Death in Breslau

your reasoning here: “He who framed Friedlander is the murderer”. It is not the Gestapo who is behind the Baron’s daughter’s death. Indeed, the late Hauptsturmfuhrer S.A. Walter Piontek eagerly made use of the track suggested by Baron Wilhelm von Kopperlingk (who, by the by, has many friends in the Gestapo), but it would be nonsense to state that the secret police committed this crime so as to destroy an unknown dealer and then use the whole case for the purposes of propaganda. The Gestapo would rather have carried out some obvious provocation so as to widely justify their planned pogrom of the Jews. Here the most fitting person would be one of Hitler’s dignitaries, and not the Baron’s daughter.

The fact that the Gestapo is not behind the crime does not, however, mean that men from this institution will be pleased with an investigation into the matter. If somebody finds the true murderers, then the entire propaganda will be turned into a laughing stock by the English and French newspapers. I warn you against these people — they are ruthless and capable of forcing anyone into giving up an investigation. If, God forbid, you ever find yourself at the Gestapo, please stubbornly state that you are an agent of the Abwehr uncovering the Polish Intelligence network in Breslau.

This letter is proof of trust on my part. The best proof on your part would be to destroy it.

Yours respectfully,

Eberhard Mock

P.S. I’m leaving for my holiday in Zoppot. During my absence, the official car is at your disposal.

Mock slipped the letter into the envelope, sealed it and handed it to the chauffeur. He got out of the car and tried to breathe. The burning air shocked his lungs. The pavement and the walls of the station reflected the heat of the stifling day. Somewhere far beyond the city, the faint announcement of a storm was departing. The Chief of Police wiped his brow with a handkerchief and made towards the entrance, ignoring the flirtatious smiles of prostitutes. Heinz Staub dragged two suitcases behind him. As Mock was nearing the platform, someone quickly walked up to him and took him by the elbow. Despite the heat, Baron von der Malten was dressed in an elegant, worsted suit with silver stripes.

“May I walk you to your train, Eberhard?”

Mock nodded, but he could not control his face: it expressed a mixture of amazement and aversion. Von der Malten did not notice this and walked beside Mock in silence. He tried to delay ad infinitum the question which he had to ask Mock. They stopped in front of a first-class carriage. The chauffeur carried the heavy suitcases into a compartment; the conductor signalled to the passengers to board the train. The Baron clasped Mock’s face in both hands and pulled it towards himself as if he wanted to kiss him but instead of a kiss he posed a question, then immediately covered his ears so as not to hear an affirmative reply.

“Eberhard, have you told Anwaldt that I killed that luckless Friedlander?”

Mock triumphed. Heinz Staub stepped down from the carriage, informing them that the train was about to leave; Mock smiled; the Baron squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears; the conductor made polite requests; the police dignitary tore the Baron’s hands from his ears.

“I haven’t told him yet …”

“I beg of you, don’t!”

The conductor grew impatient; Staub insisted; the Baron looked at Mock with imploring fury; Mock smiled. Clouds of steam spurted from under the engine; Mock entered his compartment and shouted through the window:

“I won’t tell him if you let me know why it’s so important to you.”

The train moved slowly away. The conductor slammed the door; Staub waved goodbye; von der Malten clung on to the window and pronounced four words in a booming voice. Mock fell back on to the sofa cushions, amazed. The Baron jumped away from the window. The train gathered speed. The conductor nodded menacingly. Staub walked down the stairs. A beggar pulled at the sleeve of the Baron’s jacket (“the respected gentleman nearly fell under the train”). The Baron stood erect, all but brushing the train. And Mock sat motionless in his compartment, repeating to himself over and over that what he had heard was not just a Freudian illusion.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME JULY 8TH, 1934

A QUARTER TO EIGHT IN THE EVENING

Maass sat in his three-roomed apartment on Tauentzienstrasse 14, listening to the crackling gramophone record and reconstructing the Hebrew words by ear. He dipped his nib in the round-bellied inkpot with enthusiasm and marked the paper with strange, slanting signs. He was lost in his work. He could not allow himself any hesitation, any doubt. The doorbell painfully tore his attention away from the Biblical language. He turned off the light, deciding not to open, then heard the grating of a key in the lock. (The inquisitive owner of this tenement no doubt. He thinks I’m not at home and wants to snoop around a bit.) He got up and made his way furiously to the hall, where — he supposed — he would see the cunning hypochondriac with whom he had already managed to argue on the first day about rent. Maass, to be sure, did not pay a fenig towards the rent from his own pocket but had accused the landlord of extortion on principle.

The men he did see were no more to his taste. Next to the terrified owner, three men in S.S. uniform stood in the hall. All three were baring their teeth at him. But Maass was in no mood to smile.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME JULY 8TH, 1934

EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

Returning home in a droschka, Anwaldt lay on the seat and anxiously regarded the tops of the tenements. He thought the parallel lines of the roofs opposite met and merged over him in an undulating ceiling. He closed his eyes and, for a while, repeated in his thoughts: “I am normal, there is nothing wrong with me.” As if to negate this creed, Chaim Soutine’s painting of “Exiled Children” swam before his eyes. A boy in short trousers was pointing something out to a little girl with a deformed leg. She could barely walk and held tightly to her companion’s hand. The yellow path cut the blue-black of the azure vault in the distance and met the teasing greenery of the forest. On the meadow burst red ulcers of flowers.

Anwaldt instantly opened his eyes and saw the enormous, bearded, weather-beaten face of the cabby looking suspiciously at his passenger.

“We’re on Zietenstrasse.”

Anwaldt slapped the cabby gruffly on the shoulder. (“I am normal, there is nothing wrong with me.”) He grinned broadly:

“And do you have a good brothel in this town? But it’s got to be, you know, first rate. Wenches with backsides the size of a horse. That’s the kind I like.”

The cabby narrowed his eye, retrieved a small visiting card from his breast pocket and handed it to the passenger: “Here the respected gentleman will find all the dames he wants.”

Anwaldt paid and went to Kahlert’s corner restaurant. He ordered the elderly waiter to bring him a menu and, without even looking at it, pointed randomly to an item. He wrote his address on a napkin and handed it to the polite head waiter.

At home, he found no shelter from the heat. He closed the south-west-facing window and promised himself to open it only late into the night. He undressed to his long johns and lay down on the carpet. He did not close his eyes — Soutine’s painting might otherwise have floated in again. The knocking on the door was insistent. The waiter passed him a plate covered with a silver lid and left after receiving his tip. Anwaldt went into the kitchen and turned on the light. He leaned against the wall and groped for the bottle of lemonade which he had bought the previous day. His diaphragm jerked, he felt his throat cramp up: his gaze fixed on a large cockroach which, alarmed by the current of air, disappeared as fast as it could somewhere under the iron sink. Anwaldt slammed the kitchen door. He sat at the table in his room and swallowed half the bottle of lemonade, imagining it to be vodka.

A quarter of an hour passed before the image of the cockroach vanished from his eyes. He glanced at his supper. Spinach and fried egg. He quickly covered the plate so as to chase away yet another image: brown panelling of the orphanage dining-room, nausea, the pain in his nose as it was being squeezed, the sticky gunge of spinach being tipped down his throat with an aluminium spoon.

As if playing a game with himself, he uncovered his plate again and started to rummage thoughtlessly in his food with a fork. He split the thin coating of the yolk. It spilt over, flooding the egg white. Anwaldt recreated a familiar landscape with his fork: the slippery path of the yolk meandering through the greasy greenery of spinach. He rested his head against the edge of the table, his arms hung languidly; even before he fell into a sleep, the