Death in Breslau (27 page)

Anwaldt nodded. Fireworks lit up inside his skull. He poured himself some more mint. Mock stood astride, observing his hung-over assistant. He clasped his hands and twiddled his thumbs.

“Good. I see you feel like drinking. That means you won’t be sick. I’ve run a bath for you. There’s one of my shirts in the bathroom and your cleaned and pressed suit. You certainly took care of it yesterday. I paid the caretaker’s wife an arm and a leg for her efforts. It took her half the night. She also cleaned your shoes. You’ll pay me back when you’ve got some money. Someone robbed you yesterday. Take a shave because you look like an alcoholic tramp. Use my razor,” Mock was harsh and decisive. “And now listen to me. In three-quarters of an hour you’re to sit here and tell me your adventures. Briefly and concretely. Then we’ll go to John the Baptist’s Cathedral. There, at nine-fifteen, Doctor Leo Hartner’s going to be waiting for us.”

*   *   *

They sat in the cool darkness. The violence of the sun stopped short of the coloured filter of stained-glass windows; walls of ashlar muffled the noise and bustle of the sweating city; Silesian princes slept in silent niches; and Latin signs on the walls invoked the contemplation of eternity. Mock’s watch showed nine-twenty. As agreed, they sat in the front row and watched out for Hartner. Instead of him, a short priest with a crew-cut and silver-framed spectacles walked up to them. Without a word, he
handed Mock an envelope, turned and left. Anwaldt wanted to follow him, but Mock held him back. He took the typed letter from the envelope and passed it to his assistant.

“You read. I can’t see properly in this light and we’re not going out into that cursed heat.” On saying this, Mock realized that he was speaking in familiar terms to Baron von der Malten’s son. (If I was on familiar terms with Marietta, I can be the same with him.)

Anwaldt looked at the sheet of paper embossed with the University Library’s golden crest beneath which appeared the elegant letters of the Director’s typewriter.

Dear Excellency.

I apologize for not being able to attend our appointment personally, but family reasons prompted me to leave suddenly yesterday evening. I called Your Excellency several times, but you were not in. So let me speak through this letter for I have several important things to impart. All that I am now going to say is based on the admirable book
Les Yesîdîs
by Jean Boyé, published ten years ago in Paris. The author, a well-known French ethnographer and traveller, stayed with the Yesidis for four years. They liked him and respected him to such a degree that he was admitted to some sacred rituals. Among the many interesting descriptions of the religious cult of this secret sect, one is particularly significant. And so, our author stayed somewhere in the desert (he doesn’t say exactly where) with several of the Yesidi elders. There, they visited an old hermit who lived in a grotto. This elderly eremite would frequently dance and fall into a trance like the Turkish dervishes. While he did so, he pronounced prophecies in an incomprehensible tongue. Boyé had for a long time to implore the Yesidis to clarify these prophetic cries. They eventually agreed and explained them. The hermit proclaimed that the
time of vengeance for the murdered children of Al-Shausi had come. Boyé, knowing the history of the Yesidis very well, knew that these children had died at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. He was surprised, therefore, that these born avengers had waited so long to fulfil their sacred duty. The Yesidis explained to him that, according to their law, vengeance is only valid if it corresponds exactly to the crime which it is to avenge. So that if someone’s eye had been gouged out with a stiletto, then his avenger had to visit the same barbarity on the criminal or his descendant, and not just with any ordinary knife but with a stiletto and – best of all – the very same one.

Vengeance for Al-Shausi’s murdered children would only be in keeping with their law if the children of the murderer’s descendant were killed in the very same way. But this could not come about for centuries, up until the moment that the deity Malak-Taus manifested himself to the hermit and announced that the awaited time had come. These hermits are profoundly venerated by the Yesidis and are considered to be the guardians of tradition. And the duty to avenge belongs to the sacred tradition. So that when the eremite announced that the time was right, the gathering chose an avenger whose right hand was tattooed with the symbol of vengeance. If this avenger did not fulfil his task, they hung him before everybody’s eyes. So much for Boyé.

Dear Excellency, I too, unfortunately, am unable to answer the question which so troubled Jean Boyé. I looked through the entire genealogy of the von der Malten family and think I know why the Yesidi’s vengeance could not be fulfilled for so many centuries. In the fourteenth century, the von der Maltens branched into three: the Silesian, the Bavarian and the Netherlandish. In the eighteenth century, the last two dried out. The Silesian branch did not propagate
abundantly – mostly singleton boys were born to this well-known junker’s family, and the vengeance – let me remind you – could only be considered valid if it was carried out on siblings. In that family’s entire history, siblings were born only five times. In two cases, one of the children died when still an infant, in two others, the boys died in unknown circumstances. In the last one, Olivier von der Malten’s aunt, his father Ruppert’s sister, spent all her days in a strictly closed, sequestered convent, so that vengeance on her was effectively hindered.

