Self's Murder

by Bernhard Schlink

  “There are almost a hundred thousand marks here. I’ll account for every penny.”

  She handed me a little gray booklet. “I found it among the bills.”

  It was a passport from the Third Reich. I opened it and found a picture and the name Ursula Sara Brock, born October 10, 1911. A cursive J was stamped over it. It was clear that when it came to the money Schuler had left me a bequest. But why had he left me this passport? I leafed through it, turning it this way and that, and put it in my pocket.

  8

  Keep an eye out!

  On the way back I took the autobahn. I wanted to float along in the stream of cars without distractions, without having to pay too much attention to the road. I wanted to think.

  Who was Ursula Brock? If she were still alive she would be an old lady and could hardly have frightened Schuler to death. Would Samarin or his people have frightened him to death? Among the many unanswered questions was why they wouldn’t have taken the money from him right away. Would Welker, who only later laundered money, if he was laundering money at all … No, even if I could prove that Welker was laundering money now, it wouldn’t make sense that he would have frightened Schuler to death. Unless, that is, he already knew he was going to inherit Samarin’s money-laundering enterprise and was afraid of Schuler’s insatiable inquisitiveness.

  I drove in the right lane, among trucks, elderly couples in old Fords and Opels, Poles in rattling, smoking wrecks, and diehard communists in Trabants. When an exhaust pipe in front of me stank too much I switched to the left lane and drove past the trucks, Poles, and communists until I found an elderly couple behind whom I pulled in again. In one car a plastic dog was enthroned in the back window, shaking his head from side to side and up and down with insight and sorrow.

  What did I have to go on? A dark Saab on the Schlossplatz in Schwetzingen and Vera Soboda’s replacement by Karl-Heinz Ulbrich—at the end of the day, this was so little that I asked myself if I really had any proof against Welker. Was I envious of his wealth, his bank, his house, his children? The ease with which he had achieved everything? The ease with which he sauntered through life? The ability to remain untouched by both the evil that befell him and the evil he wrought? Was it a case of age envying youth, the war and postwar generation envying the generation of the economic miracle, the guilty envying the innocent? Was I being gnawed at by his having shot Samarin and having put Nägelsbach in danger without batting an eye? Was it that I didn’t feel so innocent and uninvolved?

  I spent the night in Nuremberg. The following morning I set out early and was in Schwetzingen by eleven. Until seven I sat around in various cafés, keeping my eye on the bank. A few cars, a few clients on foot, a few employees who sat down on a bench on the square at lunchtime and who at six said their good-byes in front of the gate—that was all.

  As I sat in my office that evening, Brigitte called and asked if my trip had been a success. Then she asked: “Does this mean your case has come to an end?”

  “Almost.”

  While I was jotting down what I knew and didn’t know, what still had to be done and still might be done, there was a knock at the door. It was Georg.

  “I happened to be walking by and saw you at your desk,” he said. “Do you have a moment?”

  He had been riding his bike and now cleaned his glasses. Then he sat down opposite me in the cone of the desk lamp. He eyed the half-empty wine bottle. “You’re drinking too much, Uncle Gerhard.”

  I poured myself another glass and made him some tea.

  “There must be a file at the Restitution Office,” he said. “The nephew’s son who emigrated to London and died there in the 1950s must have put in a claim after the war for the restitution of the family fortune. The Nazis wrecked and ravaged his home so completely that his parents killed themselves. Maybe the son knew something and mentioned it.”

  I needed a few moments to see where he was heading. “You’re talking about the silent partnership? Nobody here’s interested in that anymore. Nobody was ever really interested in it; my client wasn’t, and I wasn’t. It was just that it took me a long time to realize what it was a pretext for.”

  But Georg was on a roll. “I looked further into the matter. In the fifties, restitutions were a big thing, and there was one case after another. Lots of minor cases, but also really major ones. Jews who’d been forced to sell factories, department stores, or land for next to nothing, who either wanted their property back or compensation. Don’t you remember all that?”

