Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,14

be here any minute,’ snorted Korten. ‘Barfing Barfer, here comes Barfing Barfeld.’

I remembered the nickname, and we stood there, trousers open, clapping each other on the shoulder. Tears sprang to my eyes and my belly hurt from all the laughing.

Back then things almost took a nasty turn. Barfeld reported us to the headmaster and I had already imagined my father raging and my mother weeping and the scholarship evaporating into thin air. But Korten took it all on his shoulders: he had been the instigator and I’d just joined in. So he got the letter home, and his father only laughed.

‘I’ve got to go.’ Korten buttoned up his fly.

‘What, again?’ I was still laughing. But the fun was over and the Chinese were waiting.

10

Memories of the blue Adriatic

When I returned to the hall it was all drawing to a close. Frau Buchendorff asked how I was getting home, I couldn’t be driving with my arm.

‘I took a taxi before.’

‘I’d be glad to give you a lift, since we’re neighbours. Quarter of an hour by the exit?’

The tables were deserted. Small knots of people formed and dispersed. The red-haired girl was still standing with a bottle at the ready, but everyone had had plenty to drink.

‘Hello,’ I said to her.

‘Did you enjoy the reception?’

‘The buffet was good. I’m amazed there’s anything left over. But seeing there is – could you pack a little something for a picnic tomorrow?’

‘How many in your party?’ She bobbed an ironic curtsy.

‘For two, if you have time.’

‘Oh, can’t do that. But I’ll have something packed for two nonetheless. Just a moment.’

She disappeared through the swing-doors. When she returned she had with her a largish box. ‘You should have seen the face of our chef. I had to tell him that you’re peculiar but important.’ She giggled. ‘Because you’ve dined with the general director he took it on himself to add a bottle of Forster Bischofsgarten Spätlese.’

When Frau Buchendorff saw me with the carton she raised an eyebrow.

‘I’ve packed the Chinese security expert. Didn’t you notice how petite and dainty she is? The delegation leader shouldn’t have let her go with me.’ In her presence all I could think of were stupid jokes. If this had happened to me thirty years ago I’d have been forced to admit I was in love. But what was I to make of it at an age where falling in love no longer happens?

Frau Buchendorff drove an Alfa Romeo Spider, an old one without the ugly rear spoiler.

‘Should I put the roof up?’

‘I usually ride my motorbike in swimming trunks, even in winter.’ It was getting worse and worse. And on top of it, a misunderstanding – she was putting up the roof. All because I hadn’t dared say that I could think of nothing finer than to be on the road on a mellow summer night with a beautiful woman at the wheel of a cabriolet. ‘No, leave it, Frau Buchendorff, I like driving in a sports car with the top down on a mellow summer night.’

We drove over the suspension bridge, below us the Rhine and the harbour. I looked up at the sky and the cables. It was a bright and clear starry night. When we turned off the bridge and before we were submerged in the streets, Mannheim with its towers, churches, and high-rises lay before us for a moment. We had to wait at a traffic light and a heavy motorbike drew up alongside. ‘Come on, let’s drive out to the Adriatic,’ shouted the girl on the back of the bike to her boyfriend. In the hot summer of 1946 I’d often been out at the gravel pit, its name, Adriatic, imbued with Mannheimers’ and Ludwighafeners’ yearning for the South. Back then my wife and I were still happy and I enjoyed our companionship, the peace, and the first cigarettes. So, people still went out there, more rapidly and easier these days, a quick dip in the water after the movies.

We hadn’t spoken throughout the journey. Frau Buchendorff had driven fast, and with focus. Now she lit a cigarette.

‘The blue Adriatic,’ she mused ‘when I was small we sometimes drove out in our Opel Olympia. There was coffee substitute in the thermos flask, cold cutlets, and vanilla pudding in the preserving jar. My big brother was streetwise, a rocker, as they called it; on his moped he soon went his own way. Back then the notion of going for a quick dip in the night was