I was silent and thought that it really was a beautiful picture. And after all, a lot of men ran around with long hair and beards. Perhaps it had been stupid'of me to feel such a strong aversion to Dr. Germela. The young man evidently knew what he was talking about. Perhaps I had really aroused the past in Fraulein Gottschalk's mind by my mere presence—who could tell? What I had felt was a relapse and what Germela didn't see as such was possibly my fault. Perhaps Fraulein Louise was doing very well, or at least making the best progress possible after such a stubborn schizophrenic condition.
"Well, now!" Germela was smiling smugly. "Are we convinced and reassured?"
I smiled, too, reluctantly.
"You see," he said, "now we can be friends. You have your work, we have ours. We don't interfere with your writing; you don't get mixed up in our psychiatric methods. You don't disturb FrSulein Gottschalk, and you may visit her as often and as long as you like. Otherwise—no, dear Herr Roland—otherwise, I'm afraid I'll have to stop your visits. Have I made myself clear?"
"Absolutely."
"And you agree?"
"I agree." After all, these men had to know what they were doing. They'd studied it!
14
We were married on Friday, December 20, at 11:00 a.m. in a registry office. The Provincial Court had granted permission and with Hem's intercession had dispensed with the Eheftihigkeits-zeugniss for Irina in record time. After that our banns had been posted for a week, and our time had finally come. Bertie picked us up in the Mercedes. It was a cold, sunny day. There was frost on the grass in Griineburg Park. We men wore dark suits, Irina had on a black suit, one of Leo's creations, and her black coat with the mink trim, black pumps, and the alligator bag I'd bought for her in Hamburg.
Irina's psychologist had given her the day off. Bertie brought her flowers, and we drove off. We had to wait a little; there were two couples ahead of us. Irina was very pale and very beautiful, and her hands, which I was trying to warm with mine as we waited in the hall, were ice cold. At last it was our turn. The clerk, an elderly man, nodded encouragingly at Irina because she lqpked frightened. He spoke briefly and simply, just a few appropriate and beautiful words. I remember the gist of what he said, and feel like including it here.
"When I say that I wish you happiness in your life together, then I must add that happiness, true inner happiness, is a gift of fate and does not come from outside. If happiness is to last, one must fight for it again and again. Which is not necessarily cause for mourning. Because every human being can fight for his happiness, and this is made so much easier if he has someone to help him. That is why the union of two people can add value to their lives." Irina felt for my hand, and I tried to warm hers again. The clerk went on.
"One should realize that no one can be completely happy, and that realization may be the best way to come as close as possible to complete happiness. He who recognizes himself truly and values himself correctly will soon recognize his partner and all the people the same way. It is all a question of mutual radiance, and that is why, my dear people, happiness can be found only in sincerity."
We signed the marriage certificate, and Bertie and Hem signed as witnesses, and I put my hand in my pocket and took out a litde etui with the ring, a narrow platinum band with tiny diamond baguettes. Irina stared at me, speechless, when I placed the ring on her finger, because we had agreed that there would be no ring, and she had none for me. I didn't want to wear a ring, but I had noticed how much she wanted one. So I had gone to a jeweler and sold my gold cigarette lighter and bought this ring with the money. Hem knew about it. I didn't smoke much anymore, so matches would do.
"Where did you get the ring?" Irina whispered.
"Shh," I said. "I stole it. Don't let anybody notice anything, for God's sake."
In the car, driving to the Frankfurter Hof, I told Irina the truth and she cried a little, but with joy, because I said, "And I gave the jeweler the whiskey flask, too," which Bertie and Hem knew was a lie. Actually, I had thrown the flask into the dirty Main River from the Friedensbriicke, on the day before our wedding. It was an attempt of sorts to bribe the dear Lord. I am very superstitious, and I thought if I didn't drink anymore and threw the damned flask away, Irina would have an easy birth and a beautiful child, and we would be happy ever after.
