Death in Breslau

by Marek Krajewski

  “Vermin,” Mock cut in. “Who is it?”

  On a sheet of letter-paper decorated with his family crest, von Köpperlingk wrote a name and address: Isidor Friedländer, Wallstrasse 27.

  “Do you also rear scorpions, Baron?” Mock did not stop watching the scolopendra harmoniously shift the segments of its torso.

  “I used to have several at one time.”

  “Who imported them for you?”

  “This same Friedländer.”

  “Why haven’t you got them any more?”

  “They died of homesickness for the Negev desert.”

  Mock suddenly rubbed his eyes in amazement. He had just noticed a porcelain pissoir secured to the wall with a gleaming metal ice-pick in the shape of a sharpened, narrow pyramid lying in it.

  “Don’t worry, Counsellor. That piece is only an ornament in the spirit of Duchamp; nobody uses it. Nor the ice-pick.” The Baron smoothed the velvet collar of his smoking-jacket.

  Mock sat down heavily on the cushions and, without looking at his host, asked:

  “What made you take up Oriental Studies?”

  “Melancholy, probably …”

  “And what did you do, Baron, between eleven and one o’clock on the night before yesterday, on Friday, May 12th?” The second question was asked in the same tone.

  “Am I a suspect?” Baron von Köpperlingk half-closed his eyes and got up from the cushions.

  “Please answer the question!”

  “Counsellor, be so good as to contact my lawyer, Doctor Lachmann.” The Baron put the python back in its terrarium and stretched two long fingers which held a white visiting card towards Mock. “I’ll answer all your questions in his presence.”

  “I assure you, Baron, I’m going to ask you that question irrespective of whether you’re in the company of Doctor Lachmann or Chancellor von Hindenburg. If you have an alibi, we will save Doctor Lachmann the trouble.”

  The Baron mused for perhaps fifteen seconds: “I do have an alibi. I was at home. My servant, Hans, will confirm it.”

  “Forgive me, please, but that is no alibi. I do not trust your servant, nor any servant for that matter.”

  “And your assistant?”

  Before he realized, the Counsellor automatically wanted to reply “not him either”. He glanced at Forstner’s burning cheeks and shook his head: “I don’t understand. What connection do you have with my assistant?”

  “Oh, we’ve known each other a long time …”

  “Interesting … But today, by some strange coincidence, you have been hiding your acquaintanceship. I even introduced you. Why did you not want to disclose your friendship?”

  “It’s not a friendship. We simply know each other …”

  Mock turned to Forstner and looked at him expectantly. Forstner’s gaze was fixed intently on the carpet pattern.

  “What are you trying to convince me of, Baron?” Mock was triumphant on seeing the embarrassment of both men. “That an ordinary acquaintance allows Forstner to be here with you from eleven to one at night? Ah, no doubt you’re going to tell me that you were ‘playing cards’ or ‘looking at albums’ …”

  “No, Forstner was here, at a reception …”

  “But it must have been a singular reception, eh, Forstner? Why, it looks as if you’re both embarassed by this acquaintance … But maybe something shameful took place at this reception?”

  Mock stopped tormenting Forstner. He now knew what, until then, he had only suspected. He congratulated himself for asking the Baron about an alibi. He had no grounds for doing so at all. Marietta von der Malten and Françoise Debroux had been raped and Baron Wilhelm von Köpperlingk was a declared homosexual.

  Hans with the beautiful eyes was already closing the door behind them when Mock remembered something. Announced a second time by the butler, he met once more the somewhat vexed countenance of the Baron.

  “Do you buy the paintings yourself or do the servants do it for you?”

  “I rely on my chauffeur’s tastes in that respect.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “A well-built, bearded man with a comically receding chin.”

