Self's Murder

by Bernhard Schlink

  It was the others who were at the Hallesches Tor this time. Black pants and jackets, and a few girls in grungy black outfits. I didn’t recognize them, but they recognized me. “That’s the old guy who was shouting ‘Heil Hitler’ the other day. You’re an old Nazi, right?”

  I didn’t say anything. Hadn’t they seen that I’d been forced to play along, and that I’d ended up in the canal?

  They crowded around me, forcing me back against the railing. What childish faces, I thought. What foolish, eager, childish faces. But I felt I had been punished sufficiently two days ago for the “Heil Hitlers.” Perhaps I merited more punishment for the many “Heil Hitlers” all those years ago and all the misery I had caused as public prosecutor. But not from these children.

  “Please let me through.”

  “We’re the Antifa!” They, too, had a leader of the pack, a tall thin fellow wearing glasses. When I tried to wriggle my way through, he pushed his hand against my chest. “We don’t want any fascists in our city.”

  “Aren’t there enough young people you can teach that lesson to?”

  “One thing at a time! First the older generation, then the young!” He was still pressing his hand against my chest.

  I lost control of myself. I hit his hand away and gave his foolish face two slaps—one on the left cheek and one on the right. He threw himself at me and pressed me against the railing. This time there was no “One, two, three!”—the others helped him silently with set mouths until I hung head-down. I fell with a splash into the water.

  I was standing once again on the sidewalk, taxis kept driving by, first slowing down when the driver saw me wave, then speeding away when the driver saw my wet clothes. A patrol car did the same. Finally a young woman had mercy on me, asked me into her car, and dropped me off in front of my hotel. The doorman who’d been on duty two days before was standing at his post again. He recognized me and laughed out loud. I didn’t think it was funny.

  22

  An old circus horse

  I didn’t find saying good-bye to Berlin at all difficult. I looked down as the plane flew in a wide arc over the city on Saturday morning. A lot of water, a lot of green, straight and crooked streets, large and small houses, churches with towers, churches with cupolas—everything a city needs. One can’t deny that Berlin is a big city. That Berliners are unfriendly, their children unruly, their taxi drivers inhospitable, their policemen incompetent, and their doormen impolite—perhaps that is to be expected in a city that has been subsidized for decades. But I don’t like it.

  I arrived in Mannheim feeling just as grim, chilled, and feverish as I had felt leaving Berlin. Nägelsbach had left a message on my machine that my car had been moved from outside the police station, where I had left it, to the Werderstrasse. He had seen to it that it wouldn’t be towed to the Friesenheimer Insel outside of town but parked near my place, and I wouldn’t have to pay a fine. Georg was back from Strasbourg and wanted to report to me. Brigitte had taken Manu to Beerfelden for the weekend. Welker was urging me to meet with him, by Sunday morning at the latest: he’d be in his office over the weekend and would be expecting my call and visit. Among the messages there was also a whining one from Karl-Heinz Ulbrich: This isn’t right, we need to talk. He’d gotten himself a cell phone and wanted me to call him. I erased his message without taking down the number.

  The few steps from my office to my apartment were like wading through mud, and on the stairs I worried that again I wouldn’t make it, like before Christmas. I got into bed and called Philipp. He wasn’t on duty at the hospital and came over right away.

  “I can’t tell you how relieved I am you’re here,” I told him. “Will you give me a quick checkup and get me a prescription? I have to be back on my feet by tomorrow.”

  He took out his stethoscope. “Let’s see if this thing still works—I haven’t used it since I was an intern.”

  I coughed, held my breath, breathed in and out. There was a rattling; I could hear it, too. His face looked grave, and he got up. “You’re going to have to take some antibiotics. I’ll go down to the drugstore and get some for you. As for your being up and about tomorrow, forget it.”

  “I’ve got to get up.”

  “When I get back you can explain why, and I’ll talk you out of it.”

  He took my key and left. Or was he still standing at my bedside? No, he was back already with the medicine and had brought a glass of water from the kitchen.

  “Take this.”

  I’d fallen asleep.

  He got a chair from the kitchen and sat down next to my bed. “It’s just a matter of time before you have your next heart attack, even though you smoke less. If you’re in a weakened condition, like you are now, and also exert yourself, the risks are especially high. I know you’ll do what you want, but the question is simple enough: Is whatever you’re intending to do tomorrow worth the risk? Aren’t there things that are worth more? More important cases, an adventure with Manu, a wild night with Brigitte?”

  “There was a time when you’d have put a wild night with Brigitte at the top of the list, or you’d have prescribed me two rambunctious nurses,” I said.

  He grinned. “When I think of all the suggestions I made! Just pearls before swine! You should thank your lucky stars that you’ve got Brigitte. Without her you’d be a sour old grouch.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me? I’m glad I’ve got my little Furball. I think I’ll brace myself and give marrying her another go.”

  I thought of the first time he’d given marrying Füruzan a “go.” I had waited for Philipp with Füruzan—a proud, beautiful Turkish nurse—her mother, and her brother. Then, right at the door of the town hall, Philipp, dead drunk, had announced that he couldn’t go through with the marriage, and Füruzan’s brother had attacked him with a knife. I thought how Philipp had lain in the hospital recuperating from his wounds and had gone off women.

