End of the World in Breslau

by Marek Krajewski

  Völlinger drank the last drops of his wine and began to struggle with his umbrella. Mock realized that the question he wanted to ask might compromise his intelligence, but he could not stop himself.

  “Can you explain your fear regarding the building?” he asked, expecting a gibe from the astrologer, or an expression of regret, or, at best, a repetition of his words about the futility of self-hypnosis. But what he heard astounded him.

  “Yes, I can explain it with metempsychosis, a migration of souls. My soul had probably been trapped in the body of a man who had fallen from that tenement. My nightmares were the memories of a previous incarnation.”

  Völlinger put on his hat and began to button up his coat.

  “Surely you’re having me on, Völlinger.” Mock’s tone was as friendly as a factory siren calling in workers for the first shift. “I don’t know much about reincarnation but I know perfectly well when someone is trying to skirt around an issue. In the summer, I think it was July, we played bridge at Schaal’s. You and I, and two of your acquaintances – a journalist and a schoolteacher. That day we sat at the same table as today, by the window, and you didn’t have a single anxiety attack. I remember precisely that contract of three no trumps which you made by outwitting our opponents. You didn’t have any clubs in your hand and, after a rather friendly opening lead, you played precisely a club from dummy. The opponents fell for it and – not wanting to lose a high card under one of yours – played low, and let us beat them hollow. Do you remember that excellent psychological ruse?”

  “You’re right,” Völlinger agreed, troubled. He removed his bowler and began to fan himself with it. “Indeed … Do you know what? Perhaps I was so engrossed in the game I didn’t look out of the window … I simply …”

  “You simply wanted to make an ass of me today, Völlinger,” Mock smiled in derision. “And after we’ve known each other for so long, all our grand slams together, all our undertricks …”

  “Believe me, please!” the astrologer cried out. “I’m not lying, I’m not inventing excuses ex post! Let’s send for Ebners and Domagalla and play here, at this table. You’ll see, I’ll play without making serious mistakes. I don’t know, damn it, why I wasn’t frightened of the building in July and today I was … why I couldn’t see the difference between a picture card and a plain card. Perhaps it’s because I’m more on edge in the autumn – I grow melancholic …”

  Without waiting for a response from Mock, Völlinger got up, nodded to him, opened the bar door and went out into the gale, rain and fog that shrouded the melancholy city.

  † Sicherheitspolizei – Security Police.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME NOVEMBER 29TH, 1927

  FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

  Wisps of cigarette smoke turned slowly in the beam of light cast by the projector. First, a caption appeared on the screen: “The execution of Russian spies”, then an image of a row of people in white Russian shirts. All had their hands tied. They were running, legs jerking in the accelerated speed of old film. Soldiers in spiked helmets moved just as quickly, pushing the prisoners with their rifle butts towards a low thatched cottage. The prisoners did not even have time to line up along its wall before the smoke of gunfire bloomed. None of the men who had been shot fell on his face or back. All folded over like puppets whose strings had suddenly been cut. Then there was a close-up: a soldier approached one of the murdered men, lifted his head and popped a lit cigarette into his mouth.

  The young, dark-haired man comfortably sprawled in front of the projector burst out laughing. The bearded old man sitting next to him did not follow suit.

  “It makes you laugh, doesn’t it, Baron?” the old man said.

  “And does it not you, Prince?” The Baron stared intently at the corpse’s shot-through eye socket. “Maybe because the dead men were your countrymen. If so, I apologize.”

  “You’re wrong,” replied the Prince. “This is yet another crime which has already been committed once. I’m showing it to you, Baron, to convince you …”

  “I don’t believe in your theory. It simply amuses me. Your films amuse me too. I’m not bored, thanks to you … And you,” the Baron turned to a third man who was earnestly watching the screen, pressing his bony fingers together as hard as he could, “and you, Doctor, do you, as an eminent historian, believe in this theory? Can you add any arguments to support it?”

  “Like you, Baron, my attitude is emotional,” retorted the man. “You it amuses, me it horrifies. I’m no historian now, I’m a disciple …”

  These lovers of the silent screen did not notice the quiet footsteps muffled by the thick carpet. The Baron started when he saw the telephone in front of his nose; one enormous hand wielded the cradle, the other the receiver.

