The Sinner

by Petra Hammesfahr

  "The music was getting on my nerves." Although not entirely correct, that came closest to the truth.

  "The music?" the chief repeated. The bewilderment in his voice wasn't lost on her.

  She hastened to be more specific, without having to mention the tune. "Yes, they had a big radio cassette player with them. The woman had turned it up even louder. That infuriated me."

  The chief cleared his throat. "Why didn't you ask her to turn the music down? Why did you attack her companion when she turned it up?" That was the crucial question and she had no answer to it. "I did ask her," she said. Then, because that didn't accord with the facts, she swiftly corrected herself: "I mean, I didn't ask her directly, I complained. She took no notice. Maybe I didn't speak loudly enough. I didn't want to shout, I ... Well, I really wanted to go for a swim. I wanted ... I ..."

  This really didn't concern him - it was completely irrelevant. She stopped stammering and said firmly: "Look, he was lying on top of the woman! I couldn't have got at her, but anyway, I didn't want to do anything to her, honestly not. I wanted to kill him, and I did. We don't have to argue the point. I admit it. That's good enough for your records."

  "No," said the chief, shaking his head. "No, Frau Bender, it isn't."

  "If you'd been there," she retorted, "you'd know it's more than good enough. You should have seen the man - he was all over her. I couldn't just watch. I had to do something about it."

  The chief stared at her. "We aren't talking about a man assaulting a woman, Frau Bender," he said with a touch of asperity. "We're talking about a man you stabbed to death - a man named Georg Frankenberg - and I want to know why. So don't go telling me you..."

  She didn't register what else he was saying; her ears seemed to be shrouded in gauze. She had a sudden vision of a prison cell. A wardress closed the door behind her. Strangely enough, the wardress had her mother's face. She was holding a lit candle in one hand and a wooden crucifix in the other. The figure on the cross was only glued to it.

  The Saviour!

  Georg Frankenberg, was that his name? His name wasn't important, but she let it drift like an echo past Mother's face, past the candle and the crucifix, and waited for some connection to establish itself. She felt that the chief would be satisfied and leave her in peace if she said: `Ah yes, it's just occurred to me: I did know him after all."

  But the echo died away, leaving no vestige behind. Her expression must have conveyed this, because the chief's tone was plain incredulous.

  "Does the name really mean nothing to you?"

  "No."

  He sighed, scratched his neck and glanced uncertainly at the man in the sports coat, who was sitting quite still, contemplating the pot plants on his desk.

  They already looked a little perkier. It might have been her imagination, but she thought she could see their limp foliage absorbing fresh strength from the moist soil. Water was the elixir of life, after all. Father had often told her about the hard layer of moorland soil that had to be pierced so the water wouldn't drain away when it rained.

  But moorland soil was not under discussion here, and the chief's voice prevented her from dwelling on Father's stories. "So you're telling us he was a stranger to you, a man you'd never seen before. And just because he and his friends were playing loud music, you stabbed him like a madwoman."

  "Don't say that," she snapped. "I'm not mad, I'm completely normal."

  The man in the sports coat cleared his throat discreetly and pushed his notepad across the desk. He leaned forward and whispered something, tapping a passage in his notes.

  The chief nodded and looked up again. "You weren't annoyed by the music, only by what the couple were doing, isn't that it? You just said he was `all over her'. But it wasn't like that. Georg Frankenberg was merely necking with his wife, and the initiative was definitely hers. `Stop it, you filthy swine!' That's what you shouted as you stabbed him. You meant the pair of them, didn't you?"

  She registered only two out of all those words. They lodged in her throat like a foreign body. It was all she could do to spit them out.

  "His wife?"

  The chief nodded. "Georg Frankenberg had only been married three weeks. They got back from their honeymoon two days ago. They were still in the first flush, so to speak, and very much in love. It's only normal for newlyweds to kiss and cuddle, and nobody takes offence these days if they do it in public. You were the only person to get worked up about it. Why, Frau Bender? What gave you the idea that Georg Frankenberg might hit his wife?"

