Self's Punishment Part 15

I tried to explain to her that I didn't want to excuse anyone, but that I simply couldn't pursue the investigation.

'Then you're just one of the somebodies who does the dirty work for those people with power. Leave me alone now, I'll find my own way back.'

I suppressed the impulse to leave her there, and said instead: 'That's mad, the secretary of the director of the RCW reproaching the detective who carried out a contract for the RCW, for working for the RCW. That's rich.'

We walked on. After a while she put an arm through mine. 'In the old days, if something bad happened, I always had the feeling it would all be okay again. Life, I mean. Even after my divorce. Now I know nothing will ever be the same again. Do you recognize that?'

I nodded.

'Listen, it really would be best if I go on walking here on my own for a bit. You needn't look so worried, I won't do anything silly.'

From Rheinkaistra.s.se I looked back. She hadn't moved. She was looking over to the RCW at the levelled ground of the old factory. The wind blew an empty cement sack over the street.

Part Three

1

A milestone in jurisprudence

After a long, golden Indian summer, winter started abruptly. I can't remember a colder November.

I wasn't working much then. The investigation in the Sergej Mencke affair advanced at a crawl. The insurance company was hemming and hawing about sending me to America. The meeting with the ballet director had taken place on the sidelines of a rehearsal, and had taught me about Indian dance, which was being rehea.r.s.ed, but otherwise only revealed that some people liked Sergej, others didn't, and the ballet director belonged to the latter category. For two weeks I was plagued by rheumatism so that I wasn't fit for anything except getting through the bare necessities. Beyond that I went on plenty of walks, frequented the sauna and the cinema, finished reading Green Henry Green Henry I'd laid it aside in the summer and listened to Turbo's winter coat grow. One Sat.u.r.day I b.u.mped into Judith at the market. She was no longer working at RCW, was living off her unemployment money, and helping out at the women's bookshop Xanthippe. We promised to get together, but neither of us made the first move. With Eberhard I re-enacted the matches of the world chess champions.h.i.+p. As we were sitting over the last game, Brigitte called from Rio. There was a buzzing and crackling in the line; I could barely make her out. I think she said she was missing me. I didn't know what to do with that. I'd laid it aside in the summer and listened to Turbo's winter coat grow. One Sat.u.r.day I b.u.mped into Judith at the market. She was no longer working at RCW, was living off her unemployment money, and helping out at the women's bookshop Xanthippe. We promised to get together, but neither of us made the first move. With Eberhard I re-enacted the matches of the world chess champions.h.i.+p. As we were sitting over the last game, Brigitte called from Rio. There was a buzzing and crackling in the line; I could barely make her out. I think she said she was missing me. I didn't know what to do with that.

December began with unexpected days of sultry wind. On 2nd December the Federal Const.i.tutional Court p.r.o.nounced as unconst.i.tutional the direct emissions data gathering introduced by statute in Baden-Wurttemberg and the Rhineland-Palatinate.

It censured the violation of const.i.tutional rights of business data privacy and establishment and practice of a commercial enterprise, but eventually the statute was annulled for lack of legislative authority. The well-known columnist of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung celebrated the decision as a milestone in jurisprudence because, at last, data privacy had broken free of the shackles of mere civil rights protection and was elevated to the rank of entrepreneurial rights. Only now was the true grandeur of the court's judgment regarding data protection revealed. celebrated the decision as a milestone in jurisprudence because, at last, data privacy had broken free of the shackles of mere civil rights protection and was elevated to the rank of entrepreneurial rights. Only now was the true grandeur of the court's judgment regarding data protection revealed.

I wondered what would become of Grimm's lucrative sideline. Would the RCW continue to pay him a fee, for keeping quiet? I also wondered whether Judith would read the news from Karlsruhe, and what would go through her head as she did. This decision half a year earlier would have meant that Mischkey and the RCW wouldn't have locked horns.

That same day there was a letter from San Francisco in the mail. Vera Muller was a former resident of Mannheim, had emigrated to the USA in 1936, and had taught European literature at various Californian colleges. She'd been retired for some years now and out of a sense of nostalgia read the Mannheimer Morgen Mannheimer Morgen. She'd been surprised not to hear anything back about her first letter to Mischkey. She'd responded to the advertis.e.m.e.nt because the fate of her Jewish friend in the Third Reich was sadly interwoven with the RCW. She thought it a period of recent history that should be more widely researched and published, and she was willing to broker contact with Frau Hirsch. But she didn't want to cause her friend any unnecessary excitement and would only establish contact if the research project was both academically sound and fruitful from the aspect of coming to terms with the past. She asked for a.s.surances on this score.

It was the letter of an educated lady, rendered in lovely, old-fas.h.i.+oned German, and written in sloping, austere handwriting. Sometimes in the summer I see elderly American tourists in Heidelberg with a blue tint in their white hair, bright-pink frames on their spectacles, and garish make-up on their wrinkled skin. This willingness to present oneself as a caricature had always struck me as an expression of cultural despair. Reading Vera Muller's letter I could suddenly imagine such a lady being interesting and fascinating, and I recognized the wise weariness of completely forgotten peoples in that cultural despair. I wrote to her saying I'd try to visit her soon.

I called the Heidelberg Union Insurance company. I made it clear that without the trip to America all I could do was write a final report and prepare an invoice. An hour later the clerk in charge called to give me the go-ahead.

So, I was back on the Mischkey case. I didn't know what there was left for me to find out. But there it was, this trail that had vanished and had now re-emerged. And with the green light from the Heidelberg Union Insurance I could pursue it so effortlessly that I didn't have to think too deeply about the why and wherefore.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon and I figured out from my diary that it was 9 a.m. in Pittsburgh. I'd discovered from the ballet director that Sergej Mencke's friends were at the Pittsburgh State Ballet, and International Information divulged its telephone number. The girl from the exchange was jovial. 'You want to give the little lady from Flashdance Flashdance a call?' I didn't know the film. 'Is the movie worth seeing? Should I take a look?' She'd seen it three times. With my dreadful English the long-distance call to Pittsburgh was a torture. At least I found out from the ballet's secretary that both dancers would be in Pittsburgh throughout December. a call?' I didn't know the film. 'Is the movie worth seeing? Should I take a look?' She'd seen it three times. With my dreadful English the long-distance call to Pittsburgh was a torture. At least I found out from the ballet's secretary that both dancers would be in Pittsburgh throughout December.

I came to an understanding with my travel agency that I'd receive an invoice for a Lufthansa flight FrankfurtPittsburgh, but would actually be booked on a cheap flight from Brussels to San Francisco with a stopover in New York and a side trip to Pittsburgh. At the beginning of December there wasn't much going on over the Atlantic. I got a flight for Thursday morning.

Towards evening I gave Vera Muller a call in San Francisco. I told her I'd written, but that rather suddenly a convenient opportunity had arisen to come to the USA, and I'd be in San Francis...o...b.. the weekend. She said she'd announce my visit to Frau Hirsch; she herself was out of town over the weekend but would be glad to see me on Monday. I noted down Frau Hirsch's address: 410 Connecticut Street, Potrero Hill.

2

A crackle, and the picture appeared

From the old films I had visions in my mind of s.h.i.+ps steaming into New York, past the Statue of Liberty and on past the skysc.r.a.pers, and I'd imagined seeing the same, not from the deck of a liner, but through the small window on my left. However, the airport was way out of the city, it was cold and dirty, and I was glad when I'd transferred and was sitting in the plane to San Francisco. The rows of seats were so squashed together that it was only bearable to be in them with the seat reclined. During the meal you had to put your seat-back up; presumably the airline only served a meal so that you would be happy afterwards when you could recline again.

