Self's deception - By Bernhard Schlink & Peter Constantine Page 0,27

cause a scandal?

“Biafra.” Breuer reached for his earlobe again, as if he wanted to milk from it the continuation of the story, and looked at me meaningfully. “König had speculated with loans to Biafra. If Biafra had managed to secede from Nigeria, he would have made millions. But as we know, Ojukwu lost, and so did König. I don't know if he embezzled the money from the fund in the legal sense of the term, or misappropriated the money, or what. He hanged himself before the verdict was announced.”

“And Salger?”

Breuer shook his head. “That was one crazy guy. I guess you don't remember. Suspicion first fell on him. He was interrogated and arrested, but kept his mouth shut. The way he saw it, there was nothing that he could be reproached for. He got in a huff and saw the whole thing as a personal insult. When it finally came out that König …”

“How?”

“König was drowning in debt, and when the Biafra money he was counting on didn't materialize, he tried to stop up the holes in other ways, with more and more building grants and credits from the fund, and the whole thing blew up on him.”

“How long was Salger in prison?”

“About six months.” He stretched out his arms. “That's a long time. And all his colleagues, superiors, and political buddies turned their backs on him. They were sure he was the culprit. When it became clear that he wasn't, they tried to pin dereliction of duty as a board member on him. But that didn't stick either. A report surfaced showing that he had drawn attention to all the irregularities. So he was rehabilitated. There was even a promotion in the works. But he couldn't deal with the fact that the same people who had suspected and already convicted him were now patting him on the back and acting as if nothing had happened. He dropped everything and broke off contact with everyone: with his colleagues, superiors, and political buddies. He was barely fifty and had ended up retired and totally isolated. It's a crazy world.” He shook his head.

“Does the story go on?”

Breuer poured us another cup of coffee and reached for a pack of Marlboros on his desk. “My first one today. Would you like one, too?” I fished my yellow pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and offered him one, and he took it with great aplomb. A smoker of filter cigarettes who at the sight of a Sweet Afton doesn't say “Oh, but those don't have a filter!” and takes one with interest. I like that.

“There's more. Salger joined the Free Democratic Party, put himself up as a candidate for parliament, and mounted a futile campaign with a fervor that he would have done well to invest in a better cause. He wrote a book into which he poured all his experiences, a book that nobody wanted to publish and nobody wanted to read. He got sick, cancer, was in and out of hospitals, you know. He died a few years ago.”

“What did he live on?”

Breuer milked his earlobe. “He had a private fortune, quite a large one. That just goes to show—money doesn't guarantee happiness.”

21

Very clear indeed

On my trip back home the train was diverted through Darmstadt and along the Bergstrasse route. It was the first time I noticed the many quarries at the edge of the Odenwald Range. They made the mountains look like red Jell-O covered in green mint sauce, of which God had taken a few bites with a spoon.

In Bonn I had again dialed 41-17-88 and let it ring a long time in vain. The answering machine remained silent. But I'd barely set foot in my office when the phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Herr Self, Salger here. Have you tried reaching me over the past few days?”

So he, too, had noticed that his answering machine wasn't reacting. Had one of his friends turned the machine off by mistake?

“I'm glad you called, Herr Salger. I have a lot of information for you and would like to give it to you in person. I'd be happy to come see you in Bonn, but perhaps you will be passing through Mannheim one of these days? I take it you're back in Bonn, you see, your answering machine …”

“It must be broken, or the maid turned it off by mistake. But no, we're not back in Bonn, and as I can't arrange a meeting in the foreseeable future, I must ask you to give