The Sonderberg Case

  “Let’s hope these few days go by quickly … and pleasantly.”

  But the trial would have many surprises in store for us.

  Very early the next morning, I’m barely awake when I get a phone call from Paul.

  “I read your piece. It’s going on the front page. But let me be frank: it’s not what I expected of you. You just made a compilation of what others have written. Too many facts, too many details. In a word, too dry. You’re not a machine. Think of your passion for the stage. The courses you took. These are the tools you should use. Each person has to come alive, every sentence has to be effulgent, and everything has to revolve around the main character.”

  “I see. You shouldn’t have …”

  “Don’t take it badly. But on reading you, one has the impression that you’ve never heard of this crime, am I mistaken?”

  “No, you’re right,” I say in a weak voice. “You’re always right. But I warned you that…”

  “That you’re not the right man for the job. Yes, I know. You’re wrong. Trust me: you can do better and you will.”

  “I’ll try, Professor.”

  We both hang up at the same time.

  “I should have listened to you,” I say to Alika, who is still half asleep. “I shouldn’t have agreed to it.”

  “Agreed to what?”

  I let her sleep.

  First session.

  Room number 12 in the New York County Criminal Court is packed. Photographers, reporters, lawyers, legal correspondents, the German consul. They all seem to know one another. Habitués, apparently. They all speak at the same time: the weather, the baseball and football games. The stock market. The latest gossip. I can’t make sense of it. I don’t know anyone. I don’t belong to their world. Estranged from myself, I sit quietly in my corner, pen and pad in hand, my eyes wandering around the setting where a man’s future will be hanging in the balance. Will he find freedom again? Will he lose it forever? Will he win back the right to happiness? Will he become a respectable member of the human family again, or remain one of humanity’s black sheep? And what about me, what am I doing here? Where do I fit in?

  A murmur sweeps through the room. The defendant is brought in; he has been cast in the part of showing how man and act can coincide, and how society judges one of its own.

  Flanked by two policemen and wearing a gray suit, a white shirt, and a blue tie, Werner projects the image of an elegant man whom fate has turned into a culprit. His features are drawn, his gestures slow, he has a fixed, lackluster gaze; he doesn’t acknowledge a single familiar face—his mind is elsewhere. He walks toward his seat accompanied by his two attorneys, Michael Redford, his court-appointed lawyer, and Peter Coles, a lawyer hired by the German consulate. As the leading man in a scene whose lines he doesn’t know, he makes a successful entrance: he is the focus of attention. It is from him that we expect the truth: the explanation for an irreversible act. Is he deliberately adopting an indifferent attitude to his surroundings, to what awaits him? Where do his thoughts lead him? To the scene of the crime, up there in the mountains? Or to his victim, to whom he will be bound to his dying day, no matter what happens? Was it precisely that bond he sought to establish by committing his crime?

  “He’s so young,” someone whispers. “He doesn’t look like a murderer,” says another. A third person remembers that, after all, he’s German. Therefore? You can expect anything.

  What is my first impression? Guilty or not guilty? How is one to know? How can one be positive? Yet it is possible he is guilty. Why not? There had been a quarrel, that’s certain. A brusque movement, entirely unpremeditated, and the young man could easily have pushed the old man, even if he later regretted it.

  Suddenly my imagination becomes fired up. I see myself with him in another setting. In a train or a café. Two strangers. In the theater? I address him with one word: Why? And he replies: Who appointed you judge?

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the court is in session!”

  In unison, everyone in the room stands up. Tradition first: the law demands respect. As a result, the defendant is no longer the focus of attention. The presiding judge, Robert Gardner, in his black robe, vested with specific powers whose reach only the habitués understand, is now the focal point. Everyone stares at him with curiosity, as if they were trying to guess the future: Will he be strict or understanding, inflexible or easily swayed?

  “Be seated,” he says, greeting the court with a nod.

