Phantoms of Breslau

When this thought came to mind, I remembered that I had once read about one of the Erinyes, probably Megaera or Tisiphone, being the personification of wild jealousy. I now knew what to do. The worst I can do is fail. True wisdom is not the garbled analysis of some baroque mystic! True wisdom is not to be found in Daniel von Czepko or Angelus Silesius! True wisdom is achieved only through experience. And it is precisely my next experiment which will show whether Aristotle was right when he wrote: “The soul in a way is all that exists.” We will see whether, as Otto claims, the Erinyes really do exist.

RUGENWALDERMUNDE, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16TH, 1919

FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Erika and Mock passed the lighthouse and turned right towards the eastern beach. Erika rested her head on Mock’s shoulder and turned away for a moment to let her eyes glide indifferently over the houses on the other side of the canal. Mock followed her gaze. Although his interest in maritime architecture was equal to his interest in the question of civilizing Slavs and Kasubians, frequently blared out in newspaper headlines, he nevertheless unexpectedly took in a large number of technical details: on the whole the houses were built with timber-and-stone walls and generally covered with tarred roofing sheets, which somewhat surprised Mock, accustomed as he was to the Silesian craft of roof slating. Once in a tavern, where Bornholm salmon sizzled on a spit, he had asked about this maritime roofing and had been told by an old sailor how incredibly strong the sea wind could be, and that flying slates would smash against the walls of the houses or on the heads of passers-by.

“Do you remember, Erika, that old sailor who told us about how roofing is done in Pomerania?” He felt her nod on his shoulder. “When you left to go out for a walk he told me about another effect of the sea wind …”

“What effect?” Erika took her head off his shoulder and looked at him with interest.

“When the wind howls for a long time it drives people insane. Makes them commit suicide.”

“Then it’s a good thing it’s not howling now,” she said gravely and huddled against him.

The eye of the lighthouse lit up behind them. Its built-in horn monotonously announced a fog which was to descend on the port after the hot autumnal day. Seagulls screeched in warning.

At a seafront cafe they turned down to the beach. Erika was full of energy. She ran across the sand below the cafe terrace and raced towards the ladies’ changing room. For a moment Mock lost sight of her. Carrying a wicker basket filled with bread, wine, fried marinated herring and half a roast chicken, he could barely keep up with her. He panted and gasped, his lungs damaged by nicotine.

Finally he staggered onto the eastern beach. A few strollers were building up an appetite for supper with a brisk walk. Some daredevil in a tight tricot bathing suit was cutting through the gentle waves with his solid knots of muscle. On the footbridge leading to the splendid ladies’ changing room, supported by several metre-long wooden stumps sunk into the beach, Erika stood talking to a young woman. Mock wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and looked carefully at the girl. He recognized her. It was the prostitute who was staying at the Spa House Hotel where, as Mock had already managed to discover, a four-woman team of Corinthian professionals was at work.

“She’s met her match,” he thought, and walked on westwards, ignoring Erika who bade her friend-by-trade goodbye and ran gaily after him. They sat down on a dune. Erika turned her face to the salty sea breeze; Mock turned his mind to an all-consuming fury: “She’s met her match — surely I’m mad to associate with this whore.” Erika paid no heed to the man lying next to her with his hands behind his head, watching the girl step off the footbridge which connected the changing room to the beach. When she found herself past the broken teeth of the groyne, the girl lifted her dress a little and progressed more slowly, digging holes in the sand with her crooked heels. Mock’s fury began to abate. “She wanders around like that all day — I’ve never seen her with a client. A darned dress, twisted heels, a parasol with prongs sticking out, eyes of a heifer, bleary and vacuous. A cheap whore.” All of a sudden he felt sorry for her, twisting her ankles on cobblestones in an empty seaside spa, pursued by the screeching of angry seagulls. He turned to look at Erika. He wanted to put his arms around her in gratitude that she was no cheap, downtrodden whore, grinding down the pavements. He controlled the urge, however, and looked at the long fingers which held on to what once had been his strong biceps.

“Do you know, I come from a seaside village just like this,” Erika said, her eyes closed. “When I was a girl …” She baulked and glanced anxiously at Mock, anticipating an acerbic reaction.

“See to the supper, Erika,” he muttered and closed his eyes. He pictured her laying out the blanket on the white sand and, struggling against the slight wind, spreading over it the clean tablecloth with its embroidered fish. Then she would take the herring, chicken and wine out of the basket. He opened his eyes and saw everything as he had imagined it. He waved a hand invitingly. She snuggled up to him and felt him place a kiss first on one eye, then the other.

“I can anticipate everything you’re going to do and say,” she heard him murmur. “So, tell me about your seaside village.”

Erika smiled and freed herself from Mock’s embrace. She grasped a chicken thigh with the tips of her fingers and not without difficulty pulled it away from the rest of the meat. She gave it to Mock. He thanked her and tore off the crisp, golden skin with his teeth, then dug into the juicy fibres covered with a slippery veneer of fat.

“When I was little, I fell in love with our neighbour.” With the very tips of her fingers Erika lifted a thin slice of herring to her lips. “He was a musician, like my parents. I used to sit on his knee and he’d play Saint-Saens’ The Carnival of the Animals on the piano. Do you know it?”

“Yes,” Mock muttered and sucked in air as he detached the last strips of meat from the bone.

“He would play and I’d guess what animal the piece was supposed to be about. Our neighbour had a greying, evenly trimmed and well-groomed beard. I loved him with all my burning, eight-year-old heart … Don’t worry,” she briefly changed the subject, detecting a glimmer of unease in Mock’s eyes. “He didn’t do anything bad to me. He sometimes kissed me on the cheek and I would pick up the smell of good tobacco from his beard … From time to time he played cards with my parents. I’d sit on my father’s knee this time, staring in bewilderment at the figures on the cards and not understanding anything of the game, but wishing with my whole heart that my father would be the loser … I wanted our neigh-bour, Herr Manfred Nagler, to win … I’ve always liked older men …”

“Glad to hear it.” Mock passed the wine to her and watched as she drank straight from the bottle.

“I studied at the Music Conservatory in Riga, you know?” She was breathing quickly; the wine had momentarily taken her breath away. “Most of all I liked to play The Carnival of the Animals, even though my professor railed against Saint-Saens. He said it was primitive, illustrative music … He was wrong. All music illustrates something, doesn’t it? Debussy, for instance, illustrates a sea warmed by the sun, Dvorak the vigour and power of America, and Chopin the states of a human soul … Do you want some more chicken?”

“Yes, please.” He watched her slender fingers, rested his head on his arm and moved closer to her. The sun dappled the sea before his eyes.

He was torn from his nap by Erika’s voice. She was asking him something insistently.

“You agree, really?” she whispered delightedly. “Well, go on then! Tell me when you were born! Exactly, including the time!”

“What do you want to know that for?” Mock rubbed his eyes and glanced at his watch. He had not slept for more than a quarter of an hour.

“But you nodded, you agreed with everything I said,” Erika said, disappointed. “You were asleep all along — you’ve had it up to here with my babbling …”

“Alright, alright …” Mock lit a cigarette. “I can give you the exact time I was born … What’s it to me? The eighteenth of September, 1883. At about midday …”

“Ah, so it’s your birthday the day after tomorrow. I’ve got to get you a present …” Erika traced the date in the wet sand. “And your place of birth?”

“Waldenburg, Silesia. Are you trying to work out my horoscope?”

“No, not me.” She rested her head on his knee. “My sister … she’s an astrologer. But I told you …”

“Alright, alright …” he muttered.

“Why are you being so kind to me?” She was not looking him in the eye; she was looking lower. At his nose? Lips? “You haven’t called me a whore for a whole week … You’ve been calling me by my name … You even listen when I tell you about my childhood, even though it bores you… Why?”

Mock struggled with himself for a while. He pondered his reply, weighing all its consequences.

“The wind isn’t howling.” He avoided an honest answer. “And there’s no aggression or insanity in me.”

17. IX.1919

I could not put my plan into effect because I had to seek approval from the Great Assembly. When I presented him with my plan to awaken the Erinyes a few days ago, the Master wrote to me to say that further sacrificial offerings could prove dangerous. Apart from that, the Master voiced other reservations and summoned the Council. The meeting took place this past night at my house. The Master quite rightly pointed out my inconsistency. It lies in the lack of a precise definition of the notion of the “Erinyes”. According to my plan, the spiritual energy which will escape when the body of our bitter enemy’s father is offered in sacrifice will become an “Erinye”. How can we be certain that this will be the case? the Master asked. How do we know that the “Erinye” is not going to be some part of our bitter enemy’s soul, or some spiritual being independent of our bitter enemy and his father? Some demon we have awakened? And that demon we are not going to be able to control. It is too dangerous. What should we do therefore? There was a discussion. One of our brothers rightly pointed out that the ancients believed in three Erinyes. One of them, Megaera, was the Erinye of jealousy. So, with the help of Augsteiner’s formulae, we could transform the spiritual energy slipping from the body of our enemy’s father into either Megaera or Tisiphone. The second Erinye, Tisiphone, being the “avenger of murder”, while the third, Allecto, is “unremitting in her vengeance”. We have to offer two further sacrifices, three in all — our bitter enemy’s father, and two others whom he loves to be Tisiphone and Allecto. Everybody agreed with this reasoning. When three Erinyes descend on our greatest enemy, he will turn to an occultist. There can be no doubt that we have a hold on every occultist in the city. Then we will bore into his mind and make him aware of his terrible guilt. It will be the final blow. We cannot blatantly spell out to him where this guilt lies — he has to be deeply convinced of it himself. That is why our plan of self-knowledge is the best one possible. There remains the problem of the two other Erinyes — Tisiphone and Allecto. Who can they be? Whom does he love apart from his father? Does he love anyone at all? Because surely he does not love the prostitute with whom he went away — he who knows all the hideous secrets of the prostituted soul? We resolved to examine this carefully in the light of ancient writings, and we will meet in three days to settle everything.

RUGENWALDERMUNDE, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26TH, 1919

NOON

Erika and Mock sat in silence on the covered terrace of a cafe on the eastern side of the canal, staring out at the stormy sea through small, rectangular windowpanes lashed with fine rain. Both were preoccupied, Erika with her coffee and apple strudel, Mock with his cigar and balloon of cognac. The silence which had come over them heralded imminent chaos, foreshadowed changes, relentlessly signalled the end.

“We’ve been here for more than two weeks,” Mock began, and fell silent again.

“I’d say we’ve been here for almost three weeks.” Erika smoothed her napkin on the marble table.

“This cognac would be a lot of alcohol for you.” Mock swirled his glass and watched as the amber liquid ran down its inner sides. “There’s still quite a bit left, but for me it’s no more than a gulp. I’ll knock it back and it’ll be gone.”

“Yes. In that we differ,” Erika said, and she closed her eyes. Two streams of tears trickled from beneath her long lashes down towards the corners of her lips.

Mock riveted his eyes to the windowpanes streaming with rain and listened to the howling of the gale above the sound of the waves. Another gale tore at his chest and forced words into his head that he did not want to utter. He looked about him and shuddered. On the terrace besides them was the prostitute with the broken parasol, whom he knew by sight. She was gazing at the streaming window, grating a spoon in her cup. And now there appeared one other person: the hotel bell-boy. He swiftly ran up to the table occupied by Mock and Erika.

“Registered delivery for Frau Erika Mock,” he said, clicking his heels loudly.

Erika accepted the letter, the boy some coins and Mock a few moments of respite. The girl tore open the envelope with a fruit knife and began to read. A faint smile appeared on her lips.

“What is it?” Mock could not resist asking.

“Listen to this.” She put the letter on the table and weighted down an unruly corner of the page with the ashtray. “‘The man born on September 18th, 1883, in Waldenburg is a typical Virgo, full of inhibitions and unconscious longings. Sad events experienced not long ago — perhaps an unfortunate love affair? — weigh heavily on his mind.’” Erika glanced at Mock with interest. “Tell me, Eberhard, what was this unfortunate love affair … You never talk about yourself. You don’t want to confide in a crafty whore … But now, after three wonderful weeks together … Tell me something about yourself …”

“There was no unfortunate love affair.” Clumsily Mock held Erika’s chin in one hand and with his thumb roughly wiped away her tears. “It was the war. I was called up in 1916. I fought on the Eastern front at Dunaburg. I was injured on leave in Konigsberg. I fell out of a first-floor window. I was drunk and I can’t remember anything. Do you understand, girl?” Mock could not tear his fingers away from her cheeks. “I wasn’t hit by Russian shrapnel — I fell out of a window. It’s ridiculous and embarrassing. Then I went back to Dunaburg and lived through some hard times there … Who compiled this horoscope?”

“My sister sent it to me from Riga. And what, does it fit?”

“From what you’ve read so far it’s so general it has to fit. Every human being has a complicated personality and many strange longings. Keep reading!”

“‘In his youth somebody disappointed him badly. Robbed him of his dreams …’” Erika continued. “What did you dream of when you were young, Ebi?”

“A career in academia. I even wrote a few papers in Latin.” Mock recalled his student years, when five of them had lived in a leaking garret. “But nobody disappointed me in any way. I gave up my studies quite early on. I took a job with the police because I didn’t want to live in poverty in some small dark room, with one of my colleagues spitting blood on his translations of the works of Theognis of Megara, and another fishing out bacon rind from behind the stove, where he had chucked it a few weeks earlier, then dusting it off, cooking it over a candle and cutting it into tiny pieces to fill his stomach …”

“‘He is characterized by irritating punctiliousness and an exaggerated love of detail. When in charge he will point out to his subordinates their untidy clothing as readily as, for example, neglecting to water the flowers …’”

“Rubbish,” Mock interrupted her. “I don’t have a single flower in my office or at home.”

