End of the World in Breslau

by Marek Krajewski

  “Seventeen.”

  “Are you still at school?”

  “No,” the boy retorted, still swaying as he put on his jacket. “I’m apprenticed at a tailor’s. I passed my craftsman’s exam today. I haven’t got any more money.”

  “And this was supposed to be a present for passing your exam?” Mock spat his cigarette end on the floor and looked at the boy. The boy nodded. “Today you were going to become a real man, is that it? If you can’t get it up, your pals will laugh at you?”

  The boy turned to stone and hid his face in his hands. Mitzi laughed out loud and glanced at Mock encouragingly, expecting him to do the same.

  “Yell,” Mock said in a low voice.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Mitzi’s kohl eyebrows rode right up to her hairline in amazement. “What kind of shit are you giving me?”

  “You’re the piece of shit,” whispered Mock, taking stock of her reddened nostrils. “And I’m the police. Yell as if this youngster was making you come no end.”

  This time Mitzi did not show the slightest surprise. She plucked out her cigarette from its holder and began a noisy performance. Moans and gasps tore from her throat. She kneeled on the bed and bounced up and down, without ceasing to emit passionate groans. The bedspread fell away from her full hips. Cries of approval reached them from the courtyard. Mock closed his eyes and lay back on the tangled linen with Mitzi bouncing beside him. The bed rocked back and forth like the droschka in which he and Sophie had sped through Scheitniger Park one night. It was late summer. Sophie was wearing a light-green dress and he white tennis clothes. He was urging the cabby along, pressing handfuls of banknotes into his pocket. A strong, warm wind was blowing. Sophie, half reclining in the droschka, was grasping a bottle of champagne in her left hand, and heavy sheaves of hair whipped her drunken eyes. She moaned for the first time near the Japanese Garden. The coachman was uneasy, but did not look round. Sophie had no control over herself, nor did she wish to. The coachman clenched his teeth and whipped the horse furiously. The woman’s throaty cries resounded in the empty pergola, bouncing off the stone arches and startling the animal who had never been lashed like that before. Sophie brought her lips to the neck of the bottle, the horse lurched a little to one side and what was left of the champagne gurgled in her throat. Drops of the noble drink trickled down to her windpipe and bronchial tubes. She stiffened and started to cough. Horrified, Mock fastened his trousers and began to blow air into her mouth. The last thing he remembered was the Centenary Hall and Sophie’s stiffened body. He did not remember the journey to the hospital; he did not remember the swift resuscitation performed on his wife; he forgot what the droschka and the ill-treated horse looked like. All he could remember was the cabby, the old Jew who, grateful for the generous sum, and humiliated by Sophie’s orgiastic cries, was wiping the froth off his horse.

  Mock opened his eyes and signalled for Mitzi to stop. She gave one violent sob and fell silent. A cheer of approval rose from the courtyard.

  “Get out of here,” he said to the tailor’s apprentice. “Don’t stare at me like that, and don’t thank me. Just get out … Leave the door open and tell my men to come in.”

  Wirth and Zupitza appeared in the room. Embarrassed by them, Mitzi covered her pudenda once more. Both men stood in the door and looked in amazement at the Counsellor still stretched out beside the prostitute, on bedclothes covered with cigarette burns. Without getting up, Mock turned towards Mitzi and asked:

  “A drunk, red-haired gentleman came to see you today. What did he talk about, and where did he go?”

  “I’ve had five clients and none of them had red hair,” Mitzi said slowly.

  Mock was overcome with boredom. He felt like a factory worker standing at the same machine for the thousandth time, for the thousandth time placing the same objects into a vice and squeezing them. How many times had he seen the impudent gaze of pimps or the fixed stare of bandits, the heavy eyelids of murderers, the restless eyes of thieves – and all of them saying: “Get lost, cop, I’m not going to tell you anything anyway!” At moments like these, Mock would arm himself with an iron bar, a truncheon or knuckle-dusters, remove his frock coat, roll up his sleeves, and don oversleeves and a rubber apron so as not to sully himself with blood. These preparations were not usually sufficient. He would then begin to persuade the interrogated parties with sentimental arguments. He would sit with them and, fondling his truncheon or knuckle-dusters, talk about their sick children, wives, fiancées, impoverished parents and imprisoned brothers. He would promise help from the police and freedom from their most pressing material worries. A few allowed themselves to be persuaded and, gazing gloomily into the iron sink – the only object of any interest in the interrogation room – would whisper their secrets and Mock, like a sensitive confessor, would talk to them for a long time and give his absolution. Many criminals, however, did not allow themselves to be deluded by sentimental arguments. So the resigned Criminal Counsellor would remove his executioner’s outfit and detect flashes of triumph in the impudent eyes of the pimps, the staring eyes of bandits, and behind the heavy eyelids of the murderers. These soon vanished when Mock stood back from the interrogated parties and, in a barely audible whisper, presented his strongest arguments: colourful descriptions of their future life; epic tales of fratricidal wars between criminals; appalling prophecies of humiliation and rape that ended in vividly depicted deaths on rubbish heaps, or in the dark currents of the River Oder, with eyes being devoured by fish. When this failed to produce results, Mock would leave the room and hand over the instruments of torture to the burly officers who rarely took off their rubber aprons. After a few hours he would return to renew his alternating gentle and threatening arguments. He would observe desperate eyes lost within swollen bumps, and waited until the throats of those interrogated “filled” – as the Poet once said – “with sticky consent”.

  He was bored now because Mitzi would not be taken in by the usual “You’re a whore and I’m a policeman”, a simple statement which produced immediate results with most prostitutes. Mock had to move on to more advanced, grimmer forms of persuasion and for the thousandth time appeal to suppressed common sense. He looked into Mitzi’s eyes again and detected stubbornness and amusement. This was how Sophie would look at him when he begged for a moment’s love. His wife formed her lips in a similar way when she exhaled smoke; no doubt that was what she was doing at that moment, sitting in some seedy Berlin hotel, wrapping her slender hips in bedclothes full of cigarette burns.

  Mock got up suddenly, grabbed Mitzi roughly by the shoulder and led her into the corridor, where he left her in Zupitza’s care. He went back into the room and said to Wirth:

  “Search this room thoroughly. Fiery Mitzi must surely put out her flames with snow.”

  It was a moment before Wirth understood what his police patron and protector wanted of him, at which point he began a thorough search. Mock stood by the window, watching the drunken youths as they shouted and patted the tailor’s apprentice on the back. With their arms around each other, and slipping on the thick clumps of snow, they made their way across the courtyard towards the banks of the Oder. The sounds in the room also died away. Mock turned and saw, right in front of his nose, a tin for corn ointment held up in Wirth’s crooked fingers. It was full of a white powder.

  “Here it is – cocoa,” lisped Wirth.

  “Bring her in,” Mock said.

  Mitzi’s eyes were now full of resignation. She sat on the bed with a sigh that was not in the least orgiastic. She was shaking with fear.

  “You know what I’m going to do with you now? I’m going to pour the snow out of the window and lock you up for a long time. That’ll be my good deed, to get you off cocaine.” Mock felt the duck sit heavily in his stomach. “But maybe you don’t want to be cured, maybe this stuff means a lot to you? Or maybe you’re going to tell me something about that redhaired drunk who was here today. What did he say and where was he going, sweetheart?”
>
  “He was here at about six. He had his way with me, then asked where Anna the Goldfish now works.” Mitzi was less guarded and very much to the point. “I told him she’s at Gabi Zelt’s dive. He probably went there.”

  “Did he explain why he was looking for Anna the Goldfish?”

  “Men like him don’t tend to explain themselves.”

  Mock beckoned to Wirth and Zupitza, leaving Mitzi alone with her conscience. The sense of boredom receded. Instead he was bursting with pride at having such an efficient vice that nobody had been able to withstand: neither Urbanek nor Mitzi, nor – all those years ago – Wirth and Zupitza, who now, without asking questions, would accompany him on his odyssey through the dives of Breslau. As he ran down the stairs, he caught sight of Urbanek’s frightened expression. He slowed his step. With every sudden movement he was reminded of the duck he had washed down with schnapps. It struck him that only one person had withstood the workings of his vice, only one person had failed to find a place in his ordered and pedantic world.

