End of the World in Breslau

by Marek Krajewski

  His uncle closed the front door and looked around in disgust. He approached the sleeping youth and shook him hard by the shoulder. Erwin opened his eyes and closed them again, pulling the coverless eider-down over his head. Mock noticed the sour reek of digested wine coming from his nephew. He sat in the armchair, having first thrown aside its lumpy, shapeless cover, pulled a flick-knife from his pocket, opened it and scratched his neck with it under the corset. He then rolled a cigarette of blond, Georgia tobacco, lit it and stared at the shape of Erwin’s body wrapped in the eiderdown. The boy began to wriggle about, until finally he poked out his dishevelled head.

  “Forgive me for receiving you like this but …” he said with Difficulty, as if unable to squeeze the words through his parched throat, “we had a party last night, which went on until morning …”

  “Where’s Inge?” Mock interrupted him.

  “In the studio,” replied Erwin. “Working …”

  Mock thought about his empty apartment without Sophie, and without Adalbert or Marta who had gone to see their family near Striegau, and even without the dog, Argos, which they had magnanimously taken with them so as to spare the Counsellor any trouble. Mock imagined the following day’s Christmas Eve dinner: he alone at the head of the huge table, cutting slices of roast goose; lighting candles on the Christmas tree; drunk, and singing carols so loudly that Doctor Fritz Patschkowsky from above has to thump the floor with his walking stick; staring at the telephone, a bottle of schnapps in his hand. He did not want his predictions to come true. He longed to be able to place a piece of carp on Erwin’s plate, drink schnapps and sing carols with him. Which was why he had to suppress his fury at his nephew’s drunkenness, at this pigsty in which he lived – which successive lovers of Breslau’s femme fatale used to clean – at his two-day truancy from school, and at his failure to find himself, which was something nobody could help him with.

  “I am inviting you … both of you …” Mock corrected himself, “to join me for Christmas Eve dinner. Families ought to spend Christmas together …”

  Erwin sat up in bed, scanned the table and reached for a glass with a little water in it. Contrary to Mock’s expectation, he did not drink, but poured it onto his palm and slicked down his hair, which was sticking out in all directions.

  “Thank you very much, Uncle,” he tried not to mumble, “but I’m going to spend Christmas with Inge. And she won’t come to yours, Uncle. Unless you apologize to her for what happened in the past … Forgive me, Uncle … I have to go to the toilet on the landing …”

  Erwin wrapped himself in a threadbare dressing gown – Mock guessed it to be a trophy passed on to subsequent lovers of the seductive artist – and staggered out of the room. The Counsellor went to the window and threw it wide open. He listened with some surprise to the patter of rain in the gutters as it cut across the snow-covered roofs, causing small avalanches and icicle daggers to break off. He heard Erwin’s footsteps and turned around.

  “The day before yesterday, I suggested that you come and live with me; today I am inviting you to spend Christmas Eve with me,” said Mock slowly. “The day before yesterday we were interrupted by a paedophile. Today you try to cut the conversation short yourself. You told me to apologize to Inge, and went to the toilet. You didn’t wait for my reply; you didn’t want to know what it was because you thought I’d take offence and leave. You’d have a clear conscience and be able to spend Christmas Eve drinking wine in this filthy tip, this disgusting shakedown …” Mock stuck his cigarette into a plate of disintegrating herring. “You can always count on me, but can I count on you?”

  Erwin got up and approached his uncle. He wanted to put his arms around him, but held back. Tears glistened in his eyes. He glanced over Mock’s shoulder and his tears immediately dried. Mock turned and saw Inge. She stood there without a hat and her black hair, wet with rain, was wrapped around her face. She stared at them, beautiful, scornful and drunk.

  “Apologize to her, Uncle, apologize,” Erwin whispered.

  “Apologies,” Mock said, fastening his coat, “must be preceded by a request for forgiveness. What are apologies worth if they are not accepted. They only humiliate the one who apologizes. And I’m not going to ask her to forgive me.” Mock kissed Erwin on both cheeks. “Happy Christmas, Erwin,” he said, and then turned to Inge. “Happy Christmas, dear lady.”

