Self's deception - By Bernhard Schlink & Peter Constantine Page 0,81

and the knife plunged into his left side. The brother pulled it out, ready to take another stab, but I managed to knock the umbrella against him just in time. It surprised him more than it injured him, but the knife went clanging to the ground, and as he bent forward to pick it up, I quickly stepped on his fingers. Phillip collapsed, falling onto the knife, and the brother had to make do with spitting on the ground in front of his sister. He turned around and walked away.

“You have to bandage it up,” Philipp said in a low but clear voice, pressing his left hand against the wound. “Real fast and real tight. The spleen bleeds like crazy. Tear your shirt.”

I took off my jacket and shirt, tore at my shirt to no avail, and gave it to Füruzan, who bit at it, shredding it strip by strip.

She began bandaging him. “Harder,” Philipp snapped.

People stopped, asked what had happened, offered help.

“Can your giggly little sister get a taxi from the Parade-platz?” Philipp asked Füruzan. “She can? OK, Gerhard, call the hospital and tell them to get the operating theater ready. Shit, he got me in the lung, too.” Philipp was talking with a bloody mouth.

Füruzan's little sister ran off. I saw from the phone box that she was back in a few minutes with a taxi. Füruzan had finished bandaging Philipp and led him to the taxi. The driver must have taken him for drunk and groggy, but obviously didn't see any blood, just that his dark blue silk suit might have gotten a little wet. Füruzan got in with him, while her mother shooed away the crowd. I don't know what Füruzan said to the driver, but he drove off with screeching tires.

18

A little peace of mind

“As far as we can tell, he should be fine. We took out the spleen and patched up his lung.” The surgeon who had operated on Philipp took off his green cap, crumpled it up, and threw it in the trash. He noticed my cigarette. “Can I have one, too?”

I handed him the pack and a lighter. “Can I see him?” “If you like. But you ought to put on a gown. It'll take a while, though, for him to come around. When his girlfriend comes back, she'll take over.”

When I got to the room, Füruzan was no longer there. Perhaps she was in the process of shooting her brother. Or reconciling with him. Or was mad at Philipp and didn't want to see him again. I sat at his bedside listening to his labored breathing and to the low hissing of the pump from which a tube leading to his ribcage disappeared beneath his hospital gown. Another tube ran from a drip to the back of his hand. His hair, wet with sweat, was sticking to his head. It was the first time I noticed how thin and sparse it was. Was my vain friend a maestro with a hair dryer? Or had I just never noticed? The blood around his mouth had not been cleaned away properly; it was brown and dry, and flaking at the corners of his mouth. From time to time his eyelids twitched. The sun and the blinds drew lines through the room that slowly wandered across the linoleum floor, the bedcover, and up the wall. When the nurse changed his drip, he woke up.

“Maria with the pretty ears.” Then he recognized me. “Remember, Gerhard: Nice earlobes mean nice breasts.”

“Really, Herr Doctor!” Maria said, playing along.

“I'd do better not to speak,” Philipp whispered with some effort.

The nurse left the room, quietly closing the door. After a while Philipp beckoned me to come closer. “My spleen is out? The pump is running? I used to dream sometimes that I was dying. I'd be lying in the hospital, in a room and a bed just like now, and I would bid all the women I ever knew farewell.”

“All of them?” I, too, was whispering. “You mean they'd be lining up outside, along the corridor and down the stairs?”

“Each woman would say that after me she never met another guy like me.”

“I see.”

“And I would tell each of them that I never again met anyone like her.”

“What you'd need is a room with two doors, one in front and one in back. The women you've already spoken to mustn't come face-to-face with the women still waiting. Can you imagine if word got down the line that you were