Self's Punishment

by Bernhard Schlink

  I set off. Down at the Rhine I saw the small boy I’d met yesterday. He’d tied a piece of string to his little bucket and was ladling water out of the Rhine with it. He emptied the water down the drain.

  ‘I’m emptying the Rhine,’ he called, when he recognized me.

  ‘I hope it works.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m going to the laboratories over there.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  He shook out his little bucket and came. Children often attach themselves to me, I don’t know why. I don’t have any, and most of them get on my nerves.

  ‘Come on then,’ I said, and we made our way together to the building with the large windows.

  We were about fifty metres away when several people in white coats came rushing out of the entrance. They raced along the banks of the Rhine. Then there were more, not only in white coats, but also in blue overalls, and secretaries in skirts and blouses. It was an odd spectacle, and I didn’t see how anyone could run in this heat.

  ‘Look, he’s waving at us,’ the little boy said, and indeed one of the white-coats was flailing his arms and shouting something at us I couldn’t understand. But I didn’t have to understand; it was obviously about getting away as quickly as possible.

  The first explosion sent a cascade of glass shards raining down the road. I grabbed the little boy’s hand, but he tore loose. For a moment it was as though I were paralysed: I didn’t feel any injury, heard a deep silence in spite of the continuing rattle of glass, saw the boy running, skidding on the glass shards, regaining his balance then finally falling two steps later and somersaulting forward from the impetus of movement.

  Then came the second explosion, the scream of the little boy, the pain in my right arm. The bang was followed by a violent, dangerous, evil-sounding hissing. A noise that struck panic into me.

  It was the sirens in the distance that made me act. They awakened reflexes inculcated in the war to flee, to help, to seek cover, and give protection. I ran to the boy, tugged him to his feet with my left hand, and dragged him in the direction we’d just come from. His little legs couldn’t keep up, but he pedalled his feet in the air and didn’t let go. ‘Come on, little one, run, we’ve got to get out of here, don’t slow down.’ Before we turned the corner I looked back. Where we’d been standing a green cloud was rising into the leaden sky.

  In vain I waved at the ambulance tearing past. At Gate 1 the guard took care of us. He knew the little boy, who was clinging tightly to my hand, pale, scratched, and frightened.

  ‘Richard, in the name of God what happened? I’ll call your grandfather right away.’ He went over to the phone. ‘And I’ll call the medics for you. That doesn’t look good.’

  A splinter of glass had torn open my arm and the blood was staining red the sleeve of my light-coloured jacket. I felt dizzy. ‘Do you have a schnapps?’

  I only faintly recall the next half-hour. Richard was collected. His grandfather, a large, broad, heavy-set man with a bald head, shaved clean at the back and sides, and a bushy, white moustache, gathered up his grandson effortlessly into his arms. The police tried to get into the Works to investigate the accident, but were turned away. The doorman gave me a second and a third schnapps. When the ambulance men came they took me with them to the Works doctor, who put stitches in my arm and wrapped it in a sling.

  ‘You should lie down for a while next door,’ said the doctor. ‘You can’t leave now.’

  ‘Why can’t I leave?’

  ‘We have a smog alarm, and all traffic has been stopped.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? There’s a smog alarm, and no one can leave the centre of the smog?’

  ‘Your understanding of it is completely wrong. Smog is a meteorological overall occurrence and has no centre or periphery.’

  This I considered complete nonsense. Whatever other sort of smog there might be, I’d seen a green cloud growing larger. It grew larger right here over the compound. And I was supposed to stay here? I wanted to talk to Firner.

  In his office a crisis headquarters had been set up. Through the door I could see policemen in green, firemen in blue, chemists in white, and some grey gentlemen from the management.

  ‘What actually happened?’ I asked Frau Buchendorff.

  ‘We had a little glitch on site, nothing serious. But the authorities foolishly turned on the smog alarm, and that caused some excitement.’

  ‘I got myself some little scratches at your little glitch.’

  ‘What were you up… ah, you were on your way to Schneider. He’s not here today, by the way.’

  ‘Am I the only injured person? Were there any deaths?’