  Georg Frankenberg? Something was wrong - something wasn't the way she'd instinctively expected. She had the same puzzling sensation as she'd had after the murder, when the blonde pushed her hand away. His wife! She felt utterly bewildered.

  "Look," she said, "there's no point in telling me such things and asking stupid questions. That's all I'm saying. It'll save a lot of time if you take down my confession. I killed the man, I can't say more than that."

  "You mean you won't," said the chief. "However, we already have several statements, and one of the witnesses says you tried to put your arms round Frau Frankenberg after the murder. You spoke to her too. Do you remember what you said?"

  He was furious now, but she didn't care. Georg Frankenberg! And his wife! If the chief said so, it must be true. Why should a policeman lie - what would he gain? And Gereon hadn't even glanced at her afterwards.

  He was probably lounging in front of the TV at this moment, watching a movie. That was his life, working and watching TV. But he was more likely to be still sitting with his parents in the living room, and they would all be furious with her. The old man: "She was a minx, I saw that the moment she walked into the room. We should have sent her back where she came from."

  And Gereon's mother: "You should divorce her. You must, if only because of the neighbours. We can't have them thinking we want anything more to do with such a creature."

  And Gereon would nod. He not only nodded whenever his parents made a suggestion but acted on it too, unless someone pointed out what nonsense it was.

  There was no one there to tell him anything any more, but he would soon find someone else. He was a healthy, good-looking young man. He owned a house and earned a decent living: she'd seen to that. One day he would take over the business and become his own boss. He was a good catch, not only financially.

  He didn't drink much, wasn't given to violence and avoided arguments. He was affectionate - yes, he was. She could have slept with him for years and decades to come, if only he hadn't tried to kiss her that way on Christmas Eve. Any other woman might have enjoyed it.

  He was welcome to a woman who could love him the way he deserved. Who enjoyed being in bed with him. Who couldn't wait for him to go down on her and would do the same to him. Although it pained her to imagine it, she hoped with all her heart that he would soon find such a woman. He was a philistine, yes, but a thoroughly normal man. And she ... She was normal too. Absolutely normal, and had been from an early age. Grit Adigar had said so.

  That was the worst thing I had to come to terms with as a child: that none of my family was normal. I can't recall when I first realized I was a part of it and that nothing would ever change, nor do I remember if that realization dawned on a particular occasion or was a gradual process. I simply knew, at some stage, that that frightful creature was my biological mother. If I'd had to show my face in town with her, I would have denied her just as Peter denied our Saviour. But that made no difference to the facts or to anything else in my miserable existence.

  Father tried to make things a little more bearable for me, but what could he do? There was the day I went to school for the first time. Father had bought me a satchel and a blue dress in Hamburg. It was a pretty dress with little white buttons down the bodice, a white collar and a belt.

  Vanity being yet another sin, I had to burn it before the altar in the living room - in a tin bucket. Mother stood alongside with a watering can in case the house went up in flames.

  Fat
her shook his head that evening when I told him. Mother was a Catholic, lie said, and Catholics are a bit stricter than most. And later on, when we were in bed, he told me about the first school in Buchholz.

  It had been built in 1654, he said, and consisted of only two rooms. The schoolroom doubled as the teacher's living room. The local inhabitants didn't send their children to school because they needed them to work in the fields - because they themselves couldn't read or write and didn't think it mattered much. These days everyone knew how important it was to be able to read and write, Father said, and it was up to every schoolchild what became of it.

  That was his way of saying: "Make the best of things, Cora. I'm afraid I can't help you."

  He said it didn't matter what clothes you wore, only what was in your head. Children in the old days went to school barefoot and in rags. Well, I possessed shoes and didn't have to wear rags on my first day at school, but I still felt like a scarecrow compared to all those dolled-up little girls.

  I set off with the new satchel on my back, like the rest, but in an old, sack-like frock that Mother had dug out of the cupboard as a penance, even though it was too small for me. I smelled of mothballs and went to school empty-handed. All the others turned up clutching bags of sweets in the traditional German manner.

