The Sinner (23 page)

"Did Gereon call you?" she asked. When her aunt nodded she
went on: "How is he? Did he say anything about his arm? I stabbed
him twice, I think. One of the medics at the lido bandaged him up. It was quite a dressing - it covered the whole of his forearm.
Let's hope he'll be able to work with it, they're so busy at present.
Manni Weber can't handle things on his own. As for the old man,
forget it. You know what he's like. Talks big, but he doesn't know a
screwdriver from a pipe wrench."

Her aunt nodded again, bit her lip and finally brought the
conversation around to what had happened.

"Is there anything you need? Shall I get you a lawyer?"

Cora made a dismissive gesture. "Never mind that, but if you
could bring me a few things. Some clothes and my sponge bag.
The usual, you know what I mean."

"No, I don't know," Margret Rosch snapped suddenly. "What's
`the usual' when you're going to jail? This isn't a vacation, Cora.
Do me a favour and tell these people the truth. Don't worry about
anyone else, think of yourself for once. Tell them what happened
five years ago. Tell them why you left home that August - they'll
understand. Tell them everything."

"I already did."

"I don't believe you."

Cora calmly shrugged her shoulders. "Forget it, then. Leave me
alone. Pretend Mother was right and I'm dead."

She was silent for some seconds. Then she said quietly: "Will you
talk to Father? He'll have to be told, and I'd sooner you did it. But
break it to him gently. Tell him I'm all right. I don't want him to get
upset. I don't want him coming here either."

Margret Rosch merely nodded, then cast a yearning glance at
the door. Grovian escorted her out and thanked her for her help.
He meant it too. Johnny, heroin, brutally beaten, thrown out of a
car on the move ... He should be able to make something of that,
not to mention the sound of the other girl's ribs snapping.

The dialogue between aunt and niece had also been informative.
It illustrated the family's displacement mechanisms. When push
came to shove, they preferred to talk about the weather.

Grovian was fairly sure that Margret Rosch could have told him
a bit more - at least about "the Saviour, Mary Magdalene and
all that rubbish". It puzzled him that Cora Bender seemed solely concerned to satisfy herself of her aunt's silence on these matters,
even though she herself had talked at length about them.

He mentally corrected himself. No, she had only talked about
the crucifix. He distinctly recalled how her face had twitched when
she mentioned the Saviour in connection with the penitent Mary
Magdalene and how she had promptly initiated a diversion by
asking for some water in her coffee.

Not being very well versed in the Bible, he wondered what
significance could be attached to a minor biblical figure if, five years
after appearing as Satan with the serpent, Georg Frankenberg had
now functioned as the Saviour. But it didn't pay to brood on the
subject.

A trauma! Without realizing it, he'd touched her on the raw
It really wasn't his job to meddle with that trauma - that was a
medical responsibility. Grovian never made the same mistake
twice. She wouldn't collapse at his feet again. You had to know
your own limits, and he had reached his. Or so he thought.

Margret's visits were a mixed blessing from my point of view. She
came too seldom and never stayed long enough to really change
anything. She came bearing hope for Father but took it away with
her when she went home.

I scarcely remember her visits in my early years. There couldn't
have been many of them, and she usually turned up accompanied
by a very old woman, my grandmother. They always brought some
cakes with them. Mother took them and put them in the larder with
the bread. What happened to them after that, only Mother and the
Saviour knew Those early visits brought me no concessions, so I
found them rather a nuisance. My grandmother kept on asking me
if I was a good girl, if I obeyed my mother and father and always
did as I was told. I nodded every time and felt relieved when she
and my aunt went away again.

Then, for the first time, Margret came on her own, my grandmother having died in the interim. We talked together during that
visit. She wanted to know if I enjoyed school, if my marks were
good, what subject I liked best, whether I liked sleeping in the same
room as my father, and whether I could draw her a picture of him
because she didn't possess a photo of him.

I wasn't any good at drawing, so I painted her a matchstick man
holding a rake and a bucket. She asked what the long thing sticking
out of the matchstick man's side was, and I told her. That was the
way I saw him.

The rest of the time Margret spent with Mother. During the
day, at least, because Father had to work. Mother was strange for days after she left. I don't know how to describe it, but she seemed
frightened. She was thoroughly upset and subjected me to endless
lectures on "the true sins" - as if there weren't enough of the
others.

The true sins, said Mother, were carnal desires. This meant
nothing to me, being only nine years old. I thought it might have
something to do with the joint she'd had to roast for Margret's
benefit. Father had insisted on this, saying you couldn't feed a guest
on bean soup two days running. He'd carved two slices of beef
for himself and only one for me - the smallest, although Margret
pressed me to have another. "Or don't you like meat, Cora?"

Of course I liked meat, but it occurred to me that, if I had
another slice, Mother would give me an earful after she left. And
she did.

And then, a week after Margret's departure, a parcel arrived.
It was during the Christmas vacation, I remember distinctly. The
postman delivered it one morning, but Mother didn't dare open it
because it was addressed to Father. She put it away in the kitchen
cupboard until that evening, when Father came home and cut the
string with a grand gesture.

Margret's visit had changed him. A new wind was blowing in
our home, he kept saying. Seven lean years must be followed by
seven years of plenty, or if there'd been eight lean years, eight
years of plenty. By then he'd be old enough to go without for
good. I once heard him tell Mother: "If you don't give in soon,
I'll get calluses on my hands." Those strange remarks of his made
me feel uneasy. The people in our neighbourhood said Mother
was crazy, and they said it so I could hear. I was afraid Father was
also going mad.

