Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,32
healed crookedly. I’ve always abhorred self-mutilators, the young Spartan who let his belly be mauled by a fox, Mucius Scaevola, and Ignatius of Loyola. But so far as I was concerned, they could all have had a million if it meant them disappearing from the pages of our schoolbooks. My ballet dancer claimed the break occurred when shutting the heavy door of his Volvo; on the evening in question he was running a high fever, had to get through a performance nonetheless, and afterwards wasn’t himself. That’s why he’d slammed the door although his leg was still hanging out. I sat in my car for a long time trying to imagine whether such a thing was possible. There wasn’t much more I could do with the summer break that had scattered his theatre colleagues and friends in every direction.
Sometimes I thought about Frau Buchendorff and about Mischkey. I hadn’t found anything about his case in the papers. Once I happened to walk along Rathenaustrasse and the second-floor shutters were closed.
2
Everything was fine with the car
It was pure coincidence that I got her message in time one afternoon in September. Normally I don’t pick up messages in the afternoon. Frau Buchendorff had called in the afternoon and asked if she could talk to me after work. I’d forgotten my umbrella so had to go back to the office, saw the signal on the answering machine, and called back. We agreed to meet at five o’clock. Her voice was subdued.
Shortly before five I was in my office. I made coffee, rinsed the cups, tidied the papers on my desk, loosened my tie, undid my top button, pushed my tie up again, and moved the chairs in front of my desk back and forth. Finally they stood where they always stand. Frau Buchendorff was punctual.
‘I really don’t know if I should have come. Maybe I’m only imagining things.’
She stood, out of breath, next to the potted palm. She smiled uncertainly, was pale, and had shadows beneath her eyes. As I helped her out of her coat her movements were nervous.
‘Take a seat. Would you like a coffee?’
‘For days I’ve done nothing but drink coffee. But, yes, please do give me a cup.’
‘Milk and sugar?’
Her thoughts were elsewhere and she didn’t reply. Then she fixed me with a look of determination that hid her uncertainty.
‘Do you know anything about murder?’
Carefully I put the cups down and sat myself behind the desk.
‘I’ve worked on murder cases. Why do you ask?’
‘Peter is dead, Peter Mischkey. It was an accident, they say, but I simply can’t believe it.’
‘Oh, my God!’ I got up, paced back and forth behind my desk. I felt queasy. In the summer on the tennis court I’d destroyed a part of Mischkey’s vitality, and now he was dead.
Hadn’t I ruined something for her, too, then? Why had she come to me anyway?
‘You met him just that one time playing tennis, and he did play pretty wildly, and it’s true, he was also a wild driver, but he never had an accident and drove so confidently with such concentration – what happened doesn’t fit.’
So she knew nothing about my meeting with Mischkey in Heidelberg. Nor would she refer to the tennis match that way if she knew I’d turned Mischkey in. It seemed he’d told her nothing, nor had she, in her role as Firner’s personal assistant, discovered anything. I didn’t know what to make of that.
‘I liked Mischkey and I’m terribly sorry, Frau Buchendorff, to learn of his death. But we both know that not even the best of drivers is immune to road accidents. Why don’t you believe it was an accident?’
‘You know the railway bridge between Eppelheim and Wieblingen? That’s where it happened, two weeks ago. According to the police report, Peter skidded out of control on the bridge, broke through the railings, and crashed down onto the tracks. He had his seatbelt on, but the car buried him beneath it. His cervical vertebra was broken and he was killed on the spot.’ She sobbed convulsively, brought out a handkerchief, and blew her nose. ‘Sorry. He drove that route every Thursday; after his sauna at the Eppelheim baths he rehearsed with his band in Wieblingen. He was musical, you know, played the piano really well. The section over the bridge is straight as an arrow, the roads were dry, and visibility was good. Sometimes it’s foggy but not that evening.’