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 …”
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