Self's Murder

by Bernhard Schlink

  “He’ll either go straight to the police when he’s discharged or he won’t go at all. But before he goes he’ll tell us. You’ll have to wait till he’s discharged.”

  Philipp laughed and shook his head as if I ought to know better. “Do you expect me to wait that long?”

  12

  Traveling

  I went to Schwetzingen and knocked on the doors of Schuler’s neighbors, asking them for his niece’s address, until one of them sent me to the Werkstrasse, beyond the railroad tracks.

  There the garden gate stood open, and a note on the door said Frau Schubert would be right back. I waited. In the yard across the street some garden gnomes were being given a bath in a zinc tub, plunged into the water dirty sad, emerging happy and clean.

  Frau Schubert came riding up on her bicycle.

  “Oh, hello! I’ll make us some coffee,” she called out.

  I helped her carry her groceries inside. The deliveryman for whom she had left the note on the door appeared, and I carried in the cases of beer, lemonade, and soft drinks that he unloaded at the gate. By the time I finished, the coffee was ready.

  Frau Schubert struck me as being a little embarrassed.

  “I didn’t remember your name,” she said, “so I couldn’t send you a death notice. Is that why you dropped by? The burial will be next week, on Tuesday.”

  I promised her that I would attend, and she invited me to the reception after the service. I told her that I had lent her uncle some books that I needed, and she offered to drive me to his house so I could look for them. As we drove there, she told me about the offer she had gotten for her uncle’s library.

  “Imagine. Fifteen thousand marks!”

  “Are you his sole heir?” I asked.

  “He didn’t have any children, and my cousin died a few years ago in a hang-gliding accident. I’m inheriting his house, though it will need so much work that I’d be very happy to get fifteen thousand for the books.”

  I can’t tell what old books are worth, but as I looked around Schuler’s house I saw that he had amassed a rather unusual library. On the one hand, he had collected books about the area between Edingen and Waghäusel, and on the other, books about railways and banks in Baden. I couldn’t imagine that there would be anything published on these topics that wouldn’t be here. Most of the publications were small pamphlets, but there were also thick linen-and leather-bound volumes among them, at times whole series of works from the nineteenth century. About the channeling of the Rhine and the stabilization of its meadows by Major Tulla, the viaducts and tunnels of the railroad of the Odenwald Range, or the river police on the Rhine and the Neckar, from their founding until today. I resisted the temptation to claim as one of the books I’d lent Schuler a volume concerning the details of the construction of the Bismarck Tower on the Heiligenberg.

  The cabinet above the sink in the bathroom was packed with medicines: pills for heart and blood pressure, insomnia, headaches, constipation, and diarrhea; pills for strengthening the prostate and calming the vegetative nervous system; ointments for varicose veins and rheumatism; corn plasters and corn scrapers. Many medicines were duplicated, and many had expired. Some of the tubes had dried out, and some of the pills that had once been white were now yellow. I ignored the scrapers, plasters, and ointments, the constipation and diarrhea pills, and the strengthening and invigorating medicines. But I took with me the tranquilizers, the sleeping pills, and the heart and blood-pressure pills—seven in all. The cabinet was still full enough for their absence not to be noticed.

  Frau Schubert had opened all the windows and the spring air battled with Schuler’s smell. The kitchen no longer stank of rotting food but of lemony detergent. A sparkling cleanliness had settled in.

  “You didn’t find your books?” Frau Schubert said, seeing me come out of the study empty-handed.

  “I gave up. Your uncle had too many books.”

  She nodded sympathetically, but also with some pride.

  “Just like with his medicines,” I added. “He simply had too many. I had to use the bathroom, and noticed it was filled with them.”

  “He couldn’t bring himself to throw anything away. And also, he liked those old medicines, the ones that came in little bottles. With his gouty fingers he couldn’t open the new plastic or aluminum packets. I always had to take out the pills and put them in little bottles for him.” She wiped a tear from her eye.

