Death in Breslau

by Marek Krajewski

  Does such a variety of interpretations disqualify Isidor F.’s prophecies? Not in the least. The complex and gloomy forecasts of my patient divest the person of any possible defence. It is impossible to imagine a more spiteful and cruel fatalism – because here we would be publishing a list of eighty-three people of whom thirteen are yet to die tragically. And thirteen do, indeed, die – or maybe twelve, or maybe ten! But suddenly, after some time, we go through the death certificates and find a few deceased who were not on the list but to whom Isidor F.’s prophecies did apply. A person mentioned in his prophecies falls prey to harpies of the dark forces, is a helpless puppet whose proud declarations of independence are shattered by the stern sound of Hebrew consonants, and whose missa defunctorum† is only the derisive laughter of a self-satisfied demiurge.

  After this pathetic note followed dreary and learned proofs comparing Friedländer to clairvoyants and various mediums who prophesy in a trance. Anwaldt read Weinsberg’s article to the end with far less attention and started studying the eighty-three interpretations which, held together by brass paperclips, formed a clearly noticeable wad among the other materials and notes. He soon became bored with it. For dessert, he left himself the audio prophecies, sensing that they had something to do with the death of the Baron’s daughter. He set up the gramophone and surrendered himself to listening to the mysterious messages. What he was doing was irrational for, at secondary school, Anwaldt notoriously used to miss extra-curricular lessons in Biblical language and might now as well be listening to an audition in Quechuan with as much understanding. But the hoarse sounds induced in him the same state of morbid unease and fascination as had overcome him when he had first seen the flowing letters of Greek. Friedländer emitted sounds similar to choking. The sounds once purred, once hissed, once a wave forced from the lungs practically ripped the tense larynx. After twenty minutes of this relentless refrain, the sounds broke off.

  Anwaldt was thirsty. For a while, he drove away the thought of a frothy tankard of beer. He got up, put all the materials – except the gramophone record – into the cardboard box, and went to the old store of office supplies which, now equipped with a desk and telephone, served the Official for Special Affairs as an office. He telephoned Doctor Georg Maass and arranged a meeting with him. Then he made his way to Mock’s office with the list of gramophone names and his impressions. On the way, he passed Forstner, who had just left his superior. Anwaldt was surprised to see him there on a Sunday. He had a mind to joke about the heavy police work, but Forstner passed him without a word and ran briskly down the stairs. (That’s how someone looks who Mock has caught in a vice.) He was wrong. Forstner had been held in a vice all along. Mock only tightened it from time to time. That is what he had done a moment ago.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME JULY 8TH, 1934

  HALF-PAST TWO IN THE AFTERNOON

  Standartenführer S.S. Erich Kraus kept professional and private matters neatly apart. He dedicated far fewer hours to the latter, of course, but it was time strictly measured out – Sunday, for example, was held to be a day of rest. Following his post-prandial siesta, it was his habit to talk to his four sons between four and five o’clock. The boys would sit at a huge round table and relate to their father the progress they were making in their work, the ideological activities of the Hitlerjugend and the resolutions which they had regularly to make in the Führer’s name. Kraus would pace up and down the room, comment good-naturedly on what he heard, and pretend not to notice the surreptitious glances at their watches and the suppressed yawns.

  But he was not permitted the freedom to spend his first Sunday in Breslau in a purely private capacity. The taste of his lunch was spoiled by the sour thought of General-Major Rainer von Hardenburg, the chief of Breslau’s Anwehr. He loathed this stiff, monocled aristocrat with all his might – he, the son of a bricklayer and alcoholic. Kraus swallowed a delicious schnitzel with onions and felt his gastric juices rise. Furious, he got up from the table, threw his napkin down in a rage, walked through to his study and, for the umpteenth time that day, phoned Forstner. Instead of exhaustive information about Anwaldt, he heard half a minute of a long, intermittent ringing tone. (Where has that son-of-a-bitch gone?) He dialled Mock’s number, but when the Director of Police picked up the telephone, Kraus threw down the receiver. (I won’t learn any more from that obsequious prat than he’s already told me.) The helplessness he experienced in the face of von Hardenburg, whom he had already known in Berlin, was somehow comprehensible to Kraus: in the face of Mock, it was almost contemptible – which is why it so wounded his amour propre.

