Phantoms of Breslau (19 page)

“
Nolens volens
I overheard your conversation, gentlemen,” he said. “I apologize, Councillor sir, but would you mind telling me a bit more about this suicide?”

“Tell him, Domagalla,” sighed Ilssheimer.

“Criminal Secretary von Gallasen phoned me,” Domagalla said. “He’d been sent to a suicide. Probably a prostitute, judging by her clothes and make-up. On her backside was a prison tattoo of a sun with the writing: ‘You’ll get hot with me.’ I’m just looking through our files to speed up identification of the body.”

“Where did this happen?” Mock asked.

“On Marthastrasse. Probably jumped off a roof.”

“How old was she?”

“Looking at her – well over thirty.”

The sigh which issued from Mock’s lips made the leaves of the palm in the corner of Ilssheimer’s office tremble. A current of air set them moving again as Mock closed the door behind him.

“We’re off,” Mock told Wirth and Zupitza. “To Marthastrasse.”

“Not Gartenstrasse, as on the business card?” Wirth asked.

“No,” Mock said, irritated. “Von Gallasen is very young. A twenty-something-year-old prostitute, ravaged by life, could look forty to him.”

Wirth understood nothing, but he asked no more questions.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1919
ONE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Mock sat in the Horch next to Wirth, cursing the September heat. The dust rising from the cobblestones irritated him, as did the odour of the horses and their manure, and the threads of gossamer that stuck to his stubbly cheeks. When irritated or perturbed, he generally called to mind passages from writers of antiquity, which he had analysed years earlier as a schoolboy and student. He would recite the lofty and concise phrases of Seneca that he had once learned by heart, Homer’s fleeting hexameters, and the sonorous endings of sentences by Cicerone.

He squeezed his eyes shut and saw himself in his uniform, sitting in the front row at secondary school, listening to the simple, crystalline sounds of ancient Roman speech. Into the din of the street broke his Latin teacher, Otton Moravjetz, his mighty voice reciting a painfully relevant passage from Seneca’s
On Solace
:
“Quid est enim novi hominem mori, cuius tota vita nihil aliud, quam ad mortem iter est?
”
^†

Mock opened his eyes. He did not want to hear anything about death. At the newspaper kiosk on the corner of Feldstrasse and Am Ohlauufer, a little boy handed the vendor a small pile of banknotes and received in return a copy of
Die Woche
with its children’s supplement.

Ten-year-old Eberhard Mock runs to the kiosk at Waldenburg railway station, a one-mark coin for Sunday’s
Die Woche
children’s supplement clasped in his hand. Soon he’ll be reading about Billy the Kid’s adventures in the Wild West; soon he’ll find out what happened to Doctor Volkmere, the explorer. Will he escape the cannibals’ cauldron? The newsvendor shakes his head. “None left. Sold out. Go and look somewhere else.” Little Ebi runs hopefully to the kiosk near his school; soon he’ll buy it, read it – but again the apologetic smile, a shake of the head. Ebi drags his feet home. Now he has learned to think negatively. You have to keep repeating to yourself: it’s not going to work, it’ll all end in a fiasco, I’m not going to read about Billy the Kid’s adventures, I’m not going to find out what’s going to happen to Doctor Volkmere.

Thirty-six-year-old Eberhard Mock found it difficult to breathe the Breslau dust and was amazed at the depth of his childhood reflections. “Defensive pessimism is the best attitude,” he thought, “because the only disappointment you can suffer will be a pleasant one.”

Comforted, Mock observed a horse-drawn wagon carrying barrels and crates marked:
WILLY SIMSON. REAL FRANCISCAN BEER FROM BAVARIA
, which was blocking the way into Marthastrasse. Two workers in soft caps and waistcoats were unloading the beer onto the platform of a three-wheeled cart. Mock imagined it to be a wagon belonging to the Forensic Medical Department, and instead of frothy drink in barrels it was Johanna’s body beneath the tarpaulin. Her corpse’s eyes are a sea of blood, a little girl and a howling dog are at her side. The girl tugs at one of her hands. If she could read she would learn from the piece of paper held tightly in the dead woman’s fingers that she had died because of a certain Eberhard Mock, who should own up to some mistake but does not want to, which means that others will die.

