David's Revenge

by Hans Werner Kettenbach

  “When was this?” Steguweit asked.

  I said we had parted at about nine. “I can even tell you just when I arrived at Herr Schumann’s. I looked at my watch because Herr Schumann asked if I knew how late it was. Not only can Herr Schumann confirm that time, so can a certain Frau Kiwitt.

  She was sitting on Herr Schumann’s sofa when I arrived, and she stayed there until I left again and drove home.”

  Steguweit made some notes. While he was still writing he asked, “What were you quarrelling about?”

  Julia said, “You don’t either of you have to answer that question.”

  “Why shouldn’t we?” I nodded at my son. “Ralf, perhaps you’ll tell Herr Steguweit what we were quarrelling about.”

  Ralf cleared his throat. “About Mount Elbrus.”

  Steguweit looked up. “About what?”

  I said, “It’s the highest mountain in the Caucasus. On 21 August 1942 an advance party of the first German Mountain Division planted the Nazi fag on it. And it’s my son’s opinion that it would still be flying there if further supplies had arrived from Army Group A, but they didn’t. Because of treachery, you understand.”

  Herr Steguweit stroked his chin. Then he looked at Ralf. “And did you go to Herr Schumann?”

  Ralf said, “No.” He cleared his throat again. Julia glanced sideways at him. He said. “I just… I just walked round the block, and then I came home and went to bed.”

  Julia stood up. “I really think that will do. At the time of the attack, my husband and my son were together at home. That ought to be clear by now.”

  I don’t know if she just wanted to act the lawyer at this point or put an end to this interrogation for some entirely different reason. I’m not sure if she had accepted my alibi for Ralf. Maybe she was afraid that our son could lose his nerve and get muddled.

  Herr Steguweit said, “Forgive me, Dr Kestner, but I have another question for your husband.” Julia folded her arms. Steguweit leafed through his notebook and then looked at me. “You said that shortly after your son walked out of the house you drove to Herr Schumann’s because you thought your son was there.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But he couldn’t have reached Herr Schumann before you, could he?”

  I smiled. “My son has a moped. And sometimes he goes faster on it than I do in my car.”

  “I see.” Steguweit nodded. Then he asked, “So you heard your son ride away on the moped?”

  The man was no fool. I almost said, “That’s right.” But I smiled at Herr Steguweit and said, “No, he told you just now that he only walked round the block. Walked, you understand? I thought he had ridden off to Herr Schumann’s place on his moped, but I was wrong. I was very upset, as I’m sure you will understand.”

  Steguweit nodded. Julia said, “I’m sorry, but that really ought to be enough. We would like to eat our evening meal, if you don’t mind.”

  Herr Steguweit put his notebook away and rose to his feet. “Thank you for being so helpful. If there should be any more questions I’ll let you know.” He smiled. “And I ask for your understanding. But in all probability this is a case of attempted murder, and if Herr Ninoshvili is unlucky, it will in fact be a murder case.”

  Chapter 67

  Delayed intracranial bleeding can sometimes be quite late in occurring. You think the patient is over the worst, and then it suddenly happens. A damaged blood vessel tears, the cranial cavity fills with blood, increasing pressure puts a strain on the brain and can do incurable damage.

  I’ve talked to Wolfgang Zahn, who works as a surgeon at the University Hospital. He told me about a case in his own experience there. A woman whose head had struck the windscreen in a car accident had recovered relatively well from the aftermath, and was no longer showing symptoms that gave any particular cause for concern. But a full three weeks after the accident, she suffered life-threatening intracranial bleeding.

  I didn’t ask Wolfgang Zahn what they were able to do for the woman, and what happened to her. They probably wheeled the patient straight into the operating theatre, late in the evening or in the middle of the night, opened her skull, got the blood out by suction, and closed up the leaking vessel. Perhaps she survived. Or perhaps she’s in a wheelchair, paralysed down one side, able to communicate only by babbling.

