Phantoms of Breslau (33 page)

“Brother,” Rühtgard stammered, “how sorry I feel for you … That girl” – he sprang out of his armchair and slammed his palm down on the photograph on the front page of the newspaper – “is your dream. It’s the girl of your dreams, your nurse from Königsberg who doesn’t exist …”

Mock stood up and wiped his damp forehead with the back of his hand. Doctor Rühtgard’s study grew longer and narrower. The window appeared to be a far off, bright point. The pictures on the walls distorted into rhomboids, Rühtgard’s head sank into his shoulders. Mock stumbled into the bathroom adjacent to the study, tripped and fell to the floor, hitting his forehead against the edge of the porcelain toilet bowl. The blow was so hard that tears filled his eyes. He closed them and felt the warm bump on his forehead pulsate. He opened his eyes again and waited for the veil of tears to disperse. Objects returned to their rightful proportions.
Rühtgard was standing in the doorway, his head once again its rightful size. Mock pushed himself up on his knees and pulled his Mauser from his pocket. He checked that it was loaded and slurred:

“Either I kill myself, or I kill that son of a whore who was supposed to keep an eye on her …”

“Wait a moment,” Rühtgard said, grasping Mock’s wrists in his iron grip. “Don’t kill anyone. Sit down on the sofa and tell me everything, calmly … We’ll find a solution, you’ll see … After all, that girl has only disappeared, she might still be alive …”

He pulled Mock forcibly to the study sofa. The velvet-upholstered piece was too short for Mock to lie on comfortably, so Rühtgard laid his friend’s head on a large pillow and his feet on the armrest at the other end. He removed his shoes and applied a cold letter-knife to the bump.

“I’m not going to tell you anything.” Rühtgard’s nursing clearly brought Mock relief. “I can’t talk about it, Corni … I just can’t …”

“You have no idea how much it can help to talk to someone who sympathizes with you …” The doctor was very serious. His grey, evenly trimmed beard bristled with kindness, and his pince-nez flashed wisely. “Listen to me, I know a form of therapy which can work extremely well when patients have a block, when they don’t want to or can’t fully trust their psychologist …”

“You’re not a psychologist, Rühtgard.” Mock sensed drowsiness creep over him. “And I’m not your patient … I haven’t, as yet, caught syphilis …”

“But you are my friend.” Now it seemed that Rühtgard was the one with the block; umpteen seconds passed before he blurted: “And the only one at that, the only one I’ve ever had, or have …”

“And what method is that?” Mock appeared not to have heard the confession.

“A method which allows one to get into your subconscious … which
reveals what is unconscious and negated in an individual. What you may have experienced only once, what you may be ashamed of … This method might, for example, make you realize that it is your father you love most, and that the girl who has disappeared is no more than a passing infatuation … When you understand yourself, nothing will make you angry … You will live and act true to your innermost being.
Gnothi seauton
!
^†
This method is called hypnosis … Don’t worry, I’m an expert hypnotist. I’ve mastered the art. I won’t harm you, just as I didn’t harm my daughter when I put her into a trance. How could I ever harm the person dearest to me?”

Mock did not hear Rühtgard’s last words. The autumn wind sending flurries of yellow leaves into flight in Breslau’s South Park became a sea wind, and the river whose dark and turbulent waters flowed not far from Rühtgard’s house ceased to be the lazy Oder, and became the Pregel, stirred by the salty breeze.

Mock found himself in Königsberg.

KÖNIGSBERG, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28TH, 1916
MIDNIGHT

Private Eberhard Mock could not climb the stairs in the tenement at Kniprodestrasse 8, but not because they were exceptionally steep or slippery. The reason was quite different: pumped up with six tall shots of Trishdivinis, a Lithuanian herbal schnapps, he was not in a state even to give the date of his birth. Slumped against the banister he tried to recite the first twenty lines of
The Aeneid
without making any mistakes, in order to convince himself that he was sober. But he could only get as far as the bit about Carthage before the epic’s first lines – “
Arma virumque cano
”
^†
– would come back at him like an echo. The regularity of the Latin hexameters introduced a certain order to his brain, which on that winter evening was swimming in schnapps as bitter as absinthe rather than in cerebrospinal fluid.

