Self's Murder

by Bernhard Schlink

  My nose was smarting. I was frightened. I couldn’t think fast enough: Should I play along? Would that be cleverer? Was that cowardly? Was it some sort of betrayal? Was this and what it symbolized worth getting hurt or getting pneumonia? They grabbed hold of me and I stuttered out a “Heil Hitler.” The leader of the pack told me to say it louder and I said it louder, and when he again said, “Louder!” and they let go of me, I stood on the platform and shouted as loud as I could: “Heil Hitler!”

  Now they were laughing again and clapping. “Bravo, Granddad! Bravo!” But their leader shook his head silently until all the others fell silent and then said: “He didn’t raise his arm, though, did he? It doesn’t count without the arm.” They stared at him and then at me and then at him, and they understood before I did. They grabbed me by the arms and legs, hooted, and swung me back and forth—“one, two, three”—and as the metro came thundering into the station, they flung me over the railing into the canal. When I surfaced, I could still hear them hooting.

  The stone embankment on the near side was too steep, but I made it to the other side and managed to climb onto the street across a wooden landing. Two taxis didn’t stop, but the third driver had plastic covers on his seats, so twenty minutes later I was back at my hotel and under a hot shower.

  I hadn’t come to any great harm. The following morning, the side of my body that had hit the water was a single big bruise. I also had a runny nose and a slight fever. But my injury was elsewhere. I’d had a chance to make up for the wrongs I had done in the old days. And when does one ever get such a chance? But I’d done it wrong again.

  19

  Everything comes together

  The Sorbian Cooperative Bank is on the old market square in Cottbus. I went inside and took a look around until I ran the risk of being noticed. Then I went to the teller and got 91.50 marks for the fifty-dollar bill I’d just purchased across the street at the Deutsche Bank for 99.50 marks.

  It was like any other bank. The modern furnishings were of wood and steel, the walls covered with large abstract paintings. What was different was the life-sized wood relief of Hans Kleiner by the door, guarding the entrance. Also different was that Vera Soboda, the manager, had her desk right in the main hall, which was either a legacy of the Socialist past or state-of-the-art management and administration. If the woman sitting at the desk was Vera Soboda, then the Sorbian Cooperative Bank had a manager of middle years, somewhat plump, somewhat tough, more tractor driver on a Socialist farming cooperative than banker. But the staff going up to her from other desks interacted with her with such deference and speed that I concluded she must have given them the best of training.

  In this bank, too, there was a gate on the side, but I didn’t see any cars driving in or out, even though I lingered all day, frozen to the bone, in various stores, at an Eduscho café, and in doorways. I didn’t see any young men in dark suits, either. The abundant bank clientele was made up of local people: modest savers, some in anoraks and gray loafers of the kind Karl-Heinz Ulbrich wore, some in bright and shiny tracksuits, some in pants and jackets that looked as if the blue of the East German Youth Movement shirts were vying for a second career in West European fashion.

  The only remaining sign of East Germany was the people’s clothes. The stores belonged to the same chains as those in Mannheim and Heidelberg, Viernheim and Schwetzingen. I looked into side streets and saw more streets that had just been dug up, more houses that were being renovated, sometimes also a house in a state of utter ruin. On the other hand, there were fewer of the architectural sins of the sixties and seventies. The housing projects I had seen as the train headed toward the station were no worse than those in Waldhof or Boxberg. Everything was coming together.

  It rained in the afternoon. My nose was running and I felt feverish, so I got myself some medicine from a drugstore that turned my mucus membranes to parchment. But the people were different here: it wasn’t only that they were wearing different, shabbier clothes. They also had different, wearier faces. They were slower, more hesitant and careful. There was none of that familiar cheeriness and resolve in their expressions and gestures. They reminded me of the old days. I saw my reflection in a storefront, shabby in my old, wet raincoat, my face tired, and any exertion seemed a strain. Was I more suited to the East than the West?

