The doorman told me the offices were on the second floor, to the right. I climbed the wide, worn, sandstone steps. By the door to room 107 was a sign, ADMINISTRATION/RECEPTION. I knocked and was told to enter.
The receptionist drew a blank at the name Leonore Salger, and returned to her medical records. Passport photos were stapled to some of them, which gave me the idea of showing her Leo's picture. She took it, studied it carefully, asked me to wait for a moment, locked her filing cabinet, and left the room. I looked out the window at the park. The magnolia trees and forsythia bushes were in full bloom, and the lawn was being mowed. Some patients in everyday clothes were sauntering along the paths; others were sitting on benches that had been painted white. How everything had changed! Back in the days when I used to visit Eberhard, there were no lawns beneath the trees, just trodden earth. In those days patients had also been let out for fresh air, but in gray institutional overalls, walking one after another in a circle at a certain hour every day for twenty minutes, like the yard exercise of prison inmates.
The receptionist didn't come back alone.
“I am Dr. Wendt. Who are you, and what is she to you?” He held Leo's picture in his hand and looked at me coldly.
I handed him my card and told him of my search.
“I am sorry, Herr Self, but we can only provide patient information to authorized individuals.”
“So she is-”
“That is all I am prepared to say. Who was it who commissioned you to undertake this search?”
I had brought along Salger's letter and handed it to him. Wendt read it with a frown. He didn't look up, although he most certainly had finished reading it. Finally he got a grip on himself. “Please follow me.”
A few doors down he showed me into a conference room with a round table. This room also faced the park. The workers had not finished renovating here. The old frames and glass had been removed from the windows, which were now sealed with a temporary transparent plastic sheet. A fine layer of white dust covered the table, shelves, and filing cabinets.
“Yes, Frau Salger was a patient here. She came about three months ago. Somebody brought her here; he had picked her up…hitchhiking. We have no idea what happened before or during that car ride. The man just told us he'd picked her up and taken her along.” The doctor fell silent and looked pensive. He was still young, wore corduroys and a checked shirt beneath his open white gown, and looked athletic. He had a healthy complexion and his hair was artfully tousled. His eyes were too close-set.
I waited. “You were saying, Dr. Wendt?”
“As they were driving, she had begun to cry and simply wouldn't stop. That went on for over an hour. The man didn't know what to do, and finally decided to bring her to us. Here she continued crying till we gave her a Valium injection and she fell asleep.” Again he stared pensively.
“And what then?”
“Well, what do you think? I initiated her therapy.”
“No, I mean where is Leonore Salger now? How come you didn't contact anyone?”
Again he took his time. “We didn't have…well, it's only now that I find out from you what her real name is. If our receptionist”-he waved his hand in the direction of room 107-”hadn't happened to deal with her a couple of times…she doesn't usually get to see our patients at all. And then you come with a passport photo…” He shook his head.
“Did you notify the police?”
“The police?” He fished a crumpled pack of Roth-Händle cigarettes out of the pocket of his pants and offered me one. I preferred to smoke my own, and took out my pack of Sweet Aftons. Wendt shook his head again. “No, I don't like the idea of having the police here at our hospital, and in this case having her questioned by the police would have been utterly inappropriate from a therapeutic standpoint. And then she got better soon enough. She was here voluntarily and was free to leave any time she wanted. It's not like she was a minor.”
“Where is she now?”
He cleared his throat a couple of times. “I should inform you…I have to…um…Frau Salger is dead. She…” He avoided my eyes. “I am not exactly sure what happened. A tragic accident. Please extend my sincerest condolences to her father.”
“But Dr. Wendt, I can't just call her father and tell him that his daughter died in some tragic accident.”
“True…true. Well, as you see”-he pointed at the window-”we're installing new windows. Last Tuesday, she…On the fourth floor we have these large windows along the hallway from the floor to the ceiling, and she fell though the plastic cover down into the courtyard. She died instantly.”
“So if I hadn't happened to come to see you now you'd have authorized her burial without informing her parents? What kind of a crazy story is this, Dr. Wendt?”
“Of course her parents have been informed. I'm not certain of the exact procedure our office followed, but her parents were most definitely informed.”
“How could your office have informed them if you only found out her name from me?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“And what about the burial?”
He stared at his hands as if they could tell him where Leo was to be buried. “I suppose that is waiting on the parents' response.” He got up. “I've got to go back to my station. You can't imagine the commotion this has created: Her fall, the ambulance sirens, our patients have been very shaken up. May I show you out?”
I tried to take leave outside room 107 but he pulled me away. “No, our offices are now closed. Let me say how pleased I am that you came. I would be grateful if you would speak to her father at your earliest convenience. That was a point you had there-perhaps our office didn't manage to reach her parents.” We stood by the main entrance. “Goodbye, Herr Self.”
7 Scratch a Swabian and you'll find a small Hegel
I didn't drive far. I stopped at the pond by Sankt Ilgen, got out of the car, and walked over to the water. I threw a couple of stones, trying to make them skip over the water. Even as a boy on Lake Wannsee I'd never got the knack. It's too late to learn now.
All the same, I wasn't about to let some young kid in a white gown pull the wool over my eyes. Wendt's story stunk. Why hadn't the police been called in? A woman who's been in a psychiatric hospital for three months falls out of an unsecured fourth-floor window, and it doesn't cross anybody's mind that negligent homicide or worse might be at play and that the police should be called? OK, Wendt hadn't exactly said that the police hadn't come and investigated. But he'd only mentioned ambulances, no police cars. And if the police had been brought in on Tuesday, Salger would have been informed by Thursday at the latest, regardless of what name Leo might have registered under. The police wouldn't have taken long to figure out that Frau so-and-so didn't exist but that Leonore Salger was missing, and that consequently Frau so-and-so was none other than Leonore Salger. And if Herr Salger had been contacted on Thursday, he'd surely have called me by now.