BERLIN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 4TH, 1934
HALF-PAST FIVE IN THE MORNING
Herbert Anwaldt opened his eyes and then immediately shut them. He had the vain hope that when he opened them again all around would turn out to be a dismal mirage. It was a futile hope: the drunkard’s den where he found himself was an unshakeable reality, pure realism. In Anwaldt’s head, a small gramophone replayed the refrain he had heard yesterday, over and over again — Marlene Dietrich’s “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fu? auf Liebe eingestellt …”
He moved his head several times. The dull ache slowly spread beneath the vault of his skull; cigarette fumes filled his eye sockets. Anwaldt screwed up his eyes. The pain had become intense and unremitting. In his throat nestled a thick, burning mass tasting of vomit and sweet wine. He swallowed it — through the dry pipeline of his gullet pressed a red-hot bullet. He did not want to drink; he wanted to die.
He opened his eyes and sat up on the bed. The brittle bones of his temples crunched as if squeezed by a vice. He looked around and concluded that he was seeing this interior for the first time. Next to him lay a drunken woman in a dirty, slippery petticoat. At the table slept a man in a vest; his massive hand, with its tattoo of an anchor, caressingly crushed a fallen bottle against the wet oilcloth. On the window, a paraffin lamp was dying. A light streak of dawn filtered into the room.
Anwaldt glanced at the wrist on which he wore a watch. The watch was no longer there. Oh yes, yesterday, overcome with pity, he had offered it to a beggar. A persistent thought stung him: how to get out of the place. This was not going to be easy. He could not see his clothes anywhere. Although he had no shortage of extravagant ideas, he was not wont to go out into the street wearing nothing but his underpants. He noted with relief that, true to a habit which he had acquired at the orphanage, he had tied his shoes together and hung them around his neck.
He picked himself up from the bed and almost fell. His legs slid apart on the wet floor, his arms waved about frantically and found support: the left on a child’s metal bed, the right on a stool where someone had spilt the contents of an ashtray.
Hammers continued to bang within his head, his lungs pumped fiercely, his throat emitted a rasping sound. Anwaldt struggled with himself for a moment — he wanted to lie beside the drunken nymph, but when he looked at her and smelt the odour of rotten teeth and putrid gums, he put the idea firmly aside. In the corner, he espied his creased suit. As swiftly as he could, he dressed in the darkness of the stairwell, dragged himself out into the street and remembered its name: Weserstrasse. He did not know how he had got there. He whistled at a passing droschka†. Criminal Assistant Herbert Anwaldt had been drinking for what was already the fifth day. With short intervals, he had been drinking for six months.
BERLIN, THURSDAY, JULY 5TH, 1934
EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
Criminal Commissioner Heinrich von Grappersdorff was exploding with rage. He thumped the table with his fist and screamed blue murder. It seemed to Anwaldt that the snow-white, round collar of his superior’s shirt would snap over the distended, bull-like neck. He was not especially perturbed by the screaming. Firstly, because any thoughts getting through to his mind were muffled by the thick filter of a hangover; secondly, because he knew that the “old ox from Stettin” had not fallen into a genuine fury yet.
“Look at yourself, Anwaldt.” Von Grapperdorff grasped the Assistant under the armpits and stood him in front of a mirror mounted in an engraved frame. The gesture gave Anwaldt pleasure, as if it were a coarse masculine caress. He saw, in his reflection, the slim, unshaven face of an auburn-haired man which undeniably betrayed the five-day binge. The whites of his eyes, shot with blood, were lost in their swollen sockets, from the dry lips stuck out flakes of sharp skin, the hair clung to a deeply furrowed brow.
Von Grappersdorff took his hands from Anwaldt and wiped them with revulsion. He stood behind his desk and once more assumed the stance of Thunderer.
“You’re thirty and look as if you were forty. You’ve sunk to the very bottom like the worst whore! And all because of some rag with the face of an innocent. Soon any Berlin thug will buy you out for a tankard of beer! And I don’t want any corruptible whores here!” He drew in a breath and roared: “I’m throwing you out, Schnappswald! Reason: five days’ unauthorised leave.”
The Commissioner sat down behind his desk and lit a cigar. Blowing clouds of smoke, he did not take his eyes off what used to be his best employee. The filter of a hangover had stopped working. Anwaldt realized that he would soon be left without a pension and would only be able to dream of alcohol. This thought had the necessary effect. He looked pleadingly at his superior, who suddenly started reading a report from the previous day. After a long while, he sternly said:
“I am dismissing you from the Berlin police. As of tomorrow, you start work at the Breslau Police Praesidium. A certain very important person there wants to entrust you with a rather difficult mission. So? Do you accept my proposition or are you going to beg on Kurfurstendamm? If the local boys let you in on a cushy job …”
Anwaldt tried not to burst into tears. He did not think about the Commissioner’s proposition so much as about holding back his tears. This time von Grappersdorff’s fury was genuine.
“Are you going to Breslau or aren’t you, you wine-sodden tramp?”
Anwaldt nodded. The Commissioner calmed down immediately.
“We’ll meet on Friedrichstrasse this evening at eight, on platform three. I’ll give you a few essential details then. Here are fifty marks to clean yourself up. Pay me back when you’re settled in Breslau.”
BERLIN, THAT SAME JULY 5TH, 1934
EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING
Anwaldt arrived punctually. He was clean, shaven and — most importantly — sober. He was dressed in a new, lightweight, pale-beige suit and matching tie. He carried a tattered briefcase and an umbrella. His hat, somewhat askew, made him look like an American actor whose name von Grappersdorff did not know.
“Well. Now, that’s more like it.” The Commissioner approached his former employee and sniffed. “Breathe out!”
Anwaldt did as he was told.
“Not a single beer?” Von Grappersdorff was incredulous.
“Not even a beer.”
The Commissioner took him by the arm and they began to walk along the platform. The engine was expelling clouds of steam.
“Listen carefully. I don’t know what it is you’ve got to do in Breslau, but the task is very difficult and dangerous. The bonus you’ll receive will allow you not to work for the rest of your life. Then you’ll be able to drink yourself to death, but during your stay in Breslau, not a drop … Understood?” Von Grappersdorff laughed heartily. “I must admit, I advised Muhlhaus, my old friend from Breslau, against this. But he insisted. I don’t know why. Maybe he heard that you used to be good from somewhere. But, to the point. You’ve got the entire carriage to yourself. Have a good time. And here’s a going-away present from your colleagues. It’ll help with the hangover.”
He wagged his finger. A shapely brown-haired woman in a playful hat came up to them. She handed Anwaldt a piece of paper: “I’m a present from your colleagues. Take care and drop in to Berlin again from time to time.”
Anwaldt looked around and behind the ice-cream and lemonade stall on the platform he saw his laughing colleagues pulling silly faces and making rude gestures. He was embarrassed. The girl, not in the least.
BRESLAU, FRIDAY, JULY 6TH, 1934
HALF-PAST FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON
Criminal Director Eberhard Mock was getting ready to leave for Zoppot, where he intended to spend a two-week holiday. The train was leaving in two hours so it was not surprising that an indescribable mess reigned in his apartment. Mock’s wife felt like a fish in water. The short and corpulent blonde was giving the servants brief instructions in a loud voice. Mock sat in an armchair, bored and listening to the radio. He was in the process of searching for a different wavelength when the telephone rang.
“The Baron von der Malten’s residence here,” he heard the butler Matthias’ voice. “The Baron is expecting you, Criminal Director, just as soon as is possible.”
Without ceasing to search for his wavelength on the radio, the Criminal Director said in a calm voice:
“Listen here, you lackey, if the Baron wants to see me then let him take the trouble ‘just as soon as is possible’ himself because I’m just about to leave on holiday.”
“I was expecting just such a reaction, Eberhard.” Eberhard heard the deep and cold voice of the Baron over the receiver. “I foresaw it and, since I have respect for time, I have placed a visiting card with a telephone number on it next to the receiver. It cost me a lot of trouble to get hold of it. If you don’t come here straight away, I’ll dial the number. Do you want to know who I’ll be connected to?”
Mock was suddenly no longer interested in the martial music transmitted over the radio. He ran his finger along the top of the radio set and muttered: “I’ll be there directly.”
A quarter of an hour later he was on Eichen-Allee. Without a word of greeting, he passed the old butler, who was standing — straight as an arrow — in the doorway, and growled: “I know how to find the Baron’s study!”
His host was in the open door, dressed in a long, pique dressing gown and slippers of pale leather. Beneath the unbuttoned collar of his shirt was a silk neckerchief. He was smiling, but his eyes were extremely mournful. The slim, furrowed face was aflame.
“It’s a great honour for us that your Excellency has deigned to trouble himself to come and see us,” he contorted his face in a joker’s grin. All of a sudden he grew serious. “Come inside, sit down, have a smoke and don’t ask any questions!”
“I’ll ask one.” Mock was clearly angry. “Who were you going to phone?”
