It was the letter of an educated lady, rendered in lovely, old-fashioned German, and written in sloping, austere handwriting. Sometimes in the summer I see elderly American tourists in Heidelberg with a blue tint in their white hair, bright-pink frames on their spectacles, and garish make-up on their wrinkled skin. This willingness to present oneself as a caricature had always struck me as an expression of cultural despair. Reading Vera Müller’s letter I could suddenly imagine such a lady being interesting and fascinating, and I recognized the wise weariness of completely forgotten peoples in that cultural despair. I wrote to her saying I’d try to visit her soon.
I called the Heidelberg Union Insurance company. I made it clear that without the trip to America all I could do was write a final report and prepare an invoice. An hour later the clerk in charge called to give me the go-ahead.
So, I was back on the Mischkey case. I didn’t know what there was left for me to find out. But there it was, this trail that had vanished and had now re-emerged. And with the green light from the Heidelberg Union Insurance I could pursue it so effortlessly that I didn’t have to think too deeply about the why and wherefore.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon and I figured out from my diary that it was 9 a.m. in Pittsburgh. I’d discovered from the ballet director that Sergej Mencke’s friends were at the Pittsburgh State Ballet, and International Information divulged its telephone number. The girl from the exchange was jovial. ‘You want to give the little lady from Flashdance a call?’ I didn’t know the film. ‘Is the movie worth seeing? Should I take a look?’ She’d seen it three times. With my dreadful English the long-distance call to Pittsburgh was a torture. At least I found out from the ballet’s secretary that both dancers would be in Pittsburgh throughout December.
I came to an understanding with my travel agency that I’d receive an invoice for a Lufthansa flight Frankfurt-Pittsburgh, but would actually be booked on a cheap flight from Brussels to San Francisco with a stopover in New York and a side trip to Pittsburgh. At the beginning of December there wasn’t much going on over the Atlantic. I got a flight for Thursday morning.
Towards evening I gave Vera Müller a call in San Francisco. I told her I’d written, but that rather suddenly a convenient opportunity had arisen to come to the USA, and I’d be in San Francisco by the weekend. She said she’d announce my visit to Frau Hirsch; she herself was out of town over the weekend but would be glad to see me on Monday. I noted down Frau Hirsch’s address: 410 Connecticut Street, Potrero Hill.
2 A crackle, and the picture appeared
From the old films I had visions in my mind of ships steaming into New York, past the Statue of Liberty and on past the skyscrapers, and I’d imagined seeing the same, not from the deck of a liner, but through the small window on my left. However, the airport was way out of the city, it was cold and dirty, and I was glad when I’d transferred and was sitting in the plane to San Francisco. The rows of seats were so squashed together that it was only bearable to be in them with the seat reclined. During the meal you had to put your seat-back up; presumably the airline only served a meal so that you would be happy afterwards when you could recline again.
I arrived at midnight. A cab took me into the city via an eight-lane motorway, and to a hotel. I was feeling wretched after the storm the airplane had flown through. The porter who’d carried my suitcase to the room turned on the television; there was a crackle, and the picture appeared. A man was talking with obscene pushiness. I realized later he was a preacher.
The next morning the porter called me a cab, and I stepped out into the street. The window of my room looked out onto the wall of a neighbouring building, and in the room the morning had been grey and quiet. Now the colours and noises of the city exploded around me, beneath a clear, blue sky. The drive over the hills of the town, on streets that led upwards and swooped down again straight as an arrow, the smacking jolts of the cab’s worn-out suspension when we crossed a junction, the views of skyscrapers, bridges, and a large bay made me feel dizzy.
The house was situated in a peaceful street. Like all the houses it was made of wood. Steps led to the front door. Up I went and rang the bell. An old man opened the door. ‘Mr Hirsch?’
‘My husband’s been dead for six years,’ she said in rusty German. ‘You needn’t apologize, I’m often taken for a man and I’m used to it. You’re the German Vera was telling me about, right?’
Perhaps it was the confusion or the flight or the cab ride – I must have fainted and came to when the old woman threw a glass of water at my face.
