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THE EXECUTION OF JUSTICE
Contents
Title Page
I
II
III
Postscript
Copyright
I
Granted, I’m putting all this down in an orderly report—it’s the pedant in me maybe—so that the case can be closed. I want to force myself to go over one more time the events that led to the acquittal of a murderer and to the death of an innocent man. I want one more time to think through the steps I was lured into taking, the measures I took, the possibilities left undone. I want conscientiously to gauge whatever chances may still remain for the justice system. But above all I am writing this report because I have time, lots of time, two months at least. I’ve just returned from the airport (the bars I visited on the way don’t count, nor is my present condition of any consequence. I am dead drunk, but I’ll be sober in the morning). The huge machine, with Dr. honoris causa Isaak Kohler aboard, was rising into the night sky, howling, bellowing, toward Australia as I leapt from my VW, the safety off my revolver. It was one of his finest maneuvers to get that phone call through to me in time. Presumably the old man knew what I was up to; everybody knows I haven’t got the money to follow him.
So I have no choice but to wait till he comes back, sometime, in June or July maybe, to wait, to get drunk now and then, or frequently, depending on my finances, and to write, the only appropriate activity for a lawyer whose career is a total shambles. But the canton deputy is mistaken about one thing: Time won’t mend his crime, my waiting won’t mitigate it, my being drunk won’t blot it out, my writing won’t excuse it. By presenting the truth, I’ll fix it in my mind, enabling me at some point—in June, as I said, or in July or whenever he comes back (and he will come back)—to do deliberately, whether drunk or sober, what I was going to do just now purely on impulse. The report is meant not just to provide evidence of a murder but to prepare for one as well. For a just murder.
Sober and back again in my study: Justice can be restored only by a crime. That afterward I’ll have to commit suicide is unavoidable. Not that I intend to avoid responsibility; on the contrary, it is the only responsible way to act—if not in a legal sense, then in a humane one. Possessing the truth, I cannot prove it. I lack witnesses to the critical moment. If I take my own life, it will make it easier for me to be believed even without witnesses. I do not approach death like some scientist executing himself in an experiment for the sake of science. I die because I have thought my situation through to its conclusion.
Scene of the Crime: It plays a role very early on. The Du Théâtre with its rococo façade is one of the few showpieces of our hopelessly overbuilt city. The restaurant is located on three floors, something not everyone knows, most people think there are only two. On the ground floor, as morning drags on—everybody is up early in this town—you find sleepy students, and business people as well, who then often stay through midday; later, after the coffee and kirsch, it gets quiet, the waitresses become invisible, and not until around four do the weary teachers drop by, the tired civil servants settle in. The crush, of course, arrives for dinner, and then, after ten-thirty, besides the politicians, managers, and creatures of finance, come the various representatives of the free professions, some very free, plus a few slightly shocked strangers—our city loves to put on international airs. On the second floor, then, everything turns so swanky it stinks. “Stink” is the right word for it: The two low rooms with their red wallpaper are like a steamy jungle, but people put up with it all the same, the women in evening gowns, the gentlemen often in black tie. The air is saturated with sweat, perfume, and more to the point, the odor of our city’s culinary specialities, scallops of veal with home fries, etc. People meet here (essentially the same folks as downstairs, only in gala costume) after premieres and after big business deals, not to pull them off but to celebrate their having been pulled off. On the third floor, however, the character of the Du Théâtre changes all over again. You’re taken aback by a whiff of dissipation. There’s an ostentatious nonchalance. The rooms here are high and bright, look more like those of a cheap tavern—ordinary wooden chairs, checkered cloths on the tables, beer coasters everywhere, right beside the stairway a half-empty cabaret with mediocre magicians and even more mediocre strippers, people playing cards and billiards in the main room. Here sit our city’s fruit-and-vegetable dealers, contractors and department store owners, auto sales execs and demolition experts, often for hours, making phenomenal bets, and the kibitzers crowd around them, odd and dubious characters, and there are always several hookers hanging around as well, three, four, of them, always at the same table by the window, more than just tolerated, they belong to the decor and come cheap. Relatively. Really rich people pay attention to the small change.
The first time I met the canton deputy, I had just taken my state exam, written my dissertation, been awarded my doctorate and admitted to the bar, but I was still working, as I had while a student, as a high-class gofer for Stüssi-Leupin. The latter had gained a reputation well beyond the borders of our country by the acquittals he had managed to get in the murder cases of the Ätti brothers, Rosa Pick, Deubelbeiss and Amsler, and by the agreement he had arranged between the Trög Amelioratory Works and the United States (very much to the advantage of the Trög party). I was to make a delivery to him at the Du Théâtre, a brief for one of those dubious cases that only he could love. I found the star lawyer on the third floor at the billiard table, where he had just ended a game with the canton deputy. Dr. Benno and Professor Winter were playing at another table, and only now as I write this does it occur to me that at that point the main characters of the drama to follow were assembled, as if in a prologue. It was very cold outside, November or December—I could easily determine the exact date—and I was frozen to the bone because as usual I wasn’t wearing a coat and had had to park my Volkswagen several blocks away from the Du Théâtre.
