Death in Breslau

by Marek Krajewski

  He walked in absolute darkness, groping his way, frightening a few rats and wrapping his face in rolls of cobweb. He lost all sense of time and was being overcome by sleep when a distant reflection effectively overpowered his drowsiness. He easily identified the light of a street lamp penetrating a dusty window. He opened the window and, after a few unsuccessful attempts, managed to get outside, tearing the skin on his stomach and ribs in the process. He closed the window behind him and looked around. Thick bushes, from behind which came the patter of several people’s feet running here and there, separated him from the pavement and street. He lay supine on the lawn, panting. (I have to wait a few hours.) He looked around and found the ideal hiding-place. The balcony of the first-floor apartment was overgrown with wild vine hanging to the ground. Anwaldt crawled in and felt consciousness slip away.

  The dampness of the earth and the surrounding silence woke him. Taking cover between the trees and benches of the promenade along the Oder, he crept to the car parked outside the Engineering College. He could scarcely drive. He was sore and lacerated. Climbing up to his floor, he clung to the banister. He did not turn on the light in his kitchen so as not to see the cockroaches. He drank a glass of water in one draught, threw his torn trousers down in the hall, opened the window in his room and collapsed on to the tangled sheets.

  BRESLAU, TUESDAY, JULY 10TH, 1934

  NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

  On waking, Anwaldt could not lift his ear from the pillow. The congealed blood formed a strong adhesive. He sat up in bed with difficulty. His hair, plastered with blood, bristled stiffly on the crown of his head. His entire torso was grazed and covered with bruises. His heel ached; his swollen ankle was turning purple. Hopping on one leg, he made his way to the telephone and called Baron von der Malten.

  A quarter of an hour later, the Baron’s personal physician, Doctor Lanzmann, arrived at Anwaldt’s apartment. After a further quarter of an hour, they were at von der Malten’s residence. After four hours, the patient, Anwaldt – having slept well, his head and torn ear dressed, his sprained ankle immobilized in bamboo splints, and yellow stains all over his body – was smoking a long, choice Ahnuri Shu Przedecki cigar and relating the previous night’s events to his employer. When the Baron – having heard him through – went out to his study, Anwaldt phoned the Police Praesidium and asked Kurt Smolorz to prepare all the material on Baron von Köpperlingk for six that evening. Then he got through to Professor Andreae and arranged to meet him for a talk.

  Baron von der Malten’s chauffeur helped him downstairs and into the car. They moved off. Anwaldt asked, with interest, about practically every building, every street. The chauffeur answered patiently:

  “We’re driving along Hohenzollernstrasse … On the left is the water tower … On the right, St John’s Church … Yes, I agree, it’s beautiful. Recently built … Here’s the roundabout. Reichpräsidentenplatz. This is still Hohenzollernstrasse … Yes, and now we’re coming on to Gabitzstrasse. Yes? … You know these parts? We’ll go under the viaduct and we’ll be on your Zietenstrasse …”

  The drive in the car gave Anwaldt the most enormous pleasure. (A beautiful city.) Unfortunately, his Adler had been burning in the high sun since morning and when he heaved himself in behind the steering-wheel, sweat poured down his shirt and jacket. He opened the windows, threw his hat on the back seat and pulled away with a screech of tyres, longing to cool himself by the current of air. With no success – his lungs filled with dry dust. As if this torment were not enough, Anwaldt lit a cigarette, drying his mouth out completely.

  Following the instructions given by von der Malten’s chauffeur, he arrived at the College of Oriental Studies at Schmiedebrücke 35 without any problems. Professor Andreae was waiting for him. He listened closely as Anwaldt imitated the way yesterday’s assailant spoke. Although the lines the policeman repeated several times were short – (“How did you get in here? Show your invitation!”) – the professor had no doubts. The German-speaking foreigner at the Baron’s ball was most certainly a Turk. Pleased with his linguistic intuition, Anwaldt bade the professor farewell and drove on to the Police Praesidium.

