Guilt

by Ferdinand von Schirach

  After our phone conversation she sent me a photo of her children. She also included a letter, written in her best copybook handwriting on blue paper; she must have done it very slowly. “Everything is fine with my husband and my girls. I’m happy. But I often dream about the baby lying alone in the cellar. It was a boy. I miss him.”

  Justice

  The criminal court is in the Moabit district of Berlin. That part of the city is gray; no one knows where the name came from; it sounds a little like the Slavic word for a Moor. It is the largest criminal court in Europe. The building has twelve courtyards and seventeen staircases. Fifteen hundred people work here, including 270 judges and 350 prosecutors. Approximately 300 hearings take place every day, 1,300 prisoners from 80 nations are incarcerated here awaiting trial, and more than 1,000 visitors, witnesses, and trial personnel pass through. Every year roughly 60,000 criminal proceedings are handled here. These are the statistics.

  The officer who delivered Turan said quietly that he was “a poor bastard.” He arrived in the interrogation room on crutches, dragging his right leg. He looked like the beggars in the pedestrian passageways. His left foot was turned inward. He was forty-one years old, a thin little man, just skin and bones, sunken cheeks, almost no teeth, unshaved, unkempt. In order to shake my hand, he had to lean one of the crutches against his stomach, and he found it hard to keep his balance. Turan sat down and tried to tell me his story. He was serving his term of detention; the sentence had long since started to run. He had supposedly attacked a man with his pit bull, and “brutally beaten him up and kicked him.” Turan said he was innocent. It took time for him to answer my questions, and he spoke slowly. I didn’t understand everything he said, but then he didn’t have to say much: he could barely walk, and any dog would have knocked him over. When I was about to leave, he suddenly clutched my arm, and his crutch fell to the ground. He wasn’t a bad man, he said.

  A few days later the file arrived from the DA’s office. It was thin, barely fifty pages. Horst Kowski, forty-two, had gone for a walk in Neukölln. Neukölln is a district of Berlin where schools employ private guards, technical schools have up to 80 percent foreign pupils, and every second person is on welfare. Horst Kowski had gone for this walk with his dachshund. The dachshund had gotten into a fight with the pit bull. The owner of the pit bull got angry, the fight escalated, and the man assaulted Kowski.

  When Kowski arrived home, he was bleeding from the mouth. His nose was broken, his shirt badly torn. His wife bandaged him up. She said she knew “the man with the pit bull” and his name was Tarun. He was a regular at the tanning salon where she worked. She checked the computer in the salon, and found Tarun’s discount card and his address: Kolbe-Ring 52. The couple went to the police; Kowski showed them the computer printout. Tarun was not a registered resident of Berlin. The officer was not surprised: Neukölln is not a place where the obligation to register is always observed.

  The next day the officer on the beat failed to find any Tarun among the 184 names on the little signs next to the buzzers at Kolbe-Ring 52. There was, however, a label with the name “Turan.” The policeman made inquiries at the State Residents’ Registration Office; there was in fact a Harkan Turan registered at Kolbe-Ring 52. The officer thought it must be a misspelling—it should be Turan, not Tarun—so he rang, and when no one answered he left a summons for Turan in the mailbox.

  Turan didn’t go to the police. Nor did he send an excuse. After four weeks the policeman sent the file to the DA’s office. The DA requested a penalty order and a judge signed it. If he didn’t do it, he’ll surface, he thought.

  When Turan received the order he could still have changed everything; all he had to do was write one line to the court. The penalty order took on the force of law after two weeks. The department in charge of enforcement sent a form for a money transfer to use when he paid the fine. He naturally didn’t pay because apart from everything else, he didn’t have the money. The fine was replaced by a term of imprisonment. The detention center wrote telling him to present himself within fourteen days. Turan threw the letter away. After three weeks two policemen came to get him in the morning. Since then he had been sitting in prison. Turan said: “It wasn’t me. Germans are so thorough—they must know this.”

