Marek Krajewski - Phantoms of Breslau

BRESLAU, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2ND, 1919

A QUARTER PAST EIGHT IN THE MORNING

Criminal Commissioner Heinrich Muhlhaus slowly climbed the stairs to the second floor of the Police Praesidium building at Schuhbrucke 49. Placing his foot on each step in turn, he pressed down with his full weight, to check whether the eighteenth-century sandstone would crack beneath the heels of his shining brogues. He would have liked to crumble the old stone to bits, scattering dust, and then retrace his steps to draw the caretaker’s attention to the mess. He would then be able to delay going into his office. He would not have to see the pained expression on the face of his secretary, von Gallasen, nor look at the wall calendar, filled with important deadlines, with its picture of the recently constructed Technische Hochschule, or the framed photograph of his son, Jakob Muhlhaus, taken at his confirmation. Above all, he could avoid the troubling and unpleasant presence of the pathologist, Doctor Siegfried Lasarius, whom the police messenger had announced a moment earlier. This information had spoiled the Commissioner’s mood. He did not like Lasarius, a man who considered the dead to be the best partners in conversation. And the dead appreciated him, too, even if they did not laugh at his jokes, lying as they were in the concrete troughs of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, bathed in the icy water that streamed from a shuddering rubber hosepipe. Every one of Lasarius’ visits heralded at best difficult questions, at worst serious problems. Nothing less than an interesting conceptual problem or a threat could induce Charon to leave his holdings. The Commissioner wanted to believe it was the former. He looked about him. He could see nothing that would give him an excuse to delay meeting the taciturn physician. Once again, he pressed his foot down on a stair. The lacquered leather of his shoes, reflecting the metallic leaves entwined around the bars of the banister and the colossal elevation of the stairs, creaked a little. A din and a loud cursing drifted up from the courtyard. Muhlhaus peered over a neglected fern, whose abominable condition was noticed by every woman who entered this male world. Although not a woman himself, he noted the gnarled twigs begging for water and, with an enraged expression, turned and ran downstairs towards the duty room. He did not reach it, however.

“Commissioner, sir!” he heard Lasarius’ stentorian voice from above. He stopped and caught sight of the dark spread of a hat and the damp pattern formed by sparse wisps of hair on a skull. Lasarius was descending majestically. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”

“It’s only five to nine,” Muhlhaus said, pulling out a silver fob watch from his waistcoat. “Can’t you wait a few seconds, Doctor? Is your business so urgent that we have to discuss it on the stairs?”

“There’s nothing to discuss.” Lasarius opened his leather briefcase and handed Muhlhaus two pages headed “Post-mortem Report”, then stared out at the courtyard where the caretaker and a carter were clanking cans of paraffin about. “We’re not going to say anything at all. Not a word. To anybody.”

“Especially not to Mock,” Muhlhaus rounded off after quickly reading the report. He observed the bewhiskered carter who was passing the cans to the caretaker and was so puffed up his waistcoat buttons seemed about to shoot across the courtyard in all directions. “Doctor Lasarius, don’t your stiffs have names? Why are these two anonymous? If you don’t know their names, you should give them some. Even farm cattle have names.”

“In my book, Commissioner Muhlhaus,” the physician murmured, “there’s no difference between cattle and humans, apart from the size of their heart or liver. What is it like in your profession?”

“We’ll call them …” the police officer passed over the question and glanced at the paraffin cart which bore the logo: “Lighting Articles — Salomon Beyer”. “… we’ll call them Alfred Salomon and Catarina Beyer.”

“I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” said Lasarius. He rested his briefcase on the banister, jotted down the names in the relevant spaces and made a sign of the cross over the pages.

“Not a word to anybody … especially Mock,” repeated Muhlhaus, lost in thought, and he shook the physician’s hand. “There’s no distinction between men and animals in my profession either. But it’s hard to keep files without names.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME OCTOBER 2ND, 1919

NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Criminal Assistant Eberhard Mock staggered out of Affert’s tobacconists in a dark gateway on the north side of Ring. The October sun dazzled his cloudy irises over which, every now and again, his swollen eyelids drooped. Swaying on his feet, he leaned on the gate to the Ring Theatre and slipped a pince-nez with vivid yellow lenses onto his nose. Now, thanks to the skill of Jena Opticians, everything around him was drenched in a bright glow. Acrid cigarette smoke found its way between the lenses and the whites of Mock’s eyes, which were scored with red veins. Mock gasped and blew out the smoke, instinctively covering his eyes with his hands. He hissed in pain: his eyelids were a mass of neuron endings, and hard nodules drifted beneath the clammy skin. Holding on to the wall with one hand, he proceeded like a blind man and turned into Schmiedebrucke. His palm glided over the glazed shopfront of Proskauer’s Menswear. Glare reflecting off the golden watches laid out in the window of Kuhnel’s pierced his eyes. He scraped along the rough walls of the building occupied by the German Fisheries Company until he eventually crossed Nadlerstrasse and hit upon the glass door of Heymann’s Coffee House.

Mock staggered inside. At this time of day the coffee house was still empty and quiet. In the main room, a boy in a stiff white apron was busy stacking tables and chairs into pyramids, breaking up the activity from time to time with skilful swipes of a damp cloth to gather dust and cigarette ash from the surfaces of the tables and tablecloths. Seeing Mock trip and fly straight towards the fragile pyramid of furniture, he unintentionally swung his cloth and whipped the face of this early customer. The bright-yellow pince-nez danced on its chain, Mock lost his centre of gravity, and the tables and chairs their stability. The boy watched aghast as the well-built, dark-haired man landed on the chairs’ jutting legs and curved back-supports, breaking some of them with a terrible crash while starched tablecloths tumbled onto his head. Particles of dust flickered in the October morning sun. An open salt cellar fell into Mock’s thick hair and salt trickled down his cheeks with a faint rustle. The Criminal Assistant closed his eyes in defence and the stinging intensified. He was pleased — the pain would prevent him from falling asleep, would work better than the six cups of strong coffee which he had already managed to consume since five o’clock that morning. Contrary to the young waiter’s assumption, there was not a milligram of alcohol in Mock’s veins. Mock had not slept for four days; Mock was doing everything he could so as not to sleep.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME OCTOBER 2ND, 1919

A QUARTER PAST NINE IN THE MORNING

Although Heymann’s Coffee House was not yet open, two men sat there raising cups of steaming black coffee to their lips. One of them was smoking cigarette after cigarette, the other — ivory stem of his pipe clenched between his teeth — expelled small columns of smoke from the corner of his mouth into the thicket of his beard. The young waiter did everything he could to make the dark-haired man — a police officer, as it turned out — forget the recent incident. He cleared away the broken furniture, brought coffee and milk, had the famous Friedrichshof biscuits delivered from S. Brunies, the nearby patisserie, twisted cigarettes into his little pipe-shaped cigarette-holder for him, and listened attentively to the conversation in order to read every wish of the man he had so severely mistreated. At one point the victim of his cleaning manoeuvres took a few sheets of folded paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed them to the bearded man. The latter read them, puffing out squat mushrooms of smoke from his pipe. His companion brought a small phial to his nose and the pungent smell of urine drifted across the table. The boy escaped behind the bar in disgust. The bearded man read carefully, his features and folds of skin forming a question mark.