Phantoms of Breslau iem-3

by Marek Krajewski

  “And what would the esteemed gentleman like?” the baker asked in a strong Pomeranian accent.

  “Two doughnuts, please. What’s the filling?”

  “Wild rose jam.”

  “Fine. Two please.”

  The baker took his money, handed him a paper cone of doughnuts and went back to his conversation with the sailors.

  “Listen, Zach,” Mock heard one of them say as he was on his way out. “Who was that?”

  In response he tinkled the bell above the door and glanced at Erika, who seemed bored. With the tip of her shoe she was drawing some figures in heaps of sand scattered across the uneven pavement. Mock handed her the cone and absentmindedly erased the mysterious annotations with his shoe.

  “Noli turbare circulos meos,”† Erika said, pretending to take a swing at him; instead she stroked his clean-shaven cheek. At that moment he recognized the source of his anger.

  “What am I supposed to say,” he thought as he walked beside her in silence. “I’m supposed to ask her where she knows that sentence from, and whether she went to secondary school, but every idiot knows it, after all. It doesn’t prove she’s educated or well read. ‘I’m a hetaera,’ she said to me when I asked about her profession; she uses the concept of a ‘metaphor’ correctly and quotes Cicero. Who is this whore, this crafty little whore? Maybe she wants me to start asking her about her past, her parents and her siblings; maybe she wants me to feel sorry for her and hug her. And she’s putting me to the test. Delicately and subtly. First she ruts like a she-cat in heat, then she quotes sentences in Latin which must be rattling around somewhere in that head of hers, which must be as good as empty with all this debauchery. ‘I partake in debauchery,’ she said. I wonder if she did the same way as that cripple — with three at a time.”

  They walked on. Erika ate the second doughnut with relish. As they passed a large square house with huge green doors carrying a sign which read SOCIETY FOR THE AID OF THE SHIPWRECKED, Erika crushed the empty cone and asked casually:

  “I wonder if there’s a society for the aid of the life-wrecked?”

  Crafty whore. She wants me to feel sorry for her; she wants me to see her as a child snuggling into the fur of a fawning boxer.

  Mock stopped outside the smokehouse and said something he later long regretted.

  “Listen to me, Erika” — he controlled the tone of his voice but not what he said — “you’re not a whore with a heart of gold. There’s no such thing. You’re simply a whore. And that’s all. Don’t confide in me; don’t tell me about your miserable childhood; don’t tell me about your monster of a step-father and your mother whom he raped. Don’t tell me about your sister who gave herself an abortion at the age of fifteen. Don’t try and squeeze any tears out of me. Do what you’re best at, and don’t say anything.”

  “Alright, I’ll watch myself,” she said with no suggestion of tears. “Are we going to that smokehouse or not?”

  She walked past Mock and made her way towards a temporary counter on which a fishmonger in a rubber apron and sailor’s hat had arranged lightly smoked eels. He watched her slim back, which was shaking. He ran to her, turned her round and made to kiss away her tears. He did not do so, however, as Erika was not crying, she was shaking with laughter.

  “My childhood was normal and nobody raped me,” she spluttered. “And talking of life’s wrecks, I wasn’t thinking about myself at all, but about a certain man …”

  “A man who goes by the name of Kurt, no doubt? Go on, say it!” Mock was shouting, heedless of the fishmonger’s knowing eyes which said “that’s what young wives are like”. “That’s why you like the name Kurt so much, eh? You told me that the day before yesterday! Kurty, eh? Who was Kurty? Go on, tell me, damn it!”

  “No.” Erika became serious. “The man’s name is Eberhard.”

  8. IX.1919

  It was remarkable, the occultists’ conference organized by Professor Schmikale, the representative of the Thule order in Breslau. The whole world and their father were invited! Ludwig Klages himself, Lanz von Liebenfels and even Walter Friedrich Otto! They did not, however, trouble themselves to come to this out-of-the-way Silesian province. Instead, the first of these sent his assistant, some lisping lad who gave a completely incomprehensible lecture on the cult of the Pelasgians’ Great Mother goddess. Furthermore he kept on suggesting that Klages’ master, Friedrich Nietzsche, was in constant spiritual contact with the Magna Mater. It was she who allegedly gave him the idea to call Jahwe and Jesus “usurpers of divinity”. At the same time he mercilessly criticized the young Englishman Robert Graves, who in a lecture had dared to claim that it was he who had come up with this term for the Jewish gods. It’s ridiculous! A paper on who was the first to think up some trivial formulation!

