Phantoms of Breslau

Freikorps supporters. Mock showed no enthusiasm because he was overcome by sad thoughts; Smolorz did not clap because his arm was being held down by two hands belonging to a man with butler’s whiskers, who was whispering something in his ear. Smolorz had recognized him and was listening carefully.

BRESLAU, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1919

ONE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Customers rolled out of the beer cellar after the Freikorps meeting, pumped up with equal measures of patriotism and beer. One man had drunk little, since his plans for the night would have been hindered by too much alcohol. With his arm around the slender waist of the girl next to him, Alfred Sorg felt the demon in his trousers petulantly demand an offering. He thought about his pockets — there was nothing with which to pay for a room by the hour — and about his miserable little room where two members of the so-called Erhardt brigade would shortly be snoring.

He scanned the street and noticed a shadowy opening between two buildings that led into a yard. That dark, damp cleft awoke in him a chain of associations which aroused him again. He stopped, put his arms around the girl and pressed a beery kiss onto her mouth. She parted her lips and her legs. He simultaneously slipped his tongue into her mouth and a knee between her thighs. He picked her up and they disappeared into the narrow opening. The damp draught did not surprise Sorg; the pungent smell of garlic, however, did.

A second later, as well as olfactory impressions, he experienced those of touch and sound. Chimes rang in his ear and the lobe began to swell from a hefty clout. Sorg was pushed along the alley and found himself in the yard behind Franz Krziwani’s tobacco shop. The angry face that now confronted him was not entirely unfamiliar.

He was standing before a stocky, well-built man whose height constituted a medium between a much shorter man with a foxy face and a tall beanpole who was fanning his bowler hat to cool his red-moustachioed face. From the opening emerged a giant holding the struggling girl.

“Take it easy with her, Zupitza,” said the stocky man. “Take the lady to the car and try to turn your breath away from her.”

“You shit, you Jew! What do you want to do to her?” Sorg decided to show them all that he was a real man, and threw himself at Zupitza. “Leave her alone or I’ll …”

Zupitza ignored his aggressor entirely. Sorg tumbled to the ground, having tripped over the foot of the man with the foxy face. He wanted to get up but received a hard punch on the other ear. Zupitza vanished with the girl. Sorg fell to the ground and for a moment pondered the difference between the two blows. He knew the second had been dealt with a shoe, and by somebody else. He sat on the cobblestones and stared at the stocky man who was now wiping the tip of his shining brogue with a handkerchief. Sorg knew the owner of these elegant shoes from somewhere, but could not think where.

“Listen to me, you war hero.” The hoarse voice was familiar too. “Now you’re going to tell me something. Give me some information. I’ll pay you for it.”

“Alright,” Sorg said quickly, remembering when he had seen the man before. 1914. The beginning of the war. Sorg had been blackmailing a dimwitted married woman who had a poor grasp of historical events but associated the recently declared war with the absence of her husband, who had just been called up. Sorg had promised not to tell anyone what she had said against the state if she granted him that with which Nature had so generously equipped her. The woman had consented, and that very same day had gone to the Breslau Vice Department with a complaint. There she was met with complete understanding. The following day, at the time they had agreed, Sorg heard a knock at his door. He ran to it, his demon at the ready to accept the offering, opened the door and saw several men in black. One of them, a thickset man with dark hair, had attacked him with such fury that Sorg had practically lost his life beneath those shiny, polished shoes.

“Ask me.”

“Do you dress up as a sailor and screw ladies of society?”

“Yes.”

“And do you arrange for other young men to dress up for the ladies? Carters, cabbies, gladiators …”

“I don’t, somebody else does.”

“One lady told me she rings you and you arrange it.”

“That’s right. But I ring somebody else to organize other gigolos.”

“Are you paid for it?”

“Yes, I get a commission.”

The interrogator walked up to Sorg, who was still sitting on the cobbles, and grabbed him by the hair. Sorg picked up the the sour reek of a hangover.

“Who do you ring to get the boys?”

“Norbert Risse.” Sorg did not want to smell the hangover any longer and threw the words out quickly. “That queer. He works from a ship, the Wolsung. It’s a floating brothel.”

“Here,” said the interrogator, throwing Sorg some banknotes. “Rent a room at the Sieh Dich Fur Hotel on Kleingroschenstrasse and get yourself a cheap whore. You can’t afford the girl who was with you.”

The men walked away and left Sorg sitting on the cobbles.

“You’re to go to that ship now, Smolorz,” Sorg overheard one of them say. “You’re to find out everything about the four sailors. Take the photographs.” From the corner of his eye, Sorg saw his aggressor hand Smolorz an envelope before striding off.

“Mr Mock!” Smolorz called, indicating Sorg. “What about him? You’ve just questioned him face to face … That swine might go and murder him …”

“Nothing’s going to happen to him … Do you see any murderers around here, Smolorz?” Mock retraced his steps and approached his victim, then bent over and tore the Baltic Cross from his uniform. He went to the alleyway between the houses and leaned over a drain in the gutter. The subterranean waters of the city splashed quietly below.

“He’ll buy himself a new one at the flea market,” Smolorz concluded.

“Go and see Risse, Smolorz, and I’ll take the girl,” Mock said, ignoring his subordinate’s remark. Sorg and Smolorz were left alone behind Krziwani’s tobacco shop.

“How fair is that?” Smolorz said to himself, fingering the business card given to him in the tavern by the man with the sideburns and butler’s manners. “He takes the girl and I get to go and see — a queer.”

Sorg said nothing and with his finger inspected the hole in his uniform where the Baltic Cross had hung.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1919

HALF PAST ONE IN THE MORNING

Wirth fired the engine, and Mock fell heavily onto the back seat next to the girl. His clothes were permeated with the smell of tobacco, and a hint of alcohol and expensive eau de cologne. The girl was intrigued by the man she had never spoken to but had frequently seen at home. Her interest was all the greater due to the circumstances of their meeting: a dark night, kisses in a back street, and men who looked like murderers. Suddenly she was overcome with disgust. Her thoughts had been absorbed by the man who was Alfred’s aggressor. And now Alfred, beaten up and humiliated, was trying to come to his senses in one of the seediest corners of the city! She turned away from Mock.

“I’m not going to say anything to your father, Christel.” Mock wanted to put his hand on the girl’s shoulder, but stopped himself in time.

“You can tell him whatever you want,” Christel Ruhtgard growled as she stared out at the military cemetery on the corner of Kirschallee and Lohestrasse. “I don’t care what you or my father think of me …”

“I’m not saying it,” Mock snorted, “to win you over or calm you down after that love scene in a stinking back street …”

“Then why are you saying it?” Christel’s eyes were blazing.

“Because I don’t know how to start the conversation.” Mock glanced at her prominent bust and recoiled a little, frightened of his own thoughts.

“Don’t even start one! I’ve got nothing to talk to you about …”

Silence descended. Mock was tired and would most happily have put the spoiled young madame across his