End of the World in Breslau Read online

  “It is interesting, I have known my husband for two years and today is the first time I do not recognize him.” A faint flush appeared on Sophie’s cheeks. “Where is that plebeian strength of yours, Eberhard, which makes criminals flee from you and once enthralled me so? Today it ran out when you should have defended that sensitive boy. When we’re at home you sneer at technocrats, at people whose horizons are limited to financial gain, but when we’re here you put a railwayman above a poet? It is a pity your refined brother cannot see you reading Horace, or witness how moved you are by The Sorrows of Young Werther. Criminal Counsellor Mock falls asleep in his armchair, in the safe halo of his lamp, and onto his round belly, bloated with beer and pork knuckle, slips a school edition of Horace’s Odes; a school edition with a little dictionary because this eminent Latin stylist can no longer remember his vocabulary.”

  “Shut your trap,” Eberhard Mock said quietly.

  “You pig!” Sophie suddenly got up from the table.

  Mock watched with melancholy as his wife ran from the room, then listened to the clatter of her shoes on the stairs. He lit a cigarette and smiled at Franz.

  “What is the name of Erwin’s teacher? We’ll check, maybe he really is a queer?”

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME NOVEMBER 27TH, 1927

  MIDNIGHT

  Mock staggered out of the Savoy restaurant on Tauentzienplatz. The bellboy ran out after him and handed him his hat, which Mock did not put on, instead allowing the wet flakes of snow to settle on his sweat-dampened hair. Beneath the windows of Sänger’s restaurant swayed a lone drunk, interrupting his involuntary movements only to whistle for passing cabs. The bellboy’s whistles were evidently more persuasive because in a moment an old and patched droschka stopped beside Mock. The drunkard lurched towards it but Mock was closer. He threw a fiftypfennig piece to the boy and collapsed into the seat, almost squashing a delicate human being.

  “Forgive me, sir, but you got in so quickly I didn’t have time to inform you that I already have a passenger. I’m cabby Bombosch, and this is my daughter, Rosemarie. This is my last run and we’re on our way home.” The cabby jovially twisted his bristling whiskers. “She is so tiny that the gentleman will not find himself too cramped. She is still so young …”

  Mock observed the triangular face of his travelling companion. Enormous naïve eyes, a toque with a veil, and a coat. The girl might have been eighteen; she had slender hands, blue from the cold, and re-soled shoes with holes in them. All this Mock took in by the light of the street lamps located around the Museum of Silesian Antiquities.

  Rosemarie watched the vast edifice of the museum slip past on the right-hand side of the street. Mock counted out loud the bars and restaurants on Sonnenplatz, Gräbschenerstrasse and Rehdigerstrasse, and announced the results of his findings to Rosemarie with genuine pleasure.

  The carriage stopped outside a splendid tenement on Rehdigerplatz, where Mock and his wife Sophie occupied a five-room apartment on the second floor. Mock scrambled out of the droschka and threw the driver the first crumpled banknote he pulled from his coat pocket.

  “Use the change to buy your daughter some shoes and gloves,” he hiccoughed loudly and, without hearing the cabby’s joyous thanks, stretched his shoulders wide, lowered his head and made as if to charge at the tenement door.

  Fortunately for Mock’s head, the caretaker of the tenement was not asleep and managed to open the door in time. Mock hugged him effusively and, in no particular hurry, began his arduous expedition up the stairs, tumbling against the Scylla of the banister and the Charybdis of the wall, threatened by a Cerberus who, wailing and barking, was thrashing about in the vestibule of Hades behind some closed door. Mock, detained neither by the siren song of the servant who tried to take his coat and hat, nor by the wild delight of his old dog, Argos, reached the Ithaca of his bedroom where the faithful Penelope was waiting for him in her muslin dressing gown and high-heeled slippers.

  Mock smiled at the pensive Sophie whose head was leaning against the backrest of the chaise-longue adjacent to their turned-down bed. Sophie stretched herself a little and the muslin of her dressing gown clung to her generous breasts. Mock took this to mean only one thing and feverishly began to undress. As he struggled with the cord of his long johns, Sophie sighed:

  “Where were you?”

  “In a tavern.”

  “With whom?”

  “I met two friends, the same as yesterday – Ebners and Domagalla.”

  Sophie stood up and slipped beneath the eiderdown. Mock, somewhat surprised, did the same and snuggled close to his wife’s back. He squeezed his hand under her arm with difficulty and greedily spread his fingers over one soft breast.

  “I know you want to apologize to me. I know that perfectly well. Carry on being proud and hard and don’t say a word. I forgive your behaviour at Franz’s. I forgive your coming back late. You wanted a drink, you were annoyed,” she said in a monotonous voice, staring into the mirror of the dressing table opposite the bed. “You say you were with friends. I know you’re not lying. You certainly haven’t been with a woman.” She propped herself up on one elbow and looked into the eyes of her reflection. “You wouldn’t manage it with a woman in the state you’re in. You’ve had no fire in you lately. You’re simply feeble in bed.”

  “I can do it right now. I can hold you down. You’ll be begging me to stop,” Mock’s cheeks were burning; with one hand he tore at the muslin of the dressing gown, with the other, at the cotton of his long johns. “Today is the day our child will finally be conceived.”

  Sophie turned to her husband and, touching his lips with hers, spoke with the voice of a sleepy child:

  “I waited for you yesterday – you were with friends. I waited for you today – again you were with friends, and now you want to fuck?”

  Mock adored it when she was vulgar. He ripped his long johns in his excitement. Sophie leaned against the wall. From beneath her nightdress appeared two narrow pink feet. Mock began to stroke and kiss them. Sophie slipped her fingers into her husband’s thick hair and pulled his head back.

  “You want to fuck?” she repeated the question.

  Mock closed his eyes and nodded. Sophie drew her legs towards her and planted both feet on her husband’s ribcage. She straightened them abruptly and pushed him off the bed.

  “Fuck with your friends,” he heard his wife whisper as he fell onto the rough carpet.

  BRESLAU, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28TH, 1927

  TWO O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

  Mock woke up at the desk in his study. His right hand was covered with clots of blood. In the lamplight stood a bottle of Rhein Spätburgunder and a half-filled glass. He scrutinized his hand. Stuck to the dry, brownish clumps of blood were a few fair hairs. Mock went to the kitchen, holding up his torn long johns. He washed his hands meticulously in the cast-iron washbasin. Then he poured some water into an enamel mug and drank, listening to the sounds coming from the courtyard: a metallic creaking of springs. He looked out of the window. Cabby Bombosch had put a nose-bag over his horse’s head and was stroking its nape. The carriage shook and bounced on its suspension. Rosemarie was earning the money for a new coat.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME NOVEMBER 28TH, 1927

  SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

  Mock opened his eyes and listened for a while to the persistent calls of milkmen. The coldness of the morning penetrated his body, squeezed as it was into an armchair. He opened his mouth with difficulty and ran his parched tongue over the sandpaper of his palate. Since no position in the armchair was less than painful, Mock decided to stand up. He wrapped himself in his dressing gown and padded down the sandstone floor of the hall in his bare feet. Argos the dog expressed his usual morning delirium, not shared to any degree by his master. In the bathroom, Mock dipped his toothbrush into a box of Phönix powder and began his oral ablutions. The result was such that to the acidic-alcoholic effluvium was added an acrid aftertaste of cement. Mock furiously spat the grey paste into the basin a
nd soaped his huge badger brush with Peri shaving cream. The razor was an object he should have used that day only under close supervision. A sharp prick, and he realized he had cut himself. The small trickle of blood was very light, much lighter than the blood which had poured from Sophie’s nose the previous night. Mock studied his reflection.

  “How is it that I can look you boldly in the eye?” He wiped his face dry and patted it with Welzel eau-de-cologne. “Because nothing happened yesterday. Besides, I remember nothing.”

  Their servant, Marta Goczoll, was busy in the kitchen while her husband, the butler Adalbert, stood straight as an arrow, holding more than a dozen ties in one hand and a hanger with a suit and white shirt in the other. Mock dressed hurriedly and tied a deep-red tie around his neck. Marta tucked its fat knot under the wings of his collar. Mock just managed to squeeze his swollen feet into his shoes – freshly polished by Adalbert – threw his pale, cashmere coat over his shoulders, donned his hat and left the apartment. On the landing, a large Pomeranian began to fawn on him. Mock stroked the dog. Its owner, the lawyer Patschkowsky, looked with contempt at his neighbour from whom, as every day, emanated a smell of alcohol and eau-de-cologne.

