Self's deception - By Bernhard Schlink & Peter Constantine Page 0,90

What is strange is that none of us went over to the Communist League with him, even though he had been so dominant in our group that without him we scattered to the winds. Maybe he didn't want us there with him. Anyway, he didn't proselytize us. I'd say, one day he was simply gone.”

“Did he also drop Rolf from one day to the next?”

“Yes, I think they had a fight or something. Richard was the only one who kept in touch with Helmut and whom Helmut seemed to want to keep in touch with. I don't know how long that lasted. The last time I saw Richard was when I passed my exams and was heading to Pforzheim for my internship as vicar, and was waiting in the Heidelberg station for my train. Richard was no longer working as a laboratory assistant, which is what he'd trained for, but was now working for a lawyer. A divorce lawyer, he said, though I wondered if it was really a divorce lawyer or a terrorist lawyer—you know, I mean one of those who are in cahoots with terrorists. Richard had always been frustrated that we could only watch those spaghetti Westerns and not actually live them: On one side large-scale landowners, corrupt generals, greedy priests, and on the other poor Mexican farmers in white pajamas and revolutionaries with ammunition belts crossed over their chests, and then lots of ripe mangoes, wine, and mariachis. He'd have loved to import all that over here.”

Lunch was over. The participants of the various workshops had walked their legs off in the park. When one group caught sight of us and started heading over, he got up. “They think you are the next speaker, or they want to corner me. The workshop's starting up again in a few minutes. Come along, I'll show you the photograph.”

It was hanging in his office. I had expected a photo the size of a postcard, but it had been enlarged to poster size and placed behind glass in a black frame. It showed a picnic in black and white: a lawn, a white cloth spread with fruit, bread, and wine, and Wendt and Lemke lounging across from each other. Behind them, the current director of the academy, already sporting a beard, was bending over picking flowers, and a few steps away was a Borgward with its sunroof pulled back. Instead of a number on its license plate it had the letters “R. I. P.” Lemke was talking at Wendt, gesticulating wildly, and Wendt had been listening to him with his head resting on his hand and his hand resting on his knee, but now he looked up, and the flower-picking future director of the academy had also raised his head and was looking up, bent forward as he was. They had planted a presumably red flag on a thin, glittering stick: At this instant a magpie was flying off with the stick and the flag.

“Is that… no, it's not a snapshot, is it?”

“You mean because of the Manet motif? No, we didn't arrange ourselves like that on purpose. We didn't arrange for the magpie either, though it had already stolen a silver fork from us, and Richard had planted the flag lightly enough so the bird could snatch it away. Richard had been hovering around us all afternoon with his camera, shooting us from a distance, in closeup, with a telephoto lens and without one. He took hundreds of pictures. This was the last one. Do you like it?”

It was an attractive picture. But at the same time it made me sad. Lemke in his dark jacket, white shirt, and dark, narrow tie looked boyish in an old-fashioned way, energetic and self-confident. Wendt's face was already showing the overtaxed quality I had seen. A fearful, childlike face eager to be excited about the bird flying off but not quite daring to.

“Why should that beautiful Borgward automobile rest in peace?” I asked.

He didn't understand.

“R. I. P., requiescat in pace. Wasn't that meant for the car? Was it meant for capitalism, or …”

He laughed. “That wasn't on the car. Richard retouched the picture later. He always smuggled his initials into photos that he thought were particularly successful. R. I. P.—that's short for Richard Ingo Peschkalek.”

24

After Fall Comes Winter

Shouldn't I have realized it? This was of course a futile question. But it preoccupied me all the way to Gättingen. I remembered the conversation in prison, when Peschkalek had spoken of Leo and me: