“Bandage! It’s an ordinary bandage!” said a man’s stifled voice. “A bunch of frauds, not psychics! And you wanted to make me believe it! I’m going to write everything in the
“He’s wrong, the drunk,” a loud voice answered. “‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed!’ I have no eyes, but I do believe …”
Mock was still unravelling the bandage when he felt a blow to his midriff. He clasped his stomach, amazed at the strength of the toothless woman’s punch. Her eyes were still closed as she aimed another blow, this time at his chin. His boots and spurs skidded apart on the bandage, which was sodden with mucus and saliva. He hurtled towards the window. It was not quite shut. He felt the sill beneath his buttocks, and then nothing.
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919
NOON
“And now get up and sit at the desk,” said Ruhtgard.
Mock obeyed. He got up, sat at the desk and joined his hands. He stared down at the green desk leather as Ruhtgard placed a sheet of stiff, decorated wove paper and a Colonia fountain pen in front of him. Then he extracted a wallet adorned with the Konigsberg coat of arms from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it open in front of him.
“Write down what I dictate to you,” Ruhtgard spoke loudly and clearly. “I, Eberhard Mock, the undersigned, being of sound body and mind, declare that on 28th November, 1916, in the city of Konigsberg on Pregolya, I was witness to a spiritual seance. Prompted by ill-will and under the influence of alcohol, I attempted to catch hold of the ectoplasm issuing through the mouth of the medium, Frau Natasha Vorobiev. Failing to do so, I assured those assembled that I had caught hold of a bandage, and that the entire seance was a sham. My behaviour prompted Herr Harry Hempflich, a journalist from the
Mock finished writing. Ruhtgard put the wallet back into his jacket. He folded the letter Mock had written into four and slipped it into an envelope. Then he placed the envelope in front of the police officer sitting at his desk and said in a loud voice:
“Address it to Herr Harry Hempflich, Chief Editor,
Mock stopped in the doorway, his eyes still closed.
“Walk down the corridor and through the first door on the left!”
Mock walked into the games room, with Ruhtgard following him.
“Walk over to the balcony door, open it and walk out on to the balcony!”
Mock knocked into the piano in the middle of the room, but soon found his way to the balcony. He opened the balcony door and stepped onto the small terrace.
“Climb onto the balcony ledge and jump!”
Mock clambered onto the ledge with difficulty. He held onto the balustrade with one hand, and with the other grabbed an enormous flowerpot that was secured to the ledge with a metal hoop. The flowerpot broke away and smashed onto the pavement between the spiked railings and the tenement wall. Mock lost his balance and fell back heavily onto the balcony floor.
“Stand on the ledge!”
Mock lifted his leg and placed it once again on the stone balustrade, holding on to the wall with one hand with such ease as if walking the tightrope was his daily bread.
“And now jump, impale yourself on those railings!”
Mock jumped.
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1919
ONE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
Mock jumped. His torso was not impaled on the railings, however; his legs did not hang from its arrow- shaped spikes or thrash at the metal in agony. Mock turned his shoulders and jumped … from the balustrade onto the balcony. But not by choice. As he was bending his knees to launch himself off the balustrade and soar in a wide arch onto the spiked railings, a tall figure who had been squatting in the corner of the balcony sprang to his feet. A strong, freckled hand covered with thick red hair grabbed him by the tails of his jacket and pulled him forcefully to itself.
“What’s this, Herr Mock!” growled Smolorz. “What’s all this about?”
Mock’s subordinate had a raging hangover. His gullet was burning; his stomach was aflame; his ear — enormously swollen and blue-black from the blow dealt by the poker — radiated heat to his cheeks; the haematoma at the top of his head and the bump on his forehead boiled beneath a thin film of skin. Smolorz was angry. At Mock and at the whole world. He grabbed his boss by the collar and lugged him back into the room. He placed the sole of his shoe on Mock’s pale jacket and shoved him under the piano.
“Lie there, fuck it,” he muttered and hurled himself after Ruhtgard who had disappeared into the hall, slamming the door to the games room behind him.
Smolorz was exploding with fury. He opened the door so energetically it almost came off its hinges. He heard the sound of a body falling in the hall, and was there a second later to see that the rug had been moved and the small table with the telephone overturned. The figure of Ruhtgard flashed through the front door. Smolorz ran into the corridor and saw the fleeing man already halfway down the stairs. His brain, overcooked with alcohol, now began to function. Why had the rug in the hall been moved, and why were the table and telephone lying on the floor? “Because Ruhtgard slipped,” Smolorz answered his own question, and instantly formed his plan of action. He caught hold of the stair carpet held in place with metal rods and tugged hard. The rods rang out in the silence of the corridor, rolled down the stairs, and Cornelius Ruhtgard’s feet lost contact with the floor. The doctor tumbled down to the half-landing, protecting his head from hitting the wall. A moment later he was also having to shield it from the blows of a rod. Smolorz was truly furious, and Ruhtgard was feeling his fury.
BRESLAU, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29TH, 1919
ONE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
Doctor Cornelius Ruhtgard sat in the middle of a large room encircled by a mezzanine floor. A fibrous rope cut into his swollen wrists when he moved his hands, and his eyes were struggling to adjust themselves to the bright electric light beaming from a lamp on the table. A moment earlier a sack had been removed from his head, reeking of something that reminded him of detestable mornings spent in the mortuary at Konigsberg University — formaldehyde, and an even worse odour which he preferred not to identify.
“It’s strange, Ruhtgard,” came Mock’s voice from the darkness, “that you, a doctor, after all, should loathe corpses …”
“I’m a doctor of venereology, Mock, not a pathologist.” Ruhtgard cursed the hour when, lying in the trenches surrounded by gleaming snow and the glimmering of the stars, he had once confided in Mock and told him about the terrible moments he had experienced during his classes in the mortuary: his colleagues had made a show of eating their sausage rolls while he, in spasms, had clasped his stomach and vomited trails of bile into the old sink.
“Take a look around our museum of pathology,” Mock said quietly, “while I read something to you …” He opened out the denial he himself had written. “Let’s see whether handwriting changes under hypnosis.”
Ruhtgard cast his eye at the glass display cases and turned pale. A foetus turned its film-covered eye towards him from a jar of formaldehyde. Next to it was a stretched, rectangular piece of skin, and above a tangle of
