BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 2ND, 1919
NINE O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING
Doctor Kaznicz was Professor Hoenigswald’s assistant. He specialized in experimental psychology and described himself as a disciple of Freud and Wernicke. He held lectures and classes in psychoanalysis at the University of Breslau which took the form of experimentation on students. From these experiments he drew generalized conclusions which led the more malicious academics to state that “the psychology practised by Doctor Kaznicz is no more than a study of students”. His probing questions, which frequently touched on personal behaviour, initially annoyed Mock a great deal. Later, realizing he could not allow there to be any more victims, he lowered his guard and told all he knew about the people he had met or been in contact with in as much as this contact may have inspired in somebody a desire for revenge. He did not mention Wirth, Zupitza or the nurse in Konigsberg’s Hospital of Divine Mercy. Kaznicz’s assistant noted everything down carefully in a thick copybook and looked imploringly at his master for at least one nod of approval. The master, however, barely acknowledged his helper and merely nodded when Mock offered him ever bolder confessions from his childhood and youth. He would then smile encouragingly and repeat the same thing each time: “I understand.”
Mock heard these words clearly even as he lay in his bedroom alcove kissing a bottle of cognac. He cradled it in his arms, bestowing it with a tenderness no woman had yet received from him apart from those in his imagination and dreams — apart from the nurse in Konigsberg, who may not even have existed. Behind the curtain, Mock’s father settled himself to sleep on his rickety bed, while in the alcove his son caressed his mistress Booze. “I understand,” Mock heard, and recalled the more interesting fragments of the psychological interview conducted over eight hours by Doctor Kaznicz. He pictured the psychologist’s wise eyes, and his faint smile through the thicket of his black beard when Mock recounted how he had tormented fat Erich Huhmann in the yard of their Waldenburg primary school. Twelve-year-old Mock, along with some other children, had poked his finger into Huhmann’s stomach and chest. The latter had cowered, struggled, squirmed; brick-red patches spread across the skin of his cheeks, blood ran from his nose and stained his buttoned collar, neatly ironed by his mother. Erich Huhmann fell to his knees among the bushes surrounding the yard; Erich Huhmann begged for mercy; Erich Huhmann begged heaven for the fiery sword of vengeance; Erich Huhmann dug a long needle into the bodies of the murdered sailors.
Mock acknowledged that this thought — that fat Erich Huhmann, taking revenge on him for past humiliations, could transport the bodies of the murdered men and break their bones — was absurd. “People change,” he thought, “grow up, grow strong, cultivate past hatreds.” Paying no attention to his father’s grumblings that he could not get to sleep because of his son’s creaking bed, Mock reached for his jacket which was hanging over the chair and pulled out a notebook. He took a large swig from his bottle and wrote down Huhmann’s name.
“I understand,” Mock heard Doctor Kaznicz say again and recalled another confidence he had shared that day. Schoolboy Eberhard Mock washed out a flask and test tube, then sat at a stone table in the chemistry laboratory. He had got the highest mark for proving that the salts of certain heavy metals do not dissolve in water to produce precipitation. Envious looks from the other boys. His body found no support, his arms flapped at his sides, his shoes slid forward along the floor, his hand grabbed the tray that held the chemicals, glass cracked, a pungent liquid spilled, his head hit the edge of the chair that Karl Giencke had pulled out from under him as a joke. Then Mock sees himself striking blindly with the tray; its pointed edge digging into Giencke’s head; a trickle of blood appearing on the spiteful schoolboy’s neck. Giencke losing consciousness; Giencke in hospital; Giencke in a wheelchair; Giencke walking again — “That Giencke has a funny way of walking!”
