Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,81

a man. It never went far enough for me to make the first move. And certainly not in the past few weeks. But what sort of agonized first move is this, or isn’t it one? “I don’t have a problem saying I’m interested in you” when you obviously have an enormous problem just squeezing that roundabout, cautious sentence out. Come on, let’s get going.’ She wrapped the started pullover sleeve round the needles and wound more wool round it.

My mind went blank. I felt humiliated. We didn’t exchange a word all the way to Olten.

Judith had found Dvořák’s Cello Concerto on the radio and was knitting.

What had actually humiliated me? Judith had only hit me around the head with what I’d felt myself in recent months: the lack of clarity in my feelings towards her. But she’d done it so unkindly by quoting myself back at me that I felt exposed and skewered. I told her so near Zofingen.

She let her knitting sink to her lap and stared out in front of her at the road for a long while.

‘When I was an executive assistant I so often encountered men who wanted something from me, but didn’t put themselves on the line. They’d like to have something going with me, but at the same time they’d pretend they didn’t. They’d arrange things so they could immediately retreat without getting really involved. It seemed to me that was the lie of the land with you, as well. You make the first move, but perhaps it isn’t really one, a gesture that costs you nothing and has no risk attached. You talk about humiliation . . . I didn’t want to humiliate you. Oh, shit, why are the only little wounds you notice your own?’ She turned her head away. It sounded as if she was crying. But I couldn’t see.

By Lucerne it was getting dark. When we reached Wassen I didn’t want to drive any further. The autobahn was cleared, but it had started snowing. I knew the Hotel des Alpes from earlier Adriatic expeditions. There, still, in Reception was the cage with the Indian mynah bird. When it saw us, it squawked, ‘Stop thief, stop thief.’

At dinner we had the creamy Zürcher Geschnetzeltes and diced roast potatoes. During the drive we had started to argue about whether success inevitably leads an artist to despise his audience. Röschen had once told me about a concert of Serge Gainsbourg’s in Paris where the more contemptuously Gainsbourg treated the audience, the more appreciatively they applauded. Since then this question has preoccupied me, and expanded in my mind into the larger problem of whether one can grow old without despising people either. Judith put up a lengthy resistance to this argument about the link between artistic success and scorn of others. Over the third glass of Fendant she gave in. ‘You’re right, Beethoven went deaf, after all. Deafness is the perfect expression of contempt for one’s environment.’

In my monastic single room I slept a sound, deep sleep. We set off early for Locarno. When we drove out of the Gotthard tunnel, winter was over.

11

Suite in B minor

We arrived toward midday, took rooms in a hotel by the lake, and lunched in the glassed-in veranda, looking out at the colourful boats. The sun beat warmly through the panes. I was nervous thinking about tea at Tyberg’s house. From Locarno a blue cable car goes up to Monti. At the halfway point, where the ascending cabin meets the descending one, there’s a station, Madonna del Sasso, a famous pilgrimage church, not beautiful to look at, but in a beautiful location. We walked that far on the Way of the Cross, strewn with large round pebbles. And then we took the cable car to save ourselves the rest of the climb.

We followed the curving street to Tyberg’s house on the small square with the post office. We were standing in front of a wall at least three metres high that came down to the street, with cast-iron railings running along it. The pavilion on the corner, and the trees and bushes behind the railings, underscored the elevated situation of the house and garden. We rang the bell, opened the heavy door, went up the steps to the front garden, and there facing us was a simple, red-painted, two-level house. Next to the entrance we saw a garden table and chairs, like the ones in beer-gardens. The table was awash with books and manuscripts. Tyberg unwrapped himself from