  From the order of the new Templars it was not von Liebenfels who came, but a Doctor Fritzjorg Neumann, who foretold the return of Wotan. His lecture was rewarded with applause, not because of his searing antiSemitic and anti-Christian attacks, but for the lecture’s constant reiteration of the support of Erich von Ludendorff — chief quartermaster of the Emperor’s Armies — for the concept of Wotan’s Second Coming.

  It is not surprising that after Neumann’s utterances the next lecturer, an intelligent, young Jewish woman, Dora Lorkin, was met with iciness and contempt. Oh, you profane people! Oh, you idiots with “von” before your names! Oh, you quarrelling chieftains who see nothing beyond your own dull tribes! You’re unable to appreciate true wisdom! Because through this young woman spoke Athena! Dora Lorkin was the represen tative of W.F. Otto’s polytheistic spiritualism. It transpired from the insightful theories of the Master she was representing that the human soul is a playing field for the ceaseless action of the Greek gods, who are the only true beings, while all other gods are mere myth. I will pass over her ontological reasoning. It is not vital. What made the greatest impression on me was the not new — as, after the lecture, some people accused it of being — but very apt notion of the Erinyes as the workings of a bad conscience.

  Several sentences on the subject led me to ponder deeply, and allowed me to modify the piece on which I was working. Because as yet our bitter enemy has not admitted to his guilt, has not confessed his mistake. First I set free the spiritual energy of four young men. This energy was to guide him to a rightful way of thinking. The gouged eyes and the quotation from the Bible were supposed to make things evident to him. Our enemy, in his stubbornness, has not admitted to anything. In his house, some former butcher’s shop, I forced the evil spirit of an old libertine to return and torment the inhabitants. Still no confession of any guilt. Finally, for our cause, I offered up a harlot covered in scales. Admittedly I did not tear out her eyes. He is bound to know by now what we want of him! It should not take the rheumy eyes of an adulteress to make him realize! But he persists in his silence.

  Only now, after Dora Lorkin’s lecture, have I understood that I must bring down true evil — the Erinyes — upon him. Then his torments will reach their zenith and he will admit to everything. At home I had a look at my shelf of books by writers of antiquity and took down Aeschylus’ tragedies. After reading for several hours I understood. I will bring down the Erinyes upon our enemy, and sacrifice his father as an offering to him. The Erinyes persecuted Orestes because he killed his mother. Aeschylus writes that they did not listen to Orestes’ reasonings or his pleas for mercy. Only one thing was important to them: to punish him and avenge his mother’s blood. At that point I had doubts. Our bitter enemy would not, after all, be guilty of patricide because I would be the one offering his father in sacrifice. Will then the Erinyes come down upon him? After all it is he who, de facto, has exposed his father to death by abandoning him and going off with a harlot. He has abandoned his father to his fate because now his father has to face the demons I have set loose in their house. When his father is left entirely alone and learns from me that his son has gone away to have it off with some courtesan, he will be jealous. He will be jealous of the
whore, the basest scum in the bourgeois hierarchy.

  When this thought came to mind, I remembered that I had once read about one of the Erinyes, probably Megaera or Tisiphone, being the personification of wild jealousy. I now knew what to do. The worst I can do is fail. True wisdom is not the garbled analysis of some baroque mystic! True wisdom is not to be found in Daniel von Czepko or Angelus Silesius! True wisdom is achieved only through experience. And it is precisely my next experiment which will show whether Aristotle was right when he wrote: “The soul in a way is all that exists.” We will see whether, as Otto claims, the Erinyes really do exist.

  RUGENWALDERMUNDE, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16TH, 1919

  FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

  Erika and Mock passed the lighthouse and turned right towards the eastern beach. Erika rested her head on Mock’s shoulder and turned away for a moment to let her eyes glide indifferently over the houses on the other side of the canal. Mock followed her gaze. Although his interest in maritime architecture was equal to his interest in the question of civilizing Slavs and Kasubians, frequently blared out in newspaper headlines, he nevertheless unexpectedly took in a large number of technical details: on the whole the houses were built with timber-and-stone walls and generally covered with tarred roofing sheets, which somewhat surprised Mock, accustomed as he was to the Silesian craft of roof slating. Once in a tavern, where Bornholm salmon sizzled on a spit, he had asked about this maritime roofing and had been told by an old sailor how incredibly strong the sea wind could be, and that flying slates would smash against the walls of the houses or on the heads of passers-by.

  “Do you remember, Erika, that old sailor who told us about how roofing is done in Pomerania?” He felt her nod on his shoulder. “When you left to go out for a walk he told me about another effect of the sea wind …”

  “What effect?” Erika took her head off his shoulder and looked at him with interest.

  “When the wind howls for a long time it drives people insane. Makes them commit suicide.”

  “Then it’s a good thing it’s not howling now,” she said gravely and huddled against him.

  The eye of the lighthouse lit up behind them. Its built-in horn monotonously announced a fog which was to descend on the port after the hot autumnal day. Seagulls screeched in warning.

  At a seafront cafe they turned down to the beach. Erika was full of energy. She ran across the sand below the cafe terrace and raced towards the ladies’ changing room. For a moment Mock lost sight of her. Carrying a wicker basket filled with bread, wine, fried marinated herring and half a roast chicken, he could barely keep up with her. He panted and gasped, his lungs damaged by nicotine.

  Finally he staggered onto the eastern beach. A few strollers were building up an appetite for supper with a brisk walk. Some daredevil in a tight tricot bathing suit was cutting through the gentle waves with his solid knots of muscle. On the footbridge leading to the splendid ladies’ changing room, supported by several metre-long wooden stumps sunk into the beach, Erika stood talking to a young woman. Mock wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and looked carefully at the girl. He recognized her. It was the prostitute who was staying at the Spa House Hotel where, as Mock had already managed to discover, a four-woman team of Corinthian professionals was at work.

  “She’s met her match,” he thought, and walked on westwards, ignoring Erika who bade her friend-by-trade goodbye and ran gaily after him. They sat down on a dune. Erika turned her face to the salty sea breeze; Mock turned his mind to an all-consuming fury: “She’s met her match — surely I’m mad to associate with this whore.” Erika paid no heed to the man lying next to her with his hands behind his head, watching the girl step off the footbridge which connected the changing room to the beach. When she found herself past the broken teeth of the groyne, the girl lifted her dress a little and progressed more slowly, digging holes in the sand with her crooked heels. Mock’s fury began to abate. “She wanders around like that all day — I’ve never seen her with a client. A darned dress, twisted heels, a parasol with prongs sticking out, eyes of a heifer, bleary and vacuous. A cheap whore.” All of a sudden he felt sorry for her, twisting her ankles on cobblestones in an empty seaside spa, pursued by the screeching of angry seagulls. He turned to look at Erika. He wanted to put his arms around her in gratitude that she was no cheap, downtrodden whore, grinding down the pavements. He controlled the urge, however, and looked at the long fingers which held on to what once had been his strong biceps.

  “Do you know, I come from a seaside village just like this,” Erika said, her eyes closed. “When I was a girl …” She baulked and glanced anxiously at Mock, anticipating an acerbic reaction.

  “See to the supper, Erika,” he muttered and closed his eyes. He pictured her laying out the blanket on the white sand and, struggling against the slight wind, spreading over it the clean tablecloth with its embroidered fish. Then she would take the herring, chicken and wine out of the basket. He opened his eyes and saw everything as he had imagined it. He waved a hand invitingly. She snuggled up to him and felt him place a kiss first on one eye, then the other.

  “I can anticipate everything you’re going to do and say,” she heard him murmur. “So, tell me about your seaside village.”

  Erika smiled and freed herself from Mock’s embrace. She grasped a chicken thigh with the tips of her fingers and not without difficulty pulled it away from the rest of the meat. She gave it to Mock. He thanked her and tore off the crisp, golden skin with his teeth, then dug into the juicy fibres covered with a slippery veneer of fat.

  “When I was little, I fell in love with our neighbour.” With the very tips of her fingers Erika lifted a thin slice of herring to her lips. “He was a musician, like my parents. I used to sit on his knee and he’d play Saint-Saens’ The Carnival of the Animals on the piano. Do you know it?”

  “Yes,” Mock muttered and sucked in air as he detached the last strips of meat from the bone.

  “He would play and I’d guess what animal the piece was supposed to be about. Our neighbour had a greying, evenly trimmed and well-groomed beard. I loved him with all my burning, eight-year-old heart … Don’t worry,” she briefly changed the subject, detecting a glimmer of unease in Mock’s eyes. “He didn’t do anything bad to me. He sometimes kissed me on the cheek and I would pick up the smell of good tobacco from his beard … From time to time he played cards with my parents. I’d sit on my father’s knee this time, staring in bewilderment at the figures on the cards and not understanding anything of the game, but wishing with my whole heart that my father would be the loser … I wanted our neigh-bour, Herr Manfred Nagler, to win … I’ve always liked older men …”

  “Glad to hear it.” Mock passed the wine to her and watched as she drank straight from the bottle.

