Self's Punishment

  ‘Can I make a phone call?’ I called through to the kitchen.

  ‘Go right ahead. The phone’s in the top drawer of the bureau.’

  I opened the drawer and dialled Philipp’s number. It rang eight times before he picked up.

  ‘Hello?’ His voice sounded oily.

  ‘Philipp, Gerd here. I hope I’m disturbing you.’

  ‘You bet, you crazy dick. Yes, it was blood, blood type O, rhesus negative. An everyday sort of blood, so to speak, age of the sample between two and three weeks. Anything else? Sorry, but I’m tied up here. You saw her yesterday, remember, the little Indonesian in the elevator. She brought her friend along. It’s all action.’

  Brigitte had come into the room with a bottle and two glasses, poured it, and brought a glass over to me. I’d handed her the extension, and Brigitte looked at me in amusement at Philipp’s last sentences.

  ‘Do you know anyone at forensics in Heidelberg, Philipp?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t work at forensics. At McDonald’s at the Planken, that’s where she works. Why?’

  ‘It’s not Big Mac’s blood type I’m after, but Peter Mischkey’s – he was examined by forensics at Heidelberg. And I’d like to know if you can find out. That’s why.’

  ‘But it doesn’t have to be right now. Come round instead, let’s talk about it over breakfast. Bring someone with you though. I’m not slogging my guts out so you can come along and lick the cream.’

  ‘Does she have to be Asian?’

  Brigitte laughed. I put my arm round her and she snuggled into me demurely.

  ‘No, my home is like a Mombasa brothel, all races, all classes, all colours, all lines of business. And if you’re really coming, bring a bottle.’

  He hung up. I put my other arm around Brigitte too. She leant back into my arms and looked at me. ‘And now?’

  ‘Now we take the bottle and the glasses and the cigarettes and the music over to the bedroom and lie down in bed.’

  She gave me a little kiss and said in a bashful voice: ‘You go ahead, I’ll be right there.’

  She went into the bathroom. Amongst her records I found one by George Winston, put it on, left the bedroom door open, switched on the bedside lamp, undressed, and got into her bed. I felt a little embarrassed. The bed was wide and smelled fresh. If we didn’t sleep well tonight, the fault would be all ours.

  Brigitte came into the bedroom, naked, with only the earring in her right ear and the plaster on her left earlobe. She whistled along to the George Winston. She was heavy round the hips, had breasts which were large and couldn’t help but sag a little, broad shoulders, and a protruding collarbone which gave her an air of vulnerability. She slipped beneath the covers and into the crook of my arm.

  ‘What happened to your ear?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh,’ she laughed in embarrassment, ‘combing my hair, I kind of combed the ring out of my ear. It didn’t hurt, I just bled like a pig. The day after tomorrow I have an appointment with a surgeon. He’ll make a clean wound of the tear and patch it together again.’

  ‘Would you mind me removing your other earring? Otherwise I’ll be afraid of tearing it out, too.’

  ‘You’re such a passionate guy?’ She took it out herself. ‘Come on, Gerhard, let me take off your watch.’ It was nice to have her bending over me like that, fumbling with my arm. I pulled her down to me. Her skin was smooth and fragrant. ‘I’m tired,’ she said in a sleepy voice. ‘Will you tell me a bedtime story?’

  I felt relaxed. ‘Once upon a time there was a little raven. Like all ravens he had a mother.’ She pinched my side. ‘The mother was black and beautiful. She was so black that all the other ravens appeared grey next to her, and she was so beautiful that all the other ravens appeared ugly next to her. She herself didn’t realize it. Her son, the little raven, could see and knew it very well. He knew much more besides: that black and beautiful is better than grey and ugly, that raven fathers are as good and as bad as raven mothers, that you can be wrong in the right place and right in the wrong place. One day after school the little raven flew away and got lost. He told himself that nothing could happen to him: in one direction he’d be sure to encounter his father, and in the other his mother. Nonetheless he was afraid. Beneath him he could see a land stretching far and wide with small villages and large, gleaming lakes. It was pretty to look at, but frighteningly unfamiliar to him. He flew and flew and flew . . .’ Brigitte’s breathing had grown regular. She snuggled comfortably into my arms again and started to snore softly, her mouth slightly open. I carefully withdrew my arm from under her head and put out the light. She turned onto her side. So did I and we lay there like spoons in the cutlery case.