  Luckily, Mother had no time to accompany me to school that first day, but everyone knew It's incredible how quickly such things get around.

  I was an outsider from the first because I had an invalid sister. Yes, she was still alive. The doctors expressed surprise at her survival every few months, but that didn't worry Magdalena. It was her form of revenge, I often thought. I'd eaten up her strength in Mother's belly, so she stubbornly lived on.

  I had no friends. Even Kerstin and Melanie Adigar wanted nothing to do with me in the playground; they were scared of being jeered at too. During break I used to stand there alone every day, week after week. The others played and horsed around, whereas I had to commune with myself and pray to the Saviour for forgiveness and strength for myself and mercy and another day of life for Magdalena.

  Her condition had worsened since I started school. I often came home with a cough or a cold or a sore throat. She regularly caught them, even though I didn't go near her. I had only to sneeze, and it would hit Magdalena like a hammer blow

  Mother attributed her more frequent illnesses to the fact that I had less time to pray than before. The morning was out, she said, so I must at least do my duty during break. And I did. The knowledge that Magdalena was my own flesh and blood had crippled me somehow It meant that I would bear the same stigma for as long as she lived.

  I didn't wish her dead, honestly not, but I wanted to have some girlfriends who would play with me in the schoolyard and come home with me in the afternoons. I wanted to go for walks on Sundays and sit in the ice-cream parlour with my parents - with a mother who'd taken the time to wash, do her hair and put on a pretty dress. I wouldn't even have expected her to paint her nails or use lipstick occasionally, like Grit Adigar.

  I wanted a father who could laugh. Who didn't always tell me about the old days, about things that had long been dead and decayed. Who didn't have to slink into the bathroom at night to wrestle with his sin. Who sometimes referred to tomorrow or next weekend. Who would once, just once, say: "Let's pay a visit to Hamburg Cathedral! Let's have some candyfloss and a ride on the Big Wheel!"

  I wanted to go shopping with Mother. I wanted her to ask me which I would prefer: a candy bar or a bag of crisps. I didn't want her to tell me, again and again, that I was a bad, greedy person.

  The baby that had monopolized all the strength in her belly? I hadn't done so deliberately, damn it all! I couldn't have guessed that I would be followed by another child who also needed strength.

  Sometimes I tried to get Mother to admit that she was exaggerating a little. I broached the subject very skilfully, but it was futile. If I told her I'd realized how bad I was and was trying to mend my ways, she merely looked at me as if to say: "High time too." When I told her that children at school were laughing at me, she said: "Our Saviour was also mocked, even when He hung, dying, from the Cross. He lifted up His eyes to Heaven and said: `Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' What does that teach you?"

  How I detested that question!

  It was inadvisable to grant Mother even the smallest insight into what I was really learning: reading, writing, arithmetic - and lying. Ingratiating myself with the teacher so that she would intervene when the others laughed at me too loudly and pointed their fingers at me. Above all, I learned to hate my sister.

  I really did hate Magdalena as fervently as only a child can. Whenever I saw her lying in the kitchen and heard her groaning and whimpering I hoped she was suffering the tortures of the damned.

  I continued to do so until that day in May, when I had been going to school for a year. It was a normal day. No one had said anything special to me that morning except the teacher, who shook my hand during break. "Now you're seven years old too, Cora," she told me with a smile.

  I came home at lunchtime as usual. Mother answered the door and sent me straight to the living room. There was no lunch, no saucepan on the stove, no loaf on the table. The bread was on the top shelf in the larder, but the door was locked, and Mother kept the key, her motto being "Lead us not into temptation".

  She went upstairs to see to Magdalena. My sister had caught a cold from me at the beginning of April and couldn't shake it off. Her nose often bled without her blowing it or hitting it on anything; and she spat blood even when Mother brushed her teeth. She vomited frequently, yet she ate almost nothing. Her body was covered with blue and red contusions, her hair was falling out, and she had permanent diarrhoea. Mother dared not take her to Eppendorf for fear she would need another operation. "Let us pray for tomorrow," she would say as we sat down to supper every evening.

  Father came home late that afternoon. Tummy rumbling, I was still seated in front of a bunch of fresh roses with such long stems that they overtopped the crucifix by several inches. Thanks to them, all we'd had for Sunday lunch was some bean soup without so much as a slice of sausage in it. Father walked into the kitchen and called me in a low voice. I saw when I joined him that he was holding something in his hand.

  A bar of chocolate! My stomach leaped at the very sight of it. "For your birthday," Father whispered as he kissed me.

  I knew what birthdays were from the other children in my class. When Grit's daughters had a birthday, she threw a big party, complete with cream cakes and potato crisps and ice cream. No one had ever broached the possibility of my having a birthday.

  Everyone had birthdays, Father explained, and nearly everyone celebrated them. They invited friends, ate cake and were given presents. He never took his eyes off the door as he spoke. We could hear Mother moving around upstairs. She'd tried to get a couple of spoonfuls of chicken broth down Magdalena a short while before, but after the third spoonful Magdalena had brought it up. Mother had had to change the sheets and carry Magdalena into the bathroom to wash her.

  We failed to hear her come downstairs. I'd just put the first piece of chocolate into my mouth when she walked in. After two steps she froze, her gaze commuting between my hand and my mouth. Then she turned to Father.

  "How could you?" she demanded. "One of them can't keep a morsel down, and you stuff the other with chocolate."

  Father hung his head. "It's her birthday, Elsbeth," he mumbled. "Other kids are showered with presents. All their friends turn up and bring something. Look at next door. Grit invites the whole street in, whereas we "

  He got no further. Mother didn't raise her voice - she never did. "In this house," she said quietly, "only one birthday counts: that of our Saviour. Let us now turn to Him and ask Him to grant us the strength to resist our manifold temptations. How can He show us compassion unless our hearts are pure?"

  She put out her hand for the bar of chocolate. "Give me that," she said, "and light the candles."
<
br />   The three of us knelt on the little bench for nearly an hour. Then Mother sent me to bed. She asked if I was willing to go without supper. I mustn't just say yes, she said. I must be genuinely prepared to make that sacrifice.

  Although terribly hungry I nodded, went upstairs and got into bed without cleaning my teeth. I felt sick, had a tummy-ache and wished that I could be really ill for once. Or die, possibly of starvation.

  I couldn't sleep, so I was still awake when Father came into the bedroom. It must have been around nine. He always went to bed at nine when he came home early from work, even in the summer, when it was still light outside. What else was he to do? Other people watched television in the evenings or listened to a radio programme or read a newspaper or a book.

  We had nothing of the kind apart from Mother's Bibles. She had several: an Old Testament, a New Testament and a Children's Testament. The latter contained some nice pictures and stories about the miracles performed by our Saviour.

  Mother would often read aloud to Magdalena from the book, then show her the pictures and tell her that she would one day sit before our Saviour's father on a little bench, rejoicing with the other angels. She hadn't read to her in recent weeks, though, because Magdalena was too weak. Whenever Mother started to talk or read aloud, she turned her head away.

  Just as Father shut the bedroom door I heard him mutter: "It'll soon be over. If she doesn't stop all this nonsense then, I'll kick her arse for her." And he drove his fist into his palm. He hadn't noticed I wasn't asleep yet.

  The chief's name was Rudolf Grovian. A lot of people mispronounced it deliberately, Grobian being the German for "roughneck", but he wasn't a violent man. On the contrary, he knew there were times when he should have been tougher in his private life. Now fifty-two, he had been married for twenty-seven years and a father for twenty-five.

  His daughter had always been a rebellious creature who made impossible demands and rode her parents roughshod. It was his fault for leaving his wife to bring her up alone. Mechthild was too soft and too gullible. She couldn't bring herself to put her foot down and believed any old rubbish she was told. If he ever said anything, all he got was: "Oh, go easy on her, Rudi, she's still so young."