Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,50
the door in uniform. ‘Step right in, Herr Self. I don’t have much time, I’ve got to head back in a minute.’ We sat down in the living room. Jägermeister schnapps was offered, but no one drank.
Sergej was actually called Siegfried and had left his parents’ house at the age of sixteen, much to his mother’s distress. Father and son had broken ties with one another. The sporty son still wasn’t forgiven for having evaded army service with a bogus spinal-chord injury. The path leading to ballet had also met with disapproval. ‘Perhaps it’s also got a good side, his not being able to dance any more,’ his mother mused. ‘When I visited him in hospital, he was just like my Sigi again.’
I asked how Siegfried had coped financially since then. There were apparently always some friends, or girlfriends, who supported him. Herr Mencke poured himself a Jägermeister after all.
‘I’d have liked to give him something from Granny’s inheritance. But you didn’t want that.’ She turned reproachful eyes on her husband. ‘You’ve just driven him deeper into everything.’
‘Leave it, Ella. That isn’t of interest to the insurance man. I must be getting back. Come along, Herr Self, I’ll see you out.’ He stood in the doorway and watched me until I’d driven off.
On the journey home I stopped in at Adelsheim. The inn was full; a few business people, teachers from the boarding school, and at one table three gentlemen who gave me the feeling they were a judge, a prosecutor, and a defence lawyer from the Adelsheim local court, negotiating in peace and quiet without the bothersome presence of the accused. I remembered my days at court.
In Mannheim I met the rush-hour traffic and needed twenty minutes for the five hundred metres through the Augusta-Anlage. I opened the door to the office.
‘Gerd,’ someone called, and as I turned I saw Judith coming from the other side of the street through the parked cars. ‘Can we talk for a moment?’
I locked the door again. ‘Let’s stretch our legs.’
We walked up Mollstrasse and along Richard-Wagner-Strasse. It took a while before she said anything. ‘I overreacted on Saturday. I still don’t think it’s good you didn’t tell me straight away on Wednesday about Peter and you. But somehow I can understand how you felt, and the way I acted as though you’re not to be trusted, I’m sorry about that. I can get pretty hysterical since Peter’s death.’
I needed a while, too. ‘This morning I wrote you a final report. You’ll find it along with an invoice in your mail, today or tomorrow. It was sad. It felt as though I was having to tear something out of my heart: you, Peter Mischkey, some better understanding of myself that I was getting from the case.’
‘Then, you’ll agree to continue? Just tell me what’s in your report.’
We’d reached the art museum; a few drops were falling. We went in and, wandering through the nineteenth-century painting galleries, I told her what I’d discovered, my theories, and what I was pondering. In front of Feuerbach’s painting of Iphigenia on Aulis she stopped. ‘This is a beautiful painting. Do you know the story behind it?’
‘I think Agamemnon, her father, has just deposited her as a sacrifice to the goddess Artemis so that a wind will start to blow again and the Greek fleet can set sail for Troy. I love the painting.’
‘I’d like to know who that lady was.’
‘The model, you mean? Feuerbach loved her very much. Nanna, the wife of a cobbler from Rome. He quit smoking for her sake. Then she ran away from him and her husband with an Englishman.’
We walked to the exit and saw it was still raining. ‘What do you plan to do next?’ Judith asked.
‘Tomorrow I want to talk to Grimm, Peter Mischkey’s colleague in the Regional Computer Centre, and with a few people from RCW again.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘If something comes to mind, I’ll let you know. Does Firner actually know about you and Mischkey, and that you’ve hired me?’
‘I haven’t said anything to him. But why did he never actually tell me about Peter’s involvement in our computer story? To begin with he always kept me up to date.’
‘So you never realized that I’d tied up the case?’
‘Well yes, a report from you crossed my desk. It was all very technical.’
‘You only got the first part. Why, I would like to know. Do you think you can find out?’