Mock and Smolorz stopped at the back of the hall while their eyes adjusted to the stinging atmosphere. At the heavy tables sat men leaden with beer. They slammed their tankards on the oak tabletops swimming with white froth, clicked their fingers at the head waiter and hushed each other. To the eye of an experienced policeman their varied headgear was just as clear an indication of the men’s social standing as any military decoration. Workers sat at tables wearing canvas caps with patent peaks, or soft caps made of oilcloth. Their social class was further highlighted by their collarless shirts and rolled-up sleeves. A little to one side were tradesmen, restaurateurs and clerks. Their distinguishing attire was a bowler hat, with the additional attribute of a stiff collar — many of which were crying out for a visit to the laundry. These men drank less and did not slam their tankards down, but it was from their cigars and pipes that the heaviest smoke bombs wafted. The third and largest group was made up of youths in helmets, or round caps with no peaks known as Einheits-feldmutzen, very familiar to Mock.
The Criminal Assistant paid keen attention to this last group. His watchful eye penetrated the smoke screen and inspected the grey uniforms with their medals pinned on here and there. Just then, a young, handsome man wearing one such uniform climbed onto a podium where usually — when the Freikorps were not meeting — a few musicians would beguile the beer cellar’s guests as they ate their rissoles, a speciality of the house. The man now standing on the podium wore a medal which reminded Mock of the so-called Baltic Cross he himself had received for his service in Kurland.
“Brothers! Fellow companions in arms!” yelled the Knight of the Baltic Cross. “We must not allow the communists to poison our nation. We cannot let our proud Germanic peoples be defiled by the Bolshevik Asians and their lackeys!”
Mock switched off his sense of hearing. Otherwise he would have climbed onto the podium and slapped the young man whose ardour to fight was as inauthentic as his Baltic Cross. He knew the speaker well; he knew that, throughout the war, he had worked as a brave informer for the political police, which vehemently hunted down any sign of defeatism or lowering of morale among civilians. While Mock was delousing himself in the trenches; while, on the order of Captain Mantzelmann, he and Cornelius Ruhtgard were exposing their backsides to the icy north wind to crap; while they were pumping fountains of blood from the heads of Kalmucks; while they were looking into the sad eyes of dying Russian prisoners of war; while they were extracting fat larvae from infected wounds, this speaker, Alfred Sorg, was doing the rounds of taverns and listening bravely to embittered people; happily leading youngsters who were caught cursing the emperor to the nearest police station by the scruff of the neck; valiantly blackmailing young wives who abused the Reich’s name, and then courageously presenting these wives who were so missing their husbands with a choice: either to face prison or to indulge in a moment of oblivion, forgetting everything and, above all, their faithfulness to their husbands.
Somebody nudged Mock and handed him a pile of pamphlets, saying “Pass them on”. Mock studied them. They urged young men to join the Garde-Kavallerie-Schutzen-Division. On one of them a member was pointing to a picture of a charming town above which a moulting, Polish white eagle with hideous talons and a foul, gaping beak spread its wings, while another Freikorps soldier aimed his bayonet at the beast. Beneath the cartoon was a quotation from Ernst von Salomon: “Germany burned darkly in daring minds. Germany was always there where it was being fought for, it showed itself where armed hands strove for its continued existence, it blazed where those possessed of its spirit dared to spill the last drops of their blood on its behalf.”
“I wonder whether Germany was in the trenches at Dunaburg,” thought Mock. “I wonder whether von Salomon, writing about ‘last drops of blood’, saw my comrades in arms dying of diphtheria, with bloody diarrhoea running down their trousers.” The Criminal Assistant looked at another pamphlet with a picture of the American president blowing soap bubbles. One of the bubbles contained the caption: “President Wilson’s pipe dreams”.
“Do what you must!” thundered Alfred Sorg from the podium. “Be victorious, or die and leave the final decision to God!”
Still trying not to listen, Mock gazed in disbelief at the five-bullet Mauser 98 rifles leaning ostentatiously against the tables. He remembered a scout at Dunaburg who had informed von Thiede, the commander of the regiment, about a meeting of Russian spies at a Jewish inn. Mock and his scout platoon had burst through the inn door. A din erupted. Platoon Commander Corporal Heinz ordered them to shoot. Mock pulled the trigger of his Mauser 98, which belched thick smoke. There was a deathly silence. The smoke subsided. The communists were either female or at most ten years old. Later, Corporal Heinz laughed his head off, and he was still laughing when a bayonet ground into his guts. One of the men in the platoon which had arbitrated at the homes of the alleged spies had lost respect for his Fuhrer. When Heinz had been found lying in the mud near his quarters with a ripped-up belly, Mock, as a police officer in civilian life, was given the task of conducting an investigation. The perpetrator was not found. Mock had been rather indolent, and a month later he was demoted by Regiment Commander von Thiede for not conducting the investigation skilfully enough. Since Mock had suffered some light wounds, von Thiede sent him to Konigsberg in the hope that the police officer with the rebellious attitude would not return to his regiment. There Mock fell out of a window, and then as a convalescent he did indeed end up somewhere else: with Field Orderly Cornelius Ruhtgard under the command of Captain Mantzelmann, who so loved the cold hygiene of the north.
The speaker sat down at a table at the front next to a young woman at whose sight Mock began to quiver. He knew her well; it was to her that his friend Ruhtgard had dedicated his stories during the war. He bit his lip and once again suppressed the urge to slap Alfred Sorg across the face. The girl, unable to take her eyes off the inflamed speaker, was clapping as enthusiastically as everyone else in the Three Crowns. Everyone, that is, apart from two police officers from Division IIIb who in their search for phony sailors had dropped into a nest of Freikorps supporters. Mock showed no enthusiasm because he was overcome by sad thoughts; Smolorz did not clap because his arm was being held down by two hands belonging to a man with butler’s whiskers, who was whispering something in his ear. Smolorz had recognized him and was listening carefully.
BRESLAU, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1919
ONE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
Customers rolled out of the beer cellar after the Freikorps meeting, pumped up with equal measures of patriotism and beer. One man had drunk little, since his plans for the night would have been hindered by too much alcohol. With his arm around the slender waist of the girl next to him, Alfred Sorg felt the demon in his trousers petulantly demand an offering. He thought about his pockets — there was nothing with which to pay for a room by the hour — and about his miserable little room where two members of the so-called Erhardt brigade would shortly be snoring.
He scanned the street and noticed a shadowy opening between two buildings that led into a yard. That dark, damp cleft awoke in him a chain of associations which aroused him again. He stopped, put his arms around the girl and pressed a beery kiss onto her mouth. She parted her lips and her legs. He simultaneously slipped his tongue into her mouth and a knee between her thighs. He picked her up and they disappeared into the narrow opening. The damp draught did not surprise Sorg; the pungent smell of garlic, however, did.
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 Wolsung. It’s a floating brothel.”
“Here,” said the interrogator, throwing Sorg some banknotes. “Rent a room at the Sieh Dich Fur 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 Ruhtgard 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.