Crime

by Ferdinand von Schirach

  One of the policemen went in search of the bathroom. He opened the bedroom door by mistake, stepped into the dark room, and groped for a light switch. And this was when he saw it: the walls and ceiling were papered with thousands of photos, stuck one over the other; there wasn’t an empty inch of space. They were even lying on the floor and the night table. Every one of them featured the same thing; only the location changed. Men, women, and children sat on steps, on chairs, on sofas, and on window seats; they sat in swimming pools, shoe shops, meadows, and on the banks of lakes. And all of them were pulling a yellow thumbtack out of one foot.

  The directors of the museum pressed charges against Feldmayer for damaging their property and wanted to sue him for financial restitution. The district attorney’s office investigated hundreds of cases of grievous bodily harm. The head of the relevant department decided to have Feldmayer examined by an expert psychiatrist. It was a remarkable report. The psychiatrist couldn’t make up his mind: On the one hand, he thought Feldmayer had been in the grip of a psychosis; on the other hand, it was possible that he had healed himself by the very act of destroying the statue. Perhaps Feldmayer was dangerous, and one day the thumbtacks would be knives instead. But then again, perhaps not.

  Finally, the prosecutor brought charges that would involve a trial by jury. This signified that he was going for a sentence of two to four years. When such charges are brought, the judge must decide whether they are sufficient to order a trial. The judge institutes proceedings if he considers a verdict of guilty to be more likely than one of not guilty. At least that’s what it says in the textbooks. In reality, quite different questions come into play. No judge likes to have his decision taken up by a higher court, which is why many proceedings are set in motion even though the judge actually thinks he’s going to exonerate the accused. If the judge doesn’t want to institute proceedings, he sometimes contacts the district attorney’s office to establish that there isn’t going to be an appeal.

  The judge, the DA, and I sat in the judge’s office and discussed the case. The prosecution’s evidence struck me as sketchy. There were only the photos. No witnesses were cited in the charge. And it was unclear how old the pictures were—the events could have taken place years ago and thus be subject to the statute of limitations. The expert psychiatrist’s report didn’t provide much support, and Feldmayer had not made any confession. What was left was the damage to the statue. It seemed clear to me that the museum’s management bore most of the blame. They had locked Feldmayer in a room for twenty-three years and forgotten him.

  The judge agreed with me. He was indignant. He said he would prefer to see the museum’s management sitting where the accused sat; after all, it was the town’s administrators who had destroyed a man. The judge wanted the charge revised to reflect a more minor offense. He was extremely explicit. But dropping the graver charges would require the agreement of the prosecution, and our DA wasn’t ready to make that agreement.

  A few days later, however, I received notification of the reduction in the charges. When I called the judge, he told me our DA’s boss had, surprisingly, agreed. The reason was, naturally, never made official, but it was clear nonetheless: If the trial had gone ahead, the museum’s management would have been subjected to rather unpleasant questions in open court. And an indignant judge would have given the defense a very free hand. Feldmayer would have come out with a trivial sentence, but the town and the museum would have been made to look very bad.

  The museum also eventually gave up on its civil suit. When we had lunch, the director said he was just glad that Feldmayer hadn’t been guarding a room with a Salome painting in it.

  Feldmayer kept his pension rights. The museum made an almost invisible announcement that a statue had been accidentally damaged; Feldmayer’s name was not mentioned, and he never picked up a yellow thumbtack again.

  · · ·

  The shards of the statue were collected in a cardboard box and taken to the museum’s workshop. A restorer was given the task of putting it back together again. She spread all the pieces out on a table that was covered in black cloth. She photographed every single splinter and entered information on more than two hundred individual pieces in a notebook.

  It was silent in the workshop when she began. She had opened a window; the spring warmth suffused the room as she examined the shards and smoked a cigarette. She was happy to be able to work here after finishing her studies. The Thorn Puller was her first big job. She knew that putting it back together could last a long time, maybe even years.

  A little wooden head of a Buddha from Kyoto stood opposite the table. It was ancient and had a crack in the forehead. The Buddha was smiling.

  Love

  She had dozed off, her head lying on his thigh. It was a warm summer afternoon, the windows stood open, and she felt good. They had known each other for two years, both of them were studying economics in Bonn, and they attended the same lectures. She knew he was in love with her.

  Patrick stroked her back. The book was boring him; he didn’t like Hesse, and he was only reading the poems out loud because that’s what she wanted. He looked at her naked skin, her spine and shoulder blades, running his fingers over them. The Swiss army knife he’d used to cut the apple they’d eaten was lying on the night table. He laid the book aside and picked up the knife. Her eyes half-closed, she watched as he got an erection. She had to laugh—they’d only just had sex. He opened the blade. She lifted her head toward his penis. Then she felt the cut in her back. She screamed, struck his hand away to one side, and leapt to her feet. The knife flew onto the polished hardwood floor. She felt the blood running down her back. He looked at her, bewildered; she slapped him, seized her clothes from the chair, and ran into the bathroom. His student apartment was on the ground floor of an old building. She dressed hurriedly, climbed out of the window, and ran.

  Four weeks later, the police sent the summons to his registered address. And because, like many students, he hadn’t given any formal notification of his change of address, the letter didn’t land in Bonn, but in his parents’ mailbox in Berlin. His mother opened it, thinking it was a ticket of some kind. That evening, the parents first had a long discussion of what they might have done wrong; then the father called Patrick. The next day, his mother made an appointment with my secretary, and a week later the family was sitting in my office.

  They were orderly people, the father was a construction foreman, thickset, chinless, short arms and legs, the mother around forty, former secretary, imperious and full of energy. Patrick didn’t seem to go with his parents. He was an uncommonly pretty boy, with delicate hands and dark brown eyes. He described the details of the incident. He and Nicole had been together for two years, and they’d never had a fight. His mother interrupted him every second sentence. Then she said of course it had been an accident. Patrick said he was sorry. He loved the girl and wanted to apologize to her, but he couldn’t reach her anymore.

  His mother got a little too loud. “It’s better that way. I don’t want you to see her again. Besides which, you’re leaving next year anyway to go to the university in St. Gallen.”

  The father said very little. At the end of the meeting, he asked if things were going to get bad for Patrick.

  I thought it was a minor case that would resolve itself quickly. It had already been referred by the police to the prosecutor’s office. I called the senior prosecutor, who was preparing the formal examination. She had a wide range of oversight, all so-called DV cases—that is, domestic violence. There were thousands of such cases every year, caused overwhelmingly by alcohol, jealousy, and rows over children. She agreed quickly to let me see the files.

  Two days later, I received the contents, barely forty pages, on my computer. The photo of the girl’s back showed a six-inch cut with smooth edges to the wound. It would have healed cleanly and left no permanent scar. But I was sure that the cut itself was no accident. A falling knife makes a different kind of wound.

  I asked t
he family to come back for a second discussion, and because the matter wasn’t urgent, the appointment was made for three weeks hence.

  Five days later, when I locked the office one Thursday evening and switched on the light in the stairwell, Patrick was sitting there on the steps. I asked him to come in, but he shook his head. His eyes were glassy and he was holding an unlit cigarette in his fingers. I went back into the office, collected an ashtray, and offered him a lighter. Then I sat down next to him. The time switch for the light clicked off; we sat in the dark and smoked.

  “Patrick, what can I do for you?” I asked after a while.

  “It’s hard,” he said.

  “It’s always hard,” I said, and waited.

  “I haven’t ever told anyone.”

  “Take your time; it’s quite comfortable here.” In fact, it was cold and it was uncomfortable.

  “I love Nicole the way I’ve never loved anyone, ever. She doesn’t call; I’ve tried everything. I even wrote her a letter, but she never answered. Her cell phone is switched off. Her best friend hung up when I called.”

  “It happens.”

  “What do I do?”

