Bernhard Schlink - Self's Punishment

He rendered me speechless. Why so aggressive and cynical? Korten’s observation had got me where it hurt, and he knew it and blinked with pleasure.

‘Don’t worry, my dear Self, we won’t cause any unnecessary trouble. And about what I said – I admire it in you very much, don’t get me wrong.’

He was making it even worse and looked me mildly in the face. Even if there was some truth in his words – doesn’t friendship mean treading carefully when it comes to the lies the other person builds into his life? But there wasn’t any truth in it. I felt a surge of fury.

I didn’t want dessert any more. And preferred to have my coffee in the Café Gmeiner. And Korten had a meeting at two.

At eight I drove to Frankfurt and flew to Athens.

In August I was back in Mannheim.

I always enjoy going on vacation and the weeks in the Aegean were spent in a glow of brilliant blue. But now that I’m older I enjoy coming home more, as well. After Klara’s death I redecorated the apartment. During our marriage I hadn’t managed to assert myself against her taste and so, at fifty-six, I caught up on the pleasures of decorating that other people delight in when they’re young. I do like my two chunky leather sofas that cost a fortune and also hold their own with the tomcat, the old apothecary shelves where I keep my books and records, and the bunk-bed in my study I had built into the niche. Coming home I also always look forward to Turbo, whom I know is looked after well by the next-door neighbour but who does, in his quiet manner, suffer in my absence.

I’d put down my suitcases and opened the door when, with Turbo clinging to my trouser leg, I beheld a colossal gift hamper that had been placed on the floor of the hallway.

The door to the next-door apartment opened and Frau Weiland greeted me. ‘How nice that you’re back, Herr Self. My, you’re tanned. Your cat has missed you very much, haven’t you, puss wuss wuss wuss? Have you seen the hamper yet? It came three weeks ago with a chauffeur from the RCW. Shame about the beautiful flowers. I did consider putting them in a vase, but they’d be dead now anyway. The mail is on your desk as always.’

I thanked her and sought refuge behind the apartment door from her torrent of words.

From pâté de foie gras to Malossol caviar it contained every delicacy I like and dislike. Luckily Turbo likes caviar. The attached card, with an artistic rendition of the firm logo, was signed by Firner. The RCW thanked me for my invaluable service. They’d paid, too.

In the mail were account statements, postcards from Eberhard and Willy, and the inevitable bills. I’d forgotten to cancel my subscription to the Mannheimer Morgen ; Frau Wieland had stacked the papers neatly on the kitchen table. I leafed through them before putting them in the trash, and sampled the musty taste of old political excitement.

I unpacked and threw a load in the washing machine. Then I did my shopping, had the baker’s wife, the head butcher, and the people in the grocer’s shop comment admiringly on my rested appearance, and I enquired after news as though all sorts must have happened in my absence.

It was the summer holidays. The shops and the streets were emptier, my driver’s eyes picked out parking spaces in the most unlikely of places, and a stillness infused the town. I’d returned from my break with that lightness of spirit that allows you to experience familiar surroundings as new and different. It all gave me a floating sensation that I wanted to savour. I put off my trip to the office until the afternoon. Fearfully, I made my way to the Kleinen Rosengarten: would it have shut down for the holiday? But from a distance I could see Giovanni standing in the garden gate, napkin over his arm.

‘You come-a back from the Greek? Greek not good. Come on-a, I make you the gorgonzola spaghetti.’

‘ Si , old Roman, great.’ We played our German-converses-with-guest-worker game.

Giovanni brought me the Frascati and told me about a new film. ‘That would be a role for you, a killer who could just as easily be a private detective.’

After the spaghetti gorgonzola, coffee, and sambuca, after an hour with the Süddeutsche by the Wasserturm, after an ice-cream and another coffee at Gmeiner I gave myself up to the office. It wasn’t as bad as all that. My answering machine had announced my absence until today and not recorded any messages. In amongst the newsletters from the Federal Association of German Detectives, a tax notice, advertisements, and an invitation to subscribe to the Evangelical State Encyclopedia I found two letters. Thomas was offering me a teaching appointment on the security studies course at the technical college of Mannheim. And Heidelberg Union Insurance asked me to get in touch as soon as I returned from my holiday.

I dusted a little, flicked through the newspapers, got out the bottle of sambuca, the jar with the coffee beans, and poured myself a measure. While I reject the cliché of whisky in the desk of a private detective, there’s got to be some sort of bottle. Then I recorded my new message, made an appointment with Heidelberg Union Insurance, put off replying to Thomas’s offer, and went home. The afternoon and evening were spent on the balcony, seeing to this and that. The account statements got me calculating and I realized that with the jobs so far I’d almost fulfilled my annual target. And coming after the holiday, too. Most reassuring.

I managed to hold on to my sense of floating into the following week. The insurance fraud case I’d taken on I worked through without getting involved. Sergej Mencke, a mediocre ballet dancer at Mannheim National Theatre, had taken out a high insurance policy on his legs and promptly suffered a complicated break. He’d never dance again. A million was the sum in question and the insurance company wanted to be sure all was above board. The notion that a person could break their own leg repelled me. When I was a small boy, as an example of male willpower, my mother told me how Ignatius of Loyola re-broke his leg himself with a hammer when it healed crookedly. I’ve always abhorred self-mutilators, the young Spartan who let his belly be mauled by a fox, Mucius Scaevola, and Ignatius of Loyola. But so far as I was concerned, they could all have had a million if it meant them disappearing from the pages of our schoolbooks. My ballet dancer claimed the break occurred when shutting the heavy door of his Volvo; on the evening in question he was running a high fever, had to get through a performance nonetheless, and afterwards wasn’t himself. That’s why he’d slammed the door although his leg was still hanging out. I sat in my car for a long time trying to imagine whether such a thing was possible. There wasn’t much more I could do with the summer break that had scattered his theatre colleagues and friends in every direction.

Sometimes I thought about Frau Buchendorff and about Mischkey. I hadn’t found anything about his case in the papers. Once I happened to walk along Rathenaustrasse and the second-floor shutters were closed.

It was pure coincidence that I got her message in time one afternoon in September. Normally I don’t pick up messages in the afternoon. Frau Buchendorff had called in the afternoon and asked if she could talk to me after work. I’d forgotten my umbrella so had to go back to the office, saw the signal on the answering machine, and called back. We agreed to meet at five o’clock. Her voice was subdued.

Shortly before five I was in my office. I made coffee, rinsed the cups, tidied the papers on my desk, loosened my tie, undid my top button, pushed my tie up again, and moved the chairs in front of my desk back and forth. Finally they stood where they always stand. Frau Buchendorff was punctual.