Self's punishment (19 page)

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 skyscrapers. 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 coke 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, Japan’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 ship 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 pawn 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 documents 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 glass 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 glass 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 glass 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 undershirt 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 glass, 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
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 Führer’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 Müller 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 glasses. ‘I had to confess something to you. I’m not a historian from Hamburg, I’m a private detective from Mannheim. The man whose advertisement 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 relationship 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 Nazi prosecutor without choking on my pizza. Are you still a Nazi?’

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 shift 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 Müller 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

Demolishing 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.

‘All right, I mean, it’s really important for me to share what I know about Sergej,’ she said. ‘I’d find it, like, absolutely awful, if someone thought . . . if someone got the wrong . . . Sergej, he’s so incredibly sensitive. And he’s so vulnerable, not at all macho. You see, that’s why he couldn’t have done it for starters, he was always terribly afraid of injuries.’

Joschka wasn’t so sure. He stirred the contents of his Styrofoam cup with a little plastic stick, contemplatively. ‘Herr Self, I don’t think Sergej maimed himself either. I just can’t imagine anyone doing that. But if anyone . . . You know, Sergej was always having crackpot ideas.’

‘How can you say such mean stuff?’ Hanne interrupted him. ‘I thought you were his friend. No way, that makes me, like, really sad.’

Joschka placed his hand on her arm. ‘But, Hanne, don’t you remember the evening we were entertaining the dancers from Ghana? He told us how, when he was a boy scout, he deliberately cut his hand with the potato peeler to get out of kitchen duty. We all laughed about it, you too.’

‘But you got it completely wrong. He only pretended he’d cut himself and wrapped a large bandage around it. If you’re going to, like, distort the truth like that . . . I mean, really, Joschka . . .’

Joschka didn’t appear convinced, but didn’t want to quarrel with Hanne. I inquired about the shape, and mood, Sergej was in during the last few months of the season.

‘Exactly,’ said Hanne. ‘That doesn’t fit with your strange suspicion either. He believed completely in himself, he absolutely wanted to add flamenco to his repertoire, and tried to get a scholarship to Madrid.’

‘But, Hanne, he didn’t get the scholarship, that’s the thing.’

‘But don’t you get it, the fact he applied for it, that had so much power somehow. And his relationship, that was finally going well in the summer with his German professor. You know, Sergej, he isn’t gay, but he can also love men. He’s absolutely fantastic that way, I think. And not just something brief, sexual, but like, really deep. It’s impossible not to like him. He’s so . . .’

‘Sweet?’ I suggested.

‘Yeah, sweet. Do you actually know him, Herr Self?’

‘Uh, could you tell me who the German professor is you mentioned?’

‘Was it really German, not law?’ Joschka frowned.

‘Oh, crap, you’re demolishing Sergej. He was a Germanist, such a cuddly guy. But his name . . . I don’t know if I should tell you.’

‘Hanne, the two of them hardly made a secret of it considering how they carried on round town. It’s Fritz Kirchenberg from Heidelberg. Maybe it’s a good idea for you to talk to him.’

I asked them about Sergej’s qualities as a dancer. Hanne answered first.

‘But that’s beside the point. Even if you’re not a good dancer you don’t have to hack your leg off. I’m not even going to discuss it. And I’m still convinced you’re wrong.’

‘I don’t have any concrete opinion as yet, Frau Fischer,’ I said to Hanne. ‘And I’d like to point out that Herr Mencke hasn’t lost his leg, merely broken it.’

‘I don’t know what sort of knowledge you have of ballet, Herr Self,’ said Joschka. ‘At the end of the day, it’s the same with us as it is everywhere else. There are the stars, and the ones who will be stars one day, and then there’s the solid middle rank of the ones who’ve let go of their daydreams of glory but don’t have to worry about earning a living. And then there are the rest – the ones who have to live in constant fear of whether there’ll be a next engagement, for whom it’s certainly over when they start to get older. Sergej belongs to the third group.’

Hanne didn’t contradict. She let her defiant expression show how completely out of order she felt this conversation was. ‘I thought you wanted to find out something about Sergej, the person. You men have nothing in your heads beyond careers, really.’

‘How did Herr Mencke envisage his future?’

‘On the side he’d always done ballroom dancing and he told me once he’d like to start a dance school, a perfectly conventional one, for fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds.’

‘That also proves he couldn’t have done anything to himself. Think it through, Joschka. How’s he supposed to become a dance teacher minus a leg?’

‘Did you also know about his dancing school plans, Frau Fischer?’

‘Sergej played around with lots of ideas. He’s so brilliantly creative and has an incredible imagination. He could also imagine doing something completely different, breeding sheep in Provence, or something.’

They had to get back to rehearsal. They gave me their telephone numbers in case other questions came to me, asked whether I had plans for the evening, and promised to set aside a complimentary ticket for me at the door. I watched them go. Joschka moved with concentration and there was a spring in his step, Hanne trod lightly, as though walking on air. Admittedly, she’d talked, like, a lot of nonsense, but she walked with conviction, and I’d have liked to watch her dance that evening. But Pittsburgh was far too cold. I had a car take me to the airport, flew to New York, and got a return flight that same evening to Frankfurt. I think I’m too old for America.