The End of the World in Breslau Read Free

was gulped down loudly.
Rast sprang away as Erwin all but demolished the door as he fled the room. The boy thrust a cap onto his head, wrenched on his somewhat too tight coat and ran into the street.
“Here is the dessert, ladies and gentlemen: Silesian poppy cake.” Rast served cake and coffee. As he removed the untouched chops from in front of Sophie’s bust, he noticed that her hand holding the cigarette-case was shaking. He looked at her and understood that this would not be the end to this unpleasant dinner.
“It is interesting, I have known my husband for two years and today is the first time I do not recognize him.” A faint flush appeared on Sophie’s cheeks. “Where is that plebeian strength of yours, Eberhard, which makes criminals flee from you and once enthralled me so? Today it ran out whenyou should have defended that sensitive boy. When we’re at home you sneer at technocrats, at people whose horizons are limited to financial gain, but when we’re here you put a railwayman above a poet? It is a pity your refined brother cannot see you reading Horace, or witness how moved you are by The Sorrows of Young Werther . Criminal Counsellor Mock falls asleep in his armchair, in the safe halo of his lamp, and onto his round belly, bloated with beer and pork knuckle, slips a school edition of Horace’s Odes ; a school edition with a little dictionary because this eminent Latin stylist can no longer remember his vocabulary.”
“Shut your trap,” Eberhard Mock said quietly.
“You pig!” Sophie suddenly got up from the table.
Mock watched with melancholy as his wife ran from the room, then listened to the clatter of her shoes on the stairs. He lit a cigarette and smiled at Franz.
“What is the name of Erwin’s teacher? We’ll check, maybe he really is a queer?”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME NOVEMBER 27TH, 1927
MIDNIGHT
    Mock staggered out of the Savoy restaurant on Tauentzienplatz. The bellboy ran out after him and handed him his hat, which Mock did not put on, instead allowing the wet flakes of snow to settle on his sweat-dampened hair. Beneath the windows of Sänger’s restaurant swayed a lone drunk, interrupting his involuntary movements only to whistle for passing cabs. The bellboy’s whistles were evidently more persuasive because in a moment an old and patched droschka stopped beside Mock. The drunkard lurched towards it but Mock was closer. He threw a fiftypfennig piece to the boy and collapsed into the seat, almost squashing a delicate human being.
“Forgive me, sir, but you got in so quickly I didn’t have time to inform you that I already have a passenger. I’m cabby Bombosch, and this is my daughter, Rosemarie. This is my last run and we’re on our way home.” The cabby jovially twisted his bristling whiskers. “She is so tiny that the gentleman will not find himself too cramped. She is still so young …”
Mock observed the triangular face of his travelling companion. Enormous naïve eyes, a toque with a veil, and a coat. The girl might have been eighteen; she had slender hands, blue from the cold, and re-soled shoes with holes in them. All this Mock took in by the light of the street lamps located around the Museum of Silesian Antiquities.
Rosemarie watched the vast edifice of the museum slip past on the right-hand side of the street. Mock counted out loud the bars and restaurants on Sonnenplatz, Gräbschenerstrasse and Rehdigerstrasse, and announced the results of his findings to Rosemarie with genuine pleasure.
The carriage stopped outside a splendid tenement on Rehdigerplatz, where Mock and his wife Sophie occupied a five-room apartment on the second floor. Mock scrambled out of the droschka and threw the driver the first crumpled banknote he pulled from his coat pocket.
“Use the change to buy your daughter some shoes and gloves,” he hiccoughed loudly and, without hearing the cabby’s joyous thanks, stretched his shoulders wide, lowered his head and made as if to charge at the tenement