Phantoms of Breslau (35 page)

Mock recoiled in disgust. Rühtgard made a rapid move, straightened his arms on the pool’s edge and managed to lean against them. One more move and his knee was over the edge too. Mock hit him in the face. There was a loud splash.

“Don’t try to get out of there,” he said calmly. “And answer my questions. Who was it, then, who wrote the murderer’s diary? And who scribbled ‘Have to run for it’ at the seance?”

“That ‘diary’, as you call it” – Rühtgard was standing at the bottom of the pool, rubbing one cheek, red from the blow, and the injuries inflicted by Smolorz looked like boils on his white skin – “was written by
me. Rossdeutscher took minutes during the rites. I was the brotherhood’s chronicler but only Rossdeutscher could take down the Master’s translations. When I heard you, I scribbled something and hid under the desk. My notes fell into your hands. You assumed Rossdeutscher had written them. You don’t know my handwriting. Our German secondary schools are fortunately very strict about Sütterline handwriting, apart from for Greek and Latin. Our writing looks much the same: yours, mine and Rossdeutscher’s. No court is going to believe a handwriting expert.”

Firm, resolute steps resounded in the subterranean corridors of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Kurt Smolorz entered the pool room.

“There’s nobody in that cellar,” he said, out of breath. “Only a sign on the door.” He reached into his pocket and handed Mock a scrap of paper.

“‘
Gnothi seauton
,’” Mock read the Greek words. “‘Know thyself.’”

Mock looked at Rühtgard dispassionately and instructed Smolorz:

“Turn the wheel, open the sluice! Tell me, you son of a whore, where is my father?”

Smolorz turned the wheel, and water mixed with formaldehyde spurted straight into Rühtgard’s open mouth. The Criminal Sergeant then opened the sluice gate, resting the end of it against the pool’s edge to form a kind of platform, and moved away in revulsion. Beneath the sluice gate was a swollen, green corpse.

“Listen to me, Mock …” Rühtgard again hauled himself up on his hands, but this time only his chin appeared above the pool’s edge. “You’ve got nothing on me. Rossdeutscher committed suicide. He was your murderer … And I’m untouchable. But that’s not all. You’re in my hands. Send your denial to the
Breslauer
and the
Königsberg Allgemeine Zeitung
, and let me go. The worse that can happen is that you’ll lose your job in the police force. But you’ll save your own father and my daughter. What’s the girl done to you? Don’t forget the impression you made on her that night. You can have her, you can screw her as much as you like …”

Mock stepped away from the pool and reached for a thick rubber hose.

“Don’t try to climb out, or you’ll get a jet of water in your mug,” he said calmly. “What guarantee do I have that you’ll let them go? Maybe you’ll take revenge on me and kill them after all …”

“I’m not going to murder my own daughter, much as I may despise her.” Rühtgard stared with disgust at the green corpse lodged in the sluice. “Let me go, Mock, and everything will be alright. All you’ll do is lose your job, while the denial will reap such fruit. The denial, Mock. I can make you do things – like I did during hypnosis. I’m untouchable. Even if I were to screw that whore Kiesewalter in front of your very eyes, you wouldn’t do anything to me because I’ve got you in my hands … I must have given you the wrong address for the cellar – I’ll give you the right one now …”

Mock gave Smolorz a signal. The Criminal Sergeant tugged the corpse by its hair with disgust and the greenish body slid into the water with a gentle splash. The face of the deceased was blackened by fire, his hair thick and brown. His pubic hair reached as high as his navel. Mock squirted water into Rühtgard’s face and the doctor found himself back in the pool. The bloated body spun slowly in the stream of water and formaldehyde. Rühtgard yelled at the top of his voice. Only his head remained above the surface.

“Where is my father?” asked Mock.

Once again, Rühtgard clambered up the pool’s edge. He put his forearms on the tiles and rested his chin on his hands. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on Mock.

“It’s stalemate, Mock,” he said. “It only takes four days for a man to die of dehydration. Send that denial to the press.”

“Tell me one more thing,” Mock said, as if he had not heard the ultimatum. “Where did my dreams, my nightmares come from?”

“They weren’t dreams, they were the Erinyes. Real beings which exist
objectively. Ghosts, phantoms, spectres if you like.” Rühtgard’s chin was still resting on his hands, while the stout railwayman who had urinated from a viaduct onto a high-voltage cable a few days earlier turned in the eddies below.

“Then why did you try to prove to me that ghosts are only subjective?”

“I was playing devil’s advocate, to strengthen your belief … To make you confess to your mistake with utter conviction … So that you’d say: it must have been real ectoplasm after all!”

“Why did you gouge out their eyes and stick needles into their lungs?”

“Are you really so stupid, or are you just pretending?” Rühtgard’s pupils dilated and contracted like a shutter in a camera. “Strain your drunken brain a little! ‘If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out.’ It’s from St Matthew.
^†
And listen to St John, that great visionary, who wrote: ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’”
^‡

“And the needles in their lungs?”

“I was taking away their breath, taking their spirit!”

Mock thought back to his university lectures in comparative literature and could hear Professor Rossbach’s voice: “Marcus Terentius Varro was right in saying that the Latin
animus
(spirit) is related to the Greek
anemos
(wind),” the professor had explained. “A living person breathes and from his lips,
ergo
, comes wind, but a corpse does not breathe. In a living person there is a spirit; a dead man has no spirit. Hence the simple – we could almost say ‘commonsensical’ – identification of spirit with breath. It is the same in the Slavic languages, where
dusza
(spirit) is etymologically related to
zdech
(died), and
oddech
(breath). It is the same even in the Hebrew language. There,
ruach
means both spirit and wind, although – and here I must castigate myself – the concept of ‘breath’ is rendered by an entirely different word, namely
nefesh
. So you see, gentlemen, the study of etymology is one way of learning about spiritual culture, a culture, let us add, that is common to both Indo-Germans and Semites.” Professor Rossbach’s voice fell silent in Mock’s head. In its place he heard his own father’s nagging: “Chamomile and hot milk”.

