The Sinner

by Petra Hammesfahr

  Father smiled at her and said: "How's our little sweetheart today?"

  Magdalena didn't reply. By this time she spoke to me often but seldom to Mother and never to him. Mother answered for her. "She's not well. How could she be anything else, in a house where no one obeys the Lord's commandments?"

  "You obey them, don't you?" said Father. He was still fuming. "But you must show me the commandment in question. I can't recall ever having read that the Lord commanded a child to burn a book. Book-burning was cultivated by the Inquisition and the Nazis. Strange company you keep!"

  Mother just looked at him. He nodded to himself, bowed his head and stared at the tabletop. "But to revert to this Saviour of yours," he said after a while. "Didn't he say `Unless you become like little children ...'? I think he said something of the kind. If you obey his words to the letter, don't just cherry-pick the ones that suit you. Children like to do something occasionally apart from crossing themselves. If we're going to have to part with one of ours - and we'll have to sooner or later, you know that as well as I do - I want the other to be as hale and hearty as possible. I should have listened to those doctors, then it would have been over long ago. Then you could be performing your daft antics in the graveyard."

  I thought my heart had stopped beating. I knew exactly what he meant, and Magdalena knew it too - she wasn't stupid. Her frequent visits to the hospital had taught her a lot about her illness and other things. She knew a great deal more than I did. She couldn't read or write or do sums, but she knew words like electrocardiogram, septal defect, insufficiency, aortic aneurysm, pathology and crematorium. What was more, she knew what they meant.

  She stared at Father, hugging her doll and fingering its thick plaits. She seemed about to say something. Her lips moved a couple of times, but no sound emerged. At last it dawned on me. She was mouthing a single word: Arsehole!

  I don't know if Father read her lips too. He drew a deep breath. Then he said, rather more softly: "Having made that decision, however, we should try to make her life as bearable as we can and give her a little pleasure, not spout pious platitudes the whole time. They're no use to her. I'm sure she would have enjoyed Alice in Wonderland too. Cora would surely have read some to her."

  "She must sleep now," Mother said. "She's had a tiring day." She lifted Magdalena out of the armchairs and carried her to the door. Father watched them go, shaking his head. Then he stared at the tabletop again. "That was my sin," he said softly. "Not to have denied myself for once and bided my time. I'd have done better to stick it in a mouse hole."

  He raised his head and looked at me. "We'd best go to bed, don't you think? It's your bedtime anyway, and I'm tired too."

  We went upstairs. Mother was still in the bathroom with Magdalena, washing her and brushing her teeth. Father went to their bedroom and fetched the things he would wear to work in the morning. I retired to our room to put on my nightie. When Mother and Magdalena came out of the bathroom I went in there to wash.

  Mother put Magdalena to bed and went downstairs to pray. Father came into the bathroom looking very depressed. He stood beside the basin, watching me wash my face and comb my hair.

  My hair was all tangled - I used to twist it around my finger when I had to kneel in front of the altar for too long. Father helped me to comb out the knots, then pillowed my head against his chest and held me tight. "I'm so sorry," he murmured. "I'm so terribly sorry."

  "Don't be sad about the book," I told him. "I'm not all that fond of reading. I like it better when you tell me about the old days. It's a long time since you told me about the railway and the old school and how they built the church."

  "I've told you far too much about that," he said. `Anything, rather than talk about today or yesterday."

  He clasped my head to his chest with one hand and stroked my back with the other. Then, quite suddenly, he pushed me away. Turning toward the washbasin, he said "Roll on the spring, when we're too busy working on the allotment to get any silly ideas."

  It had been a silly idea to assume that Margret had betrayed her. But although Margret could be relied on - she herself had something to lose, after all - that realization did not detract from Cora's fear, bewilderment and uncertainty.

  When Margret and the chief left the room, the man in the sports coat came in. On her own with him for a few minutes, she wished he would speak to her. Just a sentence or two, to dispel the dead feeling inside her head.