  “I studied at the Music Conservatory in Riga, you know?” She was breathing quickly; the wine had momentarily taken her breath away. “Most of all I liked to play The Carnival of the Animals, even though my professor railed against Saint-Saens. He said it was primitive, illustrative music … He was wrong. All music illustrates something, doesn’t it? Debussy, for instance, illustrates a sea warmed by the sun, Dvorak the vigour and power of America, and Chopin the states of a human soul … Do you want some more chicken?”

  “Yes, please.” He watched her slender fingers, rested his head on his arm and moved closer to her. The sun dappled the sea before his eyes.

  He was torn from his nap by Erika’s voice. She was asking him something insistently.

  “You agree, really?” she whispered delightedly. “Well, go on then! Tell me when you were born! Exactly, including the time!”

  “What do you want to know that for?” Mock rubbed his eyes and glanced at his watch. He had not slept for more than a quarter of an hour.

  “But you nodded, you agreed with everything I said,” Erika said, disappointed. “You were asleep all along — you’ve had it up to here with my babbling …”

  “Al
right, alright …” Mock lit a cigarette. “I can give you the exact time I was born … What’s it to me? The eighteenth of September, 1883. At about midday …”

  “Ah, so it’s your birthday the day after tomorrow. I’ve got to get you a present …” Erika traced the date in the wet sand. “And your place of birth?”

  “Waldenburg, Silesia. Are you trying to work out my horoscope?”

  “No, not me.” She rested her head on his knee. “My sister … she’s an astrologer. But I told you …”

  “Alright, alright …” he muttered.

  “Why are you being so kind to me?” She was not looking him in the eye; she was looking lower. At his nose? Lips? “You haven’t called me a whore for a whole week … You’ve been calling me by my name … You even listen when I tell you about my childhood, even though it bores you… Why?”

  Mock struggled with himself for a while. He pondered his reply, weighing all its consequences.

  “The wind isn’t howling.” He avoided an honest answer. “And there’s no aggression or insanity in me.”

  17. IX.1919

  I could not put my plan into effect because I had to seek approval from the Great Assembly. When I presented him with my plan to awaken the Erinyes a few days ago, the Master wrote to me to say that further sacrificial offerings could prove dangerous. Apart from that, the Master voiced other reservations and summoned the Council. The meeting took place this past night at my house. The Master quite rightly pointed out my inconsistency. It lies in the lack of a precise definition of the notion of the “Erinyes”. According to my plan, the spiritual energy which will escape when the body of our bitter enemy’s father is offered in sacrifice will become an “Erinye”. How can we be certain that this will be the case? the Master asked. How do we know that the “Erinye” is not going to be some part of our bitter enemy’s soul, or some spiritual being independent of our bitter enemy and his father? Some demon we have awakened? And that demon we are not going to be able to control. It is too dangerous. What should we do therefore? There was a discussion. One of our brothers rightly pointed out that the ancients believed in three Erinyes. One of them, Megaera, was the Erinye of jealousy. So, with the help of Augsteiner’s formulae, we could transform the spiritual energy slipping from the body of our enemy’s father into either Megaera or Tisiphone. The second Erinye, Tisiphone, being the “avenger of murder”, while the third, Allecto, is “unremitting in her vengeance”. We have to offer two further sacrifices, three in all — our bitter enemy’s father, and two others whom he loves to be Tisiphone and Allecto. Everybody agreed with this reasoning. When three Erinyes descend on our greatest enemy, he will turn to an occultist. There can be no doubt that we have a hold on every occultist in the city. Then we will bore into his mind and make him aware of his terrible guilt. It will be the final blow. We cannot blatantly spell out to him where this guilt lies — he has to be deeply convinced of it himself. That is why our plan of self-knowledge is the best one possible. There remains the problem of the two other Erinyes — Tisiphone and Allecto. Who can they be? Whom does he love apart from his father? Does he love anyone at all? Because surely he does not love the prostitute with whom he went away — he who knows all the hideous secrets of the prostituted soul? We resolved to examine this carefully in the light of ancient writings, and we will meet in three days to settle everything.