They found themselves in Marthastrasse, a quiet little street lined with high tenements. Mock patted Wirth on the shoulder, indicating that he should stop the car. They were about a hundred yards from the crowd milling on the pavement outside number ten, near Just’s Inn which, as Mock knew only too well, was accessed by way of the yard. The Criminal Assistant got out of the Horch while Wirth and Zupitza were instructed to stay inside. He went through the gate, showing one of the uniformed policemen his identification, and began to climb the stairs. On each side of the staircase were large rectangular alcoves from which three sets of double doors led to three apartments. The windows in these peculiar shared hallways, as well as all the kitchen windows, gave onto the ventilation pit. This was how apartments for less wealthy tenants were now being built – they were cheap, of poor quality and very cramped. Two men stood at the windows on the ground floor; one, a uniformed policeman on whose enormous head sat a shako adorned with a star, was answering the questions of the other, an elegantly dressed young man. Mock shook the hand of both. He knew them well, having seen the policeman in uniform several months earlier, and the civilian only that morning. Officer Robert Stieg was on the beat in that district, and Gerhard von Gallasen was Mühlhaus’ assistant. Mock peered into the pit, at the bottom of which lay a small bundle covered with a sheet. “It was once a woman,” he thought hard. “It had a young child and a boxer bitch.”

“Do you know her name yet?” Mock asked (and then told himself, “She must have been called Johanna.”). “Were her eyes gouged out?”

“We don’t know her name,” von Gallasen replied, surprised that Mock had shaken hands with an ordinary beat officer. “None of the gawpers knew her. Your colleague Domagalla has dug up the address of a pimp living in the vicinity …”

“They’re just bringing him in,” said Officer Stieg, pointing to two
uniformed policemen and a short man with wispy blond hair and a top hat who was traipsing up the steep stairs between them.

“I asked you whether her eyes had been gouged out,” Mock said, and his thoughts replied: “Yes, he stuck a bayonet into her eye socket and twisted it a couple of times.”

“No … Of course not … The eyes are untouched,” muttered Officer Stieg. “Tieske, tell the character in the top hat to have a good look at her, then bring him here! At the double!” he yelled to the uniformed policemen.

“Stieg, please tell me everything
ab ovo
!” Mock said, irritating von Gallasen who was higher than Stieg in rank, height and birth, and therefore believed that he ought to have been asked first.

“
Ab
what?” Stieg said, having no idea what was expected of him.

“From the beginning,” Mock explained. “Didn’t you learn Latin at school?”

“This morning, Christianne Seelow from number twenty-four on the fourth floor,” Officer Stieg began, “was hanging out her washing on the roof. A gust of wind blew one of her sheets down into the ventilation pit. She went downstairs and discovered the body. The caretaker, Alfred Titz, ran to the police station. That’s it. Do you want to see her?”

Mock shook his head and imagined Johanna’s body covered by a sheet blown down from the roof by a merciful wind. The blond man in the top hat appeared next to them, evidently not pleased at the sight of Mock.

“Do you know her, Hoyer?” Mock asked, and in his mind he heard the pimp reply: ‘Yes, her name is Johanna. I don’t know her surname.”

“No, Commissioner sir,” Hoyer answered. “She wasn’t from our district. I once saw her in the inn by the yard, but my girls soon drove her out. We don’t like competition.”

“What, was she so pretty?” asked Mock.

“She wasn’t bad,” Hoyer said, smiling at his lewd recollections. “To be honest, someone could have made quite a profit out of her … I wanted to
take her on, but my girls didn’t like her. They teased her.” Hoyer smiled again, this time at Mock. “I’ve got six girls to look after. Sometimes I give in. You can’t argue with all six at once …”

“Fine,” Mock muttered, and tipped his bowler hat in farewell. He was bursting with joy. It was not Johanna. “Defensive pessimism is the best possible attitude to have in the world,” he thought, “because is there anything worse than unpleasant disappointment, than a painful surprise?”

“Teased her? How?”

Mock heard von Gallasen question Hoyer and thought: “The lad wants to ask at least one question. He likes interrogating people. One day it’ll bore him.”

“They called her names.”

“Such as?” asked the novice detective. Mock paused on the stairs to hear the answer.

“Eczema,” laughed Hoyer.