  Hearing no response from Inge, he left the apartment and paused in the dark corridor. He stroked the bottle of Franz’s favourite schnapps in his pocket. He knew how he would be spending Christmas Eve.

  BRESLAU, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24TH, 1927 FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

  Mock stood in front of the bathroom mirror and glared in annoyance at the surgical corset that prevented him from wearing a bow tie. Helpless, dressed in a dinner jacket that had been immaculately pressed by his servant, he fiddled around at his neck trying to fasten to his shirt the largest available collar, which, because of the corset, kept bursting open and sticking out. Mock spat angrily into the washbasin and flung the collar onto the tiled floor. He turned on the hot water and rinsed the shaving lather off his razor. Steam settled on the mirror, filled the air and stopped his breath. He turned off the tap and left the bathroom.

  The large table in the parlour was laid with a white tablecloth. On it stood only an ashtray, a pot of coffee and a platter with honey cake. Mock did not fetch any of the dishes Marta had prepared for him from the larder. He was not hungry; the previous night spent at the chessboard with a bottle of schnapps had taken away his appetite. He was not pleased they had found the serial killer. He was not pleased he had granted himself a day off. All that pleased him were the frost, which had frozen the puddles just before dawn, and the snow, which had spread a fluffy covering over the slippery black ice.

  Bored and indifferent, he sat at the head of the table. “Stille Nacht”, which always made him sad, drifted from the radio. The thought of a solitary Christmas Eve dinner had not yet struck him with its full force. He stared at the telephone, still believing it would ring. He thought about the beautiful, feminine hands picking up a receiver somewhere far away, and hesitantly placing it back on its cradle. He thought about words of forgiveness, a plea for forgiveness carried along the telephone wires, breaking through the crackling and unearthly whistling.

  But the telephone did not ring. Mock went to his study and took out the chessboard and Überbrandt’s book, Chess Traps. He set up the pieces and began to play out the Schmidt versus Hartlaub game of 1899. But then he remembered that he had played it out the previous night, and that it did not present any more puzzles for him. He swiped his arm over the board and the pieces scattered across the floor.

  He stood and walked around the table. He went to the Christmas tree and lit all the candles. He sat down, poured himself some coffee and picked at the cake with his fork. A short while later he fetched from his study the last few of the files he had taken from Hockermann’s house. He opened them and made an effort to go through their contents. He could not say what he had found in them, but instinctively felt that they contained nothing important. As he leafed through them he could feel Hockermann’s ironic eyes upon him, as well as those of Inge as he had tried to explain to Erwin that forgiveness is a prelude to apology. He held onto the thought feverishly, then got up and paced around the table, cup in hand.

  “I can’t ask Inge for forgiveness. But can I ask Sophie?”

  He looked at the telephone, approached it, returned to the table, lit a cigarette and sat down again. Then he leaped up, grabbed the receiver and almost blindly dialled Mühlhaus’ number.

  “Good afternoon, Criminal Director,” he said when he heard a puff on a pipe and a drawn out “hello”. “I’d like to wish you and your whole family all the best for Christmas.”

  “Thank you, and the same to you,” Mock heard, and imagined his chief’s eyes long fixed on the empty place at the table where his son, Jakob, had sat for many years.

  “Criminal Director,” Mock s
aid, feeling a pressure in his diaphragm, “I’d like to wish my wife a happy Christmas. Could you please give me Knüfer’s number in Berlin?”

  “Of course, hold on a moment … Here, I’ve got it: 5436. Ask him to call me. I’d completely forgotten about him – I haven’t heard …”

  Mock thanked him and hung up. The pressure in his diaphragm increased as he asked the telephonist to dial Berlin 5436. He replaced the receiver and waited to be connected. Minutes passed. He sat and smoked. Wax dripped from the candles on the tree. Mock glued his eyes to the telephone. After a quarter of an hour the receiver jumped on its cradle with a shrill ringing. He waited. He picked up after the third ring. The voice on the other end belonged to an elderly woman who was either crying or drunk.

