The End of the World in Breslau (13 page)

“And?” Mock asked.

Heinz Kleinfeld wiped his pince-nez and looked at Mock with tired, myopic eyes. His gaze exuded shrewdness, melancholy and Talmudic wisdom.

Eduard Reinert interrupted his reading of the files and rested his chin on one hand. His expression did not give much away. Neither of the policemen needed to answer Mock’s question; the Criminal Counsellor already knew the results of their archival search.

“Go and get something to eat, and come back in an hour,” said Mock, arranging the files he had looked through in an even pile. For the next few moments he occupied himself with his hair, which stubbornly entangled itself in the teeth of his bone comb. He was in no hurry to go anywhere,
even though a few minutes earlier Mühlhaus had telephoned to say he wanted to see him immediately. He spruced himself up, left the archives and began the tedious journey up stairs and down corridors. He did everything he could to delay the meeting with his chief: he stubbed out long-extinguished cigarette ends with the toe of his shoe, looked out for acquaintances with whom to chat, passed no spittoon without putting it to use. He was in no rush to face the sight of an enraged Mühlhaus and a conversation during which they would have to broach certain unavoidable topics.

Mühlhaus was indeed furious. His arms were stretched wide across his desk, his fat fingers drumming a monotonous rhythm on its dark-green surface. His jaws were locked in icy anger, his lips pursed around the mouthpiece of his pipe. Ribbons of smoke escaped through his teeth and nostrils. He was quite simply seething.

Mock sat opposite his chief and began to fill the enormous horseshoe-shaped ashtray.

“A messenger is going to knock on your door tomorrow, Mock,” Mühlhaus’ voice shook with emotion, “bringing you a summons to an extraordinary sitting of the Horus Lodge. Do you know what the second point on the agenda will be? ‘The matter of expelling Eberhard Mock from the Lodge’. Exactly that. I’ve proposed it and I’m going to present it. Perhaps you still remember that I’m Secretary of the Lodge?”

He fell silent and studied Mock. Apart from weariness, he could discern nothing in his face.

“And the reason for my expulsion?” Mock extinguished his cigarette, grinding it into the bottom of the ashtray.

“Committing a criminal offence.” To calm himself, Mühlhaus had begun to twist a small skewer into his pipe. “The police would expel you for the same thing. You’ve brought it upon yourself.”

“And what offence have I committed?” asked Mock.

“Are you just pretending to be an idiot?” Mühlhaus refrained from shouting this at the top of his voice. “Yesterday, in front of ten witnesses, you beat up a casino employee, Werner Kahl. And you used a knuckle-duster. Kahl has only just regained consciousness. Then you destroyed valuable Chinese porcelain belonging to the casino manager, Norbert Risse, with the intention of forcing him to defer your nephew’s debt. This was witnessed by three men, and the crime has been reported to the officer on duty. An accusation of assault and destruction of extremely valuable property will soon be drawn up. You will then stand before a court and your chances are minimal. The Lodge anticipates the facts and removes potential criminals from its circle. The President of Police will suspend you from your duties. And then we shall say our goodbyes.”

“Criminal Director …” Mock fell silent after uttering this official title, and for a while he listened to the sounds coming through the window: a tram bell on Schuhbrücke; the squelch of thawing snow; the clapping of horses’ hooves on wet cobblestones; the shuffling of students’ feet as they hurried to their lectures. “Surely not everything has been fore-judged. That doorman abused and attacked me first. I was only defending myself. My nephew and a certain Willibald Hönness, an employee of the casino, will attest to that. I wouldn’t trust Risse. He offered me coffee and I broke a cup. And now I see he has lodged a complaint that I smashed his entire Chinese coffee service. I’m surprised he didn’t mention the rape I committed on his parrot.”

Mühlhaus raised his arms and with all his strength thumped his fists against the desk. The inkwell jumped, the penholder rolled across the surface, sand scattered from the old sand-box.

“To hell with you!” he roared. “I want to hear from you what happened! And you, instead of an explanation, are fobbing me off with some miserable joke about a parrot. Tomorrow I am to be summoned before our President of Police. When he asks me how you justify all
this, I’ll reply that you defended yourself with the statement: ‘I wouldn’t trust Risse.’”