In the Frankfurter Hof we were received by the doorman, bell captain, receptionist, and all the waiters with broad smiles. They knew I wasn't working for Blitz anymore, but they didn't know why, and I was such a good old customer. Hem had reserved a table in the French restaurant, and the hotel had decorated it with flowers. We were Hem's guests. The waiters came and congratulated us and served the stupendous meal Hem had ordered. Irina and I drank orange juice, he and Bertie had champagne. After the meal they had to go straight back to the office. Before Christmas all hell always broke loose. I walked hand in hand with Irina back to Hem's apartment and we undressed and got under the covers of the big bed and made love, and then we fell asleep and slept for a long time.
I woke up to hear the bell ringing. I put on my robe and opened the door. A boy, with an enormous bouquet of flowers from Tutti and Max. They called soon after that and wished us all the luck in the world and gave us their blessing. Max said, "We just felt we had to do it, dear Waltafc. After all, you're our best friend, and your little wife's gonna be our best friend, too, now. Where is she?"
"She's asleep."
"Well, then give her a kiss from me and Tuttilein when she wakes up. And you're gonna come and see us, aren't you?"
"We certainly are. Soon. I'm awfully busy "
"I know, I know. And you can't imagine what's going on here right now! Tutti's working herself to death. I don't understand it. The city's gone crazy!"
"How come?"
"It's before the Holy Days. They all wanna get in as much screwing as they can. I reckon because the guys have to stay home with their families during the holidays. Leichenmiiller's tanking in advance. And young Herford ditto."
Tutti, sobbing softly, "My dear Walta/i, I'm so happy for you. You know, Max and I, we want to get married, too, but right now we can't. Max has such—whaddaya call 'em—moral scruples. Says we've got to have a little more stashed away first. Then, when we've got enough and his business is going properly, I'll retire, and we'll get married, and you'll be our witnesses, agreed?"
"Agreed!"
I walked into the bedroom with the flowers. Irina was awake, and I told her about Max's call and that all the men were crazy for a loving before the Holy Days.
"You, too?"
"Certainly, me, too," I said. "Come, sweetheart, I've got to love you again."
"Yes, yes, yes," she said. "Love me!"
When Hem got back with Bertie we had bathed and dressed. Hem and Bertie brought salads and cold cuts and we ate in Hem's big kitchen, and Bertie and Hem drank a lot of beer and Irina and I drank red currant juice. We went over to Hem's room and he got out his cello and played compositions by Helmuth Rahmers. It was an infinitely peaceful evening. In the end Hem said, "Rahmers set many poems to music—Eichendorff, Lenau, Hesse, Gottfried Keller, Matthias, Claudius—I'm going to play you one of my favorite songs, composed to a poem by Karl Weller. 'Homecoming.'"
The sound of the cello was lilting and the melody full of confidence and joy, and Hem spoke the words softly as he played. "This is the place where I belong; my hand is on the key. The lark and cuckoo sing my song and every flower blooms for me—"
Irina and I sat side by side and held hands, and Bertie was looking at us and smiling, and I felt calm, and every flower bloomed for me.
I walked upon the mountains I strolled along the shore I drank from sparkling fountains But now 1*11 wander no more. Although the world so wide, so wide Beguiled my heart in seasons past. Here is the realm where 111 abide I have come home at last.
Hem was silent, the music faded away. Nobody spoke. Then, suddenly, Irina said, "Fraulein Louise—"
We looked at her and at each other. "I was just
thinking of her, too," said Bertie.
"So was I," said Hem.
"And I," I said. "Strange—"
"Very strange," said Bertie.
Fraulein Louise," said Irina, laying her head on my shoulder. "She brought us together. It all began with her."
"So now my friends will kill this person," said Fr&ulein Louise. This was on December 27, and it was raining hard in Bremen. The branches of the bare old chestnut trees in the yard glistened. "They will kill this person," she repeated, smiling happily. "Nothing can stop them."
A strange compulsion had made me fly to Bremen right after Christmas. In Fraulein Louise's room there was an arrangement of fir branches with a red candle, and a bowl of nuts and cookies. She had just lit the candle. She looked better every time I saw her. My visit today had made her very happy. She told me that her friends now spoke to her regularly, and I saw a chance to at last find out more about her experiences, most of which were
revealed to me only on this day. I decided to ignore the directives of democratic reformer, Dr. Germela. I could see that Fraulein Louise's memory was restored when in the course of our conversation, I mentioned Karel.
