The End of the World in Breslau Read Online Free PDF Page B

droschkas on Wachtplatz, slashing them with sleet. Mock held on to his hat, jumped into a droschka and asked to be taken to Rehdigerplatz 2. The cabby licked his pencil and slowly wrote down the address in his greasy notebook. He pressed his antiquated top hat onto his head and shouted at the horse. Mock felt the moment had come when alcohol is at its most cajoling and deceptive: one bursts with euphoria and yet at the same time feels sober, thinks clearly, and does not stammer and or sway. Knock back another , prompts a demon. Mock noticed a rose on a shortstem in the corner of the droschka. He reached for it and froze: a tea rose, somewhat withered. He looked around for a card with “Never again, Eberhard” neatly written on it, but found nothing. He clapped the cabby on the shoulder in a friendly gesture.
“Hey, coachman, it’s nice here in your droschka. You’ve even got flowers.”
The cabby shouted something back which was drowned by the wind and the noise of a tram sliding along the busy road near Freiburg Station. To the cabby’s surprise, Mock climbed up next to him.
“Do you always decorate your carriage with flowers?” he slurred, pretending to be more drunk than he was. “I like it. I’d pay well for a journey like this.”
“I had two lady customers today with a basket of roses. One must have fallen out,” the cabby said politely.
“Stop this carriage,” Mock thrust his identity card under the surprised coachman’s nose. The droschka turned to the right, blocking the entrance to the inner yard of the station buildings on Siebenhufenerstrasse. “From where to where did you take these women?” Mock had sobered up completely and began his questioning.
“To Kleinburg. Where from? The same place as we’re going now – Rehdigerplatz.”
“Do you have the exact address of the place in Kleinburg?”
“Yes. I have to square up with my boss.” The cabby took out his grubby notebook and, licking his fingers, struggled with the pages as they flapped about in the wind. “Yes, Eichenallee in Kleinburg.”
“What did the women look like?”
Mock was quickly noting down the address in his book.
“One was dark-haired, the other blonde. They were wearing veils. Fine women.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME NOVEMBER 28TH, 1927
SIX O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING
    Mock was woken by joyful, childlike cries. He switched on his bedside lamp, rubbed his eyes, smoothed down his hair and gazed around the bedroom as if in search of the children who had disturbed the unsettled sleep that followed his starchy, greasy and viscous lunch. He looked through the window into the darkness: the first snow was falling, and children had come out to play in the yard of the Jewish Communal School. Hearing Sophie’s voice, he took off his quilted smoking-jacket and trousers of thick, grey wool, and dressed again in his suit, tie and leather shoes bright with polish. He looked in the mirror and examined his face and his eyes, underpinned with two-tiered balconies, and reached for the jug of unsweetened mint tea, which Adalbert had advised him that day was the best antidote to over-indulgence. He patted some eau-de-cologne onto his somewhat wilted cheeks and, jug in hand, walked into the hall where he met Marta bearing the coffee service. He followed the servant into the parlour. Sophie was sitting at the table in an azure dress. Contrary to the prevailing fashion, her white-blonde hair reached down to her shoulders and was so thick it could barely be contained by the blue hairband. Her green eyes – fractionally too small – lent her face a resolute and somewhat ironic expression. “A whore’s eyes,” Mock had thought when, introduced to her at a carnival ball at the Regierungsbezirk Schlesien a couple of years earlier, he had forced himself with difficulty to raise his eyes higher than her full breasts. Now Sophie’s eyes were those of a tormented, tired and disillusioned woman. The bruise around one of them was a shade darker than the