Until I realized that it was my decision whether I would interpret the ending as unjust and unsatisfactory and suffer because of it or decided that this, and only this, was the fitting ending. In either case it was my decision. Even Welker dead or Welker in prison, and a happy Karl-Heinz Ulbrich, and a Schuler who went on cultivating his files, and a Samarin who went on laundering money were not entirely just and satisfactory. I was the one who would have to decide. So I tried. I didn’t accept the end without question. But wasn’t there something fitting about Samarin, a warrior, being killed in action, and Schuler having died for the truth that lay hidden in his beloved archive? It could be arranged that Ulbrich wouldn’t have to stay in prison for too long. As for Welker? Brigitte and I could go to Costa Rica on vacation.
If the doctor allows it. He’s an old friend of Philipp’s and was a colleague of his in Mannheim before Philipp took over the department at the Speyerer Hof Clinic. The doctor shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders when I ask him about my condition and what I am to expect.
“What can I say, Herr Self? Your heart is worn out.”
Worn out. I’m quite aware that the operation wasn’t a success. Otherwise they would have told me. And I wouldn’t have been so tired. Sometimes I feel as if my tiredness is out to poison me.
I was happy when the taxi arrived.
A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, AUGUST 2009
Translation copyright © 2009 by Peter Constantine
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Switzerland as Selbs Mord by Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich, in 2001. Copyright © 2001 by Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Walter Popp for his consultation on the translation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schlink, Bernhard.
[Selbs Mord. English]
Self’s murder / Bernhard Schlink; translated from
the German by Peter Constantine.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-45668-7
I. Constantine, Peter, 1963–II. Title.
PT2680.L54S4513 2009
833′.914—dc22
2009002201
www.vintagebooks.com
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