‘You’re lucky you didn’t fall down the steps. When you’re ready, come and I’ll give you a whisky.’
The whisky burned inside me. The room was musty and smelt of age, of old flesh and old food. The same smell had suffused my grandparents’ house, I suddenly recalled, and just as suddenly I was seized by the fear of growing old that I’m continuously suppressing.
The woman was perched opposite, and scrutinizing me. Shafts of sunlight shone through the blinds onto her. She was completely bald. ‘You want to talk to me about Weinstein, my husband. Vera thinks it’s important that what happened is told. But it’s not a good story. My husband tried to forget it.’
I didn’t realize straight away who Karl Weinstein was. But as she started to talk I remembered. She didn’t realize she was not only telling his story but also touching upon my own past.
She spoke in an oddly monotonous voice. Weinstein had been professor of organic chemistry in Breslau until 1933. In 1941, when he was put in a concentration camp, his former assistant Tyberg put in a request for him to be sent to the RCW laboratories, which was granted. Weinstein was even quite pleased that he could work in his field again and that he was working with someone who appreciated him as a scientist, addressed him as Professor, and politely said goodbye in the evening when he was taken back to the camp along with the other forced labourers of the Works. ‘My husband didn’t cope well with life, nor was he very brave. He had no idea, or didn’t want to know, what was happening around him and what was coming for him, too.’
‘Were you with Weinstein at this time?’
‘I met Karl on the transport to Auschwitz in nineteen forty-one. And then again only after the war. I’m Flemish, you know, and could hide in Brussels to begin with, until they caught me. I was a beautiful woman. They conducted medical experiments on my scalp. I think that saved my life. But in nineteen fortyfive I was old and bald. I was twenty-three.’
One day they’d come to Weinstein, someone from the Works and someone from the SS. They’d told him how he must testify before the police, the prosecutor, and the judge. It was a matter of sabotage, a manuscript that he’d supposedly found in Tyberg’s desk, a conversation between Tyberg and a co-worker that he’d supposedly overheard.
I could picture Weinstein, as he was led into my office, in his prisoner’s clothes, and gave his testimony.
‘He hadn’t wanted to at first. It was all false and Tyberg hadn’t been bad to him. But they showed him they would crush him. They didn’t even promise him his life, only that he could survive a little longer. Can you imagine that? Then my husband was transferred and simply forgotten in the other camp. We’d arranged where we would meet should the whole thing ever be over. In Brussels on the Grand Place. I came there simply by chance in the spring of nineteen forty-six, not thinking of him any more. He’d been waiting there for me since the summer of nineteen forty-five. He recognized me immediately although I’d become this bald, old lady. Quite irresistible!’ She laughed.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I was the one Weinstein had delivered his testimony to. I also couldn’t tell her why it was so important to me. But I had to know. And so I asked, ‘Are you certain that the testimony your husband gave was false?’
‘I don’t understand. I’ve told you what he told me.’ Her face turned cold. ‘Get out,’ she said, ‘get out.’
3 Do not disturb
I walked down the hill and
came to the docks and warehouses by the bay. Far and wide I could see neither cab nor bus, nor subway station. I wasn’t even sure if San Francisco had a subway. I set off in the direction of the skyscrapers. The street didn’t have a name, just a number. In front of me a heavy, black Cadillac was crawling along. Every few steps it drew to a standstill, a black man in a pink silk suit got out, trampled a beer or coke can flat, and dropped it into a large blue plastic sack. A few hundred metres ahead I saw a store. As I came closer I saw it was barred like a fortress. I went in looking for a sandwich and a packet of Sweet Afton. The goods were behind grating and the checkout reminded me of a counter at the bank. I didn’t get a sandwich and no one knew what Sweet Afton was, and I felt guilty even though I hadn’t done anything. As I was leaving the store with a carton of Chesterfields, a freight train rattled past me in the middle of the street.
