The Weekend: A Novel

by Bernhard Schlink

  In the church Jan’s father speaks. He talks about the incomprehensibility of what has happened: beloved Jan suddenly disappearing and a few days later found dead in Normandy poisoned by the exhaust fumes that he had piped into his car, the car parked with a view of the sea, near a place where he had once been particularly happy years before. He speaks of the incomprehensible violence of the depressive impulse that not only drove Jan to flee his family and his job, but drove him to his death. He is the white-haired head of a family of many children and grandchildren, a retired vicar, and he speaks of the depressive impulse with an authority that impresses even the friends who can’t remember ever having known Jan to be depressive. Do they know better than his father?

  Ilse saw the funeral clearly again. It was the last time she had seen the friends with whom she was about to spend the weekend. Jörg had disappeared shortly afterward. At the funeral he had had nothing but contempt for Jan; you don’t throw your life away over bourgeois idiocies when there’s a great struggle that it could be used for. Christiane had sensed what was happening to Jörg, hovered around him and confirmed his contemptuous and revolutionary views as if she wanted to show him that he had a place in the world with them, and that he mustn’t disappear on their account. Soon afterward the others also scattered to the four winds. In a way Jörg had done what all the others had also needed to do at the time: he had determined the course of his life.

  But it wasn’t the impending meeting with these friends that had made her recall the funeral. It had only prompted her to start writing. She had bought a big, fat hardback notebook and a green mechanical pencil with a long lead of the kind that, it was explained to her—and she was pleased by the fact—was used by architects. On Thursday she had set off after school and come here by train and bus and taxi in order, the next morning, to do in a strange place what she didn’t dare do at home: write.

  No, her preoccupation with the funeral had begun years before. She had read about a play that contained an image from September 11 that she couldn’t get out of her mind. Not the image of the airplanes flying into the towers, not the image of the towers smoking, or of them collapsing, not the image of the people covered in ash. What she couldn’t get out of her mind was the image of the falling bodies, some singly, some in pairs, almost touching one another or even holding hands. It was always before her eyes.

  Ilse had read everything she could find. That estimates of the number of falling bodies varied between fifty and two hundred. That lots of people jumped, but that some had fled to the windows and, when the panes exploded, had been forced out by other people jumping out or sucked out by the draft of air. That of those who jumped, some had decided to jump because of their hopeless situation, while the rest were simply driven out by the unbearable heat. That the heat rose to above 550 degrees Centigrade and reached the people before the flames reached them. That the drop was some four hundred meters, and the fall lasted up to ten seconds. That the pictures of the falling bodies were too blurred for faces to be made out. That relatives sometimes thought they could recognize a falling body by its clothes, and were partly comforted, partly terrified by that. And that among the dead, those who had fallen could not be identified.

  But no information moved her as much as the pictures did. The falling bodies, always with both arms and often with all their limbs outstretched. Perhaps rather than the individual photographs that she found in books she might also have searched for film clips and seen the bodies actually falling, flailing, twisting, but she was scared to do so. Some of the falling bodies looked in the photographs as if they were floating to the ground or even flying away. Ilse hoped and doubted. Could someone do that? In such a situation could someone jump and then float, fly, even if it was only for the last ten seconds? Could he enjoy those ten seconds, which would end with a sudden and painless death, with all the delight that we are capable of bringing to the enjoyment of life?

  In the play a man was supposed to be sitting in his office in one of the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11, but he was late for work and realized he had the opportunity to be dead to everybody, could sneak away from his old life and start a new one. Ilse hadn’t seen or read the play. In her imagination the man had seen the pictures of the falling, floating, flying bodies and that had given him the idea of wanting to fly away—that made sense to her, that was enough. And it filled her imagination and it summoned up the memory of Jan’s funeral and with it the question of whether he had actually killed himself or whether he had abandoned his old life to start a new one. Everything that had preoccupied both her and Ulla in the year after Jan’s death came back to her, from the funeral to the mysterious phone call, the strange clothes, the missing files, the autopsy report.

  Four

  When Henner came back to the house after taking a wide sweep across the fields, another car was parked outside the gate, a big silver Mercedes with a Hamburg license plate. The door to the house was open. Henner went in, and when his eyes had grown accustomed to the half-light, he saw a staircase on the left leading up to the next floor and a hallway that ended in doors on each side. Both stairs and hallway were supported by a metal scaffolding. Again the plaster was flaking from the walls, and many of the natural stone slabs in the floor had been replaced by blobs of cement. But everything was clean, and opposite the front door a big vase of brightly colored tulips stood on an old table.

  Upstairs a door opened and closed, and for a moment talking and laughter rang out from the room behind it. Henner looked up. With slow, heavy steps, her left hand resting on the banister, a woman came down the stairs. As if she had pains in her left hip or her left leg, Henner thought, and she was too fat. He put her at fifty, a few years younger than himself. She was too young to be suffering from arthritis. Had she had an accident?

  “Have you just got here too?” He nodded toward where the Mercedes was parked in front of the house.

  She laughed. “No.” She too gave a brief nod in the direction of the Mercedes. “That’s Ulrich with his wife and daughter. I’m Margarete, Christiane’s friend, and I belong here. I have to get back to the kitchen—will you come and help me?”

  For the next hour he stood in the kitchen, peeled potatoes and cut them into slices, diced pickled gherkins, chopped chives and received instructions about what needed to be stirred into the salad dressing. “Shaken, not stirred”—he attempted a joke. Margarete’s ease, composure, cheerfulness irritated him. It was the cheerfulness of simple folk, the composure of those lucky devils who are at home in the world without having to work for it—Henner didn’t like either quality. Her physical aura irritated him too. It was an erotic aura that he found doubly incomprehensible; he didn’t like fat women—his girlfriends were always as slim as models—and Margarete, who wasn’t at all impressed by his charm, was possibly more than just a friend of Christiane’s. Possibly, too, she knew more about him than a girlfriend knows. If he thought back to that one night years ago with Christiane, he felt used again, and hurt. At the same time Christiane’s behavior back then still seemed so strange that he felt once more that there was something he hadn’t understood, and the fear that he had failed. Was that what had brought him here? Had Christiane’s call aroused the desire to know at last what had really happened back then?

  “Would you like to try the punch?” She held a glass out to him and he could tell that she’d asked him once already. He blushed.

  “Sorry.” He took the glass. “Love to.” It was punch with white peaches, and the taste reminded him of his childhood, when there had been no yellow peaches, only white ones, and how his mother had planted two peach trees in the garden. He gave the empty glass back to Margarete. “I’ve finished the potato salad. Is there anything else I can do? Do you know where I’m sleeping?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  But Ulrich, his wife and daughter were coming toward them down the stairs. Little Ulrich with his tall wife and tall daughter. Henner let himself be greeted and hugged and taken out onto the terr
ace. Ulrich’s bumptious, cloddish qualities were too much for him, as they had been years before, and he was unsettled by the way his wife liked to throw her head back when she laughed, and the way his daughter posed around the place, bored and provocative, with her long legs crossed, short skirt, tight top and sulky mouth.

  “No electricity—we’ll have to go sit in my car if we want to hear the President. It said on the news a moment ago that he’s going to deliver his speech in Berlin Cathedral, and I’m willing to bet that he’ll announce Jörg’s pardon. Very nice, I’d have to say, very nice of him to do it, when Jörg is already out, when he’s been able to find a spot where the reporters and the cameras can’t find him.” Ulrich looked around. “Not a bad spot, not a bad spot. But he can’t hide out here forever. Do you know what his plans are? They take on people like him in the arts, working as stagehands or doing lighting or proofreading. I’d be happy for him to start in one of my dental labs, but that wouldn’t be chic enough for him. No offense, but because I gave up my studies to become a dental technician, you guys have always despised me a bit.”

  Again, Henner had to struggle to remember. When they’d gone to demonstrations Ulrich had always been there, and when there had been a butyric acid attack on a politician he had been the one who got hold of the harmless but foul-smelling liquid. Despised him? In those days they wouldn’t have despised a working Ulrich, they would have admired him. He told Ulrich that.

  “Really, forget about it. I sometimes read your pieces—excellent stuff. And the papers you write for—Stern, Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung—prime addresses. The intellectual side of things has never really been my scene; I mean, I follow it, but I stay out of it myself. But where business is concerned—I think with my dental labs I’m way ahead of you intellectuals. So everyone does his own thing, you, me and Jörg. That’s what I said to myself when I got Christiane’s call. Everyone does his own thing, I said to myself. Jörg screwed up, he paid for it and now he’s got to get his life back in order. It isn’t going to be easy for him. In the old days he didn’t know how to work and get on with people and live in peace with the world—why should he be able to do it now? I don’t reckon it’s something you learn in jail—what do you think?”

  Henner didn’t get a chance to say that he didn’t know. Karin and her husband came out of the house onto the terrace. Henner was glad to see a familiar face, and glad that he immediately remembered her name. She had been a vicar, and had become the bishop of a little diocese, and he had interviewed her a few years before about the church and politics, and in the past year he had appeared with her on a talk show. On both occasions he had been glad to note that it had been no coincidence that he had liked her at university. Her soundness pleased him, so he forgave her for the marked gentleness and solemnity in her voice and her speech. Vicars just become unctuous, as journalists become boastful. And even though you can never tell with vicars how much their friendliness is due to their job and how much it is based on genuine sympathy, Henner had a sense that she was pleased to see him again too. Her husband, Eberhard, the retired curator of a South German museum, was much older than his wife, and the loving attention with which he fetched a shawl and put it around her shoulders when it grew cooler, and the affection with which she thanked him, made Henner think that this love fulfilled the longing of a daughter and a father. The husband saw through the arrangement of people around the table before sitting down, placing his chair between Ulrich’s wife, Ingeborg, and daughter, Dorle, and managing to draw them both into conversation, even raising the occasional peal of merry laughter from that bored, provocative, sulky mouth.

  As Margarete walked Andreas onto the terrace, she announced that Jörg and Christiane had called and would be arriving in half an hour. At six o’clock there would be an aperitif on the terrace, and at seven o’clock dinner in the drawing room—if anyone wanted to stretch their legs before evening, now was the time. She would summon them with the bell just before six.

