Phantoms of Breslau (24 page)

“Erika Kiesewalter, Assistant Orgiast,” she said in a melodious, almost childish voice.

“You’re witty.” Mock, because of the contrast between her voice and the licentious nature of her words, remembered old Vyhlidal’s warning and slowly regained his self-control. “You like to play with words?”

“Yes.” She inhaled deeply. “I like games of the tongue …”

Mock did not register this innuendo because he was seized by a terrible thought: that his interrogation was sentencing this girl to death, to having her eyes gouged out, to having a metal needle stuck in her lungs. “To save her,” he thought, “I’ll have to isolate her in the ‘storeroom’. And what if I never catch the murderer? Will she have to sit in Wirth’s old counting-room for years while her velvety skin wrinkles and withers? I can still save her! I won’t ask her any questions. But if the murderer’s following me, how can he know whether I’ve questioned her or not? He’ll kill her anyway. Yet without her evidence I might not catch him, and I’ll be forcing her to stay in that old counting-room, with blemishes and wrinkles creeping over her withered skin. Besides, if we don’t catch the murderer, everyone stored away at Wirth’s place is going to get old, not only the girl.”

“Stop staring at me like an idiot and don’t talk nonsense,” he snarled – and forced himself to think, “What do I care about some whore and her alabaster skin!” – “Answer my questions! Nothing more.”

“Yes, Officer sir.” Erika stood up, opened the window and flicked a column of ash into the warm, autumnal evening. The air resounded with
the grating of trams and the clip-clopping of horses’ hooves. The waist of her dress was dark and sat on her hips, accentuating their roundness. Mock felt that strong tension which awakens teenage boys from the deepest sleep, and which for ageing men is a sign that not everything in life has yet been lost. “I’ll ask her a question,” he thought, “and she’ll answer me. I’ll ask her another and be calm.”

“Answer my questions,” he repeated hoarsely. “Quickly. First question, what’s your profession?”

“Hetaera,”
^†
said the girl, making way towards the bed. This time she sat modestly, and her face displayed nothing but concentration.

“How do you know that word?” Mock’s surprise diminished the tightness he felt.

“I read this and that.” A smile appeared on her face which Mock thought impudent. “I’m especially interested in antiquity. I even played Medea in an amateur production. I’m trying my hand at acting.”

“Why did you come here? To this apartment?” Mock closed his eyes to conceal the contradictory feelings that were preying on him.

“I’ve been coming here every Saturday. For several weeks.”

“And you plied your … profession here?” Mock took his time picking the right words.

“The one I ply, but not the one I dream of.”

“And what do you dream of?”

“Acting,” she whispered and a blush suffused her cheeks. She clenched her teeth as if trying to stop herself crying. Then she laughed derisively.

“You’re to describe accurately what you did here last Saturday,” said Mock, and thought, “She’s probably mentally ill.”

“Same as every other.”

“Tell me everything.”

“It excites you, does it, sir?” she asked, lowering her childlike voice.

“You don’t have to give me the details. Tell me broadly.”

“I don’t know what that means, broadly …” Another smile.

“Go on, damn it!” Mock yelled. “The four men who used to live here are dead. Do you understand?”

“I’m sorry.” Mock wanted to believe that the fear in her face resulted from his shouting and not her acting abilities. “Right, I’ll tell you. I was hired by a wealthy man. I don’t know his name. I met him in the Eldorado, where I’m a dance-hostess. He had a beard. He danced with me, then we went to my room. He proposed a regular commission. To partake in debauchery. I agreed, on condition that I could back out after the first time if I didn’t like it.”

The girl fell silent and picked at the bedspread with her slender fingers.

“Go on,” Mock said quietly, so as to hide his hoarseness. “It’s not the first time I’ve met somebody like you. I’m not aroused by stories of hetaeras … Gone are the days when I was excited by the works of Alciphron.”

“Shame,” she said gravely.

“Shame? Why?” Anger surged in Mock. He felt himself being manipulated by this crafty whore.

“I’m ashamed to talk about it,” she said in the same serious tone of voice. “If I aroused you, I’d simply be doing my job, which is arousing men. But otherwise, I don’t know how to say …”

“Use the term ‘to look after’ to describe the act you abandon yourself to when you’re doing your job.”

