Phantoms of Breslau (31 page)

“Don’t move,” Ehlers barked at them from the car. “This is an assault, Doctor Pyttlik. You said so yourself. We’ve been terrorized.”

“He assaulted me! Attacked me!” Pyttlik hollered, and again the Adler rocked from side to side. “You are my witnesses!”

“Did you see anything, Kleinfeld?” Reinert asked languidly as he watched Mock force open the dangerously spiky railings with the help of a towering strongman.

Mock’s men easily cleared the fence and dispersed around Doctor
Rossdeutscher’s villa at a run. The giant opened the kitchen door with what Reinert surmised was a pick-lock. Mock said something in a low voice to a short man in a bowler hat and the latter passed this on to the strongman with a few hand movements. Mock entered the house and his men slipped in after him.

“Did you see anything, Kleinfeld?” Reinert asked again. “Did anyone attack anyone?”

“No, nothing at all,” Kleinfeld muttered. “All I see is that Herr Pyttlik can’t make himself comfortable in the car. He keeps on wriggling like Jonah in the belly of the whale.”

27.IX.1919

In the evening there was to be a meeting at which we had to gain the acceptance of the deities. The summoning of the Erinyes did not in itself seem a difficult task, but to do this contrary to the will of the Highest would have been a terrible sacrilege. My duty as chronicler of our brotherhood is to describe accurately these rites of acceptance.

Present at the meeting were: the Master, the Brothers Eckhard of Prague, Hermann of Marburg and Johann of Munich. Also there were all the brothers from Breslau. After prayers to Natura Magna Mater we commenced the initiation rites. The hymn to Cybele followed by the ancient Indian mantras in honour of Gauri sent our medium into a trance. After a while, the deity spoke in the medium’s high-pitched voice. Brother Johann of Munich translated, while brother Hermann of Marburg noted down the deity’s message. Our medium has great power. The daughter has all her father’s strength, certainly. This power has only to be freed. The medium was able to free all the beings circulating around her. Was able to pick up mighty clusters of spiritual energy from supersensory
reality. We heard whispers and voices all around and within the house, and … [the rest is illegible zigzags].

BRESLAU, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919
A QUARTER PAST MIDNIGHT

Mock stood in the doorway of a vast room and studied the people assembled there. He could do so quite openly and without inhibition, because everybody was completely and utterly focussed on a woman in a wheelchair; all eyes were glued to her lips. The woman was shouting something in a shrill voice, and as she did so her veil billowed about her large head. It looked as though her hair had either been shaved or plastered down. Mock’s brain, geared towards philology as always, registered the hissing sibilants in the invalid’s cries, which constructed entire sentences fused by a clearly stressed rhythm.

In this enormous room with panelled walls blackened with age, empty but for seven leather armchairs and piles of ancient publications on a three-metre-long desk, sat seven men. All were in evening attire, with snow-white shirt-fronts shining from the lapels of their tailcoats. The eldest of those assembled was translating the invalid’s ecstatic groans and a fifty-year-old bearded man who looked like an office worker was noting down the translation, while the rest fixed their anxious eyes on the crippled prophetess.

It sounded to Mock as if the woman was reciting some poem in a language unknown to him. He felt genuine admiration for the elderly man who was interpreting these utterances
ex abrupto
, and indeed slowly and clearly enough for the bearded secretary sitting next to him to note everything down accurately. Every now and again the secretary tossed the page on which he had written onto a pile of others held together with a steel paper clip.

Mock stepped into the room and clapped loudly.

“Take a break, good gentlemen,” he shouted.

Nobody took anything. The invalid continued to spit out dark tautologies, the veil sticking to the saliva on her lips. The assembly did not take their eyes off her. The man leading the meeting made a mistake in his interpretation, and the bearded secretary crossed out something in his notes. Nobody so much as glanced at Mock.

“Which of you gentlemen is Doctor Rossdeutscher?” asked Mock.

He was answered by the cries of the lame Sybil. She choked and spluttered over the agglomerations of consonants which no vowel severed, no anaptyxis disjoined. Mock walked around those gathered there and approached the secretary. He reached for the pile of papers, unfastened the clip and pulled out a few sheets from the very middle. He began to read.

