Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,86

not. I’m not going to have them tag me as mad. If they don’t pay up right away, I’m going to a lawyer.’

‘If you go to trial you won’t be able to avoid a psychiatric examination.’

‘Let’s wait and see.’

The nurse came in carrying a little dish with brightly coloured tablets. ‘The two red ones now, the yellow one before and the blue one after your meal. How are we today?’

Sergej had tears in his eyes as he looked at the nurse. ‘I can’t go on, Katrin. Nothing but pain and no dancing ever again. And now this gentleman from the insurance company wants to make me out to be a cheat.’

Nurse Katrin laid her hand on his forehead and glowered at me. ‘Can’t you see how Sergej is suffering? You should be ashamed of yourself! Leave him in peace. It’s always the same with insurance companies; first they make you pay through the nose and then they torture you because they don’t want to cough up.’

I couldn’t add anything to this conversation and fled. Over lunch I noted down keywords for my report to the Heidelberg Union Insurance. My conclusion was neither that of deliberate self-mutilation, nor mere accident. I could only gather together the points that spoke for one or the other. Should the insurance not wish to pay they wouldn’t have a bad case.

As I was crossing the street, a car spattered me from head to toe in slushy snow. I was already in a foul mood when I reached my office and the work on the report made me all the more morose. By the evening I’d laboriously dictated two cassettes that I took round to Tattersallstrasse to be typed up. On the way home it struck me I’d wanted to ask Frau Mencke about little Siegfried’s tooth-extraction methods. But now I couldn’t care less.

14

Matthew 6, verse 26

It was a small huddle of mourners that gathered at the Ludwigshafen Cemetery at 2 p.m. on Friday. Eberhard, Philipp, the vice-dean of the Heidelberg faculty for the sciences, Willy’s cleaning lady, and myself. The vice-dean had prepared a speech, which, due to the low turnout, he delivered gracelessly. We discovered that Willy had been an internationally recognized authority in the field of screech owl research. And this with heart and soul: in the war, as an adjunct lecturer at Hamburg at the time, he had rescued the entire family of distraught screech owls from the burning aviary in Hagenbeck Zoo. The minister spoke about Matthew 6, verse 26, about all the birds beneath the heavens. Beneath blue heavens and on crunchy snow we walked from the chapel to the grave. Philipp and I were first behind the coffin. He whispered to me, ‘I must show you the photo sometime. I came across it when I was tidying up. Willy and the rescued owls, with singed hair, or feathers respectively, six pairs of eyes looking exhaustedly but happily into the camera. It warmed my aching heart.’

Then we stood by the deep hole. It’s like eenie, meenie, minie, mo. According to age, Eberhard is next, and then it’s my turn. For a long time now when someone I’m fond of dies, I’ve stopped thinking, ‘Oh, if only I’d done this or that more often.’ And when a contemporary dies it’s as though he’s just gone on ahead, even if I can’t say where to. The minister recited the Lord’s Prayer and we all joined in; even Philipp, the most hard-boiled atheist I know, said it aloud. Then each of us cast a small shovelful of earth into the grave, and the minister shook our hands, one by one. A young guy, but convinced, and convincing. Philipp had to return to work straight away.

‘You will come by this evening for a funeral meal, won’t you?’ Yesterday in town I’d bought another twelve little sardine cans and laid the tiny fish in a Escabeche marinade. To go with it there’d be white bread and Rioja. We settled on eight o’clock.

Philipp strode off like a Fury, Eberhard did the honours with the vice-dean, and the cleaning lady, still emitting heartrending sobs, was led gently on the arm of the minister to the exit. I had time and slowly wandered along the cemetery paths. If Klara had been buried here I’d have wanted to visit her now, and commune a bit.

‘Herr Self!’ I turned around and recognized Frau Schmalz, complete with small trowel and watering can. ‘I’m just on my way to the family grave,