Guilt

by Ferdinand von Schirach

  The only person who could have provided the information was the other man. But he kept silent too. The judges couldn’t force him to testify. The police had found cocaine in his pocket and on the glass table; preliminary proceedings had been initiated against him, and this allowed him to remain silent—he could have incriminated himself by making any statement.

  Of course judges do not have to know the motives of a defendant in order to be able to sentence him. But they want to know why people do what they do. And only when they understand can they punish the defendant in a way that is commensurate with his guilt. If that understanding is lacking, the sentence will almost always be longer. The judges didn’t know that Paulsberg wished to protect his wife. She was a lawyer; he had committed a crime. Her office had not yet fired her: no one can do anything about an insane husband. But the partners in the law firm would not be able to accept the truth about all the unknown men, and so she would have been unable to continue in her job. Paulsberg left the decision up to his wife. She was to do what she thought was right.

  ——

  She appeared as a witness without legal counsel. She seemed fragile, too delicately spun a creature to belong with Paulsberg. The presiding judge instructed her that she had the right to remain silent. Nobody believed anything new was going to come out now in this trial. But then she started to speak and it all changed.

  In almost every jury trial there is this one moment when everything suddenly becomes clear. I thought she was going to talk about the unknown men. But she told a different story. She spoke for forty-five minutes without interruption, she was clear, explicit, and did not contradict herself. She said she had had an affair with the other man and Paulsberg had found out. He had wanted to separate; he was crazed with jealousy. The guilt was hers, not his. She said her husband had found the film she and her lover had made. She handed the bailiff a DVD. Paulsberg and she had often made similar films. This one came from the encounter with the other man. The video camera had been on a tripod next to the bed. The public was asked to leave, as we had to view it. You can find such films on countless sites on the Internet. There was no doubt: it was the other man who was having sex with her. The prosecutor observed Paulsberg while the film was running. He remained calm.

  The prosecutor had made yet another mistake. Our criminal law is over 130 years old. It is an intelligent law. Sometimes things don’t go the way the perpetrator wants. His revolver is loaded. He has five bullets. He approaches a woman, he shoots, he wants to kill her. He misses four times, only a single shot grazes her arm. Then he’s standing right in front of her. He pushes the barrel of the revolver against her stomach, he cocks it, he sees the blood running down her arm, and he sees her fear. Perhaps he has second thoughts. A bad law would sentence the man for attempted murder; an intelligent law wants to save the woman. Our criminal code says that he can step back from his attempt to murder without incurring punishment. Which is to say: if he stops now, if he doesn’t kill her, his only punishment will be for endangering her by inflicting bodily injury—not for attempted murder. So it’s up to him: the law will be friendly to him if he does the right thing at this point and lets his victim live. Professors call this “the golden bridge.” I never liked this expression. The things that go on inside people at such moments are too complicated, and a golden bridge belongs more in a Chinese garden. But the idea behind the law is right.

  Paulsberg had stopped beating in the other man’s skull. At the end, he no longer wanted to kill him. This meant that he stepped back from attempted murder; the judges could only convict him of endangering someone by inflicting bodily injury.

  The court could refute neither Paulsberg’s statement nor his wife’s testimony; hence it could not refute his motive. He was sentenced to three and a half years.

  His wife visited him regularly in prison, then he was transferred to the daytime release program. Two years after the trial the remainder of the sentence was commuted to probation. She resigned her position in the law firm and they moved back to the town where she’d grown up in Schleswig-Holstein; she opened a small law practice there. He sold his shops and the house and began to take photographs. Not long ago he had his first exhibition in Berlin. All the photos were of a faceless naked woman.

  The Briefcase

  The police sergeant was standing in a parking lot on the Berlin ring road. She and her colleagues were the last checkpoint in a routine traffic control operation, a boring job, and she would have preferred to be one of the drivers sitting in the warmth, only having to open their windows a crack. It was sixteen degrees; only the occasional frozen blade of grass broke through the crusted snow cover, and the damp cold crawled through her uniform and into her bones. She wished she were up at the front, choosing which cars would be checked, but that job belonged to her seniors. She had only moved from Cologne to Berlin two months before. Now she was longing for her bathtub. She just couldn’t take the cold; it had never been as bad as this in Cologne.