  Turan’s deformity was congenital; he’d had a whole series of operations. I wrote to his doctors and gave their case notes to an expert in the field. He said Turan was incapable of assaulting anyone. Turan’s friends came to my office. They said he was afraid of dogs so of course he’d never owned one. One of the friends even knew Tarun and his pit bull. I demanded that the matter be reopened. Turan was released. Three months later there was a hearing. Kowski said he’d never seen Turan in his life.

  Turan was exonerated. The court forgot about the charge against Tarun.

  By law, Turan had a claim against the state: eleven euros for every day of wrongful imprisonment. The claim had to be made within six months. Turan didn’t get any money—he missed the deadline.

  Comparison

  Alexandra was pretty: a blonde with brown eyes. In older photographs she wears a hair band. She grew up in the country near Oldenburg, where her parents were livestock farmers: cows, pigs, hens. She didn’t like having freckles, she read historical novels, and all she wanted was to go and live in the city. After middle school, her father got her an apprenticeship in a respectable bakery and her mother helped her look for an apartment. At first she felt homesick and went home on weekends. Then she got to know people in the city. She loved life.

  After she’d completed her apprenticeship she bought her first car. Her mother had given her the money, but she wanted to choose it herself. She was nineteen. The salesman was ten years older. Tall, slim-hipped. They took a test drive, and Thomas explained the points of the car to her. She was drawn to his hands: slender, sinewy, they attracted her. Afterwards he asked her if she would like to have dinner with him, or go to a movie. She was too nervous, so she laughed and said no. But she wrote her phone number on the contract. They made a date a week later. She liked the way he talked about things. And she liked it that he told her what to do. Everything felt right.

  They married two years later. In her wedding photographs she’s wearing a white dress. She’s tanned, she’s laughing into the camera and holding the arm of her husband, who’s a couple of heads taller. They had paid for a real photographer. The picture was to stand on her night table forever: she’d already bought the frame. They both liked the reception afterwards, and the solo entertainer on the Hammond organ; they danced, although he said he was not much of a dancer. Their families got on well together. Her favorite grandfather, a stonemason with silicosis, gave them a statue as a wedding present—a naked girl who looked a lot like her. His father gave them money in an envelope.

  Alexandra had no worries; everything was going to work out well with this man. It was all the way she’d wished it for herself. He was loving, and she thought she knew him.

  The first time he hit her was long before the baby was born. He came home drunk in the middle of the night. She woke up and told him he smelled of alcohol. She didn’t find it that bad; she was simply telling him. He yelled at her and dragged the bedclothes off her. As she sat up, he hit her in the face. She was terrified; she couldn’t say a thing.

  Next morning he wept and blamed the alcohol. She didn’t like the way he sat on the kitchen floor. He said he would never drink again. When he left for work, she cleaned the entire apartment. She did nothing else all day. They were married, she thought; that sort of thing happened, it was a slip-up. They didn’t discuss it again.

  When Alexandra got pregnant, everything became the way it had been before. He brought her flowers on weekends, he lay on her stomach and tried to hear the baby. He stroked her. When she came home from the hospital after the birth, he had tidied everything up. He’d painted the nursery yellow and bought a baby’s changing table. Her mother-in-law had brought new things for the child. There was a wreath of paper fl
owers over the door.

  The girl was baptized. He’d wanted to name her Chantal, but finally they settled on Saskia. Alexandra was happy.

  After the birth he didn’t have sex with her any more. She tried a few times, but he didn’t want it. She felt a little lonely, but she had the baby and she made herself get accustomed to it. A girlfriend had told her it sometimes happened if the husband had been present at the birth. It would pass. She didn’t know if this was true.

  After a few years, things got harder. Sales of cars were slow; they had the payments on the apartment to make. They managed somehow, but he drank more than in former times. Sometimes in the evenings she smelled a perfume she didn’t know, but she didn’t say anything. Her friends had bigger problems with their husbands; most of them were getting divorced.