“Where’s my father?” Mock said, then nodded to Smolorz who allowed the cadaver of a thin man covered in contusions through the sluice. The two bodies danced in the stream of water and formaldehyde. Mock swung the hosepipe. The rubber slapped against Rühtgard’s body. The doctor fell into the pool again. The surface of the water was now half a metre below the pool’s edge.

“Remember, Mock?” – Rühtgard resurfaced by the sluice gate and tried to shout above the roar of the water – “You always dreamed about the corpses of those who died because of you. Those were your Erinyes. Don’t fall asleep now, or the Erinyes of your father and my daughter will fly to you. Now you’ll never fall asleep. As long as you stay awake, they’ll still be alive. Beware of sleep, Mock, choose benevolent insomnia …” Once more he scrambled over the edge of the pool and hoisted himself up on outstretched arms. “Blessed are the meek!” he yelled. “I’m not going to tell you where your father is. I may die, but my brothers are here in Breslau. When your denial has been printed, they’ll set the prisoners free. Remember – don’t sleep. Your sleep is their death. Now look what I learned at the seance …”

Rühtgard slipped his tongue between his teeth and pulled his hands away from the pool’s edge. His legs, arms and torso slid into the churning water as his chin hit the tiles. Rühtgard’s severed tongue danced like a living creature at Mock’s feet as the doctor choked.

The following day, Doctor Lasarius stated that it was impossible to diagnose unequivocally whether Rühtgard had choked on his own blood, or on a mixture of water and formaldehyde.

BRESLAU, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2ND, 1919
TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Heymann’s Coffee House was open for business. Among its regular customers – chiefly employees of the German Fisheries Company who had nipped out for a coffee and strudel with whipped cream before it became too busy – sat two men raising steaming cups to their lips. One of them smoked one cigarette after another, while the other, his teeth clenched around the ivory mouthpiece of a pipe, expelled small columns of smoke from the corners of his lips. The dark-haired man took a few folded sheets of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed them to the bearded man, who puffed out squat mushrooms of smoke as he read. His companion brought a small phial to his nose. The pungent odour of urine drifted over the table. Several customers screwed up their noses in obvious disgust. The older man was red with agitation and high blood pressure.

“Now I know where this absurd declaration to the press comes from, Mock. I also know” – Mühlhaus gripped Mock’s face – “much more than that. Yes, much, much more … You don’t have to publish it any more…”

From his briefcase Mühlhaus pulled two pieces of paper headed “Post-mortem Report” and handed them to Mock. Mock tried to focus on Lasarius’ wobbly writing. “‘Male, aged about seventy-five; height: one metre sixty centimetres; weight: sixty-two kilograms. Clear fracture in two places of lower left limb. Female, aged about twenty, height: one metre fifty-nine centimetres; weight: fifty-eight kilograms. Both found in the cellar at Paulinenstrasse 18. Cause of death: dehydration.’”

Mock shook his head and rested his elbows on the table. He was staring at the headings on both pieces of paper where Lasarius had written in a spidery hand “Alfred Salomon and Catarina Beyer.”

“It’s not them,” whispered Mock. “They’re the wrong names …”

Mühlhaus put his arm around Mock’s neck and rested his head on his shoulder.

“Sleep, Mock,” he said. “And don’t have any dreams, no more dreams …”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would have been very difficult to write had it not been for the expertise and kindness of many people.

Above all I thank Dr Jerzy Kawecki of the Centre of Forensic Medicine at the Piastów Śląskich Medical Academy in Wrocław for his medical knowledge and for his advice on pathological morphology; Professor Jerzy Maron, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wrocław, for his historical advice; Małgorzata Nawotka, curator at the National Museum in Wrocław, for her advice on costumes; Marek Burak, curator at the History Museum in Wrocław, and Piotr Dudziak for their advice on topography; Zbigniew Kowerczyk and Przemysław Szczurk for their literary advice; my editor Anna Rudnicka for her valuable comments and Bogda Balicka for granting me access to the riches of her library and archives.

At the same time I would like to stress that any eventual errors are mine alone.

M.K.
Wrocław

†
A beard does not make a philosopher. (Latin)

‡
Loosely translated as “Winged Words” and subtitled “A Treasury of German Quotations”, first published in 1864.

†
Melancholic Ukrainian folk songs.

†
“What is so strange when a man dies? His life, after all, is no more than a journey towards death.”

†
A courtesan in Ancient Greece.

†
“Let there be intercourse, then may the world perish” (Latin) – a travesty of the well-known
Fiat iustitia et pereat mundus
, generally translated as “Justice must be done, even were the world to perish”.

†
“Don’t destroy my circles.” (Latin)

†
“God or Nature” (i.e. “God is not distinguishable from Nature”).

†
“Should I ever return home” – from the “Schlesierlied”.

†
“Luck up! Luck up!/Here comes the foreman!/His bright light/Has already been lit.” Traditional German song to welcome miners up from the mine.

†
Thus passes the glory of the world.

†
Know thyself.

†
“I sing of arms and of a man.”

†
St Matthew 5:29,
Holy Bible
, New International Version (2001)

‡
St John 20:29, ibid.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

BRESLAU, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2ND, 1919 A QUARTER PAST EIGHT IN THE MORNING

BRESLAU, THAT SAME OCTOBER 2ND, 1919 NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

BRESLAU, THAT SAME OCTOBER 2ND, 1919 A QUARTER PAST NINE IN THE MORNING

BRESLAU, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919 HALF PAST SEVEN IN THE MORNING