Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,7

lay low. But in my opinion he remained a ticking bomb, even ticking today.’

The food was excellent. Schmalz ate his at a rush. He didn’t leave a single grain of rice on his plate – the obsessive behavior of the food neurotic. I asked what, in his opinion, should be done with whoever was behind the computer shambles.

‘Above all, interrogate him thoroughly. And then make him get in line. He can’t be a threat to the plant any more. Bright guy. He could . . .’

He flailed around for a non-sibilant synonym for certainly or surely. I offered him a Sweet Afton.

‘Prefer my own,’ he said, and took a brown plastic box from his pocket containing homemade filter cigarettes. ‘Made by my wife, no more than eight a day.’

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s homemade cigarettes. They are way up there with crocheted modesty covers for toilet paper. The mention of his wife reminded me of the janitor’s apartment with the nameplate ‘Schmalz’.

‘You have a young son?’

He looked at me guardedly and deflected the question with a ‘Meaning what?’

I told him about how I’d lost my way in the old factory, of the enchanted atmosphere of the overgrown yard and the encounter with the little boy with the brightly coloured ball. Schmalz relaxed and confirmed that his father lived in the janitor’s flat.

‘Member of our unit, too. The general and he knew one another well from the war. Now he . . . keeping an eye on the old plant . . . In the morning we take the boy to him, my wife being an employee here in the company, too.’

I learned that lots of the security people had lived in the compound and Schmalz had more or less grown up there. He’d been through the rebuilding of the Works after the war and knew its every corner. I found the idea of a life spent between refineries, reactors, distilleries, turbines, silos, and tankers, for all its industrial romance, oppressive.

‘Didn’t you ever want to look for a job beyond the RCW?’

‘Couldn’t do that to my father. His motto: we belong here. Did the general throw in the towel? No, nor do we.’ He looked at his watch and leapt up. ‘Too bad, can’t linger. Am on personal security’ – words he spoke almost error free – ‘duty at one o’clock. Kind of you to invite . . .’

My afternoon in the personnel office was unproductive. At four o’clock I conceded I could quit studying the personnel files once and for all. I stopped by to see Frau Buchendorff, whose first name I now knew to be Judith, also that she was thirty-three, had a degree in German and English, and hadn’t found a job as a teacher. She’d been at the RCW for four years, first in the archives, then in the PR department where she’d come to Firner’s attention. She lived in Rathenaustrasse.

‘Please don’t get up,’ I said. She stopped feeling for her shoes with her feet under the table, and offered me a coffee. ‘I’d love one. Then we can drink to being neighbours. I’ve read your personnel file and know almost everything about you, apart from how many silk blouses you own.’ She was wearing another one, this time buttoned up to the top.

‘If you’re coming to the reception on Saturday, you’ll see the third one. Have you received your invitation already?’ She slid a cup over to me and lit a cigarette.

‘What reception?’ I peered at her legs.

‘We’ve had a delegation from China here since Monday, and as a finale we want to show them that not only our plants, but also our buffets are better than the French. Firner thought it would be a chance for you to get to know a couple of people of interest to your case, informally.’

‘Shall I also have the chance to get to know you informally?’

She laughed. ‘I’m there for the Chinese. But there is one Chinese woman, I haven’t figured out what she’s in charge of. Perhaps she’s a security expert, who wouldn’t be introduced as such, so a kind of colleague of yours. A pretty woman.’

‘You’re trying to fob me off, Frau Buchendorff! I shall have to lodge a complaint with Firner.’ Scarcely had the words left my lips than I regretted them. An old man’s hackneyed charm.

7

A little glitch

The next day the air lay thick over Mannheim and Ludwigshafen. It was so muggy that, even without moving, my clothes stuck to my body. Driving