A signal from his brain reached his extremities and Mock finally made it to the first floor, his spurs ringing out proudly. Even though he had been demoted to private as a former soldier of a reconnoitring platoon, he retained the right to wear spurs. Outside his apartment he felt a huge wave of shame at not being able to get beyond the twelfth verse. He clicked his heels, making an ear-splitting racket with his spurs, and yelled:

“I’m extremely sorry, Professor Moravjetz! I’ve not learned it for today, but I’ll know it all by tomorrow! All fifty verses!”

His diaphragm surged and a mighty hiccough forced its way through Mock’s gullet. He pulled a key from his pocket and pushed it into the hole. There was a grating, and he felt the metal resist. Swaying, he produced a metal pipe-cleaning brush from his pocket and slipped that into the keyhole. He pressed his whole weight down on the primitive lever and heard a crack as the cleaning brush snapped. A Mauser 98 appeared in his hand. He aimed at the lock and pulled the trigger.

The noise shook the tenement. Doors to the other apartments opened. Someone shouted at Mock from above:

“What are you doing, you drunken pig? You live one floor up!”

Mock kicked the lock with his heel and forced his way into the hallway. “Did you hear that noise, like a gunshot?” somebody was shouting. “It’s him! He’s here already!” Mock stood unsteadily in the middle of the hallway before proceeding slowly, his spurs clanking. He came to a velvet curtain and drew it aside. He entered another hallway. It was a waiting room, with doors giving on to several rooms. One of them was ajar, but another heavy curtain hung from its lintel. One of the walls had no door but a window. It gave on to the ventilation pit. Outside on the window sill stood a paraffin lamp whose feeble glow barely penetrated the dusty pane. In the meagre twilight, Mock saw a number of people sitting in the waiting room. He did not manage to get a good look at them as his attention was drawn to the curtain hanging over the door. It moved suddenly. A cold draught and a sigh drifted from beyond it. Mock began to walk towards it, but a tall man in a top hat stood in his way. When Mock tried to move him aside the latter took off his headwear. In the pale semi-darkness he saw a knot of scar tissue as it refracted the dim light; the scars criss-crossed and interweaved in the man’s eye sockets. Instead of eyes he had a tangle of scars.

Mock stepped back but was not afraid. He shoved the blind man against the wall, laughed out loud and grabbed the edge of the curtain. From behind it two voices, those of a man and a woman, were uttering inarticulate sounds. Mock yanked at the fabric and caught his spur on an unevenness in the floor. He tumbled onto the sandstone flags and, with a rattle of fastening hooks, the thick green plush tore away and flowed down over him like a shroud. He pulled himself up and advanced on all fours towards an elderly woman who was sitting in the small room beyond the curtain, wheezing. She wore a trailing dark robe. The lamp on the windowsill illuminated her toothless mouth, and from it poured a white swathe which fell in tangles and folds at her feet.

“Ectoplasm!” shrieked a woman’s high-pitched voice. “She’s materialized it!”

Mock shook with a suppressed hiccough, which was all the stronger for being accompanied by drunken, uncontrollable laughter. The patter of the feet of curious neighbours resounded in the apartment.

“What ectoplasm!” Mock was in convulsions of laughter. He got up, tripped and made towards the medium, who was frozen in a trance.
Without the slightest disgust he began to extract long white strips from the old woman’s mouth. “It’s an ordinary bandage!”

“Bandage! It’s an ordinary bandage!” said a man’s stifled voice. “A bunch of frauds, not psychics! And you wanted to make me believe it! I’m going to write everything in the
Königsberger Allgemeine Zeitung
.”

“He’s wrong, the drunk,” a loud voice answered. “‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed!’ I have no eyes, but I do believe …”

Mock was still unravelling the bandage when he felt a blow to his midriff. He clasped his stomach, amazed at the strength of the toothless woman’s punch. Her eyes were still closed as she aimed another blow, this time at his chin. His boots and spurs skidded apart on the bandage, which was sodden with mucus and saliva. He hurtled towards the window. It was not quite shut. He felt the sill beneath his buttocks, and then nothing.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919
NOON

“And now get up and sit at the desk,” said Rühtgard.

Mock obeyed. He got up, sat at the desk and joined his hands. He stared down at the green desk leather as Rühtgard placed a sheet of stiff, decorated wove paper and a Colonia fountain pen in front of him. Then he extracted a wallet adorned with the Königsberg coat of arms from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it open in front of him.

