In Amorbach I found Dr. Hopfen's office on the market square, and one of his patients told me the way to his home. “Head past the train station, over the tracks, and up toward the Hotel Frankenberg. Keep following the signs for Sommer-berg. The doctor's house is the last one on the left before you get to the driveway of the hotel.”
After I negotiated the steep and narrow lane and made a U-turn in the hotel's driveway, a little girl opened the gate in front of the Hopfen residence, and a Land Rover pulled out. The girl closed the gate again and got into the car. Two other children were romping around in the backseat. A woman was at the wheel. The engine died a few times, and I looked around: I gazed at the fruit trees on the slope, the building supplies warehouse in the valley, and the church of Amorbach with its two onion domes beyond the railway tracks. I followed the Rover back into town. The throng of tourist cars in front of the abbey left only two parking spaces-one for the Rover and one for my old Opel.
I followed the woman and the three children on foot to the market square. I still wasn't certain. But then they went into Hopfen's office, and when they came out again I had the young woman in full view, and there was no doubt. She was Leo. Leo in pink sunglasses, a peroxide blond mop of curls, and a man's checked shirt over her jeans. She had done her best to look like an au-pair girl from the American Midwest.
I followed Leo and the children. They shopped at the butcher's and at the cheese store, and while the children were having their hair cut at the salon, Leo browsed the shelves of the bookstore across the street. Before they got back in the car and drove home, they stopped at the church with the onion domes. I followed them inside and drank in the bright, spacious interior and the sounds of the organ, on which an organist happened to be practicing. In the nave, Saint Sebastian was being shot with arrows and nursed by Saint Irene. Leo and the children were kneeling in the back row. The little girl was looking around the church and the two boys were popping their bubble gum. Leo leaned her elbows on the back of the pew in front of her, rested her head on her hands, and stared into the emptiness.
17 In response to an official request
I was back in Mannheim at four thirty. On my way there I had still not figured out what to make of all this. I wanted to talk to Salger, but not on the phone and definitely not by way of his answering machine. It was clear that he knew more than he had led me to believe.
I drove straight over to the Max-Joseph-Strasse. Brigitte greeted me as if our spat had never taken place. We embraced. She felt good, warm, and soft, and I only let go of her when Manu tugged at us jealously.
“Why don't the two of you take Nonni out?” she suggested. “And come back around seven thirty. I'll finish my tax returns and cook something-the sauerbraten should be ready by seven thirty.”
Nonni is Manu's dog, a tiny creature, a fluffy toy. Manu put him on a leash and we made a grand tour of the town: the Neckar embankment, the Luisenpark, the Oststadt, and the Water Tower. We made slow progress. In general I have my doubts when it comes to evolution and progress, but the fact that erotic attraction between humans doesn't involve sniffing tree trunks and corners is without doubt a clear sign of evolutionary progress.
I called Salger from Brigitte's place. The answering machine wasn't on. Was Salger back in Bonn? The phone rang futilely. I tried again at nine and at ten, but still nobody picked up.
On Sunday, too, and even Monday morning at eight my attempts were futile. At nine I took Manu to school and Brigitte to her massage practice at the Collini Center, and then drove on to the main post office to look through the regional phone books. If Salger was back in Bonn, he had to be back at work, too. I found Bonn in phone book number 53, and under Federal Government found the number of the chancellor and seventeen federal ministries. I started with the Federal Chancellery and the Press and Public Relations Office. They didn't have an Under-Secretary Salger. There was no Salger at the Federal Ministry for Work and Social Services, nor at any of the other ministries listed. At the Federal Ministry for Justice nobody picked up until ten fifteen, at which point the lady on the phone, though sounding rested and exceptionally friendly, had never heard of an Under-Secretary Salger. I turned to phone book number 39 and called the various departments at the state government in Düsseldorf. It didn't seem too farfetched that Salger might be living in Bonn but working in Düsseldorf. But no regional minister of Nordrhein-Westfalen had an under-secretary by the name of Salger.
I drove over to the Municipal Hospital. It was time to find out a few things. I wanted to pin down my client: the mysterious under-secretary without a department, the owner of a phone number that was listed nowhere, the sender of letters containing five thousand marks without a return address. I had his telephone number, but Information will only disclose a subscriber's name and address in response to an official request or in a case of an emergency. A doctor who finds nothing but a telephone number in the pockets of an unconscious patient and needs to know his name and address can call Information and put in his request, and he will be called back. Philipp had to help me make this request official.
Philipp was still in the operating theater, and the head nurse showed me into his office. I had intended to ask him to put the call through to Information, but then I decided to save him the trouble and do my own lying.
“Hello, this is Dr. Self, Mannheim Municipal Hospital. We have an accident patient without ID. All we have is a number in Bonn: 41-17-88. Can you please provide me with the name and address for this number?”
I was put on hold twice. Then they promised to check and call me back. I gave them Philipp's number. Five minutes later the phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Dr. Self?”
“Speaking.”
“41-17-88 belongs to a Helmut Lehmann…”
“Lehmann?”
“Ludwig, Emil, Heinrich, Marta, Anton, Nordpol, Nordpol. The address is Niebuhrstrasse 46a in Bonn, District 1.”
I made a cross-check, calling Information in Bonn and asking for the number of Helmut Lehmann, Niebuhrstrasse 46a, and was given 41-17-88.
It was twenty past twelve. I checked the train schedule: There was an intercity train from Mannheim to Bonn at 12:45.I didn't wait for Philipp.
By 12:40 I was standing in the long line in front of the only open ticket window. By 12:44 the bored clerk and his boring computer had served four passengers, and I could see that I wasn't going to get to my ticket before 12:48. I rushed out onto the platform. No train came at 12:45, 12:46, 12:47, 12:48, or 12:49. At 12:50 there was an announcement that intercity train 714 was running five minutes late, and it pulled into the station at 12:54. I get worked up, even though I know that this is how things are nowadays with the train system, and that getting worked up isn't good for me. I remember the railways in the old days, punctual and treating passengers with sober, firm, Prussian respect.
I won't waste any words on the lunch in the restaurant car. The ride along the Rhine is always beautiful. I like seeing the railway bridge from Mainz to Wiesbaden, the Niederwald Memorial, the Kaub Castle on the island, the Loreley, and Castle Ehrenbreitstein. At 2:55 I was in Bonn.
I won't waste any words on Bonn either. A taxi took me to Niebuhrstrasse 46a. The narrow house was, like most houses on that street, a product of the mid-nineteenth century Gröünderzeit period with columns, capitals, and friezes. On the ground floor, next to the entrance, was a tiny shop in which nothing was on display or being sold anymore. The pale black lettering on the gray frosted glass above the door announced HABERDASHERY. I ran my eye over the names on the buzzers: There was no Lehmann.