  In the afternoon I managed to get hold of Georg in Strasbourg from a telephone booth outside the Sorbian Cooperative Bank. He had found a name: Paul Laban. The L was right, the dates were right, and as a professor at the University of Strasbourg and a renowned legal expert, Laban was a rich man. Furthermore, he had been offered a post at the University of Heidelberg at the very time at which the silent partner had requested information concerning a house or apartment in Heidelberg.

  “Are there any heirs?”

  “He didn’t have any children. I haven’t found out what became of his sister’s son and daughter, but I will.”

  The bank closed at four. At five the employees left. At six the manager left, too. I followed her to the streetcar. It was empty and the two of us sat alone—she in the second row, and I behind her in the seventh. After a few stops she got up, and on her way out she stopped next to me and said, “You might as well come along.”

  20

  Like those men of ours

  We walked in the rain through a residential area with old villas. Some of the houses had been restored to their former splendor. Plaques bore the names of the companies, law firms, and tax consultants that now occupied them. But in other villas the stucco was crumbling, the brickwork was exposed, windows and doors were rotting, and here and there a balcony or two were missing. Frau Soboda walked in silence, and I walked in silence beside her. I followed her into one of the shabby houses. The third floor had been divided into apartments. Frau Soboda unlocked the door to one and showed me into her living room.

  “It’s still warm,” she said, pointing to a large green tiled stove. “The fire’s just died down a bit. But it’ll be warmer in here in a minute.” She put in some more coals and closed the fire hatch.

  “I’m—”

  “I know, you’re with the police.”

  “How—”

  “You look just like those men of ours used to. I mean the men from the Firm. The Stasi. The way you came into the bank and looked around. The way you didn’t let the bank out of your sight all day. So one wouldn’t notice right away, but if one did it didn’t matter, as the game was up, anyway.” She eyed me. “You are from the West, and are older than those men of ours used to be. And yet …”

  We were still standing. “May I hang up my coat outside? I don’t want to get your rug wet.”

  She laughed. “Give it to me. That’s something those former men of ours wouldn’t have asked.” When she returned she offered me a chair, and when we were seated she said: “But I’m glad it’s all over.”

  I waited, but she was lost in thought. “Would you like to start from the beginning?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I didn’t notice anything for a long time. I think that’s why they let me run the bank. I learned my trade in the old East German days. I had no idea about the way banking is done in the West, and had to work my way into it slowly, and with difficulty.” She patted down the cover on the little table that stood between her chair and mine. “I really thought this was the chance of a lifetime. Many of the other East German savings banks were shut down and many of my colleagues were let go, and those who were allowed to stay had to go stand at the back of the line. As for me, I went from being bank teller to bank manager. For a while I was worried that the only reason was that they wanted an old employee of the bank to fire everyone else, so that none of you guys would have to get your fingers dirty. I need not tell you that this was how things were done more often than not. And yet nobody at our Sorbian bank got fired. So I had pulled the winning ticket, and I worked my fingers to the bone, until … until … my marriage fell apart.” She shook her head. “Not that it was much of a marriage. It wou
ld have fallen apart anyway. But perhaps it wouldn’t have happened a year ago, when I was studying and reading like a maniac, when I could see that I was making it, that everything I’d read was coming together, everything I’d learned, seen, and done right. Even though it was mostly out of sheer luck. Now I’m sure I could easily run any bank of similar size in West Germany.” She looked at me with pride. “But I wouldn’t be given such a bank, especially not now.”

  “If I had a bank, you’d be its manager,” I told her, to apologize for having thought when I first saw her that she looked like a tractor driver.

  “But you don’t.” She smiled. While she was talking I noticed the cleverness in her tough face. Now I also saw a touch of charm.

  “When did you notice what was going on?”