“It is he,” the leader translated, and his secretary noted everything in cursive script. “He is here. Our greatest enemy. He is here!”

“I have conducted an experiment; time will verify its results. How did I do it? I isolated the man and forced him to confess to his adultery in writing. It was a terrible confession for him to have to make since he was permeated to the bone with middle-class morality. I brought this man to a certain place late at night. He was bound and gagged. I freed his right hand, tied him to a chair and then asked him once again to deny what he had written previously, promising him that if he obeyed I would give this second letter to his wife. Feverishly he scribbled something down. I took the second letter, the denial, and slipped it down the drain. I witnessed his fury and his pain. ‘I’m going to come back here,’ his eyes told me. Then I took the man out to the carriage and drove away. Later I killed him, leaving him where he was sure to be found. His ghost will return and draw the attention of the inhabitants of that place to the drain,” Mock read.

The medium began to wail. She rubbed her twisted knees, dribbled
saliva and thrashed her head about. The veil slid slowly down her smooth skull. A gloved hand slipped through the folds of her dress. Her screams, which sounded like the howling of an enraged bitch, infected the translator.

“It’s him! It’s him!” translated the man. “Kill him! Kill!”

“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!,’” Mock read.

He put down the pile of papers and looked at the bearded secretary. Police cars could be heard entering Korsoallee. Mock was assailed by piercing sounds from all sides: the wailing of sirens, the high-pitched yowls of the bitch, the howling of the sea wind. He grabbed the scribe by the throat and forced him to the back of the armchair, so that his balding head thudded dully against the wood at the top of the backrest.

“Did you write this, you son of a whore?” Mock’s lower jaw jutted out as he covered the secretary’s beard with thick gobbets of saliva. All of a sudden he felt a blow on his thigh. He spun around and turned to stone. The creature in the wheelchair had wispy, plastered-down hair. Through it he could see white patches of skin with dark blotches here and there; sparse clumps grew over the horny edges. The tip of her tongue vibrated in her open, gabbling mouth. Her egg-shaped head thrashed from side to side, with first one temple then the other thumping against the back of the wheelchair.

“Slaughter him! Slaughter him! Tear him apart!”

Mock drew back his arm as if to take a swing.

“Don’t hit her!” he heard the secretary shout. “She’ll tell you everything! You’ll realize your mistake, Mock! You were wrong that time in Königsberg! Admit your mistake!”

Mock’s head found itself momentarily in the harbour of his elbow and arm. He struck. He felt pain in his wrist. The cripple opened her eyes wide and, falling backwards with the wheelchair, spat out the tongue she had just bitten off. She was no longer choking on the indigestible groups of consonants, she was choking on her own blood.

The secretary ran to her, kneeled down and turned her on her side. The invalid kicked out her twisted legs in agony. The secretary tore his bloodied cheek away from her head and stared at Mock. A swollen weal cut across his face; one eye glistened, circumscribed by a band of gore.

“My name is Doctor Horst Rossdeutscher,” he said, wiping the blood from his face. He pointed to the prostrate being. “And that’s my daughter, Louise Rossdeutscher. You’ve killed her, Mock. The strongest medium that ever lived. I satisfied all her whims, fulfilled all her needs, and you, a shoemaker’s son, killed her with one blow of your hoof.”

The sound of metal-capped shoes resounded on the stairs. Doctor Pyttlik and Commissioner Mühlhaus were on their way up to the first floor.

“But vengeance will come, Mock,” yelled Rossdeutscher as he slipped his hand into the inside pocket of his tailcoat. “The Erinyes born of the corpses of those closest to you will find you.” Rossdeutscher pulled out a gun and put it in his mouth. “Those whom you love, Mock …” – the barrel of the gun made him lisp – “tell us, where are they now? …” He pulled the trigger. The sirens were silenced.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919
HALF PAST ONE IN THE MORNING

Mock ran up to the fourth floor of the tenement on Gartenstrasse, taking three stairs at a time. The loud pounding of his brogues on the wooden steps woke the residents and their dogs. He conquered floor after floor chased by barking, swearing and the stench that erupted from dirty kitchens and draughty toilets.

