Bernhard Schlink - Self's Punishment

A splinter of glass had torn open my arm and the blood was staining red the sleeve of my light-coloured jacket. I felt dizzy. ‘Do you have a schnapps?’

I only faintly recall the next half-hour. Richard was collected. His grandfather, a large, broad, heavy-set man with a bald head, shaved clean at the back and sides, and a bushy, white moustache, gathered up his grandson effortlessly into his arms. The police tried to get into the Works to investigate the accident, but were turned away. The doorman gave me a second and a third schnapps. When the ambulance men came they took me with them to the Works doctor, who put stitches in my arm and wrapped it in a sling.

‘You should lie down for a while next door,’ said the doctor. ‘You can’t leave now.’

‘Why can’t I leave?’

‘We have a smog alarm, and all traffic has been stopped.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? There’s a smog alarm, and no one can leave the centre of the smog?’

‘Your understanding of it is completely wrong. Smog is a meteorological overall occurrence and has no centre or periphery.’

This I considered complete nonsense. Whatever other sort of smog there might be, I’d seen a green cloud growing larger. It grew larger right here over the compound. And I was supposed to stay here? I wanted to talk to Firner.

In his office a crisis headquarters had been set up. Through the door I could see policemen in green, firemen in blue, chemists in white, and some grey gentlemen from the management.

‘What actually happened?’ I asked Frau Buchendorff.

‘We had a little glitch on site, nothing serious. But the authorities foolishly turned on the smog alarm, and that caused some excitement.’

‘I got myself some little scratches at your little glitch.’

‘What were you up… ah, you were on your way to Schneider. He’s not here today, by the way.’

‘Am I the only injured person? Were there any deaths?’

‘What are you thinking of, Herr Self? A few first-aid cases, that’s all. Is there anything else we can do for you?’

‘You can get me out of here.’ I had no desire to battle my way through to Firner and be saluted with a ‘Greetings, Herr Self.’

A policeman sporting several badges of rank emerged from the office.

‘You’re driving back to Mannheim, aren’t you, Herr Herzog? Would you mind taking Herr Self with you? He got a few scratches and we don’t want to keep him waiting here any longer.’

Herzog, a vigorous type, took me with him. Gathered in front of the gates to the Works were some police vans and reporters.

‘Do avoid having your photograph taken with that bandage, please.’

I had absolutely no desire to be photographed. As we drove past the reporters I bent down to reach for the cigarette lighter, which was low on the dashboard.

‘Why did the smog alarm go off so rapidly?’ I asked on our drive through deserted Ludwigshafen.

Herzog proved to be well informed. ‘After the spate of smog alarms in the autumn of nineteen eighty-four we in Baden-Württemberg and the Rhineland-Palatinate started an experiment with new technology under a new law, with overriding authority over both states. The idea is to record the emissions directly, to correlate with the weather report, rather than just setting off the smog alarm when it’s already too late. Today the model had its baptism of fire. Until now we’ve only had dry runs.’

‘And how is cooperation with the Works? I gathered that the police were being turned away at the gate.’

‘That’s a sore point. The chemical industry is fighting the new law tooth and nail. At the moment there’s a complaint about infringement of the constitution before the Federal Constitutional Court. Legally we could have entered the plant, but we don’t want to rock the boat at this stage.’

The smoke of my cigarette was irritating Herzog, and he rolled down the window. ‘Oh Lord,’ he said, rolling it up straight away, ‘could you please stub out your cigarette.’ A pungent odour had penetrated the car, my eyes began to stream, on my tongue was a sharp taste, and we both had a coughing fit.

‘It’s just as well my colleagues outside have their breathing apparatus on.’ At the exit to the Konrad Adenauer Bridge we passed a roadblock. Both police officers stopping traffic were wearing gas masks. At the edge of the approach were fifteen or twenty vehicles. The driver of the first one was in the midst of talking with the police officers. With a colourful cloth pressed to his face, he looked funny.

‘What’s going to happen with the rush-hour traffic this evening?’

Herzog shrugged. ‘We’ll have to wait and see how the chlorine gas develops. We hope, in the course of the afternoon, to be able to get out the workers and the RCW employees. That would considerably relieve the problem of rush-hour traffic. Some may have to spend the night at their workplace. We’d inform them of this via radio and loudspeaker vans. I was surprised before how quickly we cleared the streets.’

‘Are you considering evacuation?’

‘If the chlorine gas concentration doesn’t decrease by half in the next twelve hours we’ll have to clear east of Leuschnerstrasse and maybe also Neckarstadt and Jungbusch as well. But the meteorologists are giving us grounds for hope. Where should I let you off?’

‘If the carbon monoxide concentration in the air permits it, I’d be delighted if you’d drive me to Richard-Wagner-Strasse and let me off at my front door.’

‘The carbon monoxide concentration alone wouldn’t have been enough for us to set off any smog alarm. It’s the chlorine that’s bad. With that I prefer to know people are safely at home or in their office, not, at any rate, out on the street.’

He drew up in front of my building. ‘Herr Self,’ he added, ‘aren’t you a private detective? I think my predecessor had something to do with you – do you remember the case with the senior civil servant and the sailboat?’

‘I hope we’re not sharing a case again now,’ I said. ‘Do you know anything yet about the origins of the explosion?’

‘Do you have a suspicion, Herr Self? You certainly didn’t just happen to be at the site of the occurrence. Had attacks been anticipated on the RCW?’

‘I don’t know anything about it. My job is innocuous by comparison and takes a quite different direction.’

‘We’ll see. I might have to call you down to headquarters to ask you a few more questions.’ He looked skywards. ‘And now pray for a gusty wind, Herr Self.’

I walked up the four flights of stairs to my apartment. My arm had started to bleed again. But something else was worrying me. Was my job really going in a quite different direction? Was it coincidence that Schneider hadn’t come to work today? Had I cast off the idea of blackmail too quickly? Had Firner not told me everything after all?

I washed down the chlorine taste with a glass of milk and tried to change the bandage. The telephone interrupted me.

‘Herr Self, was that you leaving the RCW with Herzog? Have the Works called you in for the investigation?’

Tietzke, one of the last honest journalists. When the Heidelberger Tageblatt folded, he’d got a job with the Rhine Neckar Chronicle by the skin of his teeth, but his status there was tricky.

‘What investigation? Don’t get any wrong ideas, Tietzke. I had other business at the RCW and I’d be grateful for you not to have seen me there.’

‘You’ve got to tell me a little bit more if I’m not supposed simply to write what I saw.’

‘With the best will in the world I can’t talk about the job. But I can try to get you an exclusive interview with Firner. I’ll be calling him this afternoon.’