Bernhard Schlink - Self's Punishment

The plot – with me as the dupe. Set up and executed by my friend and brother-in-law. And I’d been happy not to have to drag him into the trial. He’d used me with contemptuous calculation. I thought back to the conversation after our move to Bahnhofstrasse. I also thought of the last conversations we’d had, in the Blue Salon and on the terrace of his house. Me, the sweetheart.

My cigarettes had run out. That hadn’t happened to me in years. I pulled on my winter coat and galoshes, pocketed the St Christopher that I’d taken from Mischkey’s car and only remembered yesterday, walked to the train station, then dropped by to see Judith. It was mid-morning now. She came to the front door in a dressing gown.

‘What’s the matter with you, Gerd?’ She looked at me aghast. ‘Come on up, I’ve just put some coffee on.’

‘Do I look that bad? No, I won’t come up, I’m in the middle of decorating my tree. Wanted to bring you the St Christopher. I needn’t tell you where it’s from, I’d completely forgotten it, and I just found it again.’

She took the St Christopher and supported herself against the doorpost. She was fighting back tears.

‘Tell me something, Judith, do you remember if Peter went away for two or three days in the weeks in between the War Cemetery and his death?’

‘What?’ She hadn’t been listening, and I repeated my question. ‘Away? Yes, how do you know?’

‘Do you know where to?’

‘South, he said. To recover because it had all been too much for him. Why do you ask?’

‘I’m wondering whether he went to Tyberg pretending to be a journalist from Die Zeit.’

‘You mean looking for material to use against the RCW?’ She considered this. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him. But according to what Tyberg said about the visit, there wasn’t anything to unearth.’ Shivering, she pulled the dressing gown more tightly around her. ‘Are you sure you won’t have a coffee?’

‘You’ll be hearing from me, Judith.’ I walked home.

It all fitted together. A despairing Mischkey had attempted to use Tyberg’s grand aria about decency and resistance for his own ends against Korten. Intuitively he had recognized the dissonances better than all of us, the connection to the SS, the rescue of Tyberg, not that of Dohmke. He didn’t realize how close to the truth he was and how threatening that must have sounded to Korten. Not just sounded – was really, thanks to his dogged research.

Why hadn’t I thought of it? If it was so easy to save Tyberg, why, then, hadn’t Korten rescued both of them two days earlier while Dohmke was still alive? One was sufficient as reinsurance and Tyberg, the head of the research group, was more interesting than his co-worker Dohmke.

I removed my galoshes and clapped them against each other until all the snow had dropped off. The stairwell smelled of Sauerbraten. Yesterday I hadn’t bought anything else to eat and I could only make myself two fried eggs. The third egg I whisked over Turbo’s food. He’d been driven to distraction in recent days by the sardine odour in the apartment.

The SS man who’d helped Korten to liberate Tyberg had been Schmalz. Together with Schmalz Korten had exerted pressure on Weinstein. Schmalz had killed Mischkey for Korten.

I rinsed the sardine cans clean with hot water and dried them off. Where the lids were missing, I glued them back on. I chose green wool to hang them and threaded it through the curl of the rolled-back lid, or through the ring-pull, or around the hinge where an open lid was attached to its can. As soon as a can was ready I looked for its proper place on the tree; the big ones lower down, the small ones higher up.

I couldn’t fool myself. I didn’t give a damn about my Christmas tree. Why had Korten allowed his accessory Weinstein to survive? I suppose he hadn’t had any influence over the SS, only over Schmalz, the SS officer in the Works, whom he’d seduced and conquered. He couldn’t steer things so that Weinstein would be killed back in the concentration camp. But he could safely assume it. And after the war? Even if Korten were to discover that Weinstein had survived the camp, he could count on the fact that anyone who’d had to play a role such as Weinstein’s would prefer not to go public.

Now the final words made sense, too, the ones the widow Schmalz repeated from her husband’s deathbed. He must have tried to warn his lord and master about the trail he himself hadn’t been able to remove, given his physical state. How well Korten had known how to make this man depend on him! The young academic from a good home, the SS officer from a modest background, great challenges and tasks, two men in the service of the Works, each in his place. I could imagine the course of things between them. Who knew better than I how convincing and winning Korten could be?

The Christmas tree was ready. Thirty sardine cans were hanging, thirty white candles were erect. One of the vertically hanging sardine cans was oval and reminded me of the garland of light you get in depictions of the Virgin Mary. I went to the basement, found the cardboard box with Klärchen’s Christmas tree decorations and in amongst them the small, willowy Madonna in a blue cloak. She fitted into the can.

The next night I couldn’t sleep either. Sometimes I dozed off and dreamed of Dohmke’s hanging and Korten’s performance in court, my leap into the Rhine that I didn’t resurface from in my dream, Judith in her dressing gown, fighting back her tears at the doorpost, old, square-set, stout Schmalz climbing down from the statue pedestal in the Heidelberg Bismarckgarten and coming toward me, the tennis match with Mischkey, at which a small boy with Korten’s face and an SS uniform threw us the balls, my interrogation of Weinstein, and again and again Korten laughing at me, saying, ‘Self, you sweetheart, you sweetheart, you sweetheart…’

At five I made a cup of camomile tea and tried to read, but my thoughts wouldn’t leave me alone. They kept circling. How could Korten have done it? Why had I been blind enough to let myself be used by him? What should happen now? Was Korten afraid? Did I owe anyone anything? Was there anyone I could tell everything to? Nägelsbach? Tyberg? Judith? Should I go to the media? What was I to do with my guilt?

For a long time the thoughts circled in my mind, faster and faster. As they were accelerating into craziness, they flew apart and formed themselves into a completely new picture. I knew what I had to do.

At nine o’clock I called Frau Schlemihl. Korten had left on vacation at the weekend to his house in Brittany where he and his wife spent Christmas every year. I found the card he’d sent me last Christmas. It showed a magnificent estate of grey stone with a slanting roof and red shutters, the crossbars of which formed an inverted Z. Next to it was a high windmill, and beyond it stretched the sea. I checked the timetable and found a train that would get me in to Paris-Est at five o’clock in the afternoon. I’d have to hurry. I prepared a fresh litter-tray for Turbo, shook an abundant amount of cat food into his dish, and packed my travel bag. I ran to the station, changed money, and bought a ticket, second class. The train was full. Noisy soldiers on home-leave over Christmas, students, late businessmen.

The snow of the last weeks had thawed completely. Dirty greenish-brown countryside whipped by. The sky was grey, and sometimes the sun was visible as a faded disk behind the clouds. I thought about why Korten had feared Mischkey’s disclosures. He could, indeed, be prosecuted for Dohmke’s murder, which was not subject to a statute of limitations. And even if he went free due to lack of evidence, his comfortable life and the legend he’d become would be destroyed.