Suspicion

by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

  Gulliver rose to his feet; his shadow shrouded half the room in darkness. But the old man did not let him go yet.

  “What sort of man was Nehle?” he asked, and his voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

  “Christian,” said the Jew, who had hidden the bot- tles and the glasses in his dirty caftan again. “Who could answer your question? Nehle is dead, he just took his own life, his secret is with God, who reigns over heaven and hell, and God will no longer give out his secrets, not even to the theologians. It is deadly to search where there is only death. How often I have tried to slip behind the mask of this doctor with whom no conversation was possible, who was not approachable by the SS or any of the other doctors, let alone by an inmate! How often I tried to fathom what went on behind his glittering spectacles! What was a poor Jew like myself supposed to do, if he never saw his tormentor except with his face half covered and in a white smock? For the picture I took of Nehle, at extreme risk to my life—there was nothing more dangerous in a concentration camp than to make a photograph—showed him as he always was: a haggard figure dressed in white, slightly stooped and silent, as if afraid to be contaminated, walking about in these barracks full of gruesome woe and misery. He was intent on being careful, I believe. He must have always expected that some day the whole infernal specter of the concentration camps would disappear—in order to break out anew from the depths of human instinct like a pestilence with new tormentors and other political systems. So he must have been always preparing for his flight into private life, as if his stint in hell was just a temporary job. It was on this assumption that I calculated my blow, Commissar, and I aimed it well: When the picture appeared in Life, Nehle shot himself; it was enough that the world knew his name, Commissar, for a man who is cautious conceals his name!”

  Those were the last words the old man heard from Gulliver. They resounded fearfully in his ear, like the dull clang of a brass bell, “… his name!”

  Now the vodka took its effect. It seemed to the sick man as if the curtains over there by the window swelled like the sails of a vanishing ship, as if he could hear the rattling of a venetian blind; then, even less distinctly, as if a huge, massive body was descending into the night; but when the immense profusion of stars burst through the gaping wound of the open window, a wild defiance rose up in him, a determination to fight in this world for another, better world, even with this miserable body, on which cancer was gnawing with a steady, unstoppable greed, a body that had been given another year to live and no more. As the vodka started to burn like fire in his bowels, a song broke out of him, the “Berner March.” He bellowed it into the silence of the hospital, rousing the other patients from their sleep. He could think of nothing stronger; but when the distressed nurse came rushing in, he was already asleep.

  THE SPECULATION

  The next morning, a Thursday, Barlach awoke, as was to be expected, around twelve, shortly before lunch was served. His head seemed a little heavy, but otherwise he felt better than he had in a long time, and he thought to himself that a swig of booze now and then was still the best thing, especially when you were sick in bed and not allowed to drink. There was mail on his night table; Lutz had sent news about Nehle. The police were well organized these days, you really couldn’t fault them, especially when you were about to receive your pension, as would be the case the day after tomorrow, thank God; back in the old days, in Constantinople, it sometimes took months for information to reach you. But before the old man could get to his reading, the nurse brought his meal. It was Lina, his favorite among the nurses, but she seemed reserved today, not her usual self. Something was amiss, he could tell. Probably they had found out about last night, though he couldn’t imagine how. He had the impression of having sung the “Berner March” at the end, after Gulliver had left, but this had to be an illusion, he wasn’t the least bit patriotic. Damn it, he thought, if only I could remember! The old man looked suspiciously around the room while fishing around in his oatmeal gruel. (Always oatmeal gruel!) On the washstand stood some bottles and medicines that hadn’t been there before. What was that supposed to mean? There was something fishy about the whole thing. Besides, every ten minutes a different nurse would come in to fetch something, look for something, bring something; one of them was giggling outside in the hallway, he could hear it clearly. He didn’t dare ask for Hungertobel, and it was quite all right with him that he would be gone till evening, since he had his practice in the city during noon hours. Barlach gloomily swallowed his cream of wheat with apple sauce (no change in that either), but then he was surprised to be served a strong coffee with sugar for dessert—special instructions from Dr. Hungertobel, as the nurse reproachfully put it. This had never happened before. He enjoyed the coffee, and it lifted his spirits. Then he immersed himself in the dossier. That seemed the smartest thing to do, but to his surprise, Hungertobel came already at one, with an alarmed look on his face, as the old man noted with an imperceptible movement of his eyes, though he still seemed absorbed in his papers.