  ‘What are you thinking of, Herr Self? A few first-aid cases, that’s all. Is there anything else we can do for you?’

  ‘You can get me out of here.’ I had no desire to battle my way through to Firner and be saluted with a ‘Greetings, Herr Self.’

  A policeman sporting several badges of rank emerged from the office.

  ‘You’re driving back to Mannheim, aren’t you, Herr Herzog? Would you mind taking Herr Self with you? He got a few scratches and we don’t want to keep him waiting here any longer.’

  Herzog, a vigorous type, took me with him. Gathered in front of the gates to the Works were some police vans and reporters.

  ‘Do avoid having your photograph taken with that bandage, please.’

  I had absolutely no desire to be photographed. As we drove past the reporters I bent down to reach for the cigarette lighter, which was low on the dashboard.

  ‘Why did the smog alarm go off so rapidly?’ I asked on our drive through deserted Ludwigshafen.

  Herzog proved to be well informed. ‘After the spate of smog alarms in the autumn of nineteen eighty-four we in Baden-Württemberg and the Rhineland-Palatinate started an experiment with new technology under a new law, with overriding authority over both states. The idea is to record the emissions directly, to correlate with the weather report, rather than just setting off the smog alarm when it’s already too late. Today the model had its baptism of fire. Until now we’ve only had dry runs.’

  ‘And how is cooperation with the Works? I gathered that the police were being turned away at the gate.’

  ‘That’s a sore point. The chemical industry is fighting the new law tooth and nail. At the moment there’s a complaint about infringement of the constitution before the Federal Constitutional Court. Legally we could have entered the plant, but we don’t want to rock the boat at this stage.’

  The smoke of my cigarette was irritating Herzog, and he rolled down the window. ‘Oh Lord,’ he said, rolling it up straight away, ‘could you please stub out your cigarette.’ A pungent odour had penetrated the car, my eyes began to stream, on my tongue was a sharp taste, and we both had a coughing fit.

  ‘It’s just as well my colleagues outside have their breathing apparatus on.’ At the exit to the Konrad Adenauer Bridge we passed a roadblock. Both police officers stopping traffic were wearing gas masks. At the edge of the approach were fifteen or twenty vehicles. The driver of the first one was in the midst of talking with the police officers. With a colourful cloth pressed to his face, he looked funny.

  ‘What’s going to happen with the rush-hour traffic this evening?’

  Herzog shrugged. ‘We’ll have to wait and see how the chlorine gas develops. We hope, in the course of the afternoon, to be able to get out the workers and the RCW employees. That would considerably relieve the problem of rush-hour traffic. Some may have to spend the night at their workplace. We’d inform them of this via radio and loudspeaker vans. I was surprised before how quickly we cleared the streets.’

  ‘Are you considering evacuation?’

  ‘If the chlorine gas concentration doesn’t decrease by half in the next twelve hours we’ll have to clear east of Leuschnerstrasse and maybe also Neckarstadt and Jungbusch as well. But the meteorologists are giving us grounds for hope. Where should I let you off?�
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  ‘If the carbon monoxide concentration in the air permits it, I’d be delighted if you’d drive me to Richard-Wagner-Strasse and let me off at my front door.’

  ‘The carbon monoxide concentration alone wouldn’t have been enough for us to set off any smog alarm. It’s the chlorine that’s bad. With that I prefer to know people are safely at home or in their office, not, at any rate, out on the street.’

  He drew up in front of my building. ‘Herr Self,’ he added, ‘aren’t you a private detective? I think my predecessor had something to do with you – do you remember the case with the senior civil servant and the sailboat?’

  ‘I hope we’re not sharing a case again now,’ I said. ‘Do you know anything yet about the origins of the explosion?’

  ‘Do you have a suspicion, Herr Self? You certainly didn’t just happen to be at the site of the occurrence. Had attacks been anticipated on the RCW?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it. My job is innocuous by comparison and takes a quite different direction.’

  ‘We’ll see. I might have to call you down to headquarters to ask you a few more questions.’ He looked skywards. ‘And now pray for a gusty wind, Herr Self.’