"Poor Karel, with his trumpet, yes," she said. "Little Karel and his murderer. I talked a lot about both of them with my friends." And then she began to tell much of what I have described earlier in this story, in its rightful place. And while she spoke I was wondering if she was creating what she was saying as she went along, inspired by my mention of Karel, if what she was saying and obviously believed was only taking shape in her mind now, as she spoke, and she was simply arranging it into the past from recent conversations with her friends. Who could tell? She told me she had "outwitted" her friends, and went on, "I also told them that more terrible things could happen if we didn't find the murderer, if we didn't unite the murderer and his victim, so that they might be reconciled in a higher sphere. You understand me, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Have another lebkuchen, Hen* Roland, do. They're very good."
The rain was washing so hard against the pane, you could scarcely see the trees outside. I said, "I met a police chief in Hamburg. His name is Sievers. This happened weeks ago. He told me he was determined to find the murderer, and he said he had a plan."
"Yes," said Fraulein Louise without a moment's hesitation. "That's my student. I know."
"But—"
"But what? Didn't I explain to you once that there is no 'time,' no yesterday and no today and no tomorrow for my friends. Surely you remember."
"Yes, I do."
"And that my friends have to find a living human being if they want to come back. So now you can see how it works. My student, the darling, chose a chief of police. That's quite clear, isn't it?"
"Quite clear."
Fraulein Louise was nibbling on a cookie. "What I couldn't understand at first was why they've only started looking for the murderer now. But they explained it to me. By the way, now, all of a sudden, they say du to me. Yes, well... they told me, 'You
548
were sick, Louise. You were confused. You are still a human being whose thoughts can be disturbed. Nothing can disturb us. And because you were confused, you chose the wrong friends—" Suddenly she stopped speaking and looked at me fearfully.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
She said very seriously, "There were so many false friends. Herr Roland, please, please assure me on your word of honor that you are not a false friend! Because that would be horrible! You see, I'm not really clever enough to cope with all this, and if you—" She stopped again, then, after looking at me searchingly, she said firmly, "No. You are not a false friend. I am sure. A while ago I couldn't tell exactly. Such a lot of things happened that I couldn't fathom, and that's why things haven't come to a good end. Yet. That's what my friends tell me/' She was getting quite excited. "I never spoke to you so clearly, Herr Roland, but my voices were so clear. Of course I didn't see my friends, but it was as if they were speaking into my ears." She looked far away and said nothing for a while, then she said softly, hesitantly, "And still ... I keep wondering if I didn't do something wrong."
"Something wrong?"
"Because I got so terribly confused. I keep asking my friends, 'Did I? Did I?'"
"And what do they say?"
"They don't say anything. I keep begging them to tell me, 'What does it all mean?' And they say, 'It has meaning. All of it has meaning, Louise, and is concerned in a higher sense, but we can't explain it to you. Be patient.' That's what my friends say. 'Wait a little and you will know the answer to this great riddle. Very soon now.' That's what they say—"
Again she looked far away, then she said, "When I think of all the things that have happened to me, Herr Roland... suddenly I can remember it all so clearly." And then, without my having to ask anything, she went on recounting her experiences. She told about her conversation with her friends on the moor after Karel's death, of her trip to Hamburg, and how she had fled from Dr. Erkner, of her strange dream about the city with the high wall, and the four towers with the four tyrants, of her adventures in Hamburg—everything.
I took a room in Bremen, in a small boarding house, and visited Fr&ulein Louise every day until New Year's Day. I had my recorder with me, and this time I captured her entire odyssey on it. And I found out other things from her, too, very strange things.
The first thing she said to me one day was, "I have a message for you and Herr Engelhardt, from my friends. I'm to tell you because you're a good man." And she went on to speak, in her symbolic, cryptic way, about Bertie's and my future. On my last visit she said something I would like to insert here, because it made a deep impression on me. "I am stupid, I am uneducated, I am weak and old, but I keep having to imagine something "
"What, Fraulein Louise?"