  “Hello?” the Baron accentuated the second syllable. The projector stopped clattering, switched off by the man with huge hands, and now a woman’s voice could be heard in the receiver. Though not clearly enough for a brain relaxed by sophisticated distractions to register everything fully.

  “Could you repeat that, please,” he grunted. “Kurt Smolorz, right? Please, don’t worry about anything.”

  He replaced the receiver and looked expectantly at the bald head and enormous moustache of the athlete dressed in wrestler’s attire.

  “Did you hear that, Moritz? Police Officer Kurt Smolorz – stocky, well built, reddish hair.”

  “I heard everything, Baron sir,” reported Moritz. “And I know what to do.”

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME NOVEMBER 29TH, 1927

  SIX O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

  The troubled barman of Petruske’s tavern placed a plate of thick, fried bacon slices in front of Mock. When Mock pointed to his empty tankard, the barman assumed an expression of someone greatly put upon. Mock decided to torment him even further by ordering some bread and horse-radish. An existential agony swept across the barman’s features.

  Mock observed the effects of alcohol and anger in the eyes of the wretchedly dressed drunks crowding the tables and walls. The most genial person in the place seemed to be the blind accordionist playing a sentimental tune. Had he not been blind, he would have been glaring at Mock just as amicably as the builders, carters, cabbies and bandits crammed into the bar.

  Mock tore his eyes away from his brothers in alcoholic misery, and set about his food. First he decorated the slices of bacon with mounds of horseradish, then, using a knife, pressed it into a hot mush after which, with a faint sigh, he devoured the smoked and roasted meat followed by slices of dark, wholemeal bread. He washed down the strong taste of meat and horseradish with Haas beer.

  Scanning the bar with bloodshot eyes, he listened to the swearing and cursing. Foremost in this were unemployed workers, embittered at the whole world. All of a sudden a butcher joined in their laments to complain about capitalist exploiters who undervalued his rare ability to decapitate a cow with one blow.

  Mock had a revelation: the supper had not been unpalatable because it consisted of foul and badly prepared food, but because his mouth was acidic with the indigestion of an unfulfilled duty. The statement by the unemployed butcher had been as effective as a chiding from Mühlhaus: it was a sign and reminder.

  He spat the bitterness that filled his mouth onto the dirt floor, pulled out his police notebook and fountain pen, and got down to work, unconcerned by his slight inebriation or by the regular customers who no longer had any doubts as to the profession of this elegant, stocky man with thick, dark, wavy hair.

  Mock looked at the notes he had begun to make in the Bischofskeller. He read: “Let us therefore assume that the victim is incidental; only the day on which he died is not incidental. Question: why is it not incidental? Why does the murderer kill on some days and not on others?”

  “These crimes are not incidental because they have been committed on precisely these and not other days,” he whispered to himself. “Nothing is incidental. The fact that I met Sophie at a ball at the Regierungsbezirk, the fact that we still have no child
ren.” He thought of Völlinger’s expertise. “According to astrologers, chance does not exist. Völlinger, even though he doesn’t know why he is more frightened of the building in autumn than in summer, is sure of one thing: it is not down to chance. Place and time are the necessary elements in Völlinger’s phobias because the tenement terrifies him sometimes more, sometimes less. Nor is Völlinger himself a chance entity – he is a clairvoyant, a sleepwalker, a man who picks up signs that are imperceptible to others.”

  Mock sensed that the long-awaited moment of revelation was near at hand; that he – like Descartes – was about to experience his philosophical night and philosophical dawn when, after silent, choking darkness, everything suddenly appears in the bright glow of the obvious. “In Völlinger’s view of the world, these three elements – man, place and time – are not incidental, they are necessary,” he quickly noted in his book. “Can my case, the Gelfrert–Honnefelder affair, have only one essential element: time? The victims have nothing in common with each other: a member of Hitler’s party with a communist, a refined musician with a locksmith, a lover of history with an illiterate! This much I know from my men and from Mühlhaus. So that person, the victim of the crime is – at this stage in the investigation – an irrelevant element. If we assume that the murderer is not deceiving us, we can be certain that the date is essential because the murderer himself has drawn our attention to it.”

