The End of the World in Breslau (6 page)

“Criminal Director …”

“Silence, Mock!” Mühlhaus shouted. “Silence! The constable on duty who took down the report this morning found neither Smolorz nor Meinerer. It’s a good thing he found the hung-over Counsellor Eberhard Mock. Listen to me, Mock. I’m not interested in your private investigations. Your job is to find the perpetrators of these two crimes. That is what this city wants; that is also what your friends and mine want. If I discover one more time that instead of working you have gone for a beer, I’ll have a word with those men of rigid moral principles to whom you owe your promotion and I’ll tell them a story about a wife-beating alcoholic. As you see,” he added calmly, “there is nothing I don’t know.”

Mock carefully stamped out his cigarette and thought about the Horus Lodge Masons who had helped him in his career; he thought too about the subordinate Meinerer who, feeling himself undervalued,
had poured out his troubles to Mühlhaus; and about loyal Smolorz, now hiding in a droschka staring fixedly at the door of the tenement on Rehdigerplatz, his eyes watering in the wind; and about the young painter, Jakob Mühlhaus, who, thrown out of the house by his morally impeccable father, sought happiness in the company of other male artists.

“If you know everything, Criminal Director,” Mock said, tapping another cigarette against the bottom of his cigarette-case, “then I should very much like to hear about the locksmith’s apprentice Honnefelder before he encountered the embittered and frustrated woodcutter.

“That woodcutter,” Mühlhaus smiled sourly, “judging by his love of calendars, must also be rather a good mason.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME NOVEMBER 29TH, 1927
TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

It had become warmer and melting snow had begun to course down the streets. Dirty clumps slid off the roof of the droschka as Sophie and Elisabeth Pflüger climbed in. Both women were wearing furs, and their faces were hidden by veils.

“Menzelstrasse 49, please,” Elisabeth instructed the cabby, then turned to Sophie. “Do you feel like more of the same today?”

Sophie did not say anything as the mournful tones of Mahler’s 3rd Symphony resounded in her head. She came to moments later when Elisabeth snuggled up to her.

“Oh, please, not today.” Sophie was clearly upset, still thinking about her husband. “Do you know what that cad said to me this morning? That I provoke him on purpose to get slapped across the face. That I must like it! He thinks I’m a pervert!”

“And is he entirely wrong?” Elisabeth rested her head on Sophie’s
shoulder and watched wet lumps of snow as they fell from the branching chestnut trees next to the school on Yorckstrasse. “Are you not a little pervertette?

“Stop.” Sophie resolutely moved away from her friend. “How dare he treat me like that? Spending day in day out with corpses has deranged him in some way. One day he beats me up, the next he pleads for forgiveness, and then, when I forgive him, he leaves me alone for the evening and begs forgiveness again the following day, and when I’m on the point of forgiving him, he coarsely insults me. What am I to do with the lout?”

“Take your revenge,” Elisabeth said sweetly as she watched a tram grating its way along Gabitzstrasse. “You said yourself that it helps and makes it easier for you to put up with the humiliation. Revenge is the delight of goddesses.”

“Yes, but he humiliates me every day.” Sophie observed a poor wretch as he heaved a double-shafted cart to the municipal stoneyard on Menzel-strasse. “Am I to take my revenge on him every day? If so, vengeance will become routine.”

“Then your revenge will have to get harsher and harsher, and become ever more painful.”

“But he can take even that away from me. He was highly suspicious yesterday when I carelessly mentioned something about a mint infusion.”

“If he deprives you of the possibility of revenge,” Elisabeth said seriously, tapping the cabby lightly on the shoulder with her umbrella, “you’ll be all alone with your humiliation. Completely alone.” The droschka stopped outside Elisabeth’s house.

Sophie began to cry. Elisabeth helped her friend out of the droschka and put an arm around her waist. As they went through the gate, they met with the friendly and anxious gaze of the caretaker, Hans Gurwitsch.

