End of the World in Breslau

by Marek Krajewski

  Hartner approached the alcove and greeted Mock, interrupting his musings on the causes of human motivation.

  “I’ve already got twelve men together, mainly school professors,” he said happily, accepting a menu from the waiter. “Nobody has declined. They were probably tempted by the generous remuneration. Von Schroetter has allowed me to recruit only eight, so I had to invent some sort of criteria to help me make the selection. I told them all to submit a description of their scholarly work and a bibliography. The decision is now yours, Counsellor. A starter of kesselwurst for me, followed by veal cutlet with egg and anchovy,” he said to the waiter who stood by politely, waiting for Mock’s order.

  “And you, sir …”

  “Ye-es …” murmured the Counsellor. “For me, cod in mustard butter and eel in aspic with baked potatoes. Yes, that’s all.” He looked at Hartner. “You’re right, now it’s down to me. I’ll veto them, and if the result is unfavourable, we won’t waste the Mayor’s money. But, but … I’m assuming, quite unnecessarily, that there’s someone we aren’t going to take on board. Personally, I can’t imagine what could disqualify the docile teachers you’ve gathered … Unless …”

  Mock scanned Hartner’s list and then, engrossed in the bibliographies, became immune to all distractions. He did not see the starters placed in front of him by the waiter, did not smell the tobacco, did not hear the clatter of cutlery or the hiss of beer being poured from barrels. All he could see were two names that appeared on both of the lists in front of him; in those names, occultism was linked to a sentiment for the Silesian Fatherland, complex human motivations became straightforward and clear, and human aims unambiguous and murderous.

  “Listen, Doctor Hartner,” Mock said, regaining control of his senses. “You remember that, apart from Gelfrert, there were eight men who borrowed Barthesius’ Antiquitates Silesiacae from the Municipal Library. They were the viri Leopoldini:† Urban Papst – Pope Urban VIII, that is – Franz Wentzl, Peter Canisius, Johann Carmer, Carl von Hoym. And now we have an interesting candidate for our team: Professor Erich Hockermann, a member of the Society of Devotees of the Silesian Fatherland and author of a monograph on famous men whose portraits can be admired in the Leopold Lecture Theatre. (It’s a good thing you asked the candidates to prepare a bibliography of their works!) The names of these men appear in the Register of Loans. Why are they there? They could have come from the pen of someone who’s thinking about them, or studying them. And who could be studying them more thoroughly than the author of a monograph about them?” All at once Mock felt a stabbing pain in his neck, an itchy throat and the pressure of his corset. “I believe Hockermann read Barthesius in the reading room, not at home, and then signed himself in using the names of ‘Leopold’s men’. If Hockermann had wanted to borrow Barthesius to take home, he could have done so far more easily than Gelfrert just by signing his own name. He is, after all, a professor at a secondary school! There is only one explanation: he didn’t want anyone to know he was studying this ancient publication.” Mock glanced regretfully at his cod as it grew cool, and continued his deductions in a whisper. “And as for this employee of the Municipal Archives, Wilhelm Diehlsen, we don’t have to strain ourselves too much to consider him suspicious. According to Domagalla’s list, he’s a member of the occult organization the Breslau Society of Parapsychic Research.”

  Mock paused and started on his cod, which was now almost cold.

  “And what are we going to do with them?” Hartner stared at Mock in bewilderment. “Not accept them on our team?”

  “Oh, we’ll accept them alright” – thick globs of eel in aspic dissolved in Mock’s mouth – “so as to observe their skills carefully. My men aren’t going to let them out of their sight. Nor any of your other experts. If they’ve got anything to do with the crimes, they’ll try to deceive us, give us a different date so we can’t lie in wait for anyone. Somebody is going to have to check their results every day, slowly and accurately … In secret, out of the team’s normal working hours … And we’re coming up to Christmas …”

  “My wife’s going to Poland today, to spend Christmas with her parents,” Hartner said with a smile, lighting a postprandial cigarette. “I’m to join them on Christmas Eve. Another beer for me,” he told the waiter dancing up to the table. “You too?”

  “No.” Mock thought he was hearing a stranger’s voice. “Two are enough for today. Besides, I’m going to a lecture – I can’t turn up drunk.”

