Bernhard Schlink - Self's Deception

“It all sounds nice and fine, doesn't it?” she said, looking at me distressed. “But have you ever thought what interpreting really means? Inter is Latin for cutting between two things, plunging into, slashing through. And pretium means punishment, retribution, just deserts. That's what I've been trained for: slashing and punishing.”

“Nonsense, Leo. I don't know what the exact etymology is, but I'm sure it's not that. If it had such a dark origin, why would it have become the term for the harmless activity of translating the spoken word?”

“You think translation is harmless?”

I didn't know what to say.

Leo arranging and rearranging her things on the table in the prison, speaking of herself as a stranger, holding her hair under my nose, saying wild things about interpreting-what was I to think? She didn't wait for my answer, but went on talking. By the time we got back to the car, she had given me a full lecture on her theory of translation that I didn't understand, and when I'd asked whether this theory came from Professor Leider, she filled me in on his strengths, weaknesses, and habits, and also on his wife, secretary, and colleagues.

“Do you have a particular hairdresser in mind?” I asked.

“You choose one for me, Gerhard.”

Ever since I've lived in Mannheim, I've gone to a barber in the Schwetzinger Strasse and been satisfied. He has grown old along with me, and his fingers tremble, but the few hairs on my head don't challenge his capacity. He'd never do for Leo, though. I remembered that on my way to the Herschelbad I always passed a salon shining with chrome. That's where we'd go.

The young hairstylist greeted Leo as if he'd met her at a party the day before. Me he treated with the elegant respect befitting whatever I might be: her grandfather, father, or elderly gentleman friend. “You can wait here if you like,” he said to me, “but perhaps you might prefer to return in about an hour?”

I sauntered over to the Paradeplatz, bought a Süddeutsche Zeitung , and read it at the Café Journal over an ice cream and an espresso. In the science section, I learned that cockroaches lead warm and caring family lives-we wrong them by abhorring them. Then I saw the bottle of sambuca on the shelf behind the bar. I drank one glass to Leo's health, another to her freedom, and a third to her new hairstyle. It's amazing how a shot or two of sambuca can make the world click into place. An hour later I was back at the salon.

“One more minute!” the Figaro called out from behind the partition, where he could see me, but I couldn't see him. I sat down. “One more minute and we'll be ready!”

I know that women leave salons looking quite different from the way they go in. After all, that's why they go there. I also know that afterward they are usually miserable. They need time-they need our admiration and enthusiasm. Any snide or critical remark, let alone a sarcastic one, must be avoided at all costs. As a daring Indian brave must never show pain, a daring participant at the premiere of a hairstyle must never show shock.

For a second I didn't recognize Leo. For a second I thought that the young woman with the buzz cut was someone else, and so dropped my attentive, enthusiastic expression. By the time I recognized her and quickly reinstated it, it was too late.

“ You don't like it ?” she said to me in English.

“Oh, no, I do! There is something strict and piquant about you now. Yes, you remind me of the women in those French existentialist movies of the fifties, and at the same time you look younger and more tender, more delicate. I-”

“No, you don't like it! ”

She said it so emphatically that I lost courage. What I had told her wasn't entirely false, either. I liked those women in French existentialist movies, and Leo's new look had something of their vulnerable determination. I also liked her head-its beautiful shape was now revealed by the brushlike hair that had been truncated to a finger's breadth. I had loved her curls, but if they were gone they were gone. Curls invite you to plunge your hand into them, while a buzz cut invites you to sweep your hand over it-more appropriate in the circumstances. If only Leo didn't look so shorn, though. She had the air of an inmate of a prison or a psychiatric ward, and that frightened me.

“Okay, let's go.”

I paid, we went to the car, and we drove home.

“Would you like to lie down and rest awhile?”

“Why not.”

She lay down on the couch. Its leather is cool, and even in the heat of summer allows for the cozy comfort of a light blanket. I covered her up and opened the balcony door wide. Turbo came in, crossed the room, jumped up onto the couch, and curled up beside her. Leo had closed her eyes.

I tiptoed into the kitchen. I sat down at the table, opened the newspaper, and pretended to read. The tap was dripping. A fat fly was buzzing at the window.

Then I heard Leo crying quietly. Was she crying herself to sleep? I listened and waited. Her crying grew louder, smooth, throaty, moaning, and wailing. I went back into the living room, sat down next to her, talked to her, held and caressed her. She stopped sobbing, but the tears continued to flow. After a while her wailing started up again, surged, and ebbed. This went on and on. Her tears never dried.

For a long time I didn't want to face that I wasn't equal to the situation. But then her wailing became so intense that she had trouble breathing. I called Philipp. He suggested that I talk to Eberlein. Eberlein told me to take her immediately to the State Psychiatric Hospital. On the way there she continued crying. She stopped as I walked her from the car to the old building.

On the way home I cried.

It was to be a long, hot summer. For two weeks I took Brigitte and Manu to a beach resort, collected shells and starfish, and built a sand castle. Otherwise, I sat on my balcony a lot. I met Eberhard in the Luisenpark to play chess, and went out fishing with Philipp on his yacht. I occasionally practiced playing the flute or baking Christmas cookies. On a courageous day I went to the dentist. Tooth three-seven could be saved, and I was spared a removable prosthesis. Cases in the summer months had always come somewhat reluctantly. Now that I am older, they come very reluctantly indeed. I don't have to retire-I can just let my practice peter out.

In September the trial of Helmut Lemke, Richard Ingo Peschkalek, and Bertram Mohnhoff-the so-called Käfertal terrorist trial-began at the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court. The newspapers were pleased with everything: the quick police investigation, the speedy court proceedings, and the terrorists who were eager to confess. Lemke was dignified and remorseful, Mohnhoff childishly eager. Only Peschkalek dug in his heels: He had had nothing to do with Wendt's death, he had not met up with him in Wieblingen, and the gun had not been in his possession. But then the news broke that the gun in question had been found during repair work in the Böck-strasse behind a brick in his apartment's firewall. When he presented the court with his version of the accident it didn't go over too well, even though the forensics couldn't exclude the possibility that Wendt had been killed not by the bullet but by a fall. Peschkalek was given twelve years, Lemke ten, and Mohnhoff eight. The newspapers were pleased with that, too. The lead writer of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung praised the idea the constitutional state had established by building bridges to repentant terrorists, bridges that were both golden and thorny.

I didn't go to the trial. Trials-like surgical procedures, holy masses, and sexual encounters-are events that I either participate in or stay away from. Not that I have anything against public trials, but I would feel like a voyeur.