‘Do you already know by whom?’
‘Yes and no.’ I told my story.
‘Did you mention your connection to the Tyberg affair to Frau Hirsch?’
‘No, I didn’t dare.’
‘You really do remind me of my husband. He was a journalist, a famous raging reporter, but each time he wrote a piece, he was afraid. It’s good, by the way, you didn’t tell her. It would have upset her too much, because of her relationship with Karl. Did you know, he had an amazing career again, in Stanford? Sarah never adapted to that world. She stayed with him because she thought she owed it to him for his having waited so long. And at the same time he only lived with her out of a sense of loyalty. The two of them never married.’
She led me out onto the kitchen balcony and fetched the pizza. ‘One thing I do like about growing older is that principles develop holes. I never thought I’d be able to eat with an old Nazi prosecutor without choking on my pizza. Are you still a Nazi?’
I choked on my pizza.
‘All right, all right. You don’t look like one to me. Do you sometimes have problems with your past?’
‘At least two bottles of Southern Comfort’s worth.’ I told her how the weekend had been spent.
At six o’clock we were still sitting together. She told me about her start in America. At the Olympic Games in Berlin she’d met her husband and moved with him to Los Angeles. ‘Do you know what I found most difficult? Wearing my bathing suit in the sauna.’
Then she had to leave for her night shift with the help line. I went back to Perry’s and merely took a six-pack of beer to bed with me. The next morning I wrote Vera Müller a postcard over breakfast, settled the bill, and drove to the airport. In the evening I was in Pittsburgh. There was snow on the ground.
4 Demolishing Sergej
The cabs that took me to the hotel in the evening and to the ballet the next morning were every bit as yellow as those in San Francisco. It was nine, the ensemble was already in the midst of a rehearsal, at ten they took a break and I was directed to the Mannheimers. They were standing in tights and leotards next to the radiators, yoghurt in hand.
When I introduced myself and the subject of my visit, they could hardly believe I’d come all this way just for them.
‘Did you know about Sergej?’ Hanne turned to Joschka. ‘Hey, I mean, I feel just devastated.’
Joschka was startled, too. ‘If we can help Sergej in any way… I’ll have a word with the boss. It should be fine for us to start again at eleven o’clock. That way we can sit down together in the canteen and talk.’
The canteen was empty. Through the window I looked onto a park with tall, bare trees. Mothers were out with their children, Eskimos in padded overalls, romping around in the snow.
‘All right, I mean, it’s really important for me to share what I know about Sergej,’ she said. ‘I’d find it, like, absolutely awful, if someone thought… if someone got the wrong… Sergej, he’s so incredibly sensitive. And he’s so vulnerable, not at all macho. You see, that’s why he couldn’t have done it for starters, he was always terribly afraid of injuries.’
Joschka wasn’t so sure. He stirred the contents of his Styrofoam cup with a little plastic stick, contemplatively. ‘Herr Self, I don’t think Sergej maimed himself either. I just can’t imagine anyone doing that. But if anyone… You know, Sergej was always having crackpot ideas.’
‘How can you say such mean stuff?’ Hanne interrupted him. ‘I thought you were his friend. No way, that makes me, like, really sad.’
Joschka placed his hand on her arm. ‘But, Hanne, don’t you remember the evening we were entertaining the dancers from Ghana? He told us how, when he was a boy scout, he deliberately cut his hand with the potato peeler to get out of kitchen duty. We all laughed about it, you too.’
‘But you got it completely wrong. He only pretended he’d cut himself and wrapped a large bandage around it. If you’re going to, like, distort the truth like that… I mean, really, Joschka…’
Joschka didn’t appear convinced, but didn’t want to quarrel with Hanne. I inquired about the shape, and mood, Sergej was in during the last few months of the season.
‘Exactly,’ said Hanne. ‘That doesn’t fit with your strange suspicion either. He believed completely in himself, he absolutely wanted to add flamenco to his repertoire, and tried to get a scholarship to Madrid.’
‘But, Hanne, he didn’t get the scholarship, that’s the thing.’