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME DECEMBER 20TH, 1927 SIX O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

  The white-painted lecture hall in the Monistic Community of Breslau’s building on Grünstrasse was too small to hold all the listeners who either believed in or doubted the imminent coming of the Apocalypse. The former applauded the lecturer who was just stepping up to the lectern; the latter pouted their lips contemptuously or whistled. Mock, although he firmly identified with the opponents of the Apocalypse, clapped with measured enthusiasm and studied the people around him. The majority were women of a certain age, angry and sullen, incessantly repeating the words “such is the truth”, and asserting their aversion to everything that might burst through the corset of their principles and conventions. The small number of men, generally in their retirement, laughed out loud as they mentally levelled accusations at the lecturer that they had formulated long in advance. There were also a few present who betrayed signs of mental illness. A young man huddled in the fur collar of a worn, checked coat kept standing up and raising his hand and, since nobody gave him the opportunity to speak, would sit down again violently in his chair, curling up and hunching his narrow, rounded shoulders, and cutting himself off from the rest of the audience with a wall of furious glances. A grey-haired man with especially Semitic features sat next to Mock, browsing through notes coded in a complicated system of symbols and peering affectionately at his neighbour in the hope of attracting his admiration. When Mock maintained his stony expression, the man began to snort scornfully and tried to interest his neighbour on the other side – a plump, old woman whose multi-tiered hairstyle was crowned with a hat the size of a sailing boat – in his mysterious notes. In the corner, next to a stove belching heat, two schoolboys tussled in threadbare uniforms, rings of dried, salty sweat visible under their arms. Mock felt he stood out from von Orloff’s audience and feverishly racked his brains for ways to disguise himself. Fortunately, all eyes were fixed on Prince Alexei himself.

  The speaker raised his arms to calm the clapping, whistling audience. The protruding, tangled bristles of a grey beard encircled his round and flat countenance. Small, sharp eyes with Mongolian folds scanned the faces of the crowd. Slowly. From one listener to another. As they glided across Mock’s face, the latter bared his teeth in an enthusiastic smile. The man sitting beside him sensed a brotherly soul in his neighbour and leaned over to say something. Mock listened to him understandingly and nodded his clear approval. Any further expressions of fellowship from the Counsellor were interrupted by a mighty shout. The voice of the prophet reverberated in the hall.

  “Yes, my brothers,” boomed a deep bass. “The end is nigh. The Lord’s wrath will inundate us all and only the just will survive the flood.”

  The lady with the sailing boat on her head raised her short finger and nodded in agreement, while the young man in the fur collar spun around and blessed everyone.

  “A revolution of the Wheel of Life and Death is taking place and the mandala of incarnations is coming to its end,” von Orloff continued in a calmer voice. “History is repeating itself. The history of evil, murder and despair. The history of slaughter, corruption and sodomy. Oh, Sodom,” roared the speaker. “Be cursed and die …”

  Mock’s neighbour was filling the pages of his notebook with strange signs, the schoolboys were making faces at each other as if to say “told you so”, and Mock wondered whether von Orloff had prepared his performance or was improvising. The string of associations would rather suggest the latter: from sodomy the speaker had moved on to So
dom.

  “Oh, Sodom,” a theatrical whisper filled the air, “the chosen ones will leave you, the chosen ones will not look back at you. With joy they will welcome the waves of sulphur that will burn away your vile bodies. Brothers!” yelled von Orloff. “Be with the chosen ones.”

  The modulation of the speaker’s voice caused one wrinkled old woman, who had been jostling with the schoolboys for a place beside the stove, to wake up and burst into rapid sobs.

  “Brothers,” von Orloff raised his finger, a gesture repeated by a large number of the ladies gathered in the hall. “All over the world, crime is triumphant. But crime is revealing its former face, crime is telling us: ‘I’ve been here already, I’ve been committed before, many ages ago.’” The speaker fell silent and sought understanding in the eyes of his listeners. “Yes, my brothers, old crimes, hidden in chronicles of the past, are being renewed in Sodom … And these are the oldest crimes, the cruellest, inhuman … Because only they can move the inhabitants of Sodom to conversion … Yesterday, in Buenos Aires, a child’s torn-off leg was found on a rubbish heap. A hundred years ago, a Spanish marquis tore apart an illegitimate child borne by his daughter …”

  “Where was that?” Mock felt rotten breath on his ear.

  “In Argentine,” he replied rather loudly, expelling the words with a hiss.