  When I woke up it was just after seven and she was still asleep. I crept out of the bedroom, shut the door behind me, looked for and found the coffee machine, got it going, pulled on my shirt and trousers, took Brigitte’s set of keys from the bureau, and bought croissants in Lange Rötterstrasse. I was back at her bedside with the tray and coffee and croissants before she woke up.

  It was a lovely breakfast. And lovely afterwards together again beneath the covers. Then she had to leave to take care of her Saturday morning patients. I wanted to drop her off at her massage practice in the Collini Centre, but she preferred to walk. We didn’t arrange another meeting. But when we embraced at her front door we could hardly pull ourselves apart.

  9

  Clueless for hours

  It was a long time since I’d spent a night with a woman. Afterwards, returning home is like coming back to your own town after a holiday. A short period of limbo before normality kicks in again.

  I prepared a special rheumatism tea, purely prophylactic, and lost myself in Mischkey’s file once again. On the top was the photocopied newspaper article that had been lying on Mischkey’s desk and that I’d shoved in the file. I read the connected commemorative piece entitled ‘Twelve Dark Yards’. It touched only briefly on the forced labour of Jewish chemists. Yes, these had existed, but the RCW had also suffered with the Jewish chemists in this oppressive situation. In contrast with other big German businesses, RCW had generously compensated forced labourers immediately after the war. Using South Africa as an example, the author portrayed how alien any kind of mandatory employment situation was to the character of the modern industrial enterprise. Moreover, employment in the plant had lowered the rate of suffering in the concentration camps; the survival rate of the RCW forced labourers was proven to be higher than that of the average concentration camp population. The author dealt extensively with the RCW’s participation in the resistance, remembered the condemned communist workers, and depicted in detail the trial of the general director-to-be Tyberg, and his erstwhile colleague Dohmke.

  Memories of the trial came back to me. I’d led the inquiry then, while my boss, Södelknecht, the senior public prosecutor, had led the prosecution. The two RCW chemists were sentenced to death for sabotage and for some violation of the Race Laws, which I didn’t recall. Tyberg managed to escape; Dohmke was hanged. The whole affair must have been at the end of 1943, beginning of 1944. At the start of the fifties Tyberg returned from the USA after succeeding very quickly there with a chemical company of his own, came back to RCW, and soon thereafter was made general director.

  A large part of the newspaper article was devoted to the fire of March 1978. The press had estimated the damages at 40 million marks, no deaths or injuries were reported, and statements from the RCW were printed, according to which the poison released from the burnt pesticides posed absolutely no danger to the human body. I’m fascinated by such findings of the chemical industry: the same poison that annihilates the cockroach, which is supposed to be able to survive a nuclear holocaust, is no more harmful to humans than a barbecue on a charcoal grill. In the Stadstreicher magazine I found documentation by the group The Chlorine Greens that the Seveso poisons TCDD, hexachloroethane, and trichloroethylene had been released by the fire. Numerous injured employees were swept off in hush-hush fashion
to the company’s own treatment clinic in the South of France. Then there was a collection of copies and cuttings about the capital stakes of the RCW and about an inquiry by the Federal Antitrust Office, which dealt with the role of the plant within the pharmaceutical market and which went nowhere.

  I sat for hours in front of the computer printouts, clueless. I found data, names, figures, curves, and incomprehensible acronyms such as BAS, BOE, and HST. Were these printouts of the files Mischkey had managed privately at RCC? I needed to talk to Grimm.

  At eleven I started to call the numbers on the responses to Mischkey’s ad. I was Professor Selk of Hamburg University, wanting to pick up the contacts initiated by his colleague for the social and economic history research project. The people on the other end were dumbfounded; my colleague had told them that their oral testimony wasn’t of any use to the research project. I was puzzled; one phone call after the other with the same empty result. From some of them I gathered at least that Mischkey hadn’t attached any value to their statements because they’d only started work at the RCW after 1945. They were annoyed because if my colleague had put out an ad that referred to the end of the war they could have saved themselves the trouble of responding. ‘Reimbursements of expenses, it said, are we going to get our money from you now?’