“Have yourself a glass of grog, young man,” the canton deputy said to me. He eyed me observantly and waved to a waiter. I obeyed automatically; besides, I had to wait for instructions from Stüssi-Leupin, who had gone off with the brief and was paging through it at his table. At the front of the room, the grocers were gambling, dark silhouettes against the front windows. The hollow trundling of the tram could be heard from the street. The canton deputy was still watching me, candidly, making no attempt to hide it. He might have been going on seventy. He was the only one who hadn’t removed his jacket, wasn’t even sweating. I finally introduced myself, suspecting that I was standing face-to-face with a man of some prominence, though I couldn’t think of his name.
“Related to Colonel Spät?” he asked, without mentioning his own name, whether because he
considered that unimportant or because he assumed I already knew it. (Colonel Spät: militaristic farmer, nowadays member of the federal cabinet. Demands atomic weapons.)
“Hardly,” I answered. (To take care of this matter once and for all: I was born in 1930. I never knew my mother, Anna Spät; my father is unknown. I grew up in an orphanage and recall it fondly—especially the vast forest bordering it. The administration and the faculty were excellent, my youth happy; it is most decidedly not always an advantage to have parents. My misfortune began with Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler. Before that I had some difficulties, true, but not hopeless ones.)
“You want to become Stüssi-Leupin’s partner, do you?” he asked.
I looked at him in amazement. “Never entered my mind.”
“He thinks a lot of you.”
“Not so that I could notice thus far.”
“Stüssi-Leupin never lets people notice,” the old man observed dryly.
“His mistake,” I answered casually. “I want to work for myself.”
“That will be difficult.”
“Possibly.”
The old man laughed. “You are in for some surprises. It isn’t easy to get to the top in this country. Do you play billiards?” he then asked out of the blue.
I replied I didn’t.
“A mistake,” he said, giving me the thoughtful eye all over again, gray eyes full of astonishment, but without mockery, or so it appeared, humorless and hard, and led me to the second table, where Dr. Benno and Professor Winter were playing. I knew them both, the professor from my university days—he was chancellor when I matriculated—Dr. Benno from our city’s nightlife, which in those days went on only till midnight, but if for that reason alone, with some intensity. His profession was uncertain. He had once won an Olympic medal in fencing—which was why people called him Olympic Heinz—had once been Swiss master in pistol-shooting, and was still a well-known golfer; at one point he had run a gallery that hadn’t turned a profit. Now it was said he mainly managed other people’s fortunes.
I greeted them, they nodded.
“Winter will always be a greenhorn,” said Dr.h.c. Kohler.
I laughed. “Meaning you’re an expert?”
“But of course,” he answered calmly. “Billiards is my passion. Give me the cue, Professor, you’ll never make that shot.”
Professor Adolf Winter gave him the billiard cue. He was in his sixties, a heavy man but of the shorter sort, with a gleaming bald head, gold rimless glasses, a well-kempt black beard with streaks of gray, which he kept stroking worthily, always impeccably dressed in a sophisticated conservative way, one of those liberal arts blowhards who populate our university, member of PEN and the Usteri Foundation, author of the two-volume tome Carl Spitteler and Hesiod, or Switzerland and Greece: A Comparison (Artemis, 1940). (The liberal arts faculty has always got on my lawyer’s nerves.)
The canton deputy worked the leather tip carefully with the chalk. His movements were calm and sure, and however abrupt the shots he made, nothing about him seemed arrogant, simply deliberate and composed, all of it suggesting power and imperturbability. He regarded the billiard table with his head tilted slightly, then made his shot, decisive and quick.
I followed the rolling of the white balls, how they crashed against each other and bounced off.
“A la bande. That’s how you have to beat Benno,” the deputy said, as he handed the cue back to Professor Winter. “Got that, young man?”
“Don’t know anything about it,” I answered and turned to my grog, which the waiter had set down on a little table.
“You’ll understand it someday all the same.” Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler laughed, taking a newspaper scroll from the wall rack and moving away.
The Murder: What happened three years later is public knowledge and will not take long to describe (nor do I have to be absolutely sober to do it). Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler had already vacated his seat, although his party wanted to nominate him for canton senator (not for the federal cabinet, as several foreign newspapers had it), had withdrawn from politics entirely (and from his law practice long before that), was managing a brick trust that was more and more assuming worldwide dimensions, and was serving as president of various corporate boards, working as well for a UNESCO commission; sometimes you didn’t see him around town for months. One unseemly springlike day in March of 1955, he was guiding B., a minister in the English cabinet, around the city. The minister had come on a private visit, had been treated in a private clinic for stomach tumors, and was now sitting beside the canton deputy emeritus in the latter’s Rolls-Royce and reluctantly allowing himself to be shown the city, having firmly resisted for four weeks, only to yield now, was sitting there yawning at the sights as they slipped past, the Institute of Technology, the University, the Münster, “romanesque” (the deputy offered the catch phrases), the river quivered in the soft air (the sun was just setting), the quay was crowded with people. The minister nodded off, on his lips the taste of the countless servings of mashed potatoes and granola porridge that he had enjoyed in the private clinic, while dreaming of straight shots of whiskey, and hearing the voice of the deputy as if far in the distance, the rumble of traffic as an even more distant rustle; a leaden exhaustion lay within him and perhaps already the suspicion that the stomach tumors had not been benign after all.