“It’s not about flowers,” Erika explained. “It’s about you finding fault with your subordinates for the smallest of things … Besides, there’s a wonderful a propos here … ‘The example of flowers is inadequate. As a thoroughly practical person he will hold that potatoes should rather be grown in flower pots because at least they would prove useful. He is a man with the heart of a dove, clasping to his breast every lost and frightened creature, a man who could become involved in charity or missionary work. His warm heart experiences a great love once every seven years. And here is a warning to the ladies of his heart …’”

Mock was no longer listening because the sea wind had started to howl in his head once more. “What a crafty whore!” he thought. “She’s written the horoscope herself. She wants Mock, the dove, to take care of her and clasp her troubled heart to his breast. This man, with his magnanimous and warm heart, is supposed to pick up a piece of rubbish from the gutter that has been thrashed about by the wind, dry it with his kisses and wrap it in an eiderdown of love! Best if we married, we’d have four sweet children — they would inherit her good looks — and I would walk the streets of Breslau with a heavy head, seeing my ‘brother-in-law’ in each man I met. There I am at a ball and someone introduces her to some creep: ‘This is Criminal Councillor Mock’s wife.’ ‘Surely we know each other from somewhere?’ There we are at the races in Hartlieb, and the gambler sitting next to me slips the furled tip of his tongue out at my wife …”

The wind gave a savage howl and Mock thumped his open palm on the table. The plates jumped; the prostitute sitting a few tables away squinted over her cup.

“Don’t read any more of that nonsense,” he said quietly. “Let’s have a goodbye party. A threesome.”

“And who is the other man to be?” Erika folded Mock’s horoscope in four and adjusted her hat.

“Not man, woman,” Mock hissed. “Your friend sitting over there.”

“Please, no. I can’t do that,” she said softly and began to cry.

Mock lit another cigar and gazed at the prostitute. She looked up from her cup and smiled at him timidly.

“I haven’t shared you with anyone over these three weeks.” Erika soon pulled herself together, took out a lace handkerchief and wiped her dainty nose. “And I want it to stay that way.”

“Two weeks,” Mock corrected her. “If you don’t want to, then go and pack your bags.” He pulled his wallet from his pocket. “Here’s some money for your ticket. I’ll pay you for everything. How much do you charge?”

“I love you,” Erika said calmly, then got up and approached the girl sitting nearby. They spoke for a moment and she returned to Mock.

“We’ll wait for you in the ladies’ changing room. That’s her chamber of ill repute.” She turned, put her arm around the girl’s waist and they went down to the beach. The wind howled and tugged at the stem of her parasol. A moment later they were on the footbridge leading to the changing room. The prostitute opened the door to the first cabin and they disappeared inside.

Mock paid the waiter and he too went out to the beach. The wind and fine rain had scared off the strollers, setting Mock’s bourgeois conscience at rest. He stood still for a while looking about, then furtively ran across the beach, up the steps above the groynes and, sprayed with sea froth, cleared the footbridge and entered the cabin. The two women sat naked on the bench, shivering with cold. As soon as they saw the man they began to caress and embrace each other. Goose pimples appeared on their thighs and arms. Erika kissed the other girl without taking her eyes off Mock. The cold wind rushed in through gaps in the floorboards. The seagulls rent the air with their screeching, and still Erika looked at him. The prostitute beckoned him to join them, and Mock felt everything but sexual arousal. He reached into his trousers and pulled out a hundred-mark note. He handed it to the prostitute.

“This is for you. Get dressed and leave us alone for a moment,” he said quietly.

“Thank you, kind sir,” she said with a strong Pomeranian accent and pulled on her underwear, then adjusted the folds of her dress. A moment later they were alone.

“Why did you send her away, Ebi?” Erika was still sitting there naked, her dress wrapped around her. “Now that our month is coming to an end, tell me … Our honeymoon and the past month … Tell me why you sent her away … Say that you don’t want to share me with anyone during these happy days in Rugenwaldermunde. Lie and tell me you love me …”

Mock opened his mouth to tell her the truth, and at that very moment there was a loud knocking on the changing-room door. He sighed with relief and opened it. There stood the hotel bell-boy. A little way off stood the prostitute in her crooked shoes, hunched from the cold.

“A telegram for the good gentleman,” said the boy, peeking inquisitively into the depths of the cabin.

Mock gave him some more coins and loudly slammed the door in his face. He sat down next to Erika, opened the telegram and read:

YOUR FATHER HAD ACCIDENT STOP FELL DOWNSTAIRS AT HOME

STOP SERIOUS CONDITION STOP IN HOSPITAL STOP AM WAITING BY

MAX GROTZSCHL’S TELEPHONE STOP SMOLORZ.

20. IX.1919

Everyone arrived punctually. In fact, punctuality is one of our brother-hood’s principles, which stems from our respect for the passage of time, for the unchanging laws of nature. Deus sive natura, wrote Spinoza and he was absolutely — par excellence! — right. But to the point.

From the erudite performance of some of our brothers (and this erudition was gleaned from Roscher’s mythological lexicon) we learned a great deal about the ancient avengers the Erinyes, black-skinned and wrapped in black clothing. These goddesses of vengeance, as we learned from Brother Eckhard of Prague, hid in morning mists or glided in dark, stormy clouds, and their hair and cloaks were charged with electricity because, as Plutarch writes, “fire flickered in their cloaks and viperous knots of hair”. These “bitches of Styx” rendered people mad with their ominous barking, infected germinating grains with their poisonous breath, lashed those who transgressed the laws of nature with their whip. (How well this fits in with our doctrine of Natura Magna Mater!) And how can one most keenly violate the laws of Nature? By killing her who gives life, by matricide, concluded Brother Eckhard. These natural ethics became the basis of the popular ancient notion of the Erinyes as goddesses of vengeance.

A heated discussion broke out after Brother Eckhart’s lecture. The first question concerned the universality of the Erinyes. Brother Hermann of Marburg asked whether the Erinyes are independent beings or whether they are allocated to one murdered person in particular? After all, argued Brother Hermann, Homer writes that following the suicide of Jocasta, mother of Oedipus, Oedipus was tormented not by Erinyes “in general” or “Erinyes as such”, but by his mother’s particular Erinyes. In Aeschylus we read that Orestes was tormented first by the Erinyes of his father, who had been hacked to death by his mother, and only later, after Orestes had taken vengeance for the death of his father in the same way on his mother, Clytemnestra, the murderess of her husband, only then did the Erinyes of Clytemnestra appear. The first, Agamemnon’s Erinyes, forced his son Orestes to avenge his father’s death, the second, Clytemnestra’s Erinyes, tormented the matricide. So the Erinyes, as Brother Hermann argues, belong to a particular, given soul: they are not independent or universal beings. Brother Hermann’s reasoning was convincing, and nobody disagreed with him.

I took the voice and agreed that after offering up the father of our bitter enemy in sacrifice, we will unleash specific Erinyes, those appropriate to the old man’s soul. I also said that the appearance of Jocasta’s Erinyes, those which tormented Oedipus, clearly demonstrates that the haunted person does not have to have killed with his own hands (after all, Jocasta committed suicide!) but he has to be the one to blame (and Oedipus is certainly to blame!). This is the basic principle of the Erinyes’ materializing!

I received applause and those assembled raised the other issue which had come up after the lecture given by Brother Eckhard of Prague. Namely, can the Erinyes take vengeance for patricide, or only for matricide? The Master argued the legitimacy of the former view, quoting the appropriate passages from Homer and Aeschylus. It was clear from these that the Erinyes of Laius, killed by his son Oedipus, haunt the murderer, proving that patricide, too, is a violation of nature’s laws. After the Master’s declaration, everything became clear: it would be right to offer the father of our sworn enemy in sacrifice. This father must be convinced, however, that he is dying because of his son. I told the assembly that we would make this known to him before his death, just as we made it known to that scabby harlot.

After that it was Johann of Munich who took the voice. He went back to the issue which had initially brought us together, and which we were supposed to be clarifying with the help of ancient literature, namely, since there were three Erinyes — Allecto, Megaera and Tisiphone — then is it necessary to make three offerings, each corresponding to the “essential” characteristics of a given Erinyes? The majority responded in the negative. First of all, reasoned Brother Johann, the triple and individualized Erinyes appear only in Euripides, and are therefore already removed in time from the primeval notion, from the most primitive (and therefore the most authentic!) beliefs; secondly, in later literature (mainly Roman!), they become confused and take each other’s places. For example, to one author Megaera is the personification of “relentless jealousy”, to another it is Tisiphone. It is evident from this that our second and possibly third sacrifices would be sacrifices offered in the dark, without any firm grounds — in other words, unnecessary sacrifices. The last word belonged to the Master. He supported Johann of Munich’s view and gave me instructions to offer in sacrifice only the father of our sworn enemy.

When they had all left, a feeling of irritation swept over me. The Master had not let me take the voice! I had not managed to say that the Erinyes do not have to be particles of a parent’s soul alone. In Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, the Erinyes are invoked against Deianira, who unwittingly killed her lover Heracles! And in the same author’s Electra, the Erinyes are called upon to avenge matrimonial infidelity! I have made a decision: I am going to kill the one who loves our greatest enemy, and I will make it known to her before she dies that she is dying through his fault and because of him! I will be releasing not only his father’s Erinyes, but also the Erinyes of the woman who is in love with him! In this way I will put an end to everything. I will bring down upon him a twofold attack of the Erinyes. Then they will sing out their dismal hymn inside his head, a song which, like the songs of the Tyrolean snow maidens, will drive him insane. And only then will he turn to an occultist for help. And only then will he get to know the truth and become aware of his mistake!

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 26TH, 1919

A QUARTER PAST TWELVE IN THE AFTERNOON

Kurt Smolorz sat at the marble table in the waiting room of his neigh-bour, the solicitor Doctor Max Grotzschl, lazily leafing through the Ostdeutsche Sport Zeitung. The articles did not particularly interest him. Only one thing interested Smolorz: how the instructions Mock was going to give him that day would complicate his evening rendez-vous with Baroness von Bockenheim und Bielau. He was soon to find out: the telephone on the marble table jumped and rang loudly. Smolorz lifted the round receiver from its cradle and held it to his ear. With his other hand he grasped the mouthpiece and brought it to his lips. He tilted back his chair with an expression of a man of the world.

“May I speak to Doctor Grotzschl?” said a woman’s quiet voice. He did not know how to react. Usually at moments like this, when he was at a loss as to know what to do, he scaled down his reactions and did nothing. So it was now. He simply looked at the receiver and replaced it on the cradle. The telephone rang again. This time Smolorz was not in such a predicament as a few seconds earlier.

“Go on, Smolorz.” He heard Mock’s hoarse bass. “Tell me what’s happened to my father!”

“There were noises in the house last night,” Smolorz mumbled. “He went to check and fell down the stairs. Fractured his leg and injured his head. The dog barked and woke the neighbours. A certain Mr Dosche took him to St Elisabeth Hospital. He’s in good care. Unconscious. On a drip.”

“Call Doctor Cornelius Ruhtgard immediately on seventeen sixty-three. If he’s not at home, call the Wenzel-Hancke Hospital. Tell him I want him to take care of my father.” Mock fell silent. Smolorz did not say anything either and, staring at the tube into which he had just spoken, wondered at the fundamental nature of telephone communications. “How’s our investigation going?” Smolorz heard Mock say.

“Twenty young female invalids in wheelchairs in the whole of Breslau. We visited them with Frenzel …”

“Frenzel has turned up?” Smolorz could hear the hoarse bass voice tremble with joy at the other end of the receiver.

“Yes. He’s a gambler. He was betting at Orlich’s. Arm-wrestling. He lost, and two days later went home broke.”

“And what? You showed Frenzel those women? Discreetly, I hope?”

“Yes. Discreetly. From a distance. Frenzel in a car, the women in the wheelchairs on the street. He recognized one of them. Louise Rossdeutscher, daughter of the physician Doctor Horst Rossdeutscher. The father is a big fish. Commissioner Muhlhaus knows him.”

“This Rossdeutscher, was he questioned?”

“No. Muhlhaus is prevaricating. Big fish.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, damn it, ‘big fish’?” growled the voice in the receiver. “Explain, Smolorz!”

“Commissioner Muhlhaus said he’s ‘an important person’.” Smolorz could not help being amazed by the fact that here he was, grasping all of Mock’s emotions over the telephone, even though the latter was hundreds of kilometres away from Breslau. “‘We have to proceed carefully. I know him.’ That’s what he said.”

“Is Rossdeutscher being watched?”

“Yes. All the time.”

“Good, Smolorz.” The crack of a match resounded in the receiver. “Now listen. I’m arriving in Breslau tomorrow, at 7.14 in the evening. At that very hour you’re to be waiting for me at Main Station. Wirth, Zupitza and ten of their men are to be with you. You’re going to show the girl I’m with — you know, it’s that red-headed Erika — a photograph of Louise Rossdeutscher … If you don’t have a photograph of her, get in touch with Helmut Ehlers and pass my request on to him: he’s to take a photograph of Louise Rossdeutscher’s face by tomorrow. Remember — tomorrow, 7.14 at the station. And don’t plan anything else … For the whole evening and night you’re to be at my disposition. By tomorrow you’re to have gathered every scrap of information you can about this doctor. I know it might be difficult, officially we’ve been removed from the investigation and Muhlhaus is treating the suspect like a rotten egg, but do whatever is in your power. Any questions?”