Dear Excellency, I wrote that I know why revenge has not been taken. Unfortunately, I do not know why this elder had insight and announced ceremoniously that the moment of vengeance had come. The only living male descendant of Godfryd von der Malten, Olivier, did not, at the time of the hermit’s insight, have any other children apart from the hapless Marietta. So that her terrible murder is a tragic mistake of a demented old shaman, caused by the hashish which is so popular in his country.

I finish my overly long letter and apologize for not verifiying Maass’ translation of Friedländer’s last two prophecies. A lack of time rendered it impossible; much time was spent in my examining the Yesidi’s curse and on complicated family matters which unexpectedly hastened my departure. I remain sincerely yours, Doctor Leo Hartner.

Mock and Anwaldt looked at each other. They knew that the prophecies of the holy elder from the desert were not the drug-induced babble of a demented shaman. They left the cathedral and, without a word, got into the Adler, which was parked in the shade of an enormous chestnut tree, of which many grew in the Cathedral Square.

“Don’t worry, son,” Mock looked at Anwaldt with compassion. This
was no slip of the tongue. He had uttered the word “son” consciously. He remembered the Baron, clinging to the train window and shouting: “He is my son”. “I’ll take you home now. Your apartment may not be safe. I’ll send Smolorz to get your things. You stay at my place, get some sleep, do not answer any telephone calls and do not open the door to anyone. In the evening, I’ll take you somewhere where you’ll forget about your daddy and all insects.”

XV

BRESLAU, THAT SAME WEDNESDAY, JULY 18TH, 1934
EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

Wednesday frolics at Madame le Goef’s salon were kept in the style of Antiquity. In the evening, a naked slave, painted the colour of mahogany, struck an enormous gong, the curtain rose and the set was revealed in front of the audience: the façade of a Roman temple with naked men and women dancing against this background amidst rose petals floating from the ceiling. These Bacchanalia – where dancers only mimicked sexual congress – lasted about twenty minutes, after which there followed an interval of a similar duration. During this time, some guests retreated to discreet rooms while others fortified themselves and drank. After the break, the slave struck the gong once again and on stage there appeared several “Roman men and women” dressed in thin tunics, which they promptly discarded. More rose petals fell, the room became airless; this time, the bacchanalia were real. After half an hour of such games, the actors and actresses left the stage – exhausted, the hall emptied while the withdrawing rooms burst at the seams.

That evening, Rainer von Hardenburg, Eberhard Mock and Herbert Anwaldt sat in a small gallery, observing the introductory mimicry of a Bacchanalian orgy from above. At the very outset of the performance,
already, Anwaldt was clearly stirred. Seeing this, Mock got up and went to Madame’s office. He greeted her effusively and presented her with his request. Madame agreed without hesitation and picked up the telephone. Mock returned to his seat. Anwaldt leaned over to him and whispered:

“Where does one get the keys to one of the rooms?”

“Wait a minute. What’s the hurry?” Mock laughed coarsely.

“Look: all the prettiest ones are being taken.”

“They’re all pretty here. See: those coming in our direction, for example.”

Two girls in school uniforms were approaching their table. Both policemen knew them well; the girls, on the other hand, pretended to be seeing the men for the first time. Both gazed at Anwaldt with rapture. Suddenly, the one resembling Erna touched his hand and smiled. He got up, put his arms around the girls’ slender backs, turned to Mock and said “thank you”. The three withdrew to a room in the middle of which stood a round table with a beautifully embossed chessboard. Von Hardenburg glanced at Mock with a smile. He relaxed in Madame le Goef’s salon and was not so exacting with titles.

“You knew how to make that boy happy. Who is he?”

“A close relative from Berlin. Also a policeman.”

“So we’ll hear a Berliner’s opinion of the best club in Breslau. Or rather just outside of Breslau.”

“What do Berliners know? They’ll always laugh at us. But not my relative. He’s too well behaved. You know, they have to treat their complexes somehow. Especially those who come from Breslau. You know the saying ‘a true Berliner has to come from Breslau’?”

“Yes. Take Kraus, for example,” von Hardenburg adjusted his monocle. “He spent two years in Berlin then, after Heines’, Brückner’s and Piontek’s downfalls, von Woyrsch transferred him to Breslau as Chief of Gestapo. Kraus took his promotion as a kick upstairs. So, to hide his
disappointment, our spiteful and wooden-headed eager beaver started to turn his nose up. And here is the two-year-old Berliner criticizing Silesian provincialism at every step. I checked – do you know where he’s from? From Lower Silesian Frankenstein.”