  He paced around the table like a rabid beast. Suddenly, he stood still and hit his forehead with an open palm. (This heat, damn it, is killing me. I can’t think any more.) He sat down comfortably in his armchair next to his telephone. First Hans Hoffmann, then Mock. In a dry tone, he gave both one and the other a number of instructions. The tone of his voice shifted towards the end of his conversation with Mock, from the cold tone of a superior, to the yelling of a madman.

  Mock had decided that he would leave for Zoppot that evening. He had made that decision after his visit to Winkler. Kraus’ phone call tore him from his afternoon nap. The man from the Gestapo quietly reminded Mock of his dependence on the secret police and demanded a written report on Anwaldt’s work for the Abwehr. Mock calmly refused. He said that he was due some rest and was leaving for Zoppot that evening.

  “And what about your girlfriend?”

  “Oh, those girlfriends … Here one minute, gone the next. You know what they’re like …”

  “I do not know what they’re like!”

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME JULY 8TH, 1934

  THREE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

  Hans Hoffmann had been a secret agent for the police since time immemorial. He had served the Emperor, the Republic police, and now the Gestapo. He put his considerable professional success down to his warm-hearted appearance: a slender figure, small moustache, carefully combed, thin hair, honey-coloured, kind, laughing eyes. Who would have thought that this sympathetic, elderly gentleman was one of the most valued of secret agents?

  Anwaldt and Maass, who paid no attention to the neat old man sitting on the neighbouring bench, certainly did not suspect. Maass in particular was unconcerned about the presence of other strollers and pontificated loudly, somewhat irritating Anwaldt not only by his squeaky voice but, above all, by the drastic contents of his confessions which were mostly focussed on a woman’s body and the rapture it entailed.

  “Just look, Herbert – indeed, I may call you that, may I not?” Maass went so far as to smack his lips when he saw a young and shapely blonde strolling with an older woman. “How wonderfully that thin dress clings to the girl’s thighs. She’s probably not wearing a petticoat …”

  Anwaldt started to be amused by this satyr’s airs. He took Maass by the arm and they began to walk along Liebichshöhe. Above them rose a tower, crowned with a statue of the winged Roman goddess of victory. Spurting fountains refreshed the air to a certain extent. The crowd milled around on the pseudo-baroque terraces. The little old man ambled just behind them, smoking a cigarette in an amber cigarette holder.

  “My dear man,” Anwaldt, too, allowed himself a degree of familiarity. “Is it true that women become pushy in summer?”

  “How do you know?”

  “From Hezjod. I’d like to verify a twenty-seven-century-old belief with a specialist. The poet claims that in summer they are mahlotatai de gynaikes, aphaurotatoi de toi andres.” Anwaldt quoted in Greek an extract from Hezjod’s The Works and Days.†

  Maass paid no attention to Anwaldt’s sarcastic tone. He was interested in knowing where the Police Assistant had learned his Greek.

  “My secondary school teacher of Classical languages was good, that’s all,” Anwaldt said.

  After this brief entre’acte, Maass returned to the main topic of his interest.

  “Secondary school, you say … Did you know, my dear Herbert, that the sch
oolgirls of today are pretty well acquainted with the facts of life? I spent a blissful afternoon with one in Königsberg recently. Have you read the Kama Sutra? Have you heard anything about swallowing the mango fruit? Imagine that this seemingly innocent girl was able to force my steed into obedience when it was just on the point of tearing out of control. I didn’t give her private tuition in Sanskrit for nothing …”

  This mention of a lascivious schoolgirl irritated Anwaldt a great deal. He removed his jacket and unbuttoned his collar. He thought intensively about frothy tankards of beer; about the slight buzz after the first, the dizziness after the second, the tremor of the tongue after the third, the clarity of mind after the fourth, the euphoria after the fifth … He looked at the small man with curly, dark hair and a sparse beard and interrupted his pontification none too politely:

  “Doctor Maass, please listen to this record. They’ll lend you a gramophone from the police laboratory. Should you have any problems with the translation, please contact me. Professor Andreae and one Hermann Winkler are at your disposition. The texts have probably been recorded in the Hebrew language.”

  “I don’t know if it’s of any interest to you,” Maass, offended, looked at Anwaldt, “but the third edition of Hebrew grammar – of which I am author – has just been published. I manage quite well in this language and have no need of impostors such as Andreae. Winkler, on the other hand, I do not know and do not wish to know.”

