Sorry (9 page)

“How could you be so sure it would work?” Wolf wants to know. “Guys like Hessmann eat you for breakfast, what were you thinking of?”

Kris is surprised by Wolf’s reaction.

“I had nothing to lose,” he replies. “And I think it’s a good thing for him to bleed a bit.”

Wolf lets that idea run through his head for a moment.

“I have the feeling that all this apologizing is turning into something personal for you.”

“A bit personal can’t hurt,” Kris admits. “Be honest, it isn’t just a question of apologizing. It’s about understanding. What’s the point of apologizing if the other person doesn’t sense that you’re serious about it?”

“You say understanding, Kris, but you mean empathy.”

“No, with empathy you’re private, while we stay detached. We can’t afford empathy, which is why Tamara’s unsuited for the job. You fit in much better. You have a superficiality about you that’s emotionally cool, relatively speaking.”

“Hey, how convenient.”

“You know what I mean.”

Wolf nods. Kris can get away with saying things like that.

“So you’re sticking with understanding?”

“Understanding with a hint of sympathy.”

Wolf rubs his neck.

“It’s still a hard job for me. I’m pursued by ghosts. Before and after each commission. Often for hours.”

Kris thinks about how it is for him. He doesn’t see ghosts, and if he’s perfectly honest, the commission ends there and then. But he doesn’t want to rub it in.

“No one said it would be easy to apologize on other people’s behalf. If it was easy, someone would have thought of it ages ago. I reckon we’ll soon be condemned by the church. We deliver absolution and bring light to dark souls.”

“And we’re more expensive.”

“Yes, we’re more expensive, but that doesn’t mean anyone has to fall on their knees and thank us in the evening. And think about how many people we’ve brought happiness to already. On both sides. Perpetrators and victims. We’re the good guys. Look at our commissions. If we weren’t the good guys, we wouldn’t be booked up for months in advance. Guilt seeps from people’s pores. Wolf, we’re the new forgiveness. Forget religion. We mediate between guilt and remorse. You can bet your ass that we’re the good guys.”

Four days after the Hessmann commission, Julia Lambert gets the job and sends Kris a thank-you card. A week later there’s a check from Hessmann in the mailbox. He’s added a bonus to the fee. Wolf kisses the check over and over again, until Frauke tells him to stop or the bank won’t accept it.

And at this point we leave Wolf and Frauke briefly. We leave Tamara, reading on the sofa, and Kris, in the shower a floor above. It’s time for you to enter this story. Through a back door. Like a ghost rising out of the floor and taking the stage.

Welcome.

Y
OU FIRST LEARN ABOUT
the agency over lunch. You’re sitting with your boss and three other colleagues in a restaurant on Potsdamer Platz. The restaurant isn’t to your taste. Too loud and too chic. Once a week your boss plans a lunch for you, it’s a quirk he has. He thinks a bit of foodie culture can’t hurt.

You’ve just ordered when your boss mentions the agency. For a few seconds a high-pitched noise rings in your ears and you have the feeling that reality is trembling; it lurches for a moment before coming
to a standstill again with a scraping sound. You study the frozen faces around you and wonder what would happen if your heart stopped at a moment like that and you died. Would you really be dead? Would you have disappeared from reality? Then someone laughs, then someone says it’s all nonsense, and time is time again, and you’re sitting with your colleagues at the table and you raise your water glass to your lips even though it’s empty. Your colleagues don’t notice a thing. You quickly set your glass back down again, a waiter leans toward you and pours you some water. You ignore him and laugh with the others. It sounds like a joke. An agency that apologizes. You say something now too, you say:

“Oh, come off it.”

“No, no, it isn’t a joke,” your boss assures you, passing you the bread. “It’s the latest thing. A lot of big companies are working with them already. I’ve heard it firsthand. I wouldn’t even be surprised if we used them one day.”

You all shake your heads in disbelief; the idea is ridiculous, unimaginable; all the things people come up with. You spread butter on your bread, sit still and look like someone spreading butter on some bread. Inside you’re in turmoil.
What if it’s true?
you wonder.
What then?
Your boss surprises you by reading your thoughts and says:

“Look on the internet. They must even have a homepage.”