I arrived at midnight. A cab took me into the city via an eight-lane motorway, and to a hotel. I was feeling wretched after the storm the airplane had flown through. The porter who'd carried my suitcase to the room turned on the television; there was a crackle, and the picture appeared. A man was talking with obscene pus.h.i.+ness. I realized later he was a preacher.

The next morning the porter called me a cab, and I stepped out into the street. The window of my room looked out onto the wall of a neighbouring building, and in the room the morning had been grey and quiet. Now the colours and noises of the city exploded around me, beneath a clear, blue sky. The drive over the hills of the town, on streets that led upwards and swooped down again straight as an arrow, the smacking jolts of the cab's worn-out suspension when we crossed a junction, the views of skysc.r.a.pers, bridges, and a large bay made me feel dizzy.

The house was situated in a peaceful street. Like all the houses it was made of wood. Steps led to the front door. Up I went and rang the bell. An old man opened the door. 'Mr Hirsch?'

'My husband's been dead for six years,' she said in rusty German. 'You needn't apologize, I'm often taken for a man and I'm used to it. You're the German Vera was telling me about, right?'

Perhaps it was the confusion or the flight or the cab ride I must have fainted and came to when the old woman threw a gla.s.s of water at my face.

'You're lucky you didn't fall down the steps. When you're ready, come and I'll give you a whisky.'

The whisky burned inside me. The room was musty and smelt of age, of old flesh and old food. The same smell had suffused my grandparents' house, I suddenly recalled, and just as suddenly I was seized by the fear of growing old that I'm continuously suppressing.

The woman was perched opposite, and scrutinizing me. Shafts of sunlight shone through the blinds onto her. She was completely bald. 'You want to talk to me about Weinstein, my husband. Vera thinks it's important that what happened is told. But it's not a good story. My husband tried to forget it.'

I didn't realize straight away who Karl Weinstein was. But as she started to talk I remembered. She didn't realize she was not only telling his story but also touching upon my own past.

She spoke in an oddly monotonous voice. Weinstein had been professor of organic chemistry in Breslau until 1933. In 1941, when he was put in a concentration camp, his former a.s.sistant Tyberg put in a request for him to be sent to the RCW laboratories, which was granted. Weinstein was even quite pleased that he could work in his field again and that he was working with someone who appreciated him as a scientist, addressed him as Professor, and politely said goodbye in the evening when he was taken back to the camp along with the other forced labourers of the Works. 'My husband didn't cope well with life, nor was he very brave. He had no idea, or didn't want to know, what was happening around him and what was coming for him, too.'

'Were you with Weinstein at this time?'

'I met Karl on the transport to Auschwitz in nineteen forty-one. And then again only after the war. I'm Flemish, you know, and could hide in Brussels to begin with, until they caught me. I was a beautiful woman. They conducted medical experiments on my scalp. I think that saved my life. But in nineteen fortyfive I was old and bald. I was twenty-three.'

One day they'd come to Weinstein, someone from the Works and someone from the SS. They'd told him how he must testify before the police, the prosecutor, and the judge. It was a matter of sabotage, a ma.n.u.script that he'd supposedly found in Tyberg's desk, a conversation between Tyberg and a co-worker that he'd supposedly overheard.

I could picture Weinstein, as he was led into my office, in his prisoner's clothes, and gave his testimony.

'He hadn't wanted to at first. It was all false and Tyberg hadn't been bad to him. But they showed him they would crush him. They didn't even promise him his life, only that he could survive a little longer. Can you imagine that? Then my husband was transferred and simply forgotten in the other camp. We'd arranged where we would meet should the whole thing ever be over. In Brussels on the Grand Place. I came there simply by chance in the spring of nineteen forty-six, not thinking of him any more. He'd been waiting there for me since the summer of nineteen forty-five. He recognized me immediately although I'd become this bald, old lady. Quite irresistible!' She laughed.

I couldn't bring myself to tell her that I was the one Weinstein had delivered his testimony to. I also couldn't tell her why it was so important to me. But I had to know. And so I asked, 'Are you certain that the testimony your husband gave was false?'

