beer; about the slight buzz after the first, the dizziness after the second, the tremor of the tongue after the third, the clarity of mind after the fourth, the euphoria after the fifth … He looked at the small man with curly, dark hair and a sparse beard and interrupted his pontification none too politely:
“Doctor Maass, please listen to this record. They’ll lend you a gramophone from the police laboratory. Should you have any problems with the translation, please contact me. Professor Andreae and one Hermann Winkler are at your disposition. The texts have probably been recorded in the Hebrew language.”
“I don’t know if it’s of any interest to you,” Maass, offended, looked at Anwaldt, “but the third edition of Hebrew grammar – of which I am author – has just been published. I manage quite well in this language and have no need of impostors such as Andreae. Winkler, on the other hand, I do not know and do not wish to know.”
He turned away abruptly and hid the record under his jacket: “I bid you goodbye. Please come to me tomorrow for the translation of these texts. I think I should manage it,” he added in a wounded tone.
Anwaldt did not pay any attention to Maass’ acerbity. He was feverishly trying to remember something the latter had said and which he had been wanting to ask for several minutes now. Nervously, he chased away the visions of frothy tankards and tried not to hear the shouts of children running about on the pathways. The leaves of the splendid plane trees formed a dome beneath which clung a suspension of dust, thick from the heat. Anwaldt felt a stream of sweat run down between his shoulder blades. He glanced at Maass, who was plainly waiting for an apology, and croaked through his dry throat:
“Doctor Maass, why did you call Professor Andreae an impostor?”
Maass had obviously forgotten about the offence because he became markedly revitalized:
“Would you believe that this moron discovered several new Coptic inscriptions? He worked them out, and then – on the basis of them – modified Coptic grammar. This would have been a wonderful discovery if it wasn’t for the fact that these ‘discoveries’ had been laboriously composed by himself. He had simply needed a subject for his post-doctoral thesis. I disclosed this fraud in the Semitische Forschungen . Do you know what arguments I put forward?”
“I’m sorry, Maass, but I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’ll willingly get acquainted with this fascinating puzzle when I have a free moment. Anyway, I take it that you and Andreae are not friends. Am I right?”
Maass did not hear the question. He had dug his insatiable gaze into the generous curves of a girl walking past in school uniform. It did not go unnoticed by the elderly man who was blowing the cigarette butt out of his amber cigarette holder.
BRESLAU, THAT SAME JULY 8TH, 1934
HALF-PAST THREE IN THE AFTERNOON
Forstner drank what was his third schnapps within a quarter of an hour and ate a hot frankfurter topped with a white hat of horseradish. The large dose of alcohol calmed him. He sat, gloomily, in a discreet alcove separated from the rest of the room by a maroon curtain, and tried, with the help of strong drink, to loosen the vice which Mock had tightened over his head an hour ago. It was all the more difficult in that the pincers of the vice were manipulated by two mighty and despised powers: Eberhard Mock and Erich Kraus. On leaving his apartment on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse, he had heard the persistent ringing of the telephone. He knew it was Kraus calling for information about Anwaldt’s mission. Standing onthe scorching pavement at the 2 and 17 tram stop, he brooded over his own helplessness, Mock, Kraus and, above all, Baron von Köpperlingk. He cursed the wild orgies in the Baron’s palace and gardens at Kanth, during which naked teenage nymphs and curly-haired cupids invited guests to drink ambrosia, and the pool swarmed with naked dancers, male and
“Doctor Maass, please listen to this record. They’ll lend you a gramophone from the police laboratory. Should you have any problems with the translation, please contact me. Professor Andreae and one Hermann Winkler are at your disposition. The texts have probably been recorded in the Hebrew language.”
“I don’t know if it’s of any interest to you,” Maass, offended, looked at Anwaldt, “but the third edition of Hebrew grammar – of which I am author – has just been published. I manage quite well in this language and have no need of impostors such as Andreae. Winkler, on the other hand, I do not know and do not wish to know.”
He turned away abruptly and hid the record under his jacket: “I bid you goodbye. Please come to me tomorrow for the translation of these texts. I think I should manage it,” he added in a wounded tone.
Anwaldt did not pay any attention to Maass’ acerbity. He was feverishly trying to remember something the latter had said and which he had been wanting to ask for several minutes now. Nervously, he chased away the visions of frothy tankards and tried not to hear the shouts of children running about on the pathways. The leaves of the splendid plane trees formed a dome beneath which clung a suspension of dust, thick from the heat. Anwaldt felt a stream of sweat run down between his shoulder blades. He glanced at Maass, who was plainly waiting for an apology, and croaked through his dry throat:
“Doctor Maass, why did you call Professor Andreae an impostor?”
Maass had obviously forgotten about the offence because he became markedly revitalized:
“Would you believe that this moron discovered several new Coptic inscriptions? He worked them out, and then – on the basis of them – modified Coptic grammar. This would have been a wonderful discovery if it wasn’t for the fact that these ‘discoveries’ had been laboriously composed by himself. He had simply needed a subject for his post-doctoral thesis. I disclosed this fraud in the Semitische Forschungen . Do you know what arguments I put forward?”
“I’m sorry, Maass, but I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’ll willingly get acquainted with this fascinating puzzle when I have a free moment. Anyway, I take it that you and Andreae are not friends. Am I right?”
Maass did not hear the question. He had dug his insatiable gaze into the generous curves of a girl walking past in school uniform. It did not go unnoticed by the elderly man who was blowing the cigarette butt out of his amber cigarette holder.
BRESLAU, THAT SAME JULY 8TH, 1934
HALF-PAST THREE IN THE AFTERNOON
Forstner drank what was his third schnapps within a quarter of an hour and ate a hot frankfurter topped with a white hat of horseradish. The large dose of alcohol calmed him. He sat, gloomily, in a discreet alcove separated from the rest of the room by a maroon curtain, and tried, with the help of strong drink, to loosen the vice which Mock had tightened over his head an hour ago. It was all the more difficult in that the pincers of the vice were manipulated by two mighty and despised powers: Eberhard Mock and Erich Kraus. On leaving his apartment on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse, he had heard the persistent ringing of the telephone. He knew it was Kraus calling for information about Anwaldt’s mission. Standing onthe scorching pavement at the 2 and 17 tram stop, he brooded over his own helplessness, Mock, Kraus and, above all, Baron von Köpperlingk. He cursed the wild orgies in the Baron’s palace and gardens at Kanth, during which naked teenage nymphs and curly-haired cupids invited guests to drink ambrosia, and the pool swarmed with naked dancers, male and
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