Bernhard Schlink - Self's Punishment

‘Depends what you’ve got to say.’ She was a hard-boiled little slut.

‘Fifty upfront, and before that I don’t even start talking.’

I wanted to know and pulled out two fifty notes from my wallet. One of them I gave to her, the other I rolled into a ball.

‘So it was like this. That Thursday Struppi drove me home. When we came over the bridge, the delivery van was there. I wondered what it was doing on the bridge. Then Struppi and I, we, well, you know. And when the smash came I told Struppi to leave, as I was pretty sure my father would come any minute. My parents have something against Struppi because he’s as good as married. But I love him. So what. Anyhow, I saw the delivery van drive off.’

I gave her the scrunched-up ball. ‘What did the delivery van look like?’

‘Strange, somehow. You don’t see them round our way usually. But I can’t tell any more. Its lights weren’t on either.’

Her mother was peering out of the café doorway. ‘Get over here, Dina. Leave the man in peace!’

‘Okay, I’m coming.’ Dina walked back at a provocatively slow pace.

Sympathy and curiosity prompted me to meet the man who’d been saddled with this wife and daughter. In the kitchen I came across a thin, sweating little guy juggling pots and pans and casseroles. He’d probably already made several attempts to kill himself with the tear-gas gun.

‘Don’t do it. The two of them aren’t worth it.’

On the drive home I kept an eye open for delivery vans that aren’t usually found round here. But I didn’t see a thing, it was Sunday after all. If what Dina had told me was correct, there was, God knows, more to Mischkey’s death than was contained in the police report.

When we met up in the evening at the Badische Weinstuben Philipp knew that Mischkey’s blood group was AB. So it wasn’t his blood I’d scraped off the side. What conclusions could be drawn?

Philipp ate his black pudding with relish. He told me about gingerbread hearts, heart transplants, and his new girlfriend, who shaved her pubic hair in the shape of a heart.

I’d spent half the Sunday with a case I didn’t have a commission for any more. Private detectives don’t do that, on principle.

I looked through the smoked glass out onto the Augusta-Anlage. Decided to decide at the tenth car how to proceed. The tenth car was a Beetle. I crawled behind my desk to write a closing report to Judith Buchendorff. Every end must have its form.

I took a writing pad and a pencil, and jotted down key points. What spoke against it being an accident? There was what Judith had told me, there were the two bangs that Dina’s mother had heard, and above all there was Dina’s observation. If I were continuing with the case, it was explosive enough to send me on an urgent hunt for the delivery van and its driver. Did the RCW have something to do with my case? Mischkey had done extensive research on it, with whatever intention, and it must be the large plant Fred had worked for once. Had Fred rained down punches that day in the War Cemetery on their behalf? Then I also had the traces of blood on the right side of Mischkey’s convertible. And finally there was the feeling that something wasn’t right, and various shreds of thought from the previous days. Judith, Mischkey, and a jealous, spurned rival? A different computer-hacking venture of Mischkey’s, this time with deadly retaliation? An accident involving the delivery van, the driver of which committed a hit-and-run? I thought of the two bangs – an accident in which a third vehicle was also involved? Suicide? Had it all got too much for Mischkey?

It took me a long time to compose these half-baked things into a conclusive report. And I sat almost as long wondering whether I should write Judith an invoice and what should be in it. I rounded it off to a thousand marks and slapped on sales tax. When I’d typed the envelope, and stamped it and put in the letter and invoice and licked down the envelope, pulled on my coat and was ready to go and post it, I sat down again and poured myself a sambuca with three coffee beans.

It had all got fucked up. I’d miss the case, which had taken a stronger hold on me than work usually did. I’d miss Judith. Why not admit it?

When the letter was in the post box I turned to the case of Sergej Mencke. I called the National Theatre and made an appointment with the ballet director. I wrote to the Heidelberg Union Insurance asking if they’d be willing to foot the bill for a trip to the US. The two best friends and colleagues of the self-mutilated ballet dancer, Joschka and Hanne, had both accepted engagements in Pittsburgh for the new season and had already left, and I’d never been to the States. I discovered that Sergej Mencke’s parents lived in Tauberbischofsheim. The father was an army captain there. The mother said on the telephone I could look in at lunchtime. Captain Mencke ate lunch at home. I called Philipp and asked him whether in the annals of leg-breaks, self-induced breaks and breaks caused by a slammed car door were recorded at all. He offered to present his student with the problem as a dissertation theme. ‘Three weeks okay for the results?’ It was.

Then I set off for Tauberbischofsheim. I still had enough time to drive slowly through the Neckar valley and to stop for coffee in Amorbach. In front of the castle a school class was making a racket waiting for a guided tour. Can one really imbue children with a sense of the beautiful?

Herr Mencke was a bold man. He’d built himself a house, even though he might get relocated. He opened the door in uniform. ‘Step right in, Herr Self. I don’t have much time, I’ve got to head back in a minute.’ We sat down in the living room. Jägermeister schnapps was offered, but no one drank.

Sergej was actually called Siegfried and had left his parents’ house at the age of sixteen, much to his mother’s distress. Father and son had broken ties with one another. The sporty son still wasn’t forgiven for having evaded army service with a bogus spinal-chord injury. The path leading to ballet had also met with disapproval. ‘Perhaps it’s also got a good side, his not being able to dance any more,’ his mother mused. ‘When I visited him in hospital, he was just like my Sigi again.’

I asked how Siegfried had coped financially since then. There were apparently always some friends, or girlfriends, who supported him. Herr Mencke poured himself a Jägermeister after all.

‘I’d have liked to give him something from Granny’s inheritance. But you didn’t want that.’ She turned reproachful eyes on her husband. ‘You’ve just driven him deeper into everything.’

‘Leave it, Ella. That isn’t of interest to the insurance man. I must be getting back. Come along, Herr Self, I’ll see you out.’ He stood in the doorway and watched me until I’d driven off.

On the journey home I stopped in at Adelsheim. The inn was full; a few business people, teachers from the boarding school, and at one table three gentlemen who gave me the feeling they were a judge, a prosecutor, and a defence lawyer from the Adelsheim local court, negotiating in peace and quiet without the bothersome presence of the accused. I remembered my days at court.

In Mannheim I met the rush-hour traffic and needed twenty minutes for the five hundred metres through the Augusta-Anlage. I opened the door to the office.

‘Gerd,’ someone called, and as I turned I saw Judith coming from the other side of the street through the parked cars. ‘Can we talk for a moment?’

I locked the door again. ‘Let’s stretch our legs.’

We walked up Mollstrasse and along Richard-Wagner-Strasse. It took a while before she said anything. ‘I overreacted on Saturday. I still don’t think it’s good you didn’t tell me straight away on Wednesday about Peter and you. But somehow I can understand how you felt, and the way I acted as though you’re not to be trusted, I’m sorry about that. I can get pretty hysterical since Peter’s death.’