Homecoming Homecoming Homecoming

by Bernhard Schlink

  At dawn, I unwrapped my blanket and went outside. The great, white expanse was a frozen lake topped by snow. On the far side, beyond range after range of hills, sky and land merged in the mist. The sun was rising, announcing its presence with a white light. I pictured it climbing up the hills, yellow, until it hung, red, in the misty sky.

  Jonathan came up to me and said, “This must be the ‘farm’ where de Baur had his commune. He kept it under strict control. Have you seen the cameras?”

  “Cameras?”

  “Let me show you.” I followed him inside and from room to room. Each room had one or two inconspicuous video cameras up near the ceiling. “It's the same upstairs. One in each room.”

  “They had video cameras back then?”

  “Of course.” He laughed. “They probably hadn't made it to Europe yet.”

  13

  WE ALL ASSUMED the adventure would be over in the morning and the retreat proper would begin. Nothing of the sort. We waited.

  As we got more and more hungry, we ransacked the house again from top to bottom. There was nothing to be had. Nor were there any provisions in the shed behind the hotel, only more logs, some rusty farming implements, a cylindrical iron stove, and an out-of-commission jalopy. Also behind the hotel we found a staircase leading to a locked iron door on the basement level, presumably the boiler room.

  The sun was so strong that by noon it was warm enough for us to sit out on the terrace. “Oh, for a bagel with cream cheese and lox and a glass of champagne!” Jonathan said dreamily. For Meg it was cottage cheese with wild strawberries, for Phil a steak with french fries. Each had his own preference. Mine was two soft-boiled eggs with chives and whole wheat toast with honey. The rule of the game was that it had to be different from everyone else's. I was particularly impressed by Katherine's quail-egg omelet.

  But when the game was over, the hunger remained. Not only that, the sun had disappeared behind the clouds and it was cold again. Back inside by the fire we started getting aggressive. What was de Baur trying to pull on us? How dared the van driver fly the coop like that! Why hadn't Jonathan told us that de Baur ran a commune here twenty years ago? Why couldn't Mark do anything? He was a marine, wasn't he?

  “If nobody shows up today, we'll have to leave,” Mark said with a laugh. “You don't need to be a marine to see that.”

  “We'll have to leave? Why don't one or two go and come back for the rest?”

  “We can give them the best shoes and clothes we've got.”

  “But what if they don't make it and I've got to go it on my own?”

  “I can't take any more of this,” said Jane. “I'm turning in. May I have your blanket?” I nodded and she stood up. But she did not budge. She was looking out of the window and was so spellbound that we too stood and looked. There was a car moving along the far shore of the lake.

  A few minutes later it pulled up. A jeep. Four men got out. “Hey, don't we know those guys?” Ronald whispered. “Didn't we see them in front of the restaurant yesterday?”

  They marched up the stairs, stood there facing us, and asked, “What are you doing here?”

  Ronald told them about the retreat and the unfortunate situation we found ourselves in. “We're glad you've come. What brings you here? How far is it to the next town? When are you leaving and how many of us can you take with you? Too many questions at once. Sorry.”

  The spokesman, a strong-looking older man with chiseled features and a crew cut, heard Ronald out, grinding his jaw and not blinking an eye. He took his time answering. “I don't know where you think you are. It's getting dark now, but tomorrow morning you're out of here.”

  Pamela introduced herself, ever the efficient, self-possessed lawyer, and explained to him with solicitous courtesy that this was the place designated for our retreat, that our professor had been here earlier but something must have happened to him, that we had no desire to stay here ourselves and would be only too happy to let them stay the night, but also hoped to enlist their aid.

  “Pa,” one of the others said to the spokesman with a grin, “how about getting the chicks to rustle up something for us.”

  The spokesman, not turning to his son but keeping his eyes on Ronald, said, “If you want to eat tonight, you'd better make yourself useful. The women can cook, the men give my boys a hand.” He turned to Mark. “Who are you? What are you doing here with these types?”

