“What sort of order is this, damn it!” Ilssheimer’s voice was harsh and swollen with anger. “You’re a police pen-pusher, Domagalla. You ought to keep our archives in order!”
“Councillor sir, that whore could have had the tattoo done recently.” Mock sensed determination in Domagalla’s voice. “Our files are ordered alphabetically by surname, not according to distinguishing marks.”
“You know nothing about our filing!” Ilssheimer yelled. “I drew up various sub-files myself, including one for distinguishing marks. At Muhlhaus’ request. If there was a problem identifying the body of some prostitute we could always refer to the file. And now some whore has committed suicide, so Muhlhaus turns to me and says: ‘Look into your excellent archive and find me a whore with the sun tattooed on her backside.’ And what? I have to tell him: ‘Unfortunately, Councillor sir, I don’t have one like that amongst my files — my archive’s a mess.’”
Domagalla said something so quietly Mock did not hear.
“Damn it!” Ilssheimer shouted. “Don’t tell me the whore came here just to make a guest appearance during the war, and that’s why she’s not in our archive! I worked here in the war and I kept the register in good order!”
Domagalla mumbled something else.
“Domagalla …” Mock glued his ear to the door. Ilssheimer was hissing, a sign that he was at his wits’ end. “I know for a fact that the prison archives have accurate descriptions of all tattoos …”
Mock heard nothing more. “No, it’s impossible,” he thought, “it definitely isn’t Johanna, Wohsedt’s mistress. She didn’t make any ‘guest appearances’, she was a Penelope waiting for her Odysseus. And it was only when he didn’t return from the war that she took to prostitution. She certainly wasn’t in some prison getting a tattoo done on her backside.”
He decided to adopt the method which had proved so effective during his talk with Ilssheimer that day. “That swine must have got at her,” he thought. “He must have killed her, gouged her eyes out and hung her, gloating at the sight of her suffering; first he would have told her to write a letter to me saying it would save her, and then he would have broken her arms and legs, like he did the sailors’.” Mock was invaded with such evocative images that they horrified him. He shuddered, thinking, “Death has looked me in the eye.”
He knocked, and hearing a loud growl which he interpreted as “Come in”, he entered his chief’s office.
“Nolens volens I overheard your conversation, gentlemen,” he said. “I apologize, Councillor sir, but would you mind telling me a bit more about this suicide?”
“Tell him, Domagalla,” sighed Ilssheimer.
“Criminal Secretary von Gallasen phoned me,” Domagalla said. “He’d been sent to a suicide. Probably a prostitute, judging by her clothes and make-up. On her backside was a prison tattoo of a sun with the writing: ‘You’ll get hot with me.’ I’m just looking through our files to speed up identification of the body.”
“Where did this happen?” Mock asked.
“On Marthastrasse. Probably jumped off a roof.”
“How old was she?”
“Looking at her — well over thirty.”
The sigh which issued from Mock’s lips made the leaves of the palm in the corner of Ilssheimer’s office tremble. A current of air set them moving again as Mock closed the door behind him.
“We’re off,” Mock told Wirth and Zupitza. “To Marthastrasse.”
“Not Gartenstrasse, as on the business card?” Wirth asked.
“No,” Mock said, irritated. “Von Gallasen is very young. A twenty-something-year-old prostitute, ravaged by life, could look forty to him.”
Wirth understood nothing, but he asked no more questions.
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1919
ONE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
Mock sat in the Horch next to Wirth, cursing the September heat. The dust rising from the cobblestones irritated him, as did the odour of the horses and their manure, and the threads of gossamer that stuck to his stubbly cheeks. When irritated or perturbed, he generally called to mind passages from writers of antiquity, which he had analysed years earlier as a schoolboy and student. He would recite the lofty and concise phrases of Seneca that he had once learned by heart, Homer’s fleeting hexameters, and the sonorous endings of sentences by Cicerone.
He squeezed his eyes shut and saw himself in his uniform, sitting in the front row at secondary school, listening to the simple, crystalline sounds of ancient Roman speech. Into the din of the street broke his Latin teacher, Otton Moravjetz, his mighty voice reciting a painfully relevant passage from Seneca’s On Solace: “Quid est enim novi hominem mori, cuius tota vita nihil aliud, quam ad mortem iter est?”†
Mock opened his eyes. He did not want to hear anything about death. At the newspaper kiosk on the corner of Feldstrasse and Am Ohlauufer, a little boy handed the vendor a small pile of banknotes and received in return a copy of Die Woche with its children’s supplement.
Ten-year-old Eberhard Mock runs to the kiosk at Waldenburg railway station, a one-mark coin for Sunday’s Die Wochechildren’s supplement clasped in his hand. Soon he’ll be reading about Billy the Kid’s adventures in the Wild West; soon he’ll find out what happened to Doctor Volkmere, the explorer. Will he escape the cannibals’ cauldron? The newsvendor shakes his head. “None left. Sold out. Go and look somewhere else.” Little Ebi runs hopefully to the kiosk near his school; soon he’ll buy it, read it — but again the apologetic smile, a shake of the head. Ebi drags his feet home. Now he has learned to think negatively. You have to keep repeating to yourself: it’s not going to work, it’ll all end in a fiasco, I’m not going to read about Billy the Kid’s adventures, I’m not going to find out what’s going to happen to Doctor Volkmere.
Thirty-six-year-old Eberhard Mock found it difficult to breathe the Breslau dust and was amazed at the depth of his childhood reflections. “Defensive pessimism is the best attitude,” he thought, “because the only disappointment you can suffer will be a pleasant one.”
Comforted, Mock observed a horse-drawn wagon carrying barrels and crates marked: WILLY SIMSON. REAL FRANCISCAN BEER FROM BAVARIA, which was blocking the way into Marthastrasse. Two workers in soft caps and waistcoats were unloading the beer onto the platform of a three-wheeled cart. Mock imagined it to be a wagon belonging to the Forensic Medical Department, and instead of frothy drink in barrels it was Johanna’s body beneath the tarpaulin. Her corpse’s eyes are a sea of blood, a little girl and a howling dog are at her side. The girl tugs at one of her hands. If she could read she would learn from the piece of paper held tightly in the dead woman’s fingers that she had died because of a certain Eberhard Mock, who should own up to some mistake but does not want to, which means that others will die.
They found themselves in Marthastrasse, a quiet little street lined with high tenements. Mock patted Wirth on the shoulder, indicating that he should stop the car. They were about a hundred yards from the crowd milling on the pavement outside number ten, near Just’s Inn which, as Mock knew only too well, was accessed by way of the yard. The Criminal Assistant got out of the Horch while Wirth and Zupitza were instructed to stay inside. He went through the gate, showing one of the uniformed policemen his identification, and began to climb the stairs. On each side of the staircase were large rectangular alcoves from which three sets of double doors led to three apartments. The windows in these peculiar shared hallways, as well as all the kitchen windows, gave onto the ventilation pit. This was how apartments for less wealthy tenants were now being built — they were cheap, of poor quality and very cramped. Two men stood at the windows on the ground floor; one, a uniformed policeman on whose enormous head sat a shako adorned with a star, was answering the questions of the other, an elegantly dressed young man. Mock shook the hand of both. He knew them well, having seen the policeman in uniform several months earlier, and the civilian only that morning. Officer Robert Stieg was on the beat in that district, and Gerhard von Gallasen was Muhlhaus’ assistant. Mock peered into the pit, at the bottom of which lay a small bundle covered with a sheet. “It was once a woman,” he thought hard. “It had a young child and a boxer bitch.”