“The only justification I have is loyalty to my family ties,” said Mock. “My nephew is my blood, and there’s a great deal I’d do for that. Beyond that, I have nothing with which to justify myself.”

“That’s what I’ll tell the old man tomorrow: the call of family blood,” Mühlhaus said sarcastically. He had calmed down and lit his pipe, piercing his subordinate with two slits for eyes. Mock felt sorry for him. He surveyed the bald head criss-crossed by wisps of hair, the long beard as if from the nineteenth century, the sausage-like fingers nervously fiddling with his pipe. He knew that Mühlhaus would go home that evening after his customary Thursday session of skat, that his thin wife, who had been growing old with him for the past quarter of a century, would greet him with his dinner, that they would talk about everything but their son, Jakob, who had left behind him a cold, empty room.

“Criminal Director, you really shouldn’t believe anything Risse says. The casino manager is a homosexual mixed up in the ‘four sailors’ affair. What is his word against mine?”

“In normal circumstances, nothing. But you went too far, Mock, and acted out a real-life western before numerous witnesses. I happen to know that Risse is preparing for an interview today with the
Breslauer Neueste Nachrichten
. I fear that even our President lacks the power to defend you and withhold such sensational material from the press.”

“There is someone who could.” Mock still held on to the hope that he would not have to share with Mühlhaus the information he had received from Meinerer. “And that’s Criminal Director Heinrich Mühlhaus.”

“Really?” Mühlhaus raised his eyebrows so high that his monocle fell out. “Perhaps you’re right. But I don’t want to help you. I’ve had enough of you, Mock.”

Mock was familiar with the various tones of Mühlhaus’ voice. This
one was new to him – it was characterized by sarcasm, disdain and deliberation. It could mean that his boss had made his final decision. Mock had no choice but to use his ultimate argument.

“Will you really do nothing and let Risse walk out, triumphant? Allow the triumph of a homosexual patron of artists, who love him with their whole hearts and bodies? Among them a young painter who goes by the pseudonym of Giacoppo Rogodomi.”

Mühlhaus turned to the window, presenting Mock with his hunched and rounded back. Both knew this was the pseudonym used by Jakob Mühlhaus, Heinrich’s prodigal son. Minutes passed. Rain beat against the windowpane, a police siren wailed, the bells pealed at the church of St Matthias.

“Criminal Counsellor,” Mühlhaus did not turn away from the window, “there will be no extraordinary sitting of the Horus Lodge.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME DECEMBER 1ST, 1927
HALF PAST SEVEN IN THE EVENING

A light frost was settling under a cloudless, starry sky. Cobblestones were covered with a layer of thin icing. Mock climbed into the Adler and drove out of the Police Praesidium courtyard. He greeted the porter who shut the gate, and turned left at the Two Poles tenement into Schmiede brücke. A hunched coalman was leading his thin horse by its bridle; it dragged its hooves with such great effort that the coal wagon it was pulling had blocked the street, forcing Mock to slow down. The Criminal Counsellor’s brain was empty and sterile rendered thus by hundreds of pieces of useless information from the police files, by dozens of names and reports of criminality, abuse and despair. He could not put his mind to anything and was not even angry with the coalman. He pressed his foot lightly on the accelerator and, in the glow of neon lights and shop displays, watched
the passers-by. An enraged dandy in a bowler hat emerged from Noack’s drinking den and tried to explain something to a weeping, pregnant girl. The light cast by the windows of Messow & Waldschmidt’s department store illuminated two postmen arguing vehemently about the city’s topography. The immense corpulence of one testified to the fact that his knowledge might be rather theoretical, derived from persistent journeys made by his finger across a map. From a gate adjacent to the preserves shop rolled a drunken medical student or obstetrician lugging a doctor’s bag so large that, apart from his medicines and surgical instruments, it could also have contained his entire professional ethics.

With relief Mock overtook the consumptive coalman, then turned right and, with a roar of his engine, sped along the north side of Ring. He glanced over his left shoulder and caught sight of Mrs Sommé, the wife of one of the jeweller brothers.

