Phantoms of Breslau (16 page)

A second later, as well as olfactory impressions, he experienced those of touch and sound. Chimes rang in his ear and the lobe began to swell
from a hefty clout. Sorg was pushed along the alley and found himself in the yard behind Franz Krziwani’s tobacco shop. The angry face that now confronted him was not entirely unfamiliar.

He was standing before a stocky, well-built man whose height constituted a medium between a much shorter man with a foxy face and a tall beanpole who was fanning his bowler hat to cool his red-moustachioed face. From the opening emerged a giant holding the struggling girl.

“Take it easy with her, Zupitza,” said the stocky man. “Take the lady to the car and try to turn your breath away from her.”

“You shit, you Jew! What do you want to do to her?” Sorg decided to show them all that he was a real man, and threw himself at Zupitza. “Leave her alone or I’ll …”

Zupitza ignored his aggressor entirely. Sorg tumbled to the ground, having tripped over the foot of the man with the foxy face. He wanted to get up but received a hard punch on the other ear. Zupitza vanished with the girl. Sorg fell to the ground and for a moment pondered the difference between the two blows. He knew the second had been dealt with a shoe, and by somebody else. He sat on the cobblestones and stared at the stocky man who was now wiping the tip of his shining brogue with a handkerchief. Sorg knew the owner of these elegant shoes from somewhere, but could not think where.

“Listen to me, you war hero.” The hoarse voice was familiar too. “Now you’re going to tell me something. Give me some information. I’ll pay you for it.”

“Alright,” Sorg said quickly, remembering when he had seen the man before. 1914. The beginning of the war. Sorg had been blackmailing a dimwitted married woman who had a poor grasp of historical events but associated the recently declared war with the absence of her husband, who had just been called up. Sorg had promised not to tell anyone what she had said against the state if she granted him that with which Nature
had so generously equipped her. The woman had consented, and that very same day had gone to the Breslau Vice Department with a complaint. There she was met with complete understanding. The following day, at the time they had agreed, Sorg heard a knock at his door. He ran to it, his demon at the ready to accept the offering, opened the door and saw several men in black. One of them, a thickset man with dark hair, had attacked him with such fury that Sorg had practically lost his life beneath those shiny, polished shoes.

“Ask me.”

“Do you dress up as a sailor and screw ladies of society?”

“Yes.”

“And do you arrange for other young men to dress up for the ladies? Carters, cabbies, gladiators …”

“I don’t, somebody else does.”

“One lady told me she rings you and you arrange it.”

“That’s right. But I ring somebody else to organize other gigolos.”

“Are you paid for it?”

“Yes, I get a commission.”

The interrogator walked up to Sorg, who was still sitting on the cobbles, and grabbed him by the hair. Sorg picked up the the sour reek of a hangover.

“Who do you ring to get the boys?”

“Norbert Risse.” Sorg did not want to smell the hangover any longer and threw the words out quickly. “That queer. He works from a ship, the
Wölsung
. It’s a floating brothel.”

“Here,” said the interrogator, throwing Sorg some banknotes. “Rent a room at the Sieh Dich Für Hotel on Kleingroschenstrasse and get yourself a cheap whore. You can’t afford the girl who was with you.”

The men walked away and left Sorg sitting on the cobbles.

“You’re to go to that ship now, Smolorz,” Sorg overheard one of them
say. “You’re to find out everything about the four sailors. Take the photographs.” From the corner of his eye, Sorg saw his aggressor hand Smolorz an envelope before striding off.

“Mr Mock!” Smolorz called, indicating Sorg. “What about him? You’ve just questioned him face to face … That swine might go and murder him …”

“Nothing’s going to happen to him … Do you see any murderers around here, Smolorz?” Mock retraced his steps and approached his victim, then bent over and tore the Baltic Cross from his uniform. He went to the alleyway between the houses and leaned over a drain in the gutter. The subterranean waters of the city splashed quietly below.

“He’ll buy himself a new one at the flea market,” Smolorz concluded.

“Go and see Risse, Smolorz, and I’ll take the girl,” Mock said, ignoring his subordinate’s remark. Sorg and Smolorz were left alone behind Krziwani’s tobacco shop.