  In the entrance, he met Forstner. They exchanged glances and easily recognized each other: Anwaldt’s bandaged head and Forstner’s cut eyebrow. They greeted each other with feigned indifference.

  “I see you didn’t spend last night at the Salvation Army on Blücherplatz,” laughed Smolorz, greeting Anwaldt.

  “It’s nothing. I had a slight accident.” He glanced at the desk: Baron von Köpperlingk’s file lay there. “Not very thick.”

  “The thicker one’s probably in the Gestapo archives. You have to have special connections to get in there. I haven’t got any …” He wiped his sweaty forehead with a chequered handkerchief.

  “Thank you, Smolorz. Ah …” Anwaldt rubbed his nose nervously. “I’d be most grateful if you’d prepare a list of all the Turks who have lived in Breslau over the last eighteen months by tomorrow. Is there a Turkish Consulate here?”

  “Yes, on Neudorfstrasse.”

  “They’re bound to help you. Thank you, you’re free to go.”

  Anwaldt was left alone in his cool office. He rested his forehead on the slippery, green surface of the desk and felt he was reaching the lowest point of the sinusoid – the critical point of his good and bad moods. He became painfully conscious of the fact that he reacted differently to other people: the furiously burning world outside released, in him, energy and action, the pleasant coolness of the office, surrender and resignation. (Each one’s a microcosmos connected to the movement of the universe; I’m not. I’m different from them. Haven’t I been told that ever since childhood? I’m an isolated mini-universe where multi-directional gravitation rules and welds everything into heavy, concentrated blocks.)

  He abruptly got up, slipped his shirt off and leaned over the basin. Hissing with pain, he washed his neck and armpits then sat in his chair and allowed the water to run down his wounded torso in narrow streams. He wiped his face and hands on his vest. (Be active! Do something!) He picked up the receiver and instructed the runner to buy some cigarettes and lemonade, then closed his eyes and easily mastered the chaotic images. He tore them from himself and set them in order: “Scorpions in Marietta von der Malten’s belly. A scorpion on the Turk’s hand. The Turk killed Marietta.” This observation pleased Anwaldt with its self-evidence yet the prospect of ineffective work gave him cold feet. (The Turk killed the Baron’s daughter; the Turk guards Baron von Köpperlingk’s house; the Baron is protected by the Gestapo; ergo, the Turk has something to do with the Gestapo; ergo, the Gestapo is mixed up in the Baron’s daughter’s murder; ergo, I’m as weak and helpless as a child in the face of the Gestapo.)

  A knock on the door. A kn-o-ck. The runner brought in an armful of bottles and two packets of strong Bergmann Privat cigarettes. The cigarette weakened him for a moment. He drank a bottle of the lemonade in one go, closed his eyes and again the thought-images became thought-sentences. (Lea Friedländer knows who pointed her father out to Mock and made a scapegoat of him. It could be someone from the Gestapo. If she’s going to be afraid to tell me, I’ll force her. I’ll withhold the morphine, terrorize her with the needle. She’ll do anything I say!) He rejected the erotic vision “she’ll do anything I say” and got up from his desk. (Be active!) He paced the room and voiced his doubts out loud:

  “Where are you going to make her talk? In a cell. What cell? Here, in the Police Praesidium. What’ve you got Smolorz for? Great – you lock a doll like that up in a cell and all the screws and policemen are going to know about it within an hour. And most certainly the Gestapo.”

  In moments of greatest discouragement, Anwaldt always turned his thoughts to entirely different matters. And so it was now: he engaged himself in studying the Baron’s file. He found several photographs of an orgy in some garden and a list of names unknown to him – names of those present at the parties. None betrayed Turkish descent. There was very littl
e on the host himself. The ordinary life story of an educated Prussian aristocrat and a few official notes from the Baron’s meetings with Hauptsturmführer S.A. Walter Piontek.