  “Hans,” Hungertobel said, resolutely stepping up to the bed, “for God’s sake, what happened? I could swear, and so could all the nurses, that you were totally drunk!”

  “Hm,” said the old man, glancing up from his dossier. And then he said, “Is that so?”

  “Yes indeed,” Hungertobel replied, “it’s written all over you. I tried to wake you up all morning.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the inspector said.

  “It’s practically impossible that you drank alcohol, unless you swallowed the bottle too!” the doctor exclaimed in desperation.

  “I’d say so,” the old man grinned.

  “It’s a mystery,” Hungertobel said, wiping his glasses. He did that whenever he was upset.

  “Dear Samuel,” the inspector said, “I’m sure it’s not easy to give room and board to a criminologist, and if you believe I’m a secret lush, I’ll have to accept that. I have only one request: call the Sonnenstein clinic in Zürich and have me signed up as a freshly operated, bedridden, but rich patient named Blaise Kramer.”

  “You want to go to Emmenberger?” Hungertobel asked, and sat down in dismay.

  “Of course,” Barlach replied.

  “Hans,” Hungertobel said, “I don’t understand you. Nehle is dead.”

  “One Nehle is dead,” the old man corrected him. “Now we have to find out which one.”

  “For God’s sake,” the doctor asked breathlessly, “are there two Nehles?”

  Barlach picked up the dossier. “Let’s look at the case together,” he continued calmly, “and let’s see what strikes our eyes. You’ll notice that our art is comprised of some mathematics and a lot of imagination.”

  “I don’t understand a thing,” Hungertobel moaned, “I’ve been in the dark all morning.”

  “I’m reading the physical description,” the inspector continued. “Tall, haggard figure; gray hair, formerly brown-red; greenish-gray eyes; protruding ears; the face slim and pale, with bags under the eyes; healthy teeth. Special marks: scar on right eyebrow.”

  “That’s him to a T,” said Hungertobel.

  “Who?” asked Barlach.

  “Emmenberger,” replied the doctor. “I recognized him from the description.”

  “But this is the police’s description of Nehle, the man who was found dead in Hamburg,” Barlach retorted.

  “All the more natural that I mistook one man for the other,” Hungertobel remarked with satisfaction. “Any one of us can resemble a murderer. My mistake has found the simplest explanation in the world—obviously!”

  “That’s one conclusion,” said the inspector. “But it’s not the only possible one. There are other possibilities—not as compelling at first glance, but still, they’ll have to be considered as ‘maybes.’ One possible conclusion, for instance, might be that it wasn’t Emmenberger who was in Chile, but Nehle under his name, while Emmenberger was in Stutthof under Nehle’s name.”

  “Not a very likely con
clusion,” Hungertobel said.

  “Certainly,” Barlach replied, “but admissible. We have to consider all possibilities.”

  “Good lord, where would that get us!” the doctor protested. “That would mean that Emmenberger killed himself in Hamburg and that the doctor who is practicing in the Sonnenstein clinic is Nehle.”

  “Have you seen Emmenberger since he came back from Chile?” the old man interjected.

  “Just in passing,” Hungertobel replied. He put his hand on his head; the question had taken him aback. He had finally put his glasses back on again.

  “You see,” the inspector continued, “the possibility exists! Another solution is possible: The dead man in Hamburg is Nehle returned from Chile, while Emmenberger, who was known in Stutthof as Nehle, returned to Switzerland.”

  “If that were the case, we would have to presume a crime,” Hungertobel said, shaking his head. “There’s no other way to maintain this strange hypothesis.”

  “Correct, Samuel!” the inspector nodded. “We would have to assume that Nehle was killed by Emmenberger.”

  “We could just as well assume the opposite: Nehle killed Emmenberger. You are obviously free to imagine anything you want.”

  “This hypothesis is also correct,” Barlach said. “We may presume it as possible, at least at the present stage of our speculations.”

  “That’s a lot of nonsense,” said the doctor.

  “Possibly,” Barlach replied enigmatically.

  Hungertobel protested vigorously: “This is much too simplistic. The way you juggle with reality, you can prove anything you want! With this method just about anything can be put in question!”

