Me: “Ma, what are you doing?”
Ma: “Learning to swim.”
After an hour of that she runs out into the road, turns off toward the promenade, going faster and faster, an outsize version of Sebastian Vettel, runs to the landing stage by the ferry boathouse, cuts in past the ferryman and jumps into the lake like a bomb, throwing up water to form new landscapes.
Pa and I go after her, worried. Well, of course we’re worried. But Ma was happy. Ma was swimming. It’s not cold, come on in, you cowards! The ferryman is in already. Ma and the ferryman swimming a race. Ma lets him win.
Maybe she could always swim, and Pa didn’t know. Maybe she learned to swim that day in the garden. At least my Ma didn’t sink. “Yoo-hoo!” cried my Ma.
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1590, AT THE ANNA Feast, there was a tightrope-walker present who fasten’d his rope above the Church Gable, fixing the other End to the Berlin Gate, so that he flew down from the Gable to the Gate uninjur’d, all the While pushing a Handcart!
On that same Day, however, there was a Cutpurse at large in the Crowd, the latter being distracted by the Tightrope Dancer, so that there was great Suspicion of the Dancer as being one of a Pair of Rogues!
Thus was it confirm’d again that ’tis not Opportunity maketh Thieves, but Opportunity is the greatest Thief itself.
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE FEAST, ON THE FIELD, with his forehead on the steering wheeclass="underline" Wilfried Schramm, former Lieutenant-Colonel, then a forester, now retired and also moonlighting for Von Blankenburg Agricultural Machinery. On average, more dead drivers lie with their heads on their steering wheels in the German TV series Crime Scene in any one year than in six selected American crime series in the same space of time.
Herr Schramm is a critical man. Herr Schramm thinks it’s silly to have so many dead drivers in Crime Scene lying with their heads on their steering wheels. Sometimes it’s their cheeks on the steering wheel, and the face is all crumpled up, but usually it’s the forehead. Herr Schramm is sure of it; when yet another body lies like that, Herr Schramm switches channels.
So Herr Schramm is lying with his head on the steering wheel, whistling the theme tune of Crime Scene. Herr Schramm imagines what it would be like if an episode of Crime Scene were set in Fürstenfelde. Which death would be most suitable for the episode? Not counting his own. Among the top three would probably be: the Chinese man, the tractor and Frau Rebe. By the tractor he means Rüdiger under the tractor.
The Chinese would be good, because it probably wasn’t self-defense as everyone claimed. But the Chinese was, well, Chinese, and the murderer was someone from here. However, that was almost a century ago, the first episode of Crime Scene set in Fürstenfelde doesn’t have to be that far back in history.
The tractor would be better. Rüdiger lay dead under it all night. And Rüdiger’s dog brought him a dead pigeon all the same. Put it down beside his head, terrible. Drunk as a skunk, people said, an accident. The tractor under which Rüdiger was lying was Rüdiger’s tractor and it stood on Rüdiger’s farm. Rolled backward. And the dead pigeon was lying there in the morning. Terrible.
“I don’t know.” Herr Schramm has stopped whistling. His voice inside the car sounds like some other person’s voice, any voice, not his. Because it’s like this, thinks Herr Schramm: first, Rüdiger had a good head for liquor. Herr Schramm found that out by comparison with his own headache on several occasions. And second, he knew his tractors better than Herr Schramm knew the Crime Scene theme tune, and a tune like that is a lot simpler than a tractor. Although he has just this minute noticed how tiring the tune is to whistle. Yes, and third, a few months after Rüdiger’s death von Blankenburg finally managed to buy Rüdiger’s agricultural machinery business. The heirs weren’t objecting, unlike Rüdiger.
Herr Schramm goes on whistling.
But Frau Rebe’s would be the best case all the same. On 3 October, it had been, in 1990. Who’d have thought it? Eleven stab wounds. Anyone who knew Frau Rebe, and that was a lot of people, couldn’t really celebrate 3 October after that, not that many really do celebrate it, and there you go, that shows how little some in Fürstenfelde, the murderer included, thought of German Reunification.
Anyway, the murderer had been an apprentice of her husband’s. He always looked at Frau Rebe when she came into the works, and he imagined her naked, he wanted her to undress for him. But unfortunately she didn’t want to do that, and we have to say she really was very good-looking, and then he helped himself, eleven times.
Someone called Sigrun, a psychiatrist, with a name like that Herr Schramm isn’t quite sure whether a man or a woman, has found out that on average women are more creative killers than men. And in crimes where a knife is used, women are stabbed more times than men.
However, sometimes Herr Schramm wonders: who actually thinks up the questions to ask about these statistics? And then he’s glad that the people who think them up exist. Herr Schramm believes in talent, Herr Schramm thinks that he himself would have been talented in thinking up such questions, always thinking of questions to ask himself and hundreds of other people wouldn’t have been a bad career for him back then.
Of course the fact that Frau Rebe was good-looking is no excuse for murder.
Herr Schramm had liked Rüdiger. He was Herr Schramm’s first boss after the fall of the Wall. Rüdiger had taught him a few things about tractors, or he surely wouldn’t have been taken on later by Von Blankenburg Agricultural Machinery.
Herr Schramm whistles the Crime Scene tune; well, so it didn’t work with the car, he’ll have to use his pistol after all.
The Rebe case would have been a good one, because a few days after the murder her husband was taken in by the police. To this day no one knows why. Jealous husband, wife generous with her favors. People will always talk. Then the apprentice was arrested, and Herr Rebe was a free man again.
The boy never admitted it. He did admit that he’d have liked to take a look under Frau Rebe’s coat, yes. And that on the night of the crime, it was the night before the Feast back then, too, he’d asked if he could look. He’d really just wanted to look, not touch. Under her beautiful coat. But she wouldn’t let him. In the end they both went their separate ways. There wasn’t any more to admit, he said.
Herr Schramm whistles, and Herr Schramm puts the pistol to his temple, but he raises his head from the steering wheel, so that when he’s dead he won’t look like one of those dead drivers at the wheel in Crime Scene. He even tries to slip down between the seats, so as to make quite sure, but there is a knocking on the pane. A young woman is standing there, making the gesture that means: wind down the window, although even Schramm’s old Golf has windows that go down automatically.
18 MARCH 1927. INCIDENT HAS FATAL OUTCOME.
A Chinaman peddling his wares from door to door without an official permit was stopped by Police Sergeant Polster. The Chinaman spoke angrily to Polster and attacked him violently, so that the Sergeant was obliged to make use of his sword. When the Chinaman wrenched the sword from his grasp and attacked the officer with it himself, Polster fired his pistol and struck his opponent down. The Chinaman, severely injured, was taken to hospital in Prenzlau, where he passed away soon afterward.
No one could understand his last words.
WE TAKE AN INTEREST IN THE ELECTRONIC LOCK on the massive oak door to the Archivarium. The Homeland House was renovated in 2011, and the old padlock was replaced by a lock with a code that you have to tap in. 2011 was 700 years after the first mention of Fürstenfelde in the records, and between January and July three young drivers collided with the plane trees. One of them did not survive: Thorsten Brandt, a passionate computer-game player, placed third at the German Counter-Strike Championship in the team event.