Phantoms of Breslau (34 page)

BRESLAU, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29TH, 1919
ONE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Doctor Cornelius Rühtgard sat in the middle of a large room encircled by a mezzanine floor. A fibrous rope cut into his swollen wrists when he moved his hands, and his eyes were struggling to adjust themselves to the bright electric light beaming from a lamp on the table. A moment earlier a sack had been removed from his head, reeking of something that
reminded him of detestable mornings spent in the mortuary at Königsberg University – formaldehyde, and an even worse odour which he preferred not to identify.

“It’s strange, Rühtgard,” came Mock’s voice from the darkness, “that you, a doctor, after all, should loathe corpses …”

“I’m a doctor of venereology, Mock, not a pathologist.” Rühtgard cursed the hour when, lying in the trenches surrounded by gleaming snow and the glimmering of the stars, he had once confided in Mock and told him about the terrible moments he had experienced during his classes in the mortuary: his colleagues had made a show of eating their sausage rolls while he, in spasms, had clasped his stomach and vomited trails of bile into the old sink.

“Take a look around our museum of pathology,” Mock said quietly, “while I read something to you …” He opened out the denial he himself had written. “Let’s see whether handwriting changes under hypnosis.”

Rühtgard cast his eye at the glass display cases and turned pale. A foetus turned its film-covered eye towards him from a jar of formaldehyde. Next to it was a stretched, rectangular piece of skin, and above a tangle of pubic hair loomed a bold tattoo: “For beautiful women only”; below this, an arrow pointed downwards to indicate what had been reserved for the fair sex.

“Tell me, Rühtgard” – Mock’s voice was very calm – “where are my father and Erika Kiesewalter? I gather no-one at your hospital has even heard of them …”

“Before I tell you” – Rühtgard’s eyes wandered to a severed hand which had been arranged in a jar in such a way that students could study its tendons and muscles – “tell me how you found out about me.”

“I’m the one asking the questions here, you swine” Mock’s voice did not change one iota. His stocky form was obscured in the shadow cast by the lamp.

“I have to know, Mock.” Rühtgard’s eyes paused at a glass shelf on which lay a row of skulls with bullet holes. “I have to know whether I was betrayed by a member of my brotherhood. I’ll give you an address and you can send your men there. But what are we going to do while your brave boys search the cellar where I keep the prisoners? We’ll talk, won’t we, Mock? We’ll carry on our conversation to shorten the wait. And each of us will both answer and ask questions. No-one’s going to say: ‘I’m the one asking the questions here’. It’s going to be a quiet conversation between two old friends, alright Mock? You choose. On one side of the scales my silence and your pitiful copper’s pride shouting ‘I’m the one asking the questions here’, on the other the address and a quiet conversation. Are you a reasonable man, Mock, or are you so full of anger that all you want to do is hit your square head against the wall? It’s your choice, Mock.”

“And why shouldn’t I go to the cellar with my men? I want to see my father and Erika. There’ll always be time to listen to you …”

“Oh dear …” Rühtgard closed his eyes to the grotesque exhibits. “I’ve forgotten the address. It’ll come back to me when you promise to stay here… What’s it to you, Mock? I can tell you about Königsberg and many other things besides… You listen to me, I listen to you …”

For a long while Mock did not say anything, then finally he uttered a single word:

“Address.”

“Common sense has prevailed over fury. Löschstrasse 18, cellar number ten.” Rühtgard felt his throat constrict as he studied a vast aquarium of formaldehyde in which stood a two-metre-tall albino with Negroid features. “So tell me, how did you track me down.”

Mock got up, left the room and shouted: “Löschstrasse 18, cellar number ten. At the double! And take a nurse!” A clatter of shoes rang out on the stairs.

“How did you track me down?” Rühtgard felt a peculiar satisfaction in manipulating Mock. “Go on, divulge your famous, impeccable logic!”

