Self's deception - By Bernhard Schlink & Peter Constantine Page 0,30

and sharp. “You accepted my assignment and my money without too many questions. A lot of money. I'm willing to offer you a bonus for the successful completion of the assignment, let's say another five thousand. That's all I can offer. Where is Leo?”

I knew exactly how much fried eggs and two pots of coffee cost at Café Fieberg. I didn't wait for the waitress, laid the money on the table, got up, and left.

23

The boy who lops the thistle's heads

That evening I went to see Nägelsbach in his workshop, a converted shed in an old building in the Pfaffengrunder settlement from the 1920s. He had given me a call. “I've got some information on Wendt.”

It was still light outside, but a fluorescent fixture was already on over his workbench. “What you're doing isn't going to be the Pantheon, right?” I said. From what I could see, the gnarled structure on his workbench could evolve into a clenched fist, a tree stump, or a rock, but not a domed structure.

“You said it, Herr Self. I've been doing some thinking. I see now that I shouldn't have just launched into my models, but done some thinking first. Doing buildings was the wrong way to go: the Cologne Cathedral, the Empire State Building, Lomonosov University, all built to scale with matchsticks. That was just childish nonsense. I was like the boy in that Goethe poem 'who lops the thistle's heads.'“ He shook his head despondently. “What I worry about is that I'm all burned out.”

“What should you have done instead?”

He took off his glasses and put them back on again. “Do you remember my efforts with the praying hands and the golden helmet? In principle, that was the right path for me, but what I'd done wrong was that I'd taken the paintings as my models. A matchstick sculptor needs to find his models in sculptures of wood, stone, or bronze. Are you familiar with Rodin's Kiss?”

On the wall were some twenty photographs of two kissing figures taken from every perspective. They were seated next to each other, she with her arm around his neck, he with his hand on her hip. “I've also ordered a cast that has a patina of bronze, of course an altogether different model than these photos.” He looked at me as if waiting for approbation. I dodged into a question about his wife. Whenever I came to his workshop, she had always been sitting in a chair with a book. For years she had read to him as he worked. Instead of answering my question, he rang a bell. After a short, uncomfortable wait, Frau Nägelsbach appeared. She greeted me warmly, but self-consciously. It was evident that Nägelsbach's creative crisis had spilled over into a marriage crisis. Frau Nägelsbach's plumpness had lost its cheerful ruddiness.

“Why don't we all go outside?”

He picked up three folding chairs, and we sat down beneath a pear tree. I asked him about Wendt.

“What I know lies a long time back. Ages ago, Wendt had been a member of the leftist terrorist group SPK, the Socialist Patient Collective. We don't know whether he belonged to the small circle surrounding the notorious Dr. Huber or to those who were members more out of curiosity than anything else. He was driving a stolen vehicle without a driver's license and had an accident, and the woman who was in the car with him—she was also in the SPK—soon afterward went underground and joined the Red Army Faction. He was only seventeen. His parents and teachers stood behind him all the way, so his past didn't really cause him any trouble until two years ago, when he was hired by the State Psychiatric Hospital. Word got around that he'd been a terrorist, and the old story was dug up again.”

I remembered. In 1970 and 1971, the papers were full of reports on Dr. Huber, who had been fired from the Heidelberg University Neuropsychiatry Clinic and had then gone on to round up his patients and create the SPK. He had commandeered rooms at the university and prepared for revolution. Revolution as therapy. By 1971 all was over, Dr. Huber and his wife had been arrested, and the patients were scattered in all directions—except for a few who went over to the Red Army Faction. “Nothing has come up about Wendt since then?” I asked.

“Nothing. How come he interests you?”

I told him about my search for Leo in Heidelberg, in Mannheim, and finally at the State Psychiatric