“How fair is that?” Smolorz said to himself, fingering the business card given to him in the tavern by the man with the sideburns and butler’s manners. “He takes the girl and I get to go and see – a queer.”

Sorg said nothing and with his finger inspected the hole in his uniform where the Baltic Cross had hung.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1919
HALF PAST ONE IN THE MORNING

Wirth fired the engine, and Mock fell heavily onto the back seat next to the girl. His clothes were permeated with the smell of tobacco, and a hint of alcohol and expensive eau de cologne. The girl was intrigued by the man she had never spoken to but had frequently seen at home. Her interest was all the greater due to the circumstances of their meeting: a dark night, kisses in a back street, and men who looked like murderers.
Suddenly she was overcome with disgust. Her thoughts had been absorbed by the man who was Alfred’s aggressor. And now Alfred, beaten up and humiliated, was trying to come to his senses in one of the seediest corners of the city! She turned away from Mock.

“I’m not going to say anything to your father, Christel.” Mock wanted to put his hand on the girl’s shoulder, but stopped himself in time.

“You can tell him whatever you want,” Christel Rühtgard growled as she stared out at the military cemetery on the corner of Kirschallee and Lohestrasse. “I don’t care what you or my father think of me …”

“I’m not saying it,” Mock snorted, “to win you over or calm you down after that love scene in a stinking back street …”

“Then why
are
you saying it?” Christel’s eyes were blazing.

“Because I don’t know how to start the conversation.” Mock glanced at her prominent bust and recoiled a little, frightened of his own thoughts.

“Don’t even start one! I’ve got nothing to talk to you about …”

Silence descended. Mock was tired and would most happily have put the spoiled young madame across his knee and given her a thorough spanking. The thought which had frightened him a moment earlier was very innocent compared to what Mock now imagined might follow such a spanking. He plastered his cheek to the cold window and gaped dully at South Park as they approached. His eyes were closing of their own accord. Beneath his eyelids floated the lights of the Three Crowns beer cellar, then silent cemeteries. Trees rustled somewhere in the distance, a carpenter’s plane swished, and a small child cried, pressing a face wet with tears against the tired man’s face. She put her little arms around his neck and tried to say something, tugging at his arm, contorting her lips fretfully and then calling in a raised voice:

“Wake up, Mr Mock! The driver’s asking where we want to go!”

Mock rubbed his eyes, extracted his watch from his pocket and glanced at Christel Rühtgard’s angry face.

“I wanted to see you home,” he muttered, “so that you’re not accosted by any more drunks.”

“Like you?”

Mock got out of the Horch and looked around. They were at the bottom of Hohenzollernstrasse. Wind blew through the treetops in South Park to his right. To his left, the satiated incumbents of the modern detached houses and stately villas slept the sleep of the righteous. None of them were getting ghastly notes from demented murderers; none of them had a child who had just been deserted – or maybe even orphaned – put her arms around their neck. They were not told to pay a gruesome penance for fabricated mistakes. Mock walked round the car, opened the door and offered his arm to the girl. She spurned his polite gesture and nimbly jumped onto the pavement of her own accord.

“Like me,” he replied. “Those are especially dangerous.”

“Don’t make yourself out to be a demon,” Miss Rühtgard said and she set off towards the park. “I haven’t got far to go from here. I don’t want you to walk me home.”

“Today, not far from here,” he called after her, “my men found a man hanging from a tree by his legs!”

Christel Rühtgard stopped and looked at Mock with distaste, as if he had been responsible for decorating trees with dead people. They stood for a while in silence.

“This park is not as safe as the promenade by the moat on Sunday mornings,” Mock said, “where people go for an ice cream after church. It’s haunted here at night, and corpses can be found hanging on trees or floating in the pond.”

“You really won’t say anything to my father about me and Fred?” Christel asked quietly.

“On the condition that I walk you home.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1919
TWO O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

They walked in silence through the dark park, lit up here and there by islands of light from the few street lamps. Mock lit a cigarette.

“You don’t know how to begin the conversation,” laughed Miss Rühtgard quietly. She walked proud and upright. Irritation had given way to faint amusement.

“I know how to begin it, but I don’t know whether you’re going to want to talk about what interests me.”