'I don't understand. I've told you what he told me.' Her face turned cold. 'Get out,' she said, 'get out.'

3

Do not disturb

I walked down the hill and came to the docks and warehouses by the bay. Far and wide I could see neither cab nor bus, nor subway station. I wasn't even sure if San Francisco had a subway. I set off in the direction of the skysc.r.a.pers. The street didn't have a name, just a number. In front of me a heavy, black Cadillac was crawling along. Every few steps it drew to a standstill, a black man in a pink silk suit got out, trampled a beer or c.o.ke can flat, and dropped it into a large blue plastic sack. A few hundred metres ahead I saw a store. As I came closer I saw it was barred like a fortress. I went in looking for a sandwich and a packet of Sweet Afton. The goods were behind grating and the checkout reminded me of a counter at the bank. I didn't get a sandwich and no one knew what Sweet Afton was, and I felt guilty even though I hadn't done anything. As I was leaving the store with a carton of Chesterfields, a freight train rattled past me in the middle of the street.

On the piers I came across a car rental and rented a Chevrolet. I was taken by the one-piece front seating. It reminded me of the Horch on whose front seat I was initiated into love by the wife of my Latin teacher. Together with the car I got a town plan with the 49 Mile Drive highlighted. I followed it without trouble, thanks to the signs everywhere. By the cliffs I found a restaurant. At the entrance I had to edge forward in a line before being led to a seat by the window. Mist was curling over the Pacific. The show captivated me, as though, beyond the rents in the fog, j.a.pan's coast would come into view any second. I ate a tuna steak, potato in aluminum foil, and iceberg lettuce salad. The beer was called Anchor Steam and tasted almost like a smoked beer in the Bamberg Schlenkerla. The waitress was attentive, kept refilling my coffee cup without my having to ask, enquired after my health and where I was from. She knew Germany, too; she'd visited her boyfriend at the US base in Baumholder once.

After the meal I stretched my legs, clambered around on the cliffs, and suddenly saw before me, more beautiful than I remembered it from films, the Golden Gate Bridge. I took off my coat, folded it, put it on a rock, and sat on it. The coast fell away steeply, beneath me bright sailing boats were crisscrossing, and a freight s.h.i.+p ploughed its gentle path.

I had planned to live at peace with my past. Guilt, atonement, enthusiasm and blindness, pride and anger, morality and resignation I'd brought it all together in an elaborate balance. The past had become abstract. Now reality had caught up with me and was threatening that balance. Of course I'd let myself be manipulated as a prosecutor, I'd learned that much after 1945. One may question whether there is better manipulation and worse. Nevertheless, I didn't think it was the same thing to be guilty of having served a putative great, bad cause, or to be used by someone as a p.a.w.n on the chessboard of a small, shabby intrigue I didn't yet understand.

The stuff Frau Hirsch had told me, what did it amount to exactly? Tyberg and Dohmke, whom I'd investigated, had been convicted purely on the strength of Weinstein's false testimony. By any standard, even the National Socialist one, the judgment was a miscarriage of justice and my investigation was wrong. I'd been taken in by a plot made to trap Tyberg and Dohmke. My memory of it started to come back. In Tyberg's desk hidden doc.u.ments had been found that revealed a promising plan, essential to the war effort, initially pursued by Tyberg and his research group, then apparently abandoned. The accused repeatedly stressed to me and to the court that they couldn't have followed two promising paths of research at the same time. They had only put the other one on a backburner, to return to later. The whole thing was under the strictest secrecy and their discovery had been so exciting that they'd safeguarded it with the jealousy of the scientist. That had been the only reason for the cache in the desk. That might have got them off, but Weinstein reported a conversation between Dohmke and Tyberg in which both agreed to suppress the discovery to bring about a quick end to the war, even at the price of a German defeat. And now this conversation had never actually taken place.