  “About six months ago. At first I noticed only that something was wrong. It took me a while to realize what it was. I’d have been glad to go straight to the police, but the lawyer I cautiously consulted wasn’t sure if I was actually allowed to go to the authorities. By all accounts, industrial law provides for the firing of a whistle-blower, even if an employer has done something he ought not to have done and the employee was right to blow the whistle. It wasn’t only losing my job that I was frightened of. You see”—her eyes challenged me—“I have a knack for landing on my feet. But what about my colleagues at the bank? There are many of us, perhaps too many, and I don’t think the bank will stay above water if everything comes to light.”

  The longer she talked the more I liked her. In the old days, I used to think that men were the realists and women the romantics. Nowadays I know it’s the other way around, and that pragmatic men and romantic women were just pretending, to themselves and to others. I also know that a pragmatic woman with a heart, and a romantic man with common sense, is a rare and wonderful thing. Vera Soboda was just such a woman.

  “How did you find all this out?”

  “Quite by chance, the way one does. It’s not as if one expects this sort of thing, or keeps an eye out for it. One of our customers insisted that she had deposited fifty marks a week earlier, on a day when she forgot to bring her savings book with her. Now she had brought her savings book in order to have her fifty-mark deposit entered, but our bank system had no record of it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I’ve known Frau Sellmann forever. She’s an old lady who I’m sure scrimps and saves all she can, and she is conscientious to a fault. She had her deposit slip with her, and though it’s not impossible to forge one, Frau Sellmann is no forger. So I entered the fifty marks in her savings book, and then in the evening I initiated a search through our system to see where her deposit might have ended up. Tanya, the teller who had signed the receipt, is just as conscientious as Frau Sellmann. I just cannot imagine her forgetting to deposit the money.”

  “Did you find the fifty marks?”

  “We have a system we use and a program that tracks every step of every transaction. But we can’t access it because it’s there to monitor us, and the whole idea is that we shouldn’t be able to manipulate it. But I’m very good with computers, so I tried to get into the program.”

  “And did you?”

  She laughed. “You’re on pins and needles.”

  I nodded. My fever was getting worse, and I had the feeling I couldn’t hold out much longer—just a little more, and during this time I’d have to find out all I could.

  “I got into the tracking program, and in fact it had registered the deposit of those fifty marks. But at the same time there was a deposit of thirty-five thousand marks to her account, more than Frau Sellmann with all her scrimping could have ever scraped together. The tracking program had recorded that the thirty-five thousand marks had not gone into Frau Sellmann’s real account but into a false account that had been set up under her name. As both payments had taken place at the same time, both the fifty marks and the thirty-five thousand marks had somehow gotten into her false account. When I looked further, I found that Frau Sellmann’s false account had a balance of one hundred twenty thousand marks, a good hundred thousand more than in her real account. I also found all the other accounts in which my poor Sorbian compatriots were made out to be wealthy men and women, not to mention the accounts that show poor, dead Sorbians to be alive and wealthy.”

  “The whole thing’s quite straightforward,” I said, hoping she would agree with me and elaborate further so that I might finally get some insight into all of this.

  “When you own a bank,” she said, “it isn’t all that difficult to launder money—in this way, and I imagine in other ways, too. Once the money is in the bank, all the bank has to do is invest it in a manner so that it gets lost. They’ve invested most of it in Russia.”

  “In their own enterprises.”

  “I believe so.” She looked at me. “What’s the next step? What will the upshot be when you arrest Welker and Samarin? What will happen to the Sorbian bank?”

  “I don’t know. In the old days I could have called and asked Nägelsbach, but he’s retired, and I’d be happy to transfer my money from the Badische Beamtenbank to the Sorbian Cooperative Bank, but it won’t be enough. It wouldn’t matter that I’m not part of the cooperative, would it? I’m also not an official. Schuler was a retired official, but he’s dead. Can you understand that? I still don’t understand why he’s dead.”

  She looked at me in alarm.

  I got up. “I’ve got to go. I don’t want to leave still owing you an explanation, but I’ve got to get to bed. I’m sick. I’m running a temperature. Some skinheads threw me into the Landwehr Canal yesterday, which in a way served me right, and today I stood outdoors all day in the rain and cold. The only reason my nose isn’t running is because I got some medicine, but now my head’s so heavy and numb that I’d rather not have a head at all. Not to mention that I feel cold.”