  He turned away abruptly and hid the record under his jacket: “I bid you goodbye. Please come to me tomorrow for the translation of these texts. I think I should manage it,” he added in a wounded tone.

  Anwaldt did not pay any attention to Maass’ acerbity. He was feverishly trying to remember something the latter had said and which he had been wanting to ask for several minutes now. Nervously, he chased away the visions of frothy tankards and tried not to hear the shouts of children running about on the pathways. The leaves of the splendid plane trees formed a dome beneath which clung a suspension of dust, thick from the heat. Anwaldt felt a stream of sweat run down between his shoulder blades. He glanced at Maass, who was plainly waiting for an apology, and croaked through his dry throat:

  “Doctor Maass, why did you call Professor Andreae an impostor?”

  Maass had obviously forgotten about the offence because he became markedly revitalized:

  “Would you believe that this moron discovered several new Coptic inscriptions? He worked them out, and then – on the basis of them – modified Coptic grammar. This would have been a wonderful discovery if it wasn’t for the fact that these ‘discoveries’ had been laboriously composed by himself. He had simply needed a subject for his post-doctoral thesis. I disclosed this fraud in the Semitische Forschungen. Do you know what arguments I put forward?”

  “I’m sorry, Maass, but I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’ll willingly get acquainted with this fascinating puzzle when I have a free moment. Anyway, I take it that you and Andreae are not friends. Am I right?”

  Maass did not hear the question. He had dug his insatiable gaze into the generous curves of a girl walking past in school uniform. It did not go unnoticed by the elderly man who was blowing the cigarette butt out of his amber cigarette holder.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME JULY 8TH, 1934

  HALF-PAST THREE IN THE AFTERNOON

  Forstner drank what was his third schnapps within a quarter of an hour and ate a hot frankfurter topped with a white hat of horseradish. The large dose of alcohol calmed him. He sat, gloomily, in a discreet alcove separated from the rest of the room by a maroon curtain, and tried, with the help of strong drink, to loosen the vice which Mock had tightened over his head an hour ago. It was all the more difficult in that the pincers of the vice were manipulated by two mighty and despised powers: Eberhard Mock and Erich Kraus. On leaving his apartment on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse, he had heard the persistent ringing of the telephone. He knew it was Kraus calling for information about Anwaldt’s mission. Standing on the scorching pavement at the 2 and 17 tram stop, he brooded over his own helplessness, Mock, Kraus and, above all, Baron von Köpperlingk. He cursed the wild orgies in the Baron’s palace and gardens at Kanth, during which naked teenage nymphs and curly-haired cupids invited guests to drink ambrosia, and the pool swarmed with naked dancers, male and female. Forstner had felt safe under the wing of the omnipotent Piontek, all the more so as his chief had still remained ignorant as to the private life and contacts of his assistant. He had not been worried about Mock, although he knew from Piontek that, after Baron von Köpperlingk’s unfortunate remark, the Counsellor had been acquiring ever more information about him. He had been lulled and entirely anaesthetised by his spectacular promotion to the position of Deputy Chief of the Criminal Department. When, during “the night of the long knives”, Heines, Piontek and all the top people of Breslau’s S.A. fell, Forstner – previously an employee of the Criminal Department – had been spared; but he had lost the ground under his feet. He had become entirely dependent on Mock. One word whispered into Kraus’ ear about Forstner’s contacts would plunge him into inexistence, following in the footsteps of his protectors. As a homosexual, he could be certain of the double cruelty of Kraus. His very first day in office, the new Chief of Gestapo had announced that “if he were to find a queer within his department, he would end up like Heines”. Even if he did not make good his threat when confronted with Forstner, who was, after all, a policeman from a different department, he would most assuredly withdraw his support. And then Mock would devour him with wild relish.

  Forstner tried to calm his nerves with a fourth, significantly smaller, schnapps. He put a splodge of horseradish and fat left by the frankfurter on a roll, swallowed it and grimaced. He had realized that it was Mock, not Kraus, who was squeezing the vice with doubled force. He had decided to suspend his co-operation with the Gestapo for the length of Anwaldt’s secret investigation. His silence vis-à-vis Kraus could be justified by the exceptional secrecy of the investigation. If, however, he were to incur Mock’s displeasure by refusing to co-operate, disaster was unavoidable.

