Sorry (27 page)

“I haven’t been here for ages.”

As it’s a weekday, there are only a few mothers with strollers walking around. Two old men sit on a bench with a box of red wine between them. Wolf has the feeling that the park hasn’t changed since his youth.

They walk past the playground and the newsstand and head for the war memorial. Just before they get there, they turn off onto a path that leads straight down to the water.

“In there.”

Tamara points to the dense bushes by a weeping willow and plunges into the undergrowth. Behind the bushes there is a tiny patch of grass that leads to the water and offers just enough room for two people. The grass is screened from the path by bushes. A row of old residential buildings and the hotel can be seen on the opposite shore.

Tamara crouches on the shore as she crouched by the coffin, and lays the rose on the water. For a moment it bobs up and down, then it moves out toward the middle of the lake. Wolf squats down next to Tamara.

“Good plan.”

“Thanks.”

A duck swims toward the rose, bumps it once with its beak, and swims on. Wolf and Tamara stand up at the same time, bump into each other, and almost fall into the lake. Wolf puts an arm around Tamara. He’s surprised when she presses herself against him. He feels her breath on his neck, smells that scent that has always been a mystery to him.
How can she smell so good?
In her scent he finds the whole day. The grief, the weariness, and the fury. He pulls Tamara closer to him and buries his face in her hair. For a second she flinches, his breath in her ear.
Hungry, he’s hungry
. His lower body presses against hers, Tamara doesn’t flinch, even when she feels his erection she stays close to him. Her lips wander over his neck, his hand runs through her hair and pulls her head back so that she’s forced to look at him. They are both breathing heavily, both waiting for the next step.

“Here?”

“Here.”

He lies on the damp grass with the Lietzensee at his feet. He doesn’t care who’s watching from the houses opposite, he doesn’t care if the
hotel is selling tickets to the show. He only has eyes for Tamara, who is moving above him and looking down on him as if it were something she did every day. They aren’t in despair any more, their grief is drifting like the rose on the surface of the Lietzensee, and moving further and further away from them. It’s pure pleasure. Her hands on his chest, her eyes closed, and whenever she looks at him he smiles, and she closes her eyes again to hold on to this moment for as long as possible.

“Come whenever you want.”

He doesn’t think about it. He too wants to hold on to this moment and wishes Frauke could see him now.
For you
, he wants to say,
whatever else we have done wrong, we’re doing this right, and hope you understand, I really do
. Tamara’s movements become more demanding, Wolf tries to stay calm, his left hand grips the back of her neck, his right is on her bottom. Someone somewhere whistles. Tamara laughs, her lips on his mouth, her moaning in his mouth, his moaning in hers, and then she holds still.
Deep
. Deep, so deep inside her that there’s no going forward or backward.
There
. They look at each other. Tamara tenses her muscles and smiles.
As if she knows very well who I am and why I’m here
. Wolf loses himself in this smile. They’ve both arrived, they’re both there.

“A
ND, HOW ARE YOU
?”

Karl has regained his composure. He has ordered a beer from the waiter, and drained the glass and actually regained his composure. From the way he asks you the question you understand that he has no idea who you really are. Yes, he has seen the photograph, and you’re sitting in front of him, but he doesn’t know who you really are. It was the same with Fanni. It’s a mystery how these two people could be so cruel and mechanical, without seriously engaging with the children they destroyed.

“I’m not so great,” you say.

Fichtner nods as if he understands. He says you haven’t changed.

“You’ve grown, but …”

He falls silent, his chin quivers.

“I’m so sorry. I … I don’t know what I …”

Again that silence, interrupted only by the clattering of plates and the murmur of voices in the restaurant. Your stomach is churning, your hands are so damp that you have to wipe them on your trouser legs. All
this isn’t right, it shouldn’t be like this.
Repentance?
You don’t want to see this man collapse, you don’t want his pity. It’s all wrong.

Fichtner says he has to go to the bathroom.

“I don’t want anyone to see me like this,” he explains with a weary smile, pointing at his eyes. You resist sympathy, you resist the desire to follow him to the bathroom.