“I’ll start with that. If you hadn’t come, I’d have phoned Udo von Woyrsch, Chief of the S.S. in Breslau. He’s a nobleman from an excellent family, somehow even connected to the von der Maltens by marriage. He would most certainly have helped me get through to the new Head of the Gestapo, Erich Kraus. Did you know … von Woyrsch has been in an excellent mood for a week now. He drew his knife during ‘the night of the long knives’ too, and destroyed the despised enemy: Helmuth Bruckner, Hans Paul von Heydenbreck and other S.S.-men. Oh my, and what a terrible thing met our dear rake and conqueror of boys’ hearts, Edmund Heines! The S.S. killed him in beautiful Bavarian Bad Wiessee. They dragged him out of not just anybody’s bed, but that of the Chief of the S.A., Ernst Rohm himself, who not long after, shared his loved one’s fate … And what happened to our beloved, hearty Piontek that he had to go and hang himself in his own garden? Apparently they showed his darling wife a few photographs where old Walter, dressed in a spherical cap, was performing what the ancients used to call lesbian love, with a nine-year-old girl. If he hadn’t done away with himself, our brown-shirt cubs from Neudorfstrasse would have dealt with him.”
The Baron, a dedicated lover of Homer, adored retardation. This time the retardation was actually an introduction.
“I’ll ask you a brief and succinct question: do you want Kraus to see the documents I keep and which prove irrefutably that the Chief of the Criminal Department used to be a Freemason? Answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Did you know that the Chief of the Gestapo of barely a few days feverishly wants to prove himself so as to show his principals in Berlin that their decision had been correct. We have in the Gestapo now a man who is more of a Hitlerite than Hitler himself. Do you want the Hitler of Breslau to find out the whole truth about your career?”
Mock began to wriggle in his chair. The choice cigar suddenly took on a sour after-taste. He had known somewhat earlier about the planned attack on Rohm and his Silesian followers, but he had, with particular relish, forbidden his men to intervene in any way. “Let them kill themselves, the swine,” he had told the one and only man in the police whom he trusted. And he, himself, had gladly supplied the S.S. with a number of compromising photographs. He had wanted to greet the fall of Piontek, Heines and Bruckner with champagne, but as he was raising a solitary toast his arm suddenly stiffened. He had realized that the thugs had executed a purge among themselves but that they continued to rule. And that after the few bad specimens, even worse might follow. He had anticipated correctly: Erich Kraus was the worst of all the Hitlerites he had known.
“Don’t answer, you little shoemaker from Waldenburg, you little hustler, you mediocrity! Even your interpretations of Horace had the finesse of a shoemaker’s hoof. Ne ultra crepidam.† You did not heed the warning and lied at our door. For your career. You left the Lodge. You secretly served the Gestapo. Don’t ask how I know all this … Of course, you also did this for your career. But it is my daughter who served your career best. You remember — the same one who, limping, would run to meet you. You remember how much she liked you? ‘Dear Herr Ebi’ … she’d cry when she saw you.”
Mock got up abruptly.
“What do you want? I’ve already handed you the murderer. Speak, as you promised, ‘briefly and succinctly’ and spare yourself this Ciceronian performance!”
Von der Malten did not say a word, but walked up to his desk and took a tin Wiener Chocolate box from a drawer. He opened it and slipped it under Mock’s nose. A scorpion was pinned to the red velvet. Next to it lay a little blue card with the Coptic verses about death which he already knew. Underneath was added in German: ‘Your pain is still too small.’ I found this in my study.”
Mock looked at the geocentric model of Earth and said far more calmly now:
“There is no lack of psychopaths. In our city, too. And most certainly among your servants — who could get into such a well-guarded residence?”
The Baron was toying with a paper-knife. Suddenly, he turned his eyes to the window. “Do you want to see in order to believe? Do you really want to look at my daughter’s dessous? I’ve put it away. It was in this box next to the scorpion and this letter.”
Mock did, indeed, remember that Marietta’s underwear was missing from the scene of the crime. He had even told one of his men to check on all fetishists on this very account.
Von der Malten put the knife aside and said in a voice trembling with rage:
“I finished off that ‘murderer’ in the cellar, the man you delivered to me … That old, demented Jew … There’s only one man I hate more than you: the real murderer. You’re going to put all that’s within your power, Mock, to work and find that murderer. No … no … not you personally. Somebody else will be heading the new investigation. Someone from the outside, whom no gang from Breslau will ensnare. Besides, you’ve already caught the murderer … How would that be? You looking for him again? You might even lose your position and your medal …”
The Baron leaned across the desk and their faces came within a few centimetres of each other. Stale breath enveloped Mock.
“Are you going to help me or am I to ruin your career? Are you going to do everything I tell you or am I to call von Woyrsch and Kraus?”
“I’ll help you, but I don’t know how. What am I to do?” he replied without hesitation.
“That’s your first intelligent question.” Anger still trembled in the Baron’s voice. “Come into the drawing-room. I’ll introduce you to somebody.”
