Self's Punishment

by Bernhard Schlink

  ‘And how does this new smog alarm model work?’ I looked at Oelmüller invitingly.

  Ostenteich didn’t relinquish his lead quite so easily. ‘It’s good that you enquire about the technical side of things, too, Herr Self. Herr Oelmüller can explain all that to you in a minute. The crux, l’essence, of our problem is: the state and the economy only have a mutually beneficial arrangement if a certain distance prevails between the two. And, please allow me this rather bold metaphor: here the state has overstepped itself and groped the décolleté of the economy.’ He roared with laughter, and Oelmüller dutifully joined in.

  When quiet had again descended, or, as the French would say, silence, Oelmüller said, ‘Technically the whole thing isn’t a problem at all. The basic process of environmental protection is the examination of the vehicles of emissions – water, or air – to check the concentration of harmful substances. If an emission exceeds the accepted levels, one attempts to trace its source and shut it off. So, smog may be created if some factory or other emits more than their allowance. On the other hand, smog may also be created if the level of the emissions at the individual factories remains within the stated limits, but the weather cannot cope.’

  ‘How does whoever’s in charge of the smog alarm know what sort of smog he’s dealing with? He surely has to react quite differently to each.’ The business was beginning to enthrall me. I postponed my next trip to the buffet, and shuffled a cigarette out of the yellow packet.

  ‘Correct, Herr Self, indeed both sorts require a different reaction, but they’re difficult to tell apart using conventional methods. It’s possible, for example, that traffic has to be stopped and factories have to grind to a halt because a single coal power station that drastically oversteps its accepted emission level can’t be identified and stopped in time. What makes the new model irresistible is that, theoretically at least, problems like the one you raised can be avoided. Via sensors, emissions are measured where they originate and transmitted to the Regional Computing Centre that consequently always knows where which emissions are occurring. Not only that, the RCC feeds the emissions data into a simulation of the local weather expected in the next twenty-four hours – we call it a meteorograph – and the smog can be to a certain extent anticipated. An early-warning system that doesn’t look as good in practice as it sounds in theory because, quite simply, meteorology is still in its infancy.’

  ‘How do you view yesterday’s incident in this respect? Did the model prove its worth?’

  ‘The model worked all right yesterday.’ Oelmüller tugged the end of his beard, contemplatively.

  ‘No, no, Herr Self, here I must expand upon the technicians’ perspective to present the broader picture. In the old days, quite simply, absolutely nothing would have happened. Yesterday instead we had chaos with all the loudspeaker announcements, police controls, curfews. And to what purpose? The cloud dispersed, without any assistance from environmentalists. Yesterday’s event just fanned the flames of fear and destroyed trust and damaged the image of the RCW – tant de bruit pour une omelette. I think this is the very case to make clear to the Federal Constitutional Court how disproportionate the new law is.’

  ‘Our chemists are checking whether yesterday’s counts really justified the smog alarm,’ Oelmüller inserted. ‘They immediately began to evaluate the emissions data, which we also record in our MBI, management and business information, system.’

  ‘At least they deigned to grant the industry online access to the state emissions analysis,’ Ostenteich interjected.

  ‘Do you consider it possible, Herr Oelmüller, that the accident and the incidents in the computer system are in some way connected?’

  ‘I’ve thought about it. Here practically all production processes are controlled electronically, and there are multiple links between the process computers and the MBI system. Manipulations via the MBI system – I can’t completely discount it, in spite of all the built-in security measures. Regarding yesterday’s accident, however, I don’t know enough to say whether a suspicion in that direction makes sense. If so, I would hate to think what could be in store for us.’

  Ostenteich’s interpretation of yesterday’s accident had almost made me forget my arm was still in a sling. I raised my glass to the gentlemen and made my way over to the buffet. With a loin of lamb in its herb crust on my pre-warmed plate, I was steering my way to Firner’s table when Schmalz came up to me.