  Of course I remembered. Particularly the expropriations of Jews. There had been a naive Jew who didn’t want to sell, and when his business partner extorted him he turned to the public prosecutor’s office. When I started as a public prosecutor in 1942, this incident already lay some time back but still made for a good joke.

  “Aren’t you interested in what happened?” Georg asked.

  “Why would I be?”

  “Why would you be? I want to know,” Georg said, staring at me obstinately. “I’ve tracked down the silent partner. I know what kind of guy he was. He was conservative and liked to listen to music, drink wine, and smoke Havanas. He’d been awarded a pile of medals, made a fortune providing expert legal advice to the nobility, and was a modest man who invested all his money for his niece and nephew. As far as I’m concerned he’s alive and kicking.”

  “Georg—”

  “He’s dead, I know. It’s just a way of putting it. But I find Laban interesting enough to want to know everything. What are you paying me, by the way, for the research I’ve done up to now?”

  “I was thinking a thousand plus expenses. Speaking of which …” I wrote him a check for two thousand marks.

  “Thanks. That’ll be enough for me to get to Berlin and dig through the files. I’ve still got a few days until my job begins. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  “Georg?”

  “Yes?”

  I looked at his slim face, his serious, alert eyes, his lips that were usually lightly parted as if he were surprised.

  “Keep an eye out for those skinheads.”

  He laughed. “I will, Uncle Gerhard.”

  “Don’t laugh. And keep an eye out for those other guys, too!”

  “I will.”

  He got up, still laughing, and left.

  9

  Blackouts

  On Monday I called Philipp, but he didn’t want to phone Dr. Armbrust on the doctor’s first day back from vacation.

  “You can’t imagine how hectic things are here,” he told me. “Give me till tomorrow, or better, Wednesday.”

  On Wednesday he dropped by my office.

  “As I don’t have much to report,” he said, “the least I could do was come and tell you in person. This Doctor Armbrust is a very nice fellow. It turns out he’s referred several patients to me over the years.”

  “Well?”

  “I asked him if Schuler had asthma or any allergies. The answer was no. The only things wrong with Schuler were his high blood pressure and heart problems. He was taking Ximovan for insomnia, which doesn’t make you drowsy the next day. He was taking an ACE inhibitor, Zentramin for his heart, and a diuretic. He was on Catapresan for blood pressure, a great medication as long as you don’t stop taking it abruptly—if you do, you run the risk of blackouts.”

  I recognized the medications. They were among those I’d taken from Schuler’s bathroom so Philipp could tell me about Schuler’s possible condition. I had even started reading the package inserts. “Blackouts?”

  “While driving, talking, doing anything that involves concentration,” Philip said. “That’s why we don’t prescribe it to people who are scatterbrained, confused, or forgetful. Armbrust described Schuler as a somewhat odorous but exceptionally alert elderly gentleman.”

  “That was my impression, too.”

  “That’s not to say that he might not have forgotten to take his pills. On the first day you stop, things are still fine. On the second day, too. But on the th
ird day, significant blackouts can occur. Think of it in these terms: on day one and day two he wouldn’t have felt all that well, thinking it might be the weather or the extra glass of beer he’d had the night before, or just that he was having a bad day, the way one sometimes does. On the third day, he wouldn’t have been in a state to think a lot.”

  “Do you think that’s what happened?”

  “What?”

  “That someone who takes a medication year after year might suddenly forget to take it.”

  Philipp threw up his hands. “If there’s anything you learn as a doctor, it’s that patients come in all shapes and sizes. Perhaps Schuler had had enough of his medications, or he’d been feeling so well taking them all that time that he felt he didn’t need them anymore, or he took the wrong pills by mistake.”

  “Or none of the above.”

  “Sorry, but that’s the way it is. Maybe Schuler took his pills day in and day out and simply drank too much beer in the evening. Don’t start going after false leads, Gerhard! And take care of your heart!”

  10

  Old poop

  Then Georg came back from Berlin. He had managed to keep out of the way of the skinheads, and of the others, too. And he had found the restitution file of Laban’s nephew.

  “Putting in a claim for restitution was almost as painful as losing the things one was putting in for,” Georg said. “Two silver candelabras, twelve silver knives, forks, soup and dessert spoons, twelve soup plates and twelve dinner plates, a sideboard, a leather sofa and armchairs; estimated value, date of purchase, length of use, receipts or other documents of proof of ownership, witness statements, explanations as to why the estimates are being furnished in this manner, why the property was relinquished, are there witnesses that the apartment was ransacked during Kristallnacht, were the losses reported to the police, to the insurance company—perhaps there was no other way, but this was terrible. And yet Laban’s nephew seemed to have done rather well in London. He had a place in Hampstead and a gallery that still exists and has a good name.”

  We were again sitting in my office, across from each other. Georg’s face was beaming with enthusiasm. He was proud of what he had discovered and wanted to stay the course, find out more, find out everything.

  “What more can there be to know?” I said.

  He looked at me as if I had asked a foolish question. “Things like where he got the money to live in London in style, what happened to his sister, what happened to his great-uncle’s estate? There was once a bust of Laban at the university in Strasbourg, which a professor I spoke with there is also trying to locate—imagine if I should come across it in a junk store in Strasbourg or somewhere in Alsace. One thing’s for sure: I know where I’m going for my next vacation.”

  I, too, knew where I had to go. It was raining as I drove to Emmertsgrund, but by the time I got there the wind had swept the clouds from the sky and the sun was shining. The view to the west was very clear, and I spotted the nuclear power plant in Philippsburg, the towers of the Speyer Cathedral, the telecommunications tower in the Luisenpark, and the Collini-Center—everything looking as if it had been painted with a fine brush. While I was gazing at the landscape the clouds were piling up over the mountains of the Haardt, preparing the next rain.

  Old Herr Weller sat in the same chair by the same window, as if he hadn’t moved an inch since my last visit. When I sat down he leaned forward until his nose was close to mine, his weak eyes scrutinizing my face. “You’re not a young man. You’re an old poop like me.”

  “The term is old pop.”

  “What did you really want when you came by last time?”

  I laid the fifty marks that he had given me for the war grave on the table.

  “Your son-in-law hired me to ascertain the identity of the silent partner who brought half a million to your bank around the turn of the century.”

  “You didn’t ask me about that.”

  “Would you have told me?”

  He didn’t shake his head, nor did he nod. “Why didn’t you ask me?”

  I could hardly tell him that by that time my investigations had been not for but against his son-in-law. “It was enough for me to find out if your generation of Weller and Welker could really have simply forgotten a silent partner.”

  “And?”

  “I never met Welker’s father.”

  He laughed, bleating like a goat. “You can bet your life he never forgot anything!”

  “Nor have you, Herr Weller. Why did you keep it a secret?”

  “Secret, secret … Did you finish my son-in-law’s case?”

  “It was Paul Laban, a professor in Strasbourg, the most famous and sought-after specialist of his day, childless, but solicitous for his niece and nephew and their children. It doesn’t look as if any of them enjoyed the legacy of his silent partnership.” I waited, but he waited, too. “Furthermore, it wasn’t the right time for Jews to enjoy their wealth in Germany.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “Sometimes it was better to get a little something and make it abroad than to lose everything,” I added.

  “Why are we old poops beating about the bush?” Herr Weller said. “The nephew’s son emigrated to England and wasn’t able to take anything out of Germany, so we saw to it that our London connections made sure he didn’t have to start up there empty-handed.”

  “That must have cost the nephew a pretty penny.”

  “The only thing that’s free is death.”

  I nodded. “So in your archives there must be a document from 1937 or 1938 in which the nephew relinquishes all rights and claims to the silent partnership. I can understand your preferring to keep that under wraps.”