  Ever since she had regained consciousness after that brief blackout, it had been as dark and cramped in there as a coffin. Or a cellar with the lights out. She knew she had seen and felt something frightful, but whatever it was that had broken through the wall in her brain had withdrawn behind it again. Only the sensation remained - that and her father's voice, which seemed to haunt the darkness.

  She saw him sitting on the edge of her bed. He had done that night after night during the few weeks she spent at home after her return in November. She heard his imploring voice, suddenly so old and unsteady. "Speak to me, Cora. Don't be like her. You must talk to me - tell me what happened. Whatever you've done, I won't judge you. I'll never breathe a word about it, I promise. I don't have the right to judge you, nor does Mother. We each have something on our conscience. I'll tell you what I've done and Mother's done, then it'll be your turn. You must tell me, Cora. If you don't talk about it, it'll eat you up inside. What happened, Cora? What did you do?"

  Just two or three sentences from the man in the sports coat might have drowned Father's voice, but he merely looked at her with a mixture of sympathy and uncertainty. Perhaps he was waiting for her to speak first. When she remained silent he transferred his attention to the tape recorder. He removed the cassette and added it to the others that had accumulated in the course of the night.

  The cassette! "I'll wind it on a bit," the woman beside the lake had said and: "You'll never hear anything better."

  The words flashed through her mind like an electric shock and found an echo somewhere.

  "That's the best tune I've ever heard," said Magdalena.

  She was lying in bed holding a tiny cassette player connected to her ear by a thin lead. She chuckled to herself. Her head rocked to and fro - only her head, which was all she could move - in time to the tune she was humming: "Bohemian Rhapsody". "I love that number," she said. "Freddie Mercury! Some voice he's got, really terrific. I wish I could hear it good and loud, like in a disco, but for that we'd need a really big stereo system, and if Mother saw it, she'd pull the plug on us as well as turn off the water. Did you find the stopcock?"

  The chief had returned. "How are you feeling, Fran Bender?" he asked.

  Still with Magdalena, she replied: `Afraid not. I'll go and get a bucket of water from Grit, that'll do to wash with." Then, realizing what Grovian had asked her, she said quickly: "Fine, thanks."

  She felt sure he would start questioning her again. Then she remembered that his last question had remained unanswered: Where had she heard the names Frankie, Billy-Goat and Tiger? Where Frankie was concerned the answer was simple: down at the lake.

  Only the truth would do. Lies made everything worse, Mother had told her so again and again, and she'd always been right, that had now been proved once and for all. The Lord punished those who incurred his wrath. He deranged them, either in speech or in spirit.

  The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! I didn't know the man. I really didn't know him, neither his name nor his face. I've no idea why I had to kill him. I only know I had to do it.

  But the chief made no move to pursue the matter. Glancing at the man in the sports coat, he said something about them all being badly in need of sleep. He spoke in a tone of concern. As he said it she felt her limbs go leaden with fatigue. At the same time, she dreaded being left alone with the fragmentary memories that were imposing themselves on her - scouring her soul like dirty old cleaning rags. Everything inside her became stiff and hard. Bereft of the energy to protest, she could hardly rise from her chair.

/>   The chief sent for Berrenrath and his younger colleague to escort her out. Moments later she was lying on a narrow bed, almost as lifeless as Georg Frankenberg but unable to go to sleep.

  She wondered whether Margret had called Father yet. Probably not, at this hour of the night. There was no telephone in her parents' house. Anyone who wanted to give them an urgent message had to call the Adigars and ask them to go and get Father. And Margret would never get Grit Adigar out of bed in the middle of the night ...

  She felt like an open wound. She had never experienced such a sensation before, and now it was spreading. A yearning for the old days, when she used to perch on Magdalena's bed and tell her about the outside world. About the disco, with its frenzied music, flashing lights and young men. Magdalena's questions: "What's coke like? They say it's an incredible sensation. You feel everything much more intensely, especially sex. Have you tried it? What was it like? Go on, tell me."