‘But don’t you get it, the fact he applied for it, that had so much power somehow. And his relationship, that was finally going well in the summer with his German professor. You know, Sergej, he isn’t gay, but he can also love men. He’s absolutely fantastic that way, I think. And not just something brief, sexual, but like, really deep. It’s impossible not to like him. He’s so…’
‘Sweet?’ I suggested.
‘Yeah, sweet. Do you actually know him, Herr Self?’
‘Uh, could you tell me who the German professor is you mentioned?’
‘Was it really German, not law?’ Joschka frowned.
‘Oh, crap, you’re demolishing Sergej. He was a Germanist, such a cuddly guy. But his name… I don’t know if I should tell you.’
‘Hanne, the two of them hardly made a secret of it considering how they carried on round town. It’s Fritz Kirchenberg from Heidelberg. Maybe it’s a good idea for you to talk to him.’
I asked them about Sergej’s qualities as a dancer. Hanne answered first.
‘But that’s beside the point. Even if you’re not a good dancer you don’t have to hack your leg off. I’m not even going to discuss it. And I’m still convinced you’re wrong.’
‘I don’t have any concrete opinion as yet, Frau Fischer,’ I said to Hanne. ‘And I’d like to point out that Herr Mencke hasn’t lost his leg, merely broken it.’
‘I don’t know what sort of knowledge you have of ballet, Herr Self,’ said Joschka. ‘At the end of the day, it’s the same with us as it is everywhere else. There are the stars, and the ones who will be stars one day, and then there’s the solid middle rank of the ones who’ve let go of their daydreams of glory but don’t have to worry about earning a living. And then there are the rest – the ones who have to live in constant fear of whether there’ll be a next engagement, for whom it’s certainly over when they start to get older. Sergej belongs to the third group.’
Hanne didn’t contradict. She let her defiant expression show how completely out of order she felt this conversation was. ‘I thought you wanted to find out something about Sergej, the person. You men have nothing in your heads beyond careers, really.’
‘How did Herr Mencke envisage his future?’
‘On the side he’d always done ballroom dancing and he told me once he’d like to start a dance school, a perfectly conventional one, for fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds.’
‘That also proves he couldn’t have done anything to himself. Think it through, Joschka. How’s he supposed to become a dance teacher minus a leg?’
‘Did you also know about his dancing school plans, Frau Fischer?’
‘Sergej played around with lots of ideas. He’s so brilliantly creative and has an incredible imagination. He could also imagine doing something completely different, breeding sheep in Provence, or something.’
They had to get back to rehearsal. They gave me their telephone numbers in case other questions came to me, asked whether I had plans for the evening, and promised to set aside a complimentary ticket for me at the door. I watched them go. Joschka moved with concentration and there was a spring in his step, Hanne trod lightly, as though walking on air. Admittedly, she’d talked, like, a lot of nonsense, but she walked with conviction, and I’d have liked to watch her dance that evening. But Pittsburgh was far too cold. I had a car take me to the airport, flew to New York, and got a return flight that same evening to Frankfurt. I think I’m too old for America.
5 So whose goose are you cooking?
Over brunch in
Café Gmeiner I drew up a programme for the rest of the week. Outside, the snow was falling in thick flakes. I’d have to root out the scoutmaster of the troop Mencke had belonged to, and speak to Professor Kirchenberg. And I wanted to talk to the judge who’d sentenced Tyberg and Dohmke to death. I had to know whether the sentence had been influenced from above.
Judge Beufer had been elevated to the Appellate Court in Karlsruhe after the war. At the main post office I found his name in the Karlsruhe telephone directory. His voice sounded astonishingly young, and he remembered my name. ‘Master Self,’ he crooned in his Swabian accent. ‘Whatever became of him?’ He was willing to have me round for a talk that afternoon.