As the Baron opened the door to the drawing-room, two men sitting at a side table immediately stood up. The not too tall man with curly, dark hair looked like a teenager caught by his parents in the act of looking through pornographic illustrations. The younger, slim, auburn-haired man, had the same expression of weariness and satisfaction in his eyes as Mock saw in his own on Saturday mornings.
“Criminal Director,” the Baron addressed Mock. “Let me introduce Doctor Georg Maass from Konigsberg and Criminal Assistant of the Berlin Police, Herbert Anwaldt. Doctor Maass is a fellow at the University of Konigsberg and an eminent Semitologist and historian; Assistant Anwaldt a specialist in crimes of a sexual nature. Dear gentlemen, this is Chief of the Criminal Department of the Police Praesidium in Breslau, Criminal Director Eberhard Mock.
The men nodded to each other, after which — following the Baron’s example — they sat down. The host continued ceremoniously:
“In keeping with his courteous assurance, the Criminal Director will give you any help you need. Files and libraries stand open to you. The Criminal Director has kindly agreed to employ — as of tomorrow — Assistant Anwaldt in the establishment under his command as Official in Charge of Special Affairs. Am I right, Criminal Director?” — Mock, astounded by his implied “courtesy”, nodded — “Assistant Anwaldt, having access to all files and information, will commence a highly secret investigation into my daughter’s murder. Have I omitted anything, Criminal Director?”
“No, you have omitted nothing, Baron,” confirmed Mock, wondering how he would assuage his wife’s anger when she found out that she would be spending the first days of her holiday alone.
BRESLAU, SATURDAY, JULY 7TH, 1934
EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
A uniform heat prevailed over Breslau. The hollow in which Breslau lay roasted in streaks of burning air. Sellers of lemonade sat under parasols on street corners, in shops and other places rented out for the purpose. They did not have to advertise their goods. All were employing helpers who supplied them with buckets of ice from the stores. Fanning itself incessantly, the sweaty crowd filled the cafes and pastry shops on elegant Gartenstrasse. Musicians, soaked in sweat, played Sunday marches and waltzes on Liebichshohe where, under the spread of chestnut and plane trees, the weary middle class breathed the dusty air. Squares and parks were peopled with old folk playing skat and angry nursemaids trying to calm over-heated children. Older pupils, who had not yet left for the holidays, had long forgotten about sine or about Hermann and Dorothea and were organizing swimming competitions on Burgerwerder. The lumpenproletariat from the little, poor, dirty streets around Ring and Blucherplatz drank tankfuls of beer and, by morning, lay sprawled in doorways and gutters. Youngsters arranged hunts for rats which were rummaging among the dustbins in unusually large swarms. Damp bedclothes hung dolefully from windows. Breslau gasped under the weight of the heat. The manufacturers and sellers of ice-cream and lemonade rubbed their hands. The breweries worked at full steam. Herbert Anwaldt was beginning his investigation.
The policemen sat in the briefing room without their jackets, their collars loosened. The sole exception was Mock’s deputy, Max Forstner, who — although sweating in his rather too tight suit and stiff collar — did not allow himself even the appearance of informality. He was not much liked. The reason for this antipathy lay in the conceit and malice which he dealt out to his subordinates in small yet virulent doses. Here he would criticize someone’s cut of hat as being unfashionable, there pick on someone’s badly shaven stubble or stained tie, or dispute yet other trivialities, which — according to him — spoke ill of a policeman’s image. But this morning the heat deprived him of any arguments in all eventual dispute regarding his subordinates’ wardrobe.
The door opened and Mock came in, alongside him a slim, auburn-haired man of about thirty. The new policeman looked like a man who could not get enough sleep. He was stifling his yawns, but his eyes betrayed him with their tears. Forstner grimaced at the sight of the pale beige suit.
Mock, as usual, started by lighting a cigarette, an action repeated after their superior by almost all the men.
“Good morning, gentlemen. This is our new colleague, Criminal Assistant Herbert Anwaldt, who until recently was working with the Berlin Police. Assistant Anwaldt, as of today, is employed as Official in Charge of Special Affairs in our Criminal Department and is heading an investigation. He is responsible solely to me for its progress and results. Please execute his requests scrupulously. For the length of this investigation, Criminal Assistant Anwaldt is, in keeping with my decision, as good as your superior. This does not, of course, include Forstner.” Mock extinguished his cigarette and remained silent for a moment; his men knew that the most important item of the briefing was about to follow. “Gentlemen, if Assistant Anwaldt’s instructions momentarily deter you from your existing cases, leave those aside. Our new colleague’s case is, at the moment, of prime importance. That’s all, please return to your duties.”