  Mark hesitated. I did not know him well. From crack soldier to law student with a special interest in political theory—pretty impressive, and I had always found his comments well informed, well thought out, and to the point. What was going on in his mind during these seconds of hesitation? That he had to decide between us and them? That siding with them would be an easy way out? That siding with them would be a way to get us off the hook? That nothing really bound him to us? “Mark Felton is my name. I'm here because I'm studying with them. Before that I was in the marines.”

  The spokesman held his hand out to him. “Steve Walton. Aircraft carrier Independence. Pleased to meet you. Want a beer?”

  They went into the lounge. The spokesman's son and, as we later learned, nephews, had a grand old time making us carry their luggage and provisions into the hotel and bossing the women around in the kitchen. They commandeered de Baur's suite and the rooms on either side. They were loud and crude, and I imagine that the others were as torn as I was between feeling we should refuse to put up with so degrading a situation and trying not to rock the boat so as to get it over with as soon as possible. No one rebelled. I suddenly recalled a loud, crude boy in my class who had had it in for me, but I kept so aloof that he eventually lost interest.

  We had a dinner of hamburgers and potato salad in the lounge, the intruders making it clear all the while that they were under no obligation to feed us. At one point Mike snapped. He was such a dandy that I had taken him for nothing more, but he slammed down his paper plate with its half-eaten hamburger, stood up, and said, “Well, you can shove it, then!”

  Mike had gone no more than a few steps when he tripped over the leg Walton's son had stretched out, and fell at the feet of one of the cousins, who bent over him, grabbed his hair with his right hand and with his left forced his face into the plate. He laughed, as did his pals, who pointed to the scene, slapped their thighs, and laughed even louder.

  “Enough,” Walton said after a while, and the boy let Mike go. Mike stood up—his face smeared with ketchup—and left the room. “They're a little wild, these kids,” Walton said to Mark, who was sitting next to him, “the way we used to be.” He raised his glass to Mark, who raised his in return.

  The rest of us just sat there. Jane and I looked at each other and saw the same helplessness in each other's eyes. I have no experience with violence. I had no fear of being physically attacked and beaten up, but I did feel totally at the intruders' mercy, totally powerless. I would have given anything to leave. Then Katherine rose with the same self-righteousness in her face and bearing she had exhibited when bawling out Mark and Pamela for smoking. The moment she started for the door, Walton shouted, “Sit down!” with such fury that at first she simply froze. But when he put his hands on the arms of the chair as if to get up, she did as she had been told.

  “You will finish our food, is that clear?”

  We should all have risen and left the room, the food should have stuck in our throats, but we went on eating. We were ashamed and kept our eyes down and hungrily ate everything on our plates.

  When we had finished, they told us to clear out. Ronald tried to make our situation clear and to negotiate a compromise, but the two cousins seized him and removed him bodily from the room. For a while we stood freezing in the lobby.

  “We've got to get out of here. Tomorrow morning. As soon as it's light.”

  “Can we make it without Mark? I don't think he'll come with us.” Mark was still inside with Walton and the boys.

  “Well, I'm not going. I'd rather do the cooking and wait for somebody to come. Or fo
r them to drop me off somewhere. Trudge thirty miles through snow and ice? Not me.”

  “Or me. The way we're dressed we'll catch our deaths.”

  “Well, I'm going,” Ronald said. He looked around. “Anybody coming with me?”

  “I will.”

  Jonathan shook his head. “There's no point in blowing this out of proportion. I'm going to talk money with them.”

  Mike had wiped the ketchup off his face but could not look anyone in the eye. “I'm going.” Greg and Phil nodded.

  When Pamela nodded, Katherine smiled. “As long as you don't smoke,” she said.

  “I've run out of cigarettes.”

  “I'd be glad to go with you, but I have a hip problem and can't even walk a mile.”

  “So that makes seven,” Ronald said, grinning, and held his hand out. “All for one and one for all.” We shook on it.