  “There was a terrible noise coming from your apartment last night. My wife couldn’t get to sleep until morning,” Patschkowsky drawled.

  “I was training the dog,” Mock mumbled.

  “Your wife, more likely,” Patschkowsky’s pince-nez glinted in the yellow light of the hallway lamp. “You think you’re allowed to do anything, don’t you? That dog of yours wailed with a human voice.”

  “Some animals speak with a human voice a month before Christmas Eve.” Mock felt the urge to throw his neighbour down the stairs.

  “Is that so?” Patschkowsky raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  “I’m talking to one of them even now.”

  The lawyer stood as if turned to stone, staring for a moment into Mock’s bloodshot eyes. Then he walked slowly downstairs, plucking up the courage to offer one last witty “Is that so?”

  Mock turned back to his apartment. Finding that the door to the bedroom was locked from the inside, he reeled into the kitchen. Adalbert and Marta were sitting anxiously at the table.

  “You haven’t eaten any breakfast, sir. I’ve made scrambled eggs with chanterelle mushrooms.” Marta revealed the gaps in her teeth.

  “Enjoy it yourselves,” Mock smiled effusively. “I wanted to wish you a good day. May it be as good as last night. You slept well, did you?”

  “Yes, sir.” It seemed to Adalbert that he could still hear Sophie’s dreadful screams and the dull scratching of the dog’s paws against the closed bedroom door.

  Mock left the apartment, squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME NOVEMBER 28TH, 1927

  NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

  Criminal Sergeant Kurt Smolorz was one of the finest employees of the Breslau Police Praesidium. His brutality was cursed by villains and his laconic reports praised by his bosses. One of his superiors valued yet another of his virtues above all others – his perspicacity. Smolorz demonstrated this virtue very clearly that morning – twice. First, when he walked into Mock’s office with its dark wood panelling and saw the red impression of Mock’s signet ring on its owner’s forehead, a clear sign that the Counsellor had been resting his tired brow on it. He did not report right away the terrible crime committed in the Griffins tenement on Ring where, by order of Criminal Director Heinrich Mühlhaus, he and his boss were to present themselves without delay. He knew that Mock was in no condition to understand anything just then.

  “I’ll wait for you in the car, Counsellor sir,” Smolorz said, and left to bring the new black Adler up to the gate of the Praesidium. This was not the only reason the Sergeant had taken his leave so swiftly. Mock discovered another when, cursing, he rolled into the passenger seat and saw Smolorz’s red-haired hand holding out a bottle of milk. Mock opened it and greedily took a few gulps. He was now ready to hear the story. Smolorz turned on the ignition.

  “The Griffins tenement, eight o’clock this morning,” Smolorz spoke just as he wrote his reports. “Shoemaker Rohmig couldn’t stand the smell in his workshop and knocked down a wall. Behind it was a corpse.”

  It was not far from the Police Praesidium at Schuhbrücke to Ring. Mock drank the last drops of milk as Smolorz parked the Adler outside the Lottery Bookmakers on Nicolaistrasse. In the inner courtyard of the Griffins tenement, outside the shoemaker’s workshop, stood a uniformed policeman who saluted as they approached. Next to him was a whiskered consumptive who bore the weight of his heavy leather apron with heroic effort, and a stout woman who could not accept the fact that there was no bench in the dirty yard. Every few seconds, magnesium lit up the wretched room filled with the odour of old shoes, rotten with sweat, and bone glue. When Mock and Smolorz walked in they detected another smell, one well known to them and unique in its nature. A counter, sticky with glue, divided the workshop in two. Two walls were lined with cellar shelves on which stood rows of shoes. There was a small window and a door in the third, and from the fourth wafted that familiar stench. An opening of roughly one metre by one metre had been knocked through this wall. The police photographer, Ehlers, was kneeling in front of it, poking his lens into the dark recess. Mock held his nose and peered in. From the darkness of the small niche, his torch picked out a hairless skull covered with decomposing skin. The hands and feet had been tied to hooks on the far side of the recess. The Counsellor looked at the corpse’s face once again and discerned a fat maggot trying to worm its way into the film that covered one eye. He quickly stepped out of the workshop, removed his coat, threw it to the uniformed policeman and, legs astride, leaned his hands on the outside wall. Smolorz, hearing the sounds coming from his boss, reproached himself for failing to anticipate the combined effects of a hangover, a bottle of milk and a disintegrating corpse. From his trouser pocket, Mock pulled out a handkerchief on which Sophie had embroidered his initials and wiped his mouth. He turned his face to the sky and greedily swallowed drops of falling rain.