  Mock was clearly satisfied with this answer.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME MAY 14TH, 1933

  NOON

  Forstner did not want a lift to the university archives. He claimed he would willingly walk down the embankment along the Oder. Mock did not try to persuade him and, quietly singing an operatic couplet to himself, drove across Emperor Bridge, past the municipal gym and the park where Heinrich Göppert, the founder of the Botanical Gardens, stood on a plinth, left the Dominican Church on his right and the Main Post Office on his left and drove into beautiful Albrechtstrasse which started at the huge mass of the Hatzfeld Palace. He reached Ring and turned left into Schweidnitzer Strasse. He passed Dresdner Bank, Speier’s shop where he bought his shoes, Woolworth’s office block, into Karlstrasse, glanced out of the corner of his eye at the People’s Theatre, past Düno’s Haberdasheries and into Graupnerstrasse. An almost summer heat hung over the city, so he was not surprised by the sight of a long queue standing in front of a shop selling Italian ice-cream. After a dozen or so yards, he turned into Wallstrasse and drove up to a rather neglected tenement marked number 27. Friedländer’s Pet Shop was closed on Sundays. An inquisitive caretaker soon appeared and explained to Mock that Friedländer’s apartment was next door to the shop.

  The door was opened by a slim, dark-haired girl, Lea Friedländer, it turned out, Isidor’s daughter. She made a great impression on the Counsellor. Without even looking at his identification, she asked him into a modestly furnished apartment.

  “Father will come shortly. Please wait,” she stammered, clearly embarrassed by the way Mock was looking at her. Mock did not have time to avert his eyes from her curvaceous hips and breasts before Isidor Friedländer, a short, stout man, came in. He sat down in the chair opposite Mock, crossed one leg over the other and hit his knee several times with the back of his hand, causing the limb to jerk involuntarily. Mock observed him for a while, then started a series of rapid questions:

  “Surname?”

  “Friedländer.”

  “First name?”

  “Isidor.”

  “Age.”

  “Sixty.”

  “Place of birth?”

  “Goldberg.”

  “Education?”

  “I finished Yeshivo in Lublin.”

  “What languages do you know?”

  “Apart from German and Hebrew, a little Yiddish and a little Polish.”

  “How old is your daughter?”

  Friedländer suddenly interrupted the experiment with his knee and looked at Mock with eyes that had practically no pupils. He panted heavily, rose and, in a bound and flash, leapt at the Counsellor who had not had time to get up. The latter suddenly found himself on the floor, crushed under Friedländer’s weight. He tried to pull the gun from his pocket, but his right hand was immobilized by his opponent’s shoulder. Suddenly the pressure eased – a coarse beard prickled Mock in the neck, Friedländer’s body stiffened and convulsed rhythmically.

  Lea pulled her father off Mock. “Help me. We have got to lay him down on the bed.”

  “Please move away. I’ll put him there myself.”

  The Counsellor felt like a teenager wanting to show off his strength. With the greatest of difficulty, he dragged the ninety kilograms on to the sofa. Lea, in the meantime, had prepared a mixture and was pouring it carefully into her father’s mouth. Friedländer choked, but he swallowed the liquid. After a while, there was a steady, intermittent snoring.

  “I’m twenty,” Lea still avoided Mock’s eyes, “and my father suffers from epilepsy. He forgot to take his medication today. The dose I gave him will enable him to function normally for two days.”

  Mock shook down his clothes.

  “Where is your mother?”

  “She died four years ago.”

  “Do you have any siblings?”
/>
  “No.”

  “Your father suffered the attack after I asked him your age. Is that a coincidence?”

  “Actually I’ve already answered you. I’m everything to my father. If a man shows any interest in me, Father starts to get worried. And if he forgets to take his medication, he suffers an attack.”

  Lea raised her head and, for the first time, looked Mock in the eyes. Despite himself, he began the mating dance: precisely measured moves, lingering looks, deep timbre of voice.

  “I think Father provokes these attacks on purpose.” The girl would not have been able to explain why she confided in this man in particular. (Perhaps it was his ample belly.)

  But the Counsellor misunderstood this small token of trust. Questions were already pressing on his lips – about a possible boyfriend, invitations to lunch or dinner – when he noticed a dark stain spread over Friedländer’s trousers.

  “This often happens during or after an attack.” Lea quickly slipped an oilcloth under her father’s thighs and buttocks. Her beige dress stretched over her hips, her slender calves were a fascinating overture to other parts. Mock glanced once more at the sleeping dealer and remembered why he had come.

