The Collini Case

by Ferdinand von Schirach

  ‘What?’ Baumann wasn’t pretending, he was genuinely astonished.

  ‘You don’t get it at all,’ said Leinen quietly, getting to his feet. ‘Goodbye.’ He walked over the landing stage and back to the marquee. He heard Baumann call something after him. The large boat on the lake turned, its lights illuminating the bank. A few guests in dinner jackets and evening dresses stood outside the marquee, raising their glasses to the passengers on the boat. There was a smell of diesel fuel and decay.

  Leinen passed the marquee and went up the steps to the house. Mattinger was standing in a brightly lit room, his arm round his girlfriend. She was pointing to something or other out on the lake, Mattinger was looking in a different direction. Leinen wondered whether to say goodbye to him, but there were too many people in there for his liking. He went to his car. When he unlocked it, the firework display was going off. He sat on the bonnet of the car smoking, and watched for a while.

  The air was musty at home in his apartment. He opened the window, undressed and lay down on his bed. ‘A defence lawyer defends his client, no more and no less,’ Mattinger had said. That was supposed to help, but it didn’t. Then he thought of Johanna, and of the trial of Fabrizio Collini, which wouldn’t really begin until tomorrow.

  14

  It was the seventh day of the trial. The presiding judge had the resumption of the trial announced, stated for the record that everyone was present, and said she was glad that the lay judge was better again.

  ‘For all involved, I will make the following remark,’ she said. ‘Counsel for the defence told me yesterday that there would be testimony provided by his client, and as we have nothing else on the agenda today, I would like to hear it now.’ She turned to Leinen. ‘Is that still how things stand?’

  ‘Yes, your honour.’

  ‘Very well, Herr Leinen, you have the floor.’ The presiding judge leaned back.

  Leinen drank a sip of water. He looked at Johanna. He had told her on the phone yesterday that today would be terrible for her, but there was no alternative. Leinen stood there, calm and upright at his place in front of the lectern. He began reading, slowly, softly, speaking almost without emphasis. Everyone in the courtroom sensed the young lawyer’s concentration as he spoke in his first major trial. Apart from his voice, nothing could be heard in the courtroom except the sound as he turned the pages. He seldom raised his eyes, and when he did he looked at every one of the judges in turn. Leinen used the dry language of the law, saying only what he had heard from Collini and what he had found in the files in Ludwigsburg. But as he read out the statement, as he presented the horror of it sentence by sentence, the courtroom itself changed. People, landscapes and towns came into view, the sentences became images, the images came to life, and much later one of those who had heard Leinen said he had been able to smell the fields and meadows of Collini’s childhood. However, something else, something different, was happening to Caspar Leinen himself: for years on end he had listened to his professors, he had learned the law and its interpretation, he had tried to get a good grasp of criminal proceedings – yet only today, only in his own first plea to the court, did he understand that those proceedings were really about something quite different: abused human beings.

  ‘Ite, missa est – go in peace.’ The priest’s voice was rough and friendly.

  ‘Deo gratias – thanks be to God,’ responded the eleven children in chorus. They stayed put for a moment, not daring to run away yet. Of course the two-hour confirmation class on Sunday after church was always a pain. The old priest could speak well, some of his stories weren’t at all bad, but he was strict, and Fabrizio had already felt the force of his cane several times. At last the old man opened the door, laughed, and said, ‘Go on, then, off with you.’ The children ran along the schoolhouse corridor and out into the cold November day. Fabrizio got on his bicycle. ‘See you tomorrow!’ he shouted to the others, and pedalled away. He had seventeen kilometres to ride back to his father’s farm. Once he was home he’d take this idiotic suit off at once and put on his robber outfit; maybe there’d still be time for him to cycle to the old mill and meet the others.

  On that day, 14 November 1943, Fabrizio Collini was nine years old. He was lord and master of one cow, four pigs, eleven chickens and two cats on his family’s farm, he was an outstanding military commander, cycle-racing champion and circus artiste. He had already seen a crashed plane and two dead soldiers; he owned a pair of field glasses, a bicycle and a pocketknife with a stag-horn handle. He also had a sister; she was six years older than him, and most of the time he couldn’t stand her. But what mattered now was that he was hungry.

