Bernhard Schlink - Self's Punishment

‘A good three-year gap while the guy lay low. But in my opinion he remained a ticking bomb, even ticking today.’

The food was excellent. Schmalz ate his at a rush. He didn’t leave a single grain of rice on his plate – the obsessive behavior of the food neurotic. I asked what, in his opinion, should be done with whoever was behind the computer shambles.

‘Above all, interrogate him thoroughly. And then make him get in line. He can’t be a threat to the plant any more. Bright guy. He could…’

He flailed around for a non-sibilant synonym for certainly or surely . I offered him a Sweet Afton.

‘Prefer my own,’ he said, and took a brown plastic box from his pocket containing homemade filter cigarettes. ‘Made by my wife, no more than eight a day.’

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s homemade cigarettes. They are way up there with crocheted modesty covers for toilet paper. The mention of his wife reminded me of the janitor’s apartment with the nameplate ‘Schmalz’.

‘You have a young son?’

He looked at me guardedly and deflected the question with a ‘Meaning what?’

I told him about how I’d lost my way in the old factory, of the enchanted atmosphere of the overgrown yard and the encounter with the little boy with the brightly coloured ball. Schmalz relaxed and confirmed that his father lived in the janitor’s flat.

‘Member of our unit, too. The general and he knew one another well from the war. Now he… keeping an eye on the old plant… In the morning we take the boy to him, my wife being an employee here in the company, too.’

I learned that lots of the security people had lived in the compound and Schmalz had more or less grown up there. He’d been through the rebuilding of the Works after the war and knew its every corner. I found the idea of a life spent between refineries, reactors, distilleries, turbines, silos, and tankers, for all its industrial romance, oppressive.

‘Didn’t you ever want to look for a job beyond the RCW?’

‘Couldn’t do that to my father. His motto: we belong here. Did the general throw in the towel? No, nor do we.’ He looked at his watch and leapt up. ‘Too bad, can’t linger. Am on personal security’ – words he spoke almost error free – ‘duty at one o’clock. Kind of you to invite…’

My afternoon in the personnel office was unproductive. At four o’clock I conceded I could quit studying the personnel files once and for all. I stopped by to see Frau Buchendorff, whose first name I now knew to be Judith, also that she was thirty-three, had a degree in German and English, and hadn’t found a job as a teacher. She’d been at the RCW for four years, first in the archives, then in the PR department where she’d come to Firner’s attention. She lived in Rathenaustrasse.

‘Please don’t get up,’ I said. She stopped feeling for her shoes with her feet under the table, and offered me a coffee. ‘I’d love one. Then we can drink to being neighbours. I’ve read your personnel file and know almost everything about you, apart from how many silk blouses you own.’ She was wearing another one, this time buttoned up to the top.

‘If you’re coming to the reception on Saturday, you’ll see the third one. Have you received your invitation already?’ She slid a cup over to me and lit a cigarette.

‘What reception?’ I peered at her legs.

‘We’ve had a delegation from China here since Monday, and as a finale we want to show them that not only our plants, but also our buffets are better than the French. Firner thought it would be a chance for you to get to know a couple of people of interest to your case, informally.’

‘Shall I also have the chance to get to know you informally?’

She laughed. ‘I’m there for the Chinese. But there is one Chinese woman, I haven’t figured out what she’s in charge of. Perhaps she’s a security expert, who wouldn’t be introduced as such, so a kind of colleague of yours. A pretty woman.’

‘You’re trying to fob me off, Frau Buchendorff! I shall have to lodge a complaint with Firner.’ Scarcely had the words left my lips than I regretted them. An old man’s hackneyed charm.

The next day the air lay thick over Mannheim and Ludwigshafen. It was so muggy that, even without moving, my clothes stuck to my body. Driving was staccato and hectic, I could have used three feet to work the clutch, the brake, and the gas pedal. Everything was clogged on the Konrad Adenauer Bridge. There’d been a collision, and immediately after it another one. I was stuck in a traffic jam for twenty minutes. I watched the oncoming traffic and the trains, and smoked to avoid suffocating.

The appointment with Schneider was at half past nine. The doorman at Gate 1 told me the way. ‘It’s not even five minutes. Go straight on, and when you come to the Rhine it’s another hundred metres to your left. The laboratories are in the light-coloured building with the large windows.’

I set off. Down at the Rhine I saw the small boy I’d met yesterday. He’d tied a piece of string to his little bucket and was ladling water out of the Rhine with it. He emptied the water down the drain.

‘I’m emptying the Rhine,’ he called, when he recognized me.

‘I hope it works.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m going to the laboratories over there.’

‘Can I come with you?’

He shook out his little bucket and came. Children often attach themselves to me, I don’t know why. I don’t have any, and most of them get on my nerves.

‘Come on then,’ I said, and we made our way together to the building with the large windows.

We were about fifty metres away when several people in white coats came rushing out of the entrance. They raced along the banks of the Rhine. Then there were more, not only in white coats, but also in blue overalls, and secretaries in skirts and blouses. It was an odd spectacle, and I didn’t see how anyone could run in this heat.

‘Look, he’s waving at us,’ the little boy said, and indeed one of the white-coats was flailing his arms and shouting something at us I couldn’t understand. But I didn’t have to understand; it was obviously about getting away as quickly as possible.

The first explosion sent a cascade of glass shards raining down the road. I grabbed the little boy’s hand, but he tore loose. For a moment it was as though I were paralysed: I didn’t feel any injury, heard a deep silence in spite of the continuing rattle of glass, saw the boy running, skidding on the glass shards, regaining his balance then finally falling two steps later and somersaulting forward from the impetus of movement.

Then came the second explosion, the scream of the little boy, the pain in my right arm. The bang was followed by a violent, dangerous, evil-sounding hissing. A noise that struck panic into me.

It was the sirens in the distance that made me act. They awakened reflexes inculcated in the war to flee, to help, to seek cover, and give protection. I ran to the boy, tugged him to his feet with my left hand, and dragged him in the direction we’d just come from. His little legs couldn’t keep up, but he pedalled his feet in the air and didn’t let go. ‘Come on, little one, run, we’ve got to get out of here, don’t slow down.’ Before we turned the corner I looked back. Where we’d been standing a green cloud was rising into the leaden sky.

In vain I waved at the ambulance tearing past. At Gate 1 the guard took care of us. He knew the little boy, who was clinging tightly to my hand, pale, scratched, and frightened.

‘Richard, in the name of God what happened? I’ll call your grandfather right away.’ He went over to the phone. ‘And I’ll call the medics for you. That doesn’t look good.’