Marek Krajewski - Phantoms of Breslau

“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 …”