Five minutes later, the caretaker bestowed the same gaze upon the stocky, red-haired man who, with the help of a ten-mark note, was trying
to draw information from him about Miss Elisabeth Pflüger and the company she keeps.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME NOVEMBER 29TH, 1927 TWO O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Bischofskeller on Bischofstrasse was alive and busy. The front room was crowded with corpulent warehouse owners greedily swallowing huge dumplings garnished with hard, fried crackling. Before Mock had time to work out whether the dumplings constituted a main course or merely a side dish, the polite waiter Max clicked his heels, smoothed down his pomaded whiskers and, with a starched white napkin, brushed away the invisible remains of a feast enjoyed by some other merchants who, in polishing off the spongy dough and hard crackling, had set their digestive tracts a difficult task only moments earlier. Mock decided to take the risk too and ordered the same dumplings to go with his roast pork and thickened white cabbage, to Max’s evident approval. Without needing to be asked, the waiter stood a tankard of Schweidnitzer beer in front of the Criminal Counsellor, as well as a shot of schnapps and a dish of chicken in aspic garnished with a halo of pickled mushrooms. Mock stabbed a trembling gelatine square with his fork and bit into the crispy crust of a roll. A drop of vinegar, trickling off the cap of a boletus edulis, seasoned the bland chicken. Next, he knocked back the tankard and with pure pleasure washed away the stubborn aftertaste of nicotine. True to the maxim
primum edere deinde philosophari
,
†
he thought neither of Sophie nor of the investigation, and got to work on the dumplings drenched in sauce and the thick slices of roast meat.

Before long Mock sat smoking a cigarette, an empty glass and a wet tankard with froth dripping down its sides in front of him. He reached for
a napkin, wiped his lips, pulled a notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket and began to fill it with nervy, slanting writing.

“Two macabre crimes. One murderer?” he wrote. In his mind he answered his own question in the affirmative. The fundamental argument supporting this hypothesis was neither the cruelty of both crimes nor the degenerate extravagance of the murderer, but his attachment to dates, his desire to mark the day of the crime in a calendar, his attempt to write his deed down in history. As Mock had been informed by Doctor Fritz Berger, Head of Evidence Archives and an expert in forensic science, the page found on Gelfrert dated September 12th, 1927, had been torn from the victim’s wall calendar. Doctor Lasarius had suggested that this might have been the date of Gelfrert’s death. A pocket diary had been found that day in the room of Berthold Honnefelder, a twenty-two-year-old unemployed locksmith; the murderer had scored through the date November 17th with the victim’s blood. Doctor Lasarius had no doubts whatsoever that this was when Honnefelder had died. “And so two men, both sadistically murdered, are found,” thought Mock, as if explaining to an imaginary opponent in his mind. “Next to each, the date of death is found marked in a calendar. If, on the scene of two equally elaborate murders, a rose, a page from the Bible or from a calendar has been left, then the perpetrator of both is one and the same person.”

Mock gratefully accepted a slice of apple cake, a coffee and a glass of cocoa liqueur from Max. There was nothing in the preliminary reports and findings to link the walled-in alcoholic and virtuoso French horn player, supporter of the Brown Shirts and amateur historian, with the quartered teetotal communist activist. Nothing, that is, apart from the date of death, clearly and eagerly given by the murderer. “The murderer wants to tell us: ‘I killed him on precisely this day. Not a day earlier, nor later. Right then’,” Mock thought, swallowing the delicious cake with its duvet of whipped cream. “Let us therefore assume that the victim is inci
dental; only the day on which he died is not incidental. Question: why is it not incidental? Why does the murderer kill on some days and not on others? Perhaps he is simply waiting for a favourable opportunity: when it becomes possible, for example, to convey a bound man past a drunken caretaker to his place of execution. And then, triumphantly, he leaves a note as if to say: ‘Today is a big day. Today I was successful.’ But to all intents and purposes, an opportunity presents itself at every step. One can kill on any day, stick a page from a calendar onto the victim’s forehead, wall him in somewhere or chop him up. And if that opportunity is not out of the ordinary, then is it worth proudly proclaiming to the world when it took place?”