“Remember when I confided in you about my night terrors?” The crack of a match, and a blaze of light cut through a column of smoke. “You broke the whole thing down to areas of the brain, with one area being responsible for one thing, another for something else. You asked me then whether my father and the dog heard the noises. I never told you anything about a dog. Never mentioned I had one, because I don’t. How could you have known? Because you’d been to my place one night. I asked myself: what could Rühtgard have been doing at my place? I couldn’t answer this.” Mock lit a cigarette with trembling hands. “When you spent the night with me, you smoked a cigarette before going to sleep. You threw the butt into the grille in the drain. How did you know it was there, in the corner behind the old counter? Because you’d already been there once, I answered. I couldn’t believe you were a murderer, that you’d put Director Wohsedt’s letter down the drain. There was only one thing for me to do: keep an eye on you. Unfortunately, I only thought of this rather late – yesterday, in fact. I got out of the habit of thinking during my three weeks at the seaside. Smolorz has been tailing you since yesterday. He got into your apartment on the quiet and hid on the balcony. I told him not to let you out of his sight. Smolorz is a simple lad and takes everything literally. That’s why he wasn’t standing outside, but he kept an eye on you anyway.”

Mock got up and strolled over to a skeleton in a show-case.

“Now I have a question for you,” he said. “Who did the killing? Who tailed me? Who knew whom I was questioning?”

“Rossdeutscher and his men tailed you.” Rühtgard was gradually getting used to his ghastly surroundings. “You have no idea how many of them there are …”

“No, I don’t.” Mock sat down at the desk again. “But you’re going to tell me everything. You’re going to give me their names and addresses …”

“Don’t forget the friendly form this conversation is supposed to be taking. You can’t force me to do anything!”

“You’re no longer my friend, Rühtgard. You appeared at my side as far back as Königsberg … Was that to …”

“Yes … Offer me a cigarette! You don’t want to? Too bad. You know I was told to take a job at the Hospital of Divine Mercy soon after you got there … The brothers instructed me to persuade you to write this denial. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible in the hospital. You didn’t want to know about anything other than that nurse who’d appeared in your dreams. I had to go with you to the front, and then here to this accursed city, where there’s not even the slightest breeze to disperse this malarial air. The brothers rented me an apartment and set me up with a medical practice. You have no idea how many of us are doctors … But I’m gabbling away, not letting you get a word in edgeways … A question for a question, Mock. Tell me, have you really fallen in love with this … Erika Kiesewalter?”

Mock retreated into the shadow cast by the lamp. Rühtgard closed his eyes and counted the purple patches beneath his eyelids, caused by the bright light beaming on his face.

“Yes,” came the reply.

“So why didn’t you tell her that on the beach in Rügenwaldermünde?” Rühtgard would have given a great deal to see Mock’s face. “She even asked you after your failed attempt to arrange a threesome.”

Rühtgard stood up and took a swing at the burning-hot lampshade. The lamp fell off the table and cast a shaft of light on some nooses suspended from a stand, which in the past had bound the necks of humans. Mock sat quite still, his Mauser aimed at Rühtgard’s chest.

“You’re an idiot, Mock!” Rühtgard yelled, and then, looking into the
dark hole of the barrel, he drawled, “Rossdeutscher and I once considered how we might use your obsessions and phobias to the advantage of our cause … The cause of salvaging the honour of the brotherhood … I told Rossdeutscher that you were mad about a red-headed nurse from Königsberg. He then introduced me to Erika at the Eldorado. It didn’t take long to persuade her … She was the ideal bait – red-headed, slim but with a big bust, well versed in ancient classical writers …”

“What a mistake, what a terrible mistake …” Mock was still aiming at the chest of his captive. “A crafty whore, a crafty whore …”

“You made an enormous mistake. Not in trusting her … but in not telling her that you loved her. She tried to drag it out of you on the beach, but you wouldn’t say anything … No doubt you considered it unworthy of yourself to declare your love to a whore … But by that you lost her … I asked her: ‘Has Mock told you that he loved you?’ ‘No,’ she replied. So I didn’t need her any more. If you had declared your true feelings for her she would be where your father is right now, rather than at the bottom of the Oder …”

Mock fired. Rühtgard threw himself to one side and avoided the shot, but the albino did not. The slabs of glass shattered, the formaldehyde sluiced over Rühtgard as he lay curled up on the floor and the huge, pale-faced Negro broke apart at the knees and fell from the display case. Mock leaped onto the table to avoid being sent sprawling by the formaldehyde and aimed his gun once more, but then decided this was unnecessary. Rühtgard was lying on the floor, his mouth gaping and sheer terror in his eyes. Lumps of the albino’s body had attached themselves to his jacket. He looked like a man who had suffered a heart attack.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 29TH, 1919
HALF PAST ONE IN THE MORNING

“He’s alive,” Doctor Lasarius said, touching Rühtgard’s neck. “He’s in shock, but he’s alive.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” Mock breathed a deep sigh of relief. “We’ll do as I said earlier.”