  “Good afternoon, Madame,” Mock shouted into the receiver, “I’m a friend of Rainer Knüfer. I’d like to wish him a happy Christmas. Can I speak to him please?”

  “No, you can’t.” The woman was obviously crying. “He’s dead. He never came back from Wiesbaden. He was murdered there. Last Friday. Somebody wrung his neck. Broke his spine …”

  The woman began to sob loudly and hung up. Mock was puzzled by this information. On a piece of paper he wrote “December 24th – Saturday”. He worked out that “last Friday” would have been December 16th. Everything began to fall into place. With shaking hands he untied the file in which Hockermann kept his bills and expenses. Among them was a train ticket for the Wiesbaden–Breslau line, dated December 16th. Mock cried out with delight.

  “Now I’ve got another bit of evidence against you, you son of a whore.”

  He then analysed the information about Knüfer from a different angle. Half a minute’s conversation was all that had been needed; he did not have to ask anything else. The last man to have seen Sophie was dead. His joy evaporated.

  “Sophie’s guardian angel is dead,” he thought. “And she has vanished too. No Sophie, no pain.”

  The telephone rang again. Mock picked up and heard a familiar voice in the receiver:

  “It’s about your wife. Something’s very wrong.”

  “Something’s wrong with her? Is she alive?” Mock yelled.

  “She is, but she’s involved in something evil. In the cellar of Briegerstrasse 4.”

  “Who is that, damn it?”

  “Kurt Smolorz.”

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME, DECEMBER 24TH, 1927 FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

  The building at Briegerstrasse 4 was destined for renovation. The stairs were at risk of collapsing, the roof leaked, the sewerage was forever getting blocked, and the neglected chimneys caused soot to surge into the wretched two-room dwellings. Having made up his mind to repair the building, its owner had rehoused its inhabitants at his own expense, and in this way so depleted himself financially that he decided not to begin the work until after New Year. In the meantime he had surrendered the building to the rats, and to local rascals who stripped the windows of glass with unbridled joy.

  On that Christmas Eve there were neither rascals nor a caretaker at the property, so Mock had no trouble getting to the dark gate. In one hand he held his Walther, in the other a torch. He did not, however, switch it on, allowing his eyes to accustom themselves to the darkness. This they did readily and on his left-hand side he made out the cellar entrance. The door squeaked a little. He slowly went down the stairs. Now he had to switch on his torch. The bright shaft of light drew shattered and unhinged storeroom doors from the semi-darkness of the cellar corridor. He entered one of the rooms; his nostrils were assaulted by the smell of rotting potatoes, mouldy preserves and sweat. Human sweat.

  Mock swept his torch around and pinpointed the source of the smell: on the ground sat a bound man. The torchlight revealed hands cuffed behind a back, a gag, and beads of sweat on a bald, shaven head covered in bleeding gashes and bruises inflicted by heavy blows.

  “It’s Moritz Strzelczyk,” Mock heard Smolorz whisper. “The man who kicked me in the swimming baths. Baron von Hagenstahl’s bodyguard. Now’s my chance for revenge. I caught him unawares.”

  “Where’s Sophie?” Mock pointed the light at Strzelczyk and Smolorz in turn. His subordinate proved a lamentable sight: his eyes were barely visible in their swollen sockets, his nose was probably broken, and his clothes were torn and devoid of buttons.

  “Let’s go,” Smolorz muttered.

  They made their way along the dark corridor towards a flickering glow. They heard a shuffling of feet. A moment later they were standing at the entrance to a side corridor lit up by paraffin lamps. Smolorz was proceeding with a fair amount of noise. Mock held him back and put a finger to his lips.

  “They can’t hear much,” Smolorz said. “I was on my way back after I’d called you. Strzelczyk attacked me just here. There was a fight. They didn’t hear anything then. And Strzelczyk was yelling his head off.”

