Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,73

in padded overalls, romping around in the snow.

‘All right, I mean, it’s really important for me to share what I know about Sergej,’ she said. ‘I’d find it, like, absolutely awful, if someone thought . . . if someone got the wrong . . . Sergej, he’s so incredibly sensitive. And he’s so vulnerable, not at all macho. You see, that’s why he couldn’t have done it for starters, he was always terribly afraid of injuries.’

Joschka wasn’t so sure. He stirred the contents of his Styrofoam cup with a little plastic stick, contemplatively. ‘Herr Self, I don’t think Sergej maimed himself either. I just can’t imagine anyone doing that. But if anyone . . . You know, Sergej was always having crackpot ideas.’

‘How can you say such mean stuff?’ Hanne interrupted him. ‘I thought you were his friend. No way, that makes me, like, really sad.’

Joschka placed his hand on her arm. ‘But, Hanne, don’t you remember the evening we were entertaining the dancers from Ghana? He told us how, when he was a boy scout, he deliberately cut his hand with the potato peeler to get out of kitchen duty. We all laughed about it, you too.’

‘But you got it completely wrong. He only pretended he’d cut himself and wrapped a large bandage around it. If you’re going to, like, distort the truth like that . . . I mean, really, Joschka . . .’

Joschka didn’t appear convinced, but didn’t want to quarrel with Hanne. I inquired about the shape, and mood, Sergej was in during the last few months of the season.

‘Exactly,’ said Hanne. ‘That doesn’t fit with your strange suspicion either. He believed completely in himself, he absolutely wanted to add flamenco to his repertoire, and tried to get a scholarship to Madrid.’

‘But, Hanne, he didn’t get the scholarship, that’s the thing.’

‘But don’t you get it, the fact he applied for it, that had so much power somehow. And his relationship, that was finally going well in the summer with his German professor. You know, Sergej, he isn’t gay, but he can also love men. He’s absolutely fantastic that way, I think. And not just something brief, sexual, but like, really deep. It’s impossible not to like him. He’s so . . .’

‘Sweet?’ I suggested.

‘Yeah, sweet. Do you actually know him, Herr Self?’

‘Uh, could you tell me who the German professor is you mentioned?’

‘Was it really German, not law?’ Joschka frowned.

‘Oh, crap, you’re demolishing Sergej. He was a Germanist, such a cuddly guy. But his name . . . I don’t know if I should tell you.’

‘Hanne, the two of them hardly made a secret of it considering how they carried on round town. It’s Fritz Kirchenberg from Heidelberg. Maybe it’s a good idea for you to talk to him.’

I asked them about Sergej’s qualities as a dancer. Hanne answered first.

‘But that’s beside the point. Even if you’re not a good dancer you don’t have to hack your leg off. I’m not even going to discuss it. And I’m still convinced you’re wrong.’

‘I don’t have any concrete opinion as yet, Frau Fischer,’ I said to Hanne. ‘And I’d like to point out that Herr Mencke hasn’t lost his leg, merely broken it.’

‘I don’t know what sort of knowledge you have of ballet, Herr Self,’ said Joschka. ‘At the end of the day, it’s the same with us as it is everywhere else. There are the stars, and the ones who will be stars one day, and then there’s the solid middle rank of the ones who’ve let go of their daydreams of glory but don’t have to worry about earning a living. And then there are the rest – the ones who have to live in constant fear of whether there’ll be a next engagement, for whom it’s certainly over when they start to get older. Sergej belongs to the third group.’

Hanne didn’t contradict. She let her defiant expression show how completely out of order she felt this conversation was. ‘I thought you wanted to find out something about Sergej, the person. You men have nothing in your heads beyond careers, really.’

‘How did Herr Mencke envisage his future?’

‘On the side he’d always done ballroom dancing and he told me once he’d like to start a dance school, a perfectly conventional one, for fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds.’

‘That also proves he couldn’t have done anything to himself. Think it through, Joschka. How’s he supposed to become a dance teacher minus a leg?’

‘Did you also know about his dancing school plans,