  A dry, dispassionate, impersonal voice that speaks not so much for an individual as for a system. This man has only one concern: to forge ahead, rejecting any compromise, or any deviation from the law, which is immutable and incorruptible. The clerk announces that the court is convened in order to examine case number 613-D: New York State v. Werner Sonderberg. The judge wants to know if all the participants are present. The answer is yes. The prosecutor, the defendant, the defense lawyers—all are present. Are they all ready? the judge asks. Yes.

  The first session is now open. The trial can begin. Suddenly it occurs to me: if you think about it, I’ve got a part to play here. Much will depend on my articles. The judge may read them. Will he be influenced by my comments?

  “Will the defendant please stand up? Kindly state your name, age, place of birth, profession, and place of residence.”

  “Werner Sonderberg. Twenty-four years old. Born in West Germany. A student at New York University. I’ve been in America for a year. I live in downtown Manhattan. Thirty-three West Fourth Street.”

  A slow, calm, precise voice: someone who controls his feelings. He’ll know how to defend himself. My thoughts wander and take me to the distant past: if he had lived in the dark times, he would have worn a uniform—but which one? I immediately stop myself: I have no right to imagine him in any uniform. Who appointed me judge?

  “Enter your plea: guilty or not guilty?”

  A required question in the United States. Usually it produces no emotion in the courtroom. The defendant hesitates a second before raising his voice as if he wished to convey a tone of gravitas and replies, “Guilty.”

  He stops to catch his breath. Stifled murmurs on the benches. Some members of the audience are clearly disappointed. After this admission, no dramatic developments can be expected. Or eloquent attacks.

  “… and not guilty,” the defendant hastens to add.

  Surprised, not to say shocked, some observers lean forward to scrutinize the young German’s face: in this courtroom, no such statement has ever been heard before. Judge Gardner raises his hand to call the court to order.

  “This is not an acceptable answer. It is my duty to inform the defendant that the law requires him to answer guilty or not guilty.”

  The attorney stands up and takes the floor in order to speak for his client.

  “Your Honor, will the court allow me to provide an item of information in order to clarify?”

  “Mr. Redford, you’re a member of the bar and the procedure holds no secrets for you. Might you have forgotten, for some extraordinary reason, to tell your client that the court allows a plea of guilty or not guilty, but not the two simultaneously?”

  “I did make that clear to my client, Your Honor. But he persists in …”

  “Mr. Redford, let’s leave the explanations for later. At present, let’s have the defendant tell us in an audible, intelligible voice whether he pleads guilty or not guilty.”

  Werner shakes his head.

  “So it’s no?” asks Judge Gardner. “Not guilty?”

  The attorney whispers a few words into his client’s ear. Then: “Please forgive us, Your Honor, but my client only wished to tell the court that no, he can’t accept the choice, because …”

  “In that case,” the judge rules, showing his irritation, “the court will decide for him. Clerk, enter a not guilty plea for the defendant.”

  After that, he motions to the defense attorneys and the prosecutor to come closer.

  “I expect to see you in my chambers w
ithout delay,” he says to them with an intimidating look and in a muffled voice. The hearing is suspended. The court was to reconvene at two p.m.

  I run to the newsroom and walk into Paul’s office without knocking: as luck would have it, he’s with Charles Stone.

  “So, how’s our legal reporter’s baptism going?” Paul asks.

  “Talk about experiences, this sure is one,” I say. “You’re right, it’s theater, but in a category of its own. Everyone is improvising, more or less, including the judge. Every kind of surprise is allowed. And I feel like an intruder.”

  I tell them about my first court hearing. Paul smiles.

  “You don’t hold it against me that I forced you into volunteering?”

  “It’s too early to answer yes or no.”

  “Beware, you sound like your young defendant.”

  “Except I haven’t killed anyone. Not even in my theater reviews.”

  “I’m waiting for your piece,” Charles interjects. “I need it by eight p.m.”

  “I’ll tell Judge Gardner to hurry up.”

  I go home to have lunch with Alika. She seems displeased with my excitement.

  “Don’t forget, your first love is theater, after all, not law.”

  “My first love is you.”