  He buttoned his shirt and tightened his tie. He went downstairs slowly to the archives, picking up his Breslau police identification on the way. (Be active!) In the basement of the Police Praesidium, he met with bitter disappointment. On the orders of Doctor Engel – who was executing the duties of Police President – Piontek’s files had been transferred to the Gestapo archives. Anwaldt barely managed to get to his office: pain was shooting through his swollen heel, his wounds and abrasions burning. He sat down behind his desk and, in a hoarse voice, asked Mock, who was sunbathing on a Zoppot beach:

  “When are you coming back, Eberhard? If you were here you’d extract Piontek’s and Baron von Köpperlingk’s files from the Gestapo … You’d find a safe place where we could subject Lea to a morphine detox … You’d surely find a vice in your memory for that crazy Baron … When are you finally coming back?”

  Longing for Mock was longing for the Baron’s money, for tropical islands, for slaves with skin like silk … (You’ve built a fine tower, Herbert, with those bricks. Be active, force Lea to speak yourself, can’t you? You’ve built a fine tower, Herbert.)

  † To what good? (Latin).

  VI

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME TUESDAY, JULY 10TH, 1934

  SEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

  On the main road which lay at the end of Hansastrasse, Anwaldt found a small restaurant. Out of professional habit, he noted the owner’s name and the address: Paul Seidel, Tiergartenstrasse 33. There he ate three hot sausages immersed in a mash of boiled peas and drank two bottles of Deinart mineral water.

  Ten minutes later and feeling somewhat heavy, he stood outside Fatamorgana Studio of Photography and Film. He thumped for some time – loudly and stubbornly – on the closed door. (No doubt she’s topped herself up with morphine again. But it’s the last time.) The old caretaker shuffled out of the gate on to the pavement.

  “I haven’t seen Fräulein Susanne going out anywhere. Her servant left an hour ago …” he muttered, inspecting Anwaldt’s identification.

  The policeman removed his jacket and resigned himself to the trickles of sweat: he did not even attempt to wipe them off with a handkerchief. He sat down on a stone bench in the yard next to a dozing pensioner in a perforated hat. One window-vent in Lea’s apartment, he noticed, was not quite closed. He barely managed to climb on to the sill – his swollen heel was aching and his stomach lay heavily. Slipping his hand inside, he turned the brass handle and, for a moment, struggled with the tangling curtain netting and rampant ferns standing on the window sill. He felt at home in this apartment and took off his jacket, waistcoat and tie, hung all this on the back of a chair and set off in search of Lea. He made towards the studio where, so he thought, he would find her lying, intoxicated. But, before he got there, he turned to the bathroom: the peas and sausages were sending out strong physiological messages.

  Lea Friedländer was in the bathroom, her legs hanging over the toilet bowl, her thighs and shins smeared with faeces. She was naked. The thick cable wrapped around her neck was attached to the overflow pipe just below the ceiling and the corpse’s back was touching the wall. The painted crimson lips revealed gums and teeth from between which protruded a blue, swollen tongue.

  Anwaldt threw up the contents of his stomach into the bidet. He then sat on the edge of the bath and tried to collect his thoughts. In no more than a few minutes, he was sure Lea had not committed suicide. There was no stool in the bathroom, nothing from which she could have kicked herself off. She could not have rebounded from the toilet bowl because she was not tall enough. She would have had to tie the loop on the thick drainpipe below the ceiling and then, holding on to it with one hand, place the loop around her neck. (Such a feat would have been hard for an acrobat let alone a morphine addict whom half a dozen men must have shagged that day. It looks as if someone very strong strangled Lea, hung the rope in the bathroom, lifted the girl and slipped her neck through the loop. Except that he forgot about the chair which would have made the trick credible.)

  Suddenly, he heard the curtain flutter in the window through which he had climbed. A draught. (There must be another window open in this apartment.)

