Guilt

by Ferdinand von Schirach

  For the first few weeks they humiliated him in a haphazard way. He had to polish their shoes and buy candy for them in the village. Henry did what they told him. Then came the carnival holiday before Lent; the boys had three days off, as every year, but for most of them it was too far to go home. They were bored, and things for Henry got worse. The monastery had an outbuilding; during the monks’ time it had been the slaughterhouse. There were two rooms inside, with yellow tiles that reached all the way to the ceiling. It had stood empty for many years, but the old chopping blocks were still there, as were the drainage channels for blood in the floor.

  He was made to sit naked on a chair, while the three boys circled round him screaming that he was a swine and a thief and a traitor to their community, and human garbage, and ugly. They talked about his acne and his penis. They beat him with wet towels. He was only allowed to move if he was on his knees, or they made him crawl on his stomach; and he had to keep repeating “I have brought great guilt upon myself.” They forced him into an iron butcher’s barrel and banged on the metal until he almost went deaf. And they discussed what they should do with the pathetic creature. Shortly before supper, they stopped. They were friendly to him and told him to get dressed again; they would continue next weekend but for now they mustn’t be late for supper.

  That evening one of them wrote home about how the week had gone, and that he was looking forward to the holidays. He mentioned his marks in English and mathematics. The two others played soccer.

  Henry went back to the slaughterhouse again after supper. He stood in the half-darkness and waited, but he didn’t know what he was waiting for. He saw the streetlamp through the window, he thought about his mother and how he’d once eaten chocolate in the car and smeared it on the seat. When she discovered this, she got very angry. He spent the whole afternoon cleaning the car, not just the seats but the exterior too; he even scrubbed the tires with a brush, till the car gleamed and his father complimented him. And then suddenly he took off his clothes, lay down on the floor, and spread his arms wide. He felt the cold rising up into his bones from the flagstones. He closed his eyes and listened to nothing except his own breath. Henry was happy.

  “He ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead …”

  It was the liturgy for Good Friday; attendance at the village church was compulsory for the boys. Originally it had been a Lady Chapel; now it was a baroque church full of gold, trompe l’oeil marble, angels and Madonnas.

  Henry had long since drawn everything that was in here, but today he saw nothing. He groped for the piece of paper in his pocket. “Hodie te illuminatum inauguramus,” it said. “Today we will consecrate you as one of the Illuminati.” He had waited for it, the piece of paper meant everything to him, he’d found it this morning on his night table. Under the Latin text it said, “8 pm. Old Slaughterhouse.”

  “… and forgive us our trespasses …”

  “Yes,” he thought, “today my trespasses will be forgiven.” He was breathing so loudly that a couple of the boys turned round to look at him. They were already in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer, the liturgy would end at any moment. “My trespasses will be forgiven,” he said half out loud, and closed his eyes.

  Henry was naked and was made to put the noose around his neck himself. The others were wearing black hoods that they had found in a forgotten cupboard in the attic, rough monk’s robes and penitent’s shirts made of goat hair which hadn’t been worn in modern times. They had placed candles around, and the flames were reflected in the grimy film on the windows. Henry could no longer recognize the boys’ faces, but he saw all the details: the fabric of the hoods, the thread the buttons were sewn on with, the red bricks of the window frames, the forced lock in the door, the dust on the steps, the rust on the banisters.

  They bound his hands behind his back. Using watercolors from art class, one of the boys painted a red pentagram on Henry’s chest to ward off evil; they’d seen it in some engraving. They took the rope around his neck and pulled it up to a hook in the ceiling using the old winch; Henry’s toes could barely touch the floor. One of the boys read out the great exorcism, the Rituale Romanum, the papal instructions written in Latin in 1614. His words rang out in the room; nobody understood them. The boy’s voice cracked; he was being carried away by himself. They really believed they were purifying Henry of his sins.