“Fine,” she whispered, and told him everything. “The man accepted my condition and gave me this address. I was to come here every Saturday after six. He was quite insistent about the time. So I came. I didn’t do anything perverted. There were six people in the room. The man who hired
me, a young girl in a wheelchair and four young sailors. The sailors lived here. I suspect they weren’t sailors at all, but dressed up. Sailors live on ships, they don’t rent themselves out as … On my client’s instructions I’d get undressed. One of the sailors would look after me. My client would transfer the girl from the wheelchair to the bed and then the three other sailors took care of her. The girl would watch me and my … the one who was with me, and it obviously had a great effect on her because when she’d had enough of watching she very willingly looked after the three sailors all at once. It was like that every time.”

“And your client never looked after you?” Mock gulped. “Or the girl in the wheelchair?”

“God forbid!” Erika shouted.

“Why weren’t you with them last Saturday?”

“I was indisposed.”

“So the four sailors took care of the invalid?”

“Probably. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

Somebody knocked energetically. Mock pulled out his Mauser and made towards the door. Through the peep-hole he saw Smolorz. He let him into the hallway and breathed in the smell of alcohol. Smolorz was swaying slightly.

“Listen, Smolorz, you’re to keep an eye on the girl,” he said, nodding towards Erika, “until we transport her to the ‘storeroom’. You’re even to accompany her to the toilet. And one other thing. You’re not to lay a finger on her! Come back in one hour. I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but you have to be sober. Do you understand?”

Smolorz nodded and left. He did not argue or protest. He knew his chief well enough, and knew what it meant when his chief addressed him informally, as he had done in the note delivered by Wirth: it certainly did not bode well. Mock closed the door behind him, went back into the room and looked at Erika. Her expression had changed.

“Sir,” she whispered. “What storeroom? Where do you want to lock me up? I’ve got to work. This job is finished. I’ve got to dance at the Eldorado.”

“No,” Mock whispered back. “You’re not going to work at the Eldorado. You’re going to work here.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 6TH, 1919
A QUARTER PAST SEVEN IN THE EVENING

Mock lay next to Erika straining his memory to count the women he had had in his life. But this was not in order to add another trophy to his collection. They were no trophies. Most were prostitutes, usually when he was drunk, and usually without much satisfaction. Mock counted all the women he had had and could not fully square his accounting. Not because there had been a vast multitude of them, but because during intercourse he had often been in a stupor or a fever, and could not remember whether these encounters could be called what is commonly termed
finis coronat opus
. Touching Erika’s warm thigh, he decided to include only those times that could in all certainly be summed up by the Latin maxim. Erika put an arm around his neck and mumbled something. She was falling asleep. Mock stopped counting, he stopped thinking of anything at all. But he was sure of one thing: up until now, til this day, til this evening spent with a red-headed prostitute in a room belonging to murdered male whores, he had never really known what teenage boys dream of, and what makes ageing men start believing in themselves again. This evening Erika had revealed the secret to him. Without saying a word.

He got up and covered the girl’s slim body with his jacket. He could not resist running his hand over her white skin speckled here and there with islands of freckles; he could not resist slipping his hand beneath her
arm to touch her sleeping breasts, which only a moment earlier had been full of life and urgently demanding their due.

He stood wearing nothing but his long johns and observed her shallow sleep. A scene from Lucretius’ poem “De rerum natura” unexpectedly came to his mind: a man is drenched in sweat, his voice and tongue falter, a hum fills his ears. This was precisely the state he was in. He had been struck down dead. His school professor, Moravjetz, had described the scene as “pathographical” when they had discussed it in the optional Classics group. He had compared it with Sappho and Catullus’ famous verses on how the human body reacts to violent emotions. Mock had been struck dumb, not by his recollection of Professor Moravjetz, but by the words his teacher had used to describe the scene in the poetry.

“The pathography of love,” he said out loud. “But there’s no love here. I don’t love this crafty whore.”

He walked up to Erika and tore his jacket from her. She woke up.

“I don’t love this crafty whore,” he said resolutely.

She smiled at him.

“Crafty, are you?” Mock felt the flame of anger rise in him. “Why are you laughing, you crafty whore? Are you trying to annoy me?”

“God forbid!” said Erika barely audibly.

