Self's deception - By Bernhard Schlink & Peter Constantine Page 0,72
you believe a thing like that?”
I invited Grandpa and Eva for lunch in the Kleiner Rosen-garten, and then drove Henlein back to his retirement home. His room was filled with binders. He had been collecting material since 1955. I read how poison gas is manufactured, stored, and employed, how it works and how one can protect oneself, and where it was manufactured and stored in Germany—and that nobody really seems to know where it was buried after World War I and II. Henlein had cut out every local and regional report containing the slightest evidence of poison gas in the Lampertheim National Forest or on the Viernheim Meadows. He had also saved all the reports about local and regional projects for which the ticking time bomb could be particularly dangerous. Both the realized and unrealized projects reflected the development of the Federal Republic of Germany: Hunting preserves, woodland communities, adventure parks, waste management plants, test tracks, nature preserves, golf courses—all kinds of grand plans had been made for the area, anticipating the time when the Americans would give back the Lampertheim National Forest and the Viernheim Meadows.
“Do you know if maps of the stockpiling areas were made in '45?”
“I think so. And I think they also had maps back then that showed where the leftover stuff from World War I had been buried. But I've never managed to track any of those maps down. Think about it: That stuff is still lying buried all over the place, and the Americans give us back the land—those maps would be worth a fortune!”
13
Life's illusions
Worth enough to lead someone to murder? A woodland community on the Viernheim Meadows and in the Lampertheim National Forest would interest a real-estate mogul like old Herr Wendt, both for itself and for its effect on the real-estate market. I admit I haven't shown much talent in my occasional speculations in the stock market, but even I could see that one could make hefty gains with such maps. All you needed was to publish such a map at the right moment: Planning in the area would grind to a halt, and land prices would rise or come crashing down.
I left Henlein's retirement home and crossed the Planken Boulevard to the Ring, where I had parked the Opel. I bought a whole carton of Sweet Aftons, a tie with little white clouds on a night blue background, and an ice-cream cone with five scoops. I sat down in the park behind the Water Tower, ate the ice cream while listening to the splashing of the fountains, and thought, not for the first time, how nice it would be to live in one of the round towers that crown the two corner houses at the Augusta-Anlage. Would old Herr Wendt pull a few strings for me? Herr Wendt, I imagined myself saying, my investigations have revealed that you used some old maps to pull a shady trick or two for some crooked deals. You used your son, and lo and behold he got murdered along the way. Now I'm not saying that you pulled the trigger, Herr Wendt, but you let it happen. So here's the deal: I want you to fix me up with one of those two tower apartments up there, and I'll be happy to look the other way.
People don't murder simply for money. In fact, they murder for one reason, and one reason only: to save their life's illusions. There's the one who murders out of jealousy: If my beloved is dead, she's mine and nobody can take her away from me, not a lover, not she herself. There's the one who kills as a professional: He knows no trade, is nothing, but wants to hold his own in a world in which professional success makes the man. Tyrants murder because they want to be greater than they are and are murdered in turn because somebody wants the world to be a better place than it is. There is collective murder for collective illusions—the history of the twentieth century is riddled with it. Then of course there is also murder sparked by greed. But its aim is not to gather and hoard money: It, too, aims to salvage dreams of greatness and eminence. It had been many years since old Herr Wendt had stopped dreaming of being the emperor of a real-estate empire in favor of being a father who has reconciled with his son. No, old Herr Wendt had nothing to do with his son's