We shared our home with death, and Mother fought for every extra day of life. She never let Magdalena out of her sight, not even at night, which was why Father slept in my room. There were only two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. My parents never expected to have children when they bought the house, so the second bedroom would have been a guest room.
Mother was standing at the stove when I asked her for some lemonade. It was an electric stove. We also had a refrigerator, but the rest of the kitchen amenities comprised the clumsy old secondhand furniture my parents had bought after their marriage. Everything in the house was old, Mother included.
She was forty-four at this time. A tall woman with a thin face, she looked much older than her age. She had no time to spare for herself. Her stringy grey hair hung down to her shoulders. When it grew too long she cut some off.
She was wearing a coloured apron and stirring a saucepan. Putting the tumbler in the sink, she turned to me and said: "Lemonade?"
Mother had a soft voice and always spoke quietly, so you were compelled to listen hard. She shook her head as though she found it utterly incomprehensible that I could have had such an absurd idea. Then she went on in her quiet, deliberate way. "Do you know what they gave our Saviour when He was dying and said He was thirsty? They took a sponge soaked in vinegar and put it to His lips. A mug of water would have rejoiced His heart and alleviated His sufferings, but He didn't complain - and He certainly didn't ask for lemonade. What does that tell you?"
This can't have been the first such conversation I had with Mother, because I already knew the answer by heart: "That our Saviour was always content with His lot."
Me, I was never content. I was a difficult child. Stubborn, quicktempered and egotistical, I wanted everything all for myself; and if I wasn't stopped, I simply took it. That was the only reason why Magdalena was so sick, Mother explained. Magdalena had come from Mother's tummy, and I had been in Mother's tummy a short while before. I'd used up all her strength, which would have sufficed for at least three children, so there'd been none left for poor Magdalena.
I didn't care when she told me such things. Although I wasn't intent on being a bad person, being good wasn't so important where my sister was concerned. I didn't like Magdalena. To me, she was just an object like a piece of wood. She couldn't walk or speak - she couldn't even cry properly. If something hurt her, she squealed. Most of the time she lay in bed, or sometimes for an hour in an armchair in the kitchen. But that was on an especially good day.
I couldn't say what I thought, of course. I had to say the diametrical opposite, but at that I was an expert. I always said what people wanted to hear. Mother was satisfied with my answer. "Don't you also think you should follow our Saviour's example?" she asked. I nodded eagerly, and she went on: "Then go and beg Him for strength and grace."
I was still thirsty, but I knew she wouldn't even give me the glass of tap water until I'd prayed, so I went into the living room.
It was just as shabby and old-fashioned in appearance as the kitchen. A threadbare sofa, a coffee table on spindly, crooked legs and two armchairs. But no one entering the room had eyes for the worn-out furniture.
The first thing that met your gaze was the altar in the corner beside the window It was really just a cupboard minus the top half, which Father had had to saw off. In front of it stood a hard wooden bench on which you were only allowed to kneel. The makeshift altar was draped in a white cloth embroidered with candles, and on it stood a vase of flowers, usually roses.
Roses were very expensive, but Mother bought them gladly even when the housekeeping money ran short. Making a sacrifice to our Saviour couldn't fail to fill one's heart with joy, she said. My heart was never filled with joy. It was filled with the supposition that I'd been given away. My real mother, Grit Adigar, must have realized a long time ago that I was a bad person. She didn't want Kerstin and Melanie to suffer in consequence and end up as sick as Magdalena; that was why she had taken me to live with this woman who knew exactly how to make a bad person good.
But if I showed everyone that I was a good girl, if I prayed diligently enough and didn't sin - or not so anyone noticed - I felt sure I would soon be restored to my real family for evermore.
I can't imagine that everyone genuinely believed my invalid sister's survival to be dependent on my good conduct. In any case, it would mean that I could never go home again - that I would have to remain with this peculiar woman and our Saviour for all eternity.
