Self's Murder

by Bernhard Schlink

  “Frau Soboda, can you show me on your computer what I would have to do tonight? And would you help me if I got stuck and called you on a cell phone? I know there isn’t much chance I’ll find anything, but I won’t rest if I don’t at least give it a try.”

  She looked at the clock. “In six hours,” she said. “Do you have a cell phone?”

  She directed me to a store where I could get one. When I returned, she sat down with me at her computer. She showed and explained; I asked and practiced. Turning the computer on. Entering the password. What could the right password be? How did one switch from the system to the tracking program? How would I locate the accounts in the system and the tracking program? What routes might lead to the money laundering? How would I describe on the cell phone what was happening on the screen? By three o’clock I no longer knew up from down.

  “You still have a few hours to think the whole procedure through again. The new manager tends to stay late, and I wouldn’t recommend your coming out of the broom closet before eight.” She explained how I should smuggle myself into the bank’s kitchen area and said, “Good luck!”

  I parked my car on a side street and went into the Sorbian bank. I was to walk past the tellers and the cashier and enter a short hallway at the beginning of which were the restrooms and the kitchen area. It was quite straightforward. Nobody noticed me as I slowly made my way past the busy tellers and, in the hallway, quickly unlocked the door to the kitchen area with my skeleton key and pulled it shut behind me.

  The closet was full. I had to rearrange the brooms, mops, buckets, and detergents so that I’d have enough space. It was uncomfortable; I had to stand at attention with the fuse box pressing into my back, my feet locked together, and my hands at my sides. There was a powerful smell of detergent—not the aroma of fresh lemons but a mixture of soap, ammonia, and rotting fruit. At first I left the closet door ajar, certain I would hear anyone approaching the kitchen. But when someone did come in, I noticed him only once he was already in the room, and if he had looked in my direction that would have been the end of me. So I shut the door. When the bank closed at four, the kitchen area livened up. The employees who had worked at the tellers’ counters and now had to tally their accounts all took a coffee break. I heard the coffeemaker hissing and gurgling, cups and spoons clattering, comments about customers, and gossip about colleagues. I felt quite uneasy in the closet. But time flew.

  Otherwise it dragged on slowly. At first I went through what I had learned about the computer. But soon I could think of nothing but how to inch my legs into a different position and move my arms so they’d hurt less. I admired the soldiers who stood guard at Buckingham Palace or the Élysée. I also envied them for their spacious sentry boxes. From time to time I heard a sound, but I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the banking hall or the street, if a chair had banged against a desk or a car had rear-ended another or a plank had fallen off some scaffolding. Most of the time I heard only the rustling of my blood in my ears and a low, delicate piping noise that didn’t come from outside but was also in my ears. I decided that at eight I would climb out of the closet, open the kitchen door, and see if I could hear anything in the banking hall.

  But at quarter to eight it was all over. I again heard a sound. While I was still trying to figure out where it was coming from and what it might mean, the kitchen door was abruptly opened. For a moment there was silence. The man who had entered stood still, as if he were running his eyes over the sink, the stove, the refrigerator, the table and chairs, the cabinets above the sink, and the broom closet next to the stove. Then he quickly strode toward the closet and tore open the door.

  5

  In a dark suit and vest

  I was blinded by the light and could see only that someone was standing in front of me. I shut my eyes tightly, opened them wide, and blinked. Then I recognized him. Ulbrich was standing in front of me.

  Karl-Heinz Ulbrich, in a dark suit and vest, a pink shirt and red tie, and silver-rimmed spectacles, over which he looked at me with eyes that were doing their best to seem resolute and menacing. “Herr Self.”

  I laughed. I laughed, because the tension of the last minute and from having stood for so long was dissolving. I laughed at Ulbrich’s getup, and at the glare. I laughed at being caught in the broom closet as if I were the lover of the Sorbian bank and Ulbrich her jealous husband.

  “Herr Self.” He didn’t sound resolute and menacing. How could I have forgotten what a sensitive little fellow Ulbrich was? I tried to cap off my laughing in such a way that he might interpret it as me laughing with him, not at him. But it was too late, and he looked at me as if I had hurt his feelings again.

  “Herr Self, I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you. You have entered these premises illegally.”

  I nodded. “Yes, Herr Ulbrich. It’s me. How did you find me?”

  “I saw your car parked on a side street. Where else would you be, if not here?”

  “Who’d have thought that someone in Cottbus would recognize my car! But perhaps I ought to have figured out that Welker would send you here as his new bank manager.”

  “Are you hinting that … are you hinting that I … Herr Self, your insinuation that I might have blackmailed Herr Welker is an outrage! I protest most vigorously! Director Welker saw my merits, something you cannot claim to have done, and was delighted to put them to good use! Mark my words, he was delighted!”

  I got out of the closet, my numb legs knocking over detergent bottles, buckets, and mops. Ulbrich looked at me reproachfully. Why was it that with him I always ended up sooner or later having a bad conscience? I wasn’t his father; I could not have let him down as his father. I wasn’t his uncle, cousin, or brother, either.

  “I understand,” I said to him. “You are not blackmailing him. He is delighted that you are working for him. I want to go now.”

  “You have illegally—”

  “You’ve said that already. Welker doesn’t want any fuss in his bank. The police and I would amount to a considerable fuss. I imagine he doesn’t even want to know that I spent a few hours in his bank in the company of brooms and buckets. Forget my illegal entry. Forget it and let me go.”

  He shook his head but then turned around and left the kitchen area. I followed him to the side entrance. He unlocked the door and let me out. I looked up and down the street and heard the door shut behind me and the key turn twice.

  The side street was empty. I intended to head over to the old market square, but I went the wrong way and came to a wide street I didn’t know. Here, too, there was nobody about. It was a mild evening, perfect for a stroll, for sitting outside, for a chat over wine or beer, for flirting, but the people of Cottbus didn’t seem to be in the mood for any of this. I found a little Turkish restaurant with a table and two chairs out on the sidewalk. I ordered a beer and stuffed vine leaves and sat down.

  Across the street two boys were messing around with their motorbikes, making the engines roar from time to time. After a while they sped off, riding around the block once, and then again and again. They finally pulled up across the street, their engines running, again making them roar from time to time, and after a while set off around the block once again. This went on and on. They looked like good kids, and what they were yelling to each other was harmless enough. Still, the roar of their bikes ripped violently through the air, like the sound of a dentist’s drill. Before you feel it in the tooth, you feel it in the brain.

  “You’re not from these parts,” the owner of the restaurant said, putting the plate, glass, and bottle down in front of me.

  I nodded. “How’s life here?”

  “You can hear for yourself. Never a dull moment.”

  Before I could ask him any further questions he went inside. There was no knife or fork, so I ate the stuffed vine leaves with my fingers. Then I poured myself a glass.

  I didn’t think Ulbrich was blackmailing Welker. It was more likely that after I’d warned Welker he had given Ulbrich a call, i
nvited him over, and then hired him. It wasn’t hard to see that Ulbrich valued a good position far more than anything he might be able to gain through blackmail.

  Did Welker not care that a clueless Karl-Heinz Ulbrich was taking over from the very efficient Vera Soboda? Was that what Welker wanted? Did she know too much about what was going on? But how could he know how much she knew? Had the tracking device recorded her escapades in the system? If he knew this and had intentionally replaced her with the clueless Ulbrich so he could continue laundering money, then what did this tell me about Schuler’s death?

  6

  Dirty work

  Vera Soboda had barely greeted me when the doorbell rang.

  “You thought you’d scared me off!” Karl-Heinz Ulbrich said to me triumphantly. “You thought that’s why I let you go, right? I just wanted to see who was helping you.” He looked at Vera. “You’ll regret this. If you think that the Sorbian bank will give you your severance pay while you double-cross us, you’ve got another thing coming.”