  “Come and eat.”

  The afternoon session is devoted to the selection of the twelve-person jury, men and women.

  They begin by drawing lots: a peculiar lottery. Each potential juror is presented for approval to the prosecution and the defense. All members of the jury are required to be objective, neutral, devoid of prejudices, and incapable of being moved by anything but reason, a sense of equity and truth. A saint would fit the description.

  One of the first potential jurors is an elderly Jewish tailor who is probably religious as he is wearing a yarmulke. In order to get rid of him, the prosecutor questions him on his attitude toward Germany and the Germans.

  “Do you think you can be completely objective with respect to the defendant?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Because you’re probably attached to the past of your people.”

  “So? Why would my loyalty to the past cloud my judgment in this particular case?”

  “Because you’re you and the defendant is who he is.”

  “You mean I’m Jewish and he’s German, which should predispose me to hate him, is that it?”

  “No, no, that’s not what I meant.”

  “Fortunately, sir. Because I happen to be against the principle of collective guilt. Whether German or Muslim, only criminals are guilty; the children of murderers are children, not murderers.”

  Dismissed.

  As for the attorney Michael Redford, he makes use of his right to dismiss two prospective jurors peremptorily.

  The next person to be considered is an elegantly dressed woman, in her early forties, intelligent, and wearing light makeup. For some reason, I see her as the wife of a banker, as a lover of Greek and Roman art and of contemporary music. The prosecutor objects to her and dismisses her.

  Three sessions will be required for the judge to finalize the jury selection. For the other reporters these sessions are uninteresting, rather repetitive, and devoid of surprises. Not for me. Each one is a discovery leading to a confrontation between the defendant and the eight men and four women sitting in the jury box, to the left of the judge’s platform. I have trouble taking my eyes off Werner Sonderberg as I try to guess what he is feeling. After all, his life is in the hands of these individuals more than in those of the judge. He knows—his lawyers have told him—that the vote of the jury has to be unanimous for him to be convicted. All that’s needed is one dissenting voice and he can walk away free. I wonder who among the jurors might save him. Astonishingly, he seems preoccupied by something else entirely. He seems indifferent to the jury.

  But then what is he thinking of with a look of such concentration?

  ——

  My first articles seem to be well received.

  “You see? I was right,” Paul remarks. “It’s because you have no understanding of legal issues that you succeed in making the reader interested. You connect on a dramatic, personal level.”

  Charles agrees. “There’s a freshness in your writing that you don’t find in the articles of veteran court reporters.”

  “Let’s talk shop,” I say. “Every hearing reminds me of a theatrical performance. I try to bring to light the dramatic tension that will make the performance progress but at an unhurried pace. As in theater, I feel the tension must come from within and be devoid of obvious artifice.”

  “Except that in the theater,” Paul says in his low voice, “the actors and the audience go home, safe and sound, after the curtain comes down each day. In any case, I notice you’re interested in your new field of activity. Maybe even more than in the theater?”

  That evening I recount the conversation to Alika as we walk to a nearby restaurant for dinner.

  “Paul’s wrong,” I say to her.

  She doesn’t respond.

  “You don’t believe me? You have doubts about my loyalty?”

  “As I always do. You know me.”

  “Even in this instance?”

  “Even in this instance.”

  “And why?”

  “Because I’ve read your articles.”

  “And? What do they prove?”

  “They’re good. Better than your theater reviews.”

  “Thanks for the compliment. But let’s say that I work differently. I didn’t know anything about the judiciary world. I never thought about it. But, you know, you can feel attracted to something that’s foreign to you.”

  “That’s possible.”

  I don’t understand. Why is she so irritated?

  “Do you actually think that because I’m suddenly interested in the law I’m going to forsake the theater?”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “Do you want me to give it up?”

  “It’s what you want that counts.”

  “Me, I want to understand why you’re annoyed at me. Am I a journalist or not? I have to go where my editors send me. Let’s say tomorrow I’m assigned to a local police station. I can’t just say no. The same goes for this trial.”