  An arm in a dirty oversleeve stood in front of him the tankard of beer he had ordered. Mock turned to a new page in his notebook and instantly filled it with three words: “And the place? And the place? And the place? And the place? And the place?”

  “Cannot be incidental,” Mock said to the Weltschmerz-afflicted barman. “Damn it, the places where the murders occurred cannot be incidental.”

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME NOVEMBER 29TH, 1927

  EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

  Grajeck’s restaurant on Gräbschenerstrasse in no way resembled the Petruske tavern. It was a dependable and decent venue that was usually filled with work-tired citizens and work-tired prostitutes. At this relatively early hour, the daughters of Corinth were not yet tired but fresh, sweetly scented, full of hope and plans for the future. Two of them were sorely disappointed by Mock and Smolorz who, scorning their charms, were involved in a discussion at a window table on which stood two snifters of cognac. One of the rebuffed prostitutes sat nearby and attempted to eavesdrop on the men’s conversation.

  Mock listened as Smolorz spoke:

  “From nine until two, your wife was at Elisabeth Pflüger’s. They played music. The caretaker of the tenement, a certain Gurwitsch, paid them a visit. We’ve got files on him. He deals in snow. I locked him up once for being drunk. I’m not sure if he recognized me. From what he says, Pflüger is a virtuous Susanna. No men visit her, only her mother sometimes. From three to eight, your wife was back at home, playing more music. That’s how she spent her day.”

  “I don’t suppose you had time to find anything out about Baron von Hagenstahl.”

  “I didn’t, but my cousin Willy did.” Mock silently congratulated himself for having once recommended the unemployed miner, Wilhelm Smolorz, as a constable on the Old Town beat. “Baron Philipp von Hagenstahl is rich.” Smolorz glanced at his notebook. “He has a manor on Eichenallee in Kleinburg, a villa in Karlowitz near An der Klostermauer, some land near Strehlen and a stableful of racehorses which often win at Hartlieb. He organizes charity balls. Bachelor. Doctor of philosophy. He has a practically impeccable reputation, marred only by a former circus artist, Moritz Strzelczyk, who was deported to Poland two years ago but has returned. Quite a brute. Suspected of murder. He’s always at von Hagenstahl’s side. We have a statement from a certain whore who was beaten up by Strzelczyk. He broke her fingers. But the following day the accusation was withdrawn.”

  They fell silent, thinking about von Hagenstahl’s constant companion and how they could make life difficult for him. That evening, however, Moritz Strzelczyk was not at the side of his master. He was standing outside the convent and church of St Elisabeth on Gräbschenerstrasse, watching the illuminated windows of Grajeck’s restaurant.

  BRESLAU, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30TH, 1927

  NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

  Sophie stretched lazily, gazing out of the bedroom window. The arthritic old woman living in the annexe stepped out of the tenement. On her protruding belly rested an enormous wooden pastry-board fitted with little ledges around its sides to prevent its contents from slipping off. A complicated system of sackcloth belts around her neck and shoulders held the board in a horizontal position. Underneath a none-too-clean tablecloth cooled doughnuts dusted with icing sugar. She shuffled off towards Rehdigerstrasse, touting her home-baked produce. Nobody paid her any attention. Sick old men, riddled with gout, dragged their feet; petty drunks counted their pfennigs; cabbies scattered sand over horse manure. Nobody wanted to eat her doughnuts.

  The sun hit the window, sparkling in droplets, traces of the night’s rain. Dirty reminders of the early winter snow persisted on the pavements. Sophie hummed the sentimental tango “Ich hab’ dich einmal geküsst”† and went into the hall. Marta was at the market, Adalbert was shovelling coal into the cellar, Argos was napping by the door. Sophie could not help surrendering to the beauty of that dreamy morning. She still felt her husband’s morning kisses and violent caresses, her lips still tasted the crisp crust of the roll from Frömel’s, and her smooth skin was glowing from the agreeable warmth of her rose bath. Deciding to share her euphoria with Elisabeth, she sat down in the armchair in the hall and dialled her friend’s number. She was looking forward to a long, prattling chat.