  ‘May my wife and I invite the doctor to coffee?’ Schmalz had evidently dug out my title and gladly adopted it to neutralize another sibilant.

  ‘That’s extremely kind of you, Herr Schmalz,’ I thanked him. ‘But I’ll hope you’ll understand that until the end of this case, my time is not my own.’

  ‘Oh, well, another time, maybe.’ Schmalz looked downcast, but understood the Works came first.

  I looked around for Firner and found him on his way to his table with a plate from the buffet.

  He stood still for a moment. ‘Greetings, have you found out anything?’ He held his plate awkwardly at chest level to hide a red-wine stain on his dinner shirt.

  ‘Yes,’ I said simply. ‘And you?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean, Herr Self?’

  ‘Let’s imagine there’s a blackmailer who wants to demonstrate his superiority, first of all by manipulating the MBI system and then by creating a gas explosion. Then he demands ten million from the RCW. Who in the company would be the first person to get that demand on his desk?’

  ‘Korten. Because he’s the only one who could decide about sums of that size.’ He frowned and glanced instinctively at the slightly raised table where Korten was sitting with the head of the Chinese delegation, the president, and other heavyweights. I waited in vain for an appeasing remark like ‘But Herr Self, whatever are you thinking?’ He lowered his plate. The red-wine stain did its bit to reveal a tense and uncertain Firner beneath the veneer of relaxed serenity. As though I were no longer there, he took a few steps towards the open window, lost in thought. Then he pulled himself together, rearranged the plate in front of his chest, nodded curtly at me and moved in a determined fashion to his table. I went to the toilet.

  ‘Well, my dear Self, making progress?’ Korten arrived at the next stall and fumbled with his fly.

  ‘Do you mean with the case or the prostate?’

  He peed and laughed. Laughed louder and louder and had to put a hand out on the tiles to support himself, and then it came back to me, too. We’d stood next to each other like this before, in the urinals at the Friedrich Wilhelm. It had been planned as a preparatory measure for playing hookey, and then, when the teacher noticed we were missing, Bechtel was to stand up and say, ‘Korten and Self were feeling sick and went to the lavatory – I can go in quickly and check how they are.’ But the teacher checked on us himself, found us there having a great time, and, as a punishment, left us standing there for the rest of the lesson, supervised by the janitor.

  ‘Professor Barfeld with the monocle will be here any minute,’ snorted Korten. ‘Barfing Barfer, here comes Barfing Barfeld.’

  I remembered the nickname, and we stood there, trousers open, clapping each other on the shoulder. Tears sprang to my eyes and my belly hurt from all the laughing.

  Back then things almost took a nasty turn. Barfeld reported us to the headmaster and I had already imagined my father raging and my mother weeping and the scholarship evaporating into thin air. But Korten took it all on his shoulders: he had been the instigator and I’d just joined in. So he got the letter home, and his father only laughed.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’ Korten buttoned up his fly.

  ‘What, again?’ I was still laughing. But the fun was over and the Chinese were waiting.

  10 Memories of the blue Adriatic

  When I returned to the hall it was all drawing to a close. Frau Buchendorff asked how I was getting home, I couldn’t be driving with my arm.

  ‘I took a taxi before.’

  ‘I’d be glad to
give you a lift, since we’re neighbours. Quarter of an hour by the exit?’

  The tables were deserted. Small knots of people formed and dispersed. The red-haired girl was still standing with a bottle at the ready, but everyone had had plenty to drink.

  ‘Hello,’ I said to her.

  ‘Did you enjoy the reception?’

  ‘The buffet was good. I’m amazed there’s anything left over. But seeing there is – could you pack a little something for a picnic tomorrow?’

  ‘How many in your party?’ She bobbed an ironic curtsy.

  ‘For two, if you have time.’

  ‘Oh, can’t do that. But I’ll have something packed for two nonetheless. Just a moment.’

