We watched the heavy traffic on the Sophienstrasse. “Where do they come out?” Manu asked, pointing at the cars disappearing down the entrance to the underground garage on the Sophienstrasse.
“Somewhere behind these trees, I think.”
“Can they come out where we parked the other day?”
I didn't understand what he meant. “But that was…Do you mean the underground garage behind the Heilig-Geist Church?”
“Yes, that's how it is sometimes, isn't it?” Manu said. “I mean, you come up somewhere different from where you disappeared. It would be great if you could go under the earth from one underground garage to another whenever all the parking spaces are full or if there's a traffic jam. It makes sense, doesn't it?” He looked at me as if I were a little slow and launched into an intricate explanation.
I stopped listening. His vision of an underground flow of traffic took me back to Peschkalek's poisonous groundwater streams.
“You're not even listening!”
Brigitte came out of the bookstore. I bought her a skirt that flared out, and she bought me a pair of shorts in which I looked like a Brit on the River Kwai. Manu wanted a pair of jeans-not any old jeans, a specific brand-and we went all the way up the main street to the Heilig-Geist Church. I find the tide of strolling consumers in pedestrian areas no more agreeable, either aesthetically or morally, than comrades on parade or soldiers on the march. But I have grave doubts that I will live to see Heidelberg's main street once again filled with cheerfully ringing trams, cars honking happily, and related, bustling people hurrying to places where they have something to do, and not simply to places where there's something to see, something to nibble at, or something to buy.
“Let's give the castle a miss,” I said, and Brigitte and Manu stared at me, crestfallen. “Let's forget about the zoo, too.”
“But you said we-”
“I have a much better idea. We'll go flying.”
I didn't have to suggest it twice. We took a tram back to Mannheim and got out at the Neuostheim airfield. A small tower, a small office, a small runway, and small airplanes- Manu had seen bigger and better things on his flight from Rio de Janeiro to Frankfurt. But he was enraptured. I signed up for a half-hour flight. The pilot who was to take us up got his one-propeller four-seater ready for takeoff. We went rattling down the runway and rose into the air.
Mannheim lay beneath us like a toy town, neat and dapper. It would have been wonderful for the elector who had ordered the squares to be laid out centuries ago to see his city from this perspective. The Rhine and the Neckar glittered in the sun, the stacks of the Rhineland Chemical Works sent little white clouds puffing into the sky, and the fountains by the Water Tower danced in their basins. Manu was quick to spot the Luisenpark, the Kurpfalz Bridge, and the Collini Center where Brigitte has her massage practice. The friendly pilot flew an extra arc until Manu managed to spot his house in the Max-Joseph-Strasse.
“Could we swing over to Viernheim?”
“Is that where you live?” the pilot asked me.
“I used to.”
Brigitte's interest was piqued. “When did you live in Viern-heim?” she asked me. “I didn't know that.”
“After the war. For a while, that is.”
Beneath us were the blocks of the Benjamin-Franklin-Village. The golf course, the autobahn junction, the Rhein-Neckar Center, the narrow, crooked streets surrounding the town hall and churches. We had reached the last houses of Viernheim, and the pilot swung to the right.
I pointed left. “I'd rather fly back over the forest than over Heddesheim.”
“In that case, we'll have to climb quite a bit higher.”
“Why's that?”
He flew toward Weinheim and began to pick up altitude. “It's the Americans. They have a camp in the forest. There's no taking pictures either.”
“What will happen if we don't climb higher? Will they shoot us down?”
“No idea. What is it you want to see?”
“To tell you the truth, it's the camp I want to see. Back in 1945, it was a prisoner-of-war camp-that's how I got to know the forest.”
“Ah, old memories. Let's see what we can do.” He swung to the left without rising any higher, but picked up speed.
I couldn't spot the fence, but I saw the grass-covered bunkers, some on the open field, others hidden among trees. I saw the connecting asphalt paths and the clearings in which trucks or trailers in camouflage paint were parked close to one another. An area farther on was practically without vegetation and had been flattened by truck or tank tracks.
Then, not far from the autobahn, I saw bulldozers, conveyer belts, and trucks at work. Dirt had been dug up over a surface the size of a tennis court. I could not tell how far down they had dug, or if something was being buried or dug up. It was surrounded by woods, but at one end of the tennis court the trees were black, charred skeletons. There had been a fire.
9 Old hat
“You weren't really in Viernheim at that camp, were you? You never mentioned it before,” Brigitte said when Manu was already in bed and we were sitting like an old married couple on the couch in front of the TV.
“No, I wasn't. It has to do with the case I'm working on.”
“If you want some inside information about Viernheim, I have a girlfriend who lives there. Actually, she's a colleague, and you know how we masseuses find out everything, just like hairdressers and priests.”
“That sounds great. Can you set up a meeting?”
“What would you do without me?”
Brigitte stood up, gave Lisa a call, and arranged for us to meet for coffee on Sunday.
“She's a single mother, too, and her daughter Sonya is the same age as Manu. We've been wanting to set up a play date for the two of them, and Lisa's been saying she wants to see what kind of a man I-”
“Have managed to bag?”
“Your words, not mine.” Brigitte sat back down next to me. In the movie we were watching, an old man was in love with a young woman who loved him, too, but they gave each other up because he was old and she was young. “What a stupid movie,” Brigitte said. “But we had such a great day today, didn't we?” She looked at me.
At first I was worried that a straightforward yes would again conjure up the question of marriage and children, and I had every intention of answering with a noncommittal grunt. Never say yes or no when the other person will make do with an mm. But then I did say yes, and Brigitte snuggled up to me, quiet and content.
At ten o'clock the following morning I was at the Church of the Resurrection in Viernheim. I tried in vain to remember the name of the presbyter who'd commissioned me to find Saint Catherine all those years ago. After the sermon and the chorale, he sent a collection box down the rows, recognized me, and nodded to me. The sermon had focused on the dangers of addiction, and the chorale on the willfulness of the flesh, and the collection was to go to rehabilitate drug addicts. I was prepared to drop my pack of Sweet Aftons into the collection box and give up smoking forever. But what would I have smoked after church?
“To what do we owe this pleasure, Herr Self?” I had waited for him in front of the church, and he came over to me right away. Behind us the tram drove past.
“I have some questions to which you might know the answers. Let me invite you for a round or two.”
We went over to the Golden Lamb.
“Hello there, Weller! You're early today!” the pub keeper called out to the presbyter, and took us over to his regular table.
“We can have a nice quiet chat,” Weller said. “The others won't be turning up till later.” We ordered two glasses of house wine.