  “Take the pick-axe,” he told the uniformed policeman, “and bring the wall down so we can get the body out. Smolorz, tie a handkerchief around your mouth and nose and search the recess and the dead man’s pockets, and you, Ehlers, do what you can to help Smolorz.”

  Mock pulled on his coat, adjusted his hat and cast his eye around the yard.

  “And who are you?” he said, aiming a brilliant smile at the stout lady who was shifting from one leg to the other.

  “Ernst Rohmig, master shoemaker,” the consumptive eagerly introduced himself without being asked. He hunched his shoulders to adjust his leather armour.

  “The tenement administrator,” the lady huffed. Cheap dye flaked from her greasy hair which was wrapped around curlers. “Get on with it, sir. Do you think I can stand around for ever worrying about the extra money I’m going to have to pay someone to clean up the wall you’ve fouled? Now, please introduce yourself! I am Mathilde Kühn, the owner’s plenipotentiary, and you are?”

  “Eberhard Mock, ladies’ prize-fighter,” muttered the Criminal Counsellor, turning abruptly and squeezing himself once more into the little room. “Ehlers, tidy up here and gather anything that might be of importance. Smolorz, question these people.”

  Mock trotted off to the tenement lobby, passing Smolorz who was huddled under an umbrella with those he was questioning, trying to avoid venom on the one hand and bacilli of tuberculosis on the other. At the entrance door Mock greeted Doctor Lasarius from the police mortuary, followed slowly by two men carrying a stretcher.

  Mock stood outside the building and distractedly watched the traffic in the street, already busy at this hour. A couple were so engrossed in each other they did not notice him. The young man accidentally jostled the Counsellor and immediately apologized, politely removing his hat. The girl glanced at Mock and instantly turned away her face, which was ashen with tiredness. The night
’s rocking in the droschka had obviously disagreed with Rosemarie.

  Mock looked about and quickly strode off towards Apelt florists. In the made-up eyes of the plump flower girl, he detected a flicker of interest. He ordered a basket of fifty tea roses and asked for it to be delivered to “Sophie Mock, Rehdigerplatz 2”. On a cream-coloured card, which he requested be attached to the bouquet, he wrote in his beautiful script: “Never again, Eberhard”, and then he paid and left the flower girl alone with her mounting curiosity.

  A newspaper boy got under his feet. Mock dismissed him, pressing a few pfennigs into his hand and then, wielding a newspaper under his arm, cut diagonally across the western side of Ring. A moment later he was sitting in the Adler, smoking his first cigarette of the day and waiting for Smolorz and Ehlers. He passed the time reading the Breslauer Neueste Nachrichten. On one of the announcement pages, his eye was caught by an unusual illustration. A mandala, the wheel of change, was drawn around a gloomy old man with his finger pointing upwards. “Spiritual father, Prince Alexei von Orloff, proves that the end of the world is nigh. The next revolution of the Wheel of History is now taking place – crimes and cataclysms dating back centuries are recurring. We invite you to a lecture held by the sage from the Sepulchrum Mundi. Sunday, November 27th, Grünstrasse 14–16.” Mock lowered the window and flicked his cigarette end straight at the approaching Smolorz. The latter shook the ash from his coat and climbed into the car, passing over Mock’s apologies in silence. Into the back clambered Ehlers, weighed down by his tripod, and Criminal Assistant Gustav Meinerer, the fingerprint expert.

  “Rohmig has been renting his workshop for a month now: from 24th October, to be exact.” Smolorz opened his police notebook. “From July to the end of October, according to the old bag, the workshop was empty. Anyone could have broken in. The caretaker is often drunk and asleep instead of keeping watch. He’s disappeared somewhere now. Probably recovering from a hangover. The shoemaker complained about the stink from the beginning. His brother-in-law, a mason, had told him about a joke masons play if they don’t get paid properly. They set an egg into the wall. And it stinks. Rohmig thought there was an egg behind his wall, and he decided to get rid of it this morning. He knocked down the wall with a pick-axe. And that’s it.”