Self's punishment (24 page)

16

Anything for one’s career?

I couldn’t sleep that night. At six o’clock I gave up and busied myself setting up and decorating my Christmas tree. I’d listened to Mischkey’s tape over and over. On Saturday I’d been in no state to think and order my thoughts.

I put the thirty empty sardine cans that I had accumulated into the sink of water. They shouldn’t still smell of fish on the Christmas tree. I looked at them, my elbows on the edge of the sink, as they sank to the bottom. The lids of some of them had been torn off as they were opened. I’d stick them back on.

Was it Korten, then, who’d made Weinstein discover the hidden documents in Tyberg’s desk and report him? I should have thought of it when Tyberg told us that only he, Dohmke, and Korten knew about the stash. No, Weinstein hadn’t come across them by accident as Tyberg supposed. They’d ordered him to find the documents in the desk. That was what Frau Hirsch had said. And perhaps Weinstein had never even seen the documents; the important thing was the statement, not the find.

When it started growing light outside I went out onto the balcony and fitted the Christmas tree to the stand. I had to saw and use the hatchet. Its top was too high. I trimmed it in such a way that the tip could be reattached to the trunk with a needle. Then I moved the tree to its place in the sitting room.

Why? Anything for one’s career? Yes. Korten couldn’t have made such a mark if Tyberg and Dohmke had still been around. Tyberg had spoken of the years following the trial as the basis for his ascendancy. And Tyberg’s liberation had been Korten’s reinsurance. It had certainly paid off. When Tyberg became general director of the RCW Korten was catapulted to dizzying heights.

The plot – with me as the dupe. Set up and executed by my friend and brother-in-law. And I’d been happy not to have to drag him into the trial. He’d used me with contemptuous calculation. I thought back to the conversation after our move to Bahnhofstrasse. I also thought of the last conversations we’d had, in the Blue Salon and on the terrace of his house. Me, the sweetheart.

My cigarettes had run out. That hadn’t happened to me in years. I pulled on my winter coat and galoshes, pocketed the St Christopher that I’d taken from Mischkey’s car and only remembered yesterday, walked to the train station, then dropped by to see Judith. It was mid-morning now. She came to the front door in a dressing gown.

‘What’s the matter with you, Gerd?’ She looked at me aghast. ‘Come on up, I’ve just put some coffee on.’

‘Do I look that bad? No, I won’t come up, I’m in the middle of decorating my tree. Wanted to bring you the St Christopher. I needn’t tell you where it’s from, I’d completely forgotten it, and I just found it again.’

She took the St Christopher and supported herself against the doorpost. She was fighting back tears.

‘Tell me something, Judith, do you remember if Peter went away for two or three days in the weeks in between the War Cemetery and his death?’

‘What?’ She hadn’t been listening, and I repeated my question. ‘Away? Yes, how do you know?’

‘Do 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 an SS uniform threw us the balls, my interrogation of Weinstein, and again and again Korten laughing at me, saying, ‘Self, you sweetheart, you sweetheart, you sweetheart . . .’

At five I made a cup of camomile tea and tried to read, but my thoughts wouldn’t leave me alone. They kept circling. How could Korten have done it? Why had I been blind enough to let myself be used by him? What should happen now? Was Korten afraid? Did I owe anyone anything? Was there anyone I could tell everything to? Nägelsbach? Tyberg? Judith? Should I go to the media? What was I to do with my guilt?

For a long time the thoughts circled in my mind, faster and faster. As they were accelerating into craziness, they flew apart and formed themselves into a completely new picture. I knew what I had to do.

At nine o’clock I called Frau Schlemihl. Korten had left on vacation at the weekend to his house in Brittany where he and his wife spent Christmas every year. I found the card he’d sent me last Christmas. It showed a magnificent estate of grey stone with a slanting roof and red shutters, the crossbars of which formed an inverted Z. Next to it was a high windmill, and beyond it stretched the sea. I checked the timetable and found a train that would get me in to Paris-Est at five o’clock in the afternoon. I’d have to hurry. I prepared a fresh litter-tray for Turbo, shook an abundant amount of cat food into his dish, and packed my travel bag. I ran to the station, changed money, and bought a ticket, second class. The train was full. Noisy soldiers on home-leave over Christmas, students, late businessmen.

The snow of the last weeks had thawed completely. Dirty greenish-brown countryside whipped by. The sky was grey, and sometimes the sun was visible as a faded disk behind the clouds. I thought about why Korten had feared Mischkey’s disclosures. He could, indeed, be prosecuted for Dohmke’s murder, which was not subject to a statute of limitations. And even if he went free due to lack of evidence, his comfortable life and the legend he’d become would be destroyed.