  “And you’ll never touch another woman?” I asked him now.

  He raised his hands and slowly lowered them again. “When a woman looks at me, I look back. I’m like an old circus horse. When he hears all the commotion and fanfare, he goes trotting around the arena. But he’d much rather be in his stable, munching oats. And just as the public can tell that the circus horse is old, even though he goes trotting around the arena, women notice it in me, too, even though I look at them and flirt and know what they like to hear and how they like to be touched.” He stared into the distance.

  “Did you see it coming?” I asked.

  “I always thought that when the time comes all my memories would compensate me for what the present would be depriving me of. But remembering doesn’t work. I can tell myself what was, and how it was, and that it was great; I can conjure up pictures in my inner eye. But I can’t conjure up the feeling. I know that a woman’s breasts felt really good, or her bottom, or that she had a certain way of moving when she was on top of me that was just … or that she would … But I only know it, I don’t experience it. I don’t feel the feeling.”

  “Well, that’s the way of the world. Memories are memories.”

  “No!” he countered vehemently. “When I remember how furious I was when they remodeled our operating theater, I’m furious all over again. When I remember what pleasure I had when I bought my boat, I relive that pleasure. Only love eludes memory.” He got up. “You have to get some sleep. Don’t do anything foolish tomorrow.”

  I lay there staring into the twilight. Did love elude memory? Or was it desire? Was my friend mixing up love and desire?

  I decided I was not going to call Welker the following day. As it was, I hadn’t decided what to tell him or what to threaten him with or how to stop him. I would sleep and get some rest. I would give Turbo the can of mackerel I had brought him from Cottbus. I would read a book and play a game of chess with Keres or Euwe or Bobby Fisher. I would cook. I would drink red wine. Philipp hadn’t said anything about my antibiotic clashing with red wine or red wine cl
ashing with my antibiotic. I’d postpone my heart attack to some other time.

  23

  Cat and mouse

  But at nine o’clock I was awakened by a call from Welker.

  “Where did you get my number?” My number has been unlisted for five years.

  “I know it’s Sunday morning, but I must insist that you drop by my office. You can park inside the gate, that way it’ll be …” He broke off. I already knew the game well enough: Welker would start talking, the receiver would then be covered, and suddenly Samarin would be on the line. “We’ll be expecting you around noon. Twelve o’clock.”

  “How do I get inside the gate?”

  He hesitated. “Ring three times.”

  So that was that as far as catching up on my sleep was concerned, or getting some rest, cooking, reading, or playing chess. I filled the tub, sprinkled some rosemary into the water, and got in. Turbo appeared, and I irritated him with a few well-aimed drops. Some water on the thumb, flicked off with the index finger: with a little training you can become quite a champion. And I have many years of training behind me.

  Why did I hesitate about how to handle my client’s money laundering? I didn’t really have much of a choice. The TV channels might not be interested in the Russian Mafia—which has no class, no style, no tradition, no religion, and presumably no sense of humor—but the police most certainly would be, which was only right. Why didn’t I give them a call? Why hadn’t I called them yesterday? I realized that I just couldn’t bring myself to do that as long as Welker was still my client.

  So the early call and the appointment at noon did have a good side: I could close my case. I brought the phone to the bathtub and called Georg, who told me the rest of the sad tale of the Laban family. Laban’s niece died of tuberculosis in the 1930s in Davos, and his nephew had killed himself and his wife during the Nazi rampages of the Kristallnacht. The nephew’s son and his wife had died childless in London, while his daughter had not managed to flee abroad in time. She had gone into hiding when the deportations to the concentration camps began and was never heard from again. There was nobody who could claim the inheritance.

  I got out of the tub and dried myself. If you ask me, Dorian Gray exaggerated. As one grows older one needn’t want to look twenty year after year, and it was no surprise that he didn’t come to a good end. But why can’t I look sixty-six? By what right did my arms and legs become so thin? What right did their former mass have to leave its old home and find a new one under my belly button? Couldn’t my flesh have consulted me before going off and resettling someplace else?

  I stopped grumbling and pulled in my stomach when I put on the corduroys I hadn’t worn in ages, a turtleneck, and a leather jacket, and before you knew it I could almost pass for sixty-six. Over breakfast I put on an old Udo Jürgens record. At quarter past twelve I was in Schwetzingen.

  Samarin took me to the apartment in the upper story, and as we walked through the old banking hall and the new office area, he and I played cat and mouse.

  “I hear you were at the Mannheim police station,” he said.

  “I took your advice.”

  “My advice?”

  “Your advice not to keep what isn’t mine. I gave it to the police. That way whoever it belongs to can go get it.”

  Welker was on edge. He barely listened to my report concerning the silent partner. He looked at his watch again and again, his head cocked as if he were waiting for something. When I finished my report, I expected some questions—if not about the silent partner, then at least about Schuler, the black attaché case, my going to the police, or my disappearance from Mannheim. Questions that were so pressing that they had to be answered on a Sunday morning. But no questions came. Welker sat there as if more important issues were at hand, issues he could barely wait to come up. But he didn’t say anything. He got up. I got up, too.

