Caspar Hoffmann, a character in Old Bach Is Come, gets a raw deal. Enjoy our third excerpt.
Opposite the desk stood Caspar Hoffmann, still cuffed and chained. Behind him stood burly Sergeant Winterfeldt and two jailers. To his right a wooden whipping bench and whip threatened.
“What is your name?” von Hochenheimer demanded.
“Hoffmann, Your Excellency. I was walking to Brandenburg to—”
“Silence!” said von Hochenheimer. “When I ask you your name, you give your name and nothing else. Sergeant, search the prisoner.”
Sergeant Winterfeldt conducted a thorough examination, finding only Hoffmann’s papers in his shirt and five groschen in his pocket. He placed the items on the Minister’s desk and resumed his place behind the prisoner.
Von Hochenheimer unfolded the paper. “You are Caspar Hoffmann, age 25, born in Potsdam, and you live at 23 Herzogstrasse, Potsdam. Is that correct?”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“Is that your letter?”
“No, Your Excellency.”
“How did you get it?”
After a few moments of silence, the Minister of Police turned to Winterfeldt and said, “Make him talk.”
The sergeant and the two jailers forced Hoffmann to stand in front of the whipping bench. They unlocked his handcuffs and leg chains and stripped him to the waist. Then the two jailers tightly pinioned Hoffmann to the bench and left the room.
Sergeant Winterfeldt took the long leather whip from the wall, stood to one side of the bench, took aim and—with all the force that his muscular body could exert—slammed the whip into Hoffmann’s back. Hoffmann howled in pain.
As a Prussian, Hoffmann had no doubt been caned at school, and corporal punishment, often severe, was widely used to enforce discipline in the Royal Prussian Army. But no past beating could have prepared him for the sheer agony of this torture.
The sergeant stood back, waited a few seconds and then smashed the whip into Hoffmann’s back a second time. A third blow followed, as vicious as the first two.
Von Hochenheimer signaled to the sergeant to suspend the beating. The Minister got up from his chair and walked over to Hoffmann, who sobbed uncontrollably.
“Hoffmann, can you hear me?”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“Do you want the good sergeant to continue whipping you?”
“No, Your Excellency. Please let me go, Your Excellency. Please. I want to go home.”
“Are you ready to answer my questions, Hoffmann, or should I tell the sergeant to continue?”
Silence. The only audible sound was the drip, drip of blood onto the bench.
“Fine. If that’s your decision, I’ll ask the sergeant to resume the whipping until you change your mind. Eventually you will talk. Everyone does. You can save yourself a lot of unnecessary pain if you talk now, rather than later.”
No response.
“Sergeant!”
“I’ll talk! I’ll talk!”
Von Hochenheimer waited for a minute or so. “Where did you get that letter?” he began.
“Two Junker gave it to me. This afternoon. In a tavern.”
“What tavern?”
“I don’t know the name. I’ve never been there before. It’s on the Judengasse.”
“Don’t lie to me. Junker don’t go to bars on the Judengasse. Sergeant!”
“No, no, don’t hit me anymore. I’m telling the truth. I was standing on the street corner on the Judengasse and these two Junker came up to me. They said they wanted to talk to me and they took me into this tavern and bought me beer. They said they had a secret mission for me, a mission for the King. And they gave me this letter and told me where to deliver it.”
“And where did they want you to deliver it?” asked the Minister of Police. He looked sideways at Sergeant Winterfeldt as if to indicate the confession was a lie.
“A hut in the forest just outside Brandenburg,” Hoffmann whispered, eyeing the whip.
At this, von Hochenheimer held up his hand to the sergeant. He knew that, regardless of the other lies Hoffmann may have been telling, this last statement was the truth. And he knew, with absolute and total certainty, that if he was to save the life of Frederick II, King of Prussia, he had to extract every single fact from Hoffmann.
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