Self's deception - By Bernhard Schlink & Peter Constantine Page 0,9

he pulled me away. “No, our offices are now closed. Let me say how pleased I am that you came. I would be grateful if you would speak to her father at your earliest convenience. That was a point you had there—perhaps our office didn't manage to reach her parents.” We stood by the main entrance. “Goodbye, Herr Self.”

7

Scratch a Swabian and you'll find a small Hegel

I didn't drive far. I stopped at the pond by Sankt Ilgen, got out of the car, and walked over to the water. I threw a couple of stones, trying to make them skip over the water. Even as a boy on Lake Wannsee I'd never got the knack. It's too late to learn now.

All the same, I wasn't about to let some young kid in a white gown pull the wool over my eyes. Wendt's story stunk. Why hadn't the police been called in? A woman who's been in a psychiatric hospital for three months falls out of an unsecured fourth-floor window, and it doesn't cross anybody's mind that negligent homicide or worse might be at play and that the police should be called? OK, Wendt hadn't exactly said that the police hadn't come and investigated. But he'd only mentioned ambulances, no police cars. And if the police had been brought in on Tuesday, Salger would have been informed by Thursday at the latest, regardless of what name Leo might have registered under. The police wouldn't have taken long to figure out that Frau so-and-so didn't exist but that Leonore Salger was missing, and that consequently Frau so-and-so was none other than Leonore Salger. And if Herr Salger had been contacted on Thursday, he'd surely have called me by now.

I had lunch in Sandhausen. It's no culinary Mecca. After lunch I got into my old Opel, which I'd parked on the market square in the sun, and the heat inside was stifling. Summer was just around the corner.

At half past two I was back at the hospital. It was cat-and-mouse. The receptionist in room 107—a different receptionist from the one in the morning—had Dr. Wendt paged but couldn't find him. Finally she showed me the way to his station through long, high-ceilinged corridors in which footsteps echoed. The nurse was sorry, but Dr. Wendt was definitely not to be disturbed. And I'd have to wait in the reception area; waiting at the station was against regulations.

Back in reception, I managed to barge all the way through to the office of Professor Eberlein, the director of the hospital, and explained to the secretary that Eberlein would doubtless rather see me than the police. By now I was fuming. The secretary looked at me uncomprehendingly. Could I please go to room 107?

When I got back out into the corridor, a nearby door opened. “Herr Self? I am Professor Eberlein. I hear you are kicking up quite a fuss.”

He was in his late fifties, small and fat, dragging his left foot and leaning on a cane with a silver knob. He studied me with deep-set eyes that peered out from beneath thinning black hair and bushy black eyebrows. His lachrymal glands and cheeks hung limply. In nasal Swabian he asked me to accompany him in his leisurely limping gait. As we walked, his cane tapped out a syncopated beat.

“Every institution is an organism. It has its circulation, breathes, ingests and eliminates, has infections and infarctions, develops defense and healing mechanisms.” He laughed. “What kind of an infection are you?”

We descended the stairs and went out into the park. The heat of the day had turned muggy. I didn't say anything. He, too, had only puffed and wheezed as he slowly negotiated the stairs.

“Say something, Herr Self, say something! You'd rather listen? Audiatur et altera pars—You're on the side of justice. You are something like justice, aren't you?” He laughed again, a smug laugh.

The flagstones came to an end and gravel crackled beneath our feet. The wind rustled through the trees of the park. There were benches along the paths and chairs on the lawn, and there were many patients outside, alone or in small groups, with or without white-gowned hospital staff. An idyll, except for the twitching, hopping gait of some of the patients, and the empty gazes and open mouths of others. It was noisy. Shouts and laughter echoed against the wall of the old building like the impenetrable confusion of voices in an indoor swimming pool. Eberlein periodically nodded to or greeted this or