  “The charge isn’t an insoluble problem. You’re not going to go to jail. I’ve read your file.…”

  “Yes?”

  “Honestly, your story doesn’t add up. It wasn’t an accident.”

  Patrick hesitated and lit another cigarette. “Yes, you’re right,” he said; “it really wasn’t an accident. I don’t know if I can tell you what really happened.”

  “Lawyers are bound by confidentiality,” I said. “Everything you say to me will remain between us. Only you can decide whether I am allowed to speak, and if so, with whom. Not even your parents will hear anything about this conversation.”

  “Is it the same with the police?”

  “Most of all with the police and all the other people involved in the prosecution. I have to be silent; if I weren’t, I’d make myself legally liable.”

  “I still can’t talk about it,” he said.

  Suddenly, I had an idea. “There’s a lawyer in my office with a five-year-old daughter. Just the other day she told another child something while the two of them were squatting on the floor. She’s a very active child, and she talked and talked and talked while she kept sliding over closer to her friend. She was so excited by her own story that she was soon sitting almost right on top of the other girl. She kept on chattering, until finally she couldn’t contain herself any longer. She flung her arms around her friend and was so happy and excited, she bit her on the neck.”

  I could feel something at work in Patrick. He was struggling with himself. Finally, he said, “I wanted to eat her.”

  “Your girlfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you want to do that?”

  “You don’t know her; you’d have to have seen her back. Her shoulder blades come together in points; her skin is firm and clear. My skin is full of pores, almost like holes, but hers is dense and smooth, and it has these tiny little blond hairs on it.”

  I tried to recall the picture of her back that was in the file. “Was it the first time you wanted to?” I asked.

  “Yes. Well, only once before, but it wasn’t so strong that time. We were on vacation in Thailand; it was when we were lying on the beach. I bit her a little too hard.”

  “How did you want to do it this time?”

  “I don’t know. I think I just wanted to cut out a little slice.”

  “Have you ever wanted to eat anyone else?”

  “No, of course not. It’s all about her, only her.” He dragged on his cigarette. “Am I crazy? I’m not some Hannibal Lecter. Or am I?” He was afraid of himself.

  “No, you’re not. I’m not a doctor, but I think you’ve gotten too caught up in your love for her. You know that, too, Patrick; you say so yourself. I think you’re quite ill. You need to let people help you. And you need to do it soon.”

  There are different kinds of cannibalism. People eat people out of hunger, out of obedience to some ritual, or out of severe personality disorders that often take a sexual form. Patrick thought Hollywood had invented Hannibal Lecter, but he’s always existed. In Styria in the eighteenth century, Paul Reisiger ate “the beating hearts of six virgins”—he believed that if he ate nine, he could become invisible. Peter Kürten drank the blood of his victims; in the 1970s, Joachim Kroll ate at least eight people he’d killed; and in 1948, Bernhard Oehme consumed his own sister.

  Legal history abounds with the unimaginable. When Karl Denke was captured in 1924, his kitchen was full of human remains of all kinds: pieces of flesh preserved in vinegar, a tubful of bones, pots of rendered fat, and a sack with hundreds of human teeth. He wore suspenders cut from strips of human skin on which nipples were still identifiable. The number of victims remains unknown to this day.

  “Patrick, have you ever heard about the Japanese man Issei Sagawa?”

  “No, who is he?”

  “Sagawa is a restaurant critic in Tokyo right now.”

  “So?”

  “In 1981 he ate his girlfriend in Paris. He said he loved her too much.”

  “Did he eat all of her?”

  “At least several pieces.”

  “And”—Patrick’s voice shook—“did he say how it was?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. I think he said she tasted of tuna.”

  “Ah …”

  “The doctors back then diagnosed a severe psychotic disturbance.”

  “Is that what I have, too?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but I want you to go to a doctor.” I switched on the light. “Please wait here. I’m going to get you the phone number of the emergency psychiatric services. If you want, I’ll drive you there now.”