A search on Google brings up 1,288 entries. The agency’s name is Sorry. Their homepage is only one page long. A short text, e-mail address, and phone number. You run your eyes over the comments on the agency but don’t click on them, because you don’t need the opinion of outsiders.
An agency that apologizes …

All those months, days, hours, minutes. Every second is a weight around your neck. Resistance is difficult. How many times have you wanted to fall on your knees? Always resisting, always bracing yourself. It’s understandable that you’re tired. Anyone else would be tired too, many would have given up, but you’re stubborn, and well on the way to freeing yourself of your guilt. You’ve found a way. You’ve only just figured out what needs to be done, and that same day in the restaurant you hear about an agency that apologizes in return for payment. Isn’t that ironic? Would we talk about coincidence or synchronicity? Do you want to enter into a discussion about the elements of fate?

No
.

• • •

Your fingers tremble as you dial the number. It took you four days to accept the agency’s existence. Four days of stomach pains. Four days when you wanted to pummel the walls with your fists. You’re so nervous that you hang up after a single ring. You laugh. You’re aware that you’re overreacting. You’re not sixteen years old and calling the love of your life. You calm down and press redial.

“This is Sorry. Tamara Berger speaking. How can I help?”

“My name is Lars Meybach, I wanted to ask exactly how you operate,” you say, pressing your hand to your mouth to suppress a nervous giggle.

“The procedure’s very simple,” Tamara tells you. “We listen to what you want to apologize for, who it’s to, and what’s to be said. After this detailed discussion, we send one of our colleagues to see you. He fulfills the commission and—”

“How do I know that your colleague will fulfill the commission to my satisfaction?” you interrupt.

“Trust,” she replies without a moment’s hesitation. “Of course you can also ask for a report, then we put the conversation in writing and send you the report.”

“Sounds interesting. What’s the catch?”

“The only catch is that we don’t take personal requests. Is it a private or a business problem?”

“Business,” you lie. “Definitely business.”

“Wonderful. Should I mail you a copy of our standard business terms?”

You weren’t prepared for that. It’s all happening very quickly. Too quickly.

Don’t hang up!

You switch the receiver to your other hand and ask:

“Is everyone at the agency as nice as you?”

“No, just me, unfortunately. If you heard the others you’d never call us again.”

She laughs; you like her laugh.

“Miss Berger—”

“Tamara,” she says.

“OK, Tamara, I’ve got a really pressing problem, and I’m not sure whether you can really help me. How fast is your agency?”

“How pressing is it?”

“Very.”

“Then we’re very fast,” she promises.

Minutes later you’ve printed out and read the business terms and the application form. You log on to your bank and transfer the advance payment to the agency’s account. The pace of it all takes your breath away. It’s going to happen in ten days’ time. You still can’t get your head around it.

To concentrate on your text, you sit down on the balcony and take a deep breath. You think of the mirrors hanging in your flat. You think about how long it’s been since you could look yourself in the eye. Two months, twenty-six days, eleven hours.

You pick up the pen and fill out the form.

The words have to be right.

Every sentence is important.

H
IS ROOM IS AT
the end of the corridor. His name is in brightly colored wooden letters on the door. Frank. He lives in his mother’s flat. On the walls there are pictures of guardian angels. Pink little fatties, lowering their heads in prayer; stormy angels, bathed in light. Soft filters and kitsch. The whole flat smells of air freshener, all the curtains are drawn, and a budgerigar sings from a tiny cage.

The mother adjusts her skirt, she can’t look Wolf in the eye. Her son is single, thirty-six years old, and a failure. She doesn’t know what she did wrong. Her hand trembles slightly as she pours out the coffee. Cups with floral patterns and gold rims. One of the cups has a crack at the top, and a dark lipstick stain can be seen in the crack. Wolf is glad it isn’t his cup. A glass of powdered milk is pushed in front of him. Wolf pushes it back. At last the mother starts talking. Her son is working at Lidl now, stacking shelves. He hopes to make it to cashier this year. Wolf isn’t learning anything new here. There isn’t a photograph of the son anywhere in the living room.

