The End of the World in Breslau (17 page)

“My sincerest apologies,” he sobbed. “The bellboy informed you that Mitzi was free, but the client has just come out to pay for an extra hour. I couldn’t turn him down – he’s a very good client. He’s drunk, and probably no match for fiery Mitzi. Gentlemen, please amuse yourselves a while longer, have another drink …”

Mock moved Urbanek aside and climbed the stairs leading to the rooms. The attendant took one look at Wirth and Zupitza and lost all desire to protest. Silence reigned in the red-carpeted corridor. Mock knocked energetically at the door to room 12.

“Occupied!” he heard a woman’s voice.

He knocked again.

“Get lost, please! I’ve paid!” The client must have been an exceptionally polite man who, judging from his barely intelligible babbling, had evidently drunk too much.

At a sign from Mock, Zupitza backed away to the opposite wall, threw himself forward and rammed the door with his shoulder. There was a crash and some plaster crumbled, but the door did not give way. Zupitza did not need to renew his attack since Urbanek had run up and unlocked the door with a spare key. The sight they beheld was pitiful. An exceedingly drunk youth was pulling up his long johns while Mitzi, with her petticoat hitched up, sat on the edge of the iron bed, indifferently lighting up a cigarette in a long cigarette-holder. Seeing Mock, she wrapped the bedspread over her round hips. Mock stepped into the room and inhaled the smell of dust and sweat. He closed the door behind him, leaving Wirth and Zupitza in the corridor.

“Criminal police,” he said somewhat quietly, realizing he did not have to threaten anyone with his authority. The boy had got tangled up in his trouser legs and was looking around helplessly. The Counsellor had taken part in many a brothel raid and was perfectly well acquainted with the embarrassed look of a client whose virility has let him down.

“What’s up, Willy?” came shouts from outside the window. “Are you screwing so hard you’re bringing the walls down?”

A burst of laughter followed, then hiccoughing and burping.

“My friends,” the boy said, squeezing into shoes a little too small for him and with every instant growing more sober. “It was a present. They paid for the girl and I can’t get it up. I’ve drunk too much.”

“How old are you?” asked Mock, sitting on the bed next to Mitzi.

“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 …”