THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
The red-headed nurse stroked Mock’s hand. Her skin was so fair and smooth he thought the tear now falling from her lashes would slide down her cheek in one hundredth of a second. The nurse removed her bonnet and let down her hair. The thick copper locks fell with a gentle rustle onto the starched collar of her housecoat. She leaned over Mock. He caught the scent of her breath. Gently, he touched the fabric stretched across her large breasts. The girl stepped back abruptly, knocking over the bedside table. Mock had expected a sharp, metallic sound, but it was dull and somewhat muffled. All of a sudden the sound exploded, as if someone were thumping their fist against a wooden door. Mock sat up in bed and pulled aside the curtain. A penetrating cold shudder ran through him. “Must be hunger,” he thought. “I didn’t have anything to eat yesterday.” It was pitch black. He lit a candle and looked around the room. His father was snoring quietly, and Dosche’s dog was looking at him attentively, his eyes glowing amicably in the dark. Mock reached under his pillow where he kept his Mauser, a wartime habit, and stood in the middle of the room. He could have sworn that the noise which had woken him had come from the hatch leading down to the old butcher’s shop. He lay flat on the floor, opened the hatch a little and peeped through the smallest gap by the hinges. He knew any intruder would attack where the gap was widest. He yanked open the hatch and jumped back. Nobody attacked. With shivers still running down his spine, Mock held the candle to the opening. He could not see further than the first few steps. He glanced at the dog; it was resting its head peacefully on its outstretched front paws, blinking sleepily. The animal’s behaviour vouched there was no danger. Mock went down the stairs, holding the candle high.
The butcher’s shop was empty. He directed the light to the grille on the drain, and finding nothing went out on to the porch. The September night was fair but cool. He made sure the door to the shop was locked securely and went back upstairs. He yawned, stood the lighted candle on the table and got into bed without drawing the curtain. Images drifted before his eyes: a discussion in the street, scraps of conversation, a lame horse pulling a droschka, a porter pulling the shafts of a two-wheeled cart. Something falls from the cart and lands with a loud noise on the cobbles.
Mock leaped to his feet and looked at his father and the dog. His father was snoring, but the dog was growling. He shuddered — the animal was staring at the hatch and baring its teeth. He sat down on his bed, the Mauser in his hand, and felt sweat trickling from his armpits. Suddenly Rot jumped up and started wagging his tail. Standing on his hind legs he went round in circles, just as he had done when he had greeted Mock some hours earlier as he was washing behind the curtain. The dog then lay down to sleep in his usual place. For a long time Mock heard nothing but the dull thumping in his chest; unlike the dog, he did not sleep a wink that night.
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 6TH, 1919
SEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
Birdsong could be heard through the open window of Doctor Cornelius Ruhtgard’s office. Mock stood next to the sill, breathing in the cool mist formed by sunlight on damp grass. Doctor Ruhtgard himself could be heard singing in the bathroom adjacent to the office, a sure sign that a well-honed razor was making fine work of his morning stubble. The doctor’s servant knocked on the office door and entered silently to place a tray with a coffee service on a small table by the desk. Mock turned away from the fresh scent of the awakening park, thanked the servant with a nod and sat in the armchair next to the small table. He noticed that his hands were shaking as he clumsily knocked the spouts of both the coffee pot and the milk jug against the rim of his cup. To alleviate this classic ailment suffered by insomniacs, he concentrated instead on admiring the Waldenburg porcelain, the provenance of which was disclosed by the letters t.p.m. As he inhaled the aroma of Kainz coffee he heard an unsettling sound, like a muffled moan. He set down his coffee on the marble tabletop, rested his stubby hands on the edge of the table and listened. The singing in the bathroom grew by turns louder and quieter as Doctor Ruhtgard gargled to rinse out the tooth powder. During a moment of silence Mock went out into the hall. He heard another moan from behind a closed door next to the kitchen. As he approached it he sharpened all his senses. His hearing told him that someone was crying behind the door, tossing and turning in their sheets and thrashing their pillow with every moan. His nostrils caught a faint whiff of perfume and the stuffiness of a bedroom.