The sabotage story had unleashed outrage at the time. The second charge of racial defilement hadn't convinced me, even then: my investigation hadn't produced any evidence that Tyberg had had intercourse with a Jewish forced labourer. He was sentenced to death on that account, too. I pondered who from the SS and who from the economic side back then could have set up the conspiracy.

There was a constant flow of traffic over the Golden Gate Bridge. Where did everyone want to get to? I drove to the approach, parked my car beneath the monument to the architect, and walked to the middle of the bridge. I was the only pedestrian. I gazed down onto the metallic gleaming Pacific. Behind me limousines whizzed by with a callous regularity. A cold wind blew round the suspension cables. I was freezing.

With some trouble I found the hotel again. It soon turned dark. I asked the porter where I could get a bottle of sambuca. He sent me along to a liquor store two streets away. I scanned the shelves in vain. The proprietor regretted he didn't have sambuca, but he did have something similar, wouldn't I like to try Southern Comfort? He packed the bottle in a brown paper bag for me, and twisted the paper shut round the neck. On the way back to the hotel I bought a hamburger. With my trench coat, the brown paper bag in one hand, and the burger in the other I felt like an extra in a second-rate American cop film.

Back in the hotel room I lay down on the bed and switched on the TV. My toothbrush gla.s.s was wrapped in cellophane, I tore it off and poured myself a shot. Southern Comfort really doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to sambuca. Still, it tasted pleasant and trickled quite naturally down my throat. Nor did the football on TV have the least bit in common with our football. But I understood the principle and followed the match with increasing excitement.

After a while I applauded when my team had made decent headway with the ball. Finally I must have whooped when my team won, because there came a knocking through the wall. I tried to get up and thump back, but the bed kept tipping up at the side I was trying to get out of. It wasn't that important. Main thing was that topping up the gla.s.s still went smoothly. I left the last gulp in the bottle for the flight back.

In the middle of the night I woke up. Now I felt drunk. I was lying fully clothed on the bed, the TV was spitting out images. When I switched it off, my head imploded. I managed to take off my jacket before falling asleep again.

When I woke up, for a brief moment I didn't know where I was. My room was cleaned and tidied, the ashtray empty, and the toothbrush gla.s.s back in cellophane. My watch said half past two. I sat on the toilet for a long time, clutching my head. When I washed my hands I avoided looking in the mirror. I found a packet of aspirin in my toilet bag, and twenty minutes later the headache was gone. But with every movement the brain fluid slapped hard against the walls of my skull, and my stomach was crying out for food while telling me it wouldn't keep it down. At home I'd have made a camomile tea, but I didn't know the American word, nor where I'd find it, nor how I'd boil the water.

I took a shower, first hot, then cold. In the hotel's Tea Room I got a black coffee and toast. I took a few steps out onto the street. The way led me to the liquor store. It was still open. I didn't begrudge the Southern Comfort the previous night, I'm not one to nurse a grudge. To make this clear I bought another bottle. The proprietor said: 'Better than any of your sambuca, hey?' I didn't want to contradict him.

This time I intended to get drunk systematically. I got undressed, hung the 'Do not disturb' sign outside my door and my suit over the clothes stand. I stuffed my worn unders.h.i.+rt into a plastic bag provided for the purpose and left it out in the corridor. I added my shoes and hoped that I'd find everything in a decent state the next morning. I locked the door from the inside, drew the curtains, turned on the TV, slipped into my pyjamas, poured my first gla.s.s, placed bottle and ashtray within reach on the bedside table, laid my cigarettes and folder of matches next to them, and myself in bed. Red River Red River was on TV. I pulled the covers up to my chin, smoked, and drank. was on TV. I pulled the covers up to my chin, smoked, and drank.

After a while the images of the courtroom I'd appeared in, of the hangings I'd had to attend, of green and grey and black uniforms, and of my wife in her League of German Girls outfit began to fade. I could no longer hear the echo of boots in long corridors, no Fuhrer's speeches on the People's Receiver, no sirens. John Wayne was drinking whisky, I was drinking Southern Comfort, and as he set off to tidy things up I was with him all the way.