She looked at me earnesdy. "I have a feeling," she said, "that the whole world is mirrored in what we have experienced. The errors of humankind.. .we have come to their center. I felt this from the beginning. That's why I was always so excited and; restless. Look, Herr Roland... of course we have to reconcile the murderer and his victim so that everyone can see that there is a higher justice. Of course that is important. But it isn't everything. It is no longer a case of the murderer and his victim—it is a case of peace on earth. It is a case of making clear to mankind that everything man suffers he suffers only because he has such primitive instincts, because he is earthbound, although his misery is only a partial misery. Because it could serve everyone as an opportunity for purification and exaltation. But—isn't it true?— people expend most of their strength and energies in tearing themselves to pieces, in senseless struggles on ridiculous problems. And why? Because they are blind. That's why! If only they could be made seeing and grasp that this other, wonderful world holds our miserable world in its hand... just think, Herr Roland! Then people could at last turn to the higher things of life. Beauty I Religion! Wouldn't that be wonderful? I can only feel it. I really don't know the way. But wouldn't it be miraculous?"
"Yes, Fraulein Louise," I said. "It would be miraculous."
REWARD: 20,000 MARKS A Desperate Mother Needs Help! 550
On November 12, 1968, my eleven-year-old Karel was shot to death in Youth Camp Neurode, near Bremen. There is no trace of the killer. But it is a fact that three people know what happened. The murderer fired the shots that killed Karel from a black Dodge and fled in the same car. A second man, who was apprehended in the camp, escaped and fled in a black Buick that was parked in front of the camp. A woman was at the wheel of the Buick. She cried to the man, "Karl! Run! Run, Karl, run!" With the help of this woman, the man was able to escape in the Buick. The woman's function was only that of accomplice. I am beseeching her to contact me and I promise to respect her anonymity and to give her a
Reward of 20,000 Marks
for any information leading to an arrest of the killer. A desperate mother is appealing to the conscience of a woman! No. AH-453291.
"Well," said
Max Knipper. "How does it read? Elegant, no?" He was beaming at me.
"Your idea?"
"Sure!"
The ad was printed in a prominent spot in every Hamburg morning paper. They were laid out in the office of King Kong, the little room behind the stage. Besides Max, the stripper Baby Blue and old Father Concon were present. It was around noon on January 10,1969, a Friday. I had taken a night train and arrived in Hamburg a short while ago.
"In an hour, the Hamburg Evening News will be out," said Max. * 4 The ad's in that, too. You're just in time, Walta/i. My nose tells me tonight's the night, and my nose's never been wrong yet."
"What's with tonight?" I asked. "What's this all about anyway? Where is the boy's mother? She's not supposed to be in Germany anymore. The police have looked for her and never come up with anything."
"And that's just what's so good about it," said Max.
"I don't get it."
Tutti had called me die day before. Bertie had been with me, as he was so often these days, editing and filling in my first draft, over three hundred pages by now. "What's up, Tutti?" I asked.
"I just spoke to Max on the phone. He says you should take the night train to Hamburg."
"Max is in Hamburg?"
"Yeah. His pals called a few days ago, asked him to come and give them a hand. They got a problem, Walta/i, an' you know Max. He's got a good head on his shoulders."
"What sort of a problem?"
"Something to do with a murder. They're all nutty as fruitcakes. Max says be sure to come. He's had an idea. Will you go?"
"Of course!" I was beginning to feel excited. "Donnerwetter, Tutti! Your Max!"
"Yeah. My bull." She sounded dreamy. "A jewel, that's what he is. I'm telling you, any bitch who tries to take him away from me gets kicked in the ass and you know where! He loves me just as much as I love him. Ach, Waltaft, I'm so happy!"
That was the telephone conversation. I told Bertie I had to go to Hamburg and why, and he said he'd work on the manuscript while I was away. He had some time. And he had access to the apartment with Hem's key
The Traitor Blitz Page 60