“Yes. Is Rossdeutscher suspected of all these murders?”

“Think, Smolorz.” Cigarette smoke expelled from Mock’s lungs hit the telephone membrane. “The four sailors were stuffed with morphine before they died. Who has access to a lot of morphine? A physician. I don’t know whether Rossdeutscher is a suspect, but I do know that he and his daughter were probably the last people to see those dressed-up men. I want Rossdeutscher with his back up against the wall.”

“One more question. Why Wirth and Zupitza?”

“How would you describe Muhlhaus’ behaviour as regards Ross deutscher?” This time Smolorz heard the voice of a kind-hearted teacher examining a dull-witted pupil. “He’s afraid to interrogate him, he speaks of him as ‘an important person’ and so on … How would you describe such behaviour?”

“I’d say he’s fluffing about.”

“Good, Smolorz.” Mock had stopped sounding kind-hearted. “Muhlhaus is fluffing about. We’re not going to fluff about. That’s why I want Wirth and Zupitza.”

BRESLAU, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27TH, 1919

7.14 IN THE EVENING

The train from Stettin pulled into Breslau’s Main Station. Erika Kiesewalter held her head out of the window. Through tears forced from her eyes by the rush of air she watched the fleeing platforms, the flower kiosks, the mighty iron columns holding up the glass vault, and the tobacco and newspaper kiosks. White columns of steam blew onto the platforms and enveloped the people waiting there in a warm cloud. On the whole they stood alone, most of them elegantly attired gentlemen wearing velvet gloves and holding bunches of flowers wrapped in coarse parchment. There would also generally be a few dignified ladies amongst them who, at the sight of much-missed and long-awaited faces at the carriage windows, would suddenly open their parasols or tear their hands away from their lips to send kisses into the distance. There was no shortage of similar types on the platform now. But the group of thirteen glum-looking men, most with peaked or soft caps pulled down to their ears, formed a clear contrast. The sleeper carriage stopped practically in front of them. The men looked like bandits and Erika watched them anxiously, but she was soon reassured by the sight of the familiar face framed by wiry red hair that belonged to Mock’s subordinate. Mock himself, entrusting their suitcases to a porter, stepped off the train and — much to his colleague’s surprise — slipped his hands beneath Erika’s arms, spun her like a child and stood her on the platform. He shook the hands of the red-headed man and of two other men who, though diametrically opposite in height, had one characteristic in common: both were repulsive.

“You have the photograph, Smolorz?” Mock asked.

Smolorz looked drunk. He was swaying on his legs and grinning inanely. Without a word he pulled a large photograph from his briefcase and handed it to Erika. She looked at the girl in the photograph and said without prompting:

“Yes, I recognize her. She’s the one who came with her father to the apartment on Gartenstrasse.”

“Good,” Mock muttered, casting a critical eye at Smolorz. “And now to business. Are Muhlhaus’ men tailing Rossdeutscher? And where is my father?”

“At Wenzel-Hancke Hospital in the care of Doctor Ruhtgard,” Smolorz said, answering Mock’s questions in the order of their importance. “I don’t know how it stands with Rossdeutscher. There’s nothing about him in our archives. Nothing at all. Only his address. Carlowitz, Korsoallee 52. Here’s what I found out about him.” He handed Mock a piece of paper covered in even writing.

“Good, Smolorz,” Mock said, and his expression changed as he read on. “It appears our Rossdeutscher was accused by the Breslau Chamber of Medicine of practising the occult on his patients … He successfully defended himself against the accusations … And he is extremely well connected …”

Mock looked about him. Their party had drawn attention to itself. A newspaper vendor was staring at them, a beggar was pleading for a few marks.

“Get rid of them, Wirth.” Mock glanced at the short man in the bowler hat who with one gesture passed on the instructions to the giant standing next to him. The latter lurched towards the gawpers and they dispersed in clouds of steam.

“Smolorz,” Mock said, nodding towards Erika, “take Miss Kiesewalter to the apartment on Gartenstrasse. You’re to keep an eye on her until I send somebody to relieve you. And not a drop more today, understood? The rest of us” — he looked at Wirth — “are off. First to the hospital, and then to Carlowitz to pay Doctor Rossdeutscher a visit.”

He approached Erika and kissed her on the lips.

“Thank you for saying ‘Miss Kiesewalter’,” she whispered, returning the kiss, “and not simply ‘take her, Smolorz’. Thank you for not saying ‘her’ …”

“Did I really say that?” Mock smiled, and ran his rough hand across her pale cheek.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 27TH, 1919

EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

Smolorz unlocked the door to the sailors’ apartment, stepped inside first and slammed the door in Erika’s face. He switched on all the lights and carefully inspected the rooms, and only then did he re-open the door. He took Erika by the elbow and led her in, bolting the door behind them, and sat down heavily at the kitchen table. He produced a bottle of Danzig Losos liqueur from his briefcase and poured a sizeable shot into a clean glass. As he sipped the burning liquid he watched Erika hang up her coat in the hall and then, dressed in a hat and a tight, cherry-red dress, enter the main room, bend over the bed and straighten the tangled sheets which nobody had changed for three weeks. Erika’s hips and the crumpled sheets from which, Smolorz presumed, her scent still emanated fuddled his thoughts for a moment. He remembered the Baroness writhing among the damp sheets and her husband standing next to the bed with an expression of curiosity, and then Baron von Bockenheim und Bielau sniffing some white powder and scattering acrid clouds all around himself with his coughing.

His next sip of Losos liqueur did not taste as good. He blamed this on the image of the polite, haughty Baron before his eyes. To make the drink taste better he turned his thoughts to the people who stirred warm feelings in him. What was his little Arthur doing now? Was he playing with his toy car? The liqueur was excellent. Was he kneeling on the kitchen floor in his thick trousers, reinforced on the backside with a leather patch, and pushing the little model Daimler along one of the well-polished floor-boards? Cleanliness in the kitchen made him think of his wife, Ursula Smolorz. There she was, kneeling on the kitchen floor scrubbing the smooth floorboards with Ergon powder. Her strong arms, her gently swaying breasts, her tearful, freckled face, her rending sobs as Smolorz, pushing her aside, slammed the door and made his way blind drunk towards the stately villa on Wagnerstrasse, where the Baroness was waiting for him in velvet sheets, clammy with sweat. Little Arthur had cried when his furious mother explained to him in a lowered voice that Papa didn’t love him any more, that he loved some trollop instead. “What’s a trollop, Mama?” “An evil viper, the devil in human flesh,” she had explained. Arthur Smolorz had run from his father when he wanted to pick him up, and had yelled to high heaven: “I don’t want you, go to the trollop!” The Criminal Sergeant reached for his bottle. He knew what worked best on a guilty conscience.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 27TH, 1919

EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

Sister Hermina, on duty in the surgical ward at Wenzel-Hancke Hospital, replaced the telephone receiver. She was as aggravated as an angry wasp. Yet again that day she had received instructions from Doctor Ruhtgard, and yet again, in the confines of her heart, she expressed her disapproval. What was it supposed to mean? Since when was she receiving instructions from a doctor in another department? She decided to complain to her immediate superior, Doctor Karl Heintze, Head of Surgery. What impudence! This Ruhtgard, as a dermatologist, ought to restrict himself to his rotting prostitutes and his lustful middle-class men devoured by tertiary syphilis! Sister Hermina chased away these bad thoughts, incompatible as they were with her gentle, understanding nature consolidated by years in the service of others. Through the glazed panel of the duty room, she watched as two orderlies pushed a wheelchair in which pot-bellied Herr Karl Hadamitzky, dazed with morphine, travelled towards the operating theatre, to encounter the drainage tube and scalpel that were destined to cut away the cancerous growth from his kidney.

The wheelchair was followed by a man who was running. His jacket was unbuttoned and he was fanning himself with a bowler hat. Sister Hermina stared at him for a while, her attention drawn to his sallow skin darkened by a considerable five-o’clock shadow, his broad shoulders and his black, wavy hair. He passed her duty room without a word of explanation as to who he was or what he was doing there. That was too much.

“Hey, my good man!” she shouted in a loud, almost masculine voice. “Are you visiting one of our patients? You have to report to me first!”

“Eberhard Mock,” the man said in a deep, hoarse voice. “I am indeed. I’m going to visit my father, Willibald Mock.”

Saying this he donned his bowler hat and then removed it, bowing to Sister Hermina. This greeting was as ironic as it was courteous. Without waiting for her permission, and disregarding any reaction she may have had, he walked briskly down the corridor.

“Mock Willibald, Mock Willibald,” the irate nurse repeated, running her finger down the column of names. A moment later her finger stopped short. “Ah, he’s the one who found himself on our ward on Doctor Ruhtgard’s instructions. He’s the patient requiring special care! What’s that supposed to mean, ‘special care’? They all require special care! Not only the elderly Willibald Mock! I’ll soon put a stop to this!”

Sister Hermina reached for the telephone and dialled Professor Heintze’s home number.

“Doctor Heintze’s residence,” said a well-spoken male voice at the other end of the receiver.

“It’s Sister Hermina from Wenzel-Hancke Municipal Hospital. May I speak to the doctor, please?”

The butler did not deign to reply and placed the receiver next to the telephone. She knew he always behaved like this when he heard someone introduce themselves with a name not preceeded by a scholarly title. She heard the strains of a piano, merry voices and the tinkling of glasses. The usual sounds of a party being held at the professor’s on a Saturday evening.

“Yes, sister,” Doctor Heintze’s voice was none too friendly.

“That Doctor Ruhtgard from the Department of Contagious Diseases, Professor, is bossing everyone around and giving me instructions as to that …”

“Ah, I know what this is about, Sister,” Doctor Heintze interrupted her snappily. “Please listen to me carefully. You may regard all of Doctor Ruhtgard’s instructions as if they were my own. Do you understand me, Sister?” The receiver crashed onto its cradle.

Sister Hermina was no longer annoyed, but curious. Who was this old man with concussion and a double fracture of the leg? Most certainly someone important. That’s why Ruhtgard had told them to transfer him to a private room and look after him night and day, despite the shortage of staff. And now this son of his … Elegant and arrogant.

Sister Hermina made her way down the corridor towards the private room where the older Herr Mock lay. The rustle of her starched housecoat and the sight of the broken wings on her bonnet animated the patients and filled them with hope. They propped themselves up in bed and paid no heed to their pain, certain that in a short while, with a single injection and an understanding glance, Sister Hermina would take them to a land of gentleness and peace. Their hopes, however, were in vain. Sister Hermina knocked on the door of the private room and, getting no reply, entered. It was hardly surprising no-one had invited her in: the older Herr Mock was lying unconscious while his son was pressing his father’s hand, riddled with needle marks, to his lips. She looked at the younger Herr Mock and was disgusted. She was always disgusted at the sight of a grown man crying.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 27TH, 1919

ELEVEN O’CLOCK AT NIGHT

Sister Hermina, urine bottle in hand, approached the door to the private room and opened it wide, certain she would see the two men asleep again. One of them, as Sister Hermina told herself somewhat bombastically, had been lulled by physical pain, the other by spiritual. This time Sister Hermina’s otherwise faultless intuition had let her down. Neither of them was asleep. The older Herr Mock interrupted some lengthy utterance when he saw her and took the bottle with visible relief. The younger Herr Mock, obviously not wishing to disturb his father, went into the corridor and lit a cigarette. Sister Hermina carried out the embarrassing object and, remembering Doctor Heintze’s harsh words, restrained herself from pointing out to the smoker the unsuitability of surrendering to such a pernicious addiction in a place like this. The younger Herr Mock, as if reading her thoughts, extinguished the cigarette with his shoe, wrapped it in a scrap of paper and went back into the room. The sister slid the urine bottle onto the lower part of her trolley that was stacked with clean sheets, removed her impressively large bonnet and pressed her ear to a gap in the door.

“If you’d been at home at the time,” she heard the sick man’s muffled moan, “you’d have scared off that burglar who made such a racket in the night …”

“It wasn’t a burglar, Father,” the hoarse, bass voice interrupted him. “Burglars don’t make a noise … If you’d agreed to move out of the house, if you weren’t so stubborn, this accident wouldn’t have happened …”

“If, if …” The older man must have been regaining his strength since he was aping his son so well. “What a louse … Telling me it’s all my fault… Is that it? My fault? Who was it who went off with some whore to God knows where, and left the old man alone without any help? Who? Father Christmas? No, my own son, Eberhard … No-one else but he … And you, old man, you can snuff it, it’s time for you to go … That’s how grateful he is to his father …”

“And what, in truth, should I be grateful to you for, Father?” Sister Hermina had heard that tone many times before, that suppressed timbre. This was the way people spoke who, on learning of the death of someone close to them, were trying desperately not to show their weakness. Intonation through the whole range of notes, like in an adolescent boy.

Silence. Steam hissed in the sterilising units, patients groaned in their sleep, the kidney-shaped metal dish containing Herr Hadamitzky’s cancerous tissues clattered against the flagstones of the operating theatre; the hospital was falling asleep; the cockroaches under the sinks and in the damp crannies beneath the sewer pipes were waking.

