The Weekend: A Novel

by Bernhard Schlink

  Was she, by withdrawing, losing her capacity to empathize with others? She had tried to go along with Christiane in her concern for Jörg, and she had also set about trying to like Jörg and help him. But even though she understood her friend’s relationship with her brother after stories that went on all night, she thought it was sick and understood it only as one understands an illness. She thought Jörg was sick too. Wouldn’t you have to be sick to kill people not out of passion and desperation, but with a clear head and in cold blood? Wouldn’t someone healthy simply have other and better things to do? Listening to Christiane and her friends talk about the RAF and Germany’s autumn of terror and the pardoning of terrorists, time and again Margarete had the sense of something sick, a subject in which people were talking about a sickness that had afflicted the terrorists back then and was now afflicting the speakers. How can a person in a healthy mental state discuss whether society is made better by showing mercy to murderers? That showed far too much respect for an ugly, repellent sickness. No, Margarete could feel only the empathy that one has for the sick. Was that too little?

  The cool of morning came, and Margarete lifted her legs onto the seat, pulled the nightshirt over her feet and wrapped her arms around her knees. Soon it would be day. With the first gleam of sunlight she would get up, go back, lie down again and go back to sleep. No, the empathy that she had for Christiane and Jörg and the guests was not too little. It wasn’t an almsgiving empathy, which one gives while at the same time seeking distance. She looked forward to being alone again. But now the others were there, and she wanted to do what she could to keep the sick from becoming even sicker. At peace with herself, she nodded off, and her head sank to her knees. When cold and pains awoke her, the sky was brightening in the east.

  Saturday

  Sixteen

  First the sun bathes the crown of the oak in front of the house in bright light. Now the birds that live there, and that have been chattering since the break of dawn, start getting noisy. The blackbird sings so loudly and insistently that whoever is sleeping in the corner room wakes up and can’t get back to sleep. The sunlight wanders down the side of the house facing the road to reach, around the back, the other oak, the garden house, the fruit trees and the stream. It shines too on the shed to the north of the garden house, which Margarete would like to turn into a henhouse with a chicken run. She would like to be woken by the crowing of a cock.

  Apart from the birds the dawns are quiet. The bells of the village church don’t start ringing till seven, the main road is far away and the railway line even farther. The farm co-op, whose vehicles used to set off for work in the early morning and from whose stalls the wind used to carry the mooing of the cows, ceased to exist a long time ago; its stalls and sheds are empty, and its land is leased and run by a farm in the next village. The residents of the village who have work don’t have it here; they leave on Sunday evening and come back on Friday evening. On Saturday and Sunday morning they sleep late.

  The dawns are quiet, and they are melancholy—like the noontimes and evenings, like the mornings and the afternoons. They are melancholy not only in autumn and winter, but also in spring and summer. It’s the melancholy of the high sky and the wide, empty land. The eye finds no purchase among the trees, the church tower, the electricity supply with its masts and cables. It finds no mountains in the distance and no city nearby, nothing to set boundaries and create a space. The eye loses itself. The visitor who lets his eye wander loses himself along with it, and it saddens him and is at the same time so compelling that he is seized by the longing to merge with it. Simply to lose himself.

  Anyone who was born and bred here, and who sets about taking a job and founding a family, has to make his mind up. Stay or go. Staying small under this sky and in this void or growing at the cost of a life away from home. Even those who do not consciously make the decision sense that if they stay, their lives will be small even before they have really begun, and that if they leave, they are leaving behind not just a place but a life. A life whose small format is full of beauty—that’s why the visitors come back and buy themselves a house or a farm and yield to the desire to lose during the weekend. The fact that the small format is also full of ugliness doesn’t bother them. They don’t suffer from the monotony, they don’t feel that whatever they do they might equally well not do, they don’t get tired, they don’t get angry, they don’t lose themselves in alcohol.

  And it was ever thus. There were always those who stayed, those who left and those who lived partly in the big city and partly in the country. It was always a matter of merging or leaving, and some who could afford it always managed to enjoy the melancholy without succumbing to it. Margarete was irritated by talk of the decline of the wide, empty land between the big city and the sea. She didn’t think things were better under socialism or, as far as she could tell, under the rule of the Junkers. She didn’t believe political and social systems were important. The melancholy was important. It more than anything else informed the land and the people.

  Margarete had grown up in a neighboring small town and had left for Berlin, planning never to return. To learn foreign languages, travel far away and stay far away. But in the end she had moved back here, at first only for the weekend, then for months at a time. She had belatedly merged with it—though not entirely, because she still had the flat with Christiane in the city. But her garden house, her bench by the stream, her rambles, her translations, her solitude—it was a version of the little life before she escaped, and she knew it. She hated melancholy when it imposed depression upon her. But mostly she loved the melancholy. She even believed it healed people. Anyone who loses himself in the high sky and the wide, empty land also loses what it is that is making him suffer. Margarete doubted whether meeting up with their friends had been a good idea. But it had certainly been right for Christiane to bring Jörg here first, after his release. Perhaps his sickness would go into remission, along with everyone else’s.

  Seventeen

  Jörg woke before all the others. He woke with a feeling that everything was fine: his body, his state of mind, the new day. Then he gave a start—just as he had given a start in prison when he had woken with the same feeling and seen the neon lights, the bright green walls, the basin, the toilet and the small, high window. But now the walls were white, jug and basin stood on a chest of drawers and tulips on a table and fresh air came through the big window. He had given a start only out of habit. Relieved, he crossed his arms under his head and was about to make plans—just as in jail he had liked to start his days with plans for the time afterward. But now that he could not only make plans but also realize them, he found it hard. Putting Henner on the spot for his betrayal—he had done that yesterday. Why couldn’t he think of anything else? He could listen to Christiane’s and Marko’s plans, and perhaps Karin and Ulrich and Andreas had plans for him too. But why did he have none himself?

  Ilse knew what she wanted as soon as the blackbirds in the oak tree woke her up. She got out of bed, got dressed, picked up notebook and pen and crept on tiptoe down the corridor, downstairs, through the kitchen and out of the house. In the park she went to the bench by the stream. She opened the notebook and read what she had written, three short chapters in a loose sequence that wasn’t right. Should she establish a connection between the chapters? She could go with Jan as he was picked up by his French colleagues in the ambulance and taken to Germany, as he was put in a deathlike state for the second time, laid out and displayed in an open coffin at the funeral. Or should she rework the chapter about Jan at the coast? Jan couldn’t help cursing the swinish system, the assholes in politics and business and the fucking cops. She didn’t want to write it down like that. But if she couldn’t make Jan talk like a terrorist, how could she make him commit murder?

  No matter how quietly Ilse had trodden, the creaking floorboards had forced their way into Karin’s sleep. In her dream she was late, she wanted to creep quietly into the church where the congregation was waitin
g for her, but the floorboards gave her away and all heads turned toward her. She woke up. Her husband was still asleep, and she let him sleep, even though she would have liked to wake him. She prayed, or perhaps it was a meditation or a moment of truth. Was it true what she had said the previous evening? Did she see the terrorists as her confused brothers and sisters? Did she have fraternal feelings for Jörg? Did she want to have them? Did she think she had to have them?

  Ingeborg too was woken by the creaking floorboards. She listened to Ilse’s fading footsteps and waited to hear whether yet more footsteps would come and go. But it remained silent. She looked at the clock and nudged her husband. “Let’s go, while the others are still sleeping.”

  He shook his head, irritable that she had woken him and wanted to creep off. She’s beautiful, he thought, but if things get hard she always wants to take the easy way out. He looked at her. With her bleary face she wasn’t even beautiful.

  She insisted. “I don’t want the others to make me look ridiculous, not me and not my daughter.”

  “No one wants to make you look ridiculous. The others will be incredibly considerate and emotionally gentle. And your daughter is mine too and she doesn’t take the easy way out—she faces up to things.”

  “And what if there’s another row?”

  “Then there’s another row.”

  Taking the easy way out, facing up to things—when she woke up, their daughter didn’t care. The evening had been silly in the end, but she had slept well, and now it was morning. That was how it was: sometimes things worked out with people, sometimes they didn’t. Life went on. Sometimes they worked out today with a man they hadn’t worked out with yesterday. As to the great terrorist who had panicked in front of her, maybe she would give him another chance. Anyway, that had never happened to her before: she had made a man panic!

  Marko was also concerned about Jörg’s panic. How much political power could you expect from someone who panics at the sight of a naked girl? For four years Marko had been busy trying to turn Jörg, the terrorist who hadn’t distanced himself from the RAF, into the intellectual head of a new terrorist movement. He had hoped Jörg would reply with a political thunderbolt, an interview, a press declaration, not illegal, but hardhitting. He had imagined that Jörg, once free, would be full of plans and hungry for action. Instead he was tired and panicky. Four years’ work for nothing?

  At first Andreas had suited Marko just fine: a lawyer who could make sure that Jörg didn’t cross the bounds of legality with his thunderbolt. Then they had argued. But Marko was willing to bet that if Jörg wanted to, his lawyer wouldn’t hold him back.

  Andreas saw things differently. He had no time for Jörg’s political nonsense. He had threatened to resign his mandate if anything like that welcome address happened again. In the event of a thunderbolt after his release, he would have nothing more to do with Jörg. As a matter of fact the previous evening had been quite enough for him. Yes, the view of the sky from his bed was beautiful—at breakfast he could pull the bishop’s leg, then go for a walk and look at trees. But not until Sunday!

  Henner too was dreading the two days he was still supposed to be spending there. When he awoke, the conversation with Christiane had come into his mind and saddened him again. What a life! And from thinking about her life it was only a short step to thinking about his own life. Was it any better? Work was going well, and he was successful, and when he was working on an exciting report the thrill was as great as ever. But his relationships with women weren’t right. They were relationships that neither began nor ended, but which he slipped into and crept away from. They were women he didn’t want, but who wanted him. And although he longed for a different kind of relationship, he was incapable of meeting women any other way and seeking out the right ones instead of being found by the wrong ones. The knowledge that it had something to do with his mother didn’t help. Sometimes he thought his mother’s death would set him free, but he immediately doubted whether that would be the case. Work helped, even if it didn’t solve the problem. But it no longer helped as much as it had, and this weekend there wasn’t any work at all.