  She disappeared through the swing-doors. When she returned she had with her a largish box. ‘You should have seen the face of our chef. I had to tell him that you’re peculiar but important.’ She giggled. ‘Because you’ve dined with the general director he took it on himself to add a bottle of Forster Bischofsgarten Spätlese.’

  When Frau Buchendorff saw me with the carton she raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I’ve packed the Chinese security expert. Didn’t you notice how petite and dainty she is? The delegation leader shouldn’t have let her go with me.’ In her presence all I could think of were stupid jokes. If this had happened to me thirty years ago I’d have been forced to admit I was in love. But what was I to make of it at an age where falling in love no longer happens?

  Frau Buchendorff drove an Alfa Romeo Spider, an old one without the ugly rear spoiler.

  ‘Should I put the roof up?’

  ‘I usually ride my motorbike in swimming trunks, even in winter.’ It was getting worse and worse. And on top of it, a misunderstanding – she was putting up the roof. All because I hadn’t dared say that I could think of nothing finer than to be on the road on a mellow summer night with a beautiful woman at the wheel of a cabriolet. ‘No, leave it, Frau Buchendorff, I like driving in a sports car with the top down on a mellow summer night.’

  We drove over the suspension bridge, below us the Rhine and the harbour. I looked up at the sky and the cables. It was a bright and clear starry night. When we turned off the bridge and before we were submerged in the streets, Mannheim with its towers, churches, and high-rises lay before us for a moment. We had to wait at a traffic light and a heavy motorbike drew up alongside. ‘Come on, let’s drive out to the Adriatic,’ shouted the girl on the back of the bike to her boyfriend. In the hot summer of 1946 I’d often been out at the gravel pit, its name, Adriatic, imbued with Mannheimers’ and Ludwighafeners’ yearning for the South. Back then my wife and I were still happy and I enjoyed our companionship, the peace, and the first cigarettes. So, people still went out there, more rapidly and easier these days, a quick dip in the water after the movies.

  We hadn’t spoken throughout the journey. Frau Buchendorff had driven fast, and with focus. Now she lit a cigarette.

  ‘The blue Adriatic,’ she mused ‘when I was small we sometimes drove out in our Opel Olympia. There was coffee substitute in the thermos flask, cold cutlets, and vanilla pudding in the preserving jar. My big brother was streetwise, a rocker, as they called it; on his moped he soon went his own way. Back then the notion of going for a quick dip in the night was just getting fashionable. It all seems so idyllic now, looking back – as a child I always suffered those outings.’

  We’d reached my house but I wanted to savour a little longer the nostalgia that had engulfed us both.

  ‘In what way suffered?’

  ‘My father wanted to teach me how to swim but had no patience. My God, the amount of water I swallowed.’

  I thanked her for the ride home. ‘It was a beautiful drive.’

  ‘Goodnight, Herr Self.’

  11 Terrible thing to happen

  A glorious Sunday saw the last of the good weather. At our picnic by the Feudenheim Locks my friend Eberhard and I ate and drank much too much. He had brought a miniature wooden crate with three bottles of a very decent Bordeaux, and then we made the mistake of downing the RCW Spätlese, as well.

  On Monday I woke up with a blazing headache. On top of that the rain had coaxed out the rheumatism in my back and hips. Perhaps that’s why I dealt with Schneider all wrong. He had reappeared, not flushed out by the Works security service, just like that. I was to meet him in a colleague’s laboratory; his own had been burnt to a shell in the accident.

  When I entered the room he straightened up from the fridge. He was tall and lanky. He invited me with an indeterminate flick of the hand to take a seat on one of the lab stools and remained standing himself, shoulders stooped, in front of the refrigerator. His face was ashen, the fingers of his left hand yellow from nicotine. The immaculate white coat was supposed to hide the decay of the person inside. But the man was a wreck. If he was a gambler then he was the sort who had lost and had no shred of hope left. The sort who fills out a lottery ticket on a Friday, but doesn’t bother to look on the Saturday to see if he’s won.

  ‘I know why you want to talk to me, Herr Self, but I’ve nothing to tell you.’