Doctor Lasarius made towards his office and shouted into the depths of the dark corridor: “Gawlitzek and Lehnig! Come here!”

Two stalwart men wearing rubber aprons entered the museum of pathology. Their heads were split into two equal halves by wide partings, and moustaches sat proudly above their lips. One of them efficiently cleaned away the remnants of formaldehyde and flaccid human tissue from Rühtgard’s face; the other sat him on a chair and gave him a sound slap across the cheek. The stricken man opened his eyes and looked around the room full of macabre exhibits with disbelief.

“Get him undressed!” Lasarius ordered curtly. “And into the pool!”

Mock and Lasarius descended the stairs from the first to the ground floor and made their way down cold corridors decorated with pale-green wainscoting. Along the walls stood trolleys on which the dead made their last journey to the doctor. Mock could not keep count of the turns they both took, but eventually they found themselves in a tiled area where the floor dropped away into a two-metre-deep pool. In it stood Doctor Rühtgard, shivering with cold. Lasarius’ subordinates were in the process of opening the sluice gate and filling the pool with water that smelled of formaldehyde.

“Thank you, gentlemen!” Lasarius said to his subordinates, handing them a few banknotes. “And now home, take a droschka on me! Keep the change!”

Lehnig and Gawlitzek nodded and disappeared down the cavernous corridors. Lasarius followed in their footsteps, leaving Mock alone. He
looked at Rühtgard standing up to his waist in water, and turned the wheel of the sluice gate as if it were a helm. The hairs on Rühtgard’s shivering body fell in wet strips.

“Frightened of corpses, eh, Rühtgard?” Mock called as he put on a rubber apron. “See this gate?” He indicated the sluice above the edge of the pool. “I’m going to let some fat fish into the pool through it … In no time at all there’ll be masses of them. Then I’m going to pour in some more water mixed with formaldehyde until the pool’s full to the brim. You like the smell of formaldehyde, eh, Rühtgard? Remember how you ate cucumber soup after your first pathology classes in Königsberg? You raised the spoon to your lips and smelled that unmistakeable odour under your fingernails. You told me all about it and gave me your portion of cucumber soup at Dünaburg. Answer my questions, or you’ll be swimming in formaldehyde with fat, disintegrating fish.”

“If you torture me,” called Rühtgard from the pool, “sooner or later you’re going to kill me. The first dead thing that floats into this pool is going to give me a heart attack. Idiot!” he yelled. “Don’t kill me until you’ve freed them from the cellar …”

“You just said ‘them’.” Mock squatted at the edge of the pool. “You’ve only got my father, so why do you say ‘them’?” – he felt a wave of hope – “You said Erika was at the bottom of the Oder. Are you bluffing?”

“You ignorant fool.” Rühtgard’s bloodshot eyes flashed with amusement. “The Erinyes of two people are more powerful than the Erinyes of one … It’s obvious … Simple arithmetics … I had to find one other person you love … Apart from your father, and instead of the whore to whom you would not declare your love …”

“And who did you find?” Mock felt deeply uneasy.

“There is such a person.” Rühtgard laughed as if demented and leaped up and down, slapping his pale, bruised thighs. “You walked through the
park with her that night, you courted her, paid her compliments … She says you’ve fallen in love with her …”

“You crazy swine!” Mock grasped his head, unable to hide his horror. “You’ve killed your own daughter? Your own beloved daughter?”

“I haven’t killed her yet,” Rühtgard shouted through cupped hands from the bottom of the pool: “For the time being I’ve merely imprisoned my Christel … My daughter … She proved useful in my hypnosis experiments, as best she could. And now she’s out there somewhere, together with your father … She and your old man are a guarantee of my immunity.”

“That’s why you looked so strange when I told you I’d fallen in love with Erika Kiesewalter, before the hypnosis …” Mock said quietly. “You realized you had imprisoned your own daughter unnecessarily … You could have locked Erika away, and you wouldn’t have felt her death as acutely as that of your own child …”

“Correct.” Rühtgard grabbed hold of the pool’s edge and hauled himself up. His face found itself at a level with Mock’s. He looked the police officer deep in the eye. “But I stopped loving Christel … She betrayed me once too often. Besides, she’s no use to me any more… She won’t undergo any more hypnosis … She said it hurts afterwards… She hates me … She’ll soon leave me for some stinker …”