The End of the World in Breslau (18 page)

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”
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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 he’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
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stood the betrayed husband, a pitiful cuckold, a wretched and infertile manipulator.

“At the baths,” Smolorz stammered, “the Baron’s bodyguard caught me. Forced me to undress. The exercise hall. Climbing bars. They took a photograph of me there. Me, naked, prick in hand. Then, against the same bars, your wife, her mouth open. They said: ‘Stop following us or Mock’s going to get this photograph. A photo-collage. Of his wife and you …’”

The world was in flames, lovers bit off each other’s lips, faithless wives betrayed their husbands at swimming baths, musical blondes with gentle, childish voices knelt before aristocrats, searching for excitement, and friends forgot their friendship. The world was in flames, and Lucretius, singer of fire, took a drug, supposedly to make him more attractive to his frigid chosen one, the cause of his madness. The world was in flames while the indifferent gods sat apathetic, idle and aimless in a luxurious realm between the worlds.

Mock pulled out his Walther and pressed it to Smolorz’s hair, now plastered down with snow. He turned to face the wall. Mock let off the safety catch. In a wretched room, a little red-haired boy eats semolina. “Is he going to kill Papa?” he asks a young Gypsy in Czech. Mock put away his gun and sat down in the snow. He was drunk. He could feel the weight of the gun in his coat pocket. The dark well slowly filled with a carpet of snow. Smolorz waited for his punishment to be meted out while Mock lay there, pressing his face to the ground. After five minutes he stood up and told Smolorz to turn around. His subordinate shook with fear.

“I didn’t do anything with her. It’s a photo-collage,” he croaked.

“Listen to me, Smolorz,” Mock said, brushing the snow from his coat.

“Stop drinking and keep tailing von Hagenstahl. My wife might get in touch with him. Even if the Baron notices you and carries out his threat, you don’t have to worry. They’ll just send me the photo-collage. I already know about it, and I won’t do anything to you. Now sober up, and follow Baron von Hagenstahl’s every move. That’s all.”

Smolorz finally managed to comb his hair with his fingers, buttoned
up his jacket, adjusted his crooked hat and went inside. In the dark corridor, Zupitza’s mighty hand held him back. Wirth stepped out into the courtyard and approached Mock.

“Shall we let him go?” he asked.

“Yes, you don’t have to follow him. His conscience will do the job well enough.”

Wirth gave Zupitza the appropriate sign.

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“The best thing in the world – the last swig at Gabi Zelt’s”.

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Flaming walls of the world.

BRESLAU, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9TH, 1927
SEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

It snowed throughout Saturday and for half of Sunday. The city was swathed in a white shroud that muffled every sound. Instead of the clip-clop of hacks’ hooves, Breslauers heard the faint whisper of sledges gliding through the streets; instead of the clatter of women’s shoes on pavement, the crunch of snow; instead of the splashing of dirty water, the dry crack of ice. Windowpanes were covered in blossoms of frost, chimneys belched sooty smoke, skaters raced on the ice near the Regierungsbezirk Schlesien building, servants used snow to clean carpets, and carters smelled of booze. On Sunday afternoon it stopped snowing. Frost bit hard. Light and thick layers of snow clumped together in coarse clods. Their clean surfaces were cut by dog urine and stained with horse excrement. In the alleys around Salzring, homeless people chose spots on which to die, and criminals locked themselves in their safe, warm, fetid caves between Neuweltgasse and Weissgerbergasse. Newspapers told of the swindles of Willi Wang who, disguised as a hussar, had robbed and infatuated maids and staid married women, and of two ghastly and elaborate murders. Their perpetrator was of interest only to journalists, and he already had several psychological profiles to his name.

All this was unknown to the man the newspapers called “the star of Breslau’s criminal police”, or “the hound with an unerring instinct”. This “genius of criminal detection” had been holding his head, shattered by a hangover, under a stream of icy water for the third time that morning, and now his servant, Adalbert, was drying his tangled hair and red nape with a coarse towel.

Without looking in the mirror, Mock ran a bone comb through his hair, just about managed to fasten his stiff collar, and went through to the dining-room where a jug of coffee was steaming, blackcurrant preserve oozed sweetly through the cheeky recesses of a Kaiser roll’s crispy crust, and an egg yolk trembled temptingly in its slippery white membrane. But Mock had no appetite, and not because of the port which had doubtless tipped the balance of fluids in his stomach the previous night, but because of the presence of Criminal Director Mühlhaus. The latter was sitting at the table, greedily eyeing the breakfast and singlemindedly drilling into his blocked pipe with a small skewer. Mock greeted his chief and sat down opposite him. He poured himself and his guest some coffee. Then silence.

“I apologise for the intrusion at this time of the morning, Mock.” Mühlhaus had finally managed to clean out his pipe and broke the silence. “I hope I haven’t woken Frau Sophie.”

Mock did not reply and spread the yolk, which tasted of iron, around his mouth.

“Smolorz did not turn up for work on Saturday,” Mühlhaus continued. “Do you know why?”

Mock drank a mouthful of leaden coffee. Shreds of the crispy Kaiser roll pricked his gums like steel filings.

“Continue with your silence if you wish,” Mühlhaus sighed as he got up from the chair. “Don’t say a word, have a schnapps and remember the good old days … They’re over. Never to return.”

Mühlhaus straightened his bowler, stashed his pipe in its leather case and sluggishly left the table.

“Adalbert!” Mock shouted. “Breakfast for the Criminal Director!”

Then he took a huge gulp of coffee and experienced an odd harmony of tastes: dark-roasted coffee with the burned aftertaste of strong wine, traces of which unsettled his stomach.

“Nothing returns from the past,” Mock glanced at Mühlhaus, who was once again making himself comfortable at the table. “That is the wisest tautology I’ve ever come across.”

“Seneca captured it more aptly.” Cutlery and plates clattered as Adalbert laid them down in front of Mühlhaus. “
Quod retro est, mors tenet.
”
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