kohlisch remembered that there was a way of slipping out of a double Nelson, by raising your arms and falling to your knees. This he did, and it worked. For a moment he knelt on the floor. Then he received a second blow, this time from behind. A crate smashed on his head and he felt trickles of blood run down his bald skull. Only then did he feel pain. For a few moments, darkness enveloped him. The man behind him planted the crate, now without its base, on his head and pushed it down over his arms. Kohlisch was immobilized. He knelt in front of the red-headed customer, the crate pinning his arms at his waist. He tried to turn around, but his second
attacker grabbed him by the ears and turned his face towards the man with the red hair.

“Listen, Kohlisch,” he heard from behind. “We’re not going to do anything to you if you answer politely.”

Kohlisch screamed and immediately regretted it. The red-headed man’s heel hit him in the mouth, shattering a lower tooth. Saliva mixed with blood stained the floor. Kohlisch rocked a while in the stocks formed by the old crate, and then collapsed. He heard a humming all around. Someone tied his shirt, which reeked strongly of beer, around his head.

“Are you going to scream again?”

“No.” Air whistled through the gap in his teeth.

“Promise.”

“Yes.”

“Say ‘I promise.’”

“I promise.”

“Where do you get those male whores from for the ladies?”

“What whores?”

“The male ones. The ones who dress up. One as a carter, another one as a sailor, another a worker …”

“I don’t know what you’re …”

The next blow was very painful indeed. Kohlisch could almost hear whatever it was grind across his cheekbone. Someone was standing on his stomach with one heavy shoe. Blood and snot ran from his mouth and nose. The shirt around his head grew damp.

“That was a knuckle-duster. Do you want another taste of it, or are you going to talk?”

“The Baroness orders the boys …”

Someone carefully wiped his face with the shirt. A swelling on his cheek obscured the view from his left eye. With his right he saw the
red-headed man throwing away the wet shirt in disgust. The strike of a match, smoke being exhaled.

“The Baroness’ name!”

“I don’t know,” Kohlisch glanced at the red-headed man and yelled. “Don’t hit me, you son of a whore! I’ll tell you everything I know about her!”

The red-headed man slipped the knuckle-duster over his fingers and looked questioningly past Kohlisch’s trembling body to where the smoke was coming from. He must have received an answer to his unspoken question because he removed the knuckle-duster. Kohlisch breathed a sigh of relief.

“So, what do you know about the Baroness?” said the man he could not see.

“I know she’s a Baroness because that’s what they call her.”

“Who calls her that?”

“Her friends.”

“What’s the Baroness’ name?”

“I’ve already told you … I don’t know … I really don’t know … Can’t you understand,” howled Kohlisch when he saw the knuckle-duster back on the red-headed man’s hand. “The whore doesn’t introduce herself to me when she wants a boy, does she?”

“I’m satisfied.” The interrogator spat on the floor. The cigarette hissed. “But you’ve got to give me something to recognize her by.”

“Her coat of arms,” Kohlisch moaned. “The coat of arms on her carriage … An axe, a star and an arrow …”

“Good. Identify it in the Armorial of Silesian Nobility, in our archives.” Kohlisch guessed that the instructions were directed at the redheaded man. “And now one more thing, Kohlisch. Explain what you mean by ‘the Baroness orders boys’.”

“The Baroness arrives and phones somewhere from here,” Kohlisch
practically whispered. “A droschka pulls up outside the restaurant, with some men in costume inside. The Baroness or one of her friends wishes, for example, for a carter … Then I go and get him from the droschka … As if I’d fetched him myself … It’s a game …”

Kohlisch stopped talking. There were no more questions. The door to the staff room slammed. He flung his fat body around, taking in the room with crates thrown about all over the place. There stood two men Kohlisch had never seen before. One of them, a short man with a narrow, fox-like face, gestured to the other, a giant with bushy eyebrows. He seemed to be saying: “Take care of him!”

The giant emitted an inarticulate sound and then walked up to Kohlisch, slipped the temporary stocks from his arms and held under his nose a handkerchief permeated with a sweet and sickly, yet sharp smell. It reminded him of hospitals.

“It’s for your own good. You’re going to stay with us for a few days.” That was the last thing Kohlisch heard that day.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919
NINE O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

The villa belonging to Baron and Baroness von Bockenheim und Bielau stood at one end of Wagnerstrasse. Two cars drove up to the massive iron gates decorated with coats of arms on which ivy wound around a shield depicting an axe and a star pierced with a half-feathered arrow. From the garden at the back of the house came the shouts of children and the tinkling of a piano. The red-headed man climbing out of the first car listened intently to the sounds before he pressed the bell, holding it for some time. A butler in a tailcoat marched majestically from the villa. His face, framed by side-whiskers, radiated calm, and his long, stork-like legs in striped trousers advanced with a dancing step. He approached the gate
and cast a contemptuous eye over the visitor – a travelling salesman, he presumed. He extended a silver tray to allow the intruder to slip his hand through the railing and deposit on it a business card with the name
JOSEF BILKOWSKY, HUNGARIAN KING HOTEL, BISCHOFSTRASSE 13.
On it was also written the word “Verte”. The butler walked slowly towards the house, lifting his legs high. A few seconds later he disappeared behind the massive door.

The red-headed man got back into the automobile and drove off. After a short while, an elegantly dressed couple appeared on the drive. The woman, in her thirties, wore a black Chanel dress with extravagant wavy stripes, a hat with a white chrysanthemum and a stole, while the older man wore a tailcoat and a white waistcoat which reflected the light from the lanterns along the drive. They went to the gate and looked around. The man opened the gate and stepped out onto the pavement. Apart from a lone car parked at some distance, Wagnerstrasse was empty. The woman fixed her faintly amused eyes on the car. Her companion’s gaze was none too friendly. Both noted the four men sitting inside. At the steering wheel sat a small individual with a hat pushed down over his nose. Next to him sprawled a well-built, dark-haired man. The smoke spiralling from his cigarette caused the two men in the back of the car to squint. One of the two had something wrapped around his face, as if he were suffering from toothache, while the other could barely fit in the back seat. The dark-haired man turned to them, caught the one with the bandage by the neck and pointed to the elegant woman.

He said something and the man with the toothache nodded. The dark-haired man touched the driver on the shoulder and the car abruptly pulled away. A moment later it had disappeared from view. The woman in the exquisite black dress and the man in the tailcoat returned to the villa. The butler looked at them in surprise. The man in the tailcoat was a little annoyed, the woman in the black dress indifferent.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH 1919
A QUARTER PAST NINE IN THE EVENING

The children’s party being held at Baron von Bockenheim und Bielau’s villa in celebration of the eighth birthday of Baron Rüdiger II’s only daughter was coming to an end. Parents of those invited sat beneath canopies adorned with the Baron’s coat of arms, moistening their lips and tongues with Philippe champagne. Ladies chattered about the success of Hauptmann’s
Weavers
in Vienna, while men discussed Clemenceau’s threats to call for changes to the German constitution. Puffed up with the grandeur of their master and mistress’
nouvelle noblesse
, the servants moved among them slowly and ceremoniously. The first of the trusted servants carried a tray of empty glasses, the second a tray of full ones. The children, wearing sailor suits or tweeds and caps
à la
Lord Norfolk, ran around the garden watched over by their governesses. A few girls stood around a piano singing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” to the brisk rhythm hammered out on the keys by a long-haired musician. The lanterns, like the conversations, were slowly waning. The gentlemen had decided to smoke a farewell cigarette, the ladies to take one more sip of champagne “whose bubbles”, as one of them expressed it, “added an interesting bitterness to the sweet Viennese pastry twists”.

The lady of the house, Baroness Mathilde von Bockenheim und Bielau, placed her glass on the tray offered her by Friedrich the butler. She gazed lovingly at her daughter Louise, who was running across the garden trying not to lose sight of a small kite that was still just visible in the half-light of the lanterns. Out of the corner of her eye, the Baroness saw the empty glasses on the tray. She turned around in annoyance. Had the old man failed to notice that she had already replaced her glass? Didn’t he realize that there were other guests to be seen to? Maybe something’s wrong with him? He’s so old … She looked at Friedrich with concern as he stood before her, his eyes revealing a readiness to lay down his life for his mistress.

“Did you want something from me, Frédéric?” she asked very gently.

“Yes, your Ladyship.” Friedrich looked at little Louise von Bockenheim und Bielau as her governess chased her with open arms, calling with a strong English accent: “Don’t run so fast, little Baroness, you’ll get too hot!”