Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,38

a café.’

‘Thanks, but I’ll manage. Do you know what you’re looking for?’

‘Hmm.’ I was getting my bearings. The front room was the study with a large table at the window, a piano and shelves against the remaining walls. In the shelves files and stacks of computer printouts. Through the window I could see the rooftops of the old town and Heiligenberg. In the second room was a bed with a patchwork quilt, three armchairs from the era of the kidney-shaped table, one of the aforementioned tables, a wardrobe, television, and a stereo system. From the window I looked left up to the castle and right to the advertising column I’d stood behind weeks ago.

‘He didn’t have a computer?’ I asked in astonishment.

‘No. He had all sorts of private stuff on the RCC system.’

I turned to the shelves. The books were about mathematics, computing, electronics, and artificial intelligence, films and music. Next to them an absolutely beautiful edition of Green Henry and stacks of science fiction. The spines of the files indicated bills and taxes, product registration forms and instruction manuals, references and documents, travel, the public census, and computer stuff I barely understood. I reached for the folder of bills and leafed through it. In the references file I discovered that Mischkey had won a prize in his third year of high school. On his desk was a pile of papers that I looked through. Along with private mail, unpaid bills, programming notes, and sheet music, I came across a newspaper cutting.

RCW honoured the oldest fisherman on the Rhine. While he was out fishing yesterday on the river, Rudi Basler, who had turned ninety-five years old, was surprised by a delegation from the RCW headed by General Director Dr H. C. Korten: ‘I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity of congratulating the grand old man of Rhine-fishing personally. Ninety-five years old and still as fresh as a fish in the Rhine.’ Our photo captures the moment in which General Director H. C. Korten shares the happiness of the celebrated man and presents him with a gift hamper . . .

The picture had a clear shot of the gift hamper in the foreground; it was the same one I’d received. Then I found a copy of a short newspaper article from May 1970.

Scientists as forced labourers in the RCW? The Institute for Contemporary History has picked up a hot potato. The most recent monograph from the Quarterly of Contemporary History deals with the forced labour of Jewish scientists in German industry from 1940 to 1945. According to this, renowned Jewish chemists among others worked in degrading conditions on the development of chemical war materials. The press officer of the RCW pointed to a planned commemorative publication for their 1972 centenary in which one contribution will deal with the firm’s history under National Socialism, including the ‘tragic incidents’.

Why had this been of interest to Mischkey?

‘Could you come here for a moment?’ I asked Frau Buchendorff, who was sitting in the armchair in the other room, staring out of the window. I showed her the newspaper article and asked her what she made of it.

‘Yes, recently Peter had started asking for information on this or that about the RCW. He never had before. Regarding the matter of the Jewish scientists I even had to copy the article from our commemorative publication.’

‘And where this interest stemmed from he didn’t say?’

‘No, nor did I push him to tell me anything because talking was often so difficult towards the end.’

I found the copy of the commemorative publication in the file entitled ‘Reference Chart Webs’. It was next to the computer printouts. The R, the C, and the W had caught my eye as I was casting a resigned farewell glance at the shelves. The file was full of newspaper and other articles, some correspondence, a few brochures and computer printouts. So far as I could see, all the material was linked to the RCW. ‘I can take the file with me, can’t I?’

Frau Buchendorff nodded. We left the apartment.

On the homeward journey on the motorway the roof was closed. I sat with the file on my knees and felt like a schoolboy.

Suddenly Frau Buchendorff asked me, ‘You were a public prosecutor, Herr Self, weren’t you? Why did you actually stop?’

I took a cigarette from the packet and lit it. When the pause grew too long I said, ‘I’ll answer your question, I just need a moment.’ We overtook a truck with a yellow tarpaulin, ‘Fairwell’

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