Marek Krajewski - Phantoms of Breslau

“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: