There was a bang behind her. Before Lina could turn around, she was hit on the head. Everything turned black.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw something glowing orange in front of her. Someone was holding her head and seemed to be checking whether she was injured. Behind the orange, the sky was still gray, almost black. The wind howled without pause and the Baltic Sea, that tiny bathtub, was thrashing at her feet. Part of her was lying on a little tree, which had been up on the cliff until a short time ago, when it almost caused the murder of a police officer. Lina was drenched. The young woman kneeling next to her watched her with a mixture of relief and annoyance.
“Don’t you know how dangerous it is to run under the cliffs in a storm? Are you crazy?” The woman had to scream to be heard.
Max. Where was Max? Lina sat up. She was dizzy, but it got better after a few moments.
The volunteer of the life-saving organization—DLRG it said on her vest—held her and helped her get up. When she tried to guide her toward the staircase as fast as possible, away from the danger zone, Lina broke away from her. She looked toward the boats of the sailing school. No Max. No Lukas. The woman grabbed her arm and tried to pull her toward the staircase. Lina pulled out her phone from her jacket pocket, but it was dead. Drowned.
“Come with me. We’ve got to get away from here,” the woman screamed into her ear. “The cliffs might slide down any minute.”
Lina tore herself away again. She flashed her badge—at least that was waterproof—in front of the woman’s nose.
“Major Crimes, Hamburg. Where are the two men who were running in front of me?”
“What men? I’ve only seen you. And now you’ve got to come with me.”
Lina’s stomach contracted. She ran toward the boats. The DLRG woman followed her, screaming.
The rain had started. First, just a few heavy drops—a few seconds later a curtain of rain pelted them and limited visibility to a few feet. The woman behind her shouted something and grabbed her shoulders.
Lina turned around. “Do you have a cell phone or radio?” She continued before seeing her nod, “Order reinforcements! Men, boats, helicopters, whatever. Two men are missing. A suspect in a crime and a police officer.”
The woman opened her mouth to say something, but Lina just shouted, “Get on it!” She could hear the panic in her voice and took a deep breath to rein in her fear. She ran through the knee-deep water from boat to boat and shouted Max’s name. She looked down the beach, but could hardly see her hand in front of her face. The sea was like a foaming cauldron, and she was unable to say where the sea spray ended and the rain began. She stumbled over an anchor chain and fell headfirst into the water. It was freezing, but it helped get rid of the remnants of her dizziness. She held on to a boat that was violently bobbing up and down and managed to get to her feet. The waves had every intention of pulling her down, but she refused to be knocked over and stared all the while into the white, roaring chaos. Lightning strikes came one after another, and the thunder didn’t stop at all. Lina thought she saw a large, white mass to her right, maybe thirty yards or more away from the beach, something dancing up and down in the high waves. She waded closer to the shore and then ran toward the shape. The DLRG woman followed her. She had seen the white spot as well and pointed to it. She held a radio device in her right hand, but Lina could only hear fragments of what she screamed into it. Her focus was the white spot in the whitecaps. The glaring flash of lightning finally showed her the small boat, tossed about by the waves and always disappearing in troughs. Lina tried desperately to see the boat. Were Max and Lukas in this boat? Or just one of them? Was that a head? Was it an outstretched arm? The mast of the boat pointed heavenward like a straw—something drowning men could hold on to. Thirty yards or so, but unreachably far. Did Max know how to swim? Sure, but how good was he? Lina fought the impulse to jump into the water and swim toward the boat. She turned to the DLRG woman.
“Can we send out a boat?” she screamed.
The woman shook her head. “Way too dangerous. We would put ourselves in jeopardy.”
Again Lina looked out at the sea, to the spot where she’d seen the boat last. Her throat constricted. The boat wasn’t there. Had it been pulled under, and Max with it? No, it was over there! She almost wept with relief, or was she actually crying without knowing it since her face was wet anyway—everything was wet, wet and cold and numb.
Look! A head, black hair. Max. It must be Max. She thought she heard someone scream, but she must have heard wrong. Nobody could scream loud enough to be heard more than thirty yards away in this roaring and raging storm. She saw a tiny orange dot. The dot was moving away from the white spot, the boat, which meanwhile had been pushed out five more yards into the sea. Five yards—five yards times rain times waves times wind. Five yards could be fifty, could be five hundred in these conditions.
Lina grabbed the arm of the woman from the life-saving organization. “A rope! We need a rope!” She quickly waded toward the boats. Boats and ropes went together. She found a piece of blue plastic rope—too short. In the next boat there was a longer rope. She didn’t know whether it would be enough, but she had no time to keep searching. She didn’t mull it over, just grabbed it and tied it around her waist. It would have to do, one way or the other. She handed the other end of the rope to the woman, who still was holding the radio to her ear and thus had no hand free to hold Lina back. Lina gave her no time to protest. She ran into the water. She remembered her vacation on the Atlantic. The surf hadn’t been any higher, but there was also a breeze, and sunshine, a special beach, the smells and sounds—everything had been different. Most of all, it hadn’t been a matter of life and death. Yes, it really was life or death, and she might die. No matter, still better than just standing there and watching Max die—and then live for the rest of her life with the thought that she hadn’t done anything or tried hard enough.
She was so frozen through that the water felt warm. When her head was submerged once, everything turned absolutely quiet and a low calming noise clogged up her ears. She came up again and homed in on the little orange dot before dipping under the water again, swimming a few strokes, and then breaking the surface of the water again. There was no ground anymore. The current pulled at her and propelled her toward the little light dot. She dove again, pulling with strokes she thought were powerful, but which in reality were just helpless paddling. Coming up again, she gasped for air, swallowed water, spluttered, and screamed. She was screaming with rage because she didn’t want to die here, in the old, harmless Baltic Sea, because she’d been stupid enough to think she could save Max. Max who was nothing but a colleague, just someone she knew from work, who had been equally stupid trying to save a guy who had already killed once, maybe even twice. So why, why did Max, that idiot, want to save this Birkner fellow? Who cared if he drowned? Who cared if Max drowned? Damn!
Suddenly the orange spot was directly in front of her. Something pulled her up and kept her head above water. She coughed a few times and then took a deep breath—clear rainy air with almost no seawater. Max’s head stuck out from the safety vest. He held Lukas Birkner with one hand and Lina with the other. When she could think again, she gestured and he let her go. She could feel the pull of the rope around her stomach. Lina helped Max hold on to Birkner, who was completely exhausted. She clutched the safety vest and with it Max for good measure, and slowly they were being pulled ashore. The DLRG woman had received backup: three, four, five men with red vests, ropes, flashlights, and blankets. They pulled on the thin rope that cut into Lina’s stomach. She wheezed and gasped for air, again swallowed some water, and kicked with her legs until her feet touched stones again, solid ground, the beach, the saving shoreline. Hands grabbed her, pulling her up and carrying her away from the water that had wanted to kill her. The Baltic Sea also reluctantly released Max and Birkner and then retreated with a roar.
They put Lina down
at the foot of the wooden staircase, and soon afterward Max, whose eyes were closed and who was lying more than sitting. Lina crawled to him, her teeth chattering. When she reached him, she took his face in her hands.
“Max,” she whispered, “Max.” What she wanted to say was: You’re a real idiot—why did you do that? You could have died and would it have been worth it—for a guy like that, a murderer, a wife beater, a man who has done so many evil things? But she knew what he would reply: Yes, it’s worth it. Besides, she wasn’t strong enough for too many words, and so she just said over and over, “Max. Max.”
He slowly opened his eyes.
“Lina,” he said and looked at her.
Just then, one of the DLRG men grabbed her arm and pulled her up. “Come now,” he shouted in her ear. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Lina straightened herself and someone put a blanket around her shoulders. She only noticed now that her entire body was shaking. The man wanted to help her up the stairs, but she pushed his arm away, turned around, and looked.
Lukas Birkner was just laboriously standing up with the help of two brawny men. A gray, misty veil covered the sea behind him, making it almost invisible. He walked toward the staircase with slow steps, more carried than merely supported. Max was sitting up now. The rain hung almost horizontally in the air. Even though her DLRG rescuers pressured her to hurry, Lina took a few steps toward Birkner. He stopped in front of her with bowed head. His face was dripping wet.
“Lukas Birkner, you’re under arrest. You are suspected in the murder of your brother, Philip, as well as the murder of your former classmate Julia Munz,” she said.
The man’s head dropped even further. It almost looked as if he were nodding.
Epilogue
Shit, why didn’t they simply let me drown?
Instead, they fish me out of the water, half-dead, transport me back to Hamburg, and put me in the slammer. Into a tiny cell that reeks of shit and piss.
What the fuck? How was I to know that he’d kick the bucket right away? All I wanted was to make him shut the fuck up.