  She glared at him as if she were about to grab him by the neck. If I had thrown myself between them, not much would be left of either him or me. Her eyes pinned on him, she asked me: “Did you find out anything?”

  “No. And yet I see why Welker would have replaced you with him. You know what’s going on, he doesn’t. And yet that still doesn’t prove a thing.”

  “What is it that I don’t know?” Ulbrich asked.

  “Ignorant idiot!” she said, full of disgust. “I’d get off my high horse if I were you! Why do you think Welker made you the new bank manager, when you know as much about banking as I know about ostrich farming? Do you think it’s because you’re able to run the bank? Nonsense! The only reason you’ve been hired is because there’s no way you’ll ever find out that money is being laundered at the bank. Though that isn’t the only reason you were hired: it was also because of the way you handle the employees, and the fact that you wouldn’t shrink back from any sort of nastiness.”

  “How dare you! It’s not as if banking is some hocus-pocus. And whatever I need to know, I find out right away. Would I have caught the two of you otherwise? I used to be at the Head Office 18, National Security, where they hired only the best. The best! Money laundering! Don’t make me laugh.”

  “You were with the Stasi?” Vera said, looking at him first in astonishment and then as if she hadn’t seen him in a long time and now was recognizing him feature by feature. “Of course. Once in the shit, always in the shit. If no longer for our side, then for the other side. Whoever happens to need you guys and will pay you.”

  “Shit? This man entered the bank illegally, and you are making terrible and unsubstantiated allegations. That’s shit! And what do you mean, I’m not working for our side but the other side? How could I work for our side? You’re talking as if I had betrayed our side—I haven’t heard such nonsense in years! Our side no longer exists! The only thing that exists now is the other side!”

  He was still trying to present himself in a superior way, but he sounded exhausted and desperate. As if he had believed in East Germany and the Stasi and loved his job and was lost without it. As if he were orphaned.

  But Vera Soboda did not let go: in the old days he’d been with the Stasi, and now he was with a shady West German bank, ignorant when it came to banking, nasty to the bank employees, being saddled on her and then replacing her—she was too furious to notice his exhaustion and desperation and to take pity on him. Perhaps that was also too much to ask. “I know our side no longer exists, and I’m not accusing you of betrayal,” she went on, “but what you did in the past was dirty work, and it’s dirty work you’re doing now. You’re already preparing the firings, aren’t you? Everyone knows that. Do you know what they’re calling you at the bank? The angel of death! And don’t get on your high horse just because everyone’s afraid of you. One can also be frightened of a little toad if it’s poisonous and disgusting enough.”

  “Frau Soboda,” I intervened in an attempt to calm her down. But now Ulbrich could no longer hold back.

  “You need to get off your high horse! If money was being laundered in the bank, it wasn’t going on just in the past few weeks, but all the time you were there, with your knowledge, under your very nose! Did you do anything about it? Did you go to the police?” He looked triumphant again. “Shit? You were standing in it with both feet, and if you had your way, you’d be happy to still be standing in it. If anyone here is ready for any kind of nastiness, it’s you!”

  Now Vera Soboda looked exhausted. She shrugged her shoulders, raised her arms and then lowered them, and went from the hall where we were standing into the living room and sat down.

  Ulbrich followed her, saying, “You’re not getting out of this so easily. The least I expect is an apology.” Then Ulbrich didn’t know what else to say.

  I went to the kitchen, got three beers from the refrigerator, opened them, and took them to the living room. I put one on the table in front of Vera Soboda, and one in front of an empty chair, and I sat down with one of the beers on the sofa. Ulbrich went over to the empty chair, stood next to it for a moment, and sat down carefully on its edge. He took the beer and slowly rolled it between his palms. It was so quiet that I could hear the computer humming lightly in the covered veranda.

