Phantoms of Breslau

by Marek Krajewski

  “Criminal police.” Mock held his identification under Mrs Wohsedt’s nose, and for a few moments fixed his eyes on the butlers as their faces softened. “Criminal Assistant Mock and Sergeant Smolorz.”

  “That’s what I thought. I knew you’d come. I’ve been standing like this for two days waiting for him,” said Mrs Wohsedt, starting to cry. The tears fell silently and profusely. Her huge, soft body shook as she wept. Sniffing, she brushed aside the tears, rubbing them into her temples. A thought struck Mock which was so hideous and absurd that even he was disgusted by it. Swiftly he pushed it aside.

  “Why didn’t you report your husband’s disappearance if he vanished two days ago? Where could he have gone?” The hideous thought would not leave Mock in peace.

  “Sometimes he doesn’t come home. He takes our little bitch out for a walk in the evenings and goes down to the shipyards. He works in his office through the night and only comes home for dinner the next day. The day before yesterday he took the dog for a walk” – her alto voice lowered to a whisper – “at about six o’clock in the evening. And he didn’t come back for dinner …”

  “What breed is the dog?” Smolorz asked.

  “A boxer.” Mrs Wohsedt wiped away the last of her tears.

  Mock imagined the scene: a little girl playing with two boxer bitches, while on an iron bed behind a partition two people covered in eczema are cavorting, Wohsedt’s fat, triple chin resting between Johanna’s shapely breasts.

  “Is this your husband’s writing?” Mock showed her the piece of paper he had found in the drain, now protected by two sheets of transparent tracing paper. “Read it, but please handle it only through the tracing paper.”

  Mrs Wohsedt put on her glasses and began to read, moving her sunken lips. Her face lit up:

  “Yes, it’s his writing,” she said quietly, and then suddenly she shouted with joy: “I trusted him! I trusted him and he didn’t let me down! So what he wrote in that other letter isn’t true …”

  “What other letter?” Mock asked.

  “The one I got today,” Mrs Wohsedt said, turning in circles. “It’s not true, it’s not true …”

  “Calm down, please.” Mock grabbed her by the shoulders and glared at the butlers who were ready to pounce.

  “This one, this one.” She pulled out an envelope from under her blanket, tore herself away from Mock’s grasp and carried on spinning in a joyful dance. Mock noticed flaking skin on her neck.

  “You’ve got a pair of gloves, Smolorz,” Mock said as he lit his first cigarette of the day. “Take the letter from Mrs Wohsedt and read it out loud.”

  “‘My dear wife,’” Smolorz obeyed. “‘I keep a mistress. She lives on Reuscherstrasse …’”

  “‘I was forced to write the letter you’re going to get from him,’” Mrs Wohsedt’s voice sang. “‘I do not have, nor ever have had a mistress. I love only you. Julius Wohsedt.’”

  “‘… You can easily check,’” Smolorz continued reading. “‘She has the same eczema as I do. Julius Wohsedt.’”

  “When did you get this letter?” Mock asked.

  “At about eight.” Mrs Wohsedt’s lips turned into a horseshoe. She had clearly got to the part about the torture. “I was waiting for Julius on the terrace. I was worried he hadn’t come home yet.”

  “The postman came and handed you the letter?”

  “No, some scruff on a bicycle came to the fence, threw the envelope on the path, then quickly rode away.”

  “Mock, sir,” Smolorz said before his chief could ask about the “scruff’s” appearance. “There’s something else …”

  Mock looked at the squared sheet of paper. He ran the tip of his tongue over his rough palate and felt extremely thirsty. Faint fumes of alcohol emanated from his body, and his head was absorbing the heavy acids of a hangover.

  “Lost your tongue, Smolorz?” hissed Mock. “Why the hell are you showing me this? You’ve just read it.”

  “Not all of it.” Smolorz’s pale and freckled face turned pink. “There’s something else on the back …”

  “Then read it, damn it!”

  “‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Mock, admit your mistake, admit you have come to believe. If you do not want to see any more gouged eyes, admit your mistake.’” Smolorz turned purple. “There’s a postscript too: ‘South Park.’”

  “Didn’t I tell you, didn’t I tell you,” Mrs Wohsedt said in a high singsong. “I told you he went to South Park with the dog …”

  “A long walk,” muttered Smolorz as Mock tried hard to force from his mind the hideous thought that had occurred to him.

  They left the port director’s house and climbed into the gig. As they set off towards Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse, Smolorz said to Mock:

  “This might be silly, Mock, sir, but it’s no wonder the director had another woman.”

  Mock did not say anything. He did not want to admit even to himself that the hideous thought which had tormented him from the moment he set eyes on Mrs Wohsedt had now been put into words.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919

  FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

  South Park was completely empty at this hour. In the alleyway leading from Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse appeared the figure of a woman in a long dress. Next to her, tugging her from side to side, trotted a large dog. The cold, pale-pink glow of the goddess Eos sharpened the image: the woman wore a bonnet, and on her body was not a dress, but a coat from beneath which trailed the straps of a nightgown. She was walking briskly, not allowing the dog to stop for any length of time to do what a dog sets out to do on its morning walk. She passed the pond and skipped along the footbridge, hastened by the sight of a man in a peaked cap standing beneath a tree. She ran to him and threw herself into his arms. Now left to its own devices, the giant schnauzer bucked up at its mistress’ decision. The man twisted his moustache, turned the woman around and pulled up her nightdress. The woman bent over, supported her hands on the tree and noted with relief that no lights were burning in the enormous edifice of the Hungarian King Hotel and Restaurant. All of a sudden the dog growled. The man in the peaked cap stopped unbuttoning his trousers and looked round.