  Just as I lay down, freezing, on my bed, there was a knock at my door. It was Jane with her blankets and sheet. “Wouldn't it make sense to . . .”

  So we crawled under the blankets together. The bed was narrow, so she cuddled up to my back, which was fine by me: better a warm back than a warm belly. Together we heard a voice from the lounge shouting, “We don't want your fucking money! We want a good time!” followed by a crash and a door slamming. Shortly thereafter the sound of heavy footsteps came up the stairs and past our room.

  “Maybe I should go with you,” Jane said then. “Though it's a crazy idea. We'll never cover thirty miles before dark, and we'll freeze to death, literally, at night.”

  I told her about Hannibal crossing the Alps, Napoleon retreating from Moscow, and the Germans' attempt to besiege Moscow—in the versions I had heard from my grandfather—until she fell asleep.

  14

  I AWOKE WITHOUT knowing what woke me. It was dark, I was passably warm, and Jane was breathing peacefully. Then I heard it: the sound of an engine trying to start up. It must have been the second attempt, the first having brought me out of my sleep. The second attempt failed too. I got out of bed and went over to the window. It was snowing lightly. The third attempt worked. The jeep jerked forward, the headlights went on, and soon it was moving along the road. But it lurched from side to side, had trouble negotiating the first curve and, while taking the second, careered off the road into a ditch.

  Doors on the ground floor tore open. Walton's boys ran out onto the terrace. They reached the jeep just as the driver and his passengers were climbing out.

  “It's Greg, Mike, and Phil,” said Jane, who had joined me at the window. The boys were pushing them back to the hotel, and in the lobby they called for us all to come down. Then one of them ran upstairs and tore open door after door.

  Once we had gathered, Walton's son took the floor. He was shining a flashlight on Greg, Mike, and Phil. “All for one and one for all, eh? Your friends don't give a fuck about you guys; they're out for themselves.” He laughed. “They were smart enough to jump-start the engine but not to find the four-wheel-drive switch. So which one of you was the hero? How could you be so dumb?” He laughed again. “On with your shoes now, you guys. You're going down there to pull the jeep out of the snow.”

  “You must be out of your mind!” Katherine said. “Pull it out, when it's got four-wheel drive and can drive out by itself ?”

  It happened before we could do anything about it. Walton's son grabbed Katherine—a small, slender woman—by her sweater and flung her out of the door into the snow. “Want to go out in your bare feet?” Then he came back in and shouted at us, “Ready in three minutes, you hear?” I went and helped Katherine up. She was shivering and crying, and because I thought she had hurt herself I was very careful. But she shook her head: it was the humiliation of helplessness.

  The snow was coming down harder. If it went on like this, we would not be able to find the road the next day. From the look in his eye I could tell that Ronald was thinking the same thing. After a lot of pushing and pulling we managed to get the jeep out of the ditch. We then pushed it over the road and into the parking lot. It was hard work, and Ronald was furious that Greg, Phil, and Mike only went through the motions. By the time the jeep was back in the lot, we were exhausted and soaked through with snow and sweat. Inside, Katherine instructed us to rub ourselves dry, put on all the dry clothes we had, and go to bed.

  “Wait a second,” Walton said, and when the attention he called for was not immediately forthcoming he took out a pistol, pointed it at the ceiling, and pulled the trigger. We all swung in his direction, and he stuck the gun back in the holster under his shoulder and gave us a stern look. “We're disappointed in you. Here we let you stay even though you don't belong here, we share our provisions with you, and what do you do? That guy”—he pointed to Jonathan—“treats us like cabdrivers to take him where he wants to go. Those three try to rob us. And you”—he turned to Ronald—“you get on my nerves with your talk about sympathy and compromise. What we want is gratitude and goodwill.” He raised his voice a few notches. “Your thanks for what we've done for you and apologies for what you've done to us. Tomorrow morning, first thing. Is that clear?” He came up to me. “Is that clear?” When I failed to answer immediately, he gave me a shove. I felt my back hit the wall. He came up to me again, so close that his face was practically touching mine. I was afraid. “Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  He went from person to person, and each said yes.