  My teeth were chattering.

  She got up. “Herr …”

  “Self.”

  “Herr Self, shall I call you a cab?”

  “It would be best if I could lie down on your sofa and you’d lie down with me till I warmed up again.”

  She didn’t lie down with me. But she set me up on her sofa, heaped all the comforters and woolen blankets she could find over me, gave me two aspirin, made me some grog, and placed her cool hand on my hot forehead till I fell asleep.

  21

  Childish faces

  When I woke up it was bright daylight. My suit was draped neatly over a chair and there was a note on the table: “I’ll try to be back by four. Hope you feel better.” I made some tea in the kitchen, took the cup to the sofa, and lay down again.

  I had regained all my senses. But my nose was runny, my throat was sore, and I felt so weak that I wanted nothing more than to doze all day and drowsily look out the window, watching the wind drive the gray clouds across the blue sky and rustle through the bare twigs of the plane tree. I wanted to listen to the rain and watch the raindrops running down the windowpanes. Not think about Schuler, whom I could have saved if I had not been too slow; not about the skinheads I’d let make a fool of me; and not about Karl-Heinz Ulbrich, whom I found touching even though I didn’t like him. But whenever I dozed off, it all came back: Ulbrich seeking my paternal acknowledgement and backing, the skinheads and my fear, Schuler staggering toward me with his attaché case. So I got up and sat by the tiled stove and thought about everything that Vera Soboda had told me. She was right; when you own a bank it’s not hard to launder money. The dirty money went into the false accounts of customers at the Sorbian Cooperative Bank, accounts that were run in a secret parallel system, and from there the money would be invested in companies that only showed losses and perhaps didn’t even exist. That way the customers were rid of money they didn’t even know they had, while the owners of the dirty money and the companies ended up with clean money. Frau Sellmann had a hundred thousand marks too much in her account; even if the idea wasn’t to deposit an extra hundred thousand marks in every illegitima
te account, but simply three or four times the amount that people had in their legitimate accounts, with a few thousand clients, millions upon millions of marks could be laundered.

  Schuler must have found out where dirty money was being kept. Why hadn’t he gone to the police? Why had he come to me? Because he didn’t want to destroy Welker, his former pupil and the son of his friend and patron?

  It was noon. I looked around the apartment. The kitchen area had once been part of the bathroom, and the living room was also her bedroom, the sofa her bed, and she had spent the night in the covered veranda. She also had an office with a desk, a computer, and a hammock. As the manager of a bank she ought to be able to afford more. What did she do with her money? Next to the desk were photographs of her with and without her husband, with and without a child, a girl with a high forehead and blond hair, as dainty as Frau Soboda was robust. Might the girl not be a daughter but a niece? I took a sheet of paper from her desk.

  Dear Frau Soboda,

  Thank you for everything you have done for me. I enjoyed staying at your place, even though I admit I am somewhat shaken that I might look like a man from the Stasi. I slept a long time, my temperature is almost gone, and I’m glad that my head is back on my shoulders.

  I’m not a policeman. I am a private investigator and, though it may be hard for you to believe, Herr Welker hired me: I am investigating a matter for him that I am quite certain is merely a pretext. But I do not know for what.

  I wish I knew what it was. I also hope to know more before I go to the police with what I know. I’ll inform you when I get to that point.

  Best regards,

  Gerhard Self

  I added my address and phone number. Then I called a taxi and headed for the train station. By late afternoon I was back in Berlin.

  I don’t know what devil possessed me. Instead of rebooking my flight and leaving immediately or discarding the ticket and taking the next train home, I settled in again at the hotel on Unter den Linden, went strolling through Berlin again, and ended up once more at the Hallesches Tor metro station. What was I looking for? I had also gone to the street where I grew up. The hydrant where I pumped some water with a large lever, just for fun, might well have been the same one where I had pumped water as a child. I wasn’t quite sure.