“I’m not going to talk to you about Alfred Sorg. Is there anything else you’re interested in?”

“You’re an intelligent young lady. I could talk to you about anything.” Mock realized he had paid her a compliment and felt as embarrassed as a schoolboy. “But to touch on certain subjects we’ll have to get to know each other better …”

“You want to get to know me better? Isn’t what my father tells you enough?”

“I remember what your father said about you in the trenches at Dünaburg. You were his only chance of survival. You saved him, dear Christel.” Mock stopped and rubbed the sole of his shoe hard against the pathway, swearing under his breath when he realized he had stepped into one of the mementoes Bert and other dogs leave in parks. He wiped it on the grass and returned to his broken train of thought. “And not only him, by the way. You saved quite a few Russian soldiers. If it hadn’t been for you, your father would have thrown himself at the Russian trenches with his rifle and killed a lot of Russians, then he’d have died himself …”

“What makes you think he had suicidal thoughts?” In the dim light, Christel observed Mock as he pulled out a checked handkerchief and wiped the dust from the tip of his shoe.

“A lot of us had suicidal thoughts,” he muttered. “A good many of us
tried hard to imagine the end of the war, but couldn’t. Your father did. You were the end of the war for him.”

“He talked to you about me?”

“Constantly.”

“And you listened? You sympathized with him? As far as I know, you don’t have any children of your own … How long can one listen to somebody talking about their children, about boys exploding with energy and moody girls?”

“You weren’t a moody girl in his eyes.” This time Mock pulled out a starched white handkerchief and wiped his brow. The September night was almost sweltering. “You were the very idea of a beloved child. An idea in the Platonic sense. A paragon, an archetype … After those conversations I’d envy him… I wanted to have a child like that myself …”

“And after this evening?” Christel looked at Mock in despair. “Would you still like to have a daughter like that?”

“One evening doesn’t cancel out a whole lifetime.” Even though Mock said these words quickly, he hoped the girl had heard the negative in his reply. “I don’t know what things are like between you on a day-to-day basis …”

Mock offered her his arm. After a moment’s hesitation, Christel took him gently by the elbow. They circled the pond.

“You beat up my friend,” she said quietly. “I ought to hate you for that. And yet I’m going to tell you how things are with my father on a day-to-day basis … He’s possessive. Every boy I get friendly with, everyone who visits me, he considers a rival … Once he told me that after my mother’s death – I was two at the time – I jumped for joy … I was happy my mother had died, my alleged rival … Note that … He always has books by Freud on his desk. In one of them he’s boldly underlined the father of psychology’s definition of the Electra complex. Entire pages scribbled on with horrible, smudged ink …”

“Try to understand your father.” Mock felt uncomfortable to be so near the girl. “Young ladies ought to meet young men in the company of chaperones. They shouldn’t be taking part in gatherings of drunken, fired-up commoners.”

Christel let go of Mock’s arm and looked around absent-mindedly.

“Please give me a cigarette,” she said.

Mock offered her his cigarette-case and struck a match.

“Men always strike matches towards themselves, did you know that? You did too. You’re one hundred percent male.”

“Anyone would feel one hundred percent male, walking through a park on a fine night in the company of a young and beautiful lady.” Mock suddenly realized he was courting his best friend’s daughter again. “I apologize, Miss Rühtgard, I didn’t want to say that. I’m supposed to be acting as your Cerberus now, not your Romeo.”

“But the latter is decidedly nicer for any woman,” laughed Miss Rühtgard.

“Is that right?” Mock asked, blessing the dark shadows for concealing his blushes. Feverishly he searched for an apt pun, a humorous retort, but his memory let him down. Minutes passed. Miss Rühtgard smoked her cigarette awkwardly and smiled at him, waiting for him to say something. He was seized by anger – anger at himself and at this chit of a girl who was wrapping him around her little finger. What was most infuriating was the fact that the role suited him.

“Stop it, my dear,” he raised his voice a little, forsaking the formal “Miss Rühtgard”. “You’re not a woman. You’re still a child.”

“Is that so?” she asked playfully. “I stopped being a child in Hamburg. Perhaps you’d like to know the circumstances?”