Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,8
was staccato and hectic, I could have used three feet to work the clutch, the brake, and the gas pedal. Everything was clogged on the Konrad Adenauer Bridge. There’d been a collision, and immediately after it another one. I was stuck in a traffic jam for twenty minutes. I watched the oncoming traffic and the trains, and smoked to avoid suffocating.
The appointment with Schneider was at half past nine. The doorman at Gate 1 told me the way. ‘It’s not even five minutes. Go straight on, and when you come to the Rhine it’s another hundred metres to your left. The laboratories are in the light-coloured building with the large windows.’
I set off. Down at the Rhine I saw the small boy I’d met yesterday. He’d tied a piece of string to his little bucket and was ladling water out of the Rhine with it. He emptied the water down the drain.
‘I’m emptying the Rhine,’ he called, when he recognized me.
‘I hope it works.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m going to the laboratories over there.’
‘Can I come with you?’
He shook out his little bucket and came. Children often attach themselves to me, I don’t know why. I don’t have any, and most of them get on my nerves.
‘Come on then,’ I said, and we made our way together to the building with the large windows.
We were about fifty metres away when several people in white coats came rushing out of the entrance. They raced along the banks of the Rhine. Then there were more, not only in white coats, but also in blue overalls, and secretaries in skirts and blouses. It was an odd spectacle, and I didn’t see how anyone could run in this heat.
‘Look, he’s waving at us,’ the little boy said, and indeed one of the white-coats was flailing his arms and shouting something at us I couldn’t understand. But I didn’t have to understand; it was obviously about getting away as quickly as possible.
The first explosion sent a cascade of glass shards raining down the road. I grabbed the little boy’s hand, but he tore loose. For a moment it was as though I were paralysed: I didn’t feel any injury, heard a deep silence in spite of the continuing rattle of glass, saw the boy running, skidding on the glass shards, regaining his balance then finally falling two steps later and somersaulting forward from the impetus of movement.
Then came the second explosion, the scream of the little boy, the pain in my right arm. The bang was followed by a violent, dangerous, evil-sounding hissing. A noise that struck panic into me.
It was the sirens in the distance that made me act. They awakened reflexes inculcated in the war to flee, to help, to seek cover, and give protection. I ran to the boy, tugged him to his feet with my left hand, and dragged him in the direction we’d just come from. His little legs couldn’t keep up, but he pedalled his feet in the air and didn’t let go. ‘Come on, little one, run, we’ve got to get out of here, don’t slow down.’ Before we turned the corner I looked back. Where we’d been standing a green cloud was rising into the leaden sky.
In vain I waved at the ambulance tearing past. At Gate 1 the guard took care of us. He knew the little boy, who was clinging tightly to my hand, pale, scratched, and frightened.
‘Richard, in the name of God what happened? I’ll call your grandfather right away.’ He went over to the phone. ‘And I’ll call the medics for you. That doesn’t look good.’
A splinter of glass had torn open my arm and the blood was staining red the sleeve of my light-coloured jacket. I felt dizzy. ‘Do you have a schnapps?’
I only faintly recall the next half-hour. Richard was collected. His grandfather, a large, broad, heavy-set man with a bald head, shaved clean at the back and sides, and a bushy, white moustache, gathered up his grandson effortlessly into his arms. The police tried to get into the Works to investigate the accident, but were turned away. The doorman gave me a second and a third schnapps. When the ambulance men came they took me with them to the Works doctor, who put stitches in my arm and wrapped it in a sling.
‘You should lie down for a while next door,’ said the doctor. ‘You can’t leave now.’