  “Yes, my dear sir,” von Orloff roared at Mock. “In Buenos Aires, Argentine. But dreadful murders, murders from the past, are being committed here too. A man was walled in alive in the very heart of our town, another quartered not far from here, another still drained of blood and hung upside down … All these murders have already taken place once … a very long time ago … Do you want proof, sir?”

  Mock’s neighbour, thinking that the speaker was addressing him, jumped up delightedly and shouted:

  “Yes, yes! I want proof!”

  “Sit down! Keep quiet! We know the proof! It’s irrefutable!” the crowd began to bawl.

  Von Orloff stood silent. The break in his oratory had a disciplinary effect on his listeners.

  “Yet there is deliverance for us.” His narrow lips, concealed beneath a coarse moustache, were stretched in a broad smile. “A holy man is coming to us … He will save us … It is not I – I am but his prophet; I announce his coming and the funeral of the world, the eternal grave of the world, sepulchrum mundi … I am not worthy to tie the strap of his sandal … He will save us and take us with him to the seventh heaven … Brothers, be among the chosen ones!”

  “When is he coming?” The question shouted out by the man in the fur collar contained no curiosity. It contained longing. Mock smiled inwardly, expecting an elusive response. It turned out, however, to be very concrete.

  “The holy man will be conceived in four days’ time, on Christmas Eve. The eve of Christ’s birth is the day of the new saviour’s conception. The birth of the old saviour will empower those who are to beget the new. Christ was conceived of a modest virgin, and God was his father through the intermediary of the Holy Spirit … He came into the world in a place intended for animals, in utter degradation … The new prophet will be begotten in even greater degradation … For here is the holy book of prophecies, Sepulchrum Mundi. Listen to what the Master says in his conversation with the Disciple in Book III.” Von Orloff opened a large book bound in white leather and began to read from it. “‘Master,’ asked the Disciple, ‘why must the saviour be conceived of a Babylonian harlot?’ ‘Verily, I say, God is closest to you when you sin … His power is then greatest because it is entirely focussed on you, to turn you away from sin. That is why the new saviour will be conceived in sin, of a sinful woman, of a Babylonian harlot, because only in this way will God’s power rest upon him.’ So speaks the book of prophecies.”

  When the elder finished reading he collapsed onto a chair behind him. From where he sat, Mock could discern beads of sweat forming on von Orloff’s Mongolian folds. A tall youth who had been selling tickets before the lecture now approached the pulpit.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “the Prince is ready for your questions. Please don’t hesitate to ask. This is your last chance. The next lecture will not take place until Saturday. The Count is going away on a lecture tour to Berlin and won’t be back in Breslau until that day, Christmas Eve.”

  The young man in the moth-eaten, fur-collared coat raised his hand yet again that afternoon. Von Orloff nodded at him.

  “I have a question.” The young man threw distrustful glances at his neighbours. “Who is going to impregnate the harlot?”

  “Spiritus flat ubi vult,”† von Orloff replied thoughtfully.

  BRESLAU, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21ST, 1927 THREE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

  “Spiritus flat ubi vult,” Mühlhaus scowled as Mock finished telling him about von Orloff’s lecture. “That was his answer you say …”

  There was silence. As he observed the Criminal Director, Hartner realized that this unthinking repetition of the Latin sentence, the sudden brooding and the closing of the eyes suggested that the police chief had been overcome by intellectual languor after a satisfying lunch. Unlike Hartner, the police officers sitting in Mühlhaus’ office were used to their chief’s inconsequent remarks, and to repetitions that might appear thoughtless, had these not betrayed the feverish workings of a mind that, by and large, came up with pertinent ideas, a simple and inspiring summation of facts, or a new hypothesis. That was not the case this time – Mühlhaus had no ideas at all. Hartner felt an annoying itch in his lower back and recognized it to be a burning impatience. He decided to relish the knowledge he had acquired that day, and the ignorance of those present.

  “What do you think about all this, Mock?” asked Mühlhaus.

  “The whores are going to be rather busy on Christmas Eve. All the followers of Sepulchrum Mundi are going to be seeking out the Babylonian harlot.”

  “You can spare us the feeble jokes,” Mühlhaus drawled quietly – lunch had deprived him of any desire to respond more energetically – “and tell us something that might interest us.”

  † The spirit blows where it wills.

