Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,28

quarter past four, all right?’

‘And you’ll take me at seven to choir; we’re rehearsing.’

‘Gladly. We’re playing from five till six at the RCW tennis courts in Oggersheim, mixed doubles with an executive assistant and her boyfriend, the chief suspect in my current case.’

‘How thrilling,’ said Babs. Sometimes I have the impression she doesn’t take my profession seriously.

‘If you’d like to know more I can fill you in on the way. And if not, that’s all right too, you just have to behave naturally.’

The bell rang. It sounded the way it did in my day. Babs and I went out into the corridor, and I watched the students streaming into the classrooms. They didn’t just have different clothes and hairstyles, their faces were different from the faces back then. They struck me as more conflicted and more knowing. But the knowledge didn’t make them happy. The children had a challenging, violent, and yet uncertain way of moving. The air vibrated from their shouts and noise. It almost felt threatening.

‘How do you survive this, Babs?’

She didn’t understand me. Perhaps because of the noise. She looked at me questioningly.

‘Okay then, see you this afternoon.’ I gave her a kiss. A few students wolf-whistled.

I welcomed the peace of my car, drove to the Horten parking lot, bought champagne, tennis socks, and a hundred sheets of paper for the report I’d have to write that evening.

20

A lovely couple

Babs and I were at the grounds shortly before five. Neither the green nor the silver cabriolet was parked there. It was fine with me to be first. I’d changed into my tennis things at home. I asked them to put the champagne on ice. Then Babs and I perched ourselves on the uppermost step of the flight of stairs leading from the restaurant terrace of the clubhouse to the courts. The parking lot was in full view.

‘Are you nervous?’ she asked. During the drive she hadn’t wanted to know more. Now she was just asking out of concern for me.

‘Yes. Perhaps I should stop this work. I’m getting more involved in the cases than I used to. This time it’s difficult because I find the main suspect very likeable. You’ll get to know him in a moment. I think you’ll warm to Mischkey.’

‘And the executive assistant?’

Could she sense that, in my mind, Frau Buchendorff was more than just a supporting actress?

‘I like her, too.’

We had chosen an awkward place on the steps. The people who had played until five went trooping up to the terrace, and the next lot came out of the changing rooms and bustled down the stairs.

‘Does your suspect drive a green cabriolet?’

When my view was clear too I saw that Mischkey and Frau Buchendorff had just pulled up. He sprang out of the car, ran round and flung open her door with a deep bow. She got out, laughing, and gave him a kiss. A lovely, vibrant, happy couple.

Frau Buchendorff spotted us when they reached the foot of the stairs. She waved with her right hand and gave Peter an encouraging nudge with the left. He, too, raised an arm in greeting – then he recognized me, and his gesture froze, and his face turned to stone. For a moment the world stopped turning, and the tennis balls were suspended in the air, and it was absolutely still.

Then the film moved on, and the two of them were standing next to us, and we were shaking hands, and I heard Frau Buchendorff say, ‘My boyfriend, Peter Mischkey, and this is the Herr Self I was telling you about.’ I went through the necessary introduction.

Mischkey greeted me as though we were seeing each other for the first time. He played his part composedly and skilfully, with the appropriate gestures and the correct sort of smile. But it was the wrong role, and I was almost sorry that he played it with such bravado, and would have wished instead for the proper ‘Herr Self? Herr Selk? A man of many guises?’

We went over to the groundsman. Court eight was reserved under Frau Buchendorff ’s name; the groundsman pointed it out to us curtly and ungraciously, involved as he was in an argument with an older married couple who insisted they had booked a court.

‘Take a look yourselves, if you please, all the courts are taken and your name isn’t on the list.’ He tilted the screen so that they could see it.

‘I can’t allow this,’ said the man. ‘I booked the court a week in