There was a car rental in the Gare de l’Est and I took a standard-class car, one of those where every make looks much the same as every other. I left the car at the rental and went out into the hectic evening pulse of the city. In front of the station was an enormous Christmas tree that exuded about as much Christmas spirit as the Eiffel Tower. It was half past five, I was hungry. Most of the restaurants were still closed. I found a brasserie I liked the look of that was bustling in spite of what time it was. I was shown to a small table by the headwaiter and found myself in a row of five other uncommonly early diners. They were all eating
Sauerkraut
with boiled pork and sausages and I chose the same. And with it a half-bottle of Alsace Riesling. In the twinkling of an eye, a steaming plate, a bottle in a cooler with condensation on its sides, and a basket of white bread were in front of me. When I’m in the mood I like the atmosphere of brasseries, beer-cellars, and pubs. Not today. I finished quickly. At the nearest hotel I took a room and asked to be woken in four hours.

I slept like a stone. When I was roused at eleven by the ringing of the phone I didn’t know where I was. I hadn’t opened the shutters and the noise of the traffic from the boulevard only made a muffled echo in my room. I showered, brushed my teeth, shaved, and paid. On the way to the Gare de l’Est I drank a double espresso. I had a further five poured into my thermos flask. My Sweet Afton were running out. I bought a carton of Chesterfield once again.

I had reckoned on six hours for the journey to Trefeuntec. But it took an hour just to get out of Paris and onto the highway to Rennes. There was little traffic, and the driving was monotonous. It was only then that it struck me how mild it was. A green Christmas means a cold Easter. Every so often I’d pass a toll booth and never knew if I should be paying or getting a ticket. Once I pulled off the road to fill up and was astounded by the price of petrol. The lights of the villages were growing sparser. I wondered whether it was because of the late hour or because the country was emptier. To begin with I was happy to have a radio in the car. But then there was only one clear station and after I’d heard the song about the angel walking through the room for the third time, I switched it off. Sometimes the road surface would change and the tyres would sing a new song. At three, just after Rennes, I almost fell asleep, or at least I was hallucinating that there were people running all over the highway. I opened the window, drove to the next rest area, drained my thermos flask, and did ten sit-ups.

As the journey continued, my thoughts turned to Korten’s performance at the trial. He had been playing for high stakes. His statement mustn’t save Dohmke and Tyberg, yet it had to sound as though that was just what he wanted, without seriously damaging him in the process. Södelknecht had almost had him arrested. How had Korten felt then? Secure and superior because he knew how to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes? No, he wouldn’t have suffered any twinges of conscience. From my colleagues in the law I knew that there were two means of dealing with the past: cynicism, and a feeling of having always been right and only doing one’s duty. In retrospect had the Tyberg affair served the greater glory of the RCW for Korten?

When the houses of Carhaix-Plouguer were behind me, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the first streak of dawn. Another seventy kilometres to Trefeuntec. In Plonévez-Porzay the bar and the bakery were already open and I ate two croissants along with my milky coffee. At a quarter to eight I reached the bay of Trefeuntec. I drove the car onto the beach, still wet and firm from the tide. Beneath a grey sky the grey sea rolled in. It crashed against the high coast to the right and left of the bay with dirty white crests. It was even milder than Paris in spite of the strong westerly wind that drove the clouds before it. Shrieking gulls were swept aloft on its current before they dropped in a plummeting dive to the water.

I began the search for Korten’s house. I drove a little inland and came to a field-track on the craggy northerly coast. With its bays and cliffs rising from the shore it stretched as far as the eye could see. In the distance I could make out a silhouette, it could be anything under the sun, from a water tower to the large windmill. I left the car behind a wind-buffeted hut and made for the tower.

Before I saw Korten, his two dachshunds saw me. They rollicked towards me, yapping. Then he emerged from a dip. We weren’t far from one another but between us was a bay that we each headed round. Along the narrow path that ran along the cliff top, we walked towards one another.

18

Old friends like you and me

‘You look terrible, my dear Self. A few days’ rest here will do you a world of good. I hadn’t expected you yet. Let’s walk a bit. Helga’s preparing breakfast for nine. She’ll be glad to see you.’ Korten linked his arm through mine and prepared to continue. He was wearing a light loden coat and looked relaxed.

‘I know everything,’ I said, stepping away.

Korten looked at me enquiringly. He understood immediately.

‘It’s not easy for you, Gerd. It wasn’t easy for me either, and I was happy not to have to burden anyone with it.’

I stared at him speechlessly. He stepped up to me once more, took my arm, and nudged me along the path. ‘You think it had to do with my career. No, in the whole mess of those last years of the war what mattered most was sorting out real responsibility and making clean decisions. Things wouldn’t have gone well for our research group. Dohmke consigning himself to the sidelines that way – I was sorry back then. But so many people, better people, lost their lives. Mischkey had his choice too, and dug himself deeper and deeper into trouble.’ He stood still and grabbed my shoulders. ‘You have to understand, Gerd. The Works needed me to be the way I became in those difficult years. I always had great respect for old Schmalz. He was simple but he could understand these tricky connections.’