  “I’m sure an old poop like you can understand. But today everyone likes dragging things like that out into the light and making a big song and dance about it. Because they don’t understand how things were back then.”

  “Not that it’s easy to understand.”

  He grew increasingly animated. “Not easy to understand? It wasn’t nice, it wasn’t pleasant! But what is so hard to understand about the old game, one side having what the other side wants? It’s the game of games. It’s what keeps finance, the economy, and politics going.”

  “But—”

  “But me no buts!” He banged his hand down on the arm rest. “See to your business and let others see to theirs. A bank has to keep its money together.”

  “Did the nephew’s son get in touch after the war?”

  “With us?”

  I didn’t answer, but waited.

  “He stayed in London after the war.”

  I continued to wait.

  “He refused to set foot on German soil ever again.”

  I continued waiting, and he laughed.

  “What a hardheaded old poop you are!” he said.

  I’d had enough of him. “The expression isn’t old poop, it’s old pop!”

  “Ha!” Again he banged his hand down on the armrest. “Wouldn’t you love it if things were still popping for you? But they’re not! You should at least be happy you can still poop.” He laughed his bleating goat’s laugh.

  “And?”

  “His lawyer made it clear to him that he wouldn’t get anything out of us. The inflation after World War I, Black Friday, the currency reform after World War II—even the biggest pile can be reduced to a few mouse droppings. And it’s not as if he hadn’t been well provided for. Not to mention the danger we exposed ourselves to; we could have ended up in a concentration camp.”

  “Was that his German lawyer?”

  He nodded and said casually, “Yes, back then we Germans still held together.”

  11

  Remorse?

  Yes, that’s how they were. For them the Third Reich, war, defeat, rebuilding, and the economic miracle were simply different circumstances under which they could conduct the same business: multiplying the money they owned or managed. It was true when they said that they hadn’t been
Nazis, that they had nothing against Jews, that they had stood firmly on constitutional ground. Everything for them was ground on which they stood and which made their enterprises bigger, richer, and more powerful. And yet they did this with the feeling that nothing else mattered. What good were governments, systems, ideas, people’s happiness or pain if the economy wasn’t flourishing? When there was no work and no bread?

  Korten had been like that. Korten, my friend, brother-in-law, and enemy. That was how he had devoted himself to the Rhineland Chemical Works during the war and how after the war he had turned it into what it is today. For Korten, as for so many others, power and the success of the enterprise had become synonymous with his own power and success. What he took out of the enterprise for himself, he took with the certainty that he was serving what was vital: the Rhineland Chemical Works, the economy, the people. Until he fell from a cliff in Trefeuntec. Until I pushed him off that cliff.

  I never regretted it. There have been times when I thought I ought to, because it was neither legally nor morally correct. But remorse never set in. Perhaps the other, older, harder morals that existed before those of today still prevail in our hearts.

  It is only in one’s dreams that an unmastered, unmasterable remnant remains. That night I dreamed that Korten and I were having an elegant meal at a table beneath a large old tree with overhanging branches. I don’t remember what we talked about. It was a casual, friendly conversation. I enjoyed it because I knew we couldn’t really expect to chat so warmly and easily after what had happened at Trefeuntec. Then I noticed how gloomy it was. At first I thought it was the dense foliage, but then I saw that the sky was stormy and dark, and I heard the wind rustling through the leaves. We talked as if everything was fine until the wind started tearing at us, rip ping away the tablecloth along with the plates and glasses, finally carrying off Korten on the chair on which he was sit ting: a mighty, enthroned Korten, his deep laughter echoing. I ran after him, trying to catch him, ran with outstretched arms, ran without the slightest hope of grabbing hold of him or his chair, ran so fast that my feet barely touched the ground. As I ran, Korten went on laughing. I knew he was laughing at me, but I didn’t know why, until I noticed that I had run beyond the edge of the cliff on which we had been sitting beneath the tree, that I was running on air, the sea far below me. My running came to an end, and I fell.