  Ninoshvili is improving. He’s improved so much that they’ve been able to move him to an ordinary ward, a room with three beds and a shower cubicle. The walls of the ward are painted pale green. The insurance Julia took out for him pays only for basic care. Julia wanted him moved to a private room, but he refused. Perhaps he’s still slightly confused. He said he didn’t want to be a burden on her.

  I visited him this afternoon. They’ve given him the bed under the two tall, narrow windows, the bed with a view of the garden. In the first bed by the door there’s a young man who had to have one of his legs amputated below the knee after a motorbike accident, and who seldom opens his eyes; in the middle bed there’s an old man with a fracture of the neck of the femur. He keeps muttering to himself. Ninoshvili opened his eyes when I went up to the bed, raised his hand, smiled, and said in a clear voice, “My friend!”

  His head is still swathed in bandages, his right leg is in plaster, with his long toes sticking out. The swellings on his face have gone down, but the skin is still bruised green and yellow; his eyes are bloodshot. They have also bandaged his right wrist now; perhaps it took a blow when he was trying to protect his head.

  I asked how he was feeling. He said, “Fine.” He’s being very well looked after, he said, all sorts of medicine, various doctors, and the nurses take good care of him too. He smiled, pointed to the crucifix above the door. The senior nursing nun had even asked him if he’d like a priest to visit. As a guest whose own country was at war, he knew how lucky he was. “A wonderful country, your fatherland, my friend! Even in terrible trouble you feel life is worth living here.”

  I asked if talking didn’t tire him too much, and said we could easily sit together in silence. No, no, he was glad he could talk to me. Indeed, he couldn’t find words enough to say how close he felt to both me and Julia. He didn’t have to tell me what he owed me, I knew that very well myself. As for Julia, she had shown such devotion… well, she had cared for him like a sister caring for her only brother.

  I nodded. He said he would never forget this. Oh, and a Georgian diplomat had visited him too, a gentleman with the rank of embassy counsellor who came specially here from the embassy bringing him good wishes from the Ministry of Culture. The diplomatic mission had also given Matassi the news, so we didn’t need to worry about that any more.

  I asked him how Matassi was. He said very well, considering. Of course she had the same difficulties as everyone in Tbilisi, various kinds of trouble, supplies of food and fuel for heating were very unreliable.

  The door opened, and a small, round nun pushed a trolley of instruments into the room and went quickly from bed to bed. She tapped the young man on the cheek, he opened his eyes and she handed him a thermometer. The old man’s muttering grew louder. The nun said, “Now, now, no grumbling!” She put her hand inside the old man’s shirt and stuck a thermometer under his armpit, raised a finger. “Hold it nice and tight!” Smiling, Ninoshvili put out his hand; the nun said, “Under the arm will do today,” and gave him a thermometer too. She took hold of the handle of her trolley, wheeled it out, and closed the door behind her.

  Ninoshvili said, “Sister Bonifatia—very capable.” He pushed the thermometer under his armpit, and closed his eyes. His chest was rising and falling only very slightly. He said nothing. After a while his eyelids began to twitch, and now and then I could see the bloodshot rim of his eyeballs through the crack. I asked, “David?” He didn’t reply.

  I felt hot. The intracranial bleeding—perhaps he had lost consciousness. I was about to stand up and call for Sister Bonifatia when he suddenly murmured. “A Herr Hochgeschurz was here too.” He opened his eyes and smiled. “You k
now him.”

  He said Hochgeschurz had asked him a number of questions. Did he have any idea who might have attacked him? Or could he think of any reason why he had been attacked? He smiled. “Stupid questions.”

  After a short pause, I said that it was important for whoever did it to be arrested. He surely felt a great interest in that himself.

  He asked, “But what was I supposed to tell Herr Hochgeschurz? What can I tell him, my friend?”