  ——

  It began at Christmas. She had set the table: white cloth, her grandmother’s silver. Saskia was five; she said where the balls were to be hung on the Christmas tree. At half past six Alexandra lit the candles. He still wasn’t home by the time they had burned all the way down. The two of them were alone, and after dinner she put Saskia to bed. She read aloud from the new book till the little girl fell asleep. She had phoned her parents and his parents and everyone had wished one another Merry Christmas like a normal family. Only when they asked about him, Alexandra said he was making a quick trip to the gas station to buy matches, because she had none in the house for lighting the candles.

  He did it silently. He had boxed when he was younger and knew how to hit in order to cause pain. Although he was drunk, his blows were precise. He struck systematically and hard, as they stood in the kitchen between the American breakfast counter and the refrigerator. He avoided her face. On the refrigerator door were the little girl’s paintings and stickers. Thinking of Saskia, she bit into her hand so as not to scream. He dragged her across the floor to the bedroom by her hair. When he sodomized her, she felt she was being torn in half. He came almost at once, then kicked her out of bed and fell asleep. She lay on the floor, unable to move, until at some point much later she managed to make it to the bathroom. The bruises were already showing on her skin and there was blood in her urine. She lay in the bathtub for a long time, until finally she was able to breathe normally again. She was unable to cry.

  The first day after the Christmas holidays she found the necessary strength to say she was taking Saskia and going to her mother’s. He left the apartment before she did. She packed a suitcase and carried it to the elevator. Saskia was excited. As they arrived downstairs, he was standing in front of the door. He took the suitcase out of her hand gently. Saskia asked if they weren’t going to visit Grandma after all. Taking their daughter in his left hand and the suitcase in his right, he went back to the elevator. In the apartment he laid the suitcase on the bed, looked at her, and shook his head.

  “No matter where you go, I’ll find you,” he said. In the hall, he picked Saskia up in his arms. “We’re going to the zoo.”

  “Yes, yes!” said Saskia.

  It was only after the door closed that Alexandra could feel her hands again. She had dug her fingers into the chair so tight that two of her fingernails were broken. That evening he broke one of her ribs. She slept on the floor. She was devoid of feeling.

  His name was Felix and he’d rented one of the small apartments in the back of the building. She had seen him every day with his bicycle, he always said hello to her in the supermarket, and when she buckled over in the hallway once with pain in her kidneys, he’d helped with her shopping bags. Now he was standing at her door.

  “Do you have any salt?” he said. “Okay, I admit it, that’s a really stupid line. Would you like to have coffee with me?”

  They both laughed. Her ribs hurt. She had gotten used to the blows: she would stick it out for another four or five years, then Saskia would be old enough. She was nine now.

  She liked Felix’s apartment. It was warm, with pale floors, books on narrow shelves, and a mattress with white sheets. He talked to her about books and they listened to Schubert lieder. He looks like an overgrown boy, she thought, and maybe a little sad. He told her she was beautiful, then neither of them said anything for a long time. When she went back to her apartment, she thought that perhaps her life wasn’t over after all. She had to spend that night on the floor by the bed again, but it didn’t matter quite so much.

  Three months later she slept with him. She didn’t want him to see her naked, with the blue patches and all the scraped skin, so she lowered the metal blinds and undressed under the bedcovers. She was thirty-one, he didn’t have much experience, but for the first time since Saskia’s birth a man was really making love to her. She liked the way he held her. Afterwards they lay in the dark room. He talked about the trips he would like to take with her, about Florence and Paris and other places she’d never been. It all seemed so simple to her; she liked the sound of his voice. She could only stay for two hours. She told him she didn’t want to go back; she said it just like that, it was a declaration of love, but then she realized that she actually meant it.