Anwaldt looked around Mock’s office with curiosity. Try as he might, he could not find anything in this room that might express any individuality, that might bear any mark of the person occupying it. Everything had its place and was clean to the point of sterility. The Director suddenly unsettled the balance of all this paraphernalia — he removed his jacket and threw it across the back of his chair. Between the blue braces with their singular pattern (naked female bodies entwined in an embrace) proudly protruded a rather prominent belly. Anwaldt, pleased to finally discern a man of flesh and blood, smiled. Mock did not notice; he had just asked for two cups of strong tea over the phone.
“Apparently, it’s excellent for quenching thirst when it’s so hot. We’ll see …”
He passed Anwaldt a box of cigars. Unhurriedly and methodically, he cut the tip of one with a small pair of tweezers. Mock’s assistant, Dietmar Krank, laid a jug and some cups on the desk.
“Where would you like to start, Anwaldt?”
“Criminal Director, I have a suggestion …”
“Forget the formal address. We’re not as ceremonious as the Baron.”
“Of course, as you wish. I spent last night reading the case files. I’d like to know what you think of the following reasoning: somebody made a scapegoat of Friedlander, ergo somebody wants to hide the real perpetrator. Perhaps it’s precisely that somebody who is the murderer. I have to find the person or persons who framed Friedlander, meaning — in other words — those who planted him for you to devour. So I’ll start with Baron von Kopperlingk because he pointed you to Friedlander.” Anwaldt smiled surreptitiously. “But, by the way, how could you have believed that a sixty-year-old — within half an hour — managed to kill a railway man, then have intercourse twice, which — one may surmise — the victims did not make easy. Then kill both women, write some squiggles on the wall, thereafter jump out of the window and dissolve into the mist. Show me a twenty-year-old who could perform such a feat.”
“My dear man,” Mock laughed. He liked Anwaldt’s naive enthusiasm. “Exceptional, superhuman powers can occur quite often in epileptics, after a fit, too. All such behaviour is the result of mysterious hormones, which Friedlander’s physician, Doctor Weinsberg, elaborated to me in detail. I’ve no reason not to trust him.”
“Exactly so. You trust him. But I do not trust anyone. I have to see that doctor. Perhaps somebody told him to tell you about the extraordinary gifts of epileptics, dervishes’ trances and other such …” Anwaldt could not find the word, “other such nonsense.”
Mock slowly drank his tea.
“You’re very categorical, young man.”
Anwaldt drank half a cup in one go. He wanted, at all costs, to show the Director how confident he felt in matters such as these. And it was precisely self-confidence that he lacked. He was behaving, right now, like a little boy who has wet his bed in the night and, on waking in the morning, does not know what to do with himself. (I was chosen. I am the chosen one. I will earn masses of money.) He finished what remained of his tea.
“I’d like a transcript of Friedlander’s interrogation, please,” he tried to give his voice a hard edge.
“What do you need a transcript for?” Mock’s tone was no longer playful. “You’ve been working in the police for years and you know that sometimes the person being interrogated needs to be appropriately pressurized. The transcript has been touched up. It’s better that I tell you what happened. I’m the one who questioned him after all.” He looked out of the window and started to invent fluently. “I asked about an alibi. He didn’t have one. I had to strike him. (The man from the Gestapo, Konrad, forced him to talk in short order, no doubt. He has his methods.) When I asked about the strange writing with which he filled thick notebooks, he laughed that it was a message to his brothers who were going to avenge him. (I have heard that Konrad slashes through tendons with a razor.) I had to be far more persuasive. I told them to fetch his daughter. That did the trick. He calmed down immediately and confessed he was guilty. That’s all. (Poor girl … What to do? I had no choice but to hand her over to Piontek … He got her addicted to morphine and packed her into bed with various high-ranking types.)”
“And you believed a madman?” Anwaldt’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. “Whom you subjected to blackmail like that?”
Mock was sincerely amused. He assumed Muhlhaus’ attitude in face of Anwaldt — a kind-hearted grandfather stroking the head of a fantasizing grandson.
“Isn’t that enough for you?” A sarcastic smile spread over his lips. “Here I have a madman and epileptic who, as the doctor states, can perform miracles shortly after a fit; no alibi, strange writing in notebooks. If you, having such evidence, continued to look for the murderer, you’d never finish your investigation. But maybe you were equally discerning in Berlin and old von Grappersdorff finally sent you off into the country?”
“Director, sir, did all this really convince you?”
Mock consciously gave slow vent to his irritation. He adored the feeling: to control waves of emotion and to give them free reign at any moment.
“Are you running an investigation or drawing up a psychological profile of my person?” he shouted. But he had played it wrong; he had not scared Anwaldt in the least. Mock did not know that shouting did not work on him. He had heard it all too often in childhood.