  Fabrizio took the short cut, the path over the fields. In between the village of Corria and his father’s small farm there was a hill, a place to which courting couples resorted at the weekend. From this hill you had a good view of the area, which was still peaceful. The Allies had landed in Sicily four months ago; Benito Mussolini had been overthrown and taken prisoner. The king asked Marshal Pietro Badoglio to form a military government, and a short time later an armistice came into force between the Allies and the new Italian government. On orders from Adolf Hitler, Mussolini was rescued from a mountain hotel by German paratroopers, and two weeks later he was installed as head of government of the newly founded Italian Social Republic, the ‘Repubblica Sociale Italiana’, a Fascist government under the protectorate of the German Reich. Fabrizio knew very little about all that. Of course he knew there was a war on, his father’s two brothers had fallen three years earlier fighting in the Italian campaign against Greece, but he hardly remembered them. His father had shed tears at the time. War, he said, was madness. Fabrizio remembered the word – folia, ‘madness’ – not that he understood what it meant, but his father had said it again and again, and Fabrizio realized that it was something terrible. Now the Germans were everywhere in their uniforms. Sometimes family members from Genoa visited the village, they said the Germans were taking everything they needed away from the factories. The men’s faces were gloomy, there was whispering about partisans and assassination attempts, and although the grown-ups tried to hide everything from the children, they didn’t play cops and robbers any more, they played partisans and Germans. Sometimes Father put on his grey coat and a beret in the evening, kissed his two children on the forehead and left the farm. Fabrizio heard his sister crying on those nights, and when he called for her she came into his room and whispered that Father was a partisan. Their mother had died when Fabrizio was born.

  When Fabrizio reached the plateau on top of the hill he stopped for a moment, as usual. He could see his father’s farm, the farmhouse and the little barn. He raced downhill. His sister was standing in the doorway when he reached the paving stones of the farmyard. She was still wearing her black dress from church, and she was crying. Fabrizio jumped off his bicycle, which fell over. He ran to her. She hugged him and kept on saying, ‘They’ve taken Father away. The Germans have taken Father away.’ Fabrizio began to cry as well. The children stood like that for a long time. Fabrizio had questions to ask, but his sister wouldn’t talk to him.

  After a while they let go of each other and went into the kitchen. Mechanically, his sister went over to the stove, broke two eggs into a pan and cut bread. Fabrizio ate, she herself didn’t touch the food on her plate. ‘When you’ve finished,’ she said, ‘we’ll go to see Uncle Mauro. He’s sure to know what to do.’ Mauro was their mother’s elder brother, a hard man with no children, and their only living relation. His farm was almost ten kilometres away. Fabrizio’s sister stroked his head and looked out of the window. Suddenly she jumped up, crying, ‘Run, Fabrizio, they’re coming back.’ Fabrizio heard the hammering of the engine, he could see the German military vehicle through the window, a jeep with the windscreen folded down and spare tyres on the bonnet. There was a single soldier at the wheel. ‘Run, go on, run!’ cried his sister. The fear in her voice frightened Fabrizio. He ran across the farmyard and hid in the big dog kennel that had
stood empty for years, where he rolled himself up in a dirty blanket that was scratchy and full of holes. Through a crack between the boards of the kennel he saw the tyres of the jeep, and a pair of boots that stood still for a moment, turned and went towards the house. Then he heard his sister scream. He couldn’t help it, he crawled out of the kennel, ran back to the farmhouse door and pushed the door of the kitchen open.

  His sister was lying on her back on the wide kitchen table, her head towards the door. Her dress was torn, her white underwear spilling out over its coarse fabric. The man stood between her legs; he had let his trousers drop, his shirt and jacket were buttoned up. Fabrizio knew what the military badge meant, he was a private soldier, not an officer. He had a huge, jagged scar on his forehead. He had put his pistol to the girl’s breast, the hammer cocked, his finger on the trigger. She was bleeding from a wound on her forehead; there was hair stuck to the butt of the pistol. The man’s face was red, he was panting and sweating.