  ‘Where were you on the day of the accident? You’ll know that surely. And where did you disappear to?’

  ‘I unfortunately do not enjoy great health and was indisposed in recent days. The accident in my laboratory was a real blow, important records of research were destroyed.’

  ‘That’s hardly an answer to my question.’

  ‘What do you really want? Just leave me alone.’

  Indeed, what did I really want from him? I was finding it more and more difficult to picture him as the brilliant blackmailer. Broken as he was, I couldn’t even imagine him the tool of some outsider. But my imagination had duped me in the past and there was something not right about Schneider. I didn’t have that many leads. His, and my own, misfortune that he’d found his way into the security files. And there was my hangover and my rheumatism and Schneider’s sulky, whiny manner that was getting on my nerves. If I couldn’t intimidate him then I might as well kiss my job goodbye. I gathered myself for a fresh attack.

  ‘Herr Schneider, we are investigating sabotage resulting in damages reaching into the millions and we’re acting to prevent further threats. I’ve encountered nothing but cooperation during my investigation. Your unwillingness to lend your support makes you, I’ll be perfectly honest, a suspect. All the more so as your biography contains phases of criminal entanglement.’

  ‘But I put a halt to the gambling years ago.’ He lit a cigarette. His hand was trembling. He took some hasty drags. ‘But, okay, I was at home in bed and we often unplug the telephone at the weekend.’

  ‘But Herr Schneider. Security was round at your house. There was nobody home.’

  ‘So you don’t believe me anyway. Then I won’t say another word.’

  I’d heard that often enough. Sometimes it helped to convince the other person I believed whatever he said. Sometimes I’d understood how to address the deep-seated trouble at the source of this childish reaction so that everything came gushing out. Today I was capable of neither one nor the other. I’d had it.

  ‘Right, then we’ll have to continue our discussion in the presence of Security and your superiors. I’d have liked to spare you that. But if I don’t hear from you by this evening… Here’s my business card.’

  I didn’t wait for his reaction, and left. I stood under the awning, looked into the rain and lit a cigarette. Was it also raining on the banks of the Sweet Afton? I didn’t know what to do. Then I recalled that the boys from Security would have set their trap and I went over to the computer centre to take a look. Oelmüller wasn’t there. One of his co-workers whose badge revealed him to be a Herr Tausendmilch showed me on screen the message sent to users about the false data file.

  ‘Should I print it out for you? It’s no problem at all.’

  I took the printout and went over to Firner’s office. Neither Firner nor Frau Buchendorff were there. A typist regaled me on the subject of cacti. I’
d had enough for one day and left the Works.

  If I’d been younger I’d have driven out to the Adriatic regardless of the rain to swim off my hangover. If I could just have got into my car I’d maybe have done it anyway, regardless of age. But with my injured arm I still couldn’t drive. The guard, the same one as on the day of the accident, called a taxi for me.

  ‘Ah, you’re the fellow who brought in Schmalz’s son on Friday. You’re Self? Then I have something for you. He scrabbled beneath the control and alarm desk and came back up with a package that he handed over with ceremony.

  ‘There is a cake inside as a surprise for you. Frau Schmalz baked it.’

  I had the taxi take me to the Herschel baths. It was women’s only day in the sauna. I had it take me to the Kleiner Rosengarten, my local, and ate a saltimbocca romana. Then I went to the movies.

  The first movie showing in the early afternoon has its charm, regardless of what’s playing. The audience consists of tramps, thirteen-year-olds, and frustrated intellectuals. When there were still students who lived out of town, they went to the early showing. Pupils who matured earlier used to go to the early showing to make out. But Babs, a friend who’s headmistress of a high school, assures me that pupils now make out at school and are all made out by one o’clock.

  I’d ended up in the wrong theatre – the cinema had seven of the things – and had to watch On Golden Pond. I liked all the actors but when it was over I was glad I no longer had a wife, and never had a daughter or some little bastard of a grandson.