  “So that’s that,” I said. “I’ll be sending you my bill.”

  And yet this former client of mine might well be in jail by tomorrow morning and not get to see my bill for some years to come. Six? Eight? What does one get for organized crime?

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” Samarin said.

  Samarin walked ahead, I followed, and Welker walked behind me as we made our way through the offices and down the stairs. I took leave of the old counters with their wooden bars, the inlaid panels, and the benches with the green velvet cushions. It was a pity; I would have liked to sit on one of these benches for a while and muse over the currents and vicissitudes of life. By the gate I said good-bye to Welker. He was in a curious nervous state, his hands cold and sweaty, his face flushed, and his voice shaking. Did he suspect what I was going to do? But how could he?

  Samarin did not respond to my good-bye. He pressed the lower of the two buttons near the gate and it swung open. I went to my car, got in, and fastened my seat belt. I glanced behind me. Welker’s face was so tense, so desperate, that I was taken aback, while Samarin looked burly and grim, but at the same time pleased. I was glad to get away.

  I started the car and drove off.

  PART TWO

  1

  Drive!

  I drove off, and at the same moment Welker leapt toward me. I saw his face, his gaping mouth and wide eyes, at the passenger-side window and heard his fists banging against the car door. What does he want? I thought. I stepped on the brake, leaned across the seat, and rolled down the window. He reached in, pulled up the lock, tore the door open, jumped into the car, slumped down on the passenger seat, reached over me, locked my door, did the same with his, and rolled his window back up, all the while shouting: “Drive! Drive, damn it! As fast as you can!”

  I didn’t react immediately, but then I saw the yard gate beginning to swing shut, threw the gear into reverse, and made it out just in time, with only a few scratches to the front fenders. Samarin was running alongside the car, trying to get the door open. “Faster!” Welker kept shouting, holding on to the door from inside. “Faster!”

  I floored the gas pedal and raced over the Schlossplatz into the Schlosstrasse. “Quick, give me your cell phone!” Welker said, reaching over to me.

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Damn!” He slammed his fists down on the dashboard. “How can you not have a cell phone?”

  I pulled into a parking lot in the Hebelstrasse and stopped in front of a public phone where he could use my phone card. “Not here! Let’s go where there are lots of people!”

  It was Sunday noon and the parking lot was still empty. But what was he afraid of? That Samarin and a few young men in suits would turn up and abduct him? I drove to the Schwetzingen train station, which wasn’t exactly pulsating with life, but there were taxis, a waiting bus, a newsstand, an open ticket counter, and some passengers. Welker took my phone card, his eyes darting in all directions, and went to a phone. I saw him pick up the receiver, insert the card, dial a number, wait, and begin to talk. Then he hung up and leaned against the wall. He looked as if he would collapse if the wall weren’t there.

  I waited. Then I got out and walked over to him. He was crying. Crying silently, tears running down his cheeks, gathering on his chin, and dripping onto his sweater. He didn’t wipe them away. His arms hung limply at his sides, as if bereft of all power. He suddenly noticed that I was standing in front of him. “They’ve got my children. They drove off with them half an hour ago.”

  “Drove off? Where to?”

  “Zurich, back to their boarding school. But they’ll reach the boarding school only if I go back to Samarin.” He straightened up and wiped away his tears.

  “Please tell me what’s going on. What are you mixed up in? What is this all about?”

  “As a private investigator, are you pledged to silence? Like a doctor or priest?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. He began to talk and talk. It was a cold day, and after a while my legs and stomach began to hurt from standing. But his flow of words didn’t stop, and I didn’t interrupt him. A woman wanted to use the pho
ne, so we got back into the car. I started the engine and put the heater on high, whatever the damage to the environment. He ended up weeping again.

  2

  Double insurance

  His story began in August 1991. There had been a failed military putsch in Moscow. Gorbachev’s star was on the wane, Yeltsin’s on the rise. Gregor Samarin had proposed that Weller & Welker send him to Russia to look into investment opportunities; the failed putsch signified that the fate of Communism was sealed and that the triumph of capitalism was unstoppable. This was the perfect moment, he argued, to make investments in Russian enterprises, and with his knowledge of Russia, its language, and its people, he could guarantee Weller & Welker a competitive edge.

  Until then Samarin had been a jack-of-all-trades at the bank: chauffeur and errand boy, a handyman at the bank and the apartment, someone who could help out as a teller and with the bookkeeping and filing. He had completed high school but had not been interested in continuing with his studies—nor did anybody encourage him to. Even as a schoolboy he had made himself useful, and it was quite convenient that he was even more available now. He lived in the servant’s room in old Herr Welker’s house in the Gustav-Kirchhoff-Strasse and was paid a modest salary and given a little extra whenever he wanted to buy something or go on vacation. But he rarely asked for anything. He had studied Russian at school because of his mother, and he traveled to Russia once a year. He drove cars handed down to him by the two families. He had become a fixture.