In the gap of the door left ajar appeared the eye as well as the ear of Sister Hermina. The sick man was gripping his son’s hand tightly. The two hands with their short, fat fingers were identical.

“You’re right.” The older man’s voice wheezed like that of a dying man. Pain crossed his face in waves. “Any ass can have it off and spawn. You’re right … That’s all you have to be grateful to me for …”

The son squeezed his father’s hand so hard that Sister Hermina could have sworn it made the old man’s leg jump, even though it was encased in stiff wooden splints.

“I’ll never leave you again,” the son said.

He stood up and rushed to the door. Sister Hermina sprang away. The departing visitor had a strange glint in his eyes as he passed her. “He must have noticed my embarrassment,” she thought as she adjusted her bonnet. Her dry, downy cheeks glowed. “And he’s going to think I’m knocked out at the sight of him.”

Sister Hermina was wrong. She was the last person Criminal Assistant Eberhard Mock was thinking about at that moment.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 27TH, 1919

A QUARTER PAST ELEVEN AT NIGHT

A new Adler stood on Korsoallee opposite Doctor Rossdeutscher’s grand villa. Four glowing cigarettes betrayed the presence of the passengers inside. Similar lights glowed beneath two large linden trees next to the villa’s railings, spiked like flames. The windows of the house were lit up, and through the partially lowered blinds came the sound of raised voices, as if someone were arguing or taking a ceremonial oath.

A solitary man appeared in the silent street. There was a cigarette glowing in the corner of his mouth too. He approached the car and pulled open the back door on the driver’s side.

“Move up, Reinert,” he said hoarsely. “I’m not slim enough to squeeze in next to you any more.”

“It’s Mock,” Reinert said, and obediently moved across the seat.

Mock looked around the interior of the dark car and recognized other police officers from the Murder Commission: behind the steering wheel sat Ehlers, and the back seat was occupied by the inseparable Reinert and Kleinfeld. Next to the driver was a man in a top hat with his fat thighs spread across the seat. Mock did not recognize him.

“Tell me, gentlemen,” Mock whispered, “what are you doing here? And what about those clever investigators by the trees? Their cigarettes are visible from the banks of the Oder. Everyone leaving the Am Alten Oder tavern is asking himself: who are those two lurking beneath the trees? Don’t you think Doctor Rossdeutscher’s servants might be asking themselves the same question?”

“The servants aren’t home,” Ehlers said. “The cook and butler left the house at about six.”

“Who’s this?” said the stranger in the top hat. A monocle gleamed in one angry eye. “And what right has he got to be asking such questions?”

“Criminal Assistant Eberhard Mock, Doctor Pyttlik,” Ehlers said coldly. “He has more right than anybody to be asking such questions. And it’s our duty to answer them.”

“Don’t lecture me on my duties, Ehlers.” The monocle fell onto the lapel of the infuriated Doctor Pyttlik. “I, as the representative of the municipal authorities, am your superior here. I know who Mock is and I know the pitiful role he is playing in this case. I also know that Mock has been removed from the investigation and is on leave.” Doctor Pyttlik suddenly swivelled his hundred-kilogram body in his seat and the Adler rocked on its suspension. “What are you doing here, damn it, Mock? You ought to be mushroom-picking, or fishing …”

On his face Mock felt breath permeated with the smoke of a cheap cigar. In his head he counted to twenty in Latin and stared at the enraged Doctor Pyttlik.

“Herr Pyttlik, you said …” Mock was still whispering.

“Doctor Pyttlik,” corrected the owner of the scholarly title.

“Herr Pyttlik, you said you know the pitiful role I’m playing in this whole affair. And what role are you playing? Is it not equally pitiful?”

“How dare he!” Pyttlik choked on self-righteous indignation. “Tell him, Kleinfeld, who I am in all this …”

“You can tell him yourself,” Kleinfeld smiled. “You’re not some taciturn Moses for whom the eloquent Aaron has to speak.”

“I am here as the Mayor’s plenipotentiary.” Pyttlik raised his voice. “And I’m to see to it that the apprehension of Doctor Rossdeutscher takes place according to the law. Besides, I’m in charge of the operation and I’ll give the order when to start.”

“He’s in charge? He’s the boss here?” Mock gave himself a light slap on the cheek as if to sober up. “This is the new police president?”

“Without Herr Pyttlik’s decision …” Ehlers said.

“Doctor Pyttlik.” The plenipotentiary was fuming.

“Herr Pyttlik decides.” Ehlers did not pay the slightest attention to the man. “Those are Commissioner Muhlhaus’ orders.”

“Where is Muhlhaus?” Mock rubbed his eyes.

“What business is that of yours?” Pyttlik lowered his voice to a whisper. “Go somewhere else, take a break … Go and pick some mushrooms …”

“Where is Muhlhaus?” Mock looked Reinert in the eyes.

“Negotiating,” Reinert muttered. “He’s asking the Mayor for permission to detain and question Doctor Rossdeutscher.”

“Now? He’s negotiating at night?” This time Mock looked at Pyttlik.

“Not now,” sighed the plenipotentiary, resigned. “Unfortunately, no. Just now the Mayor’s at a reception and won’t be receiving Commissioner Muhlhaus until tomorrow. And we have to sit here until the morning to wait for the Mayor’s decision. Because we can’t leave this house …” He threw a longing glance at the nearby tavern.

Mock climbed out of the car and slammed the door. He stood on the pavement for a moment and stared at one of the windows of the villa. Suddenly a woman’s voice rose above all the others. A high-pitched incantation reached the ears of the police officers. The song of the sirens. This association helped Mock regain peace of mind after his exchange with Pyttlik. He was back in the classroom in his secondary school, in a classics lesson. Amidst maps of Italia and Hellas, amidst plaster busts on which pupils had left the marks of their schoolboy woes, amidst Greek and Latin conjugations, young Eberhard Mock gives his answers. He recites a fragment of The Odyssey, and with the help of pacy hexameters reveals the image of Odysseus tied to the mast, summoned by the siren song of the temptresses. Homer’s verses rang out in the quietness of Korsoallee.

“They’re happy. Singing away,” Pyttlik said, indicating the bright windows of Rossdeutscher’s villa. “But what’s with him?” He pointed at Mock. “Has he gone mad? What’s he gabbling about?”

Mock walked around the car and up to the passenger window from which poked a top hat.

“Thank you for your explanation, Doctor Pyttlik,” said Mock. “I have one more question. I wanted to make sure. I don’t know whether you are aware … Doctor Rossdeutscher made use of the services of the four murdered male prostitutes, so he is most likely the last person to have seen them. He has to be questioned. Nobody is doing so. Instead the Mayor sends you, Doctor, makes you responsible for the entire operation — in other words entrusts you with Commissioner Muhlhaus’ duties, but has no time for Commissioner Muhlhaus himself. Is that it, Doctor Pyttlik?”

“I won’t take this,” Pyttlik said and flounced in his seat, making the car sink once more on its new, beautifully balanced suspension. “Your insinuations regarding the Mayor are highly …”

Mock whistled three times. He then spread his fingers across Pyttlik’s bloated face and gave it a hard push towards Ehlers. He heard the crunch of a top hat being crushed. Six men rushed into the street from the tavern side, and seven more from the park. The two detectives beneath the trees left their posts and walked up to the Adler in bewilderment. Pyttlik tried to clamber out of the car in his squashed hat.

“Now I’m in command,” Mock said to the face of the raging boor, and he jammed the door with his foot.

“This is an act of violence!” Pyttlik yelled, unable to climb out of the car. “An assault on a representative of the Mayor! I’ll make you pay for this, Mock. You’re finished! Seize him!” he shouted to the two detectives who had left their posts beneath the linden trees and were now watching the whole incident with expressions of indifference. “Arrest him!”

“Don’t move,” Ehlers barked at them from the car. “This is an assault, Doctor Pyttlik. You said so yourself. We’ve been terrorized.”

“He assaulted me! Attacked me!” Pyttlik hollered, and again the Adler rocked from side to side. “You are my witnesses!”

“Did you see anything, Kleinfeld?” Reinert asked languidly as he watched Mock force open the dangerously spiky railings with the help of a towering strongman.

Mock’s men easily cleared the fence and dispersed around Doctor Rossdeutscher’s villa at a run. The giant opened the kitchen door with what Reinert surmised was a pick-lock. Mock said something in a low voice to a short man in a bowler hat and the latter passed this on to the strongman with a few hand movements. Mock entered the house and his men slipped in after him.

“Did you see anything, Kleinfeld?” Reinert asked again. “Did anyone attack anyone?”

“No, nothing at all,” Kleinfeld muttered. “All I see is that Herr Pyttlik can’t make himself comfortable in the car. He keeps on wriggling like Jonah in the belly of the whale.”

27. IX.1919

In the evening there was to be a meeting at which we had to gain the acceptance of the deities. The summoning of the Erinyes did not in itself seem a difficult task, but to do this contrary to the will of the Highest would have been a terrible sacrilege. My duty as chronicler of our brotherhood is to describe accurately these rites of acceptance.

Present at the meeting were: the Master, the Brothers Eckhard of Prague, Hermann of Marburg and Johann of Munich. Also there were all the brothers from Breslau. After prayers to Natura Magna Mater we commenced the initiation rites. The hymn to Cybele followed by the ancient Indian mantras in honour of Gauri sent our medium into a trance. After a while, the deity spoke in the medium’s high-pitched voice. Brother Johann of Munich translated, while brother Hermann of Marburg noted down the deity’s message. Our medium has great power. The daughter has all her father’s strength, certainly. This power has only to be freed. The medium was able to free all the beings circulating around her. Was able to pick up mighty clusters of spiritual energy from supersensory reality. We heard whispers and voices all around and within the house, and … [the rest is illegible zigzags].

BRESLAU, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919

A QUARTER PAST MIDNIGHT

Mock stood in the doorway of a vast room and studied the people assembled there. He could do so quite openly and without inhibition, because everybody was completely and utterly focussed on a woman in a wheelchair; all eyes were glued to her lips. The woman was shouting something in a shrill voice, and as she did so her veil billowed about her large head. It looked as though her hair had either been shaved or plastered down. Mock’s brain, geared towards philology as always, registered the hissing sibilants in the invalid’s cries, which constructed entire sentences fused by a clearly stressed rhythm.

In this enormous room with panelled walls blackened with age, empty but for seven leather armchairs and piles of ancient publications on a three-metre-long desk, sat seven men. All were in evening attire, with snow-white shirt-fronts shining from the lapels of their tailcoats. The eldest of those assembled was translating the invalid’s ecstatic groans and a fifty-year-old bearded man who looked like an office worker was noting down the translation, while the rest fixed their anxious eyes on the crippled prophetess.

It sounded to Mock as if the woman was reciting some poem in a language unknown to him. He felt genuine admiration for the elderly man who was interpreting these utterances ex abrupto, and indeed slowly and clearly enough for the bearded secretary sitting next to him to note everything down accurately. Every now and again the secretary tossed the page on which he had written onto a pile of others held together with a steel paper clip.

Mock stepped into the room and clapped loudly.

“Take a break, good gentlemen,” he shouted.

Nobody took anything. The invalid continued to spit out dark tautologies, the veil sticking to the saliva on her lips. The assembly did not take their eyes off her. The man leading the meeting made a mistake in his interpretation, and the bearded secretary crossed out something in his notes. Nobody so much as glanced at Mock.

“Which of you gentlemen is Doctor Rossdeutscher?” asked Mock.

He was answered by the cries of the lame Sybil. She choked and spluttered over the agglomerations of consonants which no vowel severed, no anaptyxis disjoined. Mock walked around those gathered there and approached the secretary. He reached for the pile of papers, unfastened the clip and pulled out a few sheets from the very middle. He began to read.

“It is he,” the leader translated, and his secretary noted everything in cursive script. “He is here. Our greatest enemy. He is here!”

“I have conducted an experiment; time will verify its results. How did I do it? I isolated the man and forced him to confess to his adultery in writing. It was a terrible confession for him to have to make since he was permeated to the bone with middle-class morality. I brought this man to a certain place late at night. He was bound and gagged. I freed his right hand, tied him to a chair and then asked him once again to deny what he had written previously, promising him that if he obeyed I would give this second letter to his wife. Feverishly he scribbled something down. I took the second letter, the denial, and slipped it down the drain. I witnessed his fury and his pain. ‘I’m going to come back here,’ his eyes told me. Then I took the man out to the carriage and drove away. Later I killed him, leaving him where he was sure to be found. His ghost will return and draw the attention of the inhabitants of that place to the drain,” Mock read.

The medium began to wail. She rubbed her twisted knees, dribbled saliva and thrashed her head about. The veil slid slowly down her smooth skull. A gloved hand slipped through the folds of her dress. Her screams, which sounded like the howling of an enraged bitch, infected the translator.

“It’s him! It’s him!” translated the man. “Kill him! Kill!”

“I ate my supper and approached the tenements into which the prostitute I was tailing the day before yesterday had disappeared. I waited. She emerged at about midnight and winked meaningfully at me. A moment later we were in a droschka, and a quarter of an hour after that at the place where we bring offerings to the souls of our ancestors. She undressed, and for a generous sum allowed me to tie her up. She did not protest even when I gagged her. She had terrible eczema on her neck. This constituted the fulfilment of anticipation. After all, yesterday I offered up to science Director W., aged sixty, who had identical eczema. And his was on the neck, too!’” Mock read.