  I walked up the four flights of stairs to my apartment. My arm had started to bleed again. But something else was worrying me. Was my job really going in a quite different direction? Was it coincidence that Schneider hadn’t come to work today? Had I cast off the idea of blackmail too quickly? Had Firner not told me everything after all?

  8 Yes, well then

  I washed down the chlorine taste with a glass of milk and tried to change the bandage. The telephone interrupted me.

  ‘Herr Self, was that you leaving the RCW with Herzog? Have the Works called you in for the investigation?’

  Tietzke, one of the last honest journalists. When the Heidelberger Tageblatt folded, he’d got a job with the Rhine Neckar Chronicle by the skin of his teeth, but his status there was tricky.

  ‘What investigation? Don’t get any wrong ideas, Tietzke. I had other business at the RCW and I’d be grateful for you not to have seen me there.’

  ‘You’ve got to tell me a little bit more if I’m not supposed simply to write what I saw.’

  ‘With the best will in the world I can’t talk about the job. But I can try to get you an exclusive interview with Firner. I’ll be calling him this afternoon.’

  It took half the afternoon before I caught Firner between two conferences. He could neither confirm sabotage nor rule it out. Schneider, according to his wife, was in bed with an ear infection. So Firner, too, had been interested in why Schneider hadn’t come to work. He reluctantly agreed to receive Tietzke the next morning. Frau Buchendorff would get in touch with him.

  Afterwards I tried calling Schneider. No one picked up, which could mean anything or nothing. I lay down on my bed. In spite of the pain in my arm I managed to fall asleep and woke up again in time for the news. It was reported that the chlorine gas cloud was rising in an easterly direction and that any danger, which had never really existed anyway, would be over in the course of the evening. The curfew, which had never really existed either, would be lifted at ten o’clock that night. I found a piece of gorgonzola in the fridge and used it to make a sauce for the tagliatelle I’d brought back from Rome two years ago. It was fun. It took a curfew to make me cook again.

  I didn’t need a watch to know when ten o’clock came around. Out on the streets a din broke out as if a Mannheim football team had won the German championship. I put on my straw hat and walked to the Rose Garden. A band calling itself Just For Fun was playing golden oldies. The basins of the terraced fountains were empty, and the young folk were dancing in them. I fox-trotted a few steps – gravel and joints crunched.

  The next morning in my letterbox I found a bulk mail delivery from the Rhineland Chemical Works that contained a perfectly worded statement on the incident. ‘RCW protects life,’ I discovered, also that a current focus of research was the conservation of the German woodlands. Yes, well then. The delivery included a small plastic cube with a healthy fir-seed suspended in it. How cute. I showed the object to my tomcat and put it on the mantelpiece above the fireplace.

  Out on my stroll around the neighbourhood I picked up my week’s provision of Sweet Afton, bought a warm meatloaf sandwich, with mustard, from the butcher on the marketplace, visited my Turk with the good olives, watched the Green Party members at their info-stand on Parade-Platz fruitlessly trying to disturb the harmony between the RCW and the population of Mannheim and Ludwigshafen. Among the bystanders I noticed Officer Herzog being supplied with fliers.

  In the afternoon I sat in Luisenpark. It costs something, just like Tivoli. So at the beginning of the year, for the first time, I’d acquired a year’s pass. I wanted to get my money’s worth out of it. When I wasn’t watching pensioners feeding the ducks I read Keller’s Green Henry. Frau Buchendorff ’s first name had led me to the Judith in the book.

  At five o’clock I went home. Sewing a button onto my dinner jacket took me a good half-hour with my dodgy arm. I took a taxi from the Wasserturm to the RCW restaurant. There was a banner stretched over the entrance with Chinese characters on it. On three masts flew the flags of the People’s Republic of China, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the RCW, flapping in the wind. To the right and left of the entrance were two Rhineland maidens in folk costume, looking about as authentic as Barbie dolls dressed as Munich beer-maids. The procession of cars was in full swing. It all looked so upright and dignified.

  9 Groping the décolleté of the economy

  Schmalz was standing in the foyer.

  ‘How’s your little son doing?’

