Guilt (16 page)

——

It began at Christmas. She had set the table: white cloth, her grandmother’s silver. Saskia was five; she said where the balls were to be hung on the Christmas tree. At half past six Alexandra lit the candles. He still wasn’t home by the time they had burned all the way down. The two of them were alone, and after dinner she put Saskia to bed. She read aloud from the new book till the little girl fell asleep. She had phoned her parents and his parents and everyone had wished one another Merry Christmas like a normal family. Only when they asked about him, Alexandra said he was making a quick trip to the gas station to buy matches, because she had none in the house for lighting the candles.

He did it silently. He had boxed when he was younger and knew how to hit in order to cause pain. Although he was drunk, his blows were precise. He struck systematically and hard, as they stood in the kitchen between the American breakfast counter and the refrigerator. He avoided her face. On the refrigerator door were the little girl’s paintings and stickers. Thinking of Saskia, she bit into her hand so as not to scream. He dragged her across the floor to the bedroom by her hair. When he sodomized her, she felt she was being torn in half. He came almost at once, then kicked her out of bed and fell asleep. She lay on the floor, unable to move, until at some point much later she managed to make it to the bathroom. The bruises were already showing on her skin and there was blood in her urine. She lay in the bathtub for
a long time, until finally she was able to breathe normally again. She was unable to cry.

The first day after the Christmas holidays she found the necessary strength to say she was taking Saskia and going to her mother’s. He left the apartment before she did. She packed a suitcase and carried it to the elevator. Saskia was excited. As they arrived downstairs, he was standing in front of the door. He took the suitcase out of her hand gently. Saskia asked if they weren’t going to visit Grandma after all. Taking their daughter in his left hand and the suitcase in his right, he went back to the elevator. In the apartment he laid the suitcase on the bed, looked at her, and shook his head.

“No matter where you go, I’ll find you,” he said. In the hall, he picked Saskia up in his arms. “We’re going to the zoo.”

“Yes, yes!” said Saskia.

It was only after the door closed that Alexandra could feel her hands again. She had dug her fingers into the chair so tight that two of her fingernails were broken. That evening he broke one of her ribs. She slept on the floor. She was devoid of feeling.

His name was Felix and he’d rented one of the small apartments in the back of the building. She had seen him every day with his bicycle, he always said hello to her in the supermarket, and when she buckled over in the hallway once with pain in her kidneys, he’d helped with her shopping bags. Now he was standing at her door.

“Do you have any salt?” he said. “Okay, I admit it, that’s a really stupid line. Would you like to have coffee with me?”

They both laughed. Her ribs hurt. She had gotten used to the blows: she would stick it out for another four or five years, then Saskia would be old enough. She was nine now.

She liked Felix’s apartment. It was warm, with pale floors, books on narrow shelves, and a mattress with white sheets. He talked to her about books and they listened to Schubert lieder. He looks like an overgrown boy, she thought, and maybe a little sad. He told her she was beautiful, then neither of them said anything for a long time. When she went back to her apartment, she thought that perhaps her life wasn’t over after all. She had to spend that night on the floor by the bed again, but it didn’t matter quite so much.

Three months later she slept with him. She didn’t want him to see her naked, with the blue patches and all the scraped skin, so she lowered the metal blinds and undressed under the bedcovers. She was thirty-one, he didn’t have much experience, but for the first time since Saskia’s birth a man was really making love to her. She liked the way he held her. Afterwards they lay in the dark room. He talked about the trips he would like to take with her, about Florence and Paris and other places she’d never been. It all seemed so simple to her; she liked the sound of his voice. She could only stay for two hours. She told him she didn’t want to go back; she said it just like that, it was a declaration of love, but then she realized that she actually meant it.

Later she couldn’t find her stockings, which made them laugh. Suddenly he switched on the light. She clutched the sheet up to her body, but it was too late. She saw the fury in
his eyes; he said he was going to call the police, it had to be done at once. It took her a long time to dissuade him, telling him she was afraid for her daughter. He didn’t want to understand. His lips were trembling.

The summer holidays began two months later. They took Saskia out to her grandparents’ in the country; she loved it there. On the trip back to the city Thomas said, “Now you’re really going to learn obedience.” Felix sent her a text message saying he missed her. She read it in the toilet at the rest stop on the Autobahn. It stank of urine in there, but it made no difference to her. Felix had said her husband was a sadist who enjoyed humiliating and hurting her. It was a mental disturbance, it could be dangerous for her, and her husband needed treatment. She had to leave, and at once. She didn’t know what to do. She was too ashamed to tell her mother, ashamed for him and ashamed for herself.

August twenty-sixth was the last day before Saskia came back. They were going to pick her up and spend the night. Then the three of them were going to Majorca; the tickets were on the table in the hall. She thought things would go better there. He had drunk a great deal during Saskia’s absence. She could barely walk. In the past two weeks he had subjected her to anal and oral rape every day, he had beaten her, and he had forced her to eat out of a bowl on the floor. When he was there she had to be naked; she slept on the floor in front of his bed; he had also now confiscated the
bedclothes. She hadn’t been able to see Felix. She’d written to tell him it was simply impossible.

During this last night he said, “Saskia’s ready now. She’s ten. I’ve waited. When she comes back, she’s going to be mine.”

She didn’t understand what he was saying, and asked him what he meant.

“I’m going to fuck her the way I fuck you. She’s ready.”

She screamed and flew at him. He stood up and hit her in the stomach. It was a short, hard blow. She vomited, he turned round and told her to clean it up. An hour later he went to bed.

Her husband was no longer snoring. He’d always snored, even during the first night, when they were happy. At the beginning it had been strange; another human being, she had thought, another voice. Gradually she had gotten used to it. They had been married for eleven years now. There would not be a second life, there was only this man and this life. She sat in the other room, listening to the radio. They were playing a piece she didn’t know. She stared into the darkness. In two hours it would be getting light and she’d have to go over into the bedroom, their bedroom.

Her father asked me to defend his daughter. I got a visitor’s pass. The DA in charge was named Kaulbach, a solidly built, plainspoken man who talked in short sentences.

“Horrifying business,” he said. “We don’t get many murders. This one’s an open-and-shut case.”

Kaulbach showed me the photos of the crime scene.

“She beat her husband to death with a statue while he was asleep.”

“Whether he was asleep or not is something the medical examiner can’t determine,” I said, knowing that this wasn’t a strong argument.

The problem was simple. Manslaughter does not distinguish itself from murder by degree of “intent” the way you see it in crime dramas on TV. Every murder is a manslaughter. But it’s also more. There has to be some additional element that makes it a murder. These defining elements are not arbitrary: they are laid out in the law. The perpetrator kills “to satisfy sexual urges,” out of “greed” or out of other “base motives.” There are also words to define
how
he kills, for example “heinously” or “brutally.” If the judge believes such a defining element is present, he has no choice: he must give the perpetrator a life sentence. If it’s manslaughter, he has a choice; he can sentence the perpetrator to anywhere between five and fifteen years.

Kaulbach was right. When a man is battered to death in his sleep, he cannot defend himself. He is unaware that he is being attacked; he’s helpless. The perpetrator is thus acting with malice. He is committing murder, and will receive a life sentence.

“Look at the pictures,” said Kaulbach. “The man was lying
on his back. There are no defensive wounds on his hands. The bedclothes on top of him aren’t disturbed. There was no struggle. There can be no doubt: he was asleep.”

The DA knew what he was saying. It looked as if the base of the statue had been stamped into the man’s face. The blood had sprayed everywhere, even onto the photo on the night table. The jury was not going to like these images.

“And moreover your client confessed today.”