“He walked in a funny way before,” Mock thought as he slid into his leather slippers, “nothing changed.” He emerged from the alcove in his nightshirt, over which he had thrown a quilted dressing gown. In his hand was the bottle of cognac. He raised the hatch in the corner of the room and went down into the butcher’s shop. He squatted next to the heavy metal grille that covered the drain and listened for the squeaking of rats. He heard nothing. He sat on the counter and put the bottle to his lips. After a few swigs he tied some string around its neck, hid it in the drain and replaced the grille. Now his father would not find the bottle and pour it out. He went back upstairs and lowered the hatch, thinking about the rats he occasionally saw on the ground floor. Sitting heavily on his bed, he extinguished the candle and was sure he would soon be overcome by the sleep of a drunkard: heavy, thick, and free of nightmares. “It’s a good thing I didn’t tell him about my dreams.” He did not think kindly of Doctor Kaznicz’s wise eyes as he drifted off. His suppositions were correct: he did not dream of anything.
2. IX.1919
Eureka! I think I have found the clue that will enable me to continue, after all my endless searching. Today I came across a very interesting passage in Augsteiner, a quotation from a letter by Pliny the Younger. We read one of his letters in secondary school — trivial, charming holiday reading. This was towards the end of the school year, after a whole year of read the cripplingly difficult and dull-as-ditchwater Livy. That letter was light relief for us, if any Latin text can be considered light relief and not merely a superhuman exercise for the brain. It was a beautiful story about a boy swimming on a dolphin. I had not known that this same Pliny also wrote about ghosts. I quote the most important fragments of this letter in my clumsy translation:
“In Athens there was a house which was large and spacious, yet sinister and and surrounded by ill fame. In the night’s silence, at first as if from a distance and then ever closer, the clanking of iron would be heard, and if one listened carefully, the rattling of chains. Shortly afterwards a phantom would appear: a thin old man, dirty and emaciated, with a matted beard and his hair standing on end. There were chains on his hands and manacles on his feet. He shook them as he walked.
“The terrified inhabitants passed long sleepless nights of horror and gloom. Sleeplessness was followed by sickness, ever-increasing fear by death. Even by day, though the ghost had withdrawn, the memory of it tormented the household. It seemed to them that the spectre still glided before their eyes — fear tormented them for longer than what had caused it. So the house was uninhabited and condemned to being deserted; and all that it contained seemed to belong to this horror.
“The building was put up for sale — should someone ignorant of such great misfortune wish to buy or rent it.
“There arrived in Athens at this time a philosopher named Atenodor, who read the announcement about this sale or rental. Intrigued by the low price, he enquired about everything in great detail and when he learned the whole truth he nevertheless — or all the more so — rented the mysterious house.
“As dusk fell he ordered his bed to be made up in the front part of the house and asked for some tablets on which to write, as well as a graver and a candle. His family, on the other hand, he settled in the inner rooms. He tried to occupy his mind, eyes and hands solely with writing, so that none of the phantoms he had heard about and no unnecessary fears would arise in his idle mind.
To begin with there was nothing but silence, but a short time later the rattle of chains and clanging of manacles could be heard. The philosopher did not look up, did not set down his graver and remained deaf to the noise. The noise, on the other hand, grew louder and could already be heard on the threshold, already in the room …
He looked up and recognized the apparition that had been described to him. The spectre stood wagging its finger as if beckoning Atenodor. Atenodor, however, reached once again for his graver and wax tablets. Meanwhile the ghost continued to rattle its manacles, now almost above the philosopher’s head. Atenodor looked at it again, and the ghost made the same sign as before. So he stood, picked up the candle and followed the phantom. It moved slowly, dragging its heavy chains. As it turned into the courtyard of the building, it suddenly dissolved into thin air. Atenodor remained alone. He picked up some leaves and grass and used them to mark out the spot where the spectre had disappeared.
“The following day he went to the administration and asked that the yard be dug up at that exact spot. Bones, bare and gnawed, were found bound by chains. Only they remained; the body had, over the years, perished in the soil. These remains were gathered up and officially buried. Ever since then ghosts have, fortunately, ceased to torment the household.”
What conclusion can be drawn from Pliny’s text? Man’s spiritual element can be abstracted, and then perceived through its urge to return, which must be appropriately contrived. Maybe this is a way of activating clusters of spiritual energy. We shall see. 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