At last he found himself outside the door to number 20. He rapped out the rhythm of “Schlesierlied”: slow-slow-slow, pause, slow-slow-slow-slow-quick-quick. Silence. In a low voice he sang “
Kehr ich einst zur Heimat wieder
”.
^†
Pausing to check that he had remembered the rhythm correctly, he tapped it out again. He was answered by abuse from a neigh-bour on the floor below who had opened his door and was spouting gutter obscenities.

Mock went down one flight of stairs to watch the man raging in the corridor and allowed the stream of abuse to flow on. But when the neigh-bour – who was clearly drunk and dressed in one-piece long-johns – became fully awake and came at him with a coal scuttle, Mock lost his patience. He felt a whoosh of air by his head, dodged the scuttle at the last moment and with the point of his polished brogue kicked the assailant in the shin. The blow was not hard, but it was painful enough for the scuttle’s owner to need to rub the spot. For a moment both his hands were occupied, one rubbing his smarting leg, the other holding his warlike scuttle at the ready. Mock took a swing very like the one he had aimed at the invalid during the seance, and the outer side of his palm came down hard on his assailant’s collarbone. His hand, sprained once already that day, burned with a raging fire as he felt the crunch of tiny bones in his wrist. Mock’s assailant let go of his scuttle and clutched his neck. Then all he heard was material ripping and shirt buttons hitting the wall of the corridor. He plunged down the stairs, his head struck the door to the toilet on the half-landing, and he heard nothing more.

Mock ran back up to the top floor. He pressed his entire weight against the rickety banister and threw himself at the door to apartment 20, aiming his shoulder at a point just above the handle. There was a terrible crash, but the door did not give way. Other doors did open, however, and on every floor. The tenement residents and their four-legged friends edged out into the stairwell. Mock gathered speed once more, charged at the door and tumbled into the apartment. Bits of rubble pattered against his bowler hat and dust poured down his shirt collar.

He lay on the floor in the hallway, on top of the door, and took stock of the apartment. Smolorz was lying down too, but on the kitchen floor. He was smiling in his sleep, misting the empty stoneware bottle of liqueur at his lips with his breath. Mock turned his head, got to his feet and went into the main room. It was empty; only Erika’s hat hung on the back of a chair. He picked it up with two fingers. On the bed sat Rossdeutscher, shouting: “Vengeance will come, Mock. The Erinyes born of the corpses of those closest to you will find you. Those whom you love, Mock … Tell us, where are they now …” Mock collapsed onto the bed and tried to catch the scent of Erika in the clean sheets which had been there for three weeks, and had not yet lost their starchy smell. Try as he may, he could detect nothing other than the sterile smell of cleanliness. There was no Rossdeutscher, no Erika.

The neighbours of the four sailors stood uncertainly in the doorway watching the two men, one of whom was trying to clamber to his feet, while the other did not want to get off the bed. Suddenly a dog howled and barked at the threshold, and Mock got up and glared at the small crowd gathered at the door.

“Get the fuck out of here!” he roared, and grabbed the chair in the hall and spun it as if throwing a discus.

“We’re going, we’re going.” said Frenzel the caretaker, urging his neighbours to leave. “I know him. He’s a police officer. It’s best not to stand in his way …”

The neighbours jumped away from the door and the chair hit Smolorz on the head. Mock’s red-headed subordinate clutched his forehead and red trickles ran through his fingers. Mock raised the chair once more and brought it down with a crash. He watched as a sizeable haematoma swelled and split on the bald patch at the back of Smolorz’s head. He kicked the chair into a corner of the kitchen and grabbed the poker from a bucket on top of a small pile of coal. He took a swing and struck. The cartilage in Smolorz’s ear crunched beneath the spiralled end of the poker. He lay in a foetal position with both hands over his head. Mock grabbed him by the arms and dragged him to the kitchen door, positioning his head against the doorframe. He grasped the door handle and swung the door shut as hard as he could. He thought he heard Smolorz’s skull crack.