Self's deception - By Bernhard Schlink & Peter Constantine Page 0,63

out, and she bought me a pair of shorts in which I looked like a Brit on the River Kwai. Manu wanted a pair of jeans—not any old jeans, a specific brand—and we went all the way up the main street to the Heilig-Geist Church. I find the tide of strolling consumers in pedestrian areas no more agreeable, either aesthetically or morally, than comrades on parade or soldiers on the march. But I have grave doubts that I will live to see Heidelberg's main street once again filled with cheerfully ringing trams, cars honking happily, and related, bustling people hurrying to places where they have something to do, and not simply to places where there's something to see, something to nibble at, or something to buy.

“Let's give the castle a miss,” I said, and Brigitte and Manu stared at me, crestfallen. “Let's forget about the zoo, too.”

“But you said we—”

“I have a much better idea. We'll go flying.”

I didn't have to suggest it twice. We took a tram back to Mannheim and got out at the Neuostheim airfield. A small tower, a small office, a small runway, and small airplanes— Manu had seen bigger and better things on his flight from Rio de Janeiro to Frankfurt. But he was enraptured. I signed up for a half-hour flight. The pilot who was to take us up got his one-propeller four-seater ready for takeoff. We went rattling down the runway and rose into the air.

Mannheim lay beneath us like a toy town, neat and dapper. It would have been wonderful for the elector who had ordered the squares to be laid out centuries ago to see his city from this perspective. The Rhine and the Neckar glittered in the sun, the stacks of the Rhineland Chemical Works sent little white clouds puffing into the sky, and the fountains by the Water Tower danced in their basins. Manu was quick to spot the Luisenpark, the Kurpfalz Bridge, and the Collini Center where Brigitte has her massage practice. The friendly pilot flew an extra arc until Manu managed to spot his house in the Max-Joseph-Strasse.

“Could we swing over to Viernheim?”

“Is that where you live?” the pilot asked me.

“I used to.”

Brigitte's interest was piqued. “When did you live in Viern-heim?” she asked me. “I didn't know that.”

“After the war. For a while, that is.”

Beneath us were the blocks of the Benjamin-Franklin-Village. The golf course, the autobahn junction, the Rhein-Neckar Center, the narrow, crooked streets surrounding the town hall and churches. We had reached the last houses of Viernheim, and the pilot swung to the right.

I pointed left. “I'd rather fly back over the forest than over Heddesheim.”

“In that case, we'll have to climb quite a bit higher.”

“Why's that?”

He flew toward Weinheim and began to pick up altitude. “It's the Americans. They have a camp in the forest. There's no taking pictures either.”

“What will happen if we don't climb higher? Will they shoot us down?”

“No idea. What is it you want to see?”

“To tell you the truth, it's the camp I want to see. Back in 1945, it was a prisoner-of-war camp—that's how I got to know the forest.”

“Ah, old memories. Let's see what we can do.” He swung to the left without rising any higher, but picked up speed.

I couldn't spot the fence, but I saw the grass-covered bunkers, some on the open field, others hidden among trees. I saw the connecting asphalt paths and the clearings in which trucks or trailers in camouflage paint were parked close to one another. An area farther on was practically without vegetation and had been flattened by truck or tank tracks.

Then, not far from the autobahn, I saw bulldozers, conveyer belts, and trucks at work. Dirt had been dug up over a surface the size of a tennis court. I could not tell how far down they had dug, or if something was being buried or dug up. It was surrounded by woods, but at one end of the tennis court the trees were black, charred skeletons. There had been a fire.

9

Old hat

“You weren't really in Viernheim at that camp, were you? You never mentioned it before,” Brigitte said when Manu was already in bed and we were sitting like an old married couple on the couch in front of the TV.

“No, I wasn't. It has to do with the case I'm working on.”

“If you want some inside information about Viernheim, I have a girlfriend who lives there. Actually, she's a colleague, and you know how we masseuses