  “When will your father be conscious again? I’d like to ask him some questions.”

  “In an hour.”

  “Maybe you can help me. The caretaker told me that you work in your father’s shop. Can one buy a scorpion there?”

  “Father brought in several scorpions some time ago through a Greek company in Berlin.”

  “What does that mean, some time ago?”

  “Three, perhaps four years ago.”

  “Who ordered them?”

  “I don’t remember. We’d have to check the invoices.”

  “Do you remember the name of the company?”

  “No … I know it’s in Berlin.”

  Mock followed her into the counting-room. As Lea was going through hefty, navy-blue files, he posed one more question:

  “Has there been another policeman here apart from me in the last few days?”

  “Caretaker Kempsky did say that there was somebody from the police here yesterday. We weren’t home in the morning. I had taken Father for his check-up at the Jewish Hospital on Menzelstrasse.”

  “What’s the name of your father’s doctor?”

  “Doctor Hermann Weinsberg. Ah, here’s the invoice. Three scorpions were imported for Baron von Köpperlingk in September 1930 by the Berlin company Kekridis and Sons. May I ask you,” – she looked imploringly at Mock – “to come back in an hour? Then Father will be himself again …”

  Mock was understanding to beautiful women. He got up and put on his hat.

  “Thank you, Fräulein Friedländer. I am sorry that we had to meet in such sad circumstances although no circumstances are inappropriate when one meets such a beautiful young lady.”

  Mock’s courtly goodbye did not impress Lea in the least. She sat down heavily on the divan. Minutes passed, the clock ticked loudly. She heard a murmur coming from the next room where her father was lying and went in with a false smile.

  “Oh, you’ve woken up so quickly, Papa. That’s very good. Can I go to Regina Weiss?”

  Isidor Friedländer looked at his daughter anxiously: “Please don’t go … Don’t leave me alone …”

  Lea was thinking about her sick father, about Regina Weiss with whom she was supposed to be going to the “Deli” cinema to see Clark Gable’s new film, about all the men who had undressed her with their eyes, about Doctor Weinsberg who was hopelessly in love with her, and about the squeaking of the guinea pigs in the dark, damp shop.

  Someone hammered loudly on the door. Friedländer, covering the stain on his trousers with the flaps of his gabardine, went into the other room. He was shaking and stumbling. Lea put her arm around him.

  “Don’t be frightened, Father. It must be caretaker Kempsky.”

  Isidor Friedländer looked at her uneasily: “Kempsky is an utter brute, but he never hammers on the door like that.”

  He was right. It was not the caretaker.

  BRESLAU, MONDAY, MAY 15TH, 1933

  NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

  Eberhard Mock was as angry on Monday morning as he was on Saturday. He cursed his foolishness and weakness for sensuous Jewish women. If he had acted by the book, he would have called someone from the Police Praesidium, brought Friedländer in to Neue Graupnerstrasse on remand and questioned him there. But he had not. He had politely agreed to Lea Friedländer’s request for an hour’s delay and instead of behaving like a proper policeman, had browsed through the newspapers in the Green Pole Inn on Reuschenstrasse 64 for an hour, drank beer and ate the speciality of the house – army bread with spicy, hashed meat. When he had returned an hour later, he had found the door prised open, a terrible mess and no sign of the tenants. The caretaker was nowhere to be seen.

  Mock lit what was his twelfth cigarette of the day. He read, yet again, the results of the autopsy and Koblischke’s report. He learned no more than he had witnessed with his own eyes. He cursed his absent-mindedness. He had overlooked the old Criminal Sergeant’s important information: underwear belonging to the Baron’s daughter had been missing from the scene of the crime. Mock sprang to his feet and burst into the detectives’ room. Only Smolorz was there.

  “Kurt!” he shouted. “Please check the alibis of all known fetishists.”

  The telephone rang: “Good morning,” Piontek’s stentorian voice resounded. “I’d like to repay your hospitality and invite you to lunch at Fischer’s bar. At two. I’ve some new, interesting information on the Marietta von der Malten case.”