  “Have you got that cocoa?” he asked Wirth.

  “Yes,” he heard in response.

  “Give it back to her,” Mock said slowly. “Don’t try to save the world. You’re not much good at it.”

  A minute later, the three men were sitting in the car. Zupitza asked Wirth something in sign language. Wirth dismissed him with a wave of his hand and fired the engine.

  “What does he want?” Mock indicated Zupitza with his eyes.

  Wirth considered for a moment whether what he was about to say would undermine the Counsellor’s authority, then translated Zupitza’s question, trying to soften its bite.

  “He asked why that door attendant and the whore were so cheeky at first, and weren’t scared of you.”

  “Tell him they didn’t know me. They were hiding behind their boss who’s got good contacts in the police. They thought I wouldn’t be able to jump out of line with him.”

  Wirth translated and Mock detected a smile of derision on the face of the thug.

  “Now translate every word of mine accurately.” Mock narrowed his eyes. “I know the manager of that brothel very well. On Saturdays and Tuesdays, I play bridge with him. The whore and the door attendant now know me well too. Does your Zupitza also want to get to know me well? If not, then he can save himself those smiles.”

  Wirth translated and Zupitza’s face was transformed as he looked out at the empty, winter strand of the Ohlau on their left.

  “But his girls are first class,” Wirth said, trying to diffuse the atmosphere. “That Mitzi was quite, you know …”

  “He knows his whores very well. He deals with them every day,” said Mock as he tried to remember what Mitzi looked like.

  † “When you’re best friend with her best friend …”

  † “When you’re best friend with her best friend …”

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME DECEMBER 2ND, 1927

  TEN O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

  Trusch’s bar in the Black Goat tenement opposite Liebchen’s stove factory on Krullstrasse was named after its energetic manageress, “Gabi Zelt’s dive”. The tenement shutters were always closed, a circumstance which was dictated, above all, by a desire to maintain order and discretion. The owner had no need of new guests, and besides, he wanted to avoid the prying eyes of local children and wives seeking their husbands. The custom was regular: petty criminals, blind-drunk ex-policemen, young ladies from the upper classes in search of greater thrills, and more or less mysterious “kings of life”. All shared a passion for the white powder, which, in carefully measured portions and wrapped in greaseproof paper, was carried by dealers in the lining of their hats. A hat indicated a dealer, therefore, and in the toilets these men would negotiate an average of ten transactions a day. This “snow” constituted the main trade in Gabi Zelt’s bar. The former brothel madam bearing this name was but a figurehead who, for a considerable wage, lent her name to the establishment’s real owner, the pharmacist Wilfried Helm, Breslau’s biggest producer of cocaine. The activities in Gabi Zelt’s bar were tolerated by the police; thanks to their informers who were a fixture there, they could on occasion lock away some cocaine dealer who worked independently of Helm, or some other criminal who had decided to spend his hard-earned money on “cement”. But if the stool-pigeons were silent for too long, the drugs squad would ruthlessly raid the bar and catch the small fry of this demi-monde, and thus be able to close a few of their files with a good conscience. Gabi Zelt and Helm the pharmacist could also breathe more freely because the raids lent them credence in the eyes of the underworld.

  Mock was well aware of all this but, as Deputy Chief of a different department, he did not interfere in the affairs of the “cement men”, as the drugs police were called. So nobody at Gabi Zelt’s would know him, and nobody should have been paying him any particular attention. Here, however, Mock was mistaken. Shortly after they had made their way through the door with a sign advertising “das beste aller welt, der letzte schluck bei gabi zelt”† and sat on a long bench of roughly hewn planks, Mock was approached by an elegantly dressed man who then stroked his nose with a manicured finger. Although Mock recognized this sign, he was astounded – for the first time in his life he had been taken for a cocaine dealer. He was quick to guess why: he had forgotten to remove his hat, which he now did, sending the dandy off with a wave of his hand. The disappointed addict looked questioningly at Wirth and Zupitza, but he found no hint of interest in their eyes.

