He was silent. Then he emptied his glass in a single draft. “That’s a good wine.” He leaned forward and sat there as if he didn’t know whether to remain sitting or get up.
“Why don’t we finish this bottle?” I asked.
“I think…” He got up. “I think I’d better go. Thank you for everything.”
16 A little joke
I finished the bottle on my own. So, Ulbrich wanted to do something that Welker wouldn’t forget. If he had designs on Welker’s life, he would have expressed himself differently. But what did he have in mind? And what could it be that Welker would never forget? Welker, who had such a knack for keeping the good things clear in his mind and forgetting the bad?
I thought about Schuler and Samarin. If Welker hadn’t forgotten them yet, he would soon enough. What had happened to them, what he had done to them, was bad. What would Ulbrich do that Welker wouldn’t forget? Kill him? The dead never forget.
I didn’t sleep well. I dreamed of Korten falling off the cliff, his coat fluttering. I dreamed of our final conversation, of my saying, “I have come to kill you.” And his mocking words: “To bring them back to life?” I dreamed of Schuler staggering toward me, and of Samarin in his straitjacket. Then everything got confused; Welker fell from the cliff, and Schuler said mockingly: “To bring me back to life?”
The following morning I called Welker. I had to talk to him.
“Are you planning an investment?” he asked cheerfully.
“I’m planning a deposit, an investment, a withdrawal-it depends on how you look at it.”
Two new batteries, and my old voice recorder was working again. You can get smaller ones today that record better and longer and that look more elegant. But my old recorder did the job. My old corduroy jacket did the job, too. It has a hole behind the lapel and one in the breast of the jacket so that the wire, hidden from view, can pass from the recorder in the inside pocket to the microphone in the lapel. Whenever I take my handkerchief out of my inside pocket to wipe the sweat off my forehead or blow my nose, I can turn the recorder on or off.
At ten o’clock I was sitting in Welker’s office.
“As you see,” he said, his hand sweeping through the air, “nothing has changed since your last visit. I wanted to renovate the place, refurbish everything and make it all more attractive. But I just can’t get to it.”
I looked around. It was true that nothing had changed. Only the leaves of the chestnut trees I could see through the window had begun to turn.
“As you know,” I said, “Herr Schuler came to see me before his Isetta crashed into the tree and he died. It wasn’t only the money he brought me. He also brought me what he had found out about Laban and Samarin.”
Welker didn’t say anything.
“He told you what he had found the evening you and Samarin went to see him, when Samarin happened to step out for a moment.”
Again Welker didn’t say anything. He who says nothing says nothing wrong.
“Later, when you were outside, you saw that Schuler was taking a blood-pressure medication that one mustn’t stop taking abruptly. You know a thing or two about such matters. Then you looked through Schuler’s arsenal of medicines to find some pills that looked similar to his blood-pressure medication, and you found some. You switched the pills, just like that. Perhaps it would kill Schuler-which would be great. Perhaps it would only confuse him, indefinitely, for a long time, or perhaps just for a short period-not bad, either. Perhaps he would notice. But even then you wouldn’t be taking a risk by switching the pills: Schuler would have blamed himself or his niece, but he never would have thought of suspecting you.”
“Indeed,” Welker said. He spoke the way one might when someone else is talking, and one wishes to indicate one is listening carefully and paying attention. He looked at me compassionately with his intelligent, sensitive, melancholic eyes, as if I had a problem and had come to him for help.
“I knew that you are also a doctor. But as long as I didn’t understand your motive, I didn’t make the connection between this fact and what I knew about the side effects of the blood-pressure medication and Schuler’s condition before his accident. It was only then that I had the pills in the bottle checked.”
“I see,” he said. He didn’t ask me: “What motive? What was my motive supposed to have been? Where do you see a motive?” All he said was “I see,” and he continued sitting there quite at ease, looking at me compassionately.
