Bernhard Schlink - Self’s Murder

Vera Soboda had barely greeted me when the doorbell rang.

“You thought you’d scared me off!” Karl-Heinz Ulbrich said to me triumphantly. “You thought that’s why I let you go, right? I just wanted to see who was helping you.” He looked at Vera. “You’ll regret this. If you think that the Sorbian bank will give you your severance pay while you double-cross us, you’ve got another thing coming.”

She glared at him as if she were about to grab him by the neck. If I had thrown myself between them, not much would be left of either him or me. Her eyes pinned on him, she asked me: “Did you find out anything?”

“No. And yet I see why Welker would have replaced you with him. You know what’s going on, he doesn’t. And yet that still doesn’t prove a thing.”

“What is it that I don’t know?” Ulbrich asked.

“Ignorant idiot!” she said, full of disgust. “I’d get off my high horse if I were you! Why do you think Welker made you the new bank manager, when you know as much about banking as I know about ostrich farming? Do you think it’s because you’re able to run the bank? Nonsense! The only reason you’ve been hired is because there’s no way you’ll ever find out that money is being laundered at the bank. Though that isn’t the only reason you were hired: it was also because of the way you handle the employees, and the fact that you wouldn’t shrink back from any sort of nastiness.”

“How dare you! It’s not as if banking is some hocus-pocus. And whatever I need to know, I find out right away. Would I have caught the two of you otherwise? I used to be at the Head Office 18, National Security, where they hired only the best. The best! Money laundering! Don’t make me laugh.”

“You were with the Stasi?” Vera said, looking at him first in astonishment and then as if she hadn’t seen him in a long time and now was recognizing him feature by feature. “Of course. Once in the shit, always in the shit. If no longer for our side, then for the other side. Whoever happens to need you guys and will pay you.”

“Shit? This man entered the bank illegally, and you are making terrible and unsubstantiated allegations. That’s shit! And what do you mean, I’m not working for our side but the other side? How could I work for our side? You’re talking as if I had betrayed our side-I haven’t heard such nonsense in years! Our side no longer exists! The only thing that exists now is the other side!”

He was still trying to present himself in a superior way, but he sounded exhausted and desperate. As if he had believed in East Germany and the Stasi and loved his job and was lost without it. As if he were orphaned.

But Vera Soboda did not let go: in the old days he’d been with the Stasi, and now he was with a shady West German bank, ignorant when it came to banking, nasty to the bank employees, being saddled on her and then replacing her-she was too furious to notice his exhaustion and desperation and to take pity on him. Perhaps that was also too much to ask. “I know our side no longer exists, and I’m not accusing you of betrayal,” she went on, “but what you did in the past was dirty work, and it’s dirty work you’re doing now. You’re already preparing the firings, aren’t you? Everyone knows that. Do you know what they’re calling you at the bank? The angel of death! And don’t get on your high horse just because everyone’s afraid of you. One can also be frightened of a little toad if it’s poisonous and disgusting enough.”

“Frau Soboda,” I intervened in an attempt to calm her down. But now Ulbrich could no longer hold back.

“ You need to get off your high horse! If money was being laundered in the bank, it wasn’t going on just in the past few weeks, but all the time you were there, with your knowledge, under your very nose! Did you do anything about it? Did you go to the police?” He looked triumphant again. “Shit? You were standing in it with both feet, and if you had your way, you’d be happy to still be standing in it. If anyone here is ready for any kind of nastiness, it’s you!”

Now Vera Soboda looked exhausted. She shrugged her shoulders, raised her arms and then lowered them, and went from the hall where we were standing into the living room and sat down.

Ulbrich followed her, saying, “You’re not getting out of this so easily. The least I expect is an apology.” Then Ulbrich didn’t know what else to say.

I went to the kitchen, got three beers from the refrigerator, opened them, and took them to the living room. I put one on the table in front of Vera Soboda, and one in front of an empty chair, and I sat down with one of the beers on the sofa. Ulbrich went over to the empty chair, stood next to it for a moment, and sat down carefully on its edge. He took the beer and slowly rolled it between his palms. It was so quiet that I could hear the computer humming lightly in the covered veranda.

“Cheers,” Ulbrich said. He raised his bottle and drank. Vera looked at him and at me as if it had slipped her mind that we were there. Ulbrich cleared his throat. “I am sorry I fired you. It was nothing personal. I wasn’t given a reason; I was just ordered to-there was nothing I could do. I’m also fully aware that I know nothing about banking. But perhaps the job doesn’t require someone who knows the business. Per haps all it needs is someone who can use the phone. I make a call when there’s something I don’t know and am told what to do.” He cleared his throat again. “And as for what you said about doing dirty work for the other side, we don’t have any say anymore-you don’t and I don’t-and whoever has nothing to say has to accept the job he’s given. Nothing personal there, either.” He took a long sip, burped quietly, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and got up. “Thank you very much for the beer. Good night.”

“Has he gone?” Vera asked.

Ulbrich had pulled the door shut behind him so quietly, and gone down the stairs so softly, that no sound disturbed the silence.

“Yes,” I replied.

“I behaved rather badly. And when I got a chance to make up for it, I ruined that, too. He was right, and he even tried to be nice. I was so angry I didn’t even manage to say good night.”

“Angry at him?”

“At him, at me, at his being so disgusting.”

“He isn’t disgusting.”

“I know. I’m angry about that, too. In fact, I owe him an apology.”

“Are the cold cuts in the refrigerator for us?”

“Yes. I was thinking of making some fried potatoes, too.”

“I’ll see to dinner,” I said.

I found some boiled potatoes, onions, bacon, and oil. The chopping, the hissing in the pan, and the aroma did me good after the argument between Vera and Ulbrich. I have come to believe that setbacks don’t make you a better person, just a smaller one. The setbacks in my life didn’t make me better, and Vera Soboda and Karl-Heinz Ulbrich, too, had become smaller through the setbacks that came with Germany ’s unification and postunification. Setbacks don’t cost you only what you have invested-every time, they cut away a piece of your belief that you will survive the next trial, the next battle, that you will manage to tackle your life.

I served the food and we ate. Vera wanted to know what had happened at the Sorbian bank, and I told her. I explained where I knew Ulbrich from and why I was certain he knew nothing of former or present money laundering at the bank. “He suspected that something crooked was going on at Weller and Welker, had talked about the Russian or Chechen Mafia, and might have been thinking of money laundering. But as for anything specific-he himself can’t have found out anything, and I’m certain Welker wouldn’t have clued him in. That is, if there’s still anything to be clued into.”