  “Fine.” Mock replaced the receiver, adding no word of courtesy.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME MAY 15TH, 1933

  TWO O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

  Fischer’s was crowded – as it usually was at lunchtime. The clientele was chiefly made up of policemen and uniformed Nazis who took pleasure in frequenting their idol Heines’ favourite restaurant. Piontek sat sprawled at a table in the small room. The sun, its rays refracted in the aquarium under the window, caressed his bald skull with reflections of light. Between fingers as chubby as sausages rested a smoking cigarette. He was watching a miniature tuna in the aquarium and making strange noises while moving his lips exactly like the fish. Having a splendid time, he tapped on the aquarium glass.

  At the sight of Mock, who had arrived five minutes earlier, he was disconcerted. He pulled himself together, rose and greeted Mock effusively. The Counsellor manifested less joy at the encounter. Piontek opened a silver cigarette case with the engraving: “To a dear Husband and Daddy on his fiftieth birthday from his wife and daughters.” The musical box played, the cigarettes in blue paper gave off a sweet scent. An elderly waiter took their order and removed himself without a sound.

  “I shan’t conceal, Counsellor,” Piontek broke the tense silence, “that all of us at the Gestapo were happy that somebody like yourself would like to work with us. Nobody knows more about the more or the less important personalities of this city than Eberhard Mock. No secret archive can be the equal of that which you have in your head.”

  “Ah, you overestimate me, Hauptsturmführer …” Mock cut him off. The waiter put down the plates of eel in dill sauce, sprinkled with glazed onions.

  “I’m not suggesting you go over to the Gestapo.” Piontek was not put off by Mock’s indifference. “What I know about you makes me think that you would not accept such a proposal.” (But of course – and who could have told this tub of lard any such thing? Forstner, you mongrel, I’m going to destroy you.) “But, on the other hand, you’re a reasonable man. Look wisely into the future and remember: the future’s going to belong to me and my people!”

  Mock ate with great appetite. He wrapped the last piece of fish around his fork, submerged it in the sauce and devoured it. For several seconds, he did not take the tankard of spiced Schweidnitz beer from his lips. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and contemplated the min
iature tuna.

  “I believe you had something to tell me about the murder of Marietta von der Malten …”

  Piontek was a man who never lost his self-control. He took a flat, tin box from the pocket of his jacket, opened it and offered it to Mock to whom a strange suspicion occurred: did accepting a cigar amount to accepting the proposal that he go over to the Gestapo? He pulled back his hand. Piontek’s hand shook a little.

  “Go on, Counsellor, have a smoke. They’re really good. One mark cigars.”

  Mock inhaled so deeply that he felt a stabbing pain in his lungs.

  “You don’t want to talk about the Gestapo. So, let’s talk about the C.I.D.,” Piontek said jovially. “Did you know that Mühlhaus has decided to take early retirement? In a month at the latest. That’s what he decided today. He told Obergruppenführer Heines, who agreed. So at the end of June there’s going to be a vacancy for the post of Chief of the Criminal Department. I’ve heard that Heines has had some candidate from Berlin suggested to him by Nebe. Artur Nebe is an excellent policeman, but what does he know about Breslau … Personally I think that a better candidate would be someone who knows conditions in Breslau … You, for example.”

  “Your opinion is, no doubt, the best reference for the Prussian Minister of Internal Affairs, Göring, and the Chief of Prussian Police, Nebe.” Mock tried, at all costs, to disguise with biting irony the reverie induced by the man from the Gestapo.

  “Counsellor,” Piontek surrounded himself with cigar smoke. “The two men you mentioned do not have time to waste on provincial personnel pushovers. They can simply approve the personal recommendation of the Supreme President of Silesia, Brückner. Brückner will put forward whomsoever Heines supports. And Heines communicates in all matters of personnel with my chief. Have I made myself clear?”

  Mock had a great deal of experience in conversations with people such as Piontek. Nervously, he unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and wiped his forehead with a chequered handkerchief: “That lunch has somehow made me hot. Maybe we could take a walk along the promenade by the moat …”