“That was murder, Herr Welker, even if you weren’t certain that switching the medicines would kill Schuler. Murder out of greed. Samarin’s grandfather might have renounced all his rights and claims to the silent partnership in 1937 or 1938, but the action back then of a Jew in favor of an Aryan business partner isn’t worth much. Samarin’s claims would have become uncomfortable for you.”
Welker smiled. “That would be quite ironic, wouldn’t it, if the silent partnership, which was my pretext for bringing you into this affair, now posed a threat to me?”
“I don’t think that’s funny. I don’t think your murder of Samarin is funny, either, a murder you committed with cold premeditation and which you presented to us as the act of a desperate man. I don’t think it’s funny that you’re continuing Samarin’s practices. No, I don’t see anything comic in any of this.”
“I said ‘ironic’, I didn’t say ‘comic.’”
“Ironic, comic-either way, I don’t see anything I could laugh about. And when I weigh the fact that Samarin, who didn’t murder Schuler, probably also didn’t murder your wife-about which you always spoke with such emotion-then I stop laughing entirely. What happened to your wife? Did you find that she, having had a fatal accident, could be of some use as a murder victim? Or wasn’t it an accident at all? Did you kill your wife?” I was furious.
I thought he would jump to his own defense. He had to. He couldn’t allow me to get away with what I’d just said. But he uncrossed his legs, leaned his elbows on his knees, pursed his lips, sullen and sulking, and slowly shook his head. “Herr Self, Herr Self…”
I waited.
After a while he sat up in his chair and looked me straight in the eye. “It is a fact that Gregor, wearing a straitjacket, was shot in the Luisenpark. If you have something to say about how he came to be there, why he was in a straitjacket, and why he was killed, I suggest you go to the police. It is also a fact that Schuler had high blood pressure and that he drove into a tree in front of your office and died. If he came by to bring you something, if you were with him before the incident and saw that he was in a bad way, then why did you let him get into his car? From what I can see, there are one or two inconsistencies, if not more. Perhaps there are also one or two inconsistencies in the matter of my wife’s death, where naturally the police suspected me first but ended up counting me out. We all have to learn to live with inconsistencies. We can’t just start leveling unsubstantiated accusations…” He shook his head again.
I wanted to intervene, but he wouldn’t let me.
“This is one of the things I wanted to tell you. The other is-how shall I put it?-I’m not interested in history: the Third Reich, the war, the Jews, silent partners, dead heirs, old claims! All that is water under the bridge. It has nothing to do with me, and I won’t be drawn into it. It bores me. I also have no interest in East Germany. I’d be happiest if everyone in the East would just stay where they are. But when the East comes over here, strikes root, starts meddling and trying to take over my business, then I have to show them that that’s not the name of the game. Samarin and his Russians came here to usurp me-don’t forget that. The past, the past! I’ve had enough of it. Our parents bored us with all those tales of their suffering during the war, their deeds in rebuilding Germany, and their part in the economic miracle, the young teachers with their myths of 1968. Do you, too, have a tale to offer? Enough! My job is to keep Weller and Welker above water. We’re an anachronism. On the great ocean of the world economy we’re just a little barge among the oil tankers, container ships, destroyers, and aircraft carriers-a barge that gets tossed about in the rough seas through which all those other ships can sail smoothly. I don’t know how long we can hold out. Perhaps my children won’t be interested in continuing. Perhaps I myself will lose interest one day. As it is, I don’t belong here. I’d have done better to become a doctor and collect art on the side or even to have picked up a brush myself. I’m old-fashioned, you know. Not in the sense that I’m in any way interested in the past. But I would have liked a quiet, old-fashioned kind of life. Old-fashioned-it’s old-fashioned, too, that I followed family tradition and am now running the family bank. But the only way of doing this is all or nothing, and as long as I’m running this bank, as long as we Welkers still exist, nobody will take us for a sleigh ride.” He repeated emphatically: “Nobody!” Then he smiled again. “I’m surprised you let me get away with that mixed metaphor. A barge can hardly be used for a sleigh ride.”