3.IX.1919

Recently my thoughts have been focussing on an anticipation of events. This evening as I passed a shop selling clocks, I caught sight of a painting advertising a timepiece on a strap which you fasten around your wrist. These watches are still a novelty, and one often sees them advertised in the windows of department stores. The black strap in the painting encircled a man’s suntanned wrist. It immediately reminded me of a woman’s leg sheathed in a stocking. The black watch strap reminded me of a suspender. A short while later I went into a restaurant and ordered dinner. The waiter discreetly placed the business card of a brothel on my table. On it was a drawing of a young woman wearing a tight dress and displaying legs in stockings with suspenders. I ate my supper and approached
the tenements into which the prostitute I was tailing the day before yesterday had disappeared. I waited. She emerged at about midnight and winked meaningfully at me. A moment later we were in a droschka, and a quarter of an hour after that at the place where we bring offerings to the souls of our ancestors. She undressed, and for a generous sum allowed me to tie her up. She did not protest even when I gagged her. She had terrible eczema on her neck. This constituted the fulfilment of anticipation. After all, yesterday I offered up to science Director W., aged sixty, who had identical eczema. And his was on the neck too!

After a while I began my lecture. She listened, and suddenly she began to reek of fear. I moved away from her and continued my subtle interpretation of two passages from Augsteiner. I’ll summarize what I told her here:

Incarnations of the soul, writes Augsteiner, appear in a space that is hostile to them. The soul, which in itself is good because it is identical to the concept of man, because he himself is
eo ipso
the effluence of the element of the soul, which
ex definitione
cannot be evil because
ex definitione
it is opposed to that which pertains to substance,
ergo
bodily,
ergo
bad; and so the soul becomes incarnate where the bad element finds expression, in order to balance out the attributes of evil which dwell within it. In this way, the emanation of the soul brings about a natural harmony, namely deity. And now for a partial, empirical confirmation of Augsteiner’s theses. The soul of that vile Director W., aged sixty, appeared in the place where he became a victim of torment – in this very house, on the ground floor. And it is this soul which indicated where Director W. had hidden the letter to his wife, deceitful yet protesting his innocence. This does not tally with Augsteiner’s views because the soul remained deceitful – just as it had done in this man during his lifetime, so the soul continued to do evil because it convinced the wife that her husband was no shameless adulterer, but an angel. But the soul destroys the evil in
the otherwise correct suspicions of Director W.’s wife, allowing her to be steeped in blissful ignorance. Blissful ignorance is the absence of evil,
ergo
– is good.

Using the prostitute as an example, I wanted to check whether the soul is more intelligent than I who direct it, or whether – according to Augsteiner – the
elementum spirituale
can become independent of its conjurer. And here is the experiment I carried out. Once I had induced a sense of horror and dread in the woman, I broke her arms and legs one at a time, and each time I said that her suffering was due to Eberhard Mock who lives in Klein Tschansch, at Plesserstrasse 24. I didn’t gouge out her eyes because I wanted to see the fear in them, and the desire for revenge. Besides I had another reason not to do so: I wanted her soul to remember me well. To whom would it come? To me, who tortured her, or to the man who is the main cause of her death? I’m interested to know whether I have power over her soul, and whether I can direct it to the house of the man who is our greatest evil. If manifestations of spiritual energy occur at this address, it will be proof that I have power over the
elementum spirituale
. I will be the creator of a new theory of materialization. A theory which, we must add, is true because it has been proven.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1919
HALF PAST ONE IN THE AFTERNOON

The cocaine had already ceased to have an effect on Kurt Smolorz’s nervous system. The jester, who a moment earlier had been in fits of laughter at being imprisoned in a toilet, was now trying to think of a way to get himself out. First he resolved to let anyone entering the toilets know of his predicament. Minutes passed, then a quarter of an hour, half an hour, but all the policemen who needed to answer a call of nature stubbornly avoided using the toilets on the ground floor. Smolorz closed the
toilet seat and cursed the two people responsible for his pitiful state: Mock, and the person who had designed the toilets. By making the distance between the floor and the bottom of the cubicle door only ten centimetres, and by installing a partition made up of eight small panes of glass between the top of the door and ceiling, the latter had immobilized Smolorz for longer.