  He closed his eyes and said no more. I was afraid his eyelids would start fluttering again, but he lay there as peacefully as if he had fallen into a gentle sleep. After a while he began talking in Georgian. He declaimed two or three resounding, rhythmic sentences, then fell silent again. A shiver ran through me.

  Suddenly he spoke in a clear voice. “A hero shows his greatest courage not in killing his defeated enemy, but in showing him mercy at the right moment.”

  I cleared my throat. “David?”

  He opened his eyes and smiled. “‘The Man in the Panther’s Skin’. You know, Shota Rustaveli’s immortal poem. I was quoting from it.”

  He kept his dark, bloodshot eyes fixed on me. I said, “Yes, I understand. But I don’t know what you meant by quoting those lines.”

  He smiled. “Those people didn’t kill me after all. They injured me badly, but they left me alive. They showed mercy at the right moment. Or don’t you think one can put it like that?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t. Those were no heroes who defeated you.” I hesitated, then I said, “I’d call them criminals.”

  “Yes, of course. You’re right again. I didn’t use the quotation properly. My head’s a little confused. But it’s a fine quotation. Very wise.”

  I took the opportunity of saying goodbye when Sister Bonifatia wheeled her trolley in again. He held my hand firmly and looked at me. “I will not forget what I owe you, my friend. I will never forget it.”

  Chapter 68

  Motherly Frau Fasold was the first to speak to me, and it was well meant, unlike the questions and consoling remarks still ahead of me. Frau Fasold joined me when I was going to the staff room in the long break. She gave me a friendly nod and walked a couple of steps beside me before saying,

  “I hope you won’t take that horrible piece in the paper too hard.” I knew what she meant at once, but I pretended not to understand her.

  I’d read the article in the morning; it leaped to my eye as I was looking through the local paper. At the head of the page, above the article, was a large photograph showing three youths with shaven heads, their mouths wide open, their hands raised to the camera in the Hitler salute. I had put the paper aside after reading it and hoped that Julia wouldn’t find the time to look at the article before going to the courthouse.

  The author, one of the editorial team who regularly writes as the paper’s expert on questions concerning Internal Security, has ranged far and wide. He describes, among other things, the subversive activities of the American businessman Gary Rex Lauck of Lincoln, Nebraska, in feeding propaganda material to German right-wing extremists, for instance in the German-language journal National Socialist Battlecry and the video of the film The Eternal Jew. I skimmed the life history of Lauck, who according to his own account remains unmarried because as a National Socialist he has “neither the time nor the money for women”, and the inflammatory diatribes that he distributes against “those of foreign races who have insidiously made their way into this country”, by which he means Germany.

  I found the passage that I’d seen coming as soon as I read the sub-title of the article (A Case Giving the Authorities Cause for Concern). The author says that not long ago a writer of note from Tbilisi, who was visiting the Federal Republic on a mission from the Georgian government, was beaten up and severely injured early in the evening in a busy street. His attackers, who the doctors say must have used baseball bats, got away unidentified. The Georgian writer, said the paper, was still hovering between life and death.

  The author asks: “After the incidents at Mölln and Solingen, do bloodthirsty slogans of the kind disseminated by Gary R. Lauck lead to murder and violence in our city too?” How far and how disturbingly the confusion has progressed, says the article, not least in young minds, can be assessed in relation to the case of this foreign writer. According to reliable information from police circles, those suspected of the crime included some adolescents of—as may be said without reservation here—the most respected local families, among them the son of a highly regarded teacher.

  This teacher, the article continues, has only just shown himself uncompromising in opposing an outbreak of rightwing radicalism at his school. He has also been working with great commitment for years to instil liberal principles into his students—“In vain? Does an insidious influence like that of Gary R. Lauck prove stronger?”

  I would like to know whether the editorial staff of the paper, led by Herr Heuberger, inspired this article. I wouldn’t rule it out, because what is proposed here is only a degeneration of nationalist ideas, and of course our friend with the Nazi sympathies would deny having anything in common with the gang of muggers.