When Fichtner comes back to the table a few minutes later, he suggests going somewhere else. It’s almost as if he can read your thoughts. If he could do that, he’d run away right now.

You pay, Fichtner waits for you outside the restaurant.

“Have you got a car?”

You shake your head, you’re relieved it’s so easy. All those days that you spent on research have paid off. You should have tracked Fichtner down earlier, but you wanted to be quite sure. As far as you’re concerned there’s nothing worse than amateurish work.

The two of you stop by Fichtner’s car, it’s a different make, and the paint isn’t red. You get in and fasten your seat belts. Fichtner sets off without telling you where you’re going.

A new closeness emerged from the remains of the old friendship. When the flat below Butch’s came free at the end of the year, Sundance moved to Charlottenburg. They finished their studies, took a month to travel through Asia, and spent more and more time together over the years that followed. It was almost too perfect.

You’re aware that it’s hard to sum up two people’s lives. Years don’t count, everything depends on events. The bad days and the good. If you look back on the lives of Butch and Sundance, you can say for certain that the years they spent together were the best ones. No distance between them, a wonderful kind of closeness.

Of course they also went through crises, they argued and insulted each other, but those were superficial rows which didn’t last longer than a day, and for which they always found a solution. If anyone had asked Sundance at the time, he couldn’t have said what could ever have come between him and Butch. Friends had become brothers. There were no secrets between them. That was why Sundance was completely unprepared

Butch called one morning from his office. He needed some important papers, he was stuck in a meeting and couldn’t get away.

“If you’re anywhere near the apartment.”

Sundance promised to drop the papers off around lunchtime. An hour later he opened the door to Butch’s flat and hesitated for a moment when he realized he was stepping inside his friend’s apartment on his own for the first time. Everything looked as it always did. Butch lived in a meticulously orderly fashion. His socks were sorted in drawers, nothing was at an awkward angle on the clothes rails, and even the toiletries in the bathroom were arranged according to a system.

If you think about it today, you put everything that happened next down to curiosity and forget that bad timing was also a significant factor in this. If Sundance hadn’t had time to spare that day, if Butch hadn’t gotten through to him, if Butch hadn’t forgotten his papers …

Sundance found the papers on the living room table and noticed the chaos in front of the television. A wineglass had tipped over and left a stain on the carpet, and there were lots of crumpled tissues next to it. One of the drawers in the chest was half pulled out. Sundance pulled it all the way out and saw narrow DVD cases. They were facing downwards and had no titles. Sundance opened one of the cases. The DVD inside had no title either.

I’ll go now
, he thought,
I won’t look at my best friend’s porn collection, let’s be clear about that
.

But that was exactly what he did. He took the DVD out of its case, put it in the player, and turned on the television. With a feeling of guilt, against his own better instincts, but also with a lot of curiosity.

Butch was new to the advertising agency and wanted to prove himself, which was why he didn’t leave work before eight every day. Today was to be no exception, although Butch was confused. Sundance hadn’t just failed to bring him the papers, he hadn’t replied to his repeated calls, either. Butch was worried. Even at Sundance’s work no one knew where he was.

At ten past eight Butch left his office and took the elevator to the underground garage. He pulled out from his parking space and was about to drive off when the passenger door was yanked open and Sundance got in. Butch braked. Sundance told him to drive on, so Butch took his foot off the brake and drove on. At the first lights he looked at Sundance. His friend was freezing, it had been a rainy day, his hair stuck to his head like a helmet, spittle had dried to white crumbs at the corners of his mouth. Butch was aware of a sour, bitter smell.

“What’s up with—”

He got no further, because Sundance grabbed him by the back of the head, his fingers clawing at his hair.

“Hey, slow down, what’s—”

“Shut your mouth,” said Sundance. “Just keep your mouth shut, OK?”

It was only when Butch nodded that Sundance let go of him. For the rest of the journey no one spoke. Sundance drummed his feet on the floor, he stared at the road and looked as if he were supercharged. When Butch found a parking place by the law court, he thought for a few seconds about running away. But who runs away from his best friend?