“Sorry,” said the Assistant. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Look, my son,” Mock spread himself comfortably in his chair, toying with his wedding ring and, in his thoughts, constructing his own keen profile of Anwaldt. “If I had such thin skin, I wouldn’t have been able to work for what’s coming up to twenty-five years in the police.” He immediately realized that Anwaldt was pretending to be humble. This intrigued him to such an extent that he decided to join in this subtle game.
“You didn’t have to apologize. This way you revealed your weakness. I’ll give you some good advice: always hide your own weak points, expose those of others. That way you ensnare others. Do you know what it means, ‘to have something on somebody’ or ‘to hold someone in a vice’? That ‘vice’ might, for example, be gambling; or it might be harmoniously built ephebes; or again, Jewish origins. By tightening that vice, I have triumphed an infinite number of times.”
“Can you now use my weakness against me? Can you catch me in ‘the grips of anxiety’?”
“But why should I?”
Anwaldt ceased being humble. This conversation was giving him a great deal of pleasure. He felt like the representative of a rare scientific discipline, who suddenly meets another demon of the science in a train and is trying not to count the stations passing by inexorably.
“Why? Because I’ve renewed an investigation which you concluded with such incredible success. (From what I know, the investigation advanced your career prodigiously.)”
“Then run the investigation and don’t perform psychological vivisections on me!” Mock had decided to lose his temper a little again.
Anwaldt fanned himself for a while with a copy of the Breslauer Zeitung. Finally, he risked: “And so I am. Starting with you.”
Mock’s whole-hearted laughter resounded in the room. Anwaldt timidly chimed in. Forstner was listening at the door — in vain.
“I like you, son,” Mock finished his tea. “If you have any problems, call me any time, night or day. I’ve got a ‘vice’ for almost everybody in this city.”
“But not yet one for me?” Anwaldt was putting the elegant visiting card away in his wallet.
Mock got up, giving the sign that he considered the conversation over. “And that’s why I still like you.”
BRESLAU, THAT SAME JULY 7TH, 1934
FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
Apart from the kitchen, Mock’s study was the only room in his five-roomed apartment on Rehdigerplatz 1 to have north-facing windows. Only here was it possible to enjoy a pleasant coolness in the summer. The Director had just finished eating lunch, brought to him from the Grajecka restaurant across the courtyard. He sat at his desk and drank cold Haselbach beer which he had taken from the larder a short while ago. As usual after a meal, he was smoking and reading a book picked at random from his bookshelf. This time he had picked the work of a banned author: The Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud. He was reading the paragraph about slips of the tongue and slowly falling into much-desired sleep when it came to him that he had called Anwaldt “my son” that day. It was a slip of the tongue which, in Mock’s speech, was highly unusual. He considered himself to be a very reserved man and, under Freud’s influence, he believed it was precisely slips of the tongue which disclosed our hidden needs and desires. His greatest dream was to father a son. He had divorced his first wife after four years of marriage when she had betrayed him with a servant because she could no longer tolerate his increasingly brutal accusations of barrenness. Later, he had had many lovers. If one of them had only become pregnant, he would have married her without any hesitation whatsoever. Unfortunately, the succession of lovers all left the gloomy neurotic, found someone else and created more or less happy herds. They all had children. Mock, then forty, still did not believe in his infertility and continued to search for a mother for his son. Finally he found a former medical student whose family had disowned her because of her illegitimate child. The girl was expelled from university and became the mistress of a certain rich fence. Mock was questioning her regarding a case in which the fence was involved. A few days later, Inga Martens moved into an apartment on Zwingerstrasse which Mock had rented for her, and the fence — after the policeman had caught him in a “vice” — very willingly moved to Liegnitz and forgot about his lover. Mock was happy. He would come to Inga every morning for breakfast after intensive sessions at the swimming pool next door to her house. After three months, his happiness reached it zenith: Inga was pregnant. Mock made the decision to marry a second time; he had come to believe the old Latin saying — “amor omnia vincit”. After a few months, Inga moved out of Zwingerstrasse and gave birth to the second child of her lecturer, Doctor Karl Meissner who, in the meantime, had got a divorce and married her. Mock, for his part, had lost his faith in love. He stopped living an illusion and married a rich, childless Danish woman, his second and last wife.
The Director’s reminiscences were interrupted by the phone ringing. He was glad to hear Anwaldt’s voice.
“I’m taking advantage of your kind permission and calling. I have a problem with Weinsberg. He’s called Winkler now and is pretending not to know anything about Friedlander. He did not want to talk and almost set his dogs on me. Do you have ‘something’ on him?”
Mock considered for a full minute.
