Self's deception - By Bernhard Schlink & Peter Constantine Page 0,49
healing shock, but he accomplished the opposite. Perhaps my father wanted to prove that he really couldn't do anything else. It turned into a ritual between him and Mother, like a last dance that the two of them had before they were executed for a crime they had committed together. He would soil the bed, and his pride and dignity suffered. She would clean him up and change the sheets, her face turned away in disgust. He knew that he disgusted her, but that she would not shrink from tending him, even though she was slowly running herself into the ground. I shit on you, he wanted to tell her, but he could only tell her this by shitting on himself, and she could only show him that he was a pitiful shit by slaving over his shit.”
Later Leo again returned to the subject. “When I was a little girl I wanted to marry my father. All girls do. Then when I realized that that wasn't possible, I wanted somebody like my father. You see, I've always liked older men. But those last years with Father…How ugly everything had become, how spiteful, nasty, dirty …” She looked past me, her eyes wide. “Sometimes Helmut seemed to me like an angel with a burning sword, destroying, judging, cleansing. You wanted to know whether I loved him. I loved the angel, and at times cherished the hope that he would take his sword and burn away my fear. But perhaps the heat was too much. I have…have I betrayed him?”
Angels do not shoot at couches and cats. I told her that, but she wasn't listening.
35
A nation of cobblers
I had put in a call from Niedersteinbach to Tyberg in Locarno. He told me he was looking forward to our visit. “You're bringing a young lady with you? My butler will prepare two rooms. I won't let you stay in a hotel, and that's that! You must stay at my place.” We reached his Villa Sem-preverde in Monti above Locarno at teatime.
Tea was served out in the arbor. The table and chairs were made of granite and were pleasantly cool in the heat of the summery afternoon. The Earl Grey gave off a strong aroma. The pastries were delicious, and Tyberg was attentive. And yet something wasn't quite right. His attentiveness was so formal that it struck me as forced and distant. I was taken aback: He had been so warm on the phone. Could it be because Judith Buchendorff, Tyberg's secretary and personal assistant, whom I had known slightly longer and better than I had known him, was away doing research for his memoirs? Or was the distance between us the kind of distance common between people who became important to each other under certain circumstances, but who in fact have nothing in common? Were we like vacationers, classmates, or war buddies who meet again?
Tea was served out in the arbor. The table and chairs were made of granite and were pleasantly cool in the heat of the summery afternoon. The Earl Grey gave off a strong aroma. The pastries were delicious, and Tyberg was attentive. And yet something wasn't quite right. His attentiveness was so formal that it struck me as forced and distant. I was taken aback: He had been so warm on the phone. Could it be because Judith Buchendorff, Tyberg's secretary and personal assistant, whom I had known slightly longer and better than I had known him, was away doing research for his memoirs? Or was the distance between us the kind of distance common between people who became important to each other under certain circumstances, but who in fact have nothing in common? Were we like vacationers, classmates, or war buddies who meet again?
After tea, Tyberg gave Leo and me a tour of the gardens, which extend far up the mountain behind the house. In his office he showed us the computer on which his memoirs were being written and told us how he had struggled to find the right title. “My whole life has been dedicated to the chemical industry—the only title I could think of was He Who Touches Pitch and Sulfur.” But that reminded him too much of verse one of Jesus Son of Sirach, chapter thirteen. In the music room he opened a chest and took out a flute for me and then sat down at the grand piano. We played Telemann's Suite in A Minor, and after that, just as we had once