He put down the pile of papers and looked at the bearded secretary. Police cars could be heard entering Korsoallee. Mock was assailed by piercing sounds from all sides: the wailing of sirens, the high-pitched yowls of the bitch, the howling of the sea wind. He grabbed the scribe by the throat and forced him to the back of the armchair, so that his balding head thudded dully against the wood at the top of the backrest.

“Did you write this, you son of a whore?” Mock’s lower jaw jutted out as he covered the secretary’s beard with thick gobbets of saliva. All of a sudden he felt a blow on his thigh. He spun around and turned to stone. The creature in the wheelchair had wispy, plastered-down hair. Through it he could see white patches of skin with dark blotches here and there; sparse clumps grew over the horny edges. The tip of her tongue vibrated in her open, gabbling mouth. Her egg-shaped head thrashed from side to side, with first one temple then the other thumping against the back of the wheelchair.

“Slaughter him! Slaughter him! Tear him apart!”

Mock drew back his arm as if to take a swing.

“Don’t hit her!” he heard the secretary shout. “She’ll tell you everything! You’ll realize your mistake, Mock! You were wrong that time in Konigsberg! Admit your mistake!”

Mock’s head found itself momentarily in the harbour of his elbow and arm. He struck. He felt pain in his wrist. The cripple opened her eyes wide and, falling backwards with the wheelchair, spat out the tongue she had just bitten off. She was no longer choking on the indigestible groups of consonants, she was choking on her own blood.

The secretary ran to her, kneeled down and turned her on her side. The invalid kicked out her twisted legs in agony. The secretary tore his bloodied cheek away from her head and stared at Mock. A swollen weal cut across his face; one eye glistened, circumscribed by a band of gore.

“My name is Doctor Horst Rossdeutscher,” he said, wiping the blood from his face. He pointed to the prostrate being. “And that’s my daughter, Louise Rossdeutscher. You’ve killed her, Mock. The strongest medium that ever lived. I satisfied all her whims, fulfilled all her needs, and you, a shoemaker’s son, killed her with one blow of your hoof.”

The sound of metal-capped shoes resounded on the stairs. Doctor Pyttlik and Commissioner Muhlhaus were on their way up to the first floor.

“But vengeance will come, Mock,” yelled Rossdeutscher as he slipped his hand into the inside pocket of his tailcoat. “The Erinyes born of the corpses of those closest to you will find you.” Rossdeutscher pulled out a gun and put it in his mouth. “Those whom you love, Mock …” — the barrel of the gun made him lisp — “tell us, where are they now? …” He pulled the trigger. The sirens were silenced.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919

HALF PAST ONE IN THE MORNING

Mock ran up to the fourth floor of the tenement on Gartenstrasse, taking three stairs at a time. The loud pounding of his brogues on the wooden steps woke the residents and their dogs. He conquered floor after floor chased by barking, swearing and the stench that erupted from dirty kitchens and draughty toilets.

At last he found himself outside the door to number 20. He rapped out the rhythm of “Schlesierlied”: slow-slow-slow, pause, slow-slow-slow-slow-quick-quick. Silence. In a low voice he sang “Kehr ich einst zur Heimat wieder”.^† Pausing to check that he had remembered the rhythm correctly, he tapped it out again. He was answered by abuse from a neigh-bour on the floor below who had opened his door and was spouting gutter obscenities.

Mock went down one flight of stairs to watch the man raging in the corridor and allowed the stream of abuse to flow on. But when the neigh-bour — who was clearly drunk and dressed in one-piece long-johns — became fully awake and came at him with a coal scuttle, Mock lost his patience. He felt a whoosh of air by his head, dodged the scuttle at the last moment and with the point of his polished brogue kicked the assailant in the shin. The blow was not hard, but it was painful enough for the scuttle’s owner to need to rub the spot. For a moment both his hands were occupied, one rubbing his smarting leg, the other holding his warlike scuttle at the ready. Mock took a swing very like the one he had aimed at the invalid during the seance, and the outer side of his palm came down hard on his assailant’s collarbone. His hand, sprained once already that day, burned with a raging fire as he felt the crunch of tiny bones in his wrist. Mock’s assailant let go of his scuttle and clutched his neck. Then all he heard was material ripping and shirt buttons hitting the wall of the corridor. He plunged down the stairs, his head struck the door to the toilet on the half-landing, and he heard nothing more.

Mock ran back up to the top floor. He pressed his entire weight against the rickety banister and threw himself at the door to apartment 20, aiming his shoulder at a point just above the handle. There was a terrible crash, but the door did not give way. Other doors did open, however, and on every floor. The tenement residents and their four-legged friends edged out into the stairwell. Mock gathered speed once more, charged at the door and tumbled into the apartment. Bits of rubble pattered against his bowler hat and dust poured down his shirt collar.

He lay on the floor in the hallway, on top of the door, and took stock of the apartment. Smolorz was lying down too, but on the kitchen floor. He was smiling in his sleep, misting the empty stoneware bottle of liqueur at his lips with his breath. Mock turned his head, got to his feet and went into the main room. It was empty; only Erika’s hat hung on the back of a chair. He picked it up with two fingers. On the bed sat Rossdeutscher, shouting: “Vengeance will come, Mock. The Erinyes born of the corpses of those closest to you will find you. Those whom you love, Mock … Tell us, where are they now …” Mock collapsed onto the bed and tried to catch the scent of Erika in the clean sheets which had been there for three weeks, and had not yet lost their starchy smell. Try as he may, he could detect nothing other than the sterile smell of cleanliness. There was no Rossdeutscher, no Erika.

The neighbours of the four sailors stood uncertainly in the doorway watching the two men, one of whom was trying to clamber to his feet, while the other did not want to get off the bed. Suddenly a dog howled and barked at the threshold, and Mock got up and glared at the small crowd gathered at the door.

“Get the fuck out of here!” he roared, and grabbed the chair in the hall and spun it as if throwing a discus.

“We’re going, we’re going.” said Frenzel the caretaker, urging his neighbours to leave. “I know him. He’s a police officer. It’s best not to stand in his way …”

The neighbours jumped away from the door and the chair hit Smolorz on the head. Mock’s red-headed subordinate clutched his forehead and red trickles ran through his fingers. Mock raised the chair once more and brought it down with a crash. He watched as a sizeable haematoma swelled and split on the bald patch at the back of Smolorz’s head. He kicked the chair into a corner of the kitchen and grabbed the poker from a bucket on top of a small pile of coal. He took a swing and struck. The cartilage in Smolorz’s ear crunched beneath the spiralled end of the poker. He lay in a foetal position with both hands over his head. Mock grabbed him by the arms and dragged him to the kitchen door, positioning his head against the doorframe. He grasped the door handle and swung the door shut as hard as he could. He thought he heard Smolorz’s skull crack.

It was not Smolorz’s skull but the kitchen door he had heard as the bottom of it rammed over the poker. Splinters flew off it and Smolorz looked up with drunken eyes.

“Sorry,” he croaked in a schnapps-baritone. “I was supposed to keep an eye on her … I don’t remember a thing …”

Mock knelt on the floor and took several deep breaths, allowing his fury to subside. Streams of sweat ran down his neck and seeped into the pale layer of dust that covered the collar of his best shirt. His cuffs were red with Smolorz’s blood, his shoes scuffed from the kicks, his jacket torn from breaking down the door, his hands black with soot from the poker.

“I’m sorry,” Smolorz said as he cowered by the doorframe. Something had happened to his eye: it was open, bloodshot, and so big that the eyelid could not cover it. “For the love of God, I swear on my Arthur’s soul …”

“You son of a whore,” hissed Mock. “Never swear on a child!”

“On my soul, then” Smolorz groaned. “I’ll never touch alcohol …”

“You son of a whore,” Mock repeated, tossing his head to the side. Drops of sweat darkened the newly polished floorboards. “Get up, pour some soap down your throat and get to work. I’ll tell you what you have to do …”

As Mock spoke, so Smolorz sobered; with every word Mock uttered he grew more and more amazed.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919

THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

It was the second time Sister Hermina had seen the younger Herr Mock that day, and this time he made a far worse impression on her. His suit was covered in dust and torn at the sleeve, his shirt was bloodied and his brogues scuffed at the toe. Small pieces of stone, like bits of rubble, were lodged in the brim of his bowler hat. Herr Mock ran into the corridor of the Surgical Ward repeating something under his breath, something Sister Hermina could not quite make out. It was as if he were saying: “Those closest … Where are they now …?”

“Herr Mock!” she called after him as he passed the duty room, muttering to himself. “Where do you think you’re going?”

He paid no attention to her and ran towards his father’s private room. Sister Hermina set her thin, tall body into motion and her heels clicked loudly down the hospital corridor. Her bonnet with its four folds flapped in all directions like a sailing boat finding its course. Hearing the sound of her heels, patients woke from their painful torpor which none could call sleep, pulled themselves up in bed and waited for a merciful injection, for the gentle touch of her dry, bony hand, for a sympathetic, comforting smile. Sister Hermina’s telepathic receptors did not pick up the patients’ mute complaints and requests this time, however; they were more sensitive to the anxiety and unease of the dark-haired man who was stumbling from wall to wall, heading for the empty private room. Herr Mock tumbled in and slammed the door. Sister Hermina heard a stifled cry. Perhaps one of her patients was sharing his pain with the others?

But it was not a patient. The younger Herr Mock was lying on his stomach with his arms spread across the clean, freshly made bed, moaning. She rushed over and shook him.

“Doctor Ruhtgard came to collect your father an hour ago,” she said. “The gentleman felt much better and Doctor Ruhtgard took him home with him …”

Mock had stopped thinking, stopped feeling anything. He took a few banknotes from his pocket.

“Could you ask somebody, Sister,” he whispered, and his bloodshot eyes flashed, “to clean my suit?” He collapsed onto the pillow and fell asleep.

Sister Hermina stroked his cheek, through which the pinpoints of a five o’clock shadow were beginning to protrude, and left the private room.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919

TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Mock walked out of Wenzel-Hancke Hospital and stood deep in thought on the street corner next to a newspaper kiosk. Small children jostled past him in their Sunday best. Entire families hurrying to the evangelical church of St John the Baptist for morning Mass marched along the pavement. Industrious fathers strode by, their gastric juices dissolving fat Sunday sausages; next to them tripped mothers, flushed and sweating in the sun, chasing small herds of unruly children with their parasols. Mock smiled and stepped behind the kiosk to allow four young citizens to pass as they walked in a row holding hands, singing the miners’ song:

Gluck auf! Gluck auf!

Der Steiger kommt!

Und er hat sein helles Licht

Bei der Nacht

Schon angezundt.

A girl of about twelve wearing a pair of thick, darned stockings was making her way behind the children, carrying a bouquet of roses and pushing it under the noses of those standing at the hospital entrance.

Mock glanced down at his cleaned suit and his brogues; a thick layer of polish concealed the scuff marks. The sleeve of his jacket had been well repaired and he could tell from the exceptional softness of its felt that his bowler hat had been cleaned over steam. He beckoned to the girl. She ran to him with her bouquet of roses, apparently limping. Mock inspected the flowers critically.

“Take the flowers into the hospital, to the nurse who was on night duty.” He handed the girl ten marks and a small card printed with the words EBERHARD MOCK, POLICE PRAESIDIUM. “And attach my business card.”

The girl hobbled to the hospital and Mock was reminded of the cripple he had killed the previous day. He thought of Erika’s empty bed. His diaphragm heaved, and his gullet filled with burning bile. He felt faint and held on to the railings surrounding the hospital. Everything seemed to be at a slant. The elegant Neudorfstrasse grew distorted in yellow-black reflections. The mighty buildings with their elaborate decoration rolled and pressed down on one other. He rested his head against the railings and closed his eyes. His head was bursting, as if he had a hangover. The worst hangover was better than a bad conscience, than the invalid’s contorted legs thrashing against the floor and the empty bed where there was no longer even a trace of Erika’s scent. Mock wanted a hangover, wanted to suffer, anything so as not to hear the baying of the Erinyes. He looked up and saw the sun-drenched street in its proper perspective. Among the shop signs, one stood out: m. horn — colonial goods. Mock knew the owner and knew he could persuade him to sell him a bottle of liqueur, even on a day of rest.

He set off in the direction of the shop, but stopped at the kerb. The street was very busy. Carriages and cars carrying citizens to church wound their way towards the town centre; in the opposite direction strolled those intending to enjoy an autumnal walk in South Park. All of a sudden there was a commotion. A cab had almost hit a speeding motor with its shaft. The horse yanked at its harness and the cabby swore at the driver, aiming his whip at the elegant gentleman sitting in the open-topped car. Making the most of the confusion, Mock leaped into the street and ran towards the shop and its shelves of bottles filled with colourful sweetness.

But before he could reach them he was accosted outside the shop by a newspaper vendor.

“Special edition of the Breslauer Neueste Nachrichten!” yelled the boy in the cap. “Vampire of Breslau commits suicide!”