  “Who was his doctor?”

  “Dr. Armbrust in Luisenstrasse.”

  As we walked to the front door we passed the wall where Schuler had hung his photographs. One was of him as a young man with a broad grin standing next to his Isetta, his hand resting on the car like a general’s resting on his map table. We looked at the photographs until Frau Schubert began crying again.

  I called Philipp from the phone booth in the Hebelstrasse, the one Welker had not wanted to use. “It’s Dr. Armbrust in the Luisenstrasse in Schwetzingen.”

  “Oh, come on, Gerhard.” It was clear I was getting on his nerves. But he gave in. “Okay, I’ll call him right away.”

  When I called Philipp back a little while later, he told me that Dr. Armbrust was on vacation for three weeks. “Will you get off my back now?”

  “Can’t you call him at home?” I asked. “Who knows whether he’s gone anywhere.”

  “You mean—”

  “Right away. Yes, call him now.”

  Philipp sighed, but he found the number. “Stay on the line; I’ll call him on my cell phone.”

  Dr. Armbrust wasn’t at home, either. His housekeeper explained that he’d be traveling till the last day of his vacation.

  13

  Apple pie and cappuccino

  Ulbrich came by on Sunday afternoon. He no longer held my refusal to be his father against me. I once read somewhere that East Germans have a taste for the finer things in life, so on Saturday I had baked an apple pie. He ate a piece with pleasure and asked for some chocolate sprinkles for the whipped cream I had made so he could turn his cup of coffee into a cappuccino. Turbo let Ulbrich cuddle him, and I can’t imagine things having been any cozier back in the old Socialist days.

  I had selected some photographs of Klara for him to look at. There are five albums on my shelf: one with pictures of Klara as a baby and little girl with her brother and parents; one with Klara as a beautiful tennis and ski debutante, one devoted to our engagement, marriage, and honeymoon; and one to our last months in Berlin and our first years in Heidelberg. All these albums make me sad. The one that makes me saddest is the last album, of the postwar period and the fifties and sixties. Klara, who had dreamed of a sparkling life at the side of a public prosecutor with a glittering career, and in these dreams had herself glittered and sparkled, had had to readjust her sights to a scrimping reality and had become increasingly bitter. Back then I had held her bitterness and reproaches against her. I simply could no longer be a public prosecutor, first because I was no longer wanted on account of my past in the Third Reich, but also because I resisted, body and soul, acting with my colleagues as if we had no past, even if we were expected to. So I had become a private investigator. Couldn’t she accept that? Couldn’t she love me as I was? I have come to realize that love can be as much a matter of the expression, the laughter, the wit, the intelligence, or the other one’s caring as it can be a matter of his standing in the world and his circumstances. Would she have been a happy mother? After giving birth to Karl-Heinz Ulbrich, she could no longer have children; during his birth something must have gone wrong.

  But you couldn’t tell just by looking at her. She was laughing in the photograph of April 1942, which I’d taken outside our house in the Bahnhofstrasse after her so-called Italian trip with Gigi. And again in a picture from June 1941, where she is walking along Unter den Linden and comes across as cheerful. Had the other man taken this picture? I had also brought out a picture from her school days, one from the 1950s where she was finally playing tennis again, since I was once more earn
ing enough, and a picture taken shortly before she died.

  Ulbrich looked at the photos slowly, without saying a word. “What did she die of?”

  “Cancer.”

  He assumed a troubled look and shook his head. “It’s still not fair though. I mean, once a child is born it also has to …” He didn’t continue.

  What would I have done if Klara had wanted to keep the child? Had she ever asked herself this and concluded that I couldn’t have handled something like that?

  He shook his head again. “It’s all very unfair. What a beautiful woman she was. The man … the man must have also been quite handsome. And take a look at me.” He held his face toward me as if I’d never seen it before. “If you’d been my father, I could understand. But with two such good-looking people …”

  I burst out laughing, and he was taken aback. He made himself another cappuccino and had another slice of apple pie.

