The Weekend: A Novel

by Bernhard Schlink

  The same evening, when the children were asleep, Ulla rang Ilse. She couldn’t bear being on her own anymore. Ilse came dutifully. She and Ulla were not close friends. But if Ulla was lonely and desperate enough to seek comfort from her, then Ilse would give what she could.

  Ulla didn’t want comfort. She had put a suit of armor around her pain. She wanted to fight. She was sure that an ugly game was being played, and she wasn’t prepared to take it. Who was behind it? What had they done with Jan? Had they abducted him? Abducted and murdered him?

  Ilse set down her notepad and pen and looked out of the window. She and Ulla had been in a frenzied state back then. All the things they had tried! The search for the client with whom Jan had been most involved over the previous weeks, and about whom he had occasionally dropped dark hints. The shadowing of her by the office, which refused to let go because of the files. The trip to Normandy. No hypothesis was too absurd, no speculation too abstruse. Until after a year the giddiness had run out and with it their friendship. Ulla was insulted because Ilse didn’t agree with her that Jan had, as the result of some foul play by his office or a client, been driven to suicide or abducted and murdered, but insisted that he had only faked his death and was now living a new life. They still met, still called each other, but the intervals between meeting and calling grew longer, and in the end each was relieved that the other stopped.

  Ilse understood why Ulla had fallen into that frenzy. It enabled her to sail swiftly across the dark water of grief; once the frenzy was past, she had got over Jan’s death. But why had she too been caught up in the frenzy? Was it a longing for common ground that found fulfillment in her dealings with Ulla? But if that was the case why didn’t she also share Ulla’s conviction that it had been suicide, or an abduction-and-murder plot? Was it a desire for adventure? Was it megalomania? There had been moments back then when she really thought she was on the trail of something big. Whatever it was that had drawn her into that frenzy—where was it? Was there something within her that she had since suppressed? Something that had really yearned to be experienced, and perhaps still wished to be?

  When Ilse finally heard the repeated ringing of the bell, it was seven o’clock and high time. There was no mirror in the room; Ilse opened the window and sought her image in the window. She resisted the temptation to adjust her hair or her face; her reflection was too vague and in any case she wasn’t good with comb, mascara and lipstick. But she didn’t avert her eyes from herself. She felt sorry for the woman that was her, always too inhibited to be entirely present wherever she happened to be. Except at home—she was homesick, even though she was a little ashamed of the meagerness of her domestic happiness with cats and books. She smiled ruefully at herself. The evening air was cool, she breathed deeply in and out. She summoned all her strength and went downstairs to join the others.

  Six

  Christiane had made a seating plan, and in front of each plate stood a little card with a name and a picture—a picture from the old days. The pictures were handed around and marveled at. “Look!”—“The beard!”—“The hair!”—“Did I look like that back then?”—“But you’ve changed too!”—“Where did you get the pictures?”

  Ilse had not yet greeted anyone apart from Margarete and Henner, and did so now. Jörg seemed just as awkward as she felt herself. When he didn’t return her hug, she thought at first that it was her fault. Then she told herself that in prison he had missed developments in etiquette and hadn’t learned to hug by way of greeting.

  His place was on one of the long sides of the table between Christiane and Margarete. Opposite him sat Karin, flanked by Andreas and Ulrich. Next to Andreas and Margarete, Ulrich’s wife and Karin’s husband sat facing each other; next to Ulrich and Christiane were Ilse and Henner. On one of the short sides Ulrich’s daughter sat between Ilse and Henner, on the other a place was set for Marko Hahn, who could only come later. Karin tapped the glass with her fork and said, “Let us pray,” waited until they had all got over their amazement and were quiet, and prayed. “Lord, stay with us, for evening is on its way and the day has declined.”

  Henner looked around; apart from Jörg and Andreas they had all lowered their heads—some had also closed their eyes. Jörg’s lips moved as if he were joining in or saying his own secular, revolutionary grace.