When Mock saw the article on the front page, he forgot all about alcohol:

VAMPIRE NO LONGER THREATENS CITIZENS OF BRESLAU

Last night, during a spiritual seance, the well-known Breslau doctor, Horst Rossdeutscher, committed suicide. Notes were found in the suicide’s house, a singular diary in which he admits to the cruel murder of four men, unidentified to this day, of Julius Wohsedt, director of the Wollheim river port, and of a young prostitute identified as Johanna Voigten. The diary claims that the murders committed during the first four days of September were of a ritualistic nature. According to the Chief of the Murder Commission of the Police Praesidium, Criminal Commissioner Heinrich Muhlhaus, Rossdeutscher had summoned the souls of those he had killed during spiritual seances and, using occult practices, had channeled them to harm an employee of the Vice Department. Neither Criminal Commissioner Muhlhaus nor the aforementioned employee himself, Criminal Assistant Eberhard Mock — we give his name here for the organ grinders of Breslau sing of him! — can explain why Rossdeutscher harboured such a burning hatred for Mock.

Yesterday at midnight, during a successful operation by the police under Criminal Commissioner Muhlhaus and the Mayor’s plenipotentiary, Doctor Richard Pyttlik, all those taking part in the seance were arrested. They were, according to the notes, members of a secret occult brotherhood that worshipped ancient Greek deities. Among those arrested were eminent representatives of learning, such as a prominent Hittite linguist at one of the oldest and most renowned German universities. They have been apprehended in order to investigate the matter, but there are unofficial reports that Rossdeutscher’s notes — which consist of obscure and garbled notions on mythological subjects — cannot form the basis of a charge.

An unfortunate incident occurred during the seance. Rossdeutscher’s handicapped and wheelchair-bound daughter, Louise (twenty), used by her father as a medium to enable the brotherhood to communicate with the dead, suffered a fatal accident as she fell from her wheelchair. On witnessing the death of his beloved daughter, Rossdeutscher shot himself.

The grisly investigation known by the police as the “Four Sailors” case has come to an end. Certain individuals allegedly at risk of death at the hands of the vampire, and for that reason held in isolation by the police, have now been released. The city breathes a sigh of relief. But one question arises: what is happening to our society when one of its foremost representatives, a well-respected surgeon, yields to superstitions which lead him to commit such monstrous crimes? It would be understandable for some eccentric aristocrat, or a shopkeeper tormented by rampaging inflation, to find solace in supernatural powers, but an enlightened representative of science? Sic transit Gloria mundi.^†

At the bottom of the page there was a large photograph of a young woman with the caption “Erika Kiesewalter”, and beneath it the following text:

Twenty-three-year-old Erika Kiesewalter, actress and dance-hostess at the Eldorado Restaurant, disappeared on the night of 27th to 28th September. Dark-red hair, medium height, slim build. No distinguishing features. Anyone with information regarding the missing person is requested to contact the Police Praesidium. Information resulting in Erika Kiesewalter’s discovery will be rewarded with the sum of fifteen thousand marks.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919

ELEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Mock climbed to the first floor of the imposing, detached tenement near South Park and knocked energetically at the door to one of the apartments. It was opened by the owner himself, Doctor Cornelius Ruhtgard, who was wearing a crimson dressing gown with velvet lapels and embossed brown-leather slippers. From beneath the velvet lapels peeped the knot of a black necktie.

“Come in, come in, Ebbo,” he said, opening the door wide. “Your father feels much better.”

“Is he with you?” Mock asked, hanging his bowler hat on the clothes stand.

“He’s at my hospital,” the doctor said, taking Mock’s walking stick.

“The nurse told me he was with you.” Mock made his way along the familiar corridor towards the doctor’s study.

“Because he is with me.” Ruhtgard sat down at a small coffee table and gestured for Mock to sit down opposite him. “At my hospital.”

“Maybe that’s what she said.” Mock clipped the end of the Hacif cigar Ruhtgard had offered him. “That’s probably what she said … I was so tired and devastated I didn’t take anything in.”

“I know, I read about it in the Breslauer.” Ruhtgard stood up. “It’s all over. You shouldn’t be devastated. It’s finished. Nobody’s ever going to sing another mournful ballad about the vampire of Breslau. I’ll make you some coffee. It’s the servants’ day off, and Christel’s not here either. She’s gone on an excursion with the Frisch Auf gymnastics society.” He studied his friend. “Tell me, Ebbo, how did that handicapped girl die?”

“I killed her.” Mock gazed out at the rustling chestnut tree as it generously bestowing the earth with its yellow leaves. “Unintentionally.” The wind murmured, the yellow leaves drifted. “No doubt there’s a storm and gales by the sea,” he thought, then said out loud: “I hit her when she attacked me. She bit her tongue off and choked on her own blood. Is that possible, Corni?”

“Of course.” Ruhtgard forgot about the coffee, opened the sideboard and took out a carafe of Edelbranntwein and two small glasses. “In the state you’re in, this will do you more good than coffee and cake.” He poured with an experienced hand. “Of course it’s possible. She drowned in her own blood. If you were to open somebody’s mouth and pour a glass of water into it in one go, they would choke and could drown in that small amount. And there would certainly be more blood if you bit your tongue off than one glass.”

“I killed her.” Mock felt a burning sensation under his eyelids. “And I killed another woman too, though indirectly.” He ran his fingers over his eyelids and felt the sand that had built up through lack of sleep. “A woman I fell in love with … She was a prostitute and a dance-hostess … I’d spent three weeks with her in Rugenwaldermunde …”

“Is it that Kiesewalter?” Ruhtgard asked, reaching for the Breslauer Neueste Nachrichten. He looked very tense, his face like a petrified mask of pain. The doctor leaned towards Mock and grabbed him by the biceps. His fingers were as strong as they had been when he picked up his shattered friend in a Konigsberg street.

“What’s happened, Corni?” Mock said, putting down his full glass.

“Brother,” Ruhtgard stammered, “how sorry I feel for you … That girl” — he sprang out of his armchair and slammed his palm down on the photograph on the front page of the newspaper — “is your dream. It’s the girl of your dreams, your nurse from Konigsberg who doesn’t exist …”

Mock stood up and wiped his damp forehead with the back of his hand. Doctor Ruhtgard’s study grew longer and narrower. The window appeared to be a far off, bright point. The pictures on the walls distorted into rhomboids, Ruhtgard’s head sank into his shoulders. Mock stumbled into the bathroom adjacent to the study, tripped and fell to the floor, hitting his forehead against the edge of the porcelain toilet bowl. The blow was so hard that tears filled his eyes. He closed them and felt the warm bump on his forehead pulsate. He opened his eyes again and waited for the veil of tears to disperse. Objects returned to their rightful proportions. Ruhtgard was standing in the doorway, his head once again its rightful size. Mock pushed himself up on his knees and pulled his Mauser from his pocket. He checked that it was loaded and slurred:

“Either I kill myself, or I kill that son of a whore who was supposed to keep an eye on her …”

“Wait a moment,” Ruhtgard said, grasping Mock’s wrists in his iron grip. “Don’t kill anyone. Sit down on the sofa and tell me everything, calmly … We’ll find a solution, you’ll see … After all, that girl has only disappeared, she might still be alive …”

He pulled Mock forcibly to the study sofa. The velvet-upholstered piece was too short for Mock to lie on comfortably, so Ruhtgard laid his friend’s head on a large pillow and his feet on the armrest at the other end. He removed his shoes and applied a cold letter-knife to the bump.

“I’m not going to tell you anything.” Ruhtgard’s nursing clearly brought Mock relief. “I can’t talk about it, Corni … I just can’t …”

“You have no idea how much it can help to talk to someone who sympathizes with you …” The doctor was very serious. His grey, evenly trimmed beard bristled with kindness, and his pince-nez flashed wisely. “Listen to me, I know a form of therapy which can work extremely well when patients have a block, when they don’t want to or can’t fully trust their psychologist …”

“You’re not a psychologist, Ruhtgard.” Mock sensed drowsiness creep over him. “And I’m not your patient … I haven’t, as yet, caught syphilis …”

“But you are my friend.” Now it seemed that Ruhtgard was the one with the block; umpteen seconds passed before he blurted: “And the only one at that, the only one I’ve ever had, or have …”

“And what method is that?” Mock appeared not to have heard the confession.

“A method which allows one to get into your subconscious … which reveals what is unconscious and negated in an individual. What you may have experienced only once, what you may be ashamed of … This method might, for example, make you realize that it is your father you love most, and that the girl who has disappeared is no more than a passing infatuation … When you understand yourself, nothing will make you angry … You will live and act true to your innermost being. Gnothi seauton!^† This method is called hypnosis … Don’t worry, I’m an expert hypnotist. I’ve mastered the art. I won’t harm you, just as I didn’t harm my daughter when I put her into a trance. How could I ever harm the person dearest to me?”

Mock did not hear Ruhtgard’s last words. The autumn wind sending flurries of yellow leaves into flight in Breslau’s South Park became a sea wind, and the river whose dark and turbulent waters flowed not far from Ruhtgard’s house ceased to be the lazy Oder, and became the Pregel, stirred by the salty breeze.

Mock found himself in Konigsberg.

KONIGSBERG, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28TH, 1916

MIDNIGHT

Private Eberhard Mock could not climb the stairs in the tenement at Kniprodestrasse 8, but not because they were exceptionally steep or slippery. The reason was quite different: pumped up with six tall shots of Trishdivinis, a Lithuanian herbal schnapps, he was not in a state even to give the date of his birth. Slumped against the banister he tried to recite the first twenty lines of The Aeneid without making any mistakes, in order to convince himself that he was sober. But he could only get as far as the bit about Carthage before the epic’s first lines — “Arma virumque cano”^† — would come back at him like an echo. The regularity of the Latin hexameters introduced a certain order to his brain, which on that winter evening was swimming in schnapps as bitter as absinthe rather than in cerebrospinal fluid.

A signal from his brain reached his extremities and Mock finally made it to the first floor, his spurs ringing out proudly. Even though he had been demoted to private as a former soldier of a reconnoitring platoon, he retained the right to wear spurs. Outside his apartment he felt a huge wave of shame at not being able to get beyond the twelfth verse. He clicked his heels, making an ear-splitting racket with his spurs, and yelled:

“I’m extremely sorry, Professor Moravjetz! I’ve not learned it for today, but I’ll know it all by tomorrow! All fifty verses!”

His diaphragm surged and a mighty hiccough forced its way through Mock’s gullet. He pulled a key from his pocket and pushed it into the hole. There was a grating, and he felt the metal resist. Swaying, he produced a metal pipe-cleaning brush from his pocket and slipped that into the keyhole. He pressed his whole weight down on the primitive lever and heard a crack as the cleaning brush snapped. A Mauser 98 appeared in his hand. He aimed at the lock and pulled the trigger.

The noise shook the tenement. Doors to the other apartments opened. Someone shouted at Mock from above:

“What are you doing, you drunken pig? You live one floor up!”

Mock kicked the lock with his heel and forced his way into the hallway. “Did you hear that noise, like a gunshot?” somebody was shouting. “It’s him! He’s here already!” Mock stood unsteadily in the middle of the hallway before proceeding slowly, his spurs clanking. He came to a velvet curtain and drew it aside. He entered another hallway. It was a waiting room, with doors giving on to several rooms. One of them was ajar, but another heavy curtain hung from its lintel. One of the walls had no door but a window. It gave on to the ventilation pit. Outside on the window sill stood a paraffin lamp whose feeble glow barely penetrated the dusty pane. In the meagre twilight, Mock saw a number of people sitting in the waiting room. He did not manage to get a good look at them as his attention was drawn to the curtain hanging over the door. It moved suddenly. A cold draught and a sigh drifted from beyond it. Mock began to walk towards it, but a tall man in a top hat stood in his way. When Mock tried to move him aside the latter took off his headwear. In the pale semi-darkness he saw a knot of scar tissue as it refracted the dim light; the scars criss-crossed and interweaved in the man’s eye sockets. Instead of eyes he had a tangle of scars.

Mock stepped back but was not afraid. He shoved the blind man against the wall, laughed out loud and grabbed the edge of the curtain. From behind it two voices, those of a man and a woman, were uttering inarticulate sounds. Mock yanked at the fabric and caught his spur on an unevenness in the floor. He tumbled onto the sandstone flags and, with a rattle of fastening hooks, the thick green plush tore away and flowed down over him like a shroud. He pulled himself up and advanced on all fours towards an elderly woman who was sitting in the small room beyond the curtain, wheezing. She wore a trailing dark robe. The lamp on the windowsill illuminated her toothless mouth, and from it poured a white swathe which fell in tangles and folds at her feet.

“Ectoplasm!” shrieked a woman’s high-pitched voice. “She’s materialized it!”

Mock shook with a suppressed hiccough, which was all the stronger for being accompanied by drunken, uncontrollable laughter. The patter of the feet of curious neighbours resounded in the apartment.

“What ectoplasm!” Mock was in convulsions of laughter. He got up, tripped and made towards the medium, who was frozen in a trance. Without the slightest disgust he began to extract long white strips from the old woman’s mouth. “It’s an ordinary bandage!”

“Bandage! It’s an ordinary bandage!” said a man’s stifled voice. “A bunch of frauds, not psychics! And you wanted to make me believe it! I’m going to write everything in the Konigsberger Allgemeine Zeitung.”

“He’s wrong, the drunk,” a loud voice answered. “‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed!’ I have no eyes, but I do believe …”

Mock was still unravelling the bandage when he felt a blow to his midriff. He clasped his stomach, amazed at the strength of the toothless woman’s punch. Her eyes were still closed as she aimed another blow, this time at his chin. His boots and spurs skidded apart on the bandage, which was sodden with mucus and saliva. He hurtled towards the window. It was not quite shut. He felt the sill beneath his buttocks, and then nothing.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919

NOON

“And now get up and sit at the desk,” said Ruhtgard.

