A conniving drifter flees from one lot of trouble - ripping off a Berlin policewoman - to another, when he winds up in the small Silesian city his Polish grandmother avoided, partly because of its bad vibe: Gliwice.
In Gliwice, he finds some gainful employment as an inept teacher of English. The ungainful employment he takes up with some Russian chancers is not much better for his soul or pocket. He also has a dalliance with a controlling, clingy young woman, while falling in love with her more cultured friend, who just happens to own a priceless violin.
On the face of it, he seems to be lucky to have landed a rent-free flat in the building he believes was once the ballet school. The ghosts who haunt him there, and frighten his guests, certainly seem to have a benign presence. However, the building may once have had a more sinister purpose, and its current residents certainly seem to have other ideas for the plans he is making.
The Exploding Elephant is a 19000-word comic novelette. I lived in Gliwice, and knew some of the people in the story, and I think it's safe to say that there's a lot of me in it (rescued by fiction, thankfully.)
It can be found here, for $0.99 in various formats:
https://books2read.com/b/m2vZv1