  When he came into the kitchen, Christiane and Margarete were making breakfast. “Am I the first?” Margarete nodded and handed him the coffee and the grinder. Christiane cracked eggs, chopped up onions and ham, mushrooms and tomatoes and smiled briefly at him. Margarete put crockery and cutlery on a tray and carried it onto the terrace. No one spoke. Then Henner drove into the little town by the lake and fetched rolls. When he came back, the other two were sitting on the terrace drinking the first cup of coffee and the first glass of Prosecco, and he joined them. Christiane smiled at him briefly again; now he saw that it was a nervous smile. He wanted to ask her if everything was all right, if she had slept well. But when Margarete put her hand on Christiane’s arm his question seemed like idle chitchat. So they sat there in silence and looked at the park, alone with their thoughts.

  Eighteen

  It was ten o’clock by the time they were all gathered around the table. Dorle was last to come down. With ponytail, no lipstick and wearing a big white linen skirt and white linen blouse, she looked fresh and sweet, and she politely did the rounds of the group and greeted each one in turn with the hint of a bow. Ulrich was proud. His daughter had reinvented herself. She was in a theater group at her school; he would also send her to private acting lessons.

  Jörg had only been waiting until the group was complete. “Yesterday you wanted to know all kinds of things about me—I’d also like to know something about you, or more precisely, about …”

  Ulrich wouldn’t be deterred. “But yesterday you didn’t say what I wanted to know about you. What about today?”

  “I didn’t …”

  “No, you didn’t, and then my wife came to your aid and you escaped to bed.”

  “I don’t remember your question, I’m sorry. Can I …”

  “I asked about your first murder. How you felt when you were doing it. Whether you learned anything about it for life.”

  Ingeborg didn’t get involved this time, and the others had come to terms with the fact that Ulrich wouldn’t let go. Everyone looked at Jörg.

  He raised his hands as if he were about to speak and emphasize his words, and then lowered them. He raised them again and lowered them again. “What should I say? In a war you shoot and kill. What are you supposed to feel? What are you supposed to learn? We were at war, so I shot and killed. Are you happy now?”

  “Wasn’t your first murder a woman who wouldn’t give you her car? When you’d robbed a bank and had to get away?”

  Jörg nodded. “She hung on to her stupid car as if it were heaven knows what. I would rather not have fired—it was the only way. And don’t try to tell me the woman wasn’t at war with me or I with her. You know as well as I do that it isn’t just soldiers who die in war.”

  “Collateral damage?”

  “Why the sarcasm? Tell me we waged the wrong war and I won’t contradict you—we misjudged the situation. But we did wage that war, and we waged it as you wage a war. How else?”

  Karin looked sadly at Jörg. “Are you sorry about it?”

  “Sorry?” Jörg shrugged. “Of course I’m sorry we chased a project that came to nothing. Whether it could have come to anything—I don’t know.”

  “I mean the victims. Do you feel sorry for the victims?”

  Jörg shrugged again. “Sorry? Sometimes I think of them, of Holger and Ulrich and Ulrike and Gudrun and Andreas and … and all the ones who fought and died, and, yes, sometimes I also think about that woman who wouldn’t give up her car, and the policeman who wanted to arrest me, and the bigwigs who stood for this state and died for it. I’m sorry that the world isn’t a place where people don’t … that it’s a place where they … So of course no one should have to fight and die, but sadly the world isn’t like that.”

  “The world’s to blame, I understand. Why can’t the stupid world be the way it’s supposed to be?” Ulr
ich laughed. “You really are a sweetie.”

  “Enough of your cheap sarcasm. You have no idea what Jörg’s talking about. Have the cops ever beaten you up? Have they shackled you by your hands and feet in a jail cell and left you lying in your shit and piss for two days? Have they forced food down your throat, down your windpipes and your bronchial tubes until your lung collapsed? Have they deprived you of sleep night after night for years? And then left you for years without a sound?” Marko bent over the table and yelled at Ulrich. “It really was war—Jörg hasn’t worked that out. Back then you knew it too—everyone knew. How many leftists have I met who have told me they nearly ended up in the armed struggle back then! They didn’t, they preferred to have other people fighting and failing for them—vicariously. I understand that people are afraid of the struggle and stay out of it. The fact that you act as if there hadn’t been a war leaves me speechless.”

  “You, however, are quite talkative. No one goes vicariously into war for me. And vicariously shoots women who don’t want to hand over their cars, or chauffeurs who have to drive company directors around. Do they for you?” Ulrich looked around.

  Karin shook her head. She looked dejectedly at Jörg. She couldn’t believe her ears. At the same time she worked to reconcile what he and Marko and Ulrich had said. “No, Ulrich, I haven’t had anyone vicariously kill for me. But we all believed that we had to leave bourgeois society behind if we were to lead an uncorrupted life. And …”