  “Hello?” answered Elisabeth’s impatient voice.

  “Good morning, darling, I wanted to tell you how good I feel.” Sophie took a deep breath. “Eberhard behaved like a young groom on his wedding night this morning. He was shy, and hugged me so passionately, as if it were the last time. He was strong and even a little brutal, if you know what I mean …”

  “Good,” sighed Elisabeth. “Long may it last. I fear it might be just another peak, darling, and you’ll find yourself in a dark abyss once more.”

  “The darkest of abysses are nothing compared to such peaks,” Sophie said dreamily. “Besides, Ebi promised me something today. He’s going to stop drinking and said he would spend the evenings with me. He’s not going to be away from me for a moment. I hope he keeps his word.”

  “You know, dearest, when you find yourself at your lowest ebb, you can count on me. Remember, if that young newly-wed ever humiliates you again, I am at your disposal. You can call me any time, whether you’re happy or sad.”

  “Thank you, Elisabeth. If he treats me badly, I’ll meet up with you and the Baron. I’ll take my revenge. When I have revenge I feel clean inside; my heart is so innocent then that I cannot be angry with him any more, and I forgive him,” Sophie laughed quietly. “Just think, all those disgraceful things we got up to have made me a paragon of Christian mercy. Without them I’d be a spiteful, frustrated and repressed Hausfrau …”

  “I’m glad you look upon it as therapy. Oh, it’s terrible, Sophie, but I’d like to repeat what we did at the Baron’s one day … …” Elisabeth’s voice cracked. “Meaning I don’t want things to work out for you and your husband … Oh, it’s terrible …”

  “Please, stop!”

  “I can’t stop,” Elisabeth began to cry. “Because now if I say anything bad about Eberhard you’ll think I’m lying to you, that all I’m thinking about is repeating what we did on Monday. But how can I say nothing when I know the hurt that is being done to you … Besides, you’re being dishonest with me. You were offended yesterday, hurt when my caretaker said Smolorz was spying on us, and today you give yourself to your husband … So you don’t need any therapy!”

  “Then you don’t have to have any scruples.” Sophie was getting a headache from her friend’s reasoning. She felt a mounting anger. “I don’t know what you mean. Are
you picking holes because today I am happy while you’re constantly unhappy and have nobody to make you feel good and safe? Besides, as far as I remember, Smolorz was asking about you and your lovers, not me. So I can’t be angry with Eberhard for spying on me because I cannot be certain that he is.”

  “You’re wrong if you think Eberhard isn’t having you followed,” Elisabeth shouted. “He met that man Smolorz in a restaurant yesterday evening. The Baron told me so.”

  “And so what if he did,” Sophie said derisively. “Smolorz is his subordinate. He can meet him whenever he likes.”

  “You don’t understand anything! Listen to me carefully: Moritz paid a certain woman in that restaurant to eavesdrop. She didn’t hear much, but she did remember one thing. Do you know what that side-kick kept repeating? Do you want to know?”

  “Yes,” Sophie said, growing worried. “I do.”

  “That man said the words ‘your wife’ several times,” Elisabeth almost choked she was so upset. “Do you understand? They were talking about you. Smolorz was following you and he was reporting on what he discovered yesterday.”

  Sophie also choked and put the receiver down on the table. The early morning was just as beautiful as it had been a moment earlier: Argos slept as peacefully as before, the sun had not stopped shining for a second, only Sophie no longer felt the benefits of her amorous awakening, the taste of the crispy roll or the redemptive effects of her hot bath. She raised the receiver to her ear.

  “Are you meeting the Baron today?” she asked calmly.

  “Yes. Moritz is coming for me in half an hour.” Elisabeth, too, had calmed down. “We’re going swimming.”

  “I like swimming,” whispered Sophie.

  † “Once I kissed you”.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME NOVEMBER 30TH, 1927