  A yearning to kneel before the altar again. To fold her hands again. To pray once more to the Saviour to grant Magdalena another day of life and herself the gift of self-denial. Then she would go next door to Grit, who regularly asked her: "Well, Cora, finished all your chores for today?"

  Yes, not just for today but for all time.

  She had killed a man: Georg Frankenberg! Heard a tune: "Tiger's Song"! Told a story: Father's version of Alice in Wonderland. Invented a world of her own and some non-existent people: BillyGoat and Tiger.

  Worst of all, she could feel her mind disintegrating, becoming friable and steadily losing substance until, in the end, it could be crumbled between finger and thumb. It was nearly five o'clock in the morning when she fell asleep at last.

  Meantime, Rudolf Grovian was lying on the sofa in his living room. He had folded his arms behind his head and was staring up at the dark ceiling. He could hear her imploring voice: "Turn on the light again!"

  He had got home at three, his thoughts in turmoil, exhausted and rather depressed by the awareness that he had started something whose completion he would have to leave to others. "Help me, please!" He couldn't help her. All he could do was prove thatJohnny Guitar and Georg Frankenberg were one and the same person.

  Werner Hoss doubted this, and his arguments could not be so easily dismissed. They had listened to the two most important tapes - the first and the last - before calling it a day. Hoss argued in favour of the first: "It was that tune." That, he said, was the answer, and it wasn't negated by her ramblings on the last tape. They were simply two different things. You couldn't tell what was going on in the head of someone who had been browbeaten with the Bible for nineteen years and smashed by a crystal paw five years ago.

  Grovian had tossed and turned for so long that Mechthild had told him: "Rudi, do me a favour and bed down on the sofa. That way, at least I'll get some sleep."

  He had long ago weaned himself from discussing his job with her. Mechthild had her own idea of justice and the law She spent two afternoons a week working in a charity shop, handing out discarded overcoats and trousers to life's failures and other persons in need. As an unpaid volunteer, of course. In the old days, when he'd told her that one of life's failures had marched into a bank with a loaded gun in his hand, her usual response had been: "Oh, the poor fellow"

  "Did Marita get home safely?" he asked, partly for something to say and partly in the hope that she would ask him why he was home so late and what the trouble was. Somehow, he had an itch to hear her say: "Oh, the poor girl."

  "I suppose so," she said.

  "What did she tell you? She must have told you something. I mean, I heard her say something about a lawyer."

  "Rudi," she said in a plaintive drawl, "let's talk about it tomorrow Look at the time."

  "I won't get a chance tomorrow I want to know now"

  Mechthild sighed. "She wants a divorce."

  "What?" He didn't even bother to sit up with a jerk. It was just as he'd feared. "She doesn't know when she's well off."

  Mechthild heaved another sigh. "She isn't doing it for fun, Rudi, believe you me."

  "If you believe it, that's good enough for me," he said. "But you believe any old guff she tells you."

  "But she's right," said Mechthild, half-convinced. "Peter works too hard. She's always on her own. It's no kind of life for a young woman."

  "Why not? I think she has a great life. He works too hard, and she spends the money he earns like it's going out of fashion. It's better than having to kneel for hours in front of a crucifix."

  "Some comparison," said Mechthild. "What put that into your head?"

  "Never mind. Tell me something, do we possess a Bible?"

  "That's enough, Rudi! It's nearly half-past three." Mechthild turned over on her side.

  "Do we or don't we?" lie persisted.

  "In the living room," she said. "In the cupboard beside the door."

  So he went downstairs and, after turning out half the contents of the cupboard, came across a dog-eared edition with doodles in the margins. Evidently a relic of their daughter's schooldays, it was among her old schoolbooks. He lay down on the sofa and read the passage about the expulsion from Paradise. Then, remembering that an apple had been involved, he went so far as to surmise that Cora Bender's sole reason for taking some apples with her to the lake had been a wish to swim until Judgement Day.

  Her expulsion from Paradise meant expulsion from her fatherin-law's business and marriage to a man who had beaten her to a pulp and was quite unconcerned about how the police were treating her. When making his statement, Gereon Bender hadn't asked how his wife was or what would happen to her.