“I think so, but I can’t talk about it over the phone. Please come here in an hour. Rehdigerplatz 1, apartment 6.”
He replaced the receiver and dialled Forstner’s number. He asked him two questions and listened to the exhaustive replies. A moment later, the telephone began to ring again. Erich Kraus’ voice combined within itself two contrary intonations: the Chief of the Gestapo was at once asking and ordering.
“Mock, who is this Anwaldt, and what’s he doing here?”
Eberhard could not abide this arrogant tone. Walter Piontek had always humbly asked for information even though he knew that Mock could not refuse him, whereas Kraus brutally demanded it. Although he had worked in Breslau for only a week, the latter was already sincerely loathed by many for this lack of tact. “A parvenu from Frankenstein and a fanatic,” — whispered Breslau’s aristocrats, both those of blood and those of spirit.
“Well, have you fallen asleep over there?”
“Anwaldt is an Abwehr agent,” Mock had been prepared for questions about his new assistant. He knew that giving the true answer would be very dangerous for the Berliner. This reply also protected Anwaldt since the Head of Breslau’s Abwehr, the Silesian aristocrat, Rainer von Hardenburg, detested Kraus. “He’s uncovering Polish Intelligence in Breslau.”
“Why do you need him? Why haven’t you gone on holiday as planned?”
“A personal matter kept me here.”
“What?”
Kraus valued, above all, military marches and a stable family life. Mock felt revulsion for this man who, precisely and methodically, washed his hands of the blood of prisoners he himself had tortured in order later to sit down to a family meal. On the second day of office, Kraus had battered to death a married prisoner who had refused to reveal where he met with his lover, an employee of the Polish Consulate. He later boasted to the entire Police Praesidium that he hated marital infidelity.
Mock drew in some air and hesitated:
“I stayed back because of a girlfriend … But I ask you to be discreet … You know what it’s like …”
“Psh,” snorted Kraus. “I do not know what it’s like.”
The receiver was slammed down with force. Mock approached the window and stared at the dusty chestnut tree whose leaves were not ruffled by the slightest breeze. The water carrier was selling his life-giving liquid to the residents of the block, children chased each other and shouted on the playground belonging to the Jewish Community School and raised clouds of dust. Mock was somewhat irritated. He wanted a rest, but here they were not giving him any peace even after working hours. He set out the chessboard on his desk and reached for Chess Traps by Uberbrand. When the combinations had absorbed him to such an extent that he had forgotten about the heat and his own tiredness, the doorbell rang. (Dammit, that must be Anwaldt. I hope he plays chess.)
Anwaldt was an enthusiast of the game. So it is not surprising that he and Mock sat at the chessboard until dawn, drinking coffee and lemonade. Mock, who ascribed prognostic meanings to the simplest of actions, wagered that the result of the last game would prophesy the success of Anwaldt’s investigation. They played out the sixth and last game between two and four o’clock. It ended in a draw.
BRESLAU, SUNDAY, JULY 8TH, 1934
NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
Mock’s black Adler drove up to the shabby tenement on Zietenstrasse where Anwaldt lived. The Assistant heard the sound of the horn just as he was coming downstairs. The men shook hands. Mock drove along Seydlitzstrasse, passed the enormous Busch Circus building, turned left, crossed Sonnenplatz and stopped in front of the Nazi printers on Sonnenstrasse. He got out and shortly returned with a small bundle under his arm. He turned sharply and accelerated so as to move the hot, stagnant air in the car at least a little. He was short of sleep and silent. They drove under the viaduct and found themselves on the long and beautiful Gabitzstrasse. Anwaldt watched the churches go by with interest as Mock knowingly told him to whom they were dedicated: first the small Jesuit chapel as if joined to the neighbouring tenement, then the new church of Christ the King, and the recent St Charles Boromeus with its stylized medieval outline. Mock drove fast, overtaking trams from as many as four different lines. He passed the municipal cemetery, cut across Menzelstrasse, Kurassier Allee and parked in front of the brick barracks of the guardsmen on Gabitzstrasse. Here, in the modern tenement, number 158, a large comfortable apartment was occupied by Doctor Hermann Winkler, until recently Weinsberg. The Friedlander case had changed his life auspiciously. The good angel of this transformation was Hauptsturmfuhrer Walter Piontek. The start of their acquaintance had not been encouraging. One evening in May of ’33, Piontek had crashed into his old apartment, cruelly abused him and then, in a sweet voice, presented his alternative: either he would convincingly declare in the newspapers that Friedlander changed into Frankenstein’s monster after epileptic fits, or he would die. When the doctor hesitated, Piontek added that if he accepted his proposition, it would significantly boost his finances. So Weinsberg had said “yes” and his life had indeed changed. Thanks to Piontek, he acquired a new identity and, every month, a sum of money flowed into his account at “Eichborn and Co.” business enterprise, which — although not very large — pleased the exceptionally frugal doctor. Unfortunately, this dolce vita had not lasted long. A few days ago, Winkler had learned about Piontek’s death from the newspapers. That same day, the Gestapo had paid him a visit and retracted the agreement negotiated with the generous Hauptsturmfuhrer. When he had tried to protest, one of the Gestapo, an overweight savage, acting — so he claimed — on the instructions of his boss, broke the fingers of Winkler’s left hand. After that visit, the doctor had bought himself two fully grown Great Danes, repudiated the Gestapo’s remuneration and tried to make himself invisible.
