Teichacker Park, behind Main Station, was seething with life at this time of day. Its coolness was sought by travellers changing trains in Breslau, and white-collar workers from the Railroad Administration, working overtime before their longed-for holiday in Zoppot or Stralsund; children made a noise by the ice-cream kiosks, servants made room for themselves on the benches using their huge bottoms as wedges, the less sick from Bethesda Hospital reclined, fathers of families, refreshed by a shower in the shower baths and time spent with newspapers in the reading room on Teichackerstrasse, smoked cigars and leered at the prostitutes lazily passing. A one-legged veteran played his clarinet outside Our Saviour’s Church. Seeing two elegantly dressed, middle-aged gentlemen taking a walk, he played a couplet from an operetta, expecting more generous alms from them. They left him behind with indifference. He heard only a fragment of one statement expressed in a fairly high, sure voice: “Alright, Criminal Director, we’ll check up on this Erkin.” The veteran adjusted his sign-board “Verdun — we will avenge” and stopped playing. The men sat on a bench vacated by two teenage boys, watching for a while as the boys in brown shirts and armed with shovels walked away. They were talking. The musician-beggar strained his ears. The falsetto of the very distinguished tall gentleman interwove with the bass murmurs of the shorter, stocky man in a suit of pale cord. The veteran’s excellent hearing easily picked out the high-toned lines which penetrated the street noise; the bass tones, on the other hand, were lost in the clatter of cabs, the roar of cars and the screech of trams rattling on the corner of Sadowa and Bohrauer Strasse:
“I’ll find out, if you wish, whether the man we’re looking for speaks … What? Ah, fine … Kurdish.”
“… ”
“My dear Criminal Director, our lamented Emperor Wilhelm already called Turkey his ‘Eastern friend’.”
“… ”
“Yes, yes. Military relations were always very much alive. Just imagine, my father was a member of the military mission led by General von der Goltz, who helped — probably in the ’80s — the modern Turkish army. Following him, Deutsche Bank marched triumphantly into Turkey and built the new section of the Baghdad Railway.”
“… ”
“And today, we Germans remember that in 1914 the highest spiritual leader of Islam declared a ‘holy war’ against our enemies. So it is not surprising that higher Turkish officers get their schooling from us. I knew some myself when I was in Berlin.”
“… ”
“Rest assured. I don’t know when, but I will certainly hand you that Erkin on a plate.”
“… ”
“Think nothing of it, Criminal Director. I rest in the hope that you will kindly repay me.”
“… ”
“Until we meet again in that pleasant place we both know so well.”
The veteran lost interest in the two men who were at that moment shaking hands for he had seen a group of tipsy teenage lads with rubber truncheons approaching. As they passed by, he played “Horst-Wessel-Lied”. For nothing. Not a single fenig dropped into his hat, perforated by French bullets.
In the meantime, at Freiburgstrasse 3, Franz Huber, joint owner of the Adolf Jenderko Detective Agency, had suddenly stopped being mistrustful or refusing stubbornly to co-operate. In a flash, he had ceased wanting to see Anwaldt’s police identification, no longer wanted to call the Police Praesidium to confirm his identity, had stopped examining the detective from a Criminal Department staff which spread over eighteen police precincts under Breslau’s Criminal Police Station. Franz Huber had suddenly become very helpful and extremely polite. Staring into the black hole of a muzzle, he replied exhaustively to all the questions:
“What did Maass want exactly? What instructions did he give you?”
“He found out from the Baron’s old caretaker about the illegitimate child whom Olivier von der Malten had fathered with a chambermaid. The only woman who had served the Baron now lives in Poland, in Rawicz. She’s called Hanne Schlossarczyk. My instructions were to find out whether she really did have a child by the Baron and what has happened to the child now.”
“Did you go to Rawicz yourself?”
“No, I sent one of my men.”
“And?”
“He found Hanne Schlossarczyk.”
“How did he persuade her to talk? After all, people aren’t usually very willing to admit to such a sin.”
“My man, Schubert, presented himself as a lawyer looking for any heirs to the supposedly deceased Baron. That’s what I thought up.”
“Clever. And what did your man find out?”
“The rich, old lady, on learning of a great inheritance awaiting her, readily admitted to the misdeed of her youth, then started crying so much that Schubert could hardly calm her.”
“So she was sorry for her sin.”
“Not quite. She was furious at herself for not knowing anything about her son, who would have been the Baron’s heir. That’s why she was crying.”
“So she had qualms of conscience?”
“So it would appear.”
“And so the Baron has an illegitimate son by her. That’s a fact. What is his name, how old is he and where does he live?”
“Schlossarczyk worked for the Baron from 1901–1902. That’s presumably when she got pregnant. Thereafter, Baron Ruppert von der Malten, Olivier’s father, never again employed a woman, not even as cook. So her son must be thirty-one or thirty-two. His name? We don’t know. Certainly not the same as the Baron. His mother got a handsome sum to keep quiet, enough for her to live comfortably to this day. Where does the bastard live now? That we don’t know either. And what do we know? That until he became of age, he lived in an orphanage in Berlin, where he landed up as a baby from his loving mother’s arms.”
“What orphanage?”
“She doesn’t know herself. Some merchant took him there. An acquaintance of hers.”
“The merchant’s name?”
“She didn’t want to give it to us. She said he had nothing to do with it.”
“And your man believed that?”
“Why should she lie? I told you she cried because she didn’t know her son’s name. If she did, she’d have been pleased. She’d got an inheritance, after all.”
Anwaldt automatically asked another question:
“Why did she hand him over to an orphanage? She could have lived comfortably with her son on the money the Baron gave her.”
“That my man didn’t ask.”
The detective put his pistol in his pocket. He could barely breathe through his parched throat. His gum was aching and swelling. The hornet stings, too, were playing up again. He opened his mouth and did not recognize his own voice:
“Was Maass happy with you?”
“Yes and no. Because, after all, we only partially carried out his instructions. My man established that Hanne Schlossarczyk had a child by the Baron. But he did not establish either his name or his whereabouts. So we only got a half from Maass.”
“How much?”
“A hundred.”
Anwaldt lit a Turkish cigar which he had bought in the covered market by Gartenstrasse. The pungent smoke took his breath away for a moment. He mastered the spasm in his lungs and exhaled a huge ball of smoke towards the ceiling. He unbuttoned his shirt collar and loosened his tie. He felt embarrassed: a moment ago he had held the man in his sights and now he was smoking in his company as with an old friend. (I got carried away needlessly and terrorized this man. My gun opened nothing but his lips. That’s all it did. It didn’t guarantee the truth. Huber could have simply made it all up.) He glanced up at the certificates and photographs hanging on the wall. On one of them, Franz Huber was shaking hands with a high-ranking officer in a spiked helmet. Under the newspaper photograph the legend read: “The policeman, Franz Huber, who saved the child, receives the congratulations of General Freiherr von Campenhausen. Beuthen 1913.” Anwaldt smiled in conciliation. He was resigned.
“Herr Huber, I apologize for pulling out that pop gun. You used to be a policeman (how do you people in Breslau call it? Schkulle?), and I treated you like the suspect’s associate. It is no surprise that you were suspicious of me, especially as I do not have my identification with me. All it resulted in was my leaving now without knowing whether you lied to me or not. In spite of that uncertainty, I’ll ask you one more question. Without the gun. If you answer, it might just be the truth. May I speak?”