  I even suspected that Tassilo Huber, in his pitiless opposition to right-wing radicals, might have cooperated with Internal Security again to win favour with the public. This was indeed my son they were talking about, the son of a friend of Tassilo’s student days, but if he went astray then ultimately his father had to assume responsibility, friendship or no friendship. Where would we be if we suppressed the truth?

  And after all, what does it matter who inspired this article and why? What counts is the plain fact that I have now been pilloried in black and white.

  Frau Fasold said she was sorry that she had made that silly joke at our first argument over Manni Wallmeroth’s graffiti, and suggested that perhaps I was in a bad mood because of a little trouble in my marriage. She understood me much better now—“Believe me, Herr Kestner, I have three children myself, after all, and they haven’t always brought me joy, God knows. I understand you very well, and I’m so sorry.”

  She stayed with me all through the break period, talking to me, and protecting me with her dark-toned voice, as if she could hear the vultures calling already and was trying to shield me. I saw the vultures, they were preening their feathers, stalking around me on horny claws, casting yellow glances at me out of the corners of their eyes. Brauckmann, who was in low-voiced conversation with three others, grinning now and then, sensed at some point that I was staring at him. He screwed up his face and raised a hand in greeting.

  Elke Lampert took no notice of me. She left the staff room just before the end of break.

  Chapter 69

  Small insincerities, little white lies don’t have to ruin a marriage. I’d even say they’re necessary to keep people living together. Elke Lampert would certainly have been better off if she had believed her husband and hadn’t stolen into the car park to find him groaning in the act of love. And what good would it do Julia and me if I confessed to having sex with her friend Erika just because she’d washed the perfume off her plump body?

  However, deceptions intended to create a permanent basis for married life are dangerous. They can’t be suppressed; even if you’d like to correct them you can’t, not without bringing the whole structure crashing down.

  I remember a film in which a man who couldn’t bear to go on living in such circumstances escaped them by running away, living in a distant city under a new identity. I forget the title of the film and the actors’ names, but anyway it was set in the USA—where else? Given the demographic conditions of Germany, there wouldn’t be much chance of a new beginning of that kind here.

  The man started a business and a new family under his false name, made a lot of money, lived for many years happy and content with a loving wife and well-brought-up children. But then his past caught up with him.

  I don’t remember just how it happened, but it was nothing to do with an agent emerging from the shadows to remind h
im of an obligation from the distant past. Nor had the man in the film done anything in his first life so serious that it could have branded him a criminal. But his loving wife couldn’t get over the deception on which he had built their life together, and the children were too well brought-up to forgive him either. They all turned away from their husband and father, and only the youngest child showed any sign of sympathy, saying, “Daddy, I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry!” or something like that.

  The film didn’t have a happy ending, and I remember that it affected me deeply at the time. I had to suppress a sob when, at the close, the man boarded a train to take him away again to yet another city far away. He pressed his forehead to the window pane and looked out into the dark as the train rushed through the night.

  This evening, when Ralf had gone out “for a breath of air” after supper, I helped Julia clear away the dishes. I waited until, with a sigh, she had sat down in the living room. Only then did I take the newspaper out of the magazine rack. I found the article and handed it to her, opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. She read the article in silence, put the paper down and looked at me.

  I sat down beside her and sipped the wine. “What do you think of it?”

  “It’s absolutely scandalous. Very likely we wouldn’t be able to pin anything on the journalist, but I’m going to raise all hell with Hochgeschurz’s boss. And Steguweit’s. I shall ask them how the press came by such information.” She picked up her glass and drank.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Or do you think it’s better to ignore something like this?” she asked.

  “No, of course not.” I drank some wine. “I’m just not sure if we’d get anywhere.”

  She put her glass down and sat in silence for a while. Then she said, “If you have any reason for keeping quiet about this thing, you’d better tell me.”