  “I read that article in the Mannheimer Morgen. I must say, your police force goes about things quite casually. Back in the East things would have been done very differently. But perhaps things will be done differently here, too, if someone points the police in the right direction.” His look was no longer sad but defiant, the way he had looked at me when we first met. Could it be that today he wasn’t so disappointed in me because he felt he had the upper hand?

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You haven’t really done anything. But the other guy, the one from the bank …” He waited, and when I was still silent, he continued feeling his way forward. “I mean, he clearly preferred not to tell the police that he … And I imagine that he’d also prefer that nobody else would tell them that—”

  “You would tell them?”

  “You needn’t say that so sharply, as if I were some … All I’m saying is, he’d do better not to leave anything to chance. Are you still working for him?”

  Did he intend to blackmail Welker?

  “Are you in such bad financial shape?” I asked him.

  “I—”

  “You’d do better to go back where you came from. I’m sure the security network will soon be flourishing there the way it is everywhere else. Firms will be looking for representatives, and insurance companies will be looking for agents who know their way around. There’s nothing for you to gain here. It’ll be your word against ours—how far will you get?”

  “My word? What do you think I’m going to say? I was only asking. I mean …” After a while he said quietly: “I tried to get a job as a security guard, and also as an insurance agent, even as a zookeeper. It’s not that easy.”

  “That’s a pity.”

  He nodded. “There are no free rides anymore.”

  After he left I called Welker. I wanted to warn him. Should Ulbrich seek him out, I didn’t want him to find Welker unprepared. “Thank you for informing me,” he said. He took down Ulbrich’s name and address and seemed quite unruffled. “See you next Saturday.”

  14

  One and one that makes two

  The children enjoyed Welker’s party most. They were the right age—Manu and Welker’s son, Max, were a little older than Isabel, Welker’s daughter, and Anne, the daughter of Füruzan’s colleague who had taken part in the operation at the water tower. At first the boys sat at the computer, ignoring the girls, who went to another room and dolled themselves up. Brigitte crinkled her nose—she’d rather have seen them at the computer than falling into the beauty trap. But once the girls were all prettied up the boys forgot about the computer and began to flirt. Manu with Isabel, who had inherited the dark hair and fiery eyes of her mother, and Max with Anne, both blond. The garden was large, and when Brigitte and I took a walk over to the pear tree by the fence, we saw that one of the teen couples was making out on the bench beneath the blackthorn, and the other couple was sitting on the wall by the roses. It was a sweet and innocent sight. Still, Brigitte was worried when it got dark and the children didn’t come to the table that had been set up in the garden, so she went looking for them. They were sitting on the balcony drinking Coca-Cola and eating potato chips and talking about love and death.

  The Nägelsbachs were there, along with Philipp and Füruzan, Füruzan’s colleague and her boyfriend, and Brigitte and me. I could see how relieved Philipp was that Nägelsbach had decided not to go to the police. There was also a young woman there whom Welker introduced as Max’s teacher at the Kurfürst-Friedrich Gymnasium and on whom he lavished as much attention as a young widower with two children could afford to. I’ve forgotten who the other guests were. They were Welker’s neighbors and friends, or acquaintances from his tennis club.

  At first the conversation was a little stiff, but the awkwardness quickly evaporated. The wine, a chardonnay from the Palatine, went down so easily, the food was so simple and convincing—from thick green spelt soup and Victoria perch to blackberry trifle—and the glow of candles was so cozy. Welker gave a little speech; he was happy to be reunited with his children. He thanked the water tower commandos—though he preferred not to touch on why he had been away or what he was thanking us for. But everyone was pleased.

  It grew cooler, and a fireplace was glowing inside the house.

  “Shall we go for a stroll in the garden before we go inside?” Welker said, taking me aside.

  We crossed the lawn and sat down on a bench beneath the blackthorn.

  “I’ve thought a lot about Gregor Samarin—and us Welkers, too. We took him in, but everything we gave him was like a handout. Because we gave, we also expected his services. When I was a boy I had the room in the attic, while his room was in the cellar so he could take care of the central heating, which back then still ran on coal, not oil.” He slowly shook his head. “I’ve been trying to remember when I first realized that he hated me. I can’t recall. Back then it simply didn’t interest me, which is why I can’t remember.” He looked at me. “Isn’t that terrible?”

  I nodded.

  “I know that shooting him was even worse,” Welker continued. “But somehow it’s terrible in the same way. Do you know what I mean? What happened in our childhood bore fruit, as the Bible says. In his case, it was murdering my wife and everything else he did, and in my case, that I could only save myself from him the way I did.”

  “He told me he liked your wife.”

  “He liked Stephanie the way a servant might like the daughter of a master he hates. At the end of the day her place is on the other side, and when the chips are down, that’s all that matters. When Stephanie confronted him, the chips were down.”

  The lights went on in the house and their glow fell on the lawn. It remained dark beneath the blackthorn. Someone put on a Hildegard Knef record: “One and One That Makes Two.” I wanted to take Brigitte in my arms and dance a waltz. “As for Stephanie,” he continued, “I don’t know where it was that they … Were they waiting for her up at the hut? I have no idea how they could have followed us without our noticing. We thought we were alone.” He pressed his hands against his eyes and sighed. “I still can’t rid myself of this nightmare. And yet all I want is to wake up and put it all behind me.”

  I felt sorry for him. At the same time, I didn’t really want to hear what he was telling me. I wasn’t his friend. I had completed the case he had hired me for. I now had another case.

  “What did you talk about with Schuler the evening you went to see him?” I asked.

  “Schuler …” If I had hurt him by the abrupt change of topic, he showed no sign. “Gregor and I went to see him together. He told us about his work with the files and about the Strasbourg lead concerning the silent partner, which you later followed. Otherwise …”

  “Did you ask him for the money? The money in the attaché case?”

  “He talked about it, but back then I wasn’t quite sure what it was all about. Schuler said that a person becomes suspicious when he finds money in a cellar and starts wondering whom it might belong to, knowing that no good comes of evil, and had we forgotten that? He was looking at Gre
gor when he said it.”

  “What did you—”

  “I wasn’t there the whole time. I had … I had diarrhea and kept having to go to the toilet. Schuler must have found the money Gregor had stashed away in a part of the old cellar, where he had no business being. He put two and two together and suspected Gregor, because I am a Welker and Gregor doesn’t belong to the family. He wanted to get his former pupil back on the straight and narrow.” Welker laughed with a touch of mockery and sadness. “I suppose you’ll also want to know what state Schuler was in. He smelled bad, but he was fine. Furthermore, he didn’t make any threats. He didn’t even say that he had the money. Gregor found that out the next day.”

  Hildegard Knef’s song had ended. I heard applause, laughter, voices, and then the song was played again, louder this time. If I couldn’t take part in the dancing, I’d at least have liked to sing along: “God in Heaven is all-seeing, he’s seen right through you, there’s no point in fleeing.”

  Welker laid his hand on my knee. “I won’t ever forget what you did for me. One day, thank God, the memories of the last few months will pale. Until now the good things that have happened to me have remained clearer in my mind than the bad, and what you did for me as my private investigator was a good thing.” He got up. “Shall we go inside?”

  When Hildegard Knef sang the song for a third time, I danced with Brigitte.

  PART THREE

  1

  Too late

  Why couldn’t things stay as they were? Light, cheerful, and breezy, with a little sadness and a little mourning—mourning for Stephanie Welker, Adolf Schuler, and Gregor Samarin. Yes, for Gregor Samarin, too, destructive as his life had been. And sadness, because Brigitte and I only now discovered the lightness with which our feet found the right steps as we moved in harmony and enjoyed each other. Why couldn’t we dance like this through the whole year, this year, next year, the one after, and as many years as we would have?