They passed several houses on Georg-Buttner-Strasse and stopped at an ice-cream parlour. Erika attacked her icy column of raspberry scoops like a child and, much to Mock’s surprise, even bit into it, the very idea of which made his own teeth ache. The rasping of a barrier announced that the raised bridge had now been lowered. They crossed it and found themselves on Skagerrak Strasse. They followed the left side of the street and entered the first house on the corner, a tavern. Mock asked the innkeeper, a Mr Robert Pastewski — this was the name that appeared above the entrance — for a dozen Reichsadler cigarettes for himself, and the same number of English Gold Flakes for Erika.
The strength of the burning September sun was tempered by a wind coming from the sea, which entangled Erika’s hair as she stood on the narrow pavement.
“I’m hungry,” she complained, and looked meaningfully at Mock.
“But …” — Mock was troubled — “we’d have to go back to the hotel …”
“I’m not speaking in metaphors now.” The wind tossed a strand of hair into her eyes. “I really do want to eat.”
“Then we’re going for some real smoked eel,” he said. “But I’ll buy you a roll first. Let’s go …”
He stepped into a nearby bakery and was enveloped by the smell of warm bread. The only customers in the place were two sailors, who were leaning on a counter decorated with starched tapestries and talking to the fat baker. They were speaking so fast in a Pomeranian dialect that Mock could hardly understand what they were saying. But one thing he did know: neither of them was buying anything, and the baker was not paying the slightest attention to him. Mock felt a vague unease, but could not get to the root of it. “It’s the two sailors, no doubt,” he thought to himself, “not four but two.”
“And what would the esteemed gentleman like?” the baker asked in a strong Pomeranian accent.
“Two doughnuts, please. What’s the filling?”
“Wild rose jam.”
“Fine. Two please.”
The baker took his money, handed him a paper cone of doughnuts and went back to his conversation with the sailors.
“Listen, Zach,” Mock heard one of them say as he was on his way out. “Who was that?”
In response he tinkled the bell above the door and glanced at Erika, who seemed bored. With the tip of her shoe she was drawing some figures in heaps of sand scattered across the uneven pavement. Mock handed her the cone and absentmindedly erased the mysterious annotations with his shoe.
“Noli turbare circulos meos,”† Erika said, pretending to take a swing at him; instead she stroked his clean-shaven cheek. At that moment he recognized the source of his anger.
“What am I supposed to say,” he thought as he walked beside her in silence. “I’m supposed to ask her where she knows that sentence from, and whether she went to secondary school, but every idiot knows it, after all. It doesn’t prove she’s educated or well read. ‘I’m a hetaera,’ she said to me when I asked about her profession; she uses the concept of a ‘metaphor’ correctly and quotes Cicero. Who is this whore, this crafty little whore? Maybe she wants me to start asking her about her past, her parents and her siblings; maybe she wants me to feel sorry for her and hug her. And she’s putting me to the test. Delicately and subtly. First she ruts like a she-cat in heat, then she quotes sentences in Latin which must be rattling around somewhere in that head of hers, which must be as good as empty with all this debauchery. ‘I partake in debauchery,’ she said. I wonder if she did the same way as that cripple — with three at a time.”
They walked on. Erika ate the second doughnut with relish. As they passed a large square house with huge green doors carrying a sign which read SOCIETY FOR THE AID OF THE SHIPWRECKED, Erika crushed the empty cone and asked casually:
“I wonder if there’s a society for the aid of the life-wrecked?”
Crafty whore. She wants me to feel sorry for her; she wants me to see her as a child snuggling into the fur of a fawning boxer.
Mock stopped outside the smokehouse and said something he later long regretted.
“Listen to me, Erika” — he controlled the tone of his voice but not what he said — “you’re not a whore with a heart of gold. There’s no such thing. You’re simply a whore. And that’s all. Don’t confide in me; don’t tell me about your miserable childhood; don’t tell me about your monster of a step-father and your mother whom he raped. Don’t tell me about your sister who gave herself an abortion at the age of fifteen. Don’t try and squeeze any tears out of me. Do what you’re best at, and don’t say anything.”
“Alright, I’ll watch myself,” she said with no suggestion of tears. “Are we going to that smokehouse or not?”
She walked past Mock and made her way towards a temporary counter on which a fishmonger in a rubber apron and sailor’s hat had arranged lightly smoked eels. He watched her slim back, which was shaking. He ran to her, turned her round and made to kiss away her tears. He did not do so, however, as Erika was not crying, she was shaking with laughter.
“My childhood was normal and nobody raped me,” she spluttered. “And talking of life’s wrecks, I wasn’t thinking about myself at all, but about a certain man …”
“A man who goes by the name of Kurt, no doubt? Go on, say it!” Mock was shouting, heedless of the fishmonger’s knowing eyes which said “that’s what young wives are like”. “That’s why you like the name Kurt so much, eh? You told me that the day before yesterday! Kurty, eh? Who was Kurty? Go on, tell me, damn it!”
“No.” Erika became serious. “The man’s name is Eberhard.”
8. IX.1919
It was remarkable, the occultists’ conference organized by Professor Schmikale, the representative of the Thule order in Breslau. The whole world and their father were invited! Ludwig Klages himself, Lanz von Liebenfels and even Walter Friedrich Otto! They did not, however, trouble themselves to come to this out-of-the-way Silesian province. Instead, the first of these sent his assistant, some lisping lad who gave a completely incomprehensible lecture on the cult of the Pelasgians’ Great Mother goddess. Furthermore he kept on suggesting that Klages’ master, Friedrich Nietzsche, was in constant spiritual contact with the Magna Mater. It was she who allegedly gave him the idea to call Jahwe and Jesus “usurpers of divinity”. At the same time he mercilessly criticized the young Englishman Robert Graves, who in a lecture had dared to claim that it was he who had come up with this term for the Jewish gods. It’s ridiculous! A paper on who was the first to think up some trivial formulation!
From the order of the new Templars it was not von Liebenfels who came, but a Doctor Fritzjorg Neumann, who foretold the return of Wotan. His lecture was rewarded with applause, not because of his searing antiSemitic and anti-Christian attacks, but for the lecture’s constant reiteration of the support of Erich von Ludendorff — chief quartermaster of the Emperor’s Armies — for the concept of Wotan’s Second Coming.
It is not surprising that after Neumann’s utterances the next lecturer, an intelligent, young Jewish woman, Dora Lorkin, was met with iciness and contempt. Oh, you profane people! Oh, you idiots with “von” before your names! Oh, you quarrelling chieftains who see nothing beyond your own dull tribes! You’re unable to appreciate true wisdom! Because through this young woman spoke Athena! Dora Lorkin was the represen tative of W.F. Otto’s polytheistic spiritualism. It transpired from the insightful theories of the Master she was representing that the human soul is a playing field for the ceaseless action of the Greek gods, who are the only true beings, while all other gods are mere myth. I will pass over her ontological reasoning. It is not vital. What made the greatest impression on me was the not new — as, after the lecture, some people accused it of being — but very apt notion of the Erinyes as the workings of a bad conscience.