  The next vehicle was an Opel Omega, silver-gray, Polish license plates. The car looked well cared for, no dents, all its lights in order. The driver lowered the window and handed out his license and registration. Everything seemed normal, he didn’t smell of alcohol, and his smile was friendly. The policewoman didn’t know why, but she had a strange feeling. While she read his papers she tried to identify it. At the police academy they had taught her to trust her instincts, but she had to find a logical reason for them.

  It was a rental car from an international company; the rental agreement was made out to the driver and all the papers were right there. And then she realized what was irritating her: the car was empty. There was nothing lying in it, no crumpled chewing gum paper, no newspapers, no suitcase, no cigarette lighters, no gloves, nothing. The car was as empty as if it had just been delivered from the factory. The driver spoke no German. She waved over a colleague who spoke a little Polish. They told the man, who was still smiling, to get out of the car and asked him to open the trunk. The driver nodded and pressed the button. Everything in here was clean to the point of sterility too; the only thing lying in the middle was a briefcase made of red imitation leather. The policewoman pointed to it and made a sign to the man to open it. He shrugged and shook his head. She bent forward to look at the locks. They were simple combination locks, set to zero, and opened immediately. She lifted the lid of the case, and recoiled so violently that she banged the back of her head against the lid of the trunk. She managed to turn away, then she threw up on the road. Her colleague, who hadn’t seen what was in the case, drew his weapon and yelled at the driver to put his hands on the roof of the car. Other policemen came running and the driver was overpowered. The policewoman was white; traces of vomit clung to the corners of her mouth. She said, “Oh my God,” and then she threw up again.

  The policemen took the man to the Keithstrasse, which houses the Major Case department. The red briefcase was sent to Forensics. Although it was Saturday, a call was made to Lanning, the chief medical examiner. The briefcase contained eighteen color Xeroxes of corpses, all apparently laser prints. All of their faces looked the same: mouths wide open, eyeballs protruding. People die, and medical examiners deal with them; it’s their job. But the pictures were unusual: eleven men and seven women were all lying on their backs in the same twisted pose. When photographed, they had all looked strangely similar: they were naked and the rough point of a wooden stake was sticking out of their stomachs.

  Jan Bathowitz was the name on the Polish passport. When he was brought in, they wanted to question him at once; the police interpreter was standing ready. Bathowitz was polite, almost submissive, but he kept repeating he wanted to call his embassy first. It was his right and finally they allowed him to make the call. He said his name and the legal staff at the embassy advised him to remain silent until a lawyer could get there. That too was his right, and Bathowitz exercised it.

  Chief Inspector Pätzold could hold the suspect until the end of the following day, and this he di
d. So the man was taken to the holding pen and locked in a cell. As they did with every prisoner, they took away his shoelaces and his belt in case he tried to hang himself. When I got there at two o’clock the next day, the questioning could proceed. I advised Bathowitz not to answer. Nonetheless he wanted to testify.

  “Your name?” Chief Inspector Pätzold looked bored, but he was wide awake. The interpreter translated every question and every answer.

  “Jan Bathowitz.”

  Pätzold went through the man’s particulars; he had had the passport checked out and it appeared to be genuine. A message had been sent to the Polish authorities yesterday, asking if there were any charges against Bathowitz, but as always such inquiries took forever.

  “Mr. Bathowitz, you know why you’re here.”

  “Your police brought me here.”

  “Yes. Do you know why?”

  “No.”

  “Where did you get the photos?”

  “What photos?”

  “We found eighteen photos in your briefcase.”

  “It’s not my briefacse.”

  “Aha. So whose is it?”

  “A businessman from Witoslaw, my hometown.”

