Self's deception - By Bernhard Schlink & Peter Constantine Page 0,105
The Heiligenberg Hill has been peeking into my cell the whole time.”
We drove to the Mönchhofplatz, climbed up the Mönch-berg, and followed the wide coils of the path to Michaels Basilica. It was almost like when we had climbed up to the ruins of Castle Wegelnburg: Leo often ran ahead of me, her hair flying. We barely spoke. She was skipping and jumping around. I watched her, and at times the memory of the trip we had taken together was as painful as if it had been a memory of distant years and long-lost youth. We sat at a table in the garden of the Waldschenke beneath tall old trees. It was only ten thirty in the morning, and we were the only customers.
“So tell me all about it.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“How you've been doing since you left me.”
“I didn't leave you. Did I leave you? I can't give you back the four hundred francs yet. I don't have any money. Helmut did have some, and I wanted him to send the four hundred francs to you, but he said you'd already made enough money off us. Did you? Helmut wanted to make money off me, and his friend did, too. I found out about that. But you …” She frowned and ran her finger along the squares on the tablecloth.
“If I hadn't been given the case, I wouldn't have gotten to know you. But by the time we were traveling together I no longer had the case and wasn't making any money. How did you get from Locarno to where Helmut was?”
“I called him and he came and picked me up. We traveled down the whole boot of Italy to Sicily, and then back up to the Riviera, and then over to Spain. Helmut was trying to drum up cash everywhere we went, but he couldn't.” She spoke as if she were talking about two strangers and countered my questions with terse answers. I pieced together that they had gone on a spending spree, squandering all the money he had brought with him, and then slept in the car, pulled off con tricks, filled up their gas tank without paying, and shoplifted at supermarkets. “Then Helmut wanted me to…Well, there were tourists, and others, too, who had the hots for me, and Helmut said I should be nice to them. But I wouldn't play along with that.”
“Why didn't you call me collect? You ran out of money— that's why you didn't call me anymore, right?”
She laughed. “That was fun, wasn't it, us talking on the phone at night? Sometimes you weren't there, but I suppose I wasn't either.” She laughed again. “I told Helmut to have his friend say hi to you from me, but I kind of knew he wouldn't.”
We ate lunch. In the old days they served up nice plain home cooking at the Waldschenke. Today microwaves give the most modest establishment the ability to serve up a bad boeuf bourgignon in minutes.
“You and I have eaten better,” she said, winking at me. “Remember the Hotel above Lake Murten?”
I nodded. “Let's go out and have a real dinner this evening,” I said. “What are your plans, by the way? Are you going to stay in Heidelberg? Are you going to go on with your studies? Visit your mother? I'm sure she's been told about developments—have you heard from her?”
She thought awhile. “I'd like to go to a hair salon. My hair's all stringy.” She took hold of a lock and tugged it straight. “And it stinks like hell.” She sniffed at it and wrinkled her nose. “Go on, smell it yourself.”
I was sitting opposite her and declined. “Don't worry, we'll go to a hair salon.”
“No, I want you to smell it.” She got up, walked around the table, bent toward me, and held her head in front of mine.
I smelled the sun in her hair, and a touch of eau de cologne. “Your hair doesn't stink, Leo, it has an aroma of—”
“It stinks! You have to take a better sniff!” She held her head even closer. I took her face in both hands. She gave me a short kiss. “And now be a good boy and smell it properly.”
“OK, Leo, you win. We'll head over to a hair salon afterward.”
Going back down the mountain was slower than the climb had been. The day had become oppressively hot; it was also strangely quiet. No breeze, no birds twittering in the heat, no cars or hikers, and