“We’re going to my place,” said Sundance.

They walked into Sundance’s apartment. In the kitchen Butch had to sit down on a chair.

“Can I talk again now?” he asked. “You can.”

“What’s all this shit about?”

Sundance reached under the table and took out a plastic bag.

“Open it,” he said.

Butch looked into the plastic bag and closed his eyes.

It turned out to be a long night. The DVDs lay between them the whole time like a sacrificial offering, while Butch talked about his addiction. He repeated himself. He kept calling it his addiction, and Sundance felt ill every time he heard those words. As if it were an illness, as if anyone could be infected and develop it. Butch insisted that he couldn’t shake it off, he’d tried everything, but there was still this hunger.

“I’m hungry for it. Without it my life is empty, without it I don’t work properly.”

“But they’re children,” said Sundance.

“I know they’re children, but I—”

“
THEY’RE CHILDREN
!” Sundance suddenly yelled at him. “
CAN’T YOU SEE THAT
?”

Butch started crying, it was pitiful, it was the saddest thing that Sundance had ever experienced. And there was nothing he could do. He could shout his head off, he could hammer the table, it wouldn’t help.

Butch made one promise after another. He would change. He saw things clearly now. He admitted that it had always scared him, but he couldn’t shake it. He was addicted now, and hungry and—

Sundance wanted to know where he got the films.

“I stumbled on them by chance. On the internet. You can find this kind of thing everywhere if you look hard enough.”

“Since when?”

“A year or two.”

“Since when?” Sundance interrupted.

“Three years, I swear, no more than three years. Maybe four. I can’t remember exactly.”

“You can’t
remember
? How can you lie to me? And what do you mean,
stumbled on them by chance
? You find child pornography if you really look for it, you don’t just stumble over it by
chance!
I want to know where you got this filth. I want the addresses. I want the exact addresses!”

Butch lowered his head, he was ashamed, and Sundance couldn’t stand the sight of him any more. He swept the DVDs onto the floor. He was about to knock the table over, but whatever he did, the images had taken root in his memory and wouldn’t go away.

He had looked at two of the DVDs, there were thirty-four of them in all. Short films. Children having sex with children. Adults having sex with children. Adults having sex and children watching them and then having to join in. Sundance didn’t know what to do with himself. He knew what needed to be done, and he knew he couldn’t do it. And of course that was the very question Butch asked.

“You’re not going to turn me in, are you?”

“How can you even ask me that?”

“I only mean that if you turn me in, then—”

Butch stopped talking. He leaned forward as if he had stomach pains. Sundance felt the need to put his hand on his shoulder and reassure him, but at the same time he resisted it. He didn’t want to be soft and indulgent at any price. He didn’t want to forgive. He wasn’t ready for that yet.

This business needs to be sorted out
, he thought,
this business can’t just be apologized away
.

“You really jerk off while you watch them?” he said.

Butch looked up, his face pale, pearls of sweat on his forehead, his lips almost drained of blood.

“Of course I jerk off, it turns me on.”

“And what about the blood?”

After Sundance had looked at the DVDs, he picked up the tissues from the floor and expected them to be stuck together with sperm. There was more than sperm.

“What’s with the blood?” Sundance probed.

Butch got up; Sundance could see that his knees were trembling. Butch pulled his jeans down. There were cuts on the inside of his thighs. Two of the wounds were fresh.

“It’s part of it,” he said and stood there pitifully with his trousers down. “It’s just part of it.”

You keep wondering whether there might not have been a chance to change the course of events at that point. As a child you often tried making the rain in the garden flow in different directions. You could dig as many trenches as you like and divert the rain streams, but as soon as your attention wavered for a moment the rain went its own way again. You don’t know what would have happened if Sundance had been tougher that day. What if he’d turned Butch in? Would it all have been different? Sundance knew what Butch had been through. He would have been inhuman not to have shown some understanding of Butch’s situation. He couldn’t turn him in. So he tried to take control.