  Then he and the boys filed into the lounge, and we filed silently up to our rooms. Jane and I got undressed and gave each other a dry rub, embarrassed because our nakedness awakened no desire.

  “Only two nights here, and it seems an eternity,” she said in bed.

  I could not bring myself to utter the word yes again. I was still afraid, but it was no longer a fear of something; it was a physical condition.

  “I wonder what tomorrow will be like.”

  “The snow is coming down harder, and I don't see how we can escape. They won't let us into the lounge. We could try and move the iron stove in the shack into the library.”

  “We have to apologize.”

  “We have to do something to get them to go on feeding us.”

  After a pause she added, “They haven't even told us what they're doing here.”

  15

  THEY TOLD US THE NEXT. They had come to go hunting. At ten it stopped snowing, and they packed some provisions in their backpacks and made a few trial shots on the terrace; at ten thirty the sun came out and off they went. Accompanied by Mark.

  “Now's the time,” Pamela said.

  “Time for what? They've locked the steering wheel.”

  “Then let's lay a trap for them. Saw a hole in the lobby floor. Or has anybody got sleeping pills? We can put some in their food. Or we can hide all the food and make them negotiate with us for it.”

  But there was no more food in the kitchen. Besides, the suite was locked, and we had no success breaking the door down or climbing in through the balcony.

  “Where did they get the key?”

  “Come with me,” Greg said, and we followed him to the jeep. The steering wheel was bolted with an iron clamp, so they had left the doors unlocked. Greg opened the right-hand door and pointed to a leather case lying on the floor. “Isn't that . . . I didn't look into it last night, but doesn't it look familiar?”

  Pamela opened it: two books, a sheaf of papers, an engagement calendar. She leafed through it. “It's de Baur's stuff all right.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don't know,” she said, putting the case back on the floor, “but I don't like the looks of it.”

  “You don't think . . .” Ronald did not complete his sentence, nor did anyone put into words what we all feared. We moved the stove, sticking the exhaust pipe through a skylight, carried some logs into the library, and made ourselves warm. We heard an occasional shot. Somehow we would manage to break away tomorrow. Today we had to apologize. Who would do it? I walked with the champagne bucket from one
person to another, and we drew lots. Katherine was chosen.

  “I'll do it, but they may not accept an apology from a woman.”

  Pamela looked at me. “You should do it.”

  “Look, Katherine's been chosen by lot. She has to try. If it doesn't work, we'll try something else.”

  “Why take a risk we can avoid? It makes more sense for you to do it or, even better, all the men together.”

  “Why should I do it? What was the point of drawing lots if—”

  “You've said it yourself. The reason we drew lots was that we couldn't come up with anything better. We hadn't thought things through. Now we have, and we have come up with something better.”

  Pamela was right. I realized it, but still I balked. I did not want to apologize for something I was not guilty of. As I was passing around the lots, I remembered the time a neighbor had complained to my mother that I had called her a “stink flower” in the street, and my mother forced me to apologize. I was a child and had never used the term before; I was not even sure what it meant. I was terribly depressed after apologizing and could not understand why. It took a long time before I realized that what bothered me was not so much that I had sacrificed my dignity to a desire to make peace with my mother as that all rituals of self-criticism with their false accusations and false apologies are meant to sacrifice one's dignity and that one's self-respect comes apart in the process. No, I refused to betray myself. I would not apologize. Katherine should make an attempt, and if it failed we would try something else.

  They came back home with a deer. Katherine was designated to butcher it because she was a doctor, and I helped because I felt guilty about forcing her to apologize. I had no idea what the others were doing: supplying the lounge with logs, kindling the fire, taking the beer outside to get cold, setting up the PA system that suddenly sent high-volume pop music throughout the hotel. During the three hours that Katherine and I spent preparing the venison, Walton and his boys presumably had a chance to have a private chat with each of us, Katherine included, but they did not immediately come out with what they had learned.