  While the others stayed where they were, Henner got up. Andreas wasn’t one of the old friends who had met at school or in the first few terms at university. He had been Jörg’s defense counsel until giving up his mandate because Jörg and the other defendants had wanted to exploit him politically. He became his lawyer again when Jörg requested his support in his bid for an early release a few years previously. Henner had met him before too. If the afternoon’s choreography was designed to allow the guests to meet before everything started revolving around Jörg, Henner could take his leave. And besides, he didn’t know how he would be able to bear so many people for so many hours in such a small space.

  Once again he took a wide arc around the fields. He walked slowly, in a gangly fashion, taking long strides and swinging his arms. He hadn’t phoned his mother from New York—he hadn’t even phoned her since he’d got back, and he felt guilty even though he knew that she wouldn’t remember when he had phoned her last. He hated the ritual of phone calls in which his mother repeatedly demanded that he speak up, before finally giving up and putting down the receiver, so that in the end nothing had been said. He hated the ritual of the visits that his mother looked forward to, but which always disappointed her because she sensed his distance. But without that distance he couldn’t have borne her and her illnesses, laments and accusations. His hand played with the phone in his jacket pocket, snapped it open and shut, open and shut. No, he wouldn’t call until Sunday.

  Just before six he came back to the house, from the side this time, across an orchard, past a greenhouse with a big woodpile beneath a low roof. At the side, too, there was an oak tree, small and bent after being struck by lightning, and a door to the house. As he stood under the tree and looked into the evening, Margarete opened the door, wiped her hands on her apron, leaned against the door frame and looked into the evening, as he was doing. A bell hung beside the door; in a moment Margarete would step away from the door frame, grab the short bell pull with her powerful, bare arms and ring the bell. Henner didn’t know she’d noticed him until she asked him, just loudly enough for him to hear her across the distance between them, and without turning around to him: “Do you hear the blackbirds’ duet?” He hadn’t paid any attention; now he heard it. The evening, the blackbirds, Margarete in the doorway—Henner didn’t know why, but he was close to tears.

  Five

  Ilse didn’t hear the bell. She was sitting in her room, on the other side of the house, writing. The room was furnished with a camp bed, chair and table; on the table there were a jug and basin, a candle, a box of matches and a bunch of tulips. It was a corner room; from one window Ilse could look out onto the oak and behind it a barn, from the other onto the gate.

  The day after the funeral two lawyers came from Jan’s office to Ulla’s house. It was afternoon; the children were waiting for dinner and running noisily through the house. The older lawyer introduced himself as the senior partner of the office, the younger as the colleague with whom Jan had worked particularly closely. Ulla recognized them both; they had paid their respects to her the previous day, and the younger man had once come to pick up Jan.

  “We spoke on the phone to the police in France. They didn’t find the files your husband had just been working on in the car. Would you forgive us for asking whether the files are here?”

  “I’ll have a look this evening.”

  But that wasn’t enough for the two men. It was a matter of urgency, said the younger man, but she mustn’t go to any trouble, he knew the way, and he slipped past her and up the stairs. The older man asked her to bear with them and apologized and followed the younger man into Jan’s study. Ulla wanted to go with them, but the twins were arguing, and the water was boiling. She forgot the lawyers. When she was sitting with the children at the dinner table, they emerged from Jan’s study. Their arms were full of files, but no, they hadn’t found the files for which they had come.

  The phone call came the same evening. Ulla had put the children to bed and was sitting at the kitchen table,
too exhausted to feel pain or grief. She just wanted to lie down and go to sleep, and not wake up again in a new normality until several weeks or months had passed. But she didn’t have the strength to get up, climb the stairs to the bedroom and go to bed. And she answered the telephone only because it was mounted on the wall in such a way that she could pick up the receiver without getting to her feet. “Hello?”

  No one answered. Then she heard the caller breathing, and it was his breath. She knew it very well, and she loved it, loved the pauses in their telephone conversations, when he was wordlessly close to her with his breath. “Jan,” she said. “Jan, say something—where are you, what’s going on?” But he didn’t speak, and when after anxious waiting she said, “Jan!” again, he hung up.

  She sat there as if anesthetized. She was sure she hadn’t been mistaken. She was sure that she must have been mistaken. She had seen Jan lying in the coffin. Jan.

  Two days later she received the autopsy report in the mail. Name, sex, date and place of birth, body measurements and physical features—she had problems with the French text only when the incisions and results were described. She fetched the dictionary and went to work, even though the account of each incision caused her pain. When she was finished, she read the whole text all the way through again. Only now did she think of the sweatshirt and jeans in which Jan had lain on the table in front of the doctor. He had driven to the office in his suit that day. And, the police had written in their report, he had been found in his suit in the car.

  She went to their shared wardrobe. She knew his clothes, even his jeans, his T-shirts and sweatshirts. Nothing was missing—as if it mattered. She called the undertakers. Somewhat surprised, they told her that her husband, when he was brought back from France, had been wearing a crumpled suit. She had been asked if she wanted to have it—didn’t she remember?