She looked away. Mock sensed her fear. His anger branched and crackled in his breast. “She’s frightened, the crafty whore!” he thought and clenched his fist. At that moment there was a knocking at the door. Slow-slow-slow, pause, slow-slow-slow-slow-quick-quick. Recognizing the code to be the rhythm of “Schlesierlied”, Mock opened the door to Smolorz, who no longer reeked of alcohol but instead gave off a scent of soap. To all intents and purposes he was sober.

“Have you been eating soap?” Mock said as he dressed, not in the least embarrassed by Smolorz’s presence. Erika wrapped herself in her dress.

“Water and suds,” said Smolorz. “To spew it all up and get sober.”

Mock donned his hat and left the apartment. He paused on the stairs. As the stench from the blocked toilet reached him, he was overcome with nausea and took the stairs two at a time. When he got to the gate he stopped and took a few very deep breaths. The nausea left him, but his mouth was still filled with saliva. He was only too familiar with these feelings of self-disgust. He heard his own voice: “Are you trying to annoy me, you crafty whore?”, and was struck again by Erika’s fearful gaze – the gaze of a child who does not understand why it will soon be beaten, of a red-headed little girl who likes to snuggle her face into a happy boxer’s fur. He heard her reply: “God forbid!” He slapped his forehead and ran back upstairs. He tapped the rhythm of “Schlesierlied” on the door. Smolorz opened it. He had been sitting on a chair in the hallway. The stench of wet rags wafted from the kitchen and he could hear the buzzing of blowflies.

“Get the caretaker, Smolorz.” Mock screwed up his nose and handed his subordinate a wad of notes. “Pay him to clean the kitchen. And tell him to bring the girl some fresh sheets. Well, go on, what are you waiting for?”

Smolorz left. The door to the main room was closed. Mock opened it and found Erika sitting on the bed in her summer coat, shivering with cold.

“Why did you say ‘God forbid’?” He went to her and rested his hands on her fragile shoulders.

“I didn’t want to annoy you, sir.”

“Not now, before. When I asked you if your client took care of you or the girl in the wheelchair you shouted ‘God forbid’. Why?”

“It wouldn’t have been so awful if he had taken care of me. But the girl in the wheelchair called him ‘Papa’.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 6TH, 1919
HALF PAST TEN AT NIGHT

“Why do you need my dog for the night?” Dosche the postman looked at Mock in surprise. They were sitting on a bench in the yard at Plesserstrasse, staring at the light shining in the window of the Mocks’ apartment. They could distinctly make out two heads bent over a table: Willibald Mock’s rugged grey mane and Cornelius Rühtgard’s parting, laboriously perfected over the years.

“What are they doing?” Dosche asked, momentarily forgetting Mock’s strange request.

“The same as you do with my father every day,” Mock answered. “Playing chess. But going back to my request …”

“Exactly. What do you need my dog for?”

“See that?” Mock pointed to the sky where a swollen moon hung suspended, its soft light gliding across the dark windows of the building, the privy door and the stoop of the pump. “It’s full, isn’t it?”

“Correct.” Dosche decided to have his last smoke of the day and extracted his tobacco pouch from his pocket.

“I’m going to tell you something.” Mock glanced meaningfully at the man to whom he was speaking. “But it must remain absolutely confidential, understood? It’s to do with the investigation I’m conducting …”

“Ah, the one everybody’s going on about?”

“Shhh …” Mock put a finger to his lips.

“Yes, sir.” Dosche struck his breast and a cloud of smoke escaped through his lips. “I swear I won’t say a word to anybody!”

“The first murder was committed a month ago …”

“I thought it was a week ago …”

“Shhh …” Mock cast his eyes around and, noticing Dosche’s perplexed expression, went on. “Well, the first murder was committed at full moon, like tonight. I’ve got a suspect who hasn’t got an alibi. If he
did
commit the murder, he would have had to keep the corpse in his room for a few days. Please don’t ask why! I can’t tell you, my dear Dosche.” He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke in the direction of the chess players, who were noisily putting away the chess pieces. “The suspect has a dog and says he couldn’t have kept the corpse at his place because the dog’s howling would have alerted the neighbours. Howling, you understand, my dear Dosche? Dogs howl in the presence of a corpse, or so the suspect claims. I’ve got to verify that tonight! Using your dog!”