  Then he remembered a reference to Mary Magdalene. He read a few lines on the subject and felt even more depressed. Mary Magdalene had been a whore. That fact, coupled with Cora Bender's heroin-taking and needle-scarred forearms, formed a combination he didn't like at all.

  At half-past five he raided the refrigerator for the makings of a hearty breakfast and left a note for Mechthild on the kitchen table informing her that he would contrive to come home for lunch. It wouldn't take longer than that to deliver Cora Bender to the examining magistrate, he felt sure, and that was precisely what he intended to do - precisely what he should have done last night, when she displayed the first signs of mental confusion. It was unpardonable of him to have disobeyed his inner voice.

  He was back in his office by six. Werner Hoss turned up shortly afterwards. They collated the documentation for the DA, listened again to the tapes, especially the last one, discussed them for a while and came to no firm conclusion.

  "The tape from Frankenberg's cassette player," said Grovian, "has it been taken into safekeeping?"

  Hoss grinned. "Want to listen to it?"

  "No," lie replied, grinning too. "On the other hand, if it really was his own composition ..."

  Hoss dug out the tape from Forensics, and they listened to it briefly. It was just music, rock music of a rather wild and woolly kind. To Grovian's ears it sounded chaotic and monotonous, but if it had some bearing on the murder, only the last number on the tape could be relevant. They knew from Winfried Meilhofer that the machine had switched itself off only a few seconds after the killing.

  "We should try an experiment," suggested Hoss. "In other words, play her a sample and see if she can identify it straight off. I couldn't, not that kind of stuff"

  Grovian firmly shook his head. "If it comes out that we've played it to her, we can kiss the case goodbye."

  A copy of the autopsy report arrived shortly before nine. A total of seven stab wounds in positions that tallied with Cora Bender's account. One in the neck, one severing the carotid, and one through the larynx. The rest were comparatively superficial. Cause of death: aspiration. Georg Frankenberg had choked on his own blood before lie could bleed to death.

  The DA, who turned up not long afterwards, requested a thorough briefing.

  "Do you have a confession?" he asked.

  "We have a statement," said Grovian. He explained what he thoug
ht of it and mentioned the fainting fit. That couldn't be hushed up, nor did lie try to gloss over it. He described Cora's alternate spells of clarity and confusion and ended with Margret Rosch's account of her nightmares. "I'd like you to listen to this."

  At a sign from Grovian, Hoss started the tape recorder. The DA listened to Cora's voice with knitted brow Although he didn't pursue the subject of her fainting fit, his expression clearly conveyed what he thought: such things simply shouldn't happen. Having listened to the halting voice on the tape for a while, he muttered "Good God!" and tapped his forehead in a meaningful way. "Is she ...?"

  Werner Hoss shrugged. Grovian gave an emphatic shake of the head. The DA asked if they thought she was putting on an act.

  "No!" said Grovian. He couldn't resist a little sideswipe. "You wouldn't ask that question if you'd been there. These tapes should be listened to by people capable of interpreting them. I mean that. A transcript isn't good enough. She's carrying a lot of ballast around, that woman." He pointed to a few major features of her childhood, like her mother's religious fanaticism and her belief that her father's "thing" would rot off in due course.

  `And there's something else," he said. "We'll look into it tomorrow We don't have much to go on, just a few words, but we should at least make inquiries. A girl from Buchholz may have disappeared at the time in question. There may even be a corpse with broken ribs up there."

  The DA shrugged his shoulders. He skimmed through the witnesses' depositions and the autopsy report. Then he looked up and said: "We've got one corpse already, don't forget. It may not have any broken ribs, but this stuff is more than enough for me. It's rare for a person to remember so precisely where they stabbed someone."

  "What do you mean, precisely?" said Grovian. "She listed the points at which a stab wound can be fatal. Her aunt is a nurse. She lived with her for eighteen months, so she could have picked up a bit of medical knowledge."