“Just a moment,” said Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler and had Franz, his chauffeur, stop in front of the Du Théâtre, climbed out, instructed him to wait a minute, pointed mechanically with his umbrella at the “eighteenth-century” façade, but Minister B. did not react at all, dozed on, dreamed on. The deputy went into the restaurant, passing through the revolving door into the large dining room, where the maître d’ greeted him respectfully. It was nearing seven, the tables were all occupied now, people eating dinner, voices babbling, lips licking, tableware clattering. The deputy emeritus looked about him, walked toward the middle of the dining room, where Professor Winter was sitting at a small table, busy with a tournedos rossini and a bottle of Chambertin, pulled out a revolver and shot the PEN Club member dead, not without having first greeted him amiably (the whole thing was played out in the most dignified fashion), then walked past the petrified maître d’, who gaped at him speechlessly, and past the confused waitresses, who were scared to death, walked through the revolving door and out into the mild March evening, climbed into his Roll-Royce, sat down next to the dozing minister, who had noticed nothing, who hadn’t even been aware that the car had stopped, who, as mentioned, was dozing on, dreaming on, whether of whiskey, or of politics (the Suez crisis later washed him away with it too), or of some definite premonition in regard to his stomach tumors (his death was announced last week in the papers, only briefly noted, and most of them were not all that scrupulous about the orthographics of his name).
“To the airport, Franz,” Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler ordered.
The Intermezzo of the Arrest: It cannot be related without a certain schadenfreude. Several tables away from the murdered man, the commandant of our canton police was dining with his old friend Mock, a deaf sculptor so self-absorbed that he took not the least notice of the whole incident, not even afterward. The two were sharing a pot-au-feu, Mock with satisfaction, the commandant, who did not like the Du Théâtre and visited it seldom, with an ill humor. Nothing tasted right: The broth was too cold, the stew meat too tough, the lingonberries too sweet. As the shot rang out, the commandant didn’t look up—which is possible, at least so it’s said—since he was just about to do some workmanlike sucking of bone marrow, but then he stood up after all, even tipping his chair over as he did, which, as a stickler for law and order, he set back upright. When he got to Winter, the latter was now lying in his tournedos rossini, his hand still clenched around the glass of Chambertin.
“Wasn’t that Kohler just now?” the commandant asked the helpless maître d’, who gaped at him, distraught and pale.
“Yes, sir. Indeed it was,” he murmured.
The commandant regarded the murdere
d professor of Germanics with a thoughtful air, gazing gloomily down at the plate of fried potatoes and green beans, let his eyes glide across the bowl of tender lettuce, tomatoes, and radishes.
“Well, there’s nothing more to be done,” he said.
“Yes, sir. Indeed not.”
The guests, at first spellbound, had sprung to their feet. The cook and the kitchen crew stared over from behind the counter. Only Mock went on eating calmly. A lanky man pushed his way forward.
“I’m a doctor.”
“Don’t touch him,” the commandant ordered calmly. “We have to photograph him first.”
The doctor bent down to the professor but obeyed the order.
“Yes, indeed,” he determined. “Dead.”
“Precisely,” the commandant answered calmly. “Go back to your table.”
Then he removed the bottle of Chambertin from the table.
“That’s requisitioned,” he said and handed it to the maître d’.
“Yes, sir. Indeed it is,” he muttered.
And then the commandant went to do some telephoning.
When he returned, Public Prosecutor Jämmerlin was already beside the corpse. He was wearing a formal dark suit. He had been on his way to attend a symphony concert at the Tonhalle and had just consumed an omelette flambée in the French restaurant on the second floor when he heard the shot. Jämmerlin was not well liked. Everyone yearned for him to retire, both the prostitutes and their competition from the other camp, the thieves and burglars, treacherous junior partners, businessmen in difficulty; and the legal authorities—from the police on through the lawyers, even his own colleagues—had deserted him as well. Everyone told jokes about him: It was no wonder things were jammed up in this town; since Jämmerlin was in office, the justice system couldn’t get jammed up any worse, etc. The prosecutor was playing a losing game, his authority had long since been undermined, and his particular cross was the commandant, who, so people said, regarded the so-called criminal element of our population as its more valuable segment. And yet, Jämmerlin was a lawyer in the grand style—he didn’t always come out on the short end, his indictments and objections were feared, his uncompromising nature was so impressive that people hated him. He was the very picture of an attorney of the old school, personally offended by every acquittal, equally unfair to rich and poor, a bachelor, untroubled by any temptation, never once having touched a woman. Most detrimental, professionally speaking. Criminals were something beyond his comprehension, something downright satanic, who set him into an Old Testament rage; he was a relic of an unyielding but equally incorruptible morality, an erratic block in the “morass of a justice system that pardons all offenses,” as he expressed it with a vigor that matched his rage. And he was also extraordinarily agitated at the moment, all the more so since he was personally acquainted with both the murdered man and the murderer.
The Execution of Justice Page 1