  Henry didn’t freeze. This time, this one time, he’d done everything right; they could no longer reject him. One of the boys swung at him with a whip he’d made himself, with knots in the leather. It wasn’t a hard blow, but Henry lost his balance. The rope was made of hemp; it cut into his throat and blocked his air passages, he tripped, his toes could no longer find the floor. And then Henry got an erection.

  A person being slowly hanged suffocates. In the first phase the rope cuts into the skin, the veins and arteries in the neck are closed off, and the face turns violet-blue. The brain is no longer supplied with blood, consciousness is lost after about ten seconds; only if the windpipe is not totally blocked does it take longer. In the next phase, which lasts approximately one minute, the breathing muscles contract, the tongue protrudes from the mouth, and the hyoid bone and the larynx are damaged. This is followed by powerful, uncontrollable cramps; the legs and arms thrash eight or ten times, and the neck muscles often tear. Then suddenly the hanged man seems peaceful, he’s no longer breathing, and after one or two minutes the last phase begins. Death is now almost inevitable. The mouth opens, the body gasps for air, but only in individual panting spasms, no more than ten in sixty seconds. Blood may issue from the mouth, nose, and ears, the face is now congested, the right ventricle of the heart is distended. Death comes after approximately ten minutes. Erections during a hanging are not uncommon: in the fifteenth century people believed the mandrake, a solanaceous herb, grew from the sperm of hanged men.

  But the young men knew nothing about the human body. They didn’t understand that Henry was dying; they thought the blows were arousing him. The boy with the whip became furious, he struck harder and roared something that Henry didn’t understand. He felt no pain. He remembered finding a deer on a country road as a child that had been hit by a car. It was lying there in its own blood in the snow, and when he tried to touch it, it jerked its head round and stared at him. Now he was one of them. His trespasses had been wiped away, he would never be alone again, he was purified, and finally he was free.

  The road from the art teacher’s house to the only gas station in the village ran between the monastery and the old slaughterhouse. She wanted to buy cigarettes there, and set off on her bike. She saw the light from the candles in the slaughterhouse and knew that no one was allowed to be there. She had been a teacher her whole life, she had supervised children and brought them up; it was probably this sense of responsibility that made her stop and climb the five worn steps. She opened the door. She saw the candles, she saw Henry, naked with a stiff penis, half-hanged in the noose, and she saw the three boys in their monk’s hoods, one of them with a whip in his hand. She screamed, backed away, missed the stair, lost her balance, and hit the nape of her neck on the edge of the bottom step. Her neck snapped and she died immediately.

  The rope round Henry’s neck was made fast to an iron chain that ran over a pulley in the ceiling and then to the winch. When he heard the teacher scream, the boy let go, the rope gave way, and Henry fell to the floor. The heavy chain raced over the pulley, yanking the plaster off the ceiling, and its weight shattered a flagstone next to Henry’s head. While the boys ran into the school to fetch help, Henry lay there, then he slowly pulled in his knees, breathed, and when he opened his eyes, he saw the teacher’s purse lying overturned in the doorway.

  The headmaster had been put in touch with me by the school’s lawyer. He told me what had happened and asked me to represent the interests of the school. He knew the teacher had had a particularly close relationship with Henry
, closer than with any of the other pupils, and although he’d always trusted her, he was now worried that her death might have something to do with this.

  ——

  When I reached the school five days after the events, the old slaughterhouse was still blocked off with red-and-white crime tape. The DA said the investigating authorities had no cause to suspect the art teacher. The detectives found her diary. I exercised my right to review the file, and read it in my hotel room.

  Then there were the pictures. The police found them in Henry’s cupboard. He had recorded it all, rapid watercolor sketches on hundreds of sheets of paper; every humiliation was there, every humiliation of his and every desire of his torturers. The pictures would become the main evidence at trial; no one would be able to deny a thing. Not one of the sketches showed the art teacher; her death really had been an accident. I wasn’t able to speak to Henry, who had been taken home, but there were almost fifty pages of interview transcripts, and I talked to his friend for many hours.