  “Cheers,” Ulbrich said. He raised his bottle and drank. Vera looked at him and at me as if it had slipped her mind that we were there. Ulbrich cleared his throat. “I am sorry I fired you. It was nothing personal. I wasn’t given a reason; I was just ordered to—there was nothing I could do. I’m also fully aware that I know nothing about banking. But perhaps the job doesn’t require someone who knows the business. Per haps all it needs is someone who can use the phone. I make a call when there’s something I don’t know and am told what to do.” He cleared his throat again. “And as for what you said about doing dirty work for the other side, we don’t have any say anymore—you don’t and I don’t—and whoever has nothing to say has to accept the job he’s given. Nothing personal there, either.” He took a long sip, burped quietly, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and got up. “Thank you very much for the beer. Good night.”

  7

  Fried potatoes

  “Has he gone?” Vera asked.

  Ulbrich had pulled the door shut behind him so quietly, and gone down the stairs so softly, that no sound disturbed the silence.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “I behaved rather badly. And when I got a chance to make up for it, I ruined that, too. He was right, and he even tried to be nice. I was so angry I didn’t even manage to say good night.”

  “Angry at him?”

  “At him, at me, at his being so disgusting.”

  “He isn’t disgusting.”

  “I know. I’m angry about that, too. In fact, I owe him an apology.”

  “Are the cold cuts in the refrigerator for us?”

  “Yes. I was thinking of making some fried potatoes, too.”

  “I’ll see to dinner,” I said.

  I found some boiled potatoes, onions, bacon, and oil. The chopping, the hissing in the pan, and the aroma did me good after the argument between Vera and Ulbrich. I have come to believe that setbacks don’t make you a better person, just a smaller one. The setbacks in my life didn’t make me better, and Vera Soboda and Karl-Heinz Ulbrich, too, had become smaller through the setbacks that came with Germany’s unification and postunification. Setbacks don’t cost you only what you have invested—every time, they cut away a piece of your belief that you will survive the next trial, the next battle, that you will manage to tackle your life.

  I served the food and we ate. Vera wanted to know what had happened at the Sorbian bank, and I told her. I explained where I knew Ulbrich from and why I was certain he knew nothing of former or present money laundering at the bank. “He suspected that something crooked was going on at Weller and Welker, had talked about the Russian or Chechen Mafia, and might have been thinking of money laundering
. But as for anything specific—he himself can’t have found out anything, and I’m certain Welker wouldn’t have clued him in. That is, if there’s still anything to be clued into.”

  “I … I see I was quick to jump to conclusions,” Vera said.

  “Yes, you might have been.”

  “In that case,” she said, “Ulbrich might be right in saying that the bank doesn’t need a manager who knows anything about banking. Perhaps the Sorbian bank needs to economize because no more money is being laundered, and firings are called for, and they took the first step with me. Perhaps they wanted to get rid of me so I wouldn’t make trouble with the other firings.” She looked at me with a sad smile and shook her head. “That’s just a fantasy; I wouldn’t have made any trouble about the other firings.”

  I got up and took the trash bag with Schuler’s money out of my suitcase. I told her how I’d gotten the money and how Schuler had probably stumbled upon it.

  “There’s a whole lot that needs to be done around here,” I said. “Take the money and get it all done.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I’m not saying you can do everything that needs doing. Just some of it.”

  “I … this is … This is quite a surprise. I don’t know if I can … I mean, I do have some ideas. But you’ve seen how angry I can get, and when I get angry I really do foolish things. Wouldn’t you want to approach someone who … well, someone who’s better? How about you yourself?”

  The following morning I found her in her nightgown in the kitchen. She had apportioned most of the money into little bundles on the table and was counting the rest with unparalleled dexterity.

  “We were made to practice counting money the old way,” she said with a laugh, “and whoever counted fastest was made supervisor.”

  “So you are taking up my offer?” I asked.