Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,90

you know where to?’

‘South, he said. To recover because it had all been too much for him. Why do you ask?’

‘I’m wondering whether he went to Tyberg pretending to be a journalist from Die Zeit.’

‘You mean looking for material to use against the RCW?’ She considered this. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him. But according to what Tyberg said about the visit, there wasn’t anything to unearth.’ Shivering, she pulled the dressing gown more tightly around her. ‘Are you sure you won’t have a coffee?’

‘You’ll be hearing from me, Judith.’ I walked home.

It all fitted together. A despairing Mischkey had attempted to use Tyberg’s grand aria about decency and resistance for his own ends against Korten. Intuitively he had recognized the dissonances better than all of us, the connection to the SS, the rescue of Tyberg, not that of Dohmke. He didn’t realize how close to the truth he was and how threatening that must have sounded to Korten. Not just sounded – was really, thanks to his dogged research.

Why hadn’t I thought of it? If it was so easy to save Tyberg, why, then, hadn’t Korten rescued both of them two days earlier while Dohmke was still alive? One was sufficient as reinsurance and Tyberg, the head of the research group, was more interesting than his co-worker Dohmke.

I removed my galoshes and clapped them against each other until all the snow had dropped off. The stairwell smelled of Sauerbraten. Yesterday I hadn’t bought anything else to eat and I could only make myself two fried eggs. The third egg I whisked over Turbo’s food. He’d been driven to distraction in recent days by the sardine odour in the apartment.

The SS man who’d helped Korten to liberate Tyberg had been Schmalz. Together with Schmalz Korten had exerted pressure on Weinstein. Schmalz had killed Mischkey for Korten.

I rinsed the sardine cans clean with hot water and dried them off. Where the lids were missing, I glued them back on. I chose green wool to hang them and threaded it through the curl of the rolled-back lid, or through the ring-pull, or around the hinge where an open lid was attached to its can. As soon as a can was ready I looked for its proper place on the tree; the big ones lower down, the small ones higher up.

I couldn’t fool myself. I didn’t give a damn about my Christmas tree. Why had Korten allowed his accessory Weinstein to survive? I suppose he hadn’t had any influence over the SS, only over Schmalz, the SS officer in the Works, whom he’d seduced and conquered. He couldn’t steer things so that Weinstein would be killed back in the concentration camp. But he could safely assume it. And after the war? Even if Korten were to discover that Weinstein had survived the camp, he could count on the fact that anyone who’d had to play a role such as Weinstein’s would prefer not to go public.

Now the final words made sense, too, the ones the widow Schmalz repeated from her husband’s deathbed. He must have tried to warn his lord and master about the trail he himself hadn’t been able to remove, given his physical state. How well Korten had known how to make this man depend on him! The young academic from a good home, the SS officer from a modest background, great challenges and tasks, two men in the service of the Works, each in his place. I could imagine the course of things between them. Who knew better than I how convincing and winning Korten could be?

The Christmas tree was ready. Thirty sardine cans were hanging, thirty white candles were erect. One of the vertically hanging sardine cans was oval and reminded me of the garland of light you get in depictions of the Virgin Mary. I went to the basement, found the cardboard box with Klärchen’s Christmas tree decorations and in amongst them the small, willowy Madonna in a blue cloak. She fitted into the can.

17

I knew what I had to do

The next night I couldn’t sleep either. Sometimes I dozed off and dreamed of Dohmke’s hanging and Korten’s performance in court, my leap into the Rhine that I didn’t resurface from in my dream, Judith in her dressing gown, fighting back her tears at the doorpost, old, square-set, stout Schmalz climbing down from the statue pedestal in the Heidelberg Bismarckgarten and coming toward me, the tennis match with Mischkey, at which a small boy with Korten’s face and