The Saviour stood on the altar between the vase of flowers and four candlesticks containing tall, white candles. But he didn't actually "stand" there: he was nailed to a twelve-inch wooden cross with tiny nails. His back was also glued to it. I took him down and examined him one day when Mother wasn't around.
I'd only wanted to see if he could open his eyes. Mother claimed he could gaze deep into people's hearts and see all their sinful desires. But his eyes didn't open even when I shook him, waggled the crown of thorns on his head, which was bowed in agony, and tapped his tummy with my knuckles. It sounded as if I'd tapped the tabletop.
I didn't believe he could catch me out. I had no respect for him, only for Mother, who compelled me to kneel before him three or more times a day and beg for grace and strength and mercy. He was supposed to purify my heart, but I didn't want a pure heart. I had a sound one - that was good enough for me. He was also supposed to give me the strength to go without things. I didn't want that either.
I always had to go without - without sweets, lemonade and other treats. Like the cake Grit Adigar regularly offered us. She baked them herself - one every Saturday, thickly sprinkled with icing sugar - and on Monday she would turn up bearing a plate with three or four slices on it. They were a bit dry already, but that didn't matter. Mother always declined them. The very sight of the plate made my mouth water.
If I stared at it for too long, Mother said: "You've got that greedy look again." And she would send me off to the living room, where I kneeled before the cross on the cupboard in the corner, the one on which the Saviour had shed his blood for the remission of our sins.
She felt momentarily puzzled as she kneeled beside the dead man, seeing his blood and the horror on the others' faces. The platinum blonde didn't want to be touched by her or helped to her feet and shepherded away. She lashed out at Cora with both fists. The seated man told Cora to leave her alone, which she did. Ute didn't concern her.
She apologized to Gereon for cutting his arm, but he punched her in the face again. The seated man had long since ceased to be seated. He was kneeling opposite her, examining his dead friend, but since this was a timeless moment, something for eternity, he had to remain the seated man. "Stop that, damn you!" he yelled at Gereon. "Give it a rest!" Gereon ignored him. `Are you mad?" he shouted at Cora. "Why did you do it?" She didn't know It was embarrassing somehow
She would have liked to be alone with the dead man, just for a minute or two, so as to be able to look at him in peace and savour the emotions the sight of him aroused in her: satisfaction, boundless relief and pride. It was as if some disagreeable, long-deferred task had been accomplished at last. She almost said: "It is finished." But she didn't; she merely sat there feeling good.
She continued to feel so even when the first policemen turned up: four uniformed officers. One of them asked if the knife was hers. When she confirmed this, he asked if she had killed the man with it.
"Yes, of course," she replied. "It was me."
The policeman said they would have to detain her. She need not make a statement, was entitled to a lawyer and so on.
She got to her feet. "Many thanks," she said. "I don't need a lawyer, everything's fine." And it was. Everything was absolutely fine. The joy, the inner peace - she had never experienced such wonderful sensations before.
A policeman told Gereon to take her clean underclothes and ID from the shoulder bag and hand them over. She wasn't allowed to touch the bag herself, she was only allowed to take her skirt and Tshirt. She forgot abo
ut a towel.
Gereon proceeded to rummage in the bag. "You must be out of your mind!" lie snarled. "You stabbed me too!" She answered him in a calm, controlled manner. Then Gereon handed her underclothes to the policeman, who had no choice but to pass them on to her with a neutral expression.
They allowed her to freshen up. Two uniformed officers escorted her to the staff washroom in the low building beside the entrance. The washbasin was filthy, the mirror above it cloudy and spattered with countless splash marks, but she could see her face well enough. She felt her right temple. The skin there was broken, and her right eyelid badly swollen. She could only see through a narrow slit on that side, but it didn't worry her.
She ran the tip of her tongue over her upper lip, tasted blood and thought of the wooden figure in the corner of the living room, of the red paint on its hands and feet and the wound in its side, from which several thin threads trickled down. She knew it was only paint, even at the age of four. But the blood of the man, the blood on her face and body was genuine. And there lay redemption.