  ‘Good, thank you. I would like to talk and thank you later. I’m tied up now.’

  I went up the stairs and through the open double-doors into the large reception room. People were clustered in small groups, the waitresses and waiters were serving champagne, orange juice, champagne with orange juice, Campari with orange juice, and Campari with soda. I ambled around a bit. It was like any other reception before the speeches were given and the buffet is opened. I sought familiar faces and found the red-haired girl with the freckles. We smiled at each other. Firner drew me into a circle and introduced me to three Chinese men whose names were made up of various combinations of San, Yin, and Kim, as well as Herr Oelmüller, head of the computer centre. Oelmüller was trying to explain computerized data protection in Germany to the Chinese. I don’t know what they found so funny about that but in any event they laughed like the Hollywood Chinese in a Pearl S. Buck adaptation.

  Then came the speeches. Korten was brilliant. He covered everything from Confucius to Goethe, left out the Boxer Uprising and the Cultural Revolution, and touched on the former RCW branch in Tsingtao solely to weave in the compliment to the Chinese that the last head of branch there had learned a new process for the production of ultramarine from the Chinese.

  The Chinese delegation leader replied no less elegantly. He recounted his university years in Karlsruhe, took his hat off to German culture and the economy, from Böll to Schleyer, spoke technical jargon I didn’t understand, and closed with Goethe’s ‘The Orient and Occident can no longer be divided’.

  After the president of the Rhineland-Palatinate’s speech even a less superb buffet would have seemed exciting. For my first helping I chose the saffron oysters in a champagne sauce. Good thing that there were tables. I hate the stand-up receptions where you have to juggle cigarette, glass, and plate – really you should be spoon-fed at them. I spotted Frau Buchendorff at a table with a free chair. She was looking charming in her raw-silk, indigo-coloured suit. The buttons of her blouse were there in their entirety.

  ‘May I join you?’

  ‘You can get another chair, unless you plan on perching the Chinese security expert on your lap straight away?’

  ‘Tell me, did the Chinese pick up on the explosion?’

  ‘What explosion? No, seriously, they were up at Cast
le Eltz first thing yesterday, and then they tried out the new Mercedes on the Nürburg Ring. When they got back, everything was over. Today the press has really been going at it, mainly from the meteorological angle. How’s your arm? You’re something of a hero – that couldn’t get into the papers, of course, though it would have made a lovely story.’

  The Chinese lady appeared. She had everything that German men who dream of Asian women could dream of. Whether she was in fact a security expert I wasn’t able to establish either. I asked whether there were private detectives in China.

  ‘No plivate plopethy, no plivate detectives,’ she answered, and asked whether there were also female private detectives in the Federal Republic of Germany. This led on to observations about the waning women’s movement. ‘I’ve lead almost evelything published in Gehmany in the way of women’s books. Why is it that men in Gehmany ahrite women’s books? A Chinese man would lose face.’

  Fohtunate China.

  A waiter brought me the invitation to Oelmüller’s table. On the way I selected a second course of sole roulades, Bremenstyle.

  Oelmüller introduced me to the gentleman at his table, who impressed me with his skill in arranging his sparse hair over his head: Professor Ostenteich, head of the law department and honorary professor at Heidelberg University. No coincidence that these gentlemen were dining together. Well, back to work. Since my talk with Herzog, a question had been bothering me.

  ‘Could the gentlemen explain the new smog model to me? Herr Herzog of the police talked about it, said it is not entirely uncontroversial. What, for example, am I to understand by the direct recording of emissions?’

  Ostenteich felt called upon to lead the discussion. ‘That is un peu délicat, as the French would say. You should read the expert opinion by Professor Wenzel that most meticulously lays out the relevant distribution of powers, and unmasks the legislative hubris of Baden-Württemberg and the Rhineland-Palatinate. Le pouvoir arrête le pouvoir - the Federal law on Emissions Protection blocks any special paths the states might choose. Added to that is freedom of property, protection of entrepreneurial activity, and a company’s privacy. The legislature hoped to disregard that with a single stroke of the pen. But la vérité est en marche, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe still exists, heureusement.’