Julia had even said, according to Erika, that I had promised David he could occupy the spare room as long as he liked.
“Is that true?” I said no. She was triumphant. “There, I was sure of that anyway. I’d have been surprised if it was!” She asked how things were going between those two, and if Julia was still acting in such a crazy way. I said there was no news.
She sighed. “Oh, Christian! I wish I were with you now, I’d so much like to hold you in my arms and comfort you a little. Do you sometimes think of me?” I said I did. She whispered, “I often think of you. That was a wonderful day alone with you.” She laughed. “And a wonderful night, in case you were thinking I’d forgotten that!” She said I mustn’t let things get me down. Before hanging up, she sent me a kiss down the phone, “a very heartfelt kiss—I hope you can really feel it!”
I hung up and went back to the top floor. Ralf wasn’t there any more. I tried the clasps of the case, and they were locked. I couldn’t see any sign that they’d been picked. I called Ralf, looked in every room for him, but he’d obviously left the house.
I sat down at my desk, stared at Günsel’s round, sprawling handwriting, but I couldn’t take in her train of thought, not a word of it. After a few minutes I phoned Elke Lampert. I was afraid she wouldn’t be at home, but to my relief she picked up the phone. She sounded very cool when I said it was me. I asked if she had a little time to spare for me; I’d very much like to talk to her. The answer was no, she was sorry, but she was deep in her work.
I said, “So am I.” And then, “Elke, I’m going out of my mind here within my own four walls. I have to talk to someone. You’re the only human soul I can really talk to.”
We agreed to meet in the bar that Brauckmann had chosen for the skittles evenings designed to promote contact between staff members. She asked if that would be all right; her husband might be home on the dot for once, and she wouldn’t want him disturbing us. I said anywhere was all right just so long as I could talk to her.
Chapter 58
The landlady of the bar, who knew our faces from the skittles evenings, seemed to be wondering what we had to do with each other. She came over to the table in the back room where we had sat down, smiled—“Here without the skittles club today, then?”– and acted as if we were a pair of lovers who could count on her discretion. Elke obviously didn’t mind, and nor did I.
I didn’t mind the atmosphere in the bar either, although I wouldn’t have lingered there on any other day. At this time in the afternoon we had the back room to ourselves, the eight tables with their blue-check tablecloths, the creaking wicker chairs. There had been only two early drinkers standing at the counter in the bar itself, and a man at the corner table who kept his coat on as he consumed a plate of knackwurst and curly kale. Now and then we could hear the voices of the men in the bar involved in a ponderous argument. There was a sour smell of beer, and the sun was pale beyond the windows looking out on the yard.
I don’t remember ever having begged another human being to listen to me before. As a child I once beat up a smaller boy who always had a runny nose, and whose pushiness infuriated me, doing him so much damage that I was afraid the police would come to our house and arrest me at the supper table. But I didn’t confide my fears even to my best friend, an out-and-out young hooligan who would have understood and approved. I suffered in silence without telling anyone.
When my aunt Laura died four weeks too late, and I ended up in hospital because I hadn’t made sensible use of her legacy, I had also felt I couldn’t bear to stay within the four pale green walls surrounding me. I thought I’d go crazy, I seemed to be at the mercy of a malicious Fate playing cat-and-mouse with me. But when my mother came to see me on the evening after my accident, and tried to comfort me, I smiled and said oh, it wasn’t too bad. When she had gone, and night was falling, I broke out in a sweat and ground my teeth. But I didn’t call for help. I kept quiet.
I must be in a bad way. I don’t know why I felt almost as if Elke were my last hope. Perhaps I was relying on her sense that she owed me something. And perhaps I thought I could safely bare my soul to her, since she herself had unashamedly told me her own troubles. I don’t know whether I was expecting her to give me advice that would instantly dispel my misery, but I must have had some such vague idea.
After the landlady had taken our order, nodding and smiling in a confidential manner, as if she were ready to give us the key to an upstairs room if we wanted, I asked Elke how she was.
“I’m all right, thank you. But you don’t seem to be, not at all.”
I nodded. She said, “I’m sorry, Christian. But I did tell you what would happen. And if you’re expecting sympathy or consolation from me now, I’ll have to disillusion you. I can’t feel any sympathy for you. And I have no intention of consoling you either. You failed to take the bend in the road and now you’ve driven into the wall. But it was your own fault.”
I ought to have buried my hopes as soon as I heard her say that. I should have looked for a reasonably dignified reason to leave this depressing bar. But I was beside myself. All I feared now was that Elke would cut this conversation short and walk out.
“Won’t you at least listen to me?”
“Yes, of course, or I wouldn’t have come.”
I said that there was probably no point in discussing the way I’d acted at the staff meeting. I only wanted to tell her that I had stuck to my point not because I was self-opinionated, but for the opposite reason: I’d been hoping that my obstinacy would annoy some of those who hadn’t yet made up their minds and influence them in Manni’s favour. I’d expected to lose, I had been sure that the vote would go against excluding the boy.
“Do you really believe that? Are you trying to cobble together excuses for yourself in retrospect?”
“Please, Elke! Let me at least finish.”