Mock and Anwaldt drew back when, behind Winkler’s door, the dogs began to bark and howl.
“Who’s there?” they heard through the minimal opening in the door.
Mock restricted himself to showing his identification — every word would have been drowned by the racket coming from the dogs. Winkler, with difficulty, calmed the hounds, tied them on a leash and invited his unwelcome guests into the drawing-room. There, as if on command, they lit cigarettes and looked around the room which appeared more like an office than a drawing-room. Winkler, a man of middling height, red-haired and about fifty, was a classic example of the pedantic bachelor. Instead of glasses and carafes, on the side-board stood canvas-bound files. Each of them had the name of a patient neatly written on its spine. The thought occurred to Anwaldt that this modern block of a house would collapse sooner than any of the files would change their place. Mock broke the silence.
“The dogs, are they for your protection?” he asked with a smile, indicating the Danes huddled on the floor and observing the strangers with mistrust. Winkler had tied them to the heavy oak table.
“Yes,” the doctor retorted dryly, wrapping his bathrobe around him. “What brings you here this Sunday morning?”
Mock ignored the question. He smiled amicably.
“To protect you … Yes, yes … From whom? Perhaps from those who broke your fingers?”
The doctor was perturbed and, with his good hand, reached for a cigarette. Anwaldt gave him a light. The way in which he inhaled showed that this was one of the few cigarettes in his life.
“What do you want?”
“What do you want? What brings you here?” Mock mimicked Winkler. Suddenly, he approached within safe distance and yelled:
“I’m the one who’s asking questions here, Weinsberg!”
The doctor just about managed to pacify the dogs which, growling, threw themselves at the policeman, almost bringing down the table to which they were tied. Mock sat down, waited a moment and continued calmly now:
“I’m not going to ask you any questions, Weinsberg. I’m only going to present you with our demands. Please make all your notes and materials concerning Isidor Friedlander accessible to us.”
The doctor started to tremble despite the almost physical waves of heat which flooded the sunny room.
“I haven’t got them any more. I handed everything over to Hauptsturmfuhrer Walter Piontek.”
Mock studied him. After a minute, he knew Weinsberg was lying. He was glancing at his bandaged hand a little too often. This could only have signified either “these men are going to start breaking my fingers, too” or “oh God, what’ll happen if the Gestapo return and demand those materials?” Mock took the second possibility to be closer to the truth. He placed the small bundle from the printers on the table. Winkler tore the parcel open and started to flick through the yet unstitched brochure. His bony finger slid along one of the pages. He turned pale.
“Yes, Winkler, you’re on the list. This is only a proof as yet. I can get in touch with the editor of that brochure and get your new, or even old, name removed. Am I to do that, Weinsberg?”
The temperature in the car was even a few degrees higher than outside, meaning it was about 35 °C. Anwaldt threw his jacket and a large cardboard box covered with green paper on to the back seat. He opened the box. In it were copies of notes, articles and one primitively pressed gramophone record. The writing on the lid of the box read: “The case of I. Friedlander’s prognostic epilepsy.”
Mock wiped the sweat from his brow and anticipated Anwaldt’s question:
“It’s a list of doctors, nurses, paramedics, midwives and other of Hippocrates’ servants of Jewish descent. It’s to appear shortly.”
Anwaldt looked at one of the last names: Doctor Hermann Winkler, Gabitzstrasse 158. “Are you in a position to have it removed?”
“I’m not even going to try.” Mock followed two girls walking beneath the red wall of the barracks with his eyes. His pale jacket was darkened at the armpits by two stains. “Do you think I’m going to risk contention with the Chief of the S.S., Udo von Woyrsch, and the Chief of Gestapo, Erich Kraus, for one quack who prattled nonsense in the papers?”
He saw the clear sarcasm in Anwaldt’s eyes: “Well, admit it, that nonsense did you no harm in your career.”
† A horse-drawn cab.
† Watch your hooves, shoemaker, i.e. mind your own business (Latin).