  Some fifty metres from them two men were forcing their way through the bushes. Both wore bowler hats and had cigarettes between their teeth. The shorter one kept stopping, grasping his stomach and groaning loudly.

  “Quiet, Bert,” the woman whispered as she stroked the dog. Bert growled softly and watched the two men shake thick drops of dew from their clothes.

  The shorter man removed his bowler and wiped the sweat from his brow, and the two of them continued on their way towards the pond where some fat swans had now appeared. Suddenly the shorter of the two stopped and said something loudly, which the woman understood as: “Oh, damn it!” and her partner as: “Oh, fuck!” The groaning man handed his bowler and coat to his taller companion and, pressing his thighs together, he pushed his way into the bushes and squatted. The unfulfilled lover decided to carry on with humankind’s eternal act, but his consort had a different idea. She tied the dog to a tree and hid behind it. Leaning out a little, she watched anxiously as the squatting man ran his fingers over his cheek, looked at them carefully, then looked up. Once again he blurted out the words which the maid and her lover had understood so differently, but now his voice was amplified by horror. At the crown of the old plane tree swung a man hanging by his legs. The dog yelped, the woman screamed and her lover saw a freckled hand covered in red hair with a gun aimed at his nose. The early morning tryst had ended in total disaster.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919

  HALF PAST FIVE IN THE MORNING

  Mock was familiar with the right wing of South Park Restaurant. There was a hotel in the wing where two rooms were forever reserved. Just under a year earlier, when he and Cornelius Rühtgard had been sent, much to their delight, on a Polish train to Warsaw, where the Poles disarmed them, both had sensed a favourable wind
at their backs. They had passed through Łódź and Posen on their way to the Silesian metropolis which, as Mock assured his friend, was to Königsberg like fat carp to dry cod. On arriving in Breslau they had lodged with Franz, Mock’s brother, and that same day they had gone to South Park Restaurant. Their table had been next to the pond, by the stone steps leading down to the water, and the autumn sun had been exceptionally strong that day. Conversation had flagged because Mock’s eight-year-old nephew Erwin, bored by his uncle’s wartime stories and fed up with feeding indifferent swans, had kept on interrupting. Everyone had feigned distress at losing the war, when in fact all had been thinking about their own affairs: Franz about his frigid wife; Irmgard about little Erwin’s tendency to tears and melancholy; Erwin about the gun which he believed must be hidden in his uncle’s backpack; Rühtgard about his daughter Christel, who was taking her final exams that year at a Hamburg boarding school for well-born young ladies, and whom he was to bring to Breslau; and Eberhard Mock about his dying mother in Waldenburg, with the old shoemaker Willibald Mock sitting at her side, trying to hide the tears that ran down the furrows on his face. When Franz’s family had hurriedly said their farewells and set off for the nearby tram terminus, Mock and Rühtgard sat in silence. The festive mood which accompanied them through the elegant restaurants of Warsaw, the dens of Łódź that smelled of onions, and the steamed-up restaurants of Posen, had somehow evaporated into thin air. As they were knocking back their second tankard of beer that day, they had been approached by a head waiter endowed with impressive whiskers. As he changed their ashtray, he had smacked his lips and winked. Mock knew what that meant. Without a moment’s hesitation they had paid and gone up to the first floor of the hotel where, in the company of two young ladies, they had celebrated the end of the war.

  That same head waiter was now sitting on reception. He did not wink or smack his lips; his eyelids and lips were glued together with sleep. Mock did not need to show his identification. Over the course of the year, head waiter Bielick had become well acquainted with Criminal Assistant Mock from the Vice Department of the Police Praesidium, and he did not feel like laughing.

  “How many members of staff are there in the hotel, and how many guests?” Mock said with no introduction.

  “I’m the only member of staff. The caretaker, the cooks and the chambermaid come at six,” Bielick said.

  “And how many guests?”

  “Two.”

  “Are they alone?”

  “No. The one in number four is with Kitty, the other in six with August.”

  “What time did they get here?”

  “Kitty’s one at midnight, the other – yesterday afternoon. August, the poor thing,” Bielick giggled, “he won’t be able to sit down.”

  “Why did you lie to me by saying you’re the only member of staff?” Mock spoke softly, but his voice shook. “Kitty and August are here too.” He lit a cigarette and remembered the existence of a malady called drinking too much. “I’ve not been here for a long time, Bielick,” he muttered. “I didn’t know you were running a brothel for queers.”

  “I informed Councillor Ilssheimer about it directly,” Bielick said, a little embarrassed. “And he gave his assent.”