He made a great song and dance about the parcel, almost as
if it contained a new heart for Magdalena. The contents turned
out to be sweets, some of which he handed around at once in
spite of Mother's grim expression. Magdalena got a little tube of
multicoloured chocolate candies - Smarties: I'd seen other girls
with them in the playground. I got a tube too. I was about to hand
it to Mother when Father gripped my wrist.

"They're yours," he said, "and you'll eat them. The rest we'll keep
for Christmas, then Mother won't have to betray her principles by
buying some herself."

As well as the sweets, Margret had included some other things
done up in coloured paper tied with ribbon, and attached to the
ribbon were little cards with our names on them. There was an
envelope on top.

It was the first letter from Margret that Father read aloud to
me, but not to me alone. Mother and Magdalena were also in the
kitchen. Mother had fetched both armchairs from the living room
and pushed them together so Magdalena could lie down. She
wasn't too well that day.

Margret wished us all a happy Christmas and a happy and,
above all, a healthy New Year. She was sorry her visit hadn't had
the desired result, but she hoped Mother would reflect on her
wifely duties and remember that the Saviour had never demanded
abstinence of his followers. Other people had claimed that later
on, but their only motive had been an unwillingness to distribute
the riches they'd amassed among their heirs. Mother was urged
to bear in mind that Father didn't have the other bedroom to
himself, and it would do no one any good if something untoward
occurred. She could well understand Mother's fear of becoming
pregnant again, but that needn't happen these days - there were
plenty of ways of avoiding it, and Margret felt sure the Saviour
approved of them. No one knew human nature better than He,
and sacrificing a second lamb would be a waste of which He could
never approve.

Father read all this aloud to us. Then he came to the presents.
Magdalena got a doll, a cloth doll with a funny face embroidered
with sewing cotton. She had big blue eyes, red cheeks and a
laughing mouthful of white teeth. Her hair consisted of yellow
knitting wool braided into thick plaits. Margret wished Magdalena
a face like the doll's, cheerful and healthy. Magdalena was allowed
to unwrap the doll at once with my help.

Meantime, Father tossed a little packet to Mother. "Better take
that into the living room," he said, "and ask Him if He objects to it." Mother didn't budge. The little packet bounced off her apron
and fell to the floor. Last of all, Father handed me my present. It
was a book: Alice in Wonderland.

I never got to read more than the title. It was too late to dip into
the book that evening, and the next day Mother asked me to put
it in the bucket and burn it in front of the altar. She didn't exactly
order me to; she preached me a sermon on Margret's letter and
the depraved ideas it contained. I must tell her at once if Father
exposed himself to me.

She's completely flipped, I thought. I'd known Father for so long,
after all, and I also knew by then that he was my real father. I looked
very like him and had long ceased to believe that the Adigars were
my family. So I merely nodded to everything Mother said.

I also nodded when she asked me if I didn't believe, as she did,
that all one needed in order to lead a full life was knowing the Book
of Books. I knew it almost by heart. Mother had told me so much
about the sins of mankind, they were coming out of my ears. And
now that I could read myself ... Oh, forget it!

She sent me to get the tin bucket and thrust the box of matches
into my hand. Then we watched as Alice in Wonderland was reduced
to a mound of ashes.

When Father came home late that afternoon and heard what had
happened, I'd never seen him fly into such a fury. I only understood
half of the things he said. He'd never expected a Tommy's whore
to turn into a walking prayer book, he told Mother. She used to
enjoy it once upon a time, he said. She'd not only welcomed the
insertion of what Nature had provided for the purpose but followed
it up with a knitting needle. Mother just stood there, frozen-faced. I
felt sorry for her somehow.

Father and I sat together at the kitchen table for a long time
afterwards while Mother did the washing up. He told me the story
of Alice in Wonderland, although he didn't know it at all. He made
up a completely new story about a girl whose mother went mad
and wanted to drive the whole family insane. The girl didn't like
living at home, but she couldn't run away because she was still too
young and had no money, so she made up a world of her own. She invented imaginary people and talked to them although they
didn't exist.

"Then the girl was as mad as her mother," I said.

Father smiled. "Yes, probably, but how could she fail to be, with a
mother like that? If you never see or hear anything else, it's hardly
surprising."

Magdalena was in the kitchen too, stretched out in the two
armchairs as before. She was recovering from a hard day: two
enemas whose only result had been a stomach ache. She'd listened
attentively, glancing at Father and Mother in turn. The thing was,
she knew the story of Alice in Wonderland.

On one occasion, the hospital nurse who ensured that she was
sometimes allowed to play with other children had pushed her
wheelchair into a room where another mother was reading the
book aloud to her sick child. Although she'd mentioned this to me
later, she didn't tell me what Alice in Wonderland was really about. I
didn't ask her, not wanting to know.

Father smiled at her and said: "How's our little sweetheart
today?"

Magdalena didn't reply. By this time she spoke to me often but
seldom to Mother and never to him. Mother answered for her.
"She's not well. How could she be anything else, in a house where
no one obeys the Lord's commandments?"

"You obey them, don't you?" said Father. He was still fuming.
"But you must show me the commandment in question. I can't
recall ever having read that the Lord commanded a child to burn
a book. Book-burning was cultivated by the Inquisition and the
Nazis. Strange company you keep!"

Mother just looked at him. He nodded to himself, bowed his
head and stared at the tabletop. "But to revert to this Saviour of
yours," he said after a while. "Didn't he say `Unless you become
like little children ...'? I think he said something of the kind. If
you obey his words to the letter, don't just cherry-pick the ones
that suit you. Children like to do something occasionally apart
from crossing themselves. If we're going to have to part with one
of ours - and we'll have to sooner or later, you know that as well as I do - I want the other to be as hale and hearty as possible. I
should have listened to those doctors, then it would have been
over long ago. Then you could be performing your daft antics in
the graveyard."