  I’d just put down the receiver when the phone rang.

  ‘It’s impossible to get through to you. What woman have you been talking to all this time?’ Babs wanted to make sure I hadn’t forgotten we were going to a concert that evening. ‘I’m bringing Röschen and Georg. They enjoyed Diva so much they don’t want to miss Wilhemenia Fernandez.’

  Of course I had forgotten. And while I’d been perusing the file, some little coil in my brain had disconnected so that it could play with the possibility of an evening arrangement incorporating Brigitte. Were there any tickets left?

  ‘Quarter to eight at the Kleiner Rosengarten? I might be bringing someone with me.’

  ‘So it was a lady on the phone. Is she pretty?’

  ‘I like her.’

  It was only to be thorough that I wrote to Vera Müller in San Francisco. There was nothing specific I could ask her. Perhaps Mischkey had asked her specific questions, my letter attempted to find out just that. I picked it up and walked to the main post office on Parade-Platz. On the way home I bought five dozen snails for after the concert. I also got fresh liver for Turbo; I felt guilty about leaving him alone the night before.

  Back home I was about to make a sandwich with sardines, onions, and olives. Frau Buchendorff prevented me. She’d had to type something for Firner that morning at the plant, was on her way home through Zollhofstrasse passing the Traber-Pilsstuben, and was quite certain she recognized one of the men from the War Cemetery.

  ‘I’m in a phone-box. He hasn’t emerged, I don’t think. Could you come over straight away? If he drives off, I’ll follow him. Head back home if I’m not here and I’ll call you later, when I can.’ Her voice cracked.

  ‘My God, girl, don’t do anything stupid. It’s enough to jot down his license plate number. I’m on my way.’

  10

  It’s Fred’s birthday

  In the stairwell I almost flattened Frau Weiland. Driving off, I nearly took Herr Weiland with me. I drove via the railway station and the Konrad Adenauer Bridge, past blanching pedestrians and reddening traffic lights. When I drew up five minutes later in front of the Traber-Pilsstuben, Frau Buchendorff ’s car was still facing it in the No Stopping zone. No sign of her, though. I got out and went into the pub. One bar, two or three tables, a jukebox and pinball, maybe ten guests and the poprietress. Frau Buchendorff had a glass of Pils in one hand and a meat patty in the other. I placed myself next to her at the bar. ‘Hello there, Judith. You’re back in the neighbourhood, are you?’

  ‘Hello, Gerhard. Join us for a beer?’

  I ordered two meat patties to go with the beer.

  The guy on her other side said in a thick Austrian accent, ‘It’s the boss’s mother who makes these meat things.’

  Judith introduced him to me. ‘This is Fred. A real Viennese gent. He’s got something to celebrate, he was saying. Fred, this is Gerhard.’

  He’d already celebrated thoroughly. Lurching and weaving cautiously like all drunks, he took himself off to the jukebox, propped himself up to select records as though there were nothing amiss, came back and sat down between Judith and myself. ‘The boss, our Silvia, is from Austria too. That’s why I like celebrating my birthday at her pub. And take a look, I’ve got my birthday present.’ He patted Judith’s bottom with the flat of his hand.

  ‘What do you do for a living, Fred?’

  ‘Marble and red wine, import and export. And yourself?’

  ‘I’m in the security business, property and personal security, bouncers, bodyguards, dog trainers, and what-not. I could use a strong guy like you. You’d have to go easy on the alcohol, though.’

  ‘Well, well, security.’ He set down his glass. ‘There’s nothing more secure than a firm ass. Right, sweetheart?’ He now used the hand that had been holding the glass to grope Frau Buchendorff ’s posterior. Judith’s butt.

  She turned round and slapped down hard on Fred’s fingers, looking at him impishly. It hurt and he withdrew his hands, but he wasn’t mad at her.

  ‘And what are you doing here with your security?’