  Separating the truth from probability in this way, Forstner heaved a sigh of some relief. He wrote Mock’s informal instructions into his notebook: “to draw up a detailed dossier on Baron Olivier von der Malten’s servants.” Then he raised his frosted glass high and drank it down in one go.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME JULY 8TH, 1934

  QUARTER TO FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON

  Anwaldt sat on tram 18 contemplating with great interest the unusual cabled bridge he was just crossing. The tram rumbled over the bridge; red-brick buildings and a church wrapped in old chestnut trees flitted by on the right, solid tenements on the left. The tram stopped in a very busy square. Anwaldt counted the stops. He was to alight at the next one. The tram moved away and quickly gathered speed. Anwaldt prayed for it to go even faster. The reason for his supplications was an enormous wasp which had begun its mad dance around the Assistant’s head. At first, he had tried at all costs to keep calm, and moved his head as little as possible, once to the right, once to the left. These moves greatly intrigued the insect, which had taken a clear liking to Anwaldt’s nose. (I remember: the sticky jar of cherry juice in the delicatessen store in Berlin, angry wasps stinging little Herbert, the shopkeeper’s laughter, the reek of onion peelings applied to the stings.) He lost control and flapped his arms. He felt he had struck the wasp. With a slight flick, it fell to the tram floor. He was about to squash it with his shoe when the tram suddenly braked and the policeman tumbled on to a corpulent lady. The wasp started up with a buzz and sat on Anwaldt’s hand, who, instead of a sting, felt the hard blow of a newspaper, then heard a distinctive crunch. He looked with gratitude at his saviour – a not very tall, old man of endearing appearance, who had just stamped on the assailant. Anwaldt thanked him politely (Where do I know this old man from?) and got off at the tram stop. Following Mock’s instructions, he crossed to the other side and made his way between some official buildings. On one of t
hem, he read the sign: UNIVERSITY CLINIC. He turned left. The buildings were burning in the heat, the cellars stank of rat poison. He reached the river, leaned against the barrier and removed his jacket. He was disorientated – he had obviously made a mistake – and waited for someone who could show him the way to Hansastrasse. A fat servant, lugging an enormous bucket full of ashes, approached the barrier. Slowly, unworried by the presence of a witness, she started to spill them on to the grassy embankment. Suddenly, a gust of wind picked up – the harbinger of a storm. The grey dust of ashes swirled around the bucket and blew right into the face and on to the neck and shoulders of the furious Anwaldt. The policeman showered the contrite wench with a volley of vulgar abuse and went off to look for a tap with clean water. He did not find one, however, and confined himself to blowing the ashes off his shirt and wiping them from his face with a handkerchief.

  The adventure with the wasp and with the ashes, his unfamiliarity with Breslau all made Anwaldt late for his meeting with Lea Friedländer. When finally he got to Hansastrasse and found the Fatamorgana Studio of Photography and Film, it was four-fifteen. Pink curtains were drawn across the window front, a brass sign ENTRANCE FROM THE YARD was nailed to the door. Anwaldt obeyed the instruction. He knocked for a long time; it was several minutes before the door was opened by a red-haired servant. In a strong foreign accent, she informed him that “Fräulein Susanne” did not admit clients who arrived late. Anwaldt was too irritated to try subtle persuasion. Without ceremony, he moved the girl aside and sat in the not very large waiting room.

  “Please tell Fräulein Friedländer that I’m a special client.” He calmly lit a cigarette. The servant left, clearly amused. Anwaldt opened all the doors except for the one behind which the girl had disappeared. The first led to a bathroom lined with pale blue tiles. His attention was drawn to a bath of unparalleled size which stood on a high pedestal, and a bidet. Having looked at the unusual sanitary equipment, Anwaldt entered the large front room where the film studio “Fatamorgana” was located. The centre was taken up by an enormous divan strewn with gold and crimson cushions. Spotlights and several wicker paravents, hung with elegant, lace underwear, were arranged all around. There could not be the slightest doubt as to the nature of the films shot here. He heard a rustling, turned and saw a tall, dark-haired girl standing in the door, wearing nothing but stockings and a see-through peignoir. She rested her hands on her hips, parting her garment. In this way, Anwaldt became acquainted with most of the beautiful secrets of her body.