“It was all different in the old days,” says the mother and touches the coffeepot with the back of her hand to check that it’s really hot enough.

Wolf knows how different it was. Her son’s decline occurred incredibly quickly. There are still idiots who think they can surf the internet and download sex clips without anyone finding out. And then there are idiots who go in search of child pornography during their lunch break. The company sacked Frank Löffler without hesitation. Until September his monthly income was 3,377 euros before tax, a week later he was clearing the shelves at the discount supermarket for 9 euros an hour.

“He works till eight,” his mother says, “but he should soon have a break.”

By the door she clutches Wolf’s arm for a second.

“Luckily there wasn’t a scandal. I wouldn’t have survived a scandal under any circumstances.”

Frank Löffler looks exactly as you would imagine. Widow’s peak, belly hanging over his belt, greasy hair. His eyes are never still, his handshake is slack. After Wolf introduces himself, Löffler says he hasn’t got a break for twenty minutes and could they meet outside.

“The management doesn’t like us talking to the customers.”

“I’ll be over there,” Wolf says, crossing the street to a laundromat. He’s always liked laundromats. They’re like waiting rooms for people who never travel. Wolf gets a hot chocolate from the machine. Around him the washing swirls in the drums. A woman is sleeping on two chairs, she looks uncomfortable. Wolf wishes he’d brought something to read. He wonders when he was last in a place like this. Once he and a friend tried to break into a vending machine in the laundromat on the Kaiserdamm. Screwdriver and jimmy. They gave up after a quarter of an hour, when the screwdriver got stuck in the metal and wouldn’t come out again. They shared a hot chocolate and then cleared off. Sixteen years later Wolf is sitting in a laundromat on an uncomfortable plastic chair, checking his e-mails on his cell phone. Life is plainly treating him well.

Frank Löffler arrives on the dot. He steps outside the supermarket and looks up and down the street as if he doesn’t know what to do next. Wolf can understand why the company fired him. Frank Löffler is a born victim.

They walk around the block and past a playground. The children are screeching and throwing sand at a dog. Löffler tries not to look. He says he’s received threatening letters. One night a stone came through his car windshield. The neighbors saw nothing; they say it’s what you get.

“This is a respectable area,” Löffler explains, as if he understands people’s reaction. It makes things even worse because he’s innocent.

“I’m here because with that conversation your file will have vanished,” Wolf says.

“You’re clean, or cleansed, or whatever you want to call it.”

Löffler doesn’t react; he probably didn’t understand. Wolf wants to shake him.

“The world’s your oyster again,” he says instead, as if Löffler had spent the last year in jail.

Löffler’s face flickers for a second, his hands move in his trouser pockets as if they wanted to come out. Wolf waits to be asked what happened. It takes a whole minute, then Löffler clears his throat:

“What happened?”

Four months after his dismissal the same download was discovered on another PC. The perpetrator wasn’t revealed, because he was a clever co-worker who sat down at his colleagues’ desks at lunchtime and scoured the internet as he saw fit. The company didn’t know what to do and installed blockers. No one mentioned Frank Löffler. It was as if he had never existed. For six months the head of the company lived with the fact of having fired the wrong man and reported him to the police. Then his conscience got the better of him. He dropped the accusation and turned to the agency.

“And they don’t know who it was?” asks Löffler.

“One of your colleagues, that’s all we know.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway.”

Wolf agrees.

“How much?” Frank Löffler wants to know.

“Eighty thousand.”

He stops.

“As an apology?”

“As an apology.”

They’re a few yards away from the supermarket entrance. Wolf knows what Frank Löffler is thinking now. He’s wondering if he should take it to court. If he asked, Wolf would advise him against it. They aren’t in America. The company would say it was a mistake and apologize. There would be a headline in the
Berliner Zeitung
and
Bild
would just wearily wave it away. Everyone’s allowed to make mistakes. And anyway, who’s to say that Frank Löffler wasn’t one of those people?

“My mother mustn’t find out anything about this,” he begs Wolf, suddenly leans against the wall of the house and gasps for air, like someone who’s just emerged from the water.