Ruhtgard pulled greedily on his cigarette for a minute and exhaled the smoke through his nostrils. A blue fog hung over the surface of the desk.
“Pour yourself some coffee,” he said quietly. “I’m not interested in what my daughter has been up to … Probably the same thing her mother liked so much … I never told you …”
“About her mother? Never. Only that she died of cholera in Cameroon. Before the war, when you had a well- paid job there.”
“I’ve told you too much then.” Ruhtgard did not look at Mock, but squinted at a point somewhere in the corner of the room. “May she be swallowed by eternal silence.”
Mock fell heavily into the expansive armchair. Silence. Ruhtgard quickly stood up and went to the Waldenburg service to pour Mock some coffee. He pressed the stork’s head and stuck the cigarette offered by the bird into Mock’s mouth. He walked out of his office, leaving his guest with an unlit cigarette between his lips.
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 6TH, 1919
HALF PAST SEVEN IN THE MORNING
Mock and Ruhtgard sat in the dining room and buried their spoons in a mixture of soft-boiled eggs, butter and several leaves of parsley which filled two tall glasses delicately etched with slender lilies.
“Tell me, Ebbo.” Ruhtgard poured a stream of honey onto a crispy roll. “Why have you come to see me?”
“The diet didn’t help.” Mock sucked up the eggy concoction with gusto and helped himself to two fat veal sausages. “I still had nightmares. I’m going to tell you something you might not believe, or might even laugh at.” Mock broke off and fell silent.
“Go on, then.” Ruhtgard attacked a soft pear with his fruit knife.
“Remember how we used to entertain ourselves at night on the front with weird stories?” When Ruhtgard murmured his affirmation, Mock went on: “Remember Corporal Neymann’s stories about his haunted house? Well, my house is haunted. Understand, Ruhtgard? It’s haunted.”
“I could ask what you by mean haunted,” Ruhtgard said. “But first of all I know you don’t like that kind of question and, secondly, I’ve got to go to the hospital in a minute. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to hear you out. We can talk on the way. So, how does this ‘haunting’ manifest itself?”
“Noises …” Mock swallowed a mouthful of sausage. “I’m woken up by noises in the night. I dream about people with their eyes gouged out, and then a thumping on the floor wakes me up.”
“That’s all?” Ruhtgard allowed Mock to pass at the dining-room door.
“Yes.” Mock accepted his bowler hat from the servant. “That’s all.”
“Listen to me carefully, Eberhard,” said Ruhtgard slowly once they were on the stairs. “I’m not a psychiatrist but, like everyone else these days, I am interested in the theories of Freud and Jung. There are some very good passages in them.” They stepped out onto sun-drenched Landsbergstrasse and set off alongside the park. “Especially where they write about the relationship between parents and children. Both scholars write about paranormal phenomena. Jung apparently experienced them in his own house in Vienna … Both he and Freud advise hypnosis in such situations … Perhaps you could try it?”
“I don’t see why.” They turned left into Kleinburgstrasse. Mock stopped to let a young woman with a child in a huge wicker pram go by before they briskly walked on, passing the Communal School building with its garden and playground. After a lengthy silence he said: “This is happening in my house, not in my head!”
“I read several of Hippocrates’ tracts in Greek during my medical studies.” Ruhtgard smiled and led Mock to the right into Kirschallee, towards the enormous water tower. “That’s your field … I suffered like hell over that Greek text … I don’t remember now which of them has a description of the brain of an epileptic goat. Of course we can’t be sure if it really did have epilepsy. Hippocrates dissected the brain and concluded that there was too much moisture in it. The poor animal might have had hallucinations, but it would have been enough to drain some water from its brain. The same applies to you. A part of your brain is responsible for your nightmares and for the noises in your house. All we have to do is work on it — perhaps with the help of hypnosis — and it’ll be over and done with. You’ll never dream of those dead, blinded people whose murderer you’re after ever again.”
“Are you trying to say” — Mock stopped, removed his bowler and wiped his brow with a handkerchief — “that those terrifying phantoms are in my brain? That they don’t actually exist?”
“Of course they don’t,” Ruhtgard exclaimed with joy. “Can your father hear them? Can that dog hear them?”
“My father can’t hear them because he’s deaf.” Mock stood stock still. “But the dog can. He growls at someone, jumps up at someone …”
“Look, the dog is reacting to you.” Ruhtgard was flushed with the ardour of his argument. They passed the water tower and made their way along the narrow path between the sports ground and the Lutheran community cemetery. He took Mock by the arm and accelerated his step. “Come on, let’s walk faster or I’ll be late for the hospital. And now listen. Something wakes you, something that’s in your head, and you wake the dog. The dog sees his master on his feet and greets you. Understand? He’s not fawning on a ghost, he’s fawning on you …”
For a long while they did not say anything. Mock tried to choose his words carefully.
“If you saw what I saw, you’d think differently.” They were nearing the imposing Wenzel-Hancke Hospital building, where Doctor Ruhtgard worked in the Department of Contagious Diseases. “The dog was on the other side of the room, standing by the hatch in the floor wagging its tail.”
“You know what?” Ruhtgard stopped on the steps leading up to the hospital and looked intently at Mock’s ravaged countenance. Every wrinkle and every bit of puffiness caused by his sleepless nights was accentuated by the merciless September sun. “I’ll prove to you that I’m right. I’ll stay at your place tonight. I sleep very lightly, the slightest sound wakes me up. Today I’ll find out whether phantoms actually exist. See you this evening! I’ll come to your place after supper, before the ‘phantom’s hour’, meaning midnight!”
Ruhtgard opened the hospital’s huge double door and was about to reply to the old porter’s greeting when he heard Mock’s voice and saw his friend’s massive frame coming up the steps. The Criminal Assistant caught him by the sleeve, his face hard and his eyes fixed.
“You mentioned some dead blinded men a moment ago. Tell me, how do you know about the investigation I’m conducting?” Fear rang in Mock’s voice. “I must have blurted something out on Wednesday, when I was drunk. Is that it?”
“No. It’s not.” Ruhtgard squeezed Mock’s hand tightly. “You do far worse things when you’re drunk, things you push out of your conscious mind. I know about the murders from little Elfriede on Reuscherstrasse.”
“From
“You know those buildings on Reuscherstrasse.” Ruhtgard would not let go of Mock’s hand. “The ones enclosing all those courtyards. If you were to go into one of the yards at midday, what would you hear, Ebbo?”
“I don’t know … children screaming and playing certainly, on their way home from school … noise from several factories and taverns …”
“What else? Think!”
“The crooning of organ grinders, that’s for sure.”
“Right.” Ruhtgard let go of his friend’s hand. “One of the organ grinders is called Bruno. He’s blind. Lost his eyes in the war, in an explosion. He plays and his daughter, Little Elfriede, sings. When Elfriede sings, tears flow from Bruno’s eye sockets. Go there today and see what Elfriede is singing about.”
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 6TH, 1919
NOON
Mock sat in his office in the Police Praesidium trying to stifle the incessant musical rondo which had been going around in his head for over an hour, ever since he had returned from his gloomy walk through the labyrinth of inner yards between Reuscherstrasse and Antonienstrasse. In the dark side streets, from which not even the sweltering September sun could burn away the musty dampness, pan vendors had set up temporary stalls; grindstones whistled in a hiss of sparks and organ grinders set down their boxes and played picaresque and romantic urban ballads. The yard’s morality play, sung by Bruno the organ grinder’s ten-year-old daughter, did not