  “What’s the name of this businessman?”

  “I don’t know. He gave me the briefcase and said I was to bring it to Berlin.”

  “But you have to know what his name is.”

  “No, I didn’t have to know that.”

  “Why?”

  “I met him in a bar. He spoke to me, he paid me right up front and in cash.”

  “Did you know what’s in the photos?”

  “No, the briefcase was closed when I got it. I have no idea.”

  “You didn’t look inside?”

  “It was shut.”

  “But it wasn’t locked. You could have looked inside.”

  “I don’t do things like that,” said Bathowitz.

  “Mr. Pätzold,” I said, “what is the actual charge against my client?”

  Pätzold looked at me. That was the point, and of course he knew it.

  “We’ve had the photographs examined. Professor Lanninger says the corpses are most likely genuine.”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “What do you mean, yes? Your client had photos of corpses in his briefcase. Corpses with stakes through them.”

  “I still haven’t found out what the charge is. Transporting color Xeroxes of photographs of corpses made by a laser printer? Lanning is no Photoshop expert, and ‘most likely’ is not the same as ‘definitely.’ And even if they were genuine corpses, there is no law against having pictures of them. There’s nothing here that constitutes a criminal offense.”

  Pätzold knew I was right. Nonetheless, I could understand him.

  At that moment, we could have left. I stood up and took my briefcase. But then my client did something I didn’t understand. He laid a hand on my forearm and said he didn’t mind the chief inspector’s questions. I wanted a break, but Bathowitz shook his head and said, “It’s fine.”

  Pätzold’s questions continued. “To whom does the briefcase belong?”

  “The man in the bar.”

  “What were you supposed to do with it?”

  “I already said I was supposed to bring it to Berlin.”

  “Did the man say what was in the case?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “What?”

  “He said it was blueprints for a big project. There was a lot of money involved.”

  “Blueprints?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t he send the plans by courier?”

  “I didn’t ask. He said he didn’t trust couriers.”

  “Why?”

  “He said couriers in Poland are always working for both sides. He preferred to have a stranger whom nobody knew transport the things.”

  “Where were you to take the pictures?”

  Bathowitz didn’t hesitate for a second. He said, “To Kreuzberg.”

  Pätzold nodded; he seemed to have reached his goal.

  “To whom in Kreuzberg? What’s his name?”

  I don’t understand Polish, but I understood the tone in Bathowitz’s voice. He was totally calm. “I don’t know. I was supposed to go to a phone booth at five o’clock.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Mehringdamm, Yorckstrasse.” He said these words first in German, then in Polish. “There’s apparently a phone booth there. I’m to be there at five o’clock tomorrow afternoon, and the phone will ring, and I’ll be told the rest of it.”

  Pätzold continued questioning him for another hour. The story didn’t change. Bathowitz remained friendly, he answered every question politely, nothing made him tense. Pätzold couldn’t refute any of his statements.

  Bathowitz was fingerprinted and photographed. The computer had no trace of him. The inquiry to Poland was answered: everything appeared to be in order. Pätzold must either release Bathowitz or go before a judge. The DA declined to make a request for an arrest warrant; Pätzold had no choice. He asked Bathowitz if he’d agree to leave the briefcase with the police. Bathowitz shrugged; all he asked was a receipt for it. At seven that evening he was allowed to leave the police station. He said goodbye to me on the steps of the old building, walked to his car, and disappeared.

  Twenty policemen were posted around the phone booth next day and the police cars in the neighborhood were on alert. A Polish-born plainclothes officer who had roughly the same build as Bathowitz and was wearing similar clothes stood in the phone booth at 5 p.m. with the red briefcase. A judge had granted a warrant to tap the phone line. The phone didn’t ring.

  A jogger found the body on Tuesday morning at a parking spot in the woods. The 6.35-millimeter Browning had made only small entry wounds, circular, barely half a centimeter across. It was an execution. Pätzold could only start a new file and notify his colleagues in Poland. Bathowitz’s death was never solved.