He lived in Durlach in a house on the hillside with a view of Karlsruhe. I could see the large gas tower with its welcoming inscription ‘Karlsruhe’. Judge Beufer opened the door in person. He had a soldier’s upright posture, was wearing a grey suit, beneath it a white shirt and a red tie with a silver tie pin. The collar of his shirt had become too large for the old, scraggy neck. Beufer was bald and his face had a heavy downward pull, bags under the eyes, jowls, chin. We’d always joked about his sticking-out ears in the public prosecutor’s office. They were more impressive than ever. He looked ill. He must be well over eighty.
‘So, he’s become a private detective. Isn’t he ashamed? He was a good lawyer, after all, a sharp prosecutor. I expected to see him back with us when the worst of it was over.’
We sat in his study and sipped sherry. He still read the New Legal Weekly. ‘Master Self hasn’t simply come to pay his old judge a visit.’ His little piggy eyes were twinkling shrewdly.
‘Do you remember the case of Tyberg and Dohmke? End of nineteen forty-three, beginning of forty-four. I was leading the investigation, Södelknecht was the prosecutor. And you were presiding over court.’
‘Tyberg and Dohmke…’ He spoke the names softly to himself a few times. ‘Yes, of course. They were sentenced to death and Dohmke was executed. Tyberg escaped. He went a long way, that man. And was a true gentleman, or is he still alive? Bumped into him once at a reception in Solitude, joked about old times. He certainly understood we all had to do our duty back then.’
‘What I’d like to know – was the court given signals from above regarding the outcome, or was it a perfectly normal trial?’
‘Why does that interest him? Whose goose is he cooking, that Master Self?’
The question was bound to come. I told him about a coincidental connection to Frau Müller and my meeting with Frau Hirsch. ‘I simply want to know what happened back then, and what role I played.’
‘To reopen the trial, what the lady told you is nowhere near enough. If Weinstein were still alive… but he isn’t. I don’t believe it anyway. A lawyer has his gut feeling, and the more clearly I remember, the more certain I am the verdict was right.’
‘And were there signals from above? I’m sure you won’t misunderstand me, Herr Beufer. We both know that German judges knew how to preserve their independence even under extraordinary conditions. Nevertheless, now and then some interested party would try to exert influence, and I’d like to know whether there was an interested party in this trial.’
‘Oh, Self, why won’t he let sleeping dogs lie? But if it’s essential for his peace of mind… Weismüller called me a few times back then, the former general director. His focus was to clear it out of the way and stop people gossiping about RCW. Perhaps the sentencing of Tyberg and Dohmke met with his approval, simply for that reason. Nothing clears up a case quite so effectively as a quick hanging. Whether there were other reasons he wanted the sentence… No idea, I don’t think so, though.’
‘That was it?’
‘Weismüller also had some business with Södelknecht. Tyberg’s defence counsel had brought forward someone from the RCW as a witness who talked himself blue in the face on the witness stand, and Weismüller intervened on his behalf. Hang on, that man also went a long way, yes, Korten is the name, the current general director. There we have them, the whole merry crew of general directors.’ He laughed.
How could I have forgotten? I had been glad not to have to bring my friend and brother-in-law into it myself, but then the defence had hauled him in. I’d been glad because Korten had worked so closely together with Tyberg that his participation in the trial could have cast suspicion on him, or damaged his career at least. ‘Was it known at court then that Korten and I are brothers-in-law?’
‘My word. I’d never have thought it. But you advised your brother-in-law badly. He spoke out so strongly for Tyberg that Södelknecht almost arrested him on the spot at the hearing. Very decent, too decent. It didn’t help Tyberg one bit. It smells just a little fishy when a witness for the defence has nothing to say about the deed and only spouts friendly platitudes about the accused.’
There was nothing left to ask Beufer. I drank the second sherry he poured me, and chatted about colleagues we’d both known. Then I took my leave.
‘Master Self, now he’s off to follow that sniffing nose again. The quest for justice won’t let go of him, eh? Will he show his face again at old Beufer’s? Be delighted.’
On top of my car were ten centimetres of fresh snow. I swept it off, was glad to make it safely down the hill, onto the autobahn. And once I was on that, I drove north in the wake of a snowplough. It had turned dark. The car radio reported traffic jams and played hits from the sixties.
