Seconds went by. She stared past him at the door with an inscrutable expression. "I told him all he needed to know," she said, rather more calmly.
`And what did you withhold from him?"
Another few seconds went by. She swallowed a couple of times, girding herself to reply. "Nothing that matters." She faltered, clearly finding it hard even to get a word out. "Nothing that isn't irrelevant from your point of view That I had a sister who died of heart failure at the age of eighteen."
Grovian cursed his conflicting emotions. Reason pointed to the door; compassion urged him to take her in his arms. There, there, it's all right, it wasn't your fault. You weren't responsible for any of it. No one is born guilty.
Instead, he said: "Your sister was terminally ill, Frau Bender. She came home to die when she left the hospital that April, only she didn't tell anyone."
"That's not true." She sounded as if she could scarcely breathe.
"Yes, it is," he said firmly. "The doctors will confirm that. Ask your aunt if you don't believe it; she has the hospital records. It's all down there, Frau Bender. Your sister would have died in any case, even if you'd remained at home that night. You couldn't have prevented it."
The corners of her mouth twisted in a kind of smile. She began to laugh or sob, he couldn't tell which. "Shut up! You don't know what you're talking about."
"Then tell me, Frau Bender. Tell me."
She shook her head to and fro, to and fro, so slowly and deliberately that her nose and chin were almost aligned with each shoulder in turn. That was her sole response.
I can't talk to anyone about Magdalena. If I were to be entirely open and honest about her, everyone would think I hated her - hated her enough to kill her. Father thought so, Margret thought so, and Grit didn't know what to think.
I didn't kill Magdalena, I can't have. She was my sister, after all, and I loved her. Not always, I admit - not at the start, but that was only natural. Any child would have felt the same in my place.
Magdalena stole my childhood from me. She robbed me of my mother, and my father of the wife he so badly needed, the cheerful, lively person she used to be, according to Margret. A woman who could laugh and dance and enjoy the occasional drink. Who regularly had sex with her husband because it was what she herself wanted. Who wanted a child. Who became a mother and was overjoyed by the birth of her elder daughter.
I never saw my mother laugh, only pray; never saw her happy, only demented. It was Magdalena who drove her mad. But for Magdalena, I would never have had to hear that I'd sapped all her strength. I would never have had to pray till my lips were numb and my knees sore. I wouldn't have had to share a bedroom with my father or see him masturbating. I wouldn't have felt such disgust or wet my bed for years on end. I wouldn't have had such trouble with my periods. I'd have had a mother to explain things and help me cope with my problems - in fact, I mightn't have had any problems at all.
But Magdalena missed having a mother as much as I did. I remember her talking about it once when she'd just turned fifteen and spent another two days at Eppendorf, being checked over again from top to toe. EGG, blood tests - all kinds of tests, the doctors gave her, and all they'd ever come up with in the end was a number - a very low number. This time it had been a five. Another five months, that was all they'd given her.
Her heart had become overdeveloped and completely worn out. The doctors were quite frank with her. They'd tried to be frank with Mother at one time, but it wasn't much use. As for Father ... Well, he'd stopped taking an interest in what went on at home.
We were lying in bed the night after she returned from the hospital for the last time. It was still light in the bedroom. "I don't care how long they give me," Magdalena said, staring up at the ceiling. "They've always been wrong so far, and it'll be the same again, you mark my words. My ticker and I will grow old together, and you'll probably be the only one to see it. I strongly suspect that our beloved mother and our drunk of a father will have kicked the bucket long before that."
She folded her arms behind her head, only to remove them again in a hurry. "Damn it!" she said. "It's hell, not being able to lie the way you want. All the same, it'll be a while before I breathe my last. You must promise me something, Cora. Don't let me rot - don't stick me in the ground with the worms. Make sure I have a nice, clean cremation. If there's no other way, haul me off into the woods and tip a can of petrol over me. I'd sooner go to hell than have to sing duets with Mother in heaven. I dread the thought of finding her waiting for me at the gate."