  Fabrizio screamed. It was a loud scream, louder than any other noise in the farmyard, a single high note, and as he screamed everything happened at the same time. The soldier, startled, stepped back. The girl was wearing a gold chain with an enamel locket showing the Virgin Mary, a present from her mother. The sights of the pistol caught in the chain, which stretched taut round the girl’s neck, holding the gun in place. The man snatched at the pistol, its resistance was transferred to the trigger. A shot rang out. The bullet went through the girl’s neck, tearing through her artery, and emerged to embed itself in the kitchen table. She clutched at her throat, and blood came welling out between her hands. The soldier stumbled back, slipped, and fell on the floor. Fabrizio was still screaming. He couldn’t make sense of the images: the pale blue smoke from the shot, the erect penis, the blood on the kitchen table. Then he saw his father’s brown tobacco tin. It was standing on the kitchen shelves where it had always stood. Every evening after supper, Father would roll two cigarettes and talk to the children while he smoked them. Fabrizio could see the two Red Indians on the lacquered wooden lid, they were sitting by the campfire, peacefully, eternally. He stopped screaming. The soldier was sitting on the floor with the pistol in his lap. He stared at Fabrizio. The soldier’s eyes were like water, pale blue, almost colourless. Fabrizio had never seen eyes like that before; he couldn’t look away from them. He simply stood there looking into the man’s watery pale eyes. Only when the soldier moved did he manage to move as well, and at last he realized that he must run for his life.

  Fabrizio ran out of the kitchen and over the farmyard, slipping on the wet paving stones and hurting his right knee. Father would be angry with him for tearing his Sunday trousers. On past the dog kennel and the pond, into the pine forest, then over the narrow bridge and along the woodland path until he was out on the open plain. He didn’t know how long he had been running, he could have gone on running for ever, but then he saw his uncle’s farmhouse. The house was very different from his father’s, a large, long house standing on a rise in the ground, with an avenue of pine trees leading up to it. The front door was not locked. Fabrizio almost ran down his Aunt Giulia at the entrance. He stammered breathlessly until his uncle arrived with the two farm labourers, then he spoke more calmly, and at last his uncle understood. He took his shotgun from the cupboard and drove out of the yard in his car.

  When Uncle Mauro came back night had fallen. He sat down on the steps outside the door and stared into the darkness. It had turned cold. Fabrizio went to join him. His uncle opened his huge woollen coat and Fabrizio sat down on its lining beside him. Uncle Mauro put one arm round him. He smelled of smoke, his face and hands were sooty. In the yellow light from the kitchen window, Fabrizio saw wet furrows on his uncle’s soot-blackened cheeks.

  ‘Fabrizio, my boy.’

  ‘Yes, Uncle,’ he said.

  ‘Your farm has been burned down and your sister is dead.’

  ‘Is she burned too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All of her?’

  ‘Yes, all of her.’

  ‘Did you see her?’

  Uncle Mauro nodded.

  ‘What about the animals? Are the animals burned as well?’

  ‘The cow, yes. I don’t know about the others,’ said his uncle. ‘They may be in the forest by now.’

  Fabrizio thought about the animals in the forest. They must be cold and hungry. Particularly the pigs, they were always hungry.

  ‘They can make friends with the wild boar,’ said Fabrizio. He saw his uncle’s rough hand in front of his face. It wasn’t like his father’s hands, it was larger, hairier, darker. And it smelled different.

  ‘Your sister told you the soldiers took your father away?’

  ‘Yes, she said it was the Germans.’

  ‘Did she say where to?’

  ‘No,’ said Fabrizio.

  ‘I’ll go to Genoa in the morning,’ said his uncle.

  ‘But why did they take him away? Has he done something wrong?’

  ‘No,’ said his uncle. ‘He did what was right.’ Fabrizio could feel how tense his uncle’s muscles were.

  ‘Will you go and fetch him?’ he asked after a while.

  ‘We’ll see what they say.’ He drew Fabrizio closer. ‘You’ll stay here and live with us now.’

