Phantoms of Breslau by Marek Krajewski Read Free Book Online Page A

in Mock’s ears – intensified by the bubbles in the beer – drowned out Wohsedt’s speech. The police officer heard only the words “godmother” and “my wife”. Whereupon a buxom, short, fifty-year-old woman who had previously been sitting next to the priest made her way to the table where the magnum of champagne stood. She smashed the bottle against the hull of the ship and gave it its mythological Germanicname. The blonde in the blue dress put down her glass of lemonade and watched the ceremony. Mock sipped his beer slowly, straight from the bottle. Unlike Smolorz, who no longer knew which was the wife and which the mistress, he was not surprised by anything. To his satisfaction he was able to confirm that the world was returning to its old ways.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919
FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
    Cabby Helmut Warschkow, who for several years now had been working solely for the Police Praesidium, was riding up on the box in a most uncomfortable position, forced as he was to share the seat with Sergeant Kurt Smolorz, the size of whose body was inversely proportional to the economy of his speech. Pressed into the iron frame by Smolorz’s hefty shoulders, he lashed his whip, deep down beside himself with indignation that his carriage was being used for ignoble purposes by Eberhard Mock from Vice Department IIIb. Mock had closed the roof and, having thus isolated himself from prying eyes, was subjecting an innocent girl in a blue dress – whom he had none too courteously invited into the droschka during the ship-launching ceremony – to a ritual as old as the hills. Warschkow’s suspicions, however, were wrong. The rocking of the carriage was not caused by the movement of Mock’s loins but by the bumpiness of the alley in South Park along which they were travelling. The otherwise lecherous Mock, looking at the scales on the girl’s neck, thought of everything but the mating dance and its consequences. The girl herself was in no way innocent; on the contrary, she was highly amenable to the kinds of requests made by men that no virgin could satisfy. Now she was reacting with equal submission to Mock’s demands, beating her shapely breast and swearing to “sir” that, whatever theconsequences, she would confirm that she had been kept by Wohsedt for several months now, especially since it was he who had infected her with “this filth”.
    “I beg of you, don’t lock me up … I have to work … I have a small child … No doctor’s going to stamp my book …”
    “You have two options,” Mock said, feeling disgust towards the sick girl, and disgusted with himself for revelling in her consternation. “Either I bring you in for having an out-of-date health record or I don’t. In which case you have only one way out: to work with me. Agreed?”
    “Yes, agreed, honourable sir.”
    “Now you’re addressing me as you should.”
    “Yes, honourable sir. And that’s how I’m going to address you from now on, honourable sir.”
    “So you’re Wohsedt’s kept woman. Do you have other clients as well?”
    “Sometimes, honourable sir. He keeps me, but he’s too miserly to have exclusivity.”
    “Are you sure he’s the one who infected you?”
    “Yes, honourable sir. He had it already the first time I was with him. He liked biting my neck. He infected me like a rabid dog.”
    Mock studied the girl. She was shaking. Tears glistened in her cornflower-blue eyes. He touched her cold, wet hand. She was moulting, layers of skin flaked from her neck. Mock felt sick; he was revolted by all kinds of things when he had a hangover. With a hangover he could never be a dermatologist.
    “What’s your name?” he said, swallowing.
    “Johanna, and my three-year-old daughter’s name is Charlotte.” The girl smiled, pulling her high collar further up over her neck. “My husband died in the war. We’ve also got a little boxer. We love her … She’s called …”
    When he was young Mock had a