  Desire

  She had positioned the chair in front of the window. She liked to drink her tea there, because she could see into the playground. A girl was doing cartwheels while two boys watched. The girl was a little older than the boys. When she fell down, she started to cry. She ran to her mother and showed her the scrape on her elbow. The mother had a bottle of water and a handkerchief and swabbed the wound clean. The girl looked over to the boys as she stood between her mother’s legs holding out her arm to her. It was Sunday. He would be coming back with the children in an hour. She would set the table; friends were coming to visit. It was silent in the apartment. She stared into the playground again without seeing what was happening there.

  They were well. She did everything the way she’d always done it: conversations with her husband about work, shopping in the supermarket, tennis lessons for the children, Christmas with her parents or parents-in-law. She uttered the same sentences she always uttered; she wore the same clothes she always wore. She went to buy shoes with her girlfriends, and went to the movies once a month if she could get a babysitter. She kept up-to-date with exhibitions and plays. She watched the news, read the political section of the paper, paid attention to the children, attended parent-teacher days at school. She didn’t do any sports, but she hadn’t put on weight.

  Her husband suited her; she’d always believed that. But it wasn’t his fault. It was nobody’s fault. It had just happened. She hadn’t been able to do anything about it. She could remember every detail of the evening when it all became clear.

  “Are you ill?” he had said. “You look pale.”

  “No.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, darling, I’m just going to go to bed now. It was a long day.”

  Much later, when they were lying in bed, she’d suddenly been unable to breathe. She’d lain awake until morning, rigid with anxiety and guilt, her thighs cramping. She didn’t want it that way, but it had stayed that way. And while making breakfast for the children next day and checking their schoolbags, she’d know
n she’d never feel any different again: she was totally empty inside. She would have to keep living with that.

  That had been two years ago. They went on living together; he didn’t notice. Nobody noticed. They rarely had sex, and when they did, she was affable with him.

  Gradually everything disappeared, until she was a mere shell. The world became alien to her; she no longer belonged in it. The children laughed, her husband got excited, their friends argued—but nothing touched her. She was serious, she laughed, she cried, she comforted—it was all the way it usually was and all on cue. But when things were quiet and she looked at other people in cafés or on the streetcar, she felt none of it had anything to do with her any more.

  At some point she started. She stood for half an hour in front of the shelves with the stockings, went away, came back. Then she grabbed. It didn’t matter what size or what color. She shoved the packs under her coat too hastily and the stockings slid to the floor. She bent down, then ran. Her heart was racing, she could feel the pulse in her neck and stains on her hands. Her whole body was wet. She didn’t feel her legs, she was trembling, then she was past the checkout. Someone bumped into her. Then the ice-cold evening air, and rain. Adrenaline flooded through her; she wanted to scream. Two corners further on, she threw the stockings into a garbage can. Taking off her shoes, she ran home in the rain. Outside her front door she looked up into the sky. The water splashed onto her forehead, her eyes, her mouth. She was alive.

  She only ever stole superfluous things, and she only ever stole when she couldn’t stand it any longer. She wouldn’t always get away with it, she knew that. Her husband would say that was in the nature of things. He always uttered remarks like that. He was right. When the detective stopped her, she immediately confessed, right there on the street. People passing by stopped to stare at her, a child pointed and said, “That woman stole things.” The detective was holding her tight by the arm. He took her to his office and wrote up a report for the police: name, address, identity card number, sequence of events, value of goods 12.99 euros, check the relevant box “admitted: yes/no.” He was wearing a checked shirt and smelled of sweat. She was the woman with the Louis Vuitton handbag and the Gucci wallet, credit cards, and 845.36 euros in cash. He showed her where to sign. She read the sheet and wondered for a moment if she could correct his spelling mistakes, the way she did with her children. He said she would get something from the police in the mail, and grinned at her. The remains of a sausage roll were lying on the table. She thought of her husband, and imagined the trial, with the judge questioning her. The detective took her out through a side door.