“Write down what I dictate to you,” Rühtgard spoke loudly and clearly. “I, Eberhard Mock, the undersigned, being of sound body and mind, declare that on 28th November, 1916, in the city of Königsberg on Pregolya, I was witness to a spiritual seance. Prompted by ill-will and under the influence of alcohol, I attempted to catch hold of the ectoplasm issuing through the mouth of the medium, Frau Natasha Vorobiev. Failing
to do so, I assured those assembled that I had caught hold of a bandage, and that the entire seance was a sham. My behaviour prompted Herr Harry Hempflich, a journalist from the
Königsberger Allgemeine Zeitung
, to publish in his newspaper on 31st November a slanderous article aimed against spiritualism. I hereby declare that all the information presented by H. Hempflich and based on my so-called experiences are false and spring from my materialist and scientific outlook on life. I also ardently declare that I firmly believe in the existence of spirits and phantoms, having experienced their activity in my house on Plesserstrasse. At the same time I vouch to assume responsibility for the deaths of six people, namely, Julius Wohsedt, Johanna Voigten and four sailors. They suffered death for a great cause – to prove to me that spirits do exist. If I had not disbelieved, those persons would still be alive. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Eberhard Mock.”

Mock finished writing. Rühtgard put the wallet back into his jacket. He folded the letter Mock had written into four and slipped it into an envelope. Then he placed the envelope in front of the police officer sitting at his desk and said in a loud voice:

“Address it to Herr Harry Hempflich, Chief Editor,
Königsberger Allgemeine Zeitung
. And now get up and go to the door!”

Mock stopped in the doorway, his eyes still closed.

“Walk down the corridor and through the first door on the left!”

Mock walked into the games room, with Rühtgard following him.

“Walk over to the balcony door, open it and walk out on to the balcony!”

Mock knocked into the piano in the middle of the room, but soon found his way to the balcony. He opened the balcony door and stepped onto the small terrace.

“Climb onto the balcony ledge and jump!”

Mock clambered onto the ledge with difficulty. He held onto the
balustrade with one hand, and with the other grabbed an enormous flowerpot that was secured to the ledge with a metal hoop. The flowerpot broke away and smashed onto the pavement between the spiked railings and the tenement wall. Mock lost his balance and fell back heavily onto the balcony floor.

“Stand on the ledge!”

Mock lifted his leg and placed it once again on the stone balustrade, holding on to the wall with one hand with such ease as if walking the tightrope was his daily bread.

“And now jump, impale yourself on those railings!”

Mock jumped.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919
ONE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Mock jumped. His torso was not impaled on the railings, however; his legs did not hang from its arrow-shaped spikes or thrash at the metal in agony. Mock turned his shoulders and jumped … from the balustrade onto the balcony. But not by choice. As he was bending his knees to launch himself off the balustrade and soar in a wide arch onto the spiked railings, a tall figure who had been squatting in the corner of the balcony sprang to his feet. A strong, freckled hand covered with thick red hair grabbed him by the tails of his jacket and pulled him forcefully to itself.

“What’s this, Herr Mock!” growled Smolorz. “What’s all this about?”

Mock’s subordinate had a raging hangover. His gullet was burning; his stomach was aflame; his ear – enormously swollen and blue-black from the blow dealt by the poker – radiated heat to his cheeks; the haematoma at the top of his head and the bump on his forehead boiled beneath a thin film of skin. Smolorz was angry. At Mock and at the whole world. He grabbed his boss by the collar and lugged him back into the
room. He placed the sole of his shoe on Mock’s pale jacket and shoved him under the piano.

“Lie there, fuck it,” he muttered and hurled himself after Rühtgard who had disappeared into the hall, slamming the door to the games room behind him.

Smolorz was exploding with fury. He opened the door so energetically it almost came off its hinges. He heard the sound of a body falling in the hall, and was there a second later to see that the rug had been moved and the small table with the telephone overturned. The figure of Rühtgard flashed through the front door. Smolorz ran into the corridor and saw the fleeing man already halfway down the stairs. His brain, overcooked with alcohol, now began to function. Why had the rug in the hall been moved, and why were the table and telephone lying on the floor? “Because Rühtgard slipped,” Smolorz answered his own question, and instantly formed his plan of action. He caught hold of the stair carpet held in place with metal rods and tugged hard. The rods rang out in the silence of the corridor, rolled down the stairs, and Cornelius Rühtgard’s feet lost contact with the floor. The doctor tumbled down to the half-landing, protecting his head from hitting the wall. A moment later he was also having to shield it from the blows of a rod. Smolorz was truly furious, and Rühtgard was feeling his fury.