  ‘What about school? Do I have to go to school tomorrow?’

  ‘No,’ said his uncle. ‘Not tomorrow.’

  ‘Will the animals go to Heaven too?’

  ‘I don’t know, my boy. Animals aren’t either good or bad.’

  They went on sitting there. Uncle Mauro put the coat over Fabrizio’s head. The woollen fabric was warm, but itchy on his throat.

  Next day Uncle Mauro went to Genoa. He wore his best suit, and Aunt Giulia had packed four trays of eggs for their relations in the city. Fabrizio and Aunt Giulia stood on the steps waving goodbye as he drove away. For the next few days the elder labourer saw to the work around the farm, and the younger one went to the local police station to report what had happened. The chickens came back to the burned-out walls the next day, and the farm labourer found one of the pigs in the forest. The old priest came to see Fabrizio, bringing chocolate, and gave him a rosary with a little silver cross.

  Mauro stayed in the city for four days. When he came back he looked tired, his shoes were pinching, the suit hung crooked on his shoulders and was stained. They all sat round the dining table as he smoothed out a piece of paper. He said he hadn’t been allowed to see Fabrizio’s father, but now he knew where he was. The piece of paper looked official, thin paper marked by two rubber stamps, one top left, one bottom right, showing swastikas. The paper bore the words ‘Security Service’. Uncle Mauro said that partisans were very special prisoners of the SS. He read out Fabrizio’s father’s name slowly, tracing the words on the page with his fingers. After every sentence they all talked at once, trying to make out what it meant. The paper gave the name of the prison; it was in the Marassi district of Genoa. The two farm labourers nodded to each other and hunched their heads down between their shoulders. And finally Uncle Mauro read out that Fabrizio’s father had been arrested by order of the security service detachment posted in Milan. He read out the name of the man who was now in charge of the prisoners, a German; Uncle Mauro took a lot of trouble to pronounce it correctly. The piece of paper gave it as SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Meyer.

  15

  ‘SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Meyer,’ said Leinen. Several spectators in Courtroom 500 let out a gasp, and there was a commotion on the press bench as a number of reporters stood up to go and phone their newsrooms.

  ‘Hans Meyer,’ Leinen repeated, more quietly; it was as if he were talking to himself. He turned to the presiding judge.

  ‘Your honour, if it’s all right, I’d like to wait to continue this statement on the next day of the trial. My client is worn out, and … and, to be honest, I’m rather tired myself.’

  Leinen knew the presiding judge was annoyed. Preparations for this trial had gone on for
months, and now it wasn’t going to be possible to bring it to a conclusion in the remaining three days set aside for it. Of course defence counsel had a right to ask for an adjournment – but Leinen was glad that the presiding judge didn’t let her displeasure show, since she didn’t want to prejudice the two lay judges against the defendant.

  ‘Very well, Herr Leinen. It’s midday now. May we know how much longer your client’s statement will take?’

  Leinen could hear the critical note in her voice, of course, but he didn’t care about that. ‘I’m certainly going to need another two or three days,’ he said. He knew that what he said next would be in the papers tomorrow. He had almost been able to sense the change in the atmosphere in the courtroom: Fabrizio Collini was no longer the deranged murderer who had shot a leading industrialist for no reason at all. ‘There will be some more surprises, your honour. I have prepared everything.’

  The hum of voices on the spectators’ benches swelled.

  ‘Then we’ll adjourn for today. The trial will continue next Thursday morning at nine in this courtroom. All involved in these proceedings are required to attend. I’ll see you then.’ The judges and lay judges rose and left the courtroom through a door behind the judges’ bench. Senior Public Prosecutor Reimers pushed his chair back, making a good deal of noise about it, and went to the door of the courtroom without speaking to anyone. The police officers opened the door for the spectators and asked them all to leave. It was almost ten minutes before the courtroom was cleared.

  Johanna was still sitting, rigid, on the accessory prosecution team’s bench opposite him. She was pale, her lips colourless. She looked at Leinen as if she had never seen him before. He stood up and went over to her.

  ‘Get me out of here.’ She was whispering, although no one could hear them.