  “I’m going to pay Kitty and August a visit. Give me the keys!”

  Jangling the keys, Mock climbed the stairs to the first floor. As he mounted the crimson carpet, he did not notice Bielick reach for the telephone. He paused on the mezzanine and glanced out of the window. The boughs of the plane trees swayed. The policeman cutting down the corpse was out of sight, whereas Smolorz was perfectly in view, questioning the unfulfilled lovers. He could see Mühlhaus too, as Smolorz pointed out the hotel to him. And now he could also see the body coming down – fat, and with a red, bloated neck. From that distance the eczema was not visible.

  Mock arrived on the first floor and opened the door marked number four. The room was fitted out like an elegant, eighteenth-century boudoir. Mirrors set in gilt frames hung on the walls, and syringes containing powder stood in front of them. There was an enormous four-poster bed and the immense spider of a still-burning chandelier. Next to the bed stood a dress. It stood because it was supported by a whalebone frame from which flowed the skirt. There were two people in the bed: a small, slight man lay cuddled up to a pair of generous breasts squeezed into a corset. The breasts belonged to a woman who was snoring heavily, opening lips accentuated by a charcoal beauty spot. Wearing an abundantly powdered and tiered wig, she looked as if she had been transported from the days of Louis XIV.

  Mock turned off the light, walked up to the chair where the man’s clothes hung and pulled out his wallet. He sat down heavily at the coffee table, pushed the woman’s lingerie off the marble surface with his elbow and noted down the man’s details. “Horst Salena, forwarding agent, Marthastrasse 23, two children.” Then he got up, yanked the eiderdown off the bed and scrutinized the man who was lying on his back, his ribs protruding above his long johns. He was very thin and ordinary. He could have done anything but haul Wohsedt’s hundred-kilogram body up a high tree. They both awoke. The woman cursed under her breath and covered herself again with the eiderdown.

  Mock studied the forwarding agent’s frightened face.

  “Beat it, Salena. Right now!”

  Salena got dressed without a sound and quickly left, hardly daring to breathe. Mock stepped into the corridor, locking Kitty in her room, and pushed at the door to August’s room. The key did not fit. Mock swore at Bielick under his breath and with a furious expression went downstairs to reception. He looked so fierce that the receptionist slid the correct key across the counter without a word. Mock grabbed it and ran back up-stairs. From the corridor he heard a window slam, and then the dull thud of someone landing heavily. He drew his Mauser and rushed to the window. Criminal Councillor Josef Ilssheimer was running, limping, across the lawn. His bowler hat was missing and his coat was thrown carelessly over his shoulders. Mock rubbed his eyes in astonishment and burst into August’s room. The young man in a dressing gown was not in the least frightened and gazed at the intruder with a smile. Mock looked around the room and saw a bowler hanging on a peg. He took it down and examined it. On the sweat-stained ribbon inside he found the embroidered initials “J.I.” – Josef Ilssheimer had jumped from August’s window! Now Mock knew why he had not been informed by Bielick about the modification to the service offered by South Park Hotel. Mock swallowed acrid saliva and felt it scratch at his throat. He dropped the bowler on the floor and dug his heel into it several times before throwing it into a corner. From that day nothing could surprise him any more. Nothing would have surprised him after having found Wohsedt’s letter in a drain at his very own home, and then discovering the man’s body hanging in a tree in South Park – even finding Councillor Ilssheimer, father of four, in August’s arms. But he could not understand why August was still smiling. He approached him and watched as his open palm struck August’s cheek, leaving a burning red mark.

  “What the fuck are you smiling at?” Mock asked, and without waiting for an answer left the room.

  Kitty’s little salon was already tidy and she herself was dressed; she had forgotten only to remove her tiered wig. Sitting at the table she lowered her eyes modestly. Mock sat opposite her and drummed his fingers on the marble slab set in the silver tabletop. “Not a bad imitation of an eighteenth-century table,” he thought. “Everything in here’s from the eighteenth century.”

  “From what time were you with him, Kitty?”

  “Who, Criminal Assistant, sir?”

  “The man I just threw out.”

  “Six, I think. That’s when he arrived. He paid for the whole night up front. He’s a good client. Bought a carafe of cherry schnapps and paid for dinner, too. A good client. He used to live not far from here …”

  “A good client.” That’s what they had called Mock when he used to drink away his wages in the Hungarian King. That’s what they called him when he used to take two girls to
a room and paid them generously, although in his drunkenness he could not move his hands or legs, let alone anything else. They used to bow to him when he walked into his favourite Jewish taverns on Antonienstrasse and stood for hours at the bar, silent, furious and glum. That whore, she too would have bowed to him from afar in the days when he used to go for walks with his father in South Park. That was only a few months ago. Then Mock’s bad dreams had begun, as had his father’s apathy, broken only by his games with postman Dosche’s dog. A good client in taverns and brothels. A good client with whom nobody had any sympathy – no innkeeper and no whore. And why should they sympathize with him? After all, how were they to know that some monster was slaying people and writing him letters! They weren’t interested; they were too busy looking after their own affairs. They had their own problems. Mock banished these unpleasant thoughts and asked Kitty mechanically: