Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,48
went by in the direction of Edingen. When I walked across the car lanes and looked down on the other side I saw the old railway station. A beautiful sandstone building from the turn of the century with three floors, rounded bow windows on the second floor, and a little tower. The station café was apparently still open. I went in.
The room was gloomy, of the ten tables three were occupied, on the right-hand side was a jukebox, pinball, and two video games, on the counter, restored in the old German style, a stunted potted palm and in its shadow the landlady. I sat down at the free table at the window, with a view onto the platform and the railroad embankment, got a menu with Wiener, Jäger and Zigeuner-schnitzel, all served with fries, and asked the landlady what their special was, their plat du jour, to use Ostenteich’s terms. She could offer Sauerbraten with dumplings and red cabbage, and broth with beef marrow. ‘First rate,’ I said, and ordered a wine from Wiesloch to go with it.
A young girl brought me the wine. She was around sixteen, with a lascivious voluptuousness that was more than the combination of too tight jeans, too tight a blouse, and too red lips. She’d have chatted up any man under fifty. Not me. ‘Enjoy,’ she said, bored.
When her mother brought me the soup I asked about the accident in September. ‘Did you hear it at all?’
‘I’d have to ask my husband about that.’
‘And what would he say?’
‘Well, we were already in bed, and then suddenly there was this smash. And shortly afterwards another. I said to my husband, “Something must have happened out there.” He got up straight away and took the tear-gas gun with him, because our game machines are always being broken into. But this time it had nothing to do with the games machines, but with the bridge. Are you from the press?’
‘I’m from insurance. Did your husband call the police?’
‘My husband didn’t know anything at that point. When he found nothing in the dining room he came back up and pulled some clothes on. Then he went out to the platform but he could already hear the ambulance siren. Who else could he have called?’
Her ample, blonde daughter brought the beef and listened attentively. Her mother sent her away to the kitchen.
‘Your daughter didn’t realize what was happening?’ It was obvious they had a problem.
‘She doesn’t notice anything. Just stares at everything in trousers, if you know what I mean. I wasn’t like that at her age.’ Now it was too late for her. Her eyes were filled with hungry futility. ‘Do you like it?’
‘Just like home,’ I said.
The bell in the kitchen rang, and she removed her willing flesh from my table. I wolfed down the Sauerbraten and the Wieslocher.
On the way to the car I heard quick steps behind me. ‘Hey, you!’ The kid from the station café was running after me breathlessly. ‘You wanted to hear something about the accident. Is there a hundred in it for me?’
‘Depends what you’ve got to say.’ She was a hard-boiled little slut.
‘Fifty upfront, and before that I don’t even start talking.’
I wanted to know and pulled out two fifty notes from my wallet. One of them I gave to her, the other I rolled into a ball.
‘So it was like this. That Thursday Struppi drove me home. When we came over the bridge, the delivery van was there. I wondered what it was doing on the bridge. Then Struppi and I, we, well, you know. And when the smash came I told Struppi to leave, as I was pretty sure my father would come any minute. My parents have something against Struppi because he’s as good as married. But I love him. So what. Anyhow, I saw the delivery van drive off.’
I gave her the scrunched-up ball. ‘What did the delivery van look like?’
‘Strange, somehow. You don’t see them round our way usually. But I can’t tell any more. Its lights weren’t on either.’
Her mother was peering out of the café doorway. ‘Get over here, Dina. Leave the man in peace!’
‘Okay, I’m coming.’ Dina walked back at a provocatively slow pace.
Sympathy and curiosity prompted me to meet the man who’d been saddled with this wife and daughter. In the kitchen I came across a thin, sweating little guy juggling pots and pans and casseroles. He’d probably already made several attempts to kill himself with the tear-gas gun.