  “ ‘For evening is on its way’—does that mean that the Christians needed God more by night than by day? I’m not like that—I need help by day more than by night,” Andreas said with mocking interest as soon as Karin was finished. His mockery suited him, it suited his gauntness, the angularity of his movements, his bald head and cold gaze. “And why ‘and the day has declined’? Isn’t evening being on its way and the day having declined one and the same thing?”

  “That’s what lawyers are like—they twist and turn your words in their mouths.” Ulrich laughed. “But quite honestly, Karin, doesn’t it ever get too much for you? Singing, praying, preaching, saying pious, clever things about everyone and everything? I know it’s your job—my job sometimes gets too much for me as well.”

  “Your first meal in freedom—what do you think?” Christiane gave Jörg a friendly nudge with her elbow.

  “Your first meal in freedom—a meal with grace.” Andreas wouldn’t let go. “What do you think about that?”

  “It isn’t my first meal in freedom. We ate this morning on the autobahn and in Berlin at lunchtime.”

  “That’s why we didn’t get here till this evening,” Christiane explained. “I thought Jörg should get a bit of city air. His release came as such a surprise that they couldn’t run the usual program. They took him out a bit the day before yesterday—that was it. No proper day release, no open prison. But do start—what are you waiting for?” She pushed the bowl of potato salad toward Karin, and the bowl of sausages toward Andreas.

  “Thanks.” Karin took the bowl. “I don’t want to leave you without an answer. The hustle often gets too much for me, and not only because I’m actually rather slow. When I’m rushed, singing, praying and preaching don’t really come from the heart any longer, they become a job that I have to do. That doesn’t do God justice, and it does me no good.”

  “I call that a good answer.” Ulrich nodded and put some potato salad on his plate. Pushing the bowl toward Ilse, he turned to Jörg. “I don’t even need to ask you.”

  Annoyed, Jörg looked at Ulrich, then Christiane, then again at Ulrich. “What …”

  “Whether it was ever too much for you. What was actually the worst thing about jail? That you weren’t rushed, that you had too much time and not enough to do? That you were always in the same place? The other inmates? The food? No alcohol? No women? You were in solitary, I read somewhere, and you didn’t have to work—that’s half the battle, isn’t it?”

  Jörg struggled for an answer while already talking with his hands. Christiane intervened. “I don’t think those are questions that should be asked right now. Let him settle in before you give him the third degree.”

  “Christiane, the eternal big sister. You know the first thing I remembered when your invitation arrived? How I met you both more than thirty years ago, you always by his side, always with one eye on what he happened to be doing. At first I thought you were a couple, before I worked out that you were the big sister looking after her little brother. Let’s leave him aside for now. Karin has told us what things are like for her as a bishop. I’d be happy to tell you how my life with the labs is going, if you’d like to hear it, and he can tell us about his life in jail.”

  Ilse and Henner looked at each other. Ulrich’s tone lightened. But in his words, as in Christiane’s, there was a certain sharpness, as if they were both fighting a restrained battle. What were they fighting for?

  “You don’t want to hear anything about solitary confinement—none of you want to hear anything about that. And sleep deprivation and force-feeding and the insults and the isolation unit. Afterward, when I had won the battle for normal conditions of imprisonment”�
�Jörg laughed—“so, when prison conditions were normal … the noise was bad. Perhaps you think it’s quiet in prison, but it’s noisy. For every activity iron doors have to be opened and closed and iron passageways and iron steps have to be walked down. By day people shout at one another and at night they shout in their sleep. And then there’s the radio and the peephole, and one person clattering on a typewriter, and someone else banging his dumbbells against the door.” Jörg spoke slowly, haltingly, and with the random, agitated gestures that had startled Christiane in the morning and startled her again now. “You want to know what the worst thing is? That life is elsewhere. That you’re cut off from it and rotting, and the longer you wait for afterward, the less afterward is worth.”

