“I am a cheerful girl, inside and out. When I feel fear coming on, I say 'Hello, fear!' and let it do its thing for a while, but I don't let it get the better of me.”
“Fear of what?”
“Don't you ever have that feeling? It's not a fear that something bad will happen, but just like when you have a fever, or when you feel cold, or sick.” She looked at me. “No, you don't ever have that feeling, do you? But I think Rolf did. He didn't get it just from his patients or from books. That's why he could help me a lot.”
“Was he in love with you?”
She took her feet off the dashboard and sat up straight. “I'm not really sure.”
I don't believe women when they say that they're not sure if they're attractive. Leo was sitting next to me in her jeans and a man's checked shirt, but I felt the woman in her voice, in her scent-even in the nervous movements with which she rolled her cigarettes. And she didn't know if Rolf Wendt was in love with her?
She could tell I didn't believe her. “OK, so he was in love with me. I didn't want to face up to it; I had a bad conscience. He'd done so much for me and got nothing in return, didn't even expect anything, but I'm sure he hoped I'd fall in love with him.”
“What about Helmut?”
She looked at me puzzled.
“Is he in love with you? Why is he so eager to know where you are? Ten thousand marks is a lot of money.”
“Oh.” She blushed and turned her face to the window. “Does it surprise you that he wants to know where I am? He was my leader, was in charge of me, and then lost me.”
34 Angels don't shoot at cats
That evening we sat in Murten, above the lake. From the terrace of the Hotel Krone we watched the late sailboats. In the evening lull they slowly made their way back into the harbor. The last steamer from Neuenburg forged past them with majesty, as if to prove the superiority of technology over nature. The sun set behind the mountains on the opposite shore.
“I'll go get my sweater.” Leo got up and stayed away a long time. The waiter brought me a second aperitif. Silence rose from the lake and swallowed the buzz of voices behind me. I turned around just as Leo came out onto the terrace through the glass doors. She hadn't put on a sweater. She wore a tight, long-sleeved black dress that reached from her neck to just above her knees, and black high-heeled shoes. Her pantyhose, the stole, and the comb in her luxuriant pinned-up hair were red. She took her time crossing the terrace. She sashayed her way around tables, and when she squeezed between chairs that were too close together she pulled her shoulders up so high that her breasts were tight within the dress. Where there were no obstacles she walked with swaying hips, her head held high. I got up, pulled her chair out for her, and she sat down. The guests on the terrace had followed her with their eyes because of her swinging hips, and also because her dress was bare down the back.
“You're gorgeous.”
We sat opposite each other. Her sparkling eyes-blue beneath a blue sky and sometimes gray or green beneath gray clouds-shone darkly. In her smile was delight at the game she was playing. A touch of seduction, a touch of complacency, a touch of self-mockery. She shook her head at my compliment, as if to say: “I know, but don't tell anybody else.”
The waiter suggested fish from the lake and wine from the opposite shore. Leo ate hungrily. Over dinner I learned that she had spent a year in America as a high school student, that jersey sweaters don't get wrinkled, that the shirt and jacket I'd bought at her suggestion in Belfort suited me, and that her mother had been a voice-over actress and had previously been married to a washed-up movie director. It was clear that her relationship with her mother was not good. She asked me what life as a private investigator was like, how long I had been one, and what I had done before.
“You were a public prosecutor?” She stared at me in amazement. “How come you gave that up?”
During the course of my life I have given many different answers to this question. Perhaps all of them true. Perhaps none. In 1945, they turned their back on me for having been a Nazi public prosecutor, and when they wanted the old Nazis again, I turned my back on them. Because I was no longer an old Nazi? Because the let's-look-the-other-way attitude of my old and new colleagues at the bar rubbed me the wrong way? Because I had definitely had enough of others laying out for me what is just and unjust? Because as a private investigator I am my own boss? Because in life you should never pick up again what you've put down for good? Because I don't like the smell of government offices? “I can't quite say, Leo. Back in 1945, being a public prosecutor was simply over for me.”
A cool wind rose and the terrace emptied. We sat down to finish our bottle on a bench that was shielded by a wall. Vully was an unpretentious local wine without frills that I had never tried before. The moon had risen and was mirrored in the lake. I felt a chill, and Leo snuggled up to me, warming and seeking warmth.
“My father stopped talking in the last years of his life. I don't know if he couldn't talk or just didn't want to. I guess a bit of both. I remember at first trying to have conversations with him-I'd talk to him about something or ask him a question. I hoped he'd tell me more about himself. There were also times when he'd try to speak, but only a croaking rattle would escape from his throat. Mostly he'd look at me with a kind of crooked smile that asked for forgiveness and understanding, but perhaps it was also the result of the minor stroke he'd had. Later I just sat by his bedside, held his hand, looked out the window into the garden, and let my thoughts wander. That's where I learned to be silent. And to love.”
I put my arm around her shoulder.
“That was actually a nice time. For him and for me. Otherwise it was sheer hell.” She took the pack of cigarettes out of my coat pocket, lit one, and smoked it, inhaling deeply. “He couldn't hold his piss or shit anymore in those last years. The doctor said his condition was psychological, not physical, which he also told my father. That was before things got really bad. The doctor wanted to help him, to give him a healing shock, but he accomplished the opposite. Perhaps my father wanted to prove that he really couldn't do anything else. It turned into a ritual between him and Mother, like a last dance that the two of them had before they were executed for a crime they had committed together. He would soil the bed, and his pride and dignity suffered. She would clean him up and change the sheets, her face turned away in disgust. He knew that he disgusted her, but that she would not shrink from tending him, even though she was slowly running herself into the ground. I shit on you, he wanted to tell her, but he could only tell her this by shitting on himself, and she could only show him that he was a pitiful shit by slaving over his shit.”
Later Leo again returned to the subject. “When I was a little girl I wanted to marry my father. All girls do. Then when I realized that that wasn't possible, I wanted somebody like my father. You see, I've always liked older men. But those last years with Father…How ugly everything had become, how spiteful, nasty, dirty…” She looked past me, her eyes wide. “Sometimes Helmut seemed to me like an angel with a burning sword, destroying, judging, cleansing. You wanted to know whether I loved him. I loved the angel, and at times cherished the hope that he would take his sword and burn away my fear. But perhaps the heat was too much. I have…have I betrayed him?”
Angels do not shoot at couches and cats. I told her that, but she wasn't listening.
35 A nation of cobblers
I had put in a call from Niedersteinbach to Tyberg in Locarno. He told me he was looking forward to our visit. “You're bringing a young lady with you? My butler will prepare two rooms. I won't let you stay in a hotel, and that's that! You must stay at my place.” We reached his Villa Sem-preverde in Monti above Locarno at teatime.