  ‘I’m looking for people for a job. There’s money in it, for me, for the people I find, and for the contractor I’m on the lookout for.’

  Fred’s face registered interest. Maybe because his hands weren’t permitted to do anything with Judith’s butt for the moment, he tapped my chest with a fleshy index finger. ‘Isn’t that a bit too big for you, gramps?’

  I seized his hand, forced it down, twisting his finger in the process, and looking at him innocently all the while. ‘How old are you today, Fred? You’re not the man I’m looking for? Never mind, come on, I’ll get you a drink.’

  Fred’s face was contorted with pain. I let go and he hesitated for a moment. Should he lay into me, or drink a beer with me? Then his eyes went to Judith and I knew what was coming.

  His ‘Fine, a beer’ was an overture for the punch that caught me on the left side of my ribcage. But I’d already rammed my knee between his legs. He doubled up, cradling his testicles. When he straightened up, my right fist hit him in the middle of his nose. His hands flew up to shield his face, then he lowered them again and stared incredulously at the blood. I reached for his glass and emptied it over his head. ‘Cheers, Fred.’

  Judith had stepped to the side, the other clients kept their distance. Only the proprietress joined the battle on the front lines. ‘Clear out, if it’s trouble you want, clear out,’ she said, already jostling me towards the exit.

  ‘But sweetheart, can’t you see, we’re just having a bit of fun? We’re getting on just fine, isn’t that right, Fred?’

  Fred wiped the blood from his lips. He nodded and looked around for Judith.

  A quick survey of her pub convinced the proprietress that peace and order had been restored. ‘Well, then, have a schnapps on the house,’ she said soothingly. Her establishment was under control.

  While she was pouring them, and Fred had slunk off to the toilet, Judith came over to me. She looked at me in concern. ‘He was one of the ones at the War Cemetery. Is everything all right?’ She spoke softly.

  ‘He may have smashed my ribs, but if you’ll call me Gerd, I’ll get over it,’ I replied. ‘Then I’d simply call you Judith.’

  She smiled. ‘I think you’re exploiting the situation, but I don’t want to quibble. I was just picturing you in a trench coat.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You don’t need one,’ she said.

  Fred came back from the toilet. He’d put on a hang-dog expression in front of the mirror and even apologized.

  ‘Not bad shape for your age. Sorry I got out of order. You know, basically it’s not easy to grow old without a family and around my birth
day I really feel it.’

  Beneath Fred’s friendly veneer, malice and the crooked charm of a Viennese pimp shone through.

  ‘Sometimes something wild takes over, Fred. The thing with the beer wasn’t necessary, but I can’t undo it.’ His hair was still damp and sticky. ‘Don’t hold it against me. I only get mad when women are involved.’

  ‘What shall we do now?’ asked Judith with an innocent blink of the eyes.

  ‘First we’ll take Fred home, then I’ll take you home,’ I ordained.

  The proprietress jumped on the bandwagon. ‘Right, Fred, you’ll be taken home. You can collect your car tomorrow. Come in a taxi.’

  We bundled Fred into my car. Judith followed us.

  Fred claimed to live in Jungbusch, ‘in Werftstrasse, just next to the old police station, you know’, and wanted to be dropped off at the corner.

  I couldn’t care less where he didn’t live. We drove over the bridge.

  ‘That big story of yours, is there anything in it for me? I’ve done some security stuff before, for a big company round here too,’ he said.

  ‘We can talk about it. If you’re looking for some action I’d be glad to have you. Just give me a call.’

  I fished out a business card from my jacket pocket, a real one, and gave it to him. At the corner I let him out and he headed with a swaying gait towards the next pub. I still had Judith’s car in the rear-view mirror. I drove via the Ring and turned round the Wasserturm into the Augusta-Anlage. I’d expected a farewell flash of her lights beyond the National Theatre and then to see nothing more of her. She followed me to Richard-Wagner-Strasse outside my front door and waited, motor running, as I parked.

  I got out, locked up, and walked over to her. It was only seven strides but I gave them everything about superior manliness that I’d picked up in my second youth. I leant down to her window, no rheumatic expense spared, and pointed to the next parking space with my left hand.