  “Did you ever imagine having to go to prison? I mean, the way an employee imagines being fired or a doctor imagines contracting an illness? A professional risk? Or did you think you’d keep going and end up retiring as a terrorist, in the old terrorists’ home, where young terrorists would look after you? Did you …”

  “Has everyone got something in his glass?” Eberhard had a powerful voice, with which he effortlessly drowned out Ulrich. “I’m the oldest one here at the table, and I’m the one you should ask about retirement and old people’s homes. Jörg is still young, and I raise my glass to the many active and fulfilled years of freedom that he still has ahead of him. To Jörg!”

  “To Jörg!”

  When they had all set their glasses back down, it was a moment before they started talking again. Karin’s husband smilingly remarked to Ulrich’s wife about her stubborn husband. Andreas ironically apologized to Karin; he had actually understood the prayer, he didn’t know what had come over him. Christiane whispered to Jörg: “Talk to Margarete!” and Ilse and Henner asked Ulrich’s daughter about school and what sort of work she planned to do afterward.

  Ulrich wouldn’t let go. “You’re acting as if Jörg has leprosy and you’re not allowed to talk about it. Why shouldn’t I ask him about his life? He chose it—just as you chose yours and I chose mine. I actually think you’re being arrogant.”

  Jörg started speaking again, still slowly, still haltingly. “So … I didn’t think about old age. I didn’t think beyond the end of each action or perhaps to the start of the next one. A journalist once asked me if a life outside the law was bad, and he couldn’t understand that it wasn’t bad. I think any life that you live now, in which you’re not somewhere else in your thoughts, is good.”

  Ulrich looked around triumphantly. He nearly said, “Come on!” For a while he let the individual conversations continue. Ilse, who thought she remembered where the pictures on the place markers came from, asked Christiane. Yes, she had cut them from a collection made at Jan’s funeral. Ilse asked Jörg if he remembered Jan, and was confused by the answer, “He’s the best.” Ulrich’s daughter quietly asked Henner if he thought Jörg had turned homosexual in prison, and Henner answered just as quietly that he had no idea, but knew that in boarding schools, camps and prisons there was a kind of pragmatic homosexuality that disappeared again afterward. Christiane whispered to Jörg, who was eating in silence: “Ask Margarete how she found the house!”

  But Ulrich preempted her. “I’m sure you remember your first case and your first sermon.” He nodded to Andreas and Karin. “And Ilse her first lesson and Henner his first article. I will never forget my first bridge; I never put so much time and love into any later work, and learned something from it that has served me for life. What about your first murder, Jörg? Did it give you …”

  “Stop it, Ulrich, please stop it!” his wife exploded.

  Ulrich raised his arms in resignation and let them fall again. “OK, OK. If you think …”

  Henner realized that he didn’t know what to think, and when he looked around at the others he read in their faces that they didn’t know either. He admired Ulrich for being so direct, so straightforward. Jörg’s life was Jörg’s life, just as their lives were their lives—perhaps Ulrich was right. At any rate, Ulrich could have an interested and engaged conversation with Jörg. He, Henner, could manage nothing but small talk.

  After dessert Jörg got to his feet. “It’s been years—what am I saying—it’s been more than two decades since I had such a long, full day. Please forgive me for going to bed. We’ll see one another again at breakfast tomorrow—many thanks to you all for coming, and sleep well.” He walked around the table and shook hands with each of them. To the astonished Henner he said, “I think it was brave of you to come.”

  As he left the room, Christiane was about to stand up and go with him. Beneath Ulrich’s scornful gaze she thought better of it.

  Seven

  Andreas had got to his feet when Jörg had said good-bye to him, and paused. “I think I should be …”

  “Please, I don’t want everyone leaving!” Christiane jumped to her feet and waved her hands around as if to press Andreas back down into his chair and keep the others in theirs. “It’s ten o’clock, far too early for bed. Andreas, I’m so glad that you’ve finally met our old friends and they’ve met you—I’m sure you’ve had a hard day, but do stay awhile.”

  As if she were an officer whose soldiers wanted to desert, Henner thought. Why the fear that we would slip away?