“At this hour?” He was surprised, and then suddenly remembered something. He stopped the car, got out, crossed the busy street and made his way briskly towards the shop.

“Good evening, Mrs Sommé,” he called. “I see you’re still open. I’d like to see the necklace I spoke to your husband about, the one with the rubies.”

“Certainly, Counsellor,” Mrs Sommé said, displaying her pink gums in an alluring smile. “I didn’t think you would be coming. Here it is – I’ve got the necklace ready in a maroon case. I think it will suit your wife beautifully. It goes so well with green eyes …”

They went into the shop. Leaning over the counter, Mrs Sommé handed Mock the necklace. His eyes swept over her thirty-something, shapely figure and then he pored over the piece. A stream of words and sighs flowed from the lips of the jeweller’s wife at his side, flooding his mind with cascades of clear syllables, but a moment later they were joined by another sound. He listened intently; from the back room came the
sound of a man’s happy voice singing Otto Reutter’s “
Wie reizend sind die Frauen
”.
†

“ … it is so rare. A woman who is so loved must be very happy,” prattled Mrs Sommé. “Oh, you always think of your wife, you’re so hard-working, so concerned about our safety …”

Mrs Sommé’s words reminded Mock that recently he had been concerned with his nephew’s safety, and that the money with which he was about to buy Sophie’s necklace was to have covered Erwin’s gambling debts. He also remembered that there was no need for him to buy the necklace that day; that Völlinger had calculated the day on which they would conceive to be the following one. It was then that he would take his wife in his arms, and she would be wearing nothing but rubies … He tipped his hat, promised to buy the necklace the next day, and mumbled an apology to the jeweller’s wife as she continued:

“ … if only all married couples were like you two …”

He left the shop, deep in thought as to how he would obtain the money for the necklace.

†
“How delightful women are.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME DECEMBER 1ST, 1927
A QUARTER TO EIGHT IN THE EVENING

Elisabeth Pflüger was practising the first violin part of Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ when her servant quietly slipped into the parlour and, next to a vase of white chrysanthemums, placed a scented envelope with the monogram s. m. Elisabeth interrupted her playing, seized the envelope and, drawing her slender legs up beneath her, made herself comfortable on the chaise-longue. With trembling hands she lost herself in reading the cornflower-blue pages covered in rounded writing.

Dear Elisabeth,

I know that what I write may make you cry. I also know how devoted you are to me. Yet I cannot allow this noble feeling that unites us to be the death of my marital happiness.

My darling, do not blame yourself for anything. Nobody forced me to take part in the meetings with the Baron that give you so much joy. I took part in them of my own free will, and of my own free will I relinquish them. Yes, my sweet, I have to leave your circle, but that does not mean this letter to you is goodbye. What unites us will endure, and neither human anger nor envy will destroy it, because what can set at variance two priestesses who serve only one mistress – Art? It is in her silent temple that we experience spiritual rapture. Our friendship will remain unchanged, and the number of our meetings will simply be reduced by those we have spent with the Baron.

It would be dishonest of me not to give you the reasons for my parting company with the Baron’s group. As you know, the meetings cleansed me spiritually. I am too proud to allow Eberhard to humiliate me. And every moment he spends without me – apart from those engaged in professional duties – is a humiliation. Every second he willingly deserts me is for me the cruellest of insults. He also humiliates me when he reproaches me, beats me, accuses me of being barren, or when, overcome with desire, he begs me for love. Spiritual blows are the worst, the cruellest and the most painful. But, my love, you know I cannot live without him, without his bitterness, his cynicism, his plebeian strength, his lyricism and his despair. If that were taken away from me, I would have no reason to live.

Darling, you know our meetings with the Baron were, for me, an antidote to the harm Eberhard subjected me to. After my humiliations there came our meetings, and with them a heavenly revenge. Then, purified and innocent, as if cleansed in a spring fount, I would throw myself at Eberhard and give myself to him, longing for the conception that was to change our lives. There was no conception and there were no changes. Then, desperate, Eberhard would begin his alcoholic rantings with his own demons, after which he would debase me, presenting yet another reason for revenge. I would phone you and you – so wonderfully debauched – would return to me my former innocence.