Mock carefully wrote his thoughts down in his notebook and realized he had arrived once more at his starting point. He was not, however, depressed. He knew he had clarified the field of his search and was ready to conduct the investigation. He felt the excitement of a hunter who, in the clear, brisk, fresh air, loads his double-barrelled shotgun and buckles on his cartridge belt. “Old Mühlhaus was wrong,” he thought. “We don’t need many men on this. Smolorz and Meinerer can carry on with the cases I have assigned to them.”

This thought pleased him so much that, after the sweet liqueur, he ordered a glass of dry red wine. Instead of bringing it to his table, however, Max produced a telephone. The voice of Counsellor Herbert Domagalla from the Vice Department grated in the receiver:

“Eberhard, come over to the ‘chocolatier’ straight away. I’m here with Ebners and Völlinger. We can play a couple of rounds of bridge.”

Mock concluded that he would be able to return to the point of departure equally well the next day and decided to have his dry wine at Schaal’s chocolate shop instead.

†
Eat first, then philosophize.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME NOVEMBER 29TH, 1927
TWO O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Winter sun flooded the white parlour. Its walls flaunted white-painted panelling; the white varnish of the furniture glistened, the white upholstery tempted with its softness; the white-glazed grand piano elegantly raised its wing. This whiteness was broken by the cream tapestries that hung on the wall, and by the unnatural flush on Sophie’s cheeks as she passionately struck the keyboard, transforming the piano into a percussion instrument. Elisabeth’s violin sobbed and squeaked, attempting – in vain – to break through the piano’s crescendo. The bare branch of a maple tree, thrashed by the wind, beat an accompaniment against the window-pane, down which trickled pitiful remnants of snow. They also trickled down caretaker Gurwitsch’s inadequately wiped shoes as, having let himself in through the front door with his key, he unceremoniously and without knocking opened the door to the parlour. With relief the women interrupted their playing and rubbed their chilled fingers. A small, dirty coal-caddy on wheels rolled across the white parquet. The caretaker opened the stove door and poured in a few generous shovelfuls of coal. He then stood straight as an arrow and looked expectantly at Elisabeth, who felt a headache coming on when she saw the muddy patches left by his boots. The violinist reached for her purse, handed Gurwitsch half a mark and politely thanked him. The recipient clearly did not intend to leave.

“I realize, Miss Pflüger,” the tenement’s most important occupant smiled cordially, “that half a mark is enough for bringing in the coal. That’s what I always get,” he explained to Sophie, “when Miss Pflüger has given her servants the day off. But today,” he looked at Elisabeth again, “I deserve more.”

“And why is that, my good man?” Sophie, irritated by this banter, stood up from the piano.

“Because today …” Gurwitsch turned up his walrus moustache and glanced lecherously at Miss Pflüger’s friend. “Because today I could have revealed many truths about Miss Pflüger, but instead I told a pack of lies.”

“How dare you!” Sophie’s affected tone had no effect on Elisabeth, who quickly asked:

“You lied? To whom? Who was asking about me?”

Gurwitsch folded his arms over his protruding belly and twiddled his thumbs. As he did so he winked knowingly at Sophie, gradually infuriating her with his impertinence. Elisabeth reached for her purse once more, and Gurwitsch’s willingness to continue the conversation returned.

“The plain-clothes policeman who came after you arrived this morning, that’s who.”

“And what did you tell him?” Elisabeth said.

“He wanted to know who comes to see Miss Pflüger, whether men visit, whether they spend the night, whether Miss Pflüger drinks or snorts snow, what state she comes home in and at what time. He also asked about the other lady. Whether she visits Miss Pflüger frequently, and whether there are any men with her.” The caretaker smiled at the five-mark note Elisabeth had rolled into a narrow straw. “And I said that Miss Pflüger is an extremely respectable lady who is sometimes visited by her mother.”

Gurwitsch held out his hand for the money, astounded by his own perspicacity and intelligence, thanks to which he had earned a week’s worth of vouchers for the canteen.

“Wait,” Sophie said, taking the rolled-up note from her friend’s fingers. “How do we know all this isn’t a lie, that our good man really did see someone, and if it’s true he was questioned by a policeman, then how do we know that is what he told him and not something entirely different?”