6 Potatoes, cabbage, and hot black pudding
In the thick snow I missed the turn-off to Mannheim at the Walldorf intersection. Then the snowplough drove into a parking lot, and I was lost. I made it as far as the Hardtwald service area.
At the stand-up snack bar I waited with my coffee for the driving snow to stop. I stared into the swirling flakes. All at once pictures from the past came vividly alive.
It was on an evening in August or September, 1943. Klara and I had to leave our apartment in Werderstrasse, and had just completed the move to Bahnhofstrasse. Korten was over for dinner. There were potatoes, cabbage, and hot black pudding. He enthused about our new apartment, praised Klara for the meal, and this annoyed me, because he knew what a pitiful cook Klärchen was and it couldn’t have escaped him that the potatoes were over-salted and the cabbage burnt. Then Klara left us men with our cigars for a bit of male conversation.
At that time the Tyberg and Dohmke file had just reached my desk. I wasn’t convinced by the results of the police investigation. Tyberg was from a good family, had volunteered for the front, and it was only against his will, as his research work was essential to the war effort, that he’d been left behind at the RCW. I couldn’t picture him as a saboteur.
‘You know Tyberg, don’t you? What do you think of him?’
‘A man beyond reproach. We were all horrified that he and Dohmke were arrested at work, without anyone knowing why. Member of the national German hockey team in nineteen thirty-six, winner of the Professor Demel Medal, a gifted chemist, esteemed colleague and respected superior – no, I really don’t understand what you people at the police and prosecutors are thinking.’
I explained to him that an arrest wasn’t a conviction and that in a German court no one was sentenced unless the necessary evidence was at hand. This was an old theme of ours from our student days. Korten had come across a book at a bookstall about famous miscarriages of justice and argued for nights on end with me whether human justice can avoid miscarriages. That was my contention, Korten’s position being the opposite, that one has to accept they occur.
A winter evening during our student days in Berlin came to my mind. Klara and I were tobogganing on the Kreuzberg, and were expected back at the Korten household for supper. Klara was seventeen, I’d encountered her and overlooked her, thousands of times, as Ferdinand’s little sister. I’d only taken the brat tobogganing with me because she’d begged so. Actually, I was hoping to meet Pauline on the toboggan run, help her up after a fall or protect her from the ghastly Kreuzberg street urchins. Was Pauline there? At an
y rate, all of a sudden I only had eyes for Klara. She was wearing a fur jacket and a bright scarf, and her blonde curls were flying, and snowflakes melting upon her glowing cheeks. On the way home we kissed for the first time. Klara had to persuade me into going up to supper. I didn’t know how to behave towards her in front of her parents and brother. When I left later she found some pretext to bring me to the front door and gave me a secret kiss.
I caught myself smiling out of the window. In the parking lot a military convoy stopped, also unable to make headway in the snow. My car was swathed in another thick layer. At the counter I fetched a coffee refill and a sandwich. I took up my place at the window again.
Korten and I had also come round to talking about Weinstein that time. An irreproachable man as the accused and a Jew as the prosecution witness – I wondered whether I shouldn’t drop the investigation. I couldn’t tell Korten about Weinstein’s significance, nor could I let the opportunity of learning something about Weinstein slip by.
‘What do you actually think about using Jews at the Works?’
‘You know, Gerd, that we’ve always thought differently about the Jewish question. I’ve never had any truck with anti-Semitism. I find it difficult having forced labourers in the plant, but whether they’re Jews or Frenchmen or Germans is all the same. In our laboratory we have Professor Weinstein working with us and it’s a crying shame that the man can’t be behind a lectern or in his own laboratory. His service to us is invaluable, and if you go by his appearance and cast of mind, you couldn’t find anyone more German. A professor of the old school, up until nineteen thirty-three he had a chair in organic chemistry at Breslau. Everything that Tyberg is as a chemist he owes, as his pupil and assistant, to Weinstein. The loveable, scatter-brained academic type.’
Self's Punishment Page 18