  Ingeborg was still bickering with her husband. “You can’t talk to Jörg like that! Can’t you see that he’s exhausted? He’s just got out of jail after twenty-something years, and instead of letting him pull himself together, you’re wearing him out.” She looked around as if expecting agreement.

  Karin tried to be conciliatory. “Wearing him out—I didn’t think that was what Ulrich was trying to do. But I also think that at the moment we should leave Jörg in peace with the past and give him courage for the future. Christiane, what are his plans?”

  Ulrich didn’t let Christiane answer. “In peace? If he’s had an excess of anything over the past few years, it’s peace. He’s in his mid- or late fifties, as we all are, and his life was … What would you call it? Robbing banks and killing people, terrorism, revolution and prison—that was the life he chose for himself. And I’m not supposed to ask him what it was like? That’s what old friends’ reunions are for—you talk about the old days and tell one another what you’ve been doing since then.”

  “You know just as well as I do that it isn’t a normal old friends’ reunion. We’re here to help Jörg find his way in life. And show him that life and people are glad to have him back.”

  “Karin, that’s part of your job. But I’m not on a therapeutic mission. I’m happy to give Jörg a job. I also want to help him find one somewhere else. I would do that for any old friend, so it’s the same for Jörg. The fact that he killed four people … If it isn’t a reason to terminate the friendship, neither is it a reason to coddle him like a sensitive little soul.”

  “Therapeutic mission? I think my memory’s a bit better than yours. No violence against individuals, and if there was, it wasn’t hard missiles, just soft ones, tomatoes and eggs, but in the people’s liberation struggle against imperialism and colonialism of course there were guns and bombs as well, and we, in the metropolitan centers of imperialism and capitalism, owe our solidarity to the liberation struggle, and solidarity means taking part in that combat—have you forgotten that we all used to talk like that? Not just Jörg, these people too.” Karin pointed at the gathering. “And you too. Yes, with you it stayed words—you don’t need to explain the difference between talking and shooting. But would it have stayed words if you’d grown up without a mother? If you had the same problems dealing with people as Jörg does? If you didn’t have the gift of seizing life so resolutely and effectively?”

  “The terrorists as our confused brothers and sisters?” Ulrich shook his head and made a face not only of rejection, but of revulsion. “Do you believe that too?” He looked around the group.

  Ilse broke the silence. “I didn’t talk of struggles in those days. I didn’t talk at all. I brewed coffee with the girls and made ste
ncils and printed up pamphlets. You didn’t, Karin, and neither did you, Christiane—I admired and envied you for it. Jörg and the others who fought were the ones I admired. Yes, the struggle was nonsense. But everything was nonsense in those days. The Cold War and the secret services and the arms race and the real wars in Asia and Africa—when I think back to that, it strikes me as insane.” She laughed. “Not that it’s any better these days. The attacks and uprisings and wars since then—I can only think that the people who do that must be crazy. Jörg has put it behind him. Isn’t that what matters?”

  “Karin, I know you mean well. But it isn’t true that Jörg wasn’t loved when he was …”

  Christiane stopped talking and listened. Footsteps came across the gravel, someone opened the front door, walked down the hall and opened the door to the drawing room. “I saw the light under the door and thought … I’m Marko.”

  Christiane got to her feet and greeted him, introduced him to the friends and the friends to him and disappeared into the kitchen to cook up some sausages for him. She did everything quickly, in a detached and businesslike way. The friends, who knew the name Marko Hahn after they had been introduced but didn’t know who he was or what connected him and Jörg, were slightly irritated; at the same time they were glad of the interruption. They stood up, opened the door and windows to the garden, cleared up, emptied the ashtrays, fetched new water and wineglasses, replaced the candles. “There’s a gale a-brewin’,” said Karin’s husband, and Margarete stepped into the doorway and, after glancing at the sky and the wind-tossed treetops, predicted a storm. Ilse came and stood next to her and put her arm around her, she herself didn’t know why. Margarete laughed a warm laugh, put her arm around Ilse and drew her to her.