  “That is the duty of a criminologist,” the old man replied, “to reality in question. That’s just the way it is. In this regard we have to proceed like philosophers, of whom it is said that they start by doubting everything and then proceed to elaborate beautiful speculations about the art of dying and life after death—except we’re probably even more useless than they are. You and I have set up a number of hypotheses. All of them are possible. That is the first step. The next one will be to identify those that are probable. Possible and probable are not the same thing; what is possible need not be probable, not at all. So we have to examine the degree of probability in our hypotheses. We have two persons, two doctors: on the one hand Nehle, a criminal, and on the other your former fellow student, Emmenberger, the director of the Sonnenstein clinic in Zürich. What we have essentially done is set up two hypotheses. Both are possible. At first glance the degree of their probability is far from equal. One hypothesis states that there is no connection between Emmenberger and Nehle, and is probable; the second one presumes a connection and is less probable.”

  “Exactly,” Hungertobel interjected, “that’s what I’ve been saying all along.”

  “Dear Samuel,” Barlach replied, “unfortunately, I am a criminologist, and that obliges me to detect crimes in the web of human relationships. The first hypothesis—the one proposing that there is no connection between Nehle and Emmenberger—doesn’t interest me. Nehle is dead and there is nothing to charge Emmenberger with. But my profession forces me to examine the second, less probable hypothesis more closely. What is probable about it? The idea is that Nehle and Emmenberger switched roles and identities: that Emmenberger was in Stutthof as Nehle and performed operations without anesthesia on the inmates, and that Nehle lived in Chile as Emmenberger and from there sent articles and reports to medical journals; not to mention all the rest, Nehle’s death in Hamburg and Emmenberger’s residence in Zürich. This hypothesis looks rather fantastical, we can admit that for the time being. However, it is still within the realm of possibility insofar as Emmenberger and Nehle are not only both doctors but also resemble each other. And here is a factor requiring some closer attention. It is the first fact we’ve come across in this tangle of possibilities and probabilities. Let us examine this fact. How do these two men resemble each other? Resemblance is not very unusual. Great resemblance is rarer, and rarest of all, I would think, are cases where two people resemble each other even in accidental details, in distinguishing marks that don’t stem from nature but from a specific event. That is the case here. Not only do they both have the same hair and eye color, similar facial features, the same build, and so on, they also both have the same peculiar scar on the right eyebrow.”

  “Well, that’s a coincidence,” said the doctor.

  “Or skill,” the old man replied. “You once operated on Emmenberger’s eyebrow. What was wrong with him?”

  “The scar comes from an operation that has to be performed in case of a very severe sinus infection,” Hungertobel replied. “You make the cut in the eyebrow, to hide the scar. I obviously didn’t do a good job in Emmenberger’s case. Bad luck, I’d say—because usually I operate very accurately. A decent surgeon shouldn’t leave such a prominent scar; and later it turned out a part of his eyebrow was missing.”

  “Is this a common operation?” the inspector asked.

  “Well, not exactly,” Hungertobel replied. “Normally, sinusitis gets treated before surgery becomes necessary.”

  “You see,” said Barlach, “there’s the peculiar thing: This rather rare operation was performed on Nehle as well as Emmenberger; he too has a gap in his eyebrow, and according to the police record, it’s in the same spot: that corpse in Hamburg was carefully examined. Did Emmenberger have a scald mark about as wide as a hand on his lower left arm?”

  “How did you figure that out?” Hungertobel was surprised. “Emmenberger once had an accident during a chemical experiment.”

  “That same scar was found on the corpse in Hamburg,” Barlach said with satisfaction. “Does Emmenberger still have those marks today? It would be important to know this—you said you saw him briefly.”

  “Last summer in Ascona,” the doctor replied. “Emmenberger still had both scars, I noticed that right away. He was his old self altogether. He made a few nasty remarks and otherwise hardly recognized me.”

  “Ah,” said the inspector, “so he seemed not to recognize you, or hardly. You see, the resemblance goes so far that we’re no longer quite sure who’s who. We are forced to presume one of two things: a rare and strange coincidence, or some artful trick. Probably the similarity between the two wasn’t as great as we now believe. Two people can look similar in their passports and official papers without being readily confused for one another. But when the resemblance involves such accidental things, the chances of one man impersonating the other are greatly increased. Then the device of a make-believe operation and an artificially induced accident would have the purpose of turning resemblance into sameness. However, we can only voice assumptions at this stage of our investigation; but you have to admit that this kind of resemblance makes our second hypothesis more probable.”