On the piers I came across a car rental and rented a Chevrolet. I was taken by the one-piece front seating. It reminded me of the Horch on whose front seat I was initiated into love by the wife of my Latin teacher. Together with the car I got a town plan with the 49 Mile Drive highlighted. I followed it without trouble, thanks to the signs everywhere. By the cliffs I found a restaurant. At the entrance I had to edge forward in a line before being led to a seat by the window. Mist was curling over the Pacific. The show captivated me, as though, beyond the rents in the fog, Japan’s coast would come into view any second. I ate a tuna steak, potato in aluminum foil, and iceberg lettuce salad. The beer was called Anchor Steam and tasted almost like a smoked beer in the Bamberg Schlenkerla. The waitress was attentive, kept refilling my coffee cup without my having to ask, enquired after my health and where I was from. She knew Germany, too; she’d visited her boyfriend at the US base in Baumholder once.
After the meal I stretched my legs, clambered around on the cliffs, and suddenly saw before me, more beautiful than I remembered it from films, the Golden Gate Bridge. I took off my coat, folded it, put it on a rock, and sat on it. The coast fell away steeply, beneath me bright sailing boats were crisscrossing, and a freight ship ploughed its gentle path.
I had planned to live at peace with my past. Guilt, atonement, enthusiasm and blindness, pride and anger, morality and resignation – I’d brought it all together in an elaborate balance. The past had become abstract. Now reality had caught up with me and was threatening that balance. Of course I’d let myself be manipulated as a prosecutor, I’d learned that much after 1945. One may question whether there is better manipulation and worse. Nevertheless, I didn’t think it was the same thing to be guilty of having served a putative great, bad cause, or to be used by someone as a pawn on the chessboard of a small, shabby intrigue I didn’t yet understand.
The stuff Frau Hirsch had told me, what did it amount to exactly? Tyberg and Dohmke, whom I’d investigated, had been convicted purely on the strength of Weinstein’s false testimony. By any standard, even the National Socialist one, the judgment was a miscarriage of justice and my investigation was wrong. I’d been taken in by a plot made to trap Tyberg and Dohmke. My memory of it started to come back. In Tyberg’s desk hidden documents had been found that revealed a promising plan, essential to the war effort, initially pursued by Tyberg and his research group, then apparently abandoned. The accused repeatedly stressed to me and to the court that they couldn’t have followed two promising paths of research at the same time. They had only put the other one on a backburner, to return to later. The whole thing was under the strictest secrecy and their discovery had been so exciting that they’d safeguarded it with the jealousy of the scientist. That had been the only reason for the cache in the desk. That might have got them off, but Weinstein reported a conversation between Dohmke and Tyberg in which both agreed to suppress the discovery to bring about a quick end to the war, even at the price of a German defeat. And now this conversation had never actually taken place.
The sabotage story had unleashed outrage at the time. The second charge of racial defilement hadn’t convinced me, even then: my investigation hadn’t produced any evidence that Tyberg had had intercourse with a Jewish forced labourer. He was sentenced to death on that account, too. I pondered who from the SS and who from the economic side back then could have set up the conspiracy.
There was a constant flow of traffic over the Golden Gate Bridge. Where did everyone want to get to? I drove to the approach, parked my car beneath the monument to the architect, and walked to the middle of the bridge. I was the only pedestrian. I gazed down onto the metallic gleaming Pacific. Behind me limousines whizzed by with a callous regularity. A cold wind blew round the suspension cables. I was freezing.
With some trouble I found the hotel again. It soon turned dark. I asked the porter where I could get a bottle of sambuca. He sent me along to a liquor store two streets away. I scanned the shelves in vain. The proprietor regretted he didn’t have sambuca, but he did have something similar, wouldn’t I like to try Southern Comfort? He packed the bottle in a brown paper bag for me, and twisted the paper shut round the neck. On the way back to the hotel I bought a hamburger. With my trench coat, the brown paper bag in one hand, and the burger in the other I felt like an extra in a second-rate American cop film.
Back in the hotel room I lay down on the bed and switched on the TV. My toothbrush glass was wrapped in cellophane, I tore it off and poured myself a shot. Southern Comfort really doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to sambuca. Still, it tasted pleasant and trickled quite naturally down my throat. Nor did the football on TV have the least bit in common with our football. But I understood the principle and followed the match with increasing excitement.