  In the door, stood a huge, dark man. He took a rapid swipe. Anwaldt jumped aside, treading on the silk petticoat lying on the floor. His right leg slid back; the entire weight of his body rested on his swollen left foot; it was more than he could take. The left leg gave way under him; Anwaldt bent forward in front of the Turk. The latter clasped his hands and gave a blow from below – to the chin. The policeman collapsed backwards into the enormous bathtub. Before he realized what had happened, he saw the assailant’s face over him and an enormous fist armed with a knuckleduster. The punch in his solar plexus took his breath away. A cough, wheezing, a blurred image, wheezing, wheezing, night, wheezing, night, night.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME JULY 10TH, 1934

  EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

  The icy water restored Anwaldt’s consciousness. He was sitting, quite naked, in a windowless cell, tied to a chair. Two men in black, unbuttoned S.S. uniforms were observing him. The shorter of the two twisted his long, intelligent face in a grimace reminiscent of a smile. He reminded Anwaldt of his secondary school maths teacher who used to pull similar faces when one of his pupils could not solve a problem. (I warn you against these people – they are ruthless and capable of forcing anyone into giving up an investigation. If, God forbid, you ever find yourself at the Gestapo, please stubbornly state that you are an agent of the Abwehr uncovering the Polish Intelligence network in Breslau.)

  The man from the Gestapo walked around the cell, where the stench of sweat was almost palpable.

  “Bad, Anwaldt, isn’t it?” he clearly expected an answer.

  “Yes …” the tortured man gasped. His tongue caught the jagged remains of his front tooth.

  “Everybody’s bad in this city.” He circled the chair. “Yeees, Anwaldt. So what are you doing here … in this Babylon? What brought you here?”

  The man in uniform lit a cigarette and put the flaming match to the prisoner’s crown. Anwaldt flung himself about; the stink of burning hair was suffocating. The second torturer, a sweaty, fat man, threw a wet rag over his head, extinguishing the fire. The relief was short-lived. That same Gestapo man squeezed the prisoner’s nose with one hand while, with the other, he shoved the rag into his mouth.

  “What’s your assignment in Breslau, Berliner?” the muffled voice repeated. “Enough, Konrad.”

  Freed of the stinking gag, Anwaldt fell into a long fit of coughing. The slim Gestapo man waited patiently for an answer. Not getting one, he looked at his helper.

  “Herr Anwaldt doesn’t want to answer, Konrad. He evidently feels safe. He thinks he’s protected. But who’s protecting him?” he spread his hands. “Criminal Director Eberhard Mock, perhaps? But Mock isn’t here. Do you see Mock anywhere, Konrad?”

  “No, I don’t, Herr Standartenführer.”

  The slim man bowed his head and uttered in a pleading voice:

  “I know, I know, Konrad. Your methods are foolproof. No secret remains, no name blotted from memory, when you question your patients. Allow me to cure this patient. May I?”

  “Of course, Herr Standartenführer.”

  The smiling Konrad left the cell. The Standartenführer opened an old, tattered briefcase and took out a litre bottle and a half-litre jar. He poured the contents of the bottle – some kind of suspension – over Anwaldt’s head. The prisoner tasted something sweet on his tongue.

  “It’s water with honey, you know, Anwaldt,” the torturer reached for the jar. “And this? You know what this is? Alright, alright … I’ll satisfy your curiosity.” He shook the jar several times. A low buzzing of insects emanated from it. Anwaldt looked: two hornets were furiously jumping on each other and thrashing against the sides of the j
ar.

  “Oh dear, what awful monsters …” the man from Gestapo lamented. Suddenly, he took a swing and smashed the jar against the wall. Before the disorientated hornets had found their wings in the small cell, the prisoner was alone.

  Anwaldt had never imagined that these enormous insects gave off the same sound with their wings as small birds. The hornets first threw themselves at the wire-encased light bulb but, after a moment, changed direction. They made strange convulsive movements in the fusty air and with every shudder fell lower. Soon, they found themselves in the vicinity of Anwaldt’s head where they were drawn by the smell of honey. The prisoner tried to use his imagination to escape the cell. He succeeded. (He was walking along a beach washed by gentle waves, rippled by a fresh breeze. His feet sank into the warm sand. Suddenly, a wind arose, the sand grew white-hot, the waves – instead of licking the beach – roared and lashed out at Anwaldt in raging froth.)