  Alika knits her brows, furious and seemingly hurt.

  “That’s completely different. In a police station, you’d do your work and you might even do it well, but you wouldn’t love it. Whereas as far as this trial goes, you enjoy attending it. Enjoy talking about it. Enjoy showing off your talent. And your new passion. That’s the point: we no longer share the same passion.”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  “Well, then, prove it to me: return to theater.”

  “How many times do I have to keep saying it? When I’m in the courtroom, that’s exactly where I am—at the theater!”

  “Really? Who’s the author of the play? The judge? The defendant? The public? Don’t tell me they’re improvising, all of them as long as they’re …”

  “Yes, they are, in a way.”

  “You’re out of your mind!”

  This is our first real quarrel. There will be others—more or less futile, more or less serious. In her opinion, I’m spending too much time away from home. My explanations—the fact that I’m no longer in control of my schedule because of the trial, the interviews with lawyers and spectators, my library research and editorial meetings—are useless. She criticizes anything I say. “Even when you’re here, which is increasingly rare, you’re miles away.”

  I don’t understand what’s happening to us. For the first time in ages, we’re getting on each other’s nerves. There are a lot of silences. Misunderstandings. Some discoveries: the little gestures that used to awaken or strengthen our love now dampen it. My way of buttoning my shirt. Her way of wiping her lips when she drinks her coffee. The magic is gone.

  Actually, Alika is not entirely wrong to be annoyed with me. I’ve undergone a ch
ange. Just a week ago, she occupied all my thoughts and filled my life, whereas, for the last few days, the trial has suddenly become the focus of all my attention. But she’s also mistaken: I haven’t forgotten my passion for the stage.

  In fact, after our quarrels, I set a rule for myself: to go to the theater at least once a week, though Alika goes almost every evening. And this while continuing her studies. According to her, our professor and protector shares her apprehensions about me.

  “He wonders,” she says one day, returning from a performance, “if you would still be able to write an objective review of a play in which I would be playing one of the leads.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “But do you think that could happen?”

  A shudder goes down my spine: I remember The Three Sisters. Alika with a group of students, in a small amateur theater. Does she know? I don’t let myself get flustered.

  “No doubt it could.”

  “And so? What would you do?”

  “You’re right, and so is the professor: it would be a problem for me. But maybe not for the reason you think. I would say to myself: if I like it, people will say it’s because of you. And if my review is critical, the people who don’t like me will snigger: look at that bastard, he’s humiliating his own wife.”

  “So? How would you get out of this dilemma?”

  “This is not about to happen tomorrow, as far as I know. We have time to think about it.”

  But, to tell the truth, I’d rather not think about it.

  ——

  When my grandfather read my articles, he said: “Long ago, in Judea, in the days when the Temple still stood in Jerusalem, a twenty-three-member court would sit and deliberate in cases requiring capital punishment. If the sentence was unanimous, it was immediately thrown out of court: it was inconceivable that, among the twenty-three judges, not one would side with the poor defendant, who was alone and helpless in facing them.”

  I told him that I wished I could have attended those trial deliberations and covered them for the newspaper at the time.

  “Remember the lesson, my son: when a man’s life is at stake, it is not theater.”

  It is day three of the proceedings. The experts at the courthouse are predicting the trial will be relatively short. Not many witnesses will be called to the stand. According to the prosecution, at the fateful moment, the defendant and his uncle were alone. No one saw Hans Dunkelman die. Going by what they call “circumstantial evidence,” provided by the local police, he fell from the heights of a plateau. But the question is, as we know: Was it an accident or a murder? The nephew’s ambiguous statement is disturbing and preys on everyone’s mind. How can someone be both guilty and not guilty? The young German remains silent while the other protagonists reveal themselves to be nonstop talkers. In a tribunal everyone wants to be heard. The only one who doesn’t seem to care is the main character, about whom there is so much curiosity that men and women have jammed the courtroom. From the very first hearings, I wondered: Will he even take the trouble to listen? He seems absent to the public and to himself.