  There was another man wearing a hat, but he was so engrossed in cavorting with a stout woman that it was hard to imagine he had come to the bar for any other reason. He kept reaching into a large fish tank and pulling out fish. He would then approach his companion’s cleavage and she would receive the thrashing creatures between mighty breasts unfettered by any bra. A moment later, the man would plunge his hand into the generous bust with a wild cry and extract the fish, to the weak applause of a few drunks and the rheumy-eyed mandolin player. The applause was weak because the woman had been acting out this charade for twenty years – regulars of all the seedy bars knew it only too well. Besides, this was how she had acquired her nickname, “Anna the Goldfish”. This frolicking “busty miracle” was no stranger to Mock either, and he recognized the fishing enthusiast perfectly well as Criminal Sergeant Kurt Smolorz, born-again alcoholic.

  Mock spat a mouthful of vile beer, somewhat reminiscent of petrol, onto the dirt floor, lit a cigarette and waited until Smolorz became aware of him. This happened very soon. On his way back to the fish tank, Smolorz glanced merrily at the three men watching him intently and lost all his jollity in an instant. Mock stood up, passed him without a word, and made for the toilets in the dark corridor cluttered with empty beer and schnapps crates, with a massive door at the end of it. Mock opened the door and found himself in a minuscule yard, as if at the bottom of a dark well whose sides consisted of the windowless gable walls of three other tenements. He tipped his head back and held his face up to the cloudy sky. A light, powdery snow was slowly falling. A moment later, Smolorz was at his side. Wirth and Zupitza had remained in the bar, having been told by the Counsellor that no-one was to witness his conversation with his subordinate. Mock placed his hands on Smolorz’s shoulders and, despite the strong fumes of alcohol emanating from him, drew his face closer.

  “I’ve had a heavy day today. My wife left me last night. My close associate, who was supposed to be following her, got drunk instead. The only person I trusted ignored my confidential instructions. Instead, he broke the grave oath of abstinence he had signed in church.”

  Mock could not put up with the smell of schnapps. He pulled back from Smolorz and stuck a cigarette in his sergeant’s mouth. Smolorz staggered back and forth, and would have fallen had his back not found the support of a brick wall.

  “My wife has been betraying me. My friend must know something about it, yet he doesn’t want to come clean,” Mock said. “But now he’s going to tell me everything, including why h
e’s started drinking.”

  Smolorz rubbed his fingers across his face and pulled away damp wisps of hair from his forehead, trying in vain to comb them back. His face was expressionless.

  “I’ve had a heavy day today.” Mock’s voice became a whisper. “I had a certain Gypsy in my vice, a certain door attendant, a whore and a thug. I’m tired and bored with blackmailing people. Don’t force me to do it. I’m going to feel terrible squeezing someone who is or was near to me. Spare me this, please …”

  Smolorz knew well that Mock’s whisper heralded a higher degree of interrogation, a levelling of irrefutable arguments. The reference to Franziska made him realize that Mock had such arguments to hand.

  “Ye-es,” he mumbled. “Orgies. Baron von Hagenstahl, Elisabeth Pflüger and your wife. They … with the Baron and with each other. Cocoa.”

  In difficult situations, Mock’s mind sought support in what is permanent and indestructible. He would recall the best years of his youth: university; the old, grey-haired professors forever at odds with each other; the smell of soaking coats; seminars where discussions were held in Latin; entire pages of ancient poetry learned by heart. One section from Lucretius, which talks of the “flaming walls of the world”, kept coming back to him. Now the walls surrounding the yard were in flames; the bricks on which he rested his hands were scorching, and the snowflakes landing on his head burned like drops of molten oil. “Lucretius wrote somewhere else about love as tragic and eternally lacking in fulfilment,” Mock thought. “About lovers who bite each other so as to dream, a moment later, of biting again”. He remembered the story of a Roman poet, one of the first poètes maudits, who was hopelessly in love, committing suicide at the age of forty-four. He thought of his own forty-four years, and of the small Walther gun weighing down the inside pocket of his jacket. The world was in flames and amidst the flammantia moenia mundi† stood the betrayed husband, a pitiful cuckold, a wretched and infertile manipulator.