Bernhard Schlink - Self's Deception

After the trial was over I got a phone call from Nägelsbach. “These are the last evenings of summer where one can sit outside. Would you like to come over?”

We sat beneath the pear tree and made small talk. The Nägelsbachs were as little interested as I was about how and where we had spent our vacations-they in the mountains, I on a beach.

“How is Leonore Salger doing?” Frau Nägelsbach asked suddenly.

“I'm still not allowed to see her. But I called Eberlein the other day-he's been reinstated as director of the hospital now that the trial's over. He doesn't know when she'll be released, but he's certain that she will get well again and be able to complete her studies and lead a normal life.” I hesitated.

“Why don't you put your cards on the table, Herr Self?” Frau Nägelsbach said. “If you and my husband don't clear this matter up now, you never will.”

“But Reni, I think-” Nägelsbach began.

“That goes for you, too.”

He and I looked at each other uncomfortably. Needless to say, Frau Nägelsbach was right. Frau Nägelsbach was always right. But we both wondered whether it was already too late.

I gave myself a push. “So you knew about the condition Leo was in?”

“She was acting very strangely. During the interrogations there were moments when she seemed completely elsewhere, as if she didn't see or hear us. At times she'd talk up a storm, and then again you'd have to wring every single word out of her. Rawitz said right away that she was insane and that her lawyer would have to be an all-out idiot for her to get convicted. That's why he couldn't stop laughing when you were so set on freeing her. I and the others, however, weren't so sure she'd get off.” He hesitated. Now he, too, gave himself a push. “What's the deal with Peschkalek's material? Do you have it, or was it lost in the fire?”

“Self, the deceiver? I guess that would fit nicely. Lemke and Peschkalek deceived Leo and her friends, the police and the Federal and the Public Prosecutor's Office deceived the courts, perhaps the courts played along and did their bit of deceiving, and the deceived public heralds its deceivers. Is there even any poison gas in Viernheim?”

Nägelsbach looked at me angrily. Then he looked angrily at his wife. “You see, he has no intention of revealing anything- all he wants to do is to hurt me!” Then he looked angrily at me again. “I don't like it either when underhanded little tricks are being played, and I've been unhappy about the Käfertal terrorist case from the start, just as the others were. But we tried to deal with everything as best we could. You, on the other hand…first you wheedle your head out of the noose, and then that of Leonore Salger. Perhaps they couldn't have found her guilty. But even so, now that she has checked herself into the psychiatric hospital of her own volition, and will be free to leave of her own volition, she's in a better position than if a judge had had her committed, not to mention that she's been spared a trial. My compliments, Herr Self. And how does that make you feel? Would you say that the rules that apply to all of us don't apply to you? If so, your deception of yourself is far worse than your deception of others.” He read his wife's glance as a summons to pull in his horns. “No Reni, it's high time that all this was put on the table. He's just sitting here, a successful deceiver, and considers himself above the deception of the police. Are you claiming that the wrong people were convicted? And can you deny that you and Leonore Salger should have ended up in the dock, too, with you, at least, being slapped with a conviction?”

What could I say? That I had, after all, helped the police bring in Lemke and Peschkalek? That I knew that the rules that apply to everyone apply to me, but that I also have my own rules, too? That not all rules are the same, not all deception the same? That he was a policeman and I wasn't?

“I don't raise myself above you, Herr Nägelsbach. And I don't have Peschkalek's material. It was lost in the fire. All I have are the pictures I showed you copies of.”

He nodded, and for a long time gazed at the gnats that danced about the lamp. He refilled our glasses. “Poison gas? Well, I don't know if there's any poison gas in Viernheim. I wasn't informed, nor will I be. I hear, though, that they're out in full force at that depot. So if there is poison gas there, at least they seem to be dealing with it.”

The wind rustled in the leaves. It grew cooler. Voices echoed from the neighbor's garden, and smoke came wafting over from their barbecue. “How about a nice hot goulash soup, and a blanket over your knees?” Frau Nägelsbach said.

“Even if I belong in prison, I must say I'm much happier here with you under your pear tree.”

“You won't be able to dodge prison altogether, you know. My husband can't let you get away entirely unscathed. Come along.”

Frau Nägelsbach got up and led the way to her husband's workshop. I had no idea what was awaiting me, but I couldn't imagine that it would be anything bad. Nägelsbach and I walked in silence. The workshop was pitch black, and I grew a little uneasy. Then the fluorescent light above his workbench flickered on.

Nägelsbach had returned to architecture. On the workbench stood a nineteenth-century prison made of thousands upon thousands of matchsticks. There were a main building and cellblocks in the form of a star with five points, and around the compound ran a wall with a gate and watchtow-ers. There were gossamer wires along the top of the wall, and minute bars on the windows of the cells. Nägelsbach never populates his models with figures. But in this case he or his wife had made an exception: a tiny cardboard man.

“Is that me?”

“Yes, it is.”

I was standing alone in the prison yard in striped prison garb and cap. I was waving to myself.

Bernhard Schlink is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The Reader and of four crime novels: The Gordian Knot, Self's Punishment (with Walter Popp), Self's Deception, and Self's Slaughter. He is a professor at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, in New York.