She chuckled. "Can you imagine what'll happen when Mother moves in? St Peter will be able to retire, I guarantee you. She'll become the head receptionist - she'll sort out who's allowed in and who isn't. By the time she's through, no one will qualify. Still, if she gets bored she can always chat about the old days with Peter. I bet you Mother knows more about them than he does. All she doesn't know is what's needed down here."
She fell silent for a minute or two, gazing up at the ceiling as if she could see through it into Mother's fantasies. "I'm really glad she doesn't know," she went on slowly. "I'm thankful she doesn't come near me when she's been too busy praying to wash for three days, but there were times when I wished she would take me in her arms. Especially when I was so ill in the hospital. You've no idea how nauseous I felt. I retched so violently, I thought my aneurysm would burst at any moment. And who held the bowl under my chin? Who wiped my sweaty forehead? A young student nurse! Mother, who'd come to give me strength, courage and God knows what else, was down on her knees and getting in the nurse's way. I sometimes wished the girl would kick her backside. I needed her so badly, Cora, and she wasn't there. She was always nearby but never there. But who am I telling? She's never been there for you either."
She turned her head and looked at me. "Did you ever wish she would put her arms around you?"
"Not really," I said.
She sighed. "Well, you had Father. And now you've got a boyfriend outside. Tell me a bit about him."
So I told her about a wonderful, non-existent boy who was two years older than me. He had finished school and rode a motor scooter, and we used to meet down at the lake in the evenings. His parents were rich and very modern-minded. They owned afantastic house, one of the ones in the woods beside the road to Dibbersen - you could only see their roofs as you drove past. Theirs was the height of chic - no expense spared - and his parents naturally had no objection to his bringing me home. On the contrary, they liked me a lot and always made me welcome. But they never kept us talking for long because they knew we wanted to be alone together. We went upstairs to his room and lay on the bed, listening to music and necking.
I told Magdalena about this boy every night. Every night I helped her up the stairs, got her undressed, held her while she brushed her teeth, washed her, creamed her and put her to bed. "I can't wait to see him," I would tell her.
I'd christened him Thomas. There was a boy at school named Thomas who I thought was very nice. He wasn't as rough and vulgar as the others. I didn't know much about him. He was in a higher class, so I only saw him in break. He usually spent it sitting in a corner on the ground, reading a book. He took as little interest in girls as they did in him. He wore glasses.
My Thomas didn't wear glasses, of course - Magdalena would have considered that a flaw. For her, boys had to be tall, strong and handsome, high-spirited but gentle. Thomas was my second such invention.
When Magdalena was in bed I would go downstairs and tell Mother: "I feel the need to commune with God in the open air." I couldn't remain in the house or Magdalena would soon have smelled a rat.
Then I would walk into town. There was always something happening in the centre of Buchholz. A lot of new buildings were going up, and I'd look at the construction sites and imagine that they would some day wall us in, surrounding our house and isolating us like the plague victims Father used to tell me about. Sometimes I also imagined meeting Thomas - the real, bespectacled one - and pictured us sitting do
wn somewhere and reading a book together.
I owned some books myself - books I'd ordered specially and bought, not stolen. They were quite expensive, but I had plenty of cash. I spent barely a third of the housekeeping money I extorted from Father every week, yet we lived better than before. I'd given up selling hair slides in the playground. Lipsticks and other items of make-up, yes, but mainly perfume and other stuff that fetched good prices and was easily concealed - even, on one occasion, a Walkman.
I'd got hold of a Walkman for Magdalena as well. She always had it in bed with her. There was no danger that Mother would catch her with it. Mother never entered our room any more. She divided her time between her home-made altar and her bed, having devolved all her earthly responsibilities onto me.
I made breakfast for us all and attended to Magdalena before going to school. I cooked lunch when I came home, did the shopping and the laundry and kept the house clean. And I spent every spare minute with Magdalena until she was tucked up in bed and I could go out on the town.
A girl in my class used to tape the latest hits for me in return for a small fee. Magdalena wouldn't have benefited from her Walkman otherwise. She loved music, and used to listen to one cassette after another during the three hours I was away at school.
Before going into the house I would pay a short visit to the barn. The potato sacks no longer concealed a hoard of candy bars, but lots of other things, including cigarettes and a little lighter. I would light a cigarette and take a few puffs, then stub it out and replace it carefully in the packet. That way, one cigarette lasted me a couple of days.
I thoroughly disliked smoking - it made me cough and feel dizzy - but Magdalena thought it was cool and could tell from my breath if I'd had a cigarette. A few months later, after the Thomas episode, I gave it up. I told her my new boyfriend hated cigarettes and couldn't stand girls who smoked. He said you might as well kiss an ashtray, and I didn't want to risk losing him because he looked fantastic and I got wet between the legs if he so much as touched my knee. Magdalena appreciated this.
I made this new boyfriend three years older. I can't remember what I called him; there were so many names in the course of time. He was the first boy I went to bed with, and Magdalena asked me to show her what it was like.
I genuinely did all I could for her. Sometimes she said: "I'm going to have another operation when I'm old enough to decide for myself. I'll find a surgeon who'll do it."
We planned to fly to the States together, to one of the great cardiac hospitals. We kept working out how much money we'd have by her eighteenth birthday if we put aside a hundred marks a week. I'd told her I could spare that much from the housekeeping. I didn't tell her it was twice that amount in case she became suspicious and thought I was helping myself to our hoard.
She said a hundred marks a week wouldn't do the trick. I told her that I'd found a wallet at the station containing a thousand marks, and that I always kept my eyes peeled because a lot of people were pretty careless and didn't notice when they lost things.
Magdalena laughed. "You're a dear," she said, "but you're a dope. You'd have to rob a bank to get that much money together. Fancy relying on people losing things!"
I was on the point of telling her that I hadn't found the money, and that there was far more in the barn than a thousand marks, but I'd read in a newspaper what operations cost and that you had to pay for them out of your own pocket. I didn't have anything like enough, and I didn't know how to get it.
It wouldn't have been such a problem if I'd been able to work after leaving school, but someone had to look after the house and Magdalena. Mother couldn't do that any more, even if she'd wanted to. Father had bought her a modern washing machine, but she couldn't cope with the thing and wanted nothing to do with it. I think she was afraid of it. She said it was the work of the Devil and turned off the water, saying we must fast for forty days in the wilderness. Although I managed to talk her out of that, we had to be constantly on our guard in case she did something silly.
Magdalena thought it would be better if I stayed at home. "Work?" she said. "What work would you do? A trainee's job is the most you'd get at your age. That means three years of earning next to nothing. If you're really serious about raising the money for my operation, we must think of something else. I've had an idea. There's a job that pays better the younger you are, but I don't know how you'd feel about it."
Cora Bender's transfer from the remand centre to the district hospital compelled the judicial authorities to appoint an attorney for her. Her family had so far made no move in that direction.
Her husband and her parents-in-law seemed to have forgotten her existence. Her aunt, the qualified nurse, was in north Germany, keeping watch over an elderly, dying man who was past helping. As for her mother, nothing could be expected from that quarter.
The district court at Cologne kept a list of attorneys available for pro bono work. One of them, Eberhard Brauning, was highly regarded for his courtroom technique. His friends, who included several judges, called him Hardy. Thirty-eight years old and unmarried, he shared a house with his mother Helene, the only woman in his life who really mattered to him.
Helene Brauning had for many years worked in the same field as Professor Burthe. Frequently called as an expert witness, she had only twice failed to prevent the imposition of a term of imprisonment. She had specialized - and not only in court - in cases of severe mental disturbance. Her retirement two years ago had been prompted in part by the fact that she'd found it more and more depressing not to be able to help people, only to keep them under lock and key.
To Eberhard Brauning, psychiatry and psychology were doubleedged swords. Mentally deranged offenders had fascinated him since his earliest youth, but only in theory. In real life he abhorred them. Fortunately, however, they tended to be the exception in his daily routine.
If a husband killed his wife while drunk or consumed with jealousy, Brauning could handle it. If a hitherto inoffensive office clerk raped a female colleague after a firm's party, he could act for such a man, despite his personal distaste.
Eberhard Brauning liked calculable reflexes and comprehensible motives. He required candour but not necessarily remorse. If remorse was also on offer, he welcomed it; but lie could cope just as well with denial.
None of these things could be expected from the creatures to whom Helene Brauning had devoted half her life. They inhabited a world to which lie had no access. Their behaviour could provide the makings of a lively conversation with his mother in the evening. Where his work was concerned, however, he preferred cases in which a client's circumstances and mental state were clear-cut.
To the examining magistrate, the Frankenberg case appeared to be one such. A young woman had killed her erstwhile lover in the presence of a dozen or more eyewitnesses. Having at first denied knowing the man, she had later, when pressed by the interrogating officer, come clean about their relationship and her motives. Since then she had attempted suicide.
The district attorney's file was almost complete. All that was missing was the psychologist's report, but that could take a little while longer. Professor Burthe was snowed under with work.
Also missing was a signed confession, because the young woman had retracted her original statement and was once more stubbornly disclaiming all knowledge of her victim. It was obvious what she hoped to achieve, and Eberhard Brauning was just the man to convince her that prison was preferable to a lunatic asylum.
To Brauning, Cora Bender's current detention in a psychiatric ward was adequately explained by her attempted suicide. Paper handkerchiefs! That idea entailed some ingenuity. He considered it an extremely clever ploy and relied on the personal impression of the examining magistrate, who had described her as cold and unfeeling. He also realized, however, that the magistrate was loath to take a risk.
Having requested a sight of the file, Brauning was issued with copies of all the available documents five days after Georg Frankenberg's death. That was on Thursd
ay. Early that evening he began his perusal of the file by studying the witnesses' statements made shortly after the killing and later amplified with details not directly related to the incident itself.
The victim's behaviour seemed as clear to him as it had to the gullible paterfamilias who had put it on record. A note had been subsequently added to the file containing Cora Bender's personal particulars. A sister, Magdalena Rosch, had died five years ago of cardiac and renal failure. Brauning attached no importance to this addendum.
He felt fleetingly uneasy while reading the transcripts of the tapes. Either Cora Bender had been in a state for which mental confusion was a very mild description, or she'd staged a firstclass performance for the benefit of the officer interviewing her. Although lie inclined to the latter view, lie would have liked to hear his mother's opinion. Unfortunately, Helene had already gone to bed by the time lie laid the file aside. It was long past midnight, and he didn't have time for an exhaustive discussion when they breakfasted together the next morning. He merely mentioned that he'd landed a new and extremely interesting case: yet another woman who imagined that the district hospital was a sanatorium.
Brauning arranged a meeting with his client as soon as he got to his chambers. He was firmly resolved to make it clear to her that a full confession would be likely to render the court more lenient. Early on Friday afternoon, at three o'clock precisely, a door was unlocked, and he saw her for the first time.
She was standing by the window in a plain skirt and a simply cut blouse, both of them creased and grubby. She wore no stockings, so the feet in her flat-heeled shoes were bare. Her hair looked as if it hadn't been in contact with water or shampoo for several days, and her face, when she slowly turned towards the door ...
Brauning involuntarily caught his breath, assailed for the first time by doubts about his assessment of the situation. Such apathy! Her eyes reminded him of the glass eyes in the head of an old teddy bear he'd dearly loved as a little boy. They'd been quite big, those button eyes, and when he held them to the light he could see himself reflected in them -just himself and his bedroom, nothing more. They never revealed any stirrings of emotion inside old Teddy's straw-filled frame.
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