Mock obeyed. He got up, sat at the desk and joined his hands. He stared down at the green desk leather as Ruhtgard placed a sheet of stiff, decorated wove paper and a Colonia fountain pen in front of him. Then he extracted a wallet adorned with the Konigsberg coat of arms from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it open in front of him.

“Write down what I dictate to you,” Ruhtgard spoke loudly and clearly. “I, Eberhard Mock, the undersigned, being of sound body and mind, declare that on 28th November, 1916, in the city of Konigsberg on Pregolya, I was witness to a spiritual seance. Prompted by ill-will and under the influence of alcohol, I attempted to catch hold of the ectoplasm issuing through the mouth of the medium, Frau Natasha Vorobiev. Failing to do so, I assured those assembled that I had caught hold of a bandage, and that the entire seance was a sham. My behaviour prompted Herr Harry Hempflich, a journalist from the Konigsberger Allgemeine Zeitung, to publish in his newspaper on 31st November a slanderous article aimed against spiritualism. I hereby declare that all the information presented by H. Hempflich and based on my so-called experiences are false and spring from my materialist and scientific outlook on life. I also ardently declare that I firmly believe in the existence of spirits and phantoms, having experienced their activity in my house on Plesserstrasse. At the same time I vouch to assume responsibility for the deaths of six people, namely, Julius Wohsedt, Johanna Voigten and four sailors. They suffered death for a great cause — to prove to me that spirits do exist. If I had not disbelieved, those persons would still be alive. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Eberhard Mock.”

Mock finished writing. Ruhtgard put the wallet back into his jacket. He folded the letter Mock had written into four and slipped it into an envelope. Then he placed the envelope in front of the police officer sitting at his desk and said in a loud voice:

“Address it to Herr Harry Hempflich, Chief Editor, Konigsberger Allgemeine Zeitung. And now get up and go to the door!”

Mock stopped in the doorway, his eyes still closed.

“Walk down the corridor and through the first door on the left!”

Mock walked into the games room, with Ruhtgard following him.

“Walk over to the balcony door, open it and walk out on to the balcony!”

Mock knocked into the piano in the middle of the room, but soon found his way to the balcony. He opened the balcony door and stepped onto the small terrace.

“Climb onto the balcony ledge and jump!”

Mock clambered onto the ledge with difficulty. He held onto the balustrade with one hand, and with the other grabbed an enormous flowerpot that was secured to the ledge with a metal hoop. The flowerpot broke away and smashed onto the pavement between the spiked railings and the tenement wall. Mock lost his balance and fell back heavily onto the balcony floor.

“Stand on the ledge!”

Mock lifted his leg and placed it once again on the stone balustrade, holding on to the wall with one hand with such ease as if walking the tightrope was his daily bread.

“And now jump, impale yourself on those railings!”

Mock jumped.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919

ONE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Mock jumped. His torso was not impaled on the railings, however; his legs did not hang from its arrow-shaped spikes or thrash at the metal in agony. Mock turned his shoulders and jumped … from the balustrade onto the balcony. But not by choice. As he was bending his knees to launch himself off the balustrade and soar in a wide arch onto the spiked railings, a tall figure who had been squatting in the corner of the balcony sprang to his feet. A strong, freckled hand covered with thick red hair grabbed him by the tails of his jacket and pulled him forcefully to itself.

“What’s this, Herr Mock!” growled Smolorz. “What’s all this about?”

Mock’s subordinate had a raging hangover. His gullet was burning; his stomach was aflame; his ear — enormously swollen and blue-black from the blow dealt by the poker — radiated heat to his cheeks; the haematoma at the top of his head and the bump on his forehead boiled beneath a thin film of skin. Smolorz was angry. At Mock and at the whole world. He grabbed his boss by the collar and lugged him back into the room. He placed the sole of his shoe on Mock’s pale jacket and shoved him under the piano.

“Lie there, fuck it,” he muttered and hurled himself after Ruhtgard who had disappeared into the hall, slamming the door to the games room behind him.

Smolorz was exploding with fury. He opened the door so energetically it almost came off its hinges. He heard the sound of a body falling in the hall, and was there a second later to see that the rug had been moved and the small table with the telephone overturned. The figure of Ruhtgard flashed through the front door. Smolorz ran into the corridor and saw the fleeing man already halfway down the stairs. His brain, overcooked with alcohol, now began to function. Why had the rug in the hall been moved, and why were the table and telephone lying on the floor? “Because Ruhtgard slipped,” Smolorz answered his own question, and instantly formed his plan of action. He caught hold of the stair carpet held in place with metal rods and tugged hard. The rods rang out in the silence of the corridor, rolled down the stairs, and Cornelius Ruhtgard’s feet lost contact with the floor. The doctor tumbled down to the half-landing, protecting his head from hitting the wall. A moment later he was also having to shield it from the blows of a rod. Smolorz was truly furious, and Ruhtgard was feeling his fury.

BRESLAU, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29TH, 1919

ONE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Doctor Cornelius Ruhtgard sat in the middle of a large room encircled by a mezzanine floor. A fibrous rope cut into his swollen wrists when he moved his hands, and his eyes were struggling to adjust themselves to the bright electric light beaming from a lamp on the table. A moment earlier a sack had been removed from his head, reeking of something that reminded him of detestable mornings spent in the mortuary at Konigsberg University — formaldehyde, and an even worse odour which he preferred not to identify.

“It’s strange, Ruhtgard,” came Mock’s voice from the darkness, “that you, a doctor, after all, should loathe corpses …”

“I’m a doctor of venereology, Mock, not a pathologist.” Ruhtgard cursed the hour when, lying in the trenches surrounded by gleaming snow and the glimmering of the stars, he had once confided in Mock and told him about the terrible moments he had experienced during his classes in the mortuary: his colleagues had made a show of eating their sausage rolls while he, in spasms, had clasped his stomach and vomited trails of bile into the old sink.

“Take a look around our museum of pathology,” Mock said quietly, “while I read something to you …” He opened out the denial he himself had written. “Let’s see whether handwriting changes under hypnosis.”

Ruhtgard cast his eye at the glass display cases and turned pale. A foetus turned its film-covered eye towards him from a jar of formaldehyde. Next to it was a stretched, rectangular piece of skin, and above a tangle of pubic hair loomed a bold tattoo: “For beautiful women only”; below this, an arrow pointed downwards to indicate what had been reserved for the fair sex.

“Tell me, Ruhtgard” — Mock’s voice was very calm — “where are my father and Erika Kiesewalter? I gather no-one at your hospital has even heard of them …”

“Before I tell you” — Ruhtgard’s eyes wandered to a severed hand which had been arranged in a jar in such a way that students could study its tendons and muscles — “tell me how you found out about me.”

“I’m the one asking the questions here, you swine” Mock’s voice did not change one iota. His stocky form was obscured in the shadow cast by the lamp.

“I have to know, Mock.” Ruhtgard’s eyes paused at a glass shelf on which lay a row of skulls with bullet holes. “I have to know whether I was betrayed by a member of my brotherhood. I’ll give you an address and you can send your men there. But what are we going to do while your brave boys search the cellar where I keep the prisoners? We’ll talk, won’t we, Mock? We’ll carry on our conversation to shorten the wait. And each of us will both answer and ask questions. No-one’s going to say: ‘I’m the one asking the questions here’. It’s going to be a quiet conversation between two old friends, alright Mock? You choose. On one side of the scales my silence and your pitiful copper’s pride shouting ‘I’m the one asking the questions here’, on the other the address and a quiet conversation. Are you a reasonable man, Mock, or are you so full of anger that all you want to do is hit your square head against the wall? It’s your choice, Mock.”

“And why shouldn’t I go to the cellar with my men? I want to see my father and Erika. There’ll always be time to listen to you …”

“Oh dear …” Ruhtgard closed his eyes to the grotesque exhibits. “I’ve forgotten the address. It’ll come back to me when you promise to stay here… What’s it to you, Mock? I can tell you about Konigsberg and many other things besides… You listen to me, I listen to you …”

For a long while Mock did not say anything, then finally he uttered a single word:

“Address.”

“Common sense has prevailed over fury. Loschstrasse 18, cellar number ten.” Ruhtgard felt his throat constrict as he studied a vast aquarium of formaldehyde in which stood a two-metre-tall albino with Negroid features. “So tell me, how did you track me down.”

Mock got up, left the room and shouted: “Loschstrasse 18, cellar number ten. At the double! And take a nurse!” A clatter of shoes rang out on the stairs.

“How did you track me down?” Ruhtgard felt a peculiar satisfaction in manipulating Mock. “Go on, divulge your famous, impeccable logic!”

“Remember when I confided in you about my night terrors?” The crack of a match, and a blaze of light cut through a column of smoke. “You broke the whole thing down to areas of the brain, with one area being responsible for one thing, another for something else. You asked me then whether my father and the dog heard the noises. I never told you anything about a dog. Never mentioned I had one, because I don’t. How could you have known? Because you’d been to my place one night. I asked myself: what could Ruhtgard have been doing at my place? I couldn’t answer this.” Mock lit a cigarette with trembling hands. “When you spent the night with me, you smoked a cigarette before going to sleep. You threw the butt into the grille in the drain. How did you know it was there, in the corner behind the old counter? Because you’d already been there once, I answered. I couldn’t believe you were a murderer, that you’d put Director Wohsedt’s letter down the drain. There was only one thing for me to do: keep an eye on you. Unfortunately, I only thought of this rather late — yesterday, in fact. I got out of the habit of thinking during my three weeks at the seaside. Smolorz has been tailing you since yesterday. He got into your apartment on the quiet and hid on the balcony. I told him not to let you out of his sight. Smolorz is a simple lad and takes everything literally. That’s why he wasn’t standing outside, but he kept an eye on you anyway.”

Mock got up and strolled over to a skeleton in a show-case.

“Now I have a question for you,” he said. “Who did the killing? Who tailed me? Who knew whom I was questioning?”

“Rossdeutscher and his men tailed you.” Ruhtgard was gradually getting used to his ghastly surroundings. “You have no idea how many of them there are …”

“No, I don’t.” Mock sat down at the desk again. “But you’re going to tell me everything. You’re going to give me their names and addresses …”

“Don’t forget the friendly form this conversation is supposed to be taking. You can’t force me to do anything!”

“You’re no longer my friend, Ruhtgard. You appeared at my side as far back as Konigsberg … Was that to …”

“Yes … Offer me a cigarette! You don’t want to? Too bad. You know I was told to take a job at the Hospital of Divine Mercy soon after you got there … The brothers instructed me to persuade you to write this denial. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible in the hospital. You didn’t want to know about anything other than that nurse who’d appeared in your dreams. I had to go with you to the front, and then here to this accursed city, where there’s not even the slightest breeze to disperse this malarial air. The brothers rented me an apartment and set me up with a medical practice. You have no idea how many of us are doctors … But I’m gabbling away, not letting you get a word in edgeways … A question for a question, Mock. Tell me, have you really fallen in love with this … Erika Kiesewalter?”

Mock retreated into the shadow cast by the lamp. Ruhtgard closed his eyes and counted the purple patches beneath his eyelids, caused by the bright light beaming on his face.

“Yes,” came the reply.

“So why didn’t you tell her that on the beach in Rugenwaldermunde?” Ruhtgard would have given a great deal to see Mock’s face. “She even asked you after your failed attempt to arrange a threesome.”

Ruhtgard stood up and took a swing at the burning-hot lampshade. The lamp fell off the table and cast a shaft of light on some nooses suspended from a stand, which in the past had bound the necks of humans. Mock sat quite still, his Mauser aimed at Ruhtgard’s chest.

“You’re an idiot, Mock!” Ruhtgard yelled, and then, looking into the dark hole of the barrel, he drawled, “Rossdeutscher and I once considered how we might use your obsessions and phobias to the advantage of our cause … The cause of salvaging the honour of the brotherhood … I told Rossdeutscher that you were mad about a red-headed nurse from Konigsberg. He then introduced me to Erika at the Eldorado. It didn’t take long to persuade her … She was the ideal bait — red-headed, slim but with a big bust, well versed in ancient classical writers …”

“What a mistake, what a terrible mistake …” Mock was still aiming at the chest of his captive. “A crafty whore, a crafty whore …”

“You made an enormous mistake. Not in trusting her … but in not telling her that you loved her. She tried to drag it out of you on the beach, but you wouldn’t say anything … No doubt you considered it unworthy of yourself to declare your love to a whore … But by that you lost her … I asked her: ‘Has Mock told you that he loved you?’ ‘No,’ she replied. So I didn’t need her any more. If you had declared your true feelings for her she would be where your father is right now, rather than at the bottom of the Oder …”

Mock fired. Ruhtgard threw himself to one side and avoided the shot, but the albino did not. The slabs of glass shattered, the formaldehyde sluiced over Ruhtgard as he lay curled up on the floor and the huge, pale-faced Negro broke apart at the knees and fell from the display case. Mock leaped onto the table to avoid being sent sprawling by the formaldehyde and aimed his gun once more, but then decided this was unnecessary. Ruhtgard was lying on the floor, his mouth gaping and sheer terror in his eyes. Lumps of the albino’s body had attached themselves to his jacket. He looked like a man who had suffered a heart attack.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 29TH, 1919

HALF PAST ONE IN THE MORNING

“He’s alive,” Doctor Lasarius said, touching Ruhtgard’s neck. “He’s in shock, but he’s alive.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” Mock breathed a deep sigh of relief. “We’ll do as I said earlier.”