  Later she couldn’t find her stockings, which made them laugh. Suddenly he switched on the light. She clutched the sheet up to her body, but it was too late. She saw the fury in his eyes; he said he was going to call the police, it had to be done at once. It took her a long time to dissuade him, telling him she was afraid for her daughter. He didn’t want to understand. His lips were trembling.

  The summer holidays began two months later. They took Saskia out to her grandparents’ in the country; she loved it there. On the trip back to the city Thomas said, “Now you’re really going to learn obedience.” Felix sent her a text message saying he missed her. She read it in the toilet at the rest stop on the Autobahn. It stank of urine in there, but it made no difference to her. Felix had said her husband was a sadist who enjoyed humiliating and hurting her. It was a mental disturbance, it could be dangerous for her, and her husband needed treatment. She had to leave, and at once. She didn’t know what to do. She was too ashamed to tell her mother, ashamed for him and ashamed for herself.

  August twenty-sixth was the last day before Saskia came back. They were going to pick her up and spend the night. Then the three of them were going to Majorca; the tickets were on the table in the hall. She thought things would go better there. He had drunk a great deal during Saskia’s absence. She could barely walk. In the past two weeks he had subjected her to anal and oral rape every day, he had beaten her, and he had forced her to eat out of a bowl on the floor. When he was there she had to be naked; she slept on the floor in front of his bed; he had also now confiscated the bedclothes. She hadn’t been able to see Felix. She’d written to tell him it was simply impossible.

  During this last night he said, “Saskia’s ready now. She’s ten. I’ve waited. When she comes back, she’s going to be mine.”

  She didn’t understand what he was saying, and asked him what he meant.

  “I’m going to fuck her the way I fuck you. She’s ready.”

  She screamed and flew at him. He stood up and hit her in the stomach. It was a short, hard blow. She vomited, he turned round and told her to clean it up. An hour later he went to bed.

  Her husband was no longer snoring. He’d always snored, even during the first night, when they were happy. At the beginning it had been strange; another human being, she had thought, another voice. Gradually she had gotten used to it. They had been married for eleven years now. There would not be a second life, there was only this man and this life. She sat in the other room, listening to the radio. They were playing a piece she didn’t know. She stared into the darkness. In two hours it would be getting light and she’d have to go over into the bedroom, their bedroom.

  Her father asked me to defend his daughter. I got a visitor’s pass. The DA in charge was named Kaulbach, a solidly built, plainspoken man who talked in short sentences.

  “Horrifying business,” he said. “We don’t get many murders. This one’s an ope
n-and-shut case.”

  Kaulbach showed me the photos of the crime scene.

  “She beat her husband to death with a statue while he was asleep.”

  “Whether he was asleep or not is something the medical examiner can’t determine,” I said, knowing that this wasn’t a strong argument.

  The problem was simple. Manslaughter does not distinguish itself from murder by degree of “intent” the way you see it in crime dramas on TV. Every murder is a manslaughter. But it’s also more. There has to be some additional element that makes it a murder. These defining elements are not arbitrary: they are laid out in the law. The perpetrator kills “to satisfy sexual urges,” out of “greed” or out of other “base motives.” There are also words to define how he kills, for example “heinously” or “brutally.” If the judge believes such a defining element is present, he has no choice: he must give the perpetrator a life sentence. If it’s manslaughter, he has a choice; he can sentence the perpetrator to anywhere between five and fifteen years.

  Kaulbach was right. When a man is battered to death in his sleep, he cannot defend himself. He is unaware that he is being attacked; he’s helpless. The perpetrator is thus acting with malice. He is committing murder, and will receive a life sentence.

  “Look at the pictures,” said Kaulbach. “The man was lying on his back. There are no defensive wounds on his hands. The bedclothes on top of him aren’t disturbed. There was no struggle. There can be no doubt: he was asleep.”

  The DA knew what he was saying. It looked as if the base of the statue had been stamped into the man’s face. The blood had sprayed everywhere, even onto the photo on the night table. The jury was not going to like these images.

  “And moreover your client confessed today.”