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!”
&n
bsp; “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 t
he 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.
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