The Sinner

by Petra Hammesfahr

  "I said: 'I'll probably come again next Saturday.'

  "He smiled. `Me too, but I'd better come by myself, I guess. See you next week, then.'

  "He really did come by himself, and he took things very slowly. It was three weeks before he kissed me for the first time. He was nice and gentle and seemed to understand whatever I told him; in fact, he didn't laugh even when I told him about my mother. All he said was: `Chacun a son gout.'

  "I asked him his name, of course. He said it was Horsti. That sounded silly, so I stuck to Johnny. He said he couldn't stand girls you could bed right away - they were only good for a laugh. He said he'd never met a girl like me before and that he loved me. Everything was perfect. He was even a trifle jealous. A couple of times, when he couldn't make it to Buchholz the following weekend, he asked me to stay home in case someone else queered his pitch.

  "I didn't know much about him. He was reluctant to talk about himself and seldom did so. He'd formed a group with two friends, he told me, and they practised in a cellar. Fatso was one of them -Johnny said he was terrific on the keyboard. He himself played the drums and the third member of the group played bass guitar.

  "In August he asked if I'd like to hear them play. I wanted to, I said, but I didn't feel like being cooped up in a cellar with Fatso, where I couldn't get away if he got fresh again. Johnny laughed at me. 'I'll be there. He won't even give you the eye.'

  "The following weekend he brought him along. Fatso behaved himself, so I agreed to go with them. It was a great night. They played a new number, `Tiger's Song'. Johnny said it was my tune now - he'd composed it especially for me.

  "They played for about an hour. Then the other two went off and didn't come back. Johnny gave me a drink and turned on the hi-fi. He played some tapes of their own composition. We danced, had another couple of drinks and sat down on the couch. And that was when it happened.

  "I won't pretend he raped me. It was lovely, and I wanted it. I was a bit squiffy, my one fear being that he'd get me pregnant. I'd never been on the pill, you see.

  "`Don't worry,' Johnny told me, 'I'll take care.' I relied on what he'd said, but my period failed to materialize. I was beside myself with fear. Johnny gave me some money and told me to buy a test kit from the chemist's. `If it's positive,' he said, `we'll simply get married.'

  "It was positive. Johnny seemed overjoyed when I told him. `So I'm going to be a daddy,' he said, hugging me delightedly. `My parents will be amazed. I'll introduce you to them tomorrow Think of some excuse so your mother lets you out and tell her you'll be gone a while. We'll meet in the car park at two. Don't give up if I'm half an hour late. Wait for me.'

  "I waited till seven that evening. He didn't show up. I never saw him again. I did my best to find him, but that didn't amount to much. I didn't know his real name or where he lived.

  `All I could remember was that we'd driven along the autobahn that night, in the direction of Hamburg. But we were sitting in the back, and I was too wrapped up in him to notice anything much. I didn't even know if we'd been at his parents' house or a friend's. I drove around for weeks, searching for the place. I thought some detail might occur to me while driving.

  "Father parked his car in a side street when he came home from work every evening, so Mother didn't notice anything. I told him I needed to keep my hand in, and he accepted that.

  "I couldn't tell him I was pregnant and had no one else to confide in. In the end I realized my quest was hopeless. I waited another few weeks for Johnny to get in touch - lie knew my name and address, after all. I couldn't believe anyone could be such a louse, but the girls who'd been with him before me said: `Did you really imagine lie was serious about you?'

  "By the end of October I could see my bump was getting bigger. My mother, who had noticed that I often felt nauseous, insisted on my seeing a doctor. So I left home, hitching a lift into the blue. Then I tried to kill myself. I threw myself in front of a car. I lost the baby -it was a girl, you could already tell. Nothing much happened to me, just a few scratches on the face. And the miscarriage, of course.

  "I had to go home again, but my mother wouldn't have me in the house. Trying to die and killing my baby in the process was the gravest sin a person could commit, she said, and she threw me out.

  "I went to Cologne and found work there. A year later I met my husband and got married. But I never got over what had happened. My mother's right: I'm a murderess. I killed an innocent child. Ever since my son's birth I've wondered what it would be like for him to have an elder sister to love him - to do everything for him and always be there for him.

  "This afternoon, when I sawJohnny with that woman ... At first I only saw him from behind. It can't be him, I thought, but then he sat up and I heard him speak. And then the woman played that tune. My tune, `Tiger's Song' .. .

  "I thought ... I don't know what I thought. Everything happened so incredibly fast. Automatically, in a way."

  At these last words she looked up, gazed into the chief's eyes, and felt relief surge through her like a warm liquid. His face had softened. He believed her story, but then, it was a good story. And, since it was based to a very small extent on the truth, no one could disprove it.

  The little apartment in Cologne in which Margret Rosch had given her niece a temporary home overlooked a busy street. This didn't bother her in the winter. She aired it briefly night and morning, but in the summer it often became unbearable. If the windows were open, they let in the noise of the traffic and the all-pervading stench of exhaust fumes. If they were shut, the heat built up inside until you felt you were in an incubator.

  Margret had come home shortly after nine that Saturday night five years ago, having spent the afternoon and evening with an old friend of hers. She never described him as anything other than a friend. Achim Mick, a physician with a practice of his own in the city centre, had been her lover for the past twenty years.

  Margret had never been married, and now it wasn't worth it any more. After all those years as his mistress, the thought of giving up her personal freedom didn't appeal to her, even though Achim was urging her to do so. He'd now been a widower for over a year.

  Margret had never pressed him or uttered the word "divorce", and she had only once asked him to do something for her - or rather, for her brother and her niece. That had been five years ago - and illegal. She later regarded it as a bad omen that Achim had felt obliged to remind her of it today of all days. "Blackmail" might have been a better word.

  She'd said goodbye to him earlier than planned to avoid an altercation, so she wasn't in the best of moods when she entered her apartment. The place was stuffy, but it was late enough to open all the windows. The traffic had diminished, and it was several degrees cooler outside than in.

  She took a lukewarm shower. Then, because the restaurant dinner they'd planned had come to nothing, she fixed herself a light supper. After that she read a few pages of a novel to take her mind off her disappointment and misgivings.

  At eleven there was a movie on TV she wanted to see. When she turned on the set a good-looking evangelist was earnestly discoursing upon our Saviour, humanity's shining example.

  Margret promptly forgot about her own problems, all except for her friend's "Don't forget what I did for you." Forget? How could she? She'd taken a far bigger risk than Achim Mick. She felt a sudden upsurge of cold fury, saw for a fraction of a second her younger niece's anguished, blue-tinged face, heard Elsbeth's soft voice murmuring a prayer. The scent of lighted candles seemed to sting her nose. The impression was so real, she couldn't help sneezing.

  She blew her nose, picked up her book again and concentrated on the text while the good-looking evangelist continued to expatiate for a minute or two. No one who had experienced what Margret had experienced could endure listening to him, although she had experienced it only sporadically. Four times a year for a couple of days at most, and not at first even then. She hadn't started visiting her brother regularly until Wilhelm expressly asked her to. Cora ha
d been nine at the time, and when Margret departed she uttered a prayer as fervent as the ones Elsbeth murmured in the living room: "Take care of Cora, Wilhelm. You must do something about her, or she'll go to the dogs."

  Wilhelm had nodded each time. "I'll do my best," he promised.

  Margret didn't know whether lie really did his best and how much he could do. She didn't know much about him in general. There was eighteen years' difference in age between her big brother and herself, their mother's spoilt little afterthought.

  Wilhelm had already volunteered for the Wehrmacht when Margret was born. He came home once in the ensuing years, but she didn't remember him. Her home at that time was in Buchholz, the little town near Luneburg Heath to which Wilhelm moved later. In the spring of 1944 Margret and her mother left their old home and went to the Rhineland, where relatives of her mother still lived. Her big brother was often mentioned after the move, but Margret didn't get to know him until she was ten years old, and Wilhelm already a broken man.

  It was never talked of openly. From the few allusions he made over the years, Margret inferred that he'd taken part in executions in Poland. Members of the civilian population, women and children included. Under orders. If he'd refused he would probably have got a bullet in the back of the neck or been strung up. Wilhelm, who couldn't see the matter in that light, had never come to terms with it.

  He didn't stay long in the Rhineland with his mother and sister. His father had been killed in France, and he wanted to go back to Buchholz, perhaps because he hoped to rediscover some measure of his youthful innocence there.

  Instead he found Elsbeth, a beautiful young woman from Hamburg. An almost ethereal-looking creature with pale golden hair and a china-doll complexion, Elsbeth had shared the post-war fate of many German girls: she became pregnant by a member of the Allied occupation forces. She hadn't carried the child to term. By the time Margret learned that she'd got rid of it with a knitting needle and almost died as a result Elsbeth was a lost cause. But it was one explanation, and explanations were the most important thing of all.

  Margret had often spoken of this during Cora's eighteen months with her. They'd spent countless nights discussing guilt and innocence, faith and morality, Cora's parents and their long years of childlessness. Elsbeth's company had gradually dispelled Wilhelm's gloom and awakened his joie de vivre, his love of laughter and dancing. Margret described how he'd begun to enjoy life, how he and Elsbeth had gone travelling - a week in Paris, three days in Rome, the Oktoberfest in Munich, the Prater in Vienna.

  Elsbeth refused to miss Cologne's annual carnival, so they used to visit the Rhineland once a year. She had the odd drink on those occasions, but one glass too many would put her into a melancholy mood and prompt her to talk about love, sorrow and the heavy burden of guilt she carried.

  Elsbeth was nearly forty when she became pregnant for the second time. Wilhelm, then pushing fifty, was exultant. He invited his mother and sister to Buchholz after Cora's birth, insisting that they come and admire that gift from heaven, their little granddaughter and niece, a pretty baby with his dark hair and a healthy appetite. The birth had taken a lot out of Elsbeth. She lay there in hospital, pale, weak and almost drained of blood but as overjoyed as Wilhelm.

  "Have you seen her yet, Margret? Go on, the nurse will show her to you. Everyone here says they've seldom seen such a pretty baby. And how strong she is! She can hold her little head up all by herself. I never thought I'd hold a child of my own in my arms. And such a beautiful one! If He's given me such a wonderful gift, God must have forgiven me. A child like that is well worth a little self-sacrifice. I'll soon get over it."

  But before Elsbeth could recover she became pregnant again - with Magdalena, the candidate for death. Her ductus Botalli, which connects the aorta to the pulmonary artery and normally closes at birth, was open, and she also suffered from several septal defects. The vestibules of her tiny heart were affected, as were both chambers. There were other vascular abnormalities as well. The left-hand chamber of the heart was not fully developed, and the abdominal aorta displayed saclike formations or aneurysms. The affected section was too big to be removed completely, and the doctors suspected that other vessels were also affected.

  Margret was a nurse. Nobody needed to tell her that the blue baby stood no chance, despite undergoing six operations in as many months. One of the surgeons told Wilhelm: "The thing that's beating in your daughter's chest isn't a heart, it's Swiss cheese. It looks as if someone has gone to work on it with a knitting needle."

  Unfortunately, Elsbeth either overheard that remark or had it relayed to her by a thoughtless nurse.

  But no matter how little time the doctors gave her, Magdalena proved them wrong. She even duelled with leukaemia and won. Elsbeth, who attributed this to the power of prayer, intensified her efforts to an extent that any normal person would have found intolerable.

  Although aware of the situation in her brother's home, Margret had done nothing about it, pleading the physical distance between them and the impossibility of leaving their old mother on her own. Her visits to Buchholz had been rare for the first few years after Magdalena's birth. She would look in, put her head in the sand and go home again.

  Then her mother died. Wilhelm attended the funeral in Cologne on his own, Elsbeth being unable to get away. They sat together that night, Margret and the brother who was old enough to be her father. He hummed and hawed for a while before coming out with it: would she pay them a visit in the next few weeks, and would she have a word with Elsbeth, woman to woman, about a normal man's needs? He found it hard to be explicit. The fact that he managed it, when they were such relative strangers, showed Margret how desperate he was.

  "I've considered divorcing her, but that would be irresponsible. I don't want to shirk my responsibilities, but things can't go on like this. I can't take it any more."

  After at least two minutes he added: "I've been sleeping in the other bedroom ever since Magdalena's birth. She won't let me go near her, no matter what I say. I used to go to a woman who took money - I didn't know what else to do. It was wrong, I know, and I stopped it a while back."

  At that time, "since Magdalena's birth" meant eight years ago. Wilhelm was fifty-nine but looked considerably younger. He was a tall, powerfully built man. "It's not just me," he told Margret in a low voice. "It's Cora. She's nine now, and getting older all the time. I'm worried about her." Although Wilhelm certainly hadn't meant this the way Margret construed it at first, a shiver ran down her spine.

  She set off for Buchholz two weeks later and tried her luck with Elsbeth. But all her efforts were in vain. Elsbeth listened placidly, her hands folded on her lap. "I'd let him if I had the strength for another child. My time isn't up yet - I could still conceive, but how am I supposed to cope? No! We all have to make sacrifices. Wilhelm is a man. He must bear it like a man."

  Wilhelm must have coped somehow, probably by resuming his visits to the woman who took money, Margret didn't know exactly. He had never raised the subject again, just made a couple of references to his fears for Cora, who was beginning to display signs of puberty.

  It hadn't been pleasant to wonder if Wilhelm was putting the lid on Elsbeth's insane treatment of Cora. Her own brother! Even if he were at the end of his sexual tether, he surely wouldn't lay hands on a child! Not his own daughter!

  Margret found this hard to believe but had made a half-hearted attempt to discover the truth. She ran into a brick wall. If Cora didn't want to say something, wild horses wouldn't drag it out of her; Margret had discovered that even then.

  It was predictable that disaster would strike sooner or later. From Margret's point of view, disaster had already struck five years ago - on 16 May, Magdalena's birthday, to be precise. Cora had seemed to vanish from the face of the earth for six whole months.

  With a shudder, Margret remembered the phone call in December of that year. Her niece's voice: "May I come to you? I can't live here any longer. I don't think I can lire any longe
r, period." She recalled Cora standing outside her door with the needle marks in her arms and the dent in her skull, recalled the nights, well into the following March, when she used to have to jump out of bed and hurry into the living room, her first step being to grab Cora's wrists to prevent the girl from harming herself. Frightful nightmares followed by raging headaches and resolute silence. Whatever had happened to Cora, she couldn't talk about it. She made one reference to an accident the previous October, but that was all.

  She needed the assistance of a competent physician, but she wouldn't let anyone near her. Margret almost had to go down on her knees before she would agree to let Achim Mick examine her. Achim said that the headaches were probably caused by the injury to her head and expressed surprise that a wound sustained in October had healed so well. As for the nightmares, lie surmised that they resulted from some traumatic experience. A good psychologist could probably help, he said.

  Cora rejected this idea, and somehow she managed without any help. These days there was no need to worry about her. Cora was doing fine - she visited Margret every other Sunday accompanied by Gereon and her little boy, full of news about her own home and her exhausting work at the office.

  It delighted Margret every time to hear how enthusiastically Cora had taken to such an unfamiliar job. Gereon Bender was no ideal husband in Margret's opinion. She thought him a fool, but since marrying him Cora had had something useful to do and no more time to brood. Her problems seemed to be over. She always made an equable impression when they came visiting, and they were due to come again this Sunday.

  Margret had spoken with her niece on the phone just before lunch on Friday. Cora had sounded a little on edge. Lately she'd often sounded a bit edgy on Fridays, and no wonder, after a week's stressful office work.

  Shortly before eleven, just after the movie started, Gereon phoned. He'd never called her before, so that was a bad omen in itself - the second tonight. He gave her a garbled account of what had happened, but all she caught at first was a single word: police!