She picked up her handbag and lit a cigarette.
I said I wasn’t trying to excuse myself. The outcome of the meeting was a disaster, and I couldn’t and wouldn’t deny my own part in it. But I also wanted her to know that I’d probably have behaved differently all along if I hadn’t been in a situation that was preying badly on my mind. It was a situation that shamed me just as much as Manni’s exclusion, but I wouldn’t conceal it from her. I wanted her to understand me.
She blew smoke into the air and looked at me in silence.
I told her about the guest in my house, the man whose cultural mission I had once mentioned to her already in passing. I said this Georgian, whom I had taken into my home in good faith, turned out to be a nationalist and a racist. He had made contact behind my back with sinister figures of the extreme political right, he’d even intoxicated my son with his ideas and turned him against me. This man had aroused my instinctive dislike of nationalism so much that I had simply freaked out when I saw Manni’s graffiti. I’d been so obsessed that I overreacted and couldn’t find a way out.
She asked, “Why haven’t you told this man to leave?”
I did not reply for a while. Then I said, “Because he’s cast a spell over my wife as well. She’s developed a fondness for him. And I can’t open her eyes because I’m afraid such a disappointment would hurt her very much.”
The landlady brought our coffee and schnapps. “Here you are, something to cheer you up. Just call if you need anything else!”
Elke drank her schnapps without raising her glass to me. Then she asked, “What do you mean, a fondness?”
I had already opened the way into my house for Herr Hochgeschurz. One more observer made no difference. Why not let Elke look into my bedroom as well?
I shrugged my shoulders and looked at her in silence.
She asked, “Are you saying that your wife is being unfaithful to you with this man?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t caught them at it yet. But there are some indications.” I drained my schnapps. “For instance, she went on a trip out of the city with him, and then they made an excuse to stay away ove
rnight.”
“That’s not evidence.”
“No. I’m groping in the dark. But maybe now you can understand why I sometimes feel I’m going mad.”
She rose to her feet. “Would you like another schnapps too?”
“Yes, one more.”
She went to the door of the bar and placed the order. After sitting down again she was silent, playing with her lighter.
I don’t know why I still wouldn’t give up hope that she, the only human being I could talk to, would at least say an understanding word. But perhaps I was also driven by a perverse pleasure in stripping myself to the bone, an irresistible impulse to reveal everything that weighed on my mind and put me to shame. Perhaps I expected that I could break down her reserve in this way after all, at whatever cost.
I said, “That’s not all. The man has turned my life upside down so badly that I didn’t just go to pieces at school.” I cleared my throat, and then I said, “He brought me to the point where I was unfaithful to my wife. With her best friend.”
She looked at me incredulously. I said I could see exactly why I’d committed this indiscretion. Really I’d always rather disliked the friend, and I had always avoided her on her earlier visits to us. But this time we’d got involved. “It was a cheap act of revenge, can you understand that?” Julia, I said, had been away with our guest, she had deceived me, not letting me know until after they left that they were going to stay away overnight. I’d been alone in the house with her friend. She had made advances to me, perhaps to console me. And I had used the opportunity to avenge myself on Julia.
The landlady brought our schnapps. “You don’t need to get up and come out—I’ll hear if you call me, I’m just next door.” She smiled understandingly. “I’ll make sure no one disturbs you.”
I sipped my schnapps. Elke didn’t touch her own glass. “Or maybe it simply happened because I felt lonely. Abandoned. Deceived. Anyway, it would never have gone so far if I hadn’t taken that man into my house. Do you understand how I feel? It’s as if he is intentionally undermining my life. Not just trying to take my wife away from me, but driving me to throw all my principles overboard. Making me behave like a total idiot. Like a berserker who won’t shrink from anything.”
She reached for her cigarettes, lit one, drew on it twice and stubbed it out again. “Why would he be interested in undermining your life?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged my shoulders. “There’s no good reason why he should.”
“But it’s his fault that you had that boy thrown out of the school? And it’s his fault that you betrayed your wife with her best friend?”
I shook my head. “Yes, I know it may sound as if I’m trying to make excuses for myself again. I’m sorry, but I can’t see it any other way. I would never, never have done what I did if the man hadn’t plagued me like that. In a subtle, single-minded way. I could give you dozens of examples, but I don’t want to unload all this on you. I think you can understand me anyway. You know what I’m like.”
She shook her head. “No, my dear. Obviously I don’t know what you’re like, or at least I didn’t. I think I do understand you now. But not in the way you want me to.”
She said I was trying to pretend to both of us, her and myself. So I said I didn’t want Manni excluded from school? Then why on earth hadn’t I said so and defended the boy? And I’d always disliked my wife’s friend, had I? Then why didn’t I keep my hands off her? No, no, my dear, she said. I hadn’t wanted to withdraw my demands at school because I couldn’t have reconciled that with my masculine arrogance. And I’d gone to bed with my wife’s friend because she happened to be available, and spending the night with her was presumably more fun than lying in bed alone, wondering if there could really be a man more attractive than me somewhere.