  “No,” he said, “I’d like to think about it first.”

  “I can’t make you, Patrick. But please come back here to the office first thing tomorrow. I’ll go with you to a sensible psychiatrist. Okay?”

  He hesitated. Then he said he’d come back, and we got to our feet. “Can I ask you something else?” said Patrick, and went very quiet. “What happens if I don’t go to a psychiatrist?”

  “I’m afraid it’ll get worse,” I said. I unlocked the door to my office again to find the phone number and put back the ashtray. When I came back out into the stairwell, Patrick had disappeared.

  He didn’t show up the next day. A week later, I received a letter and a check from his mother. She no longer wished me to represent them, and since the letter was also signed by Patrick, it was valid. I called Patrick, but he didn’t want to speak to me. Finally, I withdrew from his defense.

  Two years later, I was giving a lecture in Zürich. During the break, an elderly criminal attorney from St. Gallen came over to speak to me. He mentioned Patrick’s name and asked if he’d been my client, because Patrick had said some such thing. I asked what had happened. My colleague said, “Patrick killed a waitress two months ago; until now, nobody’s figured out why.”

  The Ethiopian

  The pale man was sitting right in the middle of the lawn. He had a strangely lopsided face with protruding ears, and his hair was red. His legs stuck out in front of him and his hands were clutching a bundle of banknotes in his lap. The man was staring at a rotting apple lying next to him, watching the ants biting minuscule fragments out of it and carrying them away.

  It was shortly after midday on one of those hellishly hot days of high summer in Berlin when no sensible person would willingly set foot out-of-doors at noon. The narrow square had been artificially conjured between the tall buildings by the city planners; their glass and steel construction reflected the sun, and the heat hovered in a trapped layer above the ground. The lawn sprinklers were broken and the grass would be burned by nightfall.

  No one paid attention to the man, not even when alarm sirens started to howl at the bank across the street. The three radio patrol cars that arrived very shortly afterward raced past him. Police ran
into the bank, others blocked off the square, and reinforcements poured in.

  A woman in a suit came out of the bank with several policemen. Putting a hand over her brow to protect herself from the sun, she searched the lawn with her eyes and finally pointed to the pale man. A stream of green-and-blue uniforms formed itself immediately in the direction of her outstretched hand. The policemen screamed at the man; one of them drew his service weapon and roared at him to put his hands in the air.

  The man didn’t react. A police captain, who’d spent the whole day in the precinct house writing up reports and being bored, ran at him, wanting to be the first. He threw himself at the man and yanked his right arm up behind his back. Banknotes flew through the air, orders were yelled, only to be ignored, and then they were all standing around him in a circle, gathering up the money. The man was lying on his stomach while the policeman drilled his knee into his back and pressed his face into the grass. The earth was warm. Looking between all the boots, the man could see the apple again. The ants, unimpressed, were keeping right on with their work. He breathed in the smell of the grass, the earth, and the rotting apple, closed his eyes, and was in Ethiopia again.

  His life began the way lives begin in a terrible fairy tale. He was abandoned. A luminously green plastic tub stood on the steps of a vicarage near Giessen. The newborn was lying on a matted coverlet and was suffering from hypothermia. Whoever had put him down there had left him with nothing—no letter, no picture, no memory. That kind of tub was sold in every supermarket; the coverlet was army-issue.

  The vicar immediately notified the police, but the mother was never found. The baby was taken to an orphanage, and after three months the authorities put him up for adoption. The Michalkas, who had no children of their own, took him in and baptized him with the name of Frank Xaver. They were taciturn, hard people, hop growers from a quiet region of Upper Franconia; they had no experience with children. His adoptive father would say, “Life isn’t a bowl of cherries,” and then stick out his bluish tongue and lick his lips. He handled human stock, livestock, and hop-root stock with equal respect and equal strictness. He got angry with his wife when she was too soft with the child. “You’re spoiling him for me,” he said, thinking of shepherds, who never stroke their dogs.