‘You must be crazy. You murdered two men and you talk about it as though . . . as though . . .’

‘Oh, those are big words. Did I murder them? Or was it the judge or the hangman? Old Schmalz? And who headed the investigation against Tyberg and Dohmke? Who set the trap for Mischkey and let it snap shut? We’re all entangled in it, all of us, and we have to recognize that and bear it, and do our duty.’

I broke loose from his hold. ‘Entangled? Perhaps we all are, but you pulled the strings!’ I was shouting into his placid face.

He stood still, too. ‘That’s just child’s stuff – “he did it, he did it.” And even when we were children we never really believed it; we knew perfectly well that we were all involved when a teacher was being goaded, or one of our classmates bullied, or the other side in the game was being fouled.’ He spoke with utter concentration, patiently, didactically, and my head was dazed and confused. It was true, that’s how my sense of guilt had eroded, year by year.

Korten was still talking. ‘But, please – I did it. If that’s what you need – yes, I did it. What do you think would have happened had Mischkey gone to the press? That sort of thing doesn’t end with an old boss being replaced by a new one, and everything goes on as before. I needn’t tell you the play his story would have got in the USA, and England and France, or talk about what it would do when we’re fighting our competition inch by inch, or about how many jobs would be destroyed, and what unemployment means today. The RCW is a large, heavy ship going at breakneck speed through the drift-ice despite its bulk and if the captain leaves and the steering is loose, it will run aground and be wrecked. That’s why I say yes, I did it.’

‘Murder?’

‘Could I have bribed him? The risk was too high. And don’t tell me that no risk is too high when it’s about saving a life. It’s not true. Think of road deaths, accidents in the workplace, police who shoot to kill. Think of the fight against terrorism: the police have shot as many people by accident as the terrorists have intentionally – is that a reason to give up?’

‘And Dohmke?’ I suddenly felt empty inside. I could see us standing there, talking, as though a film were running without a soundtrack. Beneath the grey clouds, a craggy coastline, a mist of dirty spray, a narrow path and the fields beyond, and two older men in heated discussion – hands gesticulating, mouths moving – but the scene is mute. I wished I wasn’t there.

‘Dohmke? Actually I don’t have to comment on that. The years between nineteen thirty-three and nineteen forty-five are supposed to remain a blank – that’s the foundation on which our state is built. Fine, we had to – still have to – produce some theatre with trials and verdicts. But in nineteen forty-five there was no Night of the Long Knives, and that would have been the only chance of retribution. Then the foundation was set. You’re not satisfied? Okay then, Dohmke couldn’t be trusted; he was unpredictable, a talented chemist maybe, but an amateur in everything else. He wouldn’t have lasted two minutes at the front.’

We walked on. He hadn’t needed to link arms with me again; when he continued I’d stuck by his side.

‘Fate may talk that way, Ferdinand, but not you. Steamships that set a course, solid foundations, entanglements in which we’re all mere puppets – you can tell me all about the powers and forces in life but none of it alters the fact that you, Ferdinand Korten, and only you—’

‘Fate?’ Now he was furious. ‘We are our own fate, and I don’t offload anything on powers and forces. You’re the one who never sees things through to the end, nor leaves them well and truly alone. Get Dohmke and Mischkey in a mess, yes, but when what inevitably happens next does, you find your scruples and you don’t want to have seen it or done it. My God, Gerd, grow up at last.’

He stumped on. The path had narrowed and I walked behind him, cliffs to the left, a wall to the right. Beyond it, the fields.

‘Why did you come?’ He turned round. ‘To see whether I’d kill you, too? Push you over?’ Fifty metres below the sea seethed. He laughed, as though it were a joke. Then he read it in my eyes before I said the words.

‘I’ve come to kill you.’

‘To bring them back to life?’ he mocked. ‘Because you . . . because the perpetrator wants to play judge? Do you feel innocent and exploited? What would you have been without me, without my sister and my parents, before nineteen fortyfive, and all my help afterwards? Jump yourself if you can’t deal with it.’

His voice cracked. I stared at him. Then that grin came to his face, the one I’d known, and liked, since we were young. It had charmed me into shared escapades and out of fatal situations, understanding, winning, superior.

‘Hey, Gerd, this is crazy. Two old friends like you and me

. . . Come on, let’s have breakfast. I can smell the coffee already.’ He whistled to the dogs.

‘No, Ferdinand.’

He looked at me with an expression of utter incredulity as I shoved against his chest with both hands. He lost his balance and plummeted down, his coat billowing. I didn’t hear a cry. He thudded against a rock before the sea took him with it.