None of this, she queried, would have happened but for that man? Was I really going to tell her and myself something so ridiculous? I had made my guest into a phantom figure who could be held responsible for my mistakes. There was no good reason, I’d said so myself, for him to do me any harm. Couldn’t I see how grotesque it was to claim that he was trying to destroy my life?
“No, my dear, it won’t do.” She drained her schnapps and put the glass down with a sharp little sound. “Do you want to know the truth? You’re disgustingly self-obsessed, Christian. You’re a classic example of macho man.”
She rose to her feet. “If you go on like this you’ll soon be grieving for the loss of your wife, the way you’re sorry now about sacrificing that boy to your lousy principles. Well, take care, Christian.”
She nodded to me and went out.
Chapter 59
I didn’t get home until nearly eight. I had driven from the bar to the Katharinenforst and spent almost three hours walking there, exploring small paths, clambering over wet, slippery leaves. The pale sun showed through the bare branches of the trees. There didn’t seem to be anyone but me walking in these woods.
Only when twilight began to fall did I drive back into the city, but I still didn’t go home. I went to the suburb where Lyra has its office. I left my car at the tram stop and walked to the apartment building where Dr Unger probably not only works but also lives and sleeps on the first floor. The way to the building leads past a kiosk in need of new paint, and some allotment gardens, and on the other side of the street there is a factory wall of dark-red bricks, many of them crumbling. It’s not far from the building to the city boundary, the first patches of meadowland and some sparse bushes.
It was clear to me that Ninoshvili could have seen me if, in order to keep his supposed appointment, he was already on the floor of Dr Unger’s office and happened to look through the window. Or he could meet me on my way back to the tram stop. But that didn’t bother me. I would even have welcomed it. However, I very much doubted whether Ninoshvili was going to Dr Unger’s office this evening at all.
I also doubted whether Julia was at the lawyers’ regular evening get-together at this hour. When she last went to one of those occasions she came home in a temper, because some loquacious character had been getting on everyone’s nerves all evening, and she hadn’t been to any of them at all since Ninoshvili’s arrival. As I got into my car at the tram stop I wondered whether to drive into the city, go to her alleged destination, and look in at the restaurant, which was called The Last Resort. If I had been misjudging Julia, I wouldn’t have minded her surprise and displeasure. But I didn’t want to embarrass her in front of her legal colleagues.
When I got home the house was empty. I sat down at my desk, with Günsel’s essay still lying on it, and switched on the reading lamp. After a while I got up, went to the window and looked out. It was dark now, the night sky had clouded over and there wasn’t a star to be seen. I sat down again and read Günsel’s essay to the end. She had taken great trouble to show why Herr von Briest, however stern he might be, was a good father. I gave her a high mark.
After reading two more essays, which gave me less satisfaction, I went to the window again. I wondered where Ralf might be. There was no one out in the dark street. The light over the Lohmüller family’s front door was off. Probably that dandified fellow and his flaxen-haired wife were sitting in front of the TV, and inquisitive Raffy was fast asleep in his bed.
I closed my eyes. After a while, the image that had been building up in my mind for the last few hours, although I had kept making grim efforts to suppress it, irresistibly forced itself upon me.
Dr Unger’s building, the way from there to the tram stop. Ninoshvili leaves the building, he stands in the doorway for a moment, as if unsure which way to turn, glances at the city boundary, now lying in darkness. Then he sets off towards the tram. He does not walk very fast, his shoulders are stooped, his head is bent. He passes the wire netting of the allotments. The pavement is only dimly lit by two street lamps outside the factory wall.
Ninoshvili approaches the kiosk; its counter is closed off by a large sheet of wood. Three or four dark figures emerge from the dark
ness behind the kiosk. Their faces can’t be made out; they wear knitted caps pulled right down over their eyebrows, and woollen scarves are wrapped around their mouths and noses. Ninoshvili casts them a sideways glance and quickens his pace slightly. He hasn’t passed the kiosk when he suddenly collapses and falls forwards. One of the figures has struck him a murderous blow on the back of the neck with a baseball bat.
Ninoshvili lands on his knees and is trying to get up when the next blow fells him to the ground. He buries his head in his arms, but they pull his arms apart and turn him on his back. The next blow hits him in the face, blood shoots from his nose. They haul him to his feet, one of them kicks him in the stomach and then again between the legs. The man with the baseball bat strikes at his thigh, the blow makes contact, the bone cracks. They drop Ninoshvili, swing back their heavily booted feet and kick him in the temples and the sides. One of them jumps on him and tramples on his ribcage.
Ninoshvili has stopped moving, he’s lost consciousness. The figures run away. They tear the caps off their heads, pull the scarves down and jump into a car waiting for them with its engine running. They have disappeared into the darkness when the tram with its yellow-lit windows drives up.
A fantasy. The spawn of an over-heated imagination. A nightmare not sent to haunt me by a malevolent Fate, but conjured up by me, all on my own.
I sat down at the desk again and tried to concentrate on the next essay. After five minutes I rose to my feet, went up to the top floor and into Ralf’s room. I glanced around and then began systematically searching his drawers.
In his desk drawer I found a street map of the city. The site of Dr Unger’s office was marked with a cross.
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