Everything was red. Her swimsuit, her arms, her hands - even her hair was smeared with it. She would have liked to leave it that way, but she didn't want to annoy the policemen so she turned on the tap, sluiced her hands and arms, held her head under the thin trickle and watched the blood run into the basin. It looked paler when mixed with water, almost like the raspberryade of her childhood. Not that it had been raspberryade, just syrup diluted with water.
Mother had eventually capitulated and made a concession to her sinful desires: one glass of diluted juice a day. Two, to be exact: one for her and one for Magdalena. She saw herself standing at the scratched and dented kitchen table; saw herself watching closely as Mother trickled syrup into two tumblers, taking care to pour the same amount into each; saw herself snatch the one that held maybe a millilitre more, then hurry to the tap before Mother noticed the minuscule difference and shooed her into the living room.
She hadn't thought of that for years, and now it seemed like only yesterday. Father and his attempts to wrench the sin from his body and his stories about Buchholz in the old days - always the old days, as if there were no today and no tomorrow Mother with her coloured aprons, her stringy hair and the cross. And Magdalena, her bluish, translucent porcelain features imbued with flawless intensity by ever-present death.
It was over. The Saviour had shed his blood and, by his death, taken their sins upon himself and paved their way to heaven. She saw his face before her, the look of understanding and forgiveness in his eyes. "Father, forgive her, for she knoweth not what she doth." Well, no one could know everything!
She rinsed out her swimsuit and used it to swab her breasts and stomach like a sponge. The water she wiped off with her hands. There was a towel - it hung on a hook beside the basin - but it was so grimy, it might have been hanging there for weeks. Then she got dressed. The panties and T-shirt stuck to her skin, becoming damp and transparent. She hesitated for a moment and looked down at herself. Her breasts showed through the thin material. She couldn't go outside like this. There were policemen waiting outside the door. Men! It would look provocative if she confronted them in this state. Mother would have a fit - she would feel compelled to light the candles on the altar and force her to her knees ...
She couldn't understand why this suddenly seemed so real. And so important! Try as she might, she couldn't shake it off. The candle flames continued to dance before her eyes. She blinked hard to banish the image. When that didn't help, she opened the door and spoke to one of the policemen. "Can you lend me a jacket?"
The two men, who were only wearing their uniform shirts, glanced at each other. The younger one lowered his gaze in embarrassment. The other, who could have been in his early forties, managed to look into her eyes: not at the breasts showing through the damp T-shirt. He seemed to grasp her problem. "You don't need a jacket," he said in a gentle, fatherly tone. "There are people over there with less on than you. Are you through? Shall we go?"
She merely nodded.
Still looking her in the eye, he asked: "Who did that to your face?"
"My husband," she said. "But he didn't mean to. He was very upset and lost his temper." The policeman frowned as though this information surprised him. He took hold of her elbow but swiftly withdrew his hand when she flinched at his touch. "Let's go," he said.
And the candle flames went out at last.
The lido had almost emptied while she was in the washroom. Everyone except the immediate witnesses of the incident had left. A group of figures could still be seen in the distance, where the green blanket with the dead man lying on it must be.
It was just after seven. Some twenty people were assembled on the terrace adjoining the low building. They all stared at her as she approached. She found their nervous, enquiring expressions unpleasant.
The three survivors of the green blanket party were sitting a little apart from the rest. The seated man was trying to comfort the two women. Ute thrust his hand away, sobbing incessantly. Standing beside them was a youngish man in a sports coat. He was asking questions and jotting down their answers in a notebook. Two medics appeared on the terrace. Ute was led away. Alice followed.
It was like a film set. Hustle and bustle everywhere, but she just stood and watched. The older policeman escorted her over to a chair and got one of the medics to examine her face, especially the swollen eye. He was very friendly and stood beside her while his younger colleague joined the man in the sports coat and exchanged a few words with him.