  By the end of the week I was able to reassure the headmaster. Henry’s parents were not going to sue the school; they didn’t want their son’s case to become public knowledge. The DA’s office didn’t intend to put the school administration on trial. The criminal action against the students would not be a public one; they were just seventeen, and the only issue would be their guilt. My brief mandate was thus at an end.

  A lawyer who was a friend of mine and was defending one of the young men told me later that they had all confessed and had been sentenced to three years in juvenile detention. They had not been charged with the death of the teacher.

  Some years afterwards, when I was in the neighborhood, I phoned the headmaster and he invited me to coffee at the monastery. The old slaughterhouse had been torn down and was now a parking lot. Henry had not returned to the school. He was ill for a long time and now works in the screw factory where he had already served his apprenticeship. He has never gone back to drawing.

  That evening I drove back down the same allée along which Henry had been driven to the school by his parents so many years before. I saw the dog too late. I braked and the car skidded on the gravel road. The dog was huge and black; it took its time crossing the road and didn’t even look at me. In the Middle Ages such dogs were supposed to pull mandrake roots out of the ground; people believed the plants would scream when dug up and the scream would kill people. The dogs obviously didn’t mind. I waited until it disappeared between the trees.

  Children

  Before they came to take him away, things had always gone well for Holbrecht. He had met Miriam at a supper given by friends. She was wearing a black dress and a silk shawl with brightly colored birds of paradise on it. She taught at the primary school; he was the sales representative for an office furniture company. They fell in love, and after that time was over they still got along well together. At family parties, everyone said they made such a good-looking couple, and most of them meant it.

  A year after the wedding they bought a semi-detached house in one of the most respectable suburbs of Berlin, and five years later they had almost paid it off. “Ahead of time,” as the local branch manager of the Volksbank said. He always stood up when he saw Miriam or Holbrecht at the counter. Holbrecht liked that. There’s nothing to find fault with, he thought.

  Holbrecht wanted children. “Next year,” said Miriam. “Let’s enjoy life a little longer.” She was twenty-nine, he was nine years older. They were going to take a trip to the Maldives that winter, and whenever they talked about it, Miriam looked at him and smiled.

  Customers valued his straightforward manner; when his bonus was added in, he was making a comfortable ninety thousand a year. Driving back from meetings, he listened to jazz in the car, and his world was complete.

  They came at seven in the morning. He’d been supposed to drive to Hannover that day: a new customer, complete equipping of an office, good contract. They handcuffed him and led him out of the house. Still in her pajamas that he liked so much, Miriam stared at the arrest warrant. “Twenty-four counts of child abuse.” She knew the name of the girl from her primary school class. She stood in the kitchen with an officer as two of the policemen led Holbrecht down the narrow path to the police car. They had planted the boxwood hedge the year before; the jacket she’d given him last Christmas hung awkwardly on his shoulders somehow. The policeman said most wives had no idea. It was meant to sound comforting. Then they searched the house.

  It wasn’t a long trial. Holbrecht denied everything. The judge held up the fact that porno films had been found on his computer. Admittedly there were no children in them and the films were legal, but the women were very young: one of them had barely any tits. The judge was sixty-three. He believed the girl. She said Holbrecht had always intercepted her on the way home. He had touched her “down there”—she started to cry as she testified about that. The terrace of his house was where it took place. Another girl confirmed everything; she’d even seen it all twice herself. The girls described the house and the little garden.

  Miriam didn’t attend the main hearing. Her lawyer sent the divorce papers to the house of detention. Holbrecht signed everything without reading it.

  The court sentenced him to three and a half years. It stated in its opinion that it had no cause to doubt the girl’s testimony. Holbrecht served out his sentence to the last day. The psychologist had wanted him to acknowledge his guilt. He said nothing.