  They reached the corridor and peered into it. It was not a typical corridor, more a small cellar hallway closed on three sides by doors to storerooms. On the floor lay scattered rags that probably served as bedclothes for homeless people, and empty bottles of wine, beer and cheap toiletries. In the centre of the room stood a Christmas tree and a stable with a crib, little sugar lambs strewn around it. Next to the stable was a stool covered with a white napkin, on which lay three half-full syringes and, next to them, a pharmaceutical jar containing what appeared to be the same suspension. Amidst all these objects two figures bobbed up and down. Baron von Hagenstahl was leaning against a wall, and kept collapsing involuntarily into a squatting position; swaying from side to side, he would push himself up slowly, and then a moment later his knees would give way again. Alexei von Orloff was stark naked. He too was leaning against the wall in a similar position to von Hagenstahl, but, unlike the Baron’s, his eyes were not hazy. Behind the Christmas tree squatted Sophie, urinating on the dirt floor. Having completed her bodily function, she emerged and, stretching her lips into an unnatural smile, lay down beneath the tree on a pile of rags. Mock closed his eyes; it seemed that her smile had been directed at him.

  “The holy man will be conceived in four days’ time, on Christmas Eve. The day 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 … in sin, of a sinful woman, of a Babylonian harlot …”

  Mock opened his eyes. Von Orloff had lain down next to Sophie and had begun to clamber on top of her. From half-open lips a trail of spit trickled down to his protruding beard. Mock appeared in the light cast by the paraffin lamps, a gun in his right hand. The Baron, uneasy, shook his head, grabbed a syringe and made towards him. He did not get very far – a heavy blow from Smolorz threw him against the wall and he collapsed to his knees. Smolorz set his leg into action. The Baron’s head flew back violently, then returned to its former position, sinking with his body onto the heap of empty bottles a moment later.

  Seeing Mock advancing towards him, von Orloff scrambled to his feet and made for the nearest storeroom door. A bullet hit him in the buttock and came out the other side. Smolorz saw a fountain of blood spurt from von Orloff’s groin. Mock fired two more shots but missed his target; the bullets ricocheted off the wall with a hiss. The guru burst into the storeroom and reached into the pocket of a coat hanging there. Mock kicked him with such force that a pain shot up his leg and neck. The tip of his shoe hit von Orloff in his wounded buttock. The old man howled, fell onto the coat and tore it from its hook. Mock leaped at him, held the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. The dry crack of the firing-pin reverberated in the musty air. Von Orloff pulled a small Sauer from his pocket and fired blindly. Mock felt a wetness near his ear and kicked out again. His hob-nailed shoe struck von Orloff in the temple. The battered head rolled on its neck as if it
were going to fall off, then twisted violently and one temple hit a huge stone, which was permeated with the stench of pickled cabbage. The leader of the sect churned up the earthen floor with his feet, then stopped moving.

  Mock left the small room and made for the exit. He did not even glance at Sophie, who stood frozen and helpless next to the crib. Lighting his way with the torch, he found the staircase and emerged at the gate to the building. Drops of blood flowed from his ear onto the collar and shoulders of his pale fleece coat. He pressed a handkerchief to the wound. A moment later he detected the smell of Bergmann Privat cigarettes, Smolorz’s favourite brand.

  “Will you forgive me?” Smolorz said as the smoke from his cigarette mingled with the vapour of his breath. “I lied to you … I had – with her – a … It’s not a photo-collage …”

  “Shut up and listen carefully,” Mock said. “Here’s the key to Wirth’s warehouse on Ofenerstrasse. Handcuff her and the Baron, take them there in the Adler and put them in the cell below the counting-room. There’s one man there already. Kick Strzelczyk in the arse and get rid of him somewhere on the way. Then dump the old man’s body on Hollandwiesen. Once you’ve done all that, come and find me. I’ll be walking down Klosterstrasse towards Ofenerstrasse. I could do with a walk.”

  Mock set off towards the gap in the fence through which he had entered the property.

  “Oh,” he turned towards Smolorz, “I forgive you for lying and running away from me. You still kept following the Baron, and thanks to that we’re here. Anyway, how could I be angry with someone just for screwing a Babylonian harlot?”