“I hope you’re not intending to visit my daughter in her room.” Doctor Ruhtgard was glaring at Mock from where he stood at the other end of the corridor in a dark-crimson quilted dressing gown with velvet lapels. He did not look like a man who only a moment earlier had been humming a couplet from Ascher’s operetta,
Mock could not explain his friend’s behaviour. The thought of his walk two nights earlier with the rebellious young madame who had provoked such an improper response in him now entered his tired and aching head. His ears, which a moment earlier had listened so attentively to the sound of a girl’s muffled despair, rang with the various forms of the verbs “to pleasure” and “to screw”, with which he had tried to shock the young woman torn between her love for a sensitive good-for-nothing and her possessive father. He realized that it had been two days since he had questioned that good-for-nothing, leaving him at the mercy of a murderer. He pictured Christel Ruhtgard behind the closed door of her bedroom, burying her face in her pillow so as to muffle the sobs that were tearing her apart. He reached for the telephone receiver in the hall and dialled Wirth’s private number. Ignoring the maid who had just entered the apartment with a basket of hot bread rolls, Mock croaked into the receiver:
“I know it’s early, Wirth. Don’t say anything, just listen. You’re to lock Alfred Sorg up in the ‘storeroom’. He’s the man I questioned in the yard behind the Three Crowns. He’ll either be there or at the Four Seasons.”
He replaced the receiver and became aware of Christel Ruhtgard standing in the doorway of her bedroom. The anger in her swollen eyes made her resemble her father.
“Why do you want to lock Alfred up? What’s he done to you?” Mock heard her say as he made towards her father’s office. “You’re a foul monster! A miserable, drunken beast!” she yelled as he closed the door behind him.
Doctor Ruhtgard was leaning out of the window, pouring the hot coffee from Mock’s cup onto the lawn. He turned towards Mock.
“You’ve had your coffee, Mock. And now leave!”
“Don’t behave like some offended countess.” Mock was clearly pleased with his comparison. He felt perfidiously exhilarated and a faint smile appeared on his face. “Spare yourself the melodramatic gestures and tell me what’s happened! And without any preludes such as ‘You’re asking
“The day before yesterday my daughter returned from a concert at night. She was shaking all over.” Ruhtgard stood holding an empty cup with tracks of aromatic Kainz coffee running down its sides. “She said she bumped into you during the walk she decided to take after the concert. You were drunk and insisted on seeing her home. On the way you were vulgar towards her. By this you’re to understand that you’re forbidden from entering this house again.”
Mock strained his memory, but no Latin verse, no passage of prose came to mind which might calm him. He stared at a print on the wall showing a scene from the Gospels — the healing of the man possessed. At the bottom was written the year 1756. It dawned on Mock how he might quell his anger. He recalled an episode from school: Professor Moravjetz had thrown dates from German history at his pupils, who quickly translated them into Latin.
“
“Are you out of your mind, Mock?” Ruhtgard gaped in amazement and the cup twisted on its handle spilling a few drops of coffee on his desk.
“If you believe your daughter, there’s no point in us talking.” Mock got to his feet and leaned over the desk. He looked into Ruhtgard’s eyes without blinking. “Shall I go on, or am I to obey your order and leave?”
“Go on,” Ruhtgard sighed, and he placed his hand on the head of a stork standing on a small, mahogany grand piano. The piano opened, the stork bent over and in its beak caught a cigarette which had appeared in place of the keyboard. Ruhtgard took the cigarette from the bird’s beak and closed the lid of the cigarette case.
“Only one thing in what your daughter says is true: the fact that I used inappropriate language towards a young lady from a good home. I won’t say any more. And not because I gave her my word of honour that I’d be discreet. I could quite easily grant myself dispensation … No, that’s not the reason … Someone once said that at times, truth is like a sentence. You don’t deserve a sentence.”