  His shoes were soaked by the rain; water had forced its way in over the rims and seeped into his socks. The bus shelter had a plastic roof, but Holbrecht preferred to stand outdoors. The rain ran down the back of his neck into his coat. Everything he owned fit into the gray suitcase that was standing beside him. Some underwear, a few books, approximately 250 letters to his wife which he had never sent. In the pocket of his pants he had the addresses of his probation officer and a boardinghouse where he could stay to begin with. To tide him over, he had the money he’d earned in prison. Holbrecht was now forty-two years old.

  The next five years passed quietly. He lived on his wages as a sandwich-board man for a tourist restaurant. He stood at the end of the Kurfürstendamm with colorful pictures of the various pizzas on cardboard boxes. He wore a white hat. His trick was to give a little nod to people when he handed them the flyer. Most of them took one.

  He lived in a one-and-a-half-room apartment in Schöneberg. His employer valued him; he was never ill. He didn’t want to live on unemployment benefits and he didn’t want any other job.

  He recognized her at once. She must now be sixteen or seventeen, a carefree young woman in a close-fitting T-shirt. She was with her boyfriend, eating ice cream. She tossed her hair back as she laughed. It was her.

  He turned aside quickly, feeling ill. He pulled off the sandwich board and told the restaurant owner he was sick. He was so pale that no one asked him any questions.

  In the suburban train someone had written “I love you” and someone else had written “pig” in the dirt on the window. Back home he lay down on his bed in his clothes, and spread a wet kitchen towel over his face. He slept for fourteen hours. Then he got up, made coffee, and sat down at the open window. A shoe was lying on the canopy of the building next door. Children were trying to reach it with a stick.

  In the afternoon he met his friend, a homeless man, who was fishing in the Spree, and sat down beside him.

  “It’s about a woman,” said Holbrecht.

  “It’s always about a woman,” said his friend.

  Then they fell silent. When his friend pulled a fish out of the water and killed it by smacking it against the concrete wall of the quay, he went home.

  Back in the apartment he looked out of the window again. The shoe was still lying on the canopy. He fetched a beer from the refrigerator and pressed the bottle to his temples. The heat had barely eased at all.

  She had walked by him and his sandwich board on the Kurfürstendamm every Saturday. He took the weekend off and waited. When she c
ame he followed her; he waited in front of shops and cafés and restaurants. Nobody noticed him. On the fourth Saturday she bought movie tickets. He found a seat directly behind her. His plan was going to work. She had put her hand on her boyfriend’s thigh. Holbrecht sat down. He smelled her perfume and heard her whispering. Pulling the kitchen knife out of the waistband of his pants, he clutched it under his jacket. She had pinned her hair up; he saw the blond fuzz on the back of her slender neck. He could almost count the individual tiny hairs.

  He thought he had every right.

  I don’t know why Holbrecht came straight to my office. I have no walk-in clients, but the office is not far from the movie house: maybe that’s the only reason. My secretary called me early in the morning; a man was waiting without an appointment, he’d been sitting on the steps outside the office, and he had a knife. My secretary has been with me for years. Now she was afraid.

  Holbrecht sat hunched in a chair, staring at the knife in front of him on the table. He didn’t move. I asked him if I might take the knife. Holbrecht nodded without looking up. I put it in an envelope and carried it to the secretary’s office. Then I sat down with him and waited. At some point he looked at me. The first thing he said was “I didn’t do it.” I nodded; sometimes it’s hard for clients to talk. I offered him a coffee, then we sat there and smoked. It was midsummer, and through the large open windows of the conference room you could hear high voices—children on a class outing. Young people were laughing in the café across the way. I closed the window. It was quiet and warm.

  It took a long time before he told me his story. He had a strange way of talking: He nodded after every sentence, as if he had to personally reaffirm everything he said. And there were long pauses. At the end he said he’d followed the girl into the movie house but he hadn’t stabbed her; he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He was trembling. He had sat all night in front of my offices and he was exhausted. My secretary called the movie house: there had been no incident.