Self's deception - By Bernhard Schlink & Peter Constantine Page 0,31

Hospital; of Wendt's foolish lies; and of my mysterious client.

“What is the young woman's last name?”

“Salger.”

“Leonore Salger from Bonn?”

I hadn't even mentioned Bonn. “How come—”

“And you know where Frau Salger is right now?” His tone became official and inquisitorial.

“What's going on? Why are you asking?”

“We're looking for Frau Salger. I cannot disclose the reason, but you can believe me, it's no trifle. Where is she?”

In the many years of our friendship we had always been aware that he was a policeman and I a private investigator. In a sense, our friendship lived off the fact that we were acting out different roles in the same play. He never treated me like a witness, and I never used the kind of tricks on him with which I find out from people things they don't want to disclose. Was that only because the cases had never been all that important, while this one was? There was a sharp retort on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed my words. “No, I don't know where Frau Salger is right now.”

He wasn't satisfied. He continued digging, and I continued dodging. The tone became increasingly tense, and Frau Nägelsbach looked at the two of us with mounting alarm. She repeatedly tried to pacify us. Then she got up, went into the house, and came back with a bottle of wine and some glasses. “I don't want to hear another word about this case or this woman,” she cut in. “Not another word. If you won't stop,” she turned to her husband, “then I'll tell Herr Self what's what. And if you won't stop”—now she turned to me—”I will tell my husband, perhaps not everything—because I don't have all the facts—but everything that you have said without intending to, and what my husband hasn't heard because he's become too furious to listen.”

We both fell silent. Then we slowly started chatting again, about Brigitte and Manu, vacations, old age, retirement. But our hearts were not in it any longer.

24

Marble breaks and iron bends

Driving back home, I brooded over why I'd been so intent on keeping Leo's whereabouts to myself. Was she worth it? Did it help her in any way? By all accounts she'd been unlucky in her father, and I doubted that the counterfeit Salger had brought her much luck either, though he often appeared in her photo album, with her as a little brat on his knee, him pushing her swing, or with his arm around the growing girl. How was I to reconcile Salger the paternal friend with Salger the wannabe father? I didn't know who she was, what she'd done, why she was hiding. It was high time I had a word with her.

It was only ten thirty when I arrived in Mannheim, and the mild night beckoned me out for a walk. I went to the Kleiner Rosengarten restaurant and had a bottle of Soave with my vermicelli alla puttanesca, a dish that is not on the menu but which the chef makes for me if I ask him nicely and he happens to be in the mood. After my meal I was slightly tipsy.

In the old days, when I climbed the stairs up to my attic apartment, I only needed to stop once for a breather. Then it became twice, and now, on a bad day, I have to stop on every landing. Today was a bad day. I stopped, steadied myself on the banister, and could hear my heart pounding and my breath whistling. I looked up and saw that the landing in front of my apartment was dark. Was the lightbulb out?

Then I attacked the last flight of stairs. We Prussians have fought the battles of Düppeler Schanzen, Gravelotte, and Langemarck and stormed greater heights. When I got to the last few stairs I took the key out of my pocket. There are three doors on my landing. One is to my apartment, the second to that of the Weilands, and the third up to the attic—I have my back to that one when I unlock my door.

He had been standing in the doorway to the attic waiting for me. When I unlocked my door he came up behind me, laid his left hand on my shoulder, and with his right poked a gun into my side. “Don't try anything foolish!”

I was too taken aback, and also too exhausted and drunk, to be able to dodge him or throw a punch. Maybe I'm also too old. I'd never