On the piers I came across a car rental and rented a Chevrolet. I was taken by the one-piece front seating. It reminded me of the Horch on whose front seat I was initiated into love by the wife of my Latin teacher. Together with the car I got a town plan with the 49 Mile Drive highlighted. I followed it without trouble, thanks to the signs everywhere. By the cliffs I found a restaurant. At the entrance I had to edge forward in a line before being led to a seat by the window. Mist was curling over the Pacific. The show captivated me, as though, beyond the rents in the fog, Japan’s coast would come into view any second. I ate a tuna steak, potato in aluminum foil, and iceberg lettuce salad. The beer was called Anchor Steam and tasted almost like a smoked beer in the Bamberg Schlenkerla. The waitress was attentive, kept refilling my coffee cup without my having to ask, enquired after my health and where I was from. She knew Germany, too; she’d visited her boyfriend at the US base in Baumholder once.
After the meal I stretched my legs, clambered around on the cliffs, and suddenly saw before me, more beautiful than I remembered it from films, the Golden Gate Bridge. I took