After a while I applauded when my team had made decent headway with the ball. Finally I must have whooped when my team won, because there came a knocking through the wall. I tried to get up and thump back, but the bed kept tipping up at the side I was trying to get out of. It wasn’t that important. Main thing was that topping up the glass still went smoothly. I left the last gulp in the bottle for the flight back.
In the middle of the night I woke up. Now I felt drunk. I was lying fully clothed on the bed, the TV was spitting out images. When I switched it off, my head imploded. I managed to take off my jacket before falling asleep again.
When I woke up, for a brief moment I didn’t know where I was. My room was cleaned and tidied, the ashtray empty, and the toothbrush glass back in cellophane. My watch said half past two. I sat on the toilet for a long time, clutching my head. When I washed my hands I avoided looking in the mirror. I found a packet of aspirin in my toilet bag, and twenty minutes later the headache was gone. But with every movement the brain fluid slapped hard against the walls of my skull, and my stomach was crying out for food while telling me it wouldn’t keep it down. At home I’d have made a camomile tea, but I didn’t know the American word, nor where I’d find it, nor how I’d boil the water.
I took a shower, first hot, then cold. In the hotel’s Tea Room I got a black coffee and toast. I took a few steps out onto the street. The way led me to the liquor store. It was still open. I didn’t begrudge the Southern Comfort the previous night, I’m not one to nurse a grudge. To make this clear I bought another bottle. The proprietor said: ‘Better than any of your sambuca, hey?’ I didn’t want to contradict him.
This time I intended to get drunk systematically. I got undressed, hung the ‘Do not disturb’ sign outside my door and my suit over the clothes stand. I stuffed my worn undershirt into a plastic bag provided for the purpose and left it out in the corridor. I added my shoes and hoped that I’d find everything in a decent state the next morning. I locked the door from the inside, drew the curtains, turned on the TV, slipped into my pyjamas, poured my first glass, placed bottle and ashtray within reach on the bedside table, laid my cigarettes and folder of matches next to them, and myself in bed. Red River was on TV. I pulled the covers up to my chin, smoked, and drank.
After a while the images of the courtroom I’d appeared in, of the hangings I’d had to att
end, of green and grey and black uniforms, and of my wife in her League of German Girls outfit began to fade. I could no longer hear the echo of boots in long corridors, no Führer’s speeches on the People’s Receiver, no sirens. John Wayne was drinking whisky, I was drinking Southern Comfort, and as he set off to tidy things up I was with him all the way.
By the following midday, the return to sobriety had become a ritual. At the same time it was clear the drinking was over. I drove to the Golden Gate Park and walked for two hours. In the evening I found Perry’s, an Italian restaurant I felt almost as comfortable in as the Kleiner Rosengarten. I slept deeply and dreamlessly, and on Monday morning I discovered the American breakfast. At nine o’clock I gave Vera Müller a call. She would expect me for lunch.
At half past twelve I was standing in front of her house on Telegraph Hill with a bouquet of yellow roses. She wasn’t the blue-rinsed caricature I’d envisaged. She was around my age and if I had aged as a man as she had as a woman, I’d have had reason to be content. She was tall, slim, angular, wore her grey hair piled high, over her jeans a Russian smock, her spectacles were hanging from a chain, and there was a mocking expression hovering round her grey eyes and thin mouth. She wore two wedding rings on her left hand.
‘Yes, I’m a widow.’ She had noticed my glance. ‘My husband died three years ago. You remind me of him.’ She led me into the sitting room through the windows of which I could see Alcatraz. ‘Do you take Pastis as an aperitif? Help yourself, I’ll just pop the pizza into the oven.’
When she returned I had poured two glasses. ‘I had to confess something to you. I’m not a historian from Hamburg, I’m a private detective from Mannheim. The man whose advertisement you answered, not a Hamburg historian either, was murdered and I’m trying to find out why.’
Self's Punishment Page 17