Doctor Lasarius made towards his office and shouted into the depths of the dark corridor: “Gawlitzek and Lehnig! Come here!”

Two stalwart men wearing rubber aprons entered the museum of pathology. Their heads were split into two equal halves by wide partings, and moustaches sat proudly above their lips. One of them efficiently cleaned away the remnants of formaldehyde and flaccid human tissue from Ruhtgard’s face; the other sat him on a chair and gave him a sound slap across the cheek. The stricken man opened his eyes and looked around the room full of macabre exhibits with disbelief.

“Get him undressed!” Lasarius ordered curtly. “And into the pool!”

Mock and Lasarius descended the stairs from the first to the ground floor and made their way down cold corridors decorated with pale-green wainscoting. Along the walls stood trolleys on which the dead made their last journey to the doctor. Mock could not keep count of the turns they both took, but eventually they found themselves in a tiled area where the floor dropped away into a two-metre-deep pool. In it stood Doctor Ruhtgard, shivering with cold. Lasarius’ subordinates were in the process of opening the sluice gate and filling the pool with water that smelled of formaldehyde.

“Thank you, gentlemen!” Lasarius said to his subordinates, handing them a few banknotes. “And now home, take a droschka on me! Keep the change!”

Lehnig and Gawlitzek nodded and disappeared down the cavernous corridors. Lasarius followed in their footsteps, leaving Mock alone. He looked at Ruhtgard standing up to his waist in water, and turned the wheel of the sluice gate as if it were a helm. The hairs on Ruhtgard’s shivering body fell in wet strips.

“Frightened of corpses, eh, Ruhtgard?” Mock called as he put on a rubber apron. “See this gate?” He indicated the sluice above the edge of the pool. “I’m going to let some fat fish into the pool through it … In no time at all there’ll be masses of them. Then I’m going to pour in some more water mixed with formaldehyde until the pool’s full to the brim. You like the smell of formaldehyde, eh, Ruhtgard? Remember how you ate cucumber soup after your first pathology classes in Konigsberg? You raised the spoon to your lips and smelled that unmistakeable odour under your fingernails. You told me all about it and gave me your portion of cucumber soup at Dunaburg. Answer my questions, or you’ll be swimming in formaldehyde with fat, disintegrating fish.”

“If you torture me,” called Ruhtgard from the pool, “sooner or later you’re going to kill me. The first dead thing that floats into this pool is going to give me a heart attack. Idiot!” he yelled. “Don’t kill me until you’ve freed them from the cellar …”

“You just said ‘them’.” Mock squatted at the edge of the pool. “You’ve only got my father, so why do you say ‘them’?” — he felt a wave of hope — “You said Erika was at the bottom of the Oder. Are you bluffing?”

“You ignorant fool.” Ruhtgard’s bloodshot eyes flashed with amusement. “The Erinyes of two people are more powerful than the Erinyes of one … It’s obvious … Simple arithmetics … I had to find one other person you love … Apart from your father, and instead of the whore to whom you would not declare your love …”

“And who did you find?” Mock felt deeply uneasy.

“There is such a person.” Ruhtgard laughed as if demented and leaped up and down, slapping his pale, bruised thighs. “You walked through the park with her that night, you courted her, paid her compliments … She says you’ve fallen in love with her …”

“You crazy swine!” Mock grasped his head, unable to hide his horror. “You’ve killed your own daughter? Your own beloved daughter?”

“I haven’t killed her yet,” Ruhtgard shouted through cupped hands from the bottom of the pool: “For the time being I’ve merely imprisoned my Christel … My daughter … She proved useful in my hypnosis experiments, as best she could. And now she’s out there somewhere, together with your father … She and your old man are a guarantee of my immunity.”

“That’s why you looked so strange when I told you I’d fallen in love with Erika Kiesewalter, before the hypnosis …” Mock said quietly. “You realized you had imprisoned your own daughter unnecessarily … You could have locked Erika away, and you wouldn’t have felt her death as acutely as that of your own child …”

“Correct.” Ruhtgard grabbed hold of the pool’s edge and hauled himself up. His face found itself at a level with Mock’s. He looked the police officer deep in the eye. “But I stopped loving Christel … She betrayed me once too often. Besides, she’s no use to me any more… She won’t undergo any more hypnosis … She said it hurts afterwards… She hates me … She’ll soon leave me for some stinker …”

Mock recoiled in disgust. Ruhtgard made a rapid move, straightened his arms on the pool’s edge and managed to lean against them. One more move and his knee was over the edge too. Mock hit him in the face. There was a loud splash.

“Don’t try to get out of there,” he said calmly. “And answer my questions. Who was it, then, who wrote the murderer’s diary? And who scribbled ‘Have to run for it’ at the seance?”

“That ‘diary’, as you call it” — Ruhtgard was standing at the bottom of the pool, rubbing one cheek, red from the blow, and the injuries inflicted by Smolorz looked like boils on his white skin — “was written by me. Rossdeutscher took minutes during the rites. I was the brotherhood’s chronicler but only Rossdeutscher could take down the Master’s translations. When I heard you, I scribbled something and hid under the desk. My notes fell into your hands. You assumed Rossdeutscher had written them. You don’t know my handwriting. Our German secondary schools are fortunately very strict about Sutterline handwriting, apart from for Greek and Latin. Our writing looks much the same: yours, mine and Rossdeutscher’s. No court is going to believe a handwriting expert.”

Firm, resolute steps resounded in the subterranean corridors of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Kurt Smolorz entered the pool room.

“There’s nobody in that cellar,” he said, out of breath. “Only a sign on the door.” He reached into his pocket and handed Mock a scrap of paper.

“‘Gnothi seauton,’” Mock read the Greek words. “‘Know thyself.’”

Mock looked at Ruhtgard dispassionately and instructed Smolorz:

“Turn the wheel, open the sluice! Tell me, you son of a whore, where is my father?”

Smolorz turned the wheel, and water mixed with formaldehyde spurted straight into Ruhtgard’s open mouth. The Criminal Sergeant then opened the sluice gate, resting the end of it against the pool’s edge to form a kind of platform, and moved away in revulsion. Beneath the sluice gate was a swollen, green corpse.

“Listen to me, Mock …” Ruhtgard again hauled himself up on his hands, but this time only his chin appeared above the pool’s edge. “You’ve got nothing on me. Rossdeutscher committed suicide. He was your murderer … And I’m untouchable. But that’s not all. You’re in my hands. Send your denial to the Breslauer and the Konigsberg Allgemeine Zeitung, and let me go. The worse that can happen is that you’ll lose your job in the police force. But you’ll save your own father and my daughter. What’s the girl done to you? Don’t forget the impression you made on her that night. You can have her, you can screw her as much as you like …”

Mock stepped away from the pool and reached for a thick rubber hose.

“Don’t try to climb out, or you’ll get a jet of water in your mug,” he said calmly. “What guarantee do I have that you’ll let them go? Maybe you’ll take revenge on me and kill them after all …”

“I’m not going to murder my own daughter, much as I may despise her.” Ruhtgard stared with disgust at the green corpse lodged in the sluice. “Let me go, Mock, and everything will be alright. All you’ll do is lose your job, while the denial will reap such fruit. The denial, Mock. I can make you do things — like I did during hypnosis. I’m untouchable. Even if I were to screw that whore Kiesewalter in front of your very eyes, you wouldn’t do anything to me because I’ve got you in my hands … I must have given you the wrong address for the cellar — I’ll give you the right one now …”

Mock gave Smolorz a signal. The Criminal Sergeant tugged the corpse by its hair with disgust and the greenish body slid into the water with a gentle splash. The face of the deceased was blackened by fire, his hair thick and brown. His pubic hair reached as high as his navel. Mock squirted water into Ruhtgard’s face and the doctor found himself back in the pool. The bloated body spun slowly in the stream of water and formaldehyde. Ruhtgard yelled at the top of his voice. Only his head remained above the surface.

“Where is my father?” asked Mock.

Once again, Ruhtgard clambered up the pool’s edge. He put his forearms on the tiles and rested his chin on his hands. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on Mock.

“It’s stalemate, Mock,” he said. “It only takes four days for a man to die of dehydration. Send that denial to the press.”

“Tell me one more thing,” Mock said, as if he had not heard the ultimatum. “Where did my dreams, my nightmares come from?”

“They weren’t dreams, they were the Erinyes. Real beings which exist objectively. Ghosts, phantoms, spectres if you like.” Ruhtgard’s chin was still resting on his hands, while the stout railwayman who had urinated from a viaduct onto a high-voltage cable a few days earlier turned in the eddies below.

“Then why did you try to prove to me that ghosts are only subjective?”

“I was playing devil’s advocate, to strengthen your belief … To make you confess to your mistake with utter conviction … So that you’d say: it must have been real ectoplasm after all!”

“Why did you gouge out their eyes and stick needles into their lungs?”

“Are you really so stupid, or are you just pretending?” Ruhtgard’s pupils dilated and contracted like a shutter in a camera. “Strain your drunken brain a little! ‘If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out.’ It’s from St Matthew.^† And listen to St John, that great visionary, who wrote: ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’”^‡

“And the needles in their lungs?”

“I was taking away their breath, taking their spirit!”

Mock thought back to his university lectures in comparative literature and could hear Professor Rossbach’s voice: “Marcus Terentius Varro was right in saying that the Latin animus (spirit) is related to the Greek anemos (wind),” the professor had explained. “A living person breathes and from his lips, ergo, comes wind, but a corpse does not breathe. In a living person there is a spirit; a dead man has no spirit. Hence the simple — we could almost say ‘commonsensical’ — identification of spirit with breath. It is the same in the Slavic languages, where dusza (spirit) is etymologically related to zdech (died), and oddech (breath). It is the same even in the Hebrew language. There, ruach means both spirit and wind, although — and here I must castigate myself — the concept of ‘breath’ is rendered by an entirely different word, namely nefesh. So you see, gentlemen, the study of etymology is one way of learning about spiritual culture, a culture, let us add, that is common to both Indo-Germans and Semites.” Professor Rossbach’s voice fell silent in Mock’s head. In its place he heard his own father’s nagging: “Chamomile and hot milk”.

“Where’s my father?” Mock said, then nodded to Smolorz who allowed the cadaver of a thin man covered in contusions through the sluice. The two bodies danced in the stream of water and formaldehyde. Mock swung the hosepipe. The rubber slapped against Ruhtgard’s body. The doctor fell into the pool again. The surface of the water was now half a metre below the pool’s edge.

“Remember, Mock?” — Ruhtgard resurfaced by the sluice gate and tried to shout above the roar of the water — “You always dreamed about the corpses of those who died because of you. Those were your Erinyes. Don’t fall asleep now, or the Erinyes of your father and my daughter will fly to you. Now you’ll never fall asleep. As long as you stay awake, they’ll still be alive. Beware of sleep, Mock, choose benevolent insomnia …” Once more he scrambled over the edge of the pool and hoisted himself up on outstretched arms. “Blessed are the meek!” he yelled. “I’m not going to tell you where your father is. I may die, but my brothers are here in Breslau. When your denial has been printed, they’ll set the prisoners free. Remember — don’t sleep. Your sleep is their death. Now look what I learned at the seance …”

Ruhtgard slipped his tongue between his teeth and pulled his hands away from the pool’s edge. His legs, arms and torso slid into the churning water as his chin hit the tiles. Ruhtgard’s severed tongue danced like a living creature at Mock’s feet as the doctor choked.

The following day, Doctor Lasarius stated that it was impossible to diagnose unequivocally whether Ruhtgard had choked on his own blood, or on a mixture of water and formaldehyde.

BRESLAU, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2ND, 1919

TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Heymann’s Coffee House was open for business. Among its regular customers — chiefly employees of the German Fisheries Company who had nipped out for a coffee and strudel with whipped cream before it became too busy — sat two men raising steaming cups to their lips. One of them smoked one cigarette after another, while the other, his teeth clenched around the ivory mouthpiece of a pipe, expelled small columns of smoke from the corners of his lips. The dark-haired man took a few folded sheets of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed them to the bearded man, who puffed out squat mushrooms of smoke as he read. His companion brought a small phial to his nose. The pungent odour of urine drifted over the table. Several customers screwed up their noses in obvious disgust. The older man was red with agitation and high blood pressure.

“Now I know where this absurd declaration to the press comes from, Mock. I also know” — Muhlhaus gripped Mock’s face — “much more than that. Yes, much, much more … You don’t have to publish it any more…”

From his briefcase Muhlhaus pulled two pieces of paper headed “Post-mortem Report” and handed them to Mock. Mock tried to focus on Lasarius’ wobbly writing. “‘Male, aged about seventy-five; height: one metre sixty centimetres; weight: sixty-two kilograms. Clear fracture in two places of lower left limb. Female, aged about twenty, height: one metre fifty-nine centimetres; weight: fifty-eight kilograms. Both found in the cellar at Paulinenstrasse 18. Cause of death: dehydration.’”

Mock shook his head and rested his elbows on the table. He was staring at the headings on both pieces of paper where Lasarius had written in a spidery hand “Alfred Salomon and Catarina Beyer.”

“It’s not them,” whispered Mock. “They’re the wrong names …”

Muhlhaus put his arm around Mock’s neck and rested his head on his shoulder.

“Sleep, Mock,” he said. “And don’t have any dreams, no more dreams …”