Page 24 of Self's Punishment

I almost didn’t hear the doorbell. I pressed the buzzer for the front door, but then saw the green silhouette through the frosted glass of the apartment door and knew the visitor was already upstairs. I opened up. In front of me stood Herzog in uniform.

  ‘I’m sorry, Herr Self . . .’

  So this was the end. They say it happens just before you’re hanged, but now the pictures of the past weeks went shooting through my mind, as if in a film. Korten’s last look, my arrival in Mannheim on Christmas morning, Manuel’s hand in mine, the nights with Brigitte, our happy group round the Christmas tree. I wanted to say something. I couldn’t make a sound.

  Herzog went ahead of me into the apartment. I heard the music being turned down. But our friends kept laughing and chattering cheerfully. When I had control of myself again, and went into the sitting room, Herzog had a glass of wine in his hand, and Röschen, a little tipsy, was fiddling with the buttons on his uniform.

  ‘I was just on my way home, Herr Self, when the complaint about your party came through on the radio. I took it upon myself to look in on you.’

  ‘Hurry up,’ called Brigitte, ‘two minutes to go.’ Enough time to distribute the champagne glasses and pop the corks.

  Now we’re standing on the balcony, Philipp and Eberhard let off the fireworks, from all the churches comes the ringing of bells, we clink glasses.

  ‘Happy New Year.’

  SELF’S PUNISHMENT

  Bernhard Schlink

  Bernhard Schlink is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The Reader; a collection of short stories, Flights of Love; and three other crime novels, The Gordian Knot, Self Deception, and Self Slaughter, which are currently being translated into English. He is a visiting professor at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, in New York. He lives in Bonn and Berlin.

  Walter Popp

  Walter Popp was born in Nuremberg and studied law at the University of Erlangen. He started a law practice in Mannheim before moving to France in 1983. He now lives in a Provençal village with his teenage daughter and works as a translator.

  ALSO BY BERNHARD SCHLINK

  The Reader

  Flights of Love

  A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, APRIL 2005

  Copyright © 2005 by Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Switzerland as Selbs Justiz by Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich, in 1987. Copyright © 1987 by Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Schlink, Bernhard.

  [Selbs Justiz. English]

  Self’s punishment / Bernhard Schlink with Walter Popp.

  p. cm.

  I. Popp, Walter, 1948– II. Title.

  PT2680.L54S4413 2005

  833’.914—dc22

  2004057166

  www.vintagebooks.com

  www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-42766-3

  v3.0

 


 

  Bernhard Schlink, Self's Punishment

  (Series: Gerhard Self # 1)

 

 


 

 
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