The men laughed out loud and clinked their wine glasses. The actresses on stage bowed, generously bestowing the audience with their charms. Mock pulled out some Turkish cigarettes and offered them to von Hardenburg. He knew that the Chief of the Abwehr did not like to be hurried and would reveal all the information he had managed to acquire on Erkin of his own free will and at the moment that suited him. Mock expected to hear more than he had deduced from Hartner’s expertise and letter. He wanted to learn Kemal Erkin’s whereabouts.

“People like Kraus cannot stand our tradition of nobility, family and culture,” von Hardenburg continued on the subject of Silesia. “All those von Schaffgotsches, von Carmers and von Donnersmarcks. That’s why they boost their self-esteem by deriding the fossilization of junkers and coal Barons. Let them laugh …”

Silence fell. Von Hardenburg watched the “performances”; Mock wondered whether today’s light-hearted evening was a good opportunity to touch on important, practical matters. After much thought, he decided:

“
A propos
Kraus … I’ve a favour to ask of you …”

“Eberhard,” von Hardenburg was becoming increasingly familiar. “I still haven’t granted you the first favour, the Turkish-Kurdish one, and you already have another … No, no, that was a joke. Proceed.”

“Count,” Mock, in contrast to his interlocutor, had become formal. “I would like to work for the Abwehr.”

“Oh, and why is that?” von Hardenburg’s monocle reflected the glint of candles and discreetly dimmed table lamps.

“Because my department is being infiltrated by Kraus’ rabble,” Mock replied. “He’s already looking down on me, soon he’s going to be giving
me orders. I’ll become a nominal Chief, a dummy, a puppet dependent on uncouth thugs, barbarians from the Gestapo. Count, I come from a poor, craftsman’s family from Waldenburg. But in spite of that, or maybe because of it, I want to be
integer vitae scelerisque purus
.”
^†

“Oh, Eberhard – despite your descent, you are in spirit a true aristocrat. But surely you realize that working for us, it is not easy to behave according to Horace’s maxim.”

“My dear Count, I lost my virginity a long time ago and have been working for the police since 1899 with a break during the war when I fought in Russia. I saw many things, but you will surely agree with me that there’s a difference between a man who’s defending the state using what might not always be conventional methods and an executioner’s helper.”

“You do know,” the monocle glinted with amusement, “that I wouldn’t be able to offer you a position of any authority.”

“I’ll answer by changing the gist of Napoleon’s famous saying: ‘It’s better to be second or even fifth or tenth in Paris, than first in Lyons.”

“I can’t promise you anything at the moment,” von Hardenburg examined the menu assiduously. “It’s not only up to me. There, I’ll order spare ribs in mushroom sauce. And now the other matter. I’ve got something about Kemal Erkin for you. Firstly, he’s a Kurd. He comes from a rich merchant family. In 1913, he graduated from the élite school for cadets in Istanbul. He was good at his studies and applied himself most ardently to German. Our language was then, as it is today, compulsory in every business and military school in Turkey. During the war, he fought in the Balkans and Armenia. There, too, he was surrounded by the grim fame of executioner and sadist during the slaughter of Armenians. My Turkish informer was not inclined to give more detailed information on the subject of this shady page in Erkin’s life and Turkey’s history. In 1921, as a young
officer in the Turkish Intelligence Service, Erkin was sent on two years’ supplementary studies to Berlin. There he made numerous friends. On his return, he climbed ever higher in the Turkish political police. Suddenly, in 1924, the day before he was to be promoted as Chief of this force in Smyrna, he requested a transfer to the German Consulate in Berlin where the position of Deputy Military Advisor had just been vacated. Erkin, like you, preferred to be second in Paris rather than first in Lyons. His request was considered favourably and since 1924 the ambitious Turk has been in Germany. He has been living all the time in Berlin, leading a quiet, monotonous administrative-diplomatic existence, varied only by excursions to Breslau. Yes, yes, Mock, he’s been greatly interested in our city. He visited it twenty times in six years. We kept an eye on him initially. His file is thick, but you would be disappointed in its contents. So Erkin dedicated himself, in our city, to what you could call artistic pleasures. He diligently went to concerts, regularly visited museums and libraries. Nor did he disdain the brothels where he was famous for his tremendous vigour. We have a statement from a prostitute who claimed that within half an hour Erkin had had intercourse with her twice without, so to speak, leaving her body. He even made friends with a certain librarian at the University Library, but I’ve forgotten his name. In December of 1932, he asked if he could undergo training at the Staatspolizeileistelle in Oppeln. Just imagine: having a cosy position in Berlin, he suddenly decides to move to the forlorn countryside and have Silesian provincials teach him! It looks as if he prefers to be tenth in Oppeln rather than second in Berlin!”