“Sorry I’m late, but …” Seeing a stranger, the girl broke off.
“Please, come in.” Mock moved away from the door on which he had heard a gentle knock a moment earlier.
The girl entered hesitantly. She looked around the empty apartment with unease and wrinkled her slightly upturned, powdered nose in disgust at the sight of the filthy kitchen. Mock closed the door with his foot, took her by the arm and led her into the main room. She removed her hat with its veil and tossed her summer coat onto one of the beds. She was wearing a red dress which reached down to her calves and stretched teasingly across her considerable breasts. The dress was old-fashioned, giving nothing away, and to Mock’s irritation it ended in a pleated frill. The girl sat on the bed next to her discarded coat and crossed one leg over the other, revealing high, laced boots.
“What now?” she asked with feigned fear. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Criminal Assistant Eberhard Mock,” he replied, squinting at her. He said nothing more. He could not.
The girl gazed at him with a smile. Mock did not smile. Mock did not breathe. Mock’s skin was on fire. Mock was sweating. Mock was by no means sure if the girl sitting in front of him resembled the nurse in his dreams. At that moment the image of the red-headed angel from Konigsberg was blurred, indistinct, unreal. All that was real was the girl who was smiling at him now — charmingly, disdainfully and flirtatiously.
“And what of it, Criminal Assistant, sir?” She rested the elbow of her right arm in her left palm and gestured mutely with her middle and index finger that she wanted a cigarette.
“You want a cigarette?” Mock croaked, and seeing the amusement in her eyes he began to search his jacket pockets for his cigarette case. He opened it right in front of her nose and was taken aback when he realized that its lid had almost grazed her delicate nostrils. She deftly plucked out a cigarette from under the ribbon and accepted a light, holding Mock’s trembling hand in her slim fingers.
Mock lit a cigarette too and remembered old Commissioner Otton Vyhlidal’s advice. He was the one who had assigned him to work in Department IIIb, in a two-man team which, after the eruption of prostitution during the war, had become the official Vice Department. Vyhlidal, knowing that the young policeman could be vulnerable to a woman’s charms, used to say: “Imagine, Mock, that the woman was once a child who cuddled a fluffy teddy to her breast. Imagine she once bounced up and down on a rocking horse. Then imagine that once-small child cuddling to its breast a prick consumed by syphilis or bouncing up and down on greasy, wet, lice-ridden pubic hair.”
Vyhlidal’s drastic words acted as a warning now as Mock fixed his eyes on the red-headed girl. He set his imagination to work and saw only the first image: a sweet, red-headed child nuzzling her head into an ingratiating boxer. He could not envisage the child dirty, corrupted or destroyed by the pox. Mock’s imagination refused to obey him. He looked at the girl and decided not to overstretch his imagination. He sat on the bed opposite her.
“I’ve told you who I am,” he said, trying to make his voice as gentle as possible. “Now please reciprocate.”
“Erika Kiesewalter, Assistant Orgiast,” she said in a melodious, almost childish voice.
“You’re witty.” Mock, because of the contrast between her voice and the licentious nature of her words, remembered old Vyhlidal’s warning and slowly regained his self-control. “You like to play with words?”
“Yes.” She inhaled deeply. “I like games of the tongue …”
Mock did not register this innuendo because he was seized by a terrible thought: that his interrogation was sentencing this girl to death, to having her eyes gouged out, to having a metal needle stuck in her lungs. “To save her,” he thought, “I’ll have to isolate her in the ‘storeroom’. And what if I never catch the murderer? Will she have to sit in Wirth’s old counting-room for years while her velvety skin wrinkles and withers? I can still save her! I won’t ask her any questions. But if the murderer’s following me, how can he know whether I’ve questioned her or not? He’ll kill her anyway. Yet without her evidence I might not catch him, and I’ll be forcing her to stay in that old counting-room, with blemishes and wrinkles creeping over her withered skin. Besides, if we don’t catch the murderer, everyone stored away at Wirth’s place is going to get old, not only the girl.”
“Stop staring at me like an idiot and don’t talk nonsense,” he snarled — and forced himself to think, “What do I care about some whore and her alabaster skin!” — “Answer my questions! Nothing more.”
“Yes, Officer sir.” Erika stood up, opened the window and flicked a column of ash into the warm, autumnal evening. The air resounded with the grating of trams and the clip-clopping of horses’ hooves. The waist of her dress was dark and sat on her hips, accentuating their roundness. Mock felt that strong tension which awakens teenage boys from the deepest sleep, and which for ageing men is a sign that not everything in life has yet been lost. “I’ll ask her a question,” he thought, “and she’ll answer me. I’ll ask her another and be calm.”
“Answer my questions,” he repeated hoarsely. “Quickly. First question, what’s your profession?”
“Hetaera,”† said the girl, making way towards the bed. This time she sat modestly, and her face displayed nothing but concentration.
“How do you know that word?” Mock’s surprise diminished the tightness he felt.
“I read this and that.” A smile appeared on her face which Mock thought impudent. “I’m especially interested in antiquity. I even played Medea in an amateur production. I’m trying my hand at acting.”
“Why did you come here? To this apartment?” Mock closed his eyes to conceal the contradictory feelings that were preying on him.
“I’ve been coming here every Saturday. For several weeks.”
“And you plied your … profession here?” Mock took his time picking the right words.
“The one I ply, but not the one I dream of.”
“And what do you dream of?”
“Acting,” she whispered and a blush suffused her cheeks. She clenched her teeth as if trying to stop herself crying. Then she laughed derisively.
“You’re to describe accurately what you did here last Saturday,” said Mock, and thought, “She’s probably mentally ill.”
“Same as every other.”
“Tell me everything.”
“It excites you, does it, sir?” she asked, lowering her childlike voice.
“You don’t have to give me the details. Tell me broadly.”
“I don’t know what that means, broadly …” Another smile.
“Go on, damn it!” Mock yelled. “The four men who used to live here are dead. Do you understand?”
“I’m sorry.” Mock wanted to believe that the fear in her face resulted from his shouting and not her acting abilities. “Right, I’ll tell you. I was hired by a wealthy man. I don’t know his name. I met him in the Eldorado, where I’m a dance-hostess. He had a beard. He danced with me, then we went to my room. He proposed a regular commission. To partake in debauchery. I agreed, on condition that I could back out after the first time if I didn’t like it.”
The girl fell silent and picked at the bedspread with her slender fingers.
“Go on,” Mock said quietly, so as to hide his hoarseness. “It’s not the first time I’ve met somebody like you. I’m not aroused by stories of hetaeras … Gone are the days when I was excited by the works of Alciphron.”
“Shame,” she said gravely.
“Shame? Why?” Anger surged in Mock. He felt himself being manipulated by this crafty whore.
“I’m ashamed to talk about it,” she said in the same serious tone of voice. “If I aroused you, I’d simply be doing my job, which is arousing men. But otherwise, I don’t know how to say …”
“Use the term ‘to look after’ to describe the act you abandon yourself to when you’re doing your job.”