At first, he was actually glad to see me; when he was crouching on the ground covered with his own puke. He was cursing the slut who’d done that to him and that nutty bum who had hit him on top of it all. Then he stretched out his hand and said, “Come on! Help me.”
I looked at his hand and thought: fuck you. I have no idea why I thought that. I’d never thought that before.
So he starts to bellyache. “Come on! Do you want me to die here?”
I’m still not moving, just shining my flashlight into his face. It’s one of those huge heavy ones they always show in American thrillers. He’s blinking and trying to get up on his own, but he’s too plastered for that, or maybe his nuts still hurt. The slut kicked him good.
“Damn it, help me already.” He’s really mad now. I still do nothing and even take a step back. He squints and gives me the once-over. “Don’t tell me. You’re suddenly brave now?”
I’m hesitating.
“Just be careful. Remember, I know your little secret.”
I’m getting hot all over . . . Your little secret. He always brings that up when he wants to let me know who’s boss. My little secret, the one he shares with me. Without him . . . damn, I’d never have gotten through it. Honestly, he was always there for me. I could always count on him. When he noticed that I felt down in the dumps again, he’d drag me to the next bar and then we’d talk—talk for hours, talk about everything. We’d talk about whatever real guys talk about: soccer, cars, women. He gave me hints on how to open my own business, or how to get some tail somewhere else when my old lady was in one of her moods. Man, we had some fun together. Nevertheless . . . this matter was always “your little secret,” never “our” secret. Because I was the one who did it—but only after he told me that Julia would be at that party and someone really had to teach the slut a lesson, and didn’t I also have a good reason to be mad at her? And then he started with how she had made fun of me—whispering all of that in our little room up in the attic—reminding me how she teased me in front of everyone, saying I couldn’t get it up. And I got madder and madder just thinking about it. So when he said, “Why don’t you take the car and drive there?” I didn’t think about it too long. I went downstairs and drove off. And then I was in the park, with Julia, and she was dead. I managed to drive back somehow, and he was waiting for me. When he looked at me, he knew immediately what had gone down. “This stays our secret,” he said. But it never was our secret; it was always only mine.
And then I was in the woods again and had a flashlight in my hand. It smelled of soil and filth like it had then. Philip was reeking of puke just like she had, and in his eyes I read the same thought I had read in Julia’s when she said, “Oh, it’s you.” It’s just you. Oh, you. You, again. You zero. You loser. You nobody. He was looking at me, the left corner of his mouth pulled down, the way it always looked when he was about to say something. But before he can say anything, I hit him. The flashlight feels comfortable in my hand. He doesn’t even scream, just looks astonished and raises his hand as if he wanted to protect himself. I’m hitting him again since I don’t want to hear what he’s going to say right then: that I’m a coward, that I better help him immediately, dammit, that he’s not in the mood for games. Sure, I think, and hit him a third time, you only like games if you’re the one on top and someone else lies in the dirt in front of you. That way you can kick him again and again and again—but not anymore, dammit.
It has started to rain. He’s lying there in the dirt and isn’t moving anymore. I look at him. His wide-open eyes seem to stare at me reproachfully. I look at his black hair, his handsome face, the expensive leather jacket, and the designer jeans. He was always successful, always got whatever there was to achieve. The rain quietly splashes over the leaves. I notice that I’m shaking, but inside I am completely calm as I turn my back to him and leave. My face is wet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2014 Mona Hoppe
Maria C. Poets, born in 1966, fled her small hometown in Northern Germany for the big city at age nineteen. After a stint as a university student, she spent many good and some bad years in the printing business. Since stumbling upon literary translation, in 2006, she has translated more than forty books from English to German. Today Poets lives in the countryside of Northern Germany, where she indulges in her favorite activities: reading, writing, and dreaming.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Maria Poglitsch Bauer grew up in Carinthia, Austria, and fell in love with the English language early in life. Her first translation attempt happened when at age twelve, after a few years of high school English, she came across an abridged version of The Great Gatsby, judged it “great,” and wanted to share it with those who did not speak English. The unfinished opus languished in the drawer of a desk that eventually was stolen. She studied English and history at the University of Vienna and earned a Magister der Philosophie, followed by a Master of Arts degree from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She loves to read widely in both languages with, for nostalgic reasons, a heavy emphasis on Austrian authors—dead and alive. She is a member of ALTA, the American Literary Translators Association.
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