Gereon was still there too, holding the boy on his lap and looking at the dressings on his arm. The man in the sports coat went over to him and said something. Gereon shook his head fiercely. Then he got up and went over to the seated man. He didn't spare her a glance, either then or a little later, when she made for the wiremesh fence flanked by the two policemen.
Parked in the shade of some trees near the entrance were two patrol cars and another vehicle. Gereon's car was parked a long way off in the full glare of the sun, she remembered. She stopped short and turned to the older policeman, who looked more mature and experienced than his colleague. "Would you mind telling me your name?"
"Berrenrath," he replied automatically.
She nodded her thanks. "Look, Herr Berrenrath, you must go back and have a word with my husband. Tell him to air the car well and close the windows before he drives off. I know my husband, it won't occur to him - he never thinks of such things. Our little boy has sensitive ears, he often gets ill. He so easily develops rigors when he has a high temperature."
Berrenrath merely nodded, opened the rear door of one of the patrol cars and gestured to her to get in. The younger policeman went around the car and got in behind the wheel, then turned, never taking his eyes off Cora. He looked almost afraid of her.
She would gladly have reassured him but she didn't know how It was over! He wouldn't have understood that, though. She didn't understand it herself, she merely sensed it, as though she'd inscribed it on her forehead in the man's blood: OVER!
Berrenrath really did go back. He wasn't long. "Your husband will see to it," he said as he got in beside her.
She felt relieved of everything. Relieved and remote and somewhat isolated - numb with triumph, as if she'd swum out and submerged. A grand sensation, except that it was confined to her heart and stomach. In her brain she felt a gradual, sneaking inclination to view what had happened from another perspective: with the eyes of the people who had gone to the lido for an afternoon's recreation.
She thought suddenly of her son and the way he'd been sitting on the blanket, crying. The poor little fellow had witnessed the whole thing. She consoled herself with the thought that he was too young to have taken it in. He would forget what he had seen. He would forget her too. He would grow up with Gereon and her parents-inlaw His grandmother was very kind to him. Even the old man, that uncouth boor, watched over his grandson like a mother hen.
The trip didn't take long, and she was
so preoccupied with her thoughts that she didn't register any of it. When the patrol car pulled up - when Berrenrath got out and asked her to do likewise - she surfaced for a moment, only to subside at once into thoughts of the future so as not to have to dwell on the past.
Life imprisonment! She was quite clear about that. After all, she'd committed a murder. She was clear about that too. She had to be punished, but prison bars couldn't intimidate someone inured to the Cross. There was nothing ominous about the idea of a cell. Regular meals and a job in the kitchen or the laundry - even in an office, perhaps, if she behaved herself and showed everyone what she was capable of.
Prison couldn't be so different from her three years with Gereon. It made no difference whether she was being watched by her parents-in-law or a bunch of wardresses. The weekends would be a thing of the past, that's all. No more cigarettes whose dying embers in the ashtray signalled the madness to come.
The next time she surfaced she was sitting on a chair in a whitewashed room. More chairs were scattered around at random, and in the centre were two desks, each bearing a telephone and a typewriter surrounded by a clutter of papers. The sight of them worried her. She itched to tidy them up and wondered if she should ask the policemen for permission.
The younger one was standing near the door, Berrenrath beside a large window with two pot plants languishing on the sill. The sunlight was still strong enough to dazzle her, and she'd forgotten to bring her sunglasses. On the right, beside the pot plants, lay a folder. The Cora Bender file, she thought fleetingly. It could only be a slender file - the case was clear-cut, after all. They would have to ask her a few questions, of course, but ...
Those plants needed attention badly. A pitiful sight, with brown blotches on the leaves, they must have been standing in the full glare of the afternoon sun. Ten to one the soil was bound to be bone dry.
The Sinner Page 4