  “I received a short report on von Orloff and the Sepulchrum Mundi from Criminal Counsellor Domagalla,” Mock obeyed his chief. “It contains the guru’s life story and some very brief information about his activities in Breslau, where he’s been for about a year. Shall I read it out to you?”

  Mühlhaus closed his eyes to express his consent, and with his small skewer began to drill through the carbonized tobacco that blocked the shank of his pipe. Reinert rested his heavy head on his hand, squashing a chubby cheek. Ehlers rolled a cigarette and Kleinfeld made sucking noises in an effort to probe a rotten tooth with his tongue. From outside came the joyful cries of children. Mock walked up to the window and saw a sleigh attached to a large sledge, a coachman, and a malnourished hack that had just raised its tail to leave a memento on the dirty snow covering Ursulinenstrasse. A little, laughing girl left her group and toddled over to the coachman. Her cheeks were tinged with blood-red stains. Mock turned away, not wanting to know whether it was blood on the child’s cheeks or an ordinary flush, whether the coachman was the girl’s perverted neighbour or her father who, in a few years’ time, would sell her into the bondage of some brothel madam. Mock did not want to know anything about the empty, cold linen of his marital bed, and his servants’ desperate efforts to avoid the subject of their mistress; he was interested in nothing but the apocalypse foretold by the Russian aristocrat.

  “We have the employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to thank for this report, which was put together at the request of Criminal Counsellor Herbert Domagalla. Unfortunately, all they have at their disposal is a biography written by our guru himself. Count Alexei Konstantinovich Orloff was born in 1857 on the Zolotoye Selo estate near Kishyniev, and comes from a wealthy, aristocratic family. He finished cadet school in St Petersburg in 1875 and began his military service in the Caucasus. In 1879, after the war with the Turks, he unexpectedly aban
doned his military career and entered a spiritual seminary in Tbilisi. He was expelled from there in 1881 for – as he writes – ‘a lack of humility and for his intellectual independence’. He spent the next ten years in Moscow, where he published a novel, Plague, as well as numerous philosophical pamphlets and magazine articles. One can assume that he lived off his rich family.” Mock paused and looked intently at the sleepy listeners. “He was particularly proud of one of these articles, and Domagalla has had it translated into German to enclose with his report. I read it yesterday. It is, sit venia verbo,† a terrifying religious apotheosis of evil and degradation.” Mock swallowed with revulsion. “Every criminal ought to read it and commit murder, happy in the knowledge that, at the moment of the murder, he is in all but tangible contact with God himself …”

  This description of von Orloff’s thesis made no great impression on anyone except Hartner. Mühlhaus was ploughing in his pipe with his skewer, Reinert was dozing, Ehlers smoked and Kleinfeld, with masochistic pleasure, was drawing new waves of subtle pain from his tooth. Hartner bit his tongue and shivered.

  “Von Orloff left for Warsaw in 1890,” Mock continued, “where he undertook his own private war with Catholicism. He published lampoons on the papacy and theological polemics on the Catholic concept of sin. Von Orloff appended one of these to his biography, and we also have a translation of it at our disposal. In it he claims there is no escaping sin, that sin cannot be eradicated, that we have to live with sin, and even cherish it. Our guru was probably an agent of the Okhrana, the Tsar’s secret police, because in 1905 he was shot by Polish freedom fighters. He was seriously wounded and, as he writes, only hospitalization in Germany saved his life. That year he found himself in Breslau, in Bethanien Hospital. He was then discharged for convalescence, travelled across Europe and returned in 1914 to Breslau. At the outbreak of war, he was interned here as a Russian citizen and locked up in the prison on Kletschkauerstrasse. He left prison a year later, founded the Sepulchrum Mundi sect in Breslau and, as he claims, conducted research into the philosophy of history.” Mock paused and tapped a cigarette against his silver cigarette-case. “Well, so much for his life story. Now for the reports from Domagalla’s men. The officers in Department II of the Police Praesidium took an interest in von Orloff after he came into close contact with Breslau’s Society of Parapsychic Research, which Domagalla suspected – listen to this! – of procuring orphanage children for wealthy perverts. This was never proven, but von Orloff still ended up on our files. Up until September of this year, nothing more was heard of him, but since October he has been extremely active. He’s been giving two lectures a week, during which he works himself extremely hard. That is everything in Domagalla’s report. As to what took place at yesterday’s holy service of the Sepulchrum Mundi, I’ve already told you.”