By the following midday, the return to sobriety had become a ritual. At the same time it was clear the drinking was over. I drove to the Golden Gate Park and walked for two hours. In the evening I found Perry's, an Italian restaurant I felt almost as comfortable in as the Kleiner Rosengarten. I slept deeply and dreamlessly, and on Monday morning I discovered the American breakfast. At nine o'clock I gave Vera Muller a call. She would expect me for lunch.

At half past twelve I was standing in front of her house on Telegraph Hill with a bouquet of yellow roses. She wasn't the blue-rinsed caricature I'd envisaged. She was around my age and if I had aged as a man as she had as a woman, I'd have had reason to be content. She was tall, slim, angular, wore her grey hair piled high, over her jeans a Russian smock, her spectacles were hanging from a chain, and there was a mocking expression hovering round her grey eyes and thin mouth. She wore two wedding rings on her left hand.

'Yes, I'm a widow.' She had noticed my glance. 'My husband died three years ago. You remind me of him.' She led me into the sitting room through the windows of which I could see Alcatraz. 'Do you take Pastis as an aperitif? Help yourself, I'll just pop the pizza into the oven.'

When she returned I had poured two gla.s.ses. 'I had to confess something to you. I'm not a historian from Hamburg, I'm a private detective from Mannheim. The man whose advertis.e.m.e.nt you answered, not a Hamburg historian either, was murdered and I'm trying to find out why.'

'Do you already know by whom?'

'Yes and no.' I told my story.

'Did you mention your connection to the Tyberg affair to Frau Hirsch?'

'No, I didn't dare.'

'You really do remind me of my husband. He was a journalist, a famous raging reporter, but each time he wrote a piece, he was afraid. It's good, by the way, you didn't tell her. It would have upset her too much, because of her relations.h.i.+p with Karl. Did you know, he had an amazing career again, in Stanford? Sarah never adapted to that world. She stayed with him because she thought she owed it to him for his having waited so long. And at the same time he only lived with her out of a sense of loyalty. The two of them never married.'

She led me out onto the kitchen balcony and fetched the pizza. 'One thing I do like about growing older is that principles develop holes. I never thought I'd be able to eat with an old n.a.z.i prosecutor without choking on my pizza. Are you still a n.a.z.i?'

I choked on my pizza.

'All right, all right. You don't look like one to me. Do you sometimes have problems with your past?'

'At least two bottles of Southern Comfort's worth.' I told her how the weekend had been spent.

At six o'clock we were still sitting together. She told me about her start in America. At the Olympic Games in Berlin she'd met her husband and moved with him to Los Angeles. 'Do you know what I found most difficult? Wearing my bathing suit in the sauna.'

Then she had to leave for her night s.h.i.+ft with the help line. I went back to Perry's and merely took a six-pack of beer to bed with me. The next morning I wrote Vera Muller a postcard over breakfast, settled the bill, and drove to the airport. In the evening I was in Pittsburgh. There was snow on the ground.

4

Demolis.h.i.+ng Sergej

The cabs that took me to the hotel in the evening and to the ballet the next morning were every bit as yellow as those in San Francisco. It was nine, the ensemble was already in the midst of a rehearsal, at ten they took a break and I was directed to the Mannheimers. They were standing in tights and leotards next to the radiators, yoghurt in hand.

When I introduced myself and the subject of my visit, they could hardly believe I'd come all this way just for them.

'Did you know about Sergej?' Hanne turned to Joschka. 'Hey, I mean, I feel just devastated.'

Joschka was startled, too. 'If we can help Sergej in any way . . . I'll have a word with the boss. It should be fine for us to start again at eleven o'clock. That way we can sit down together in the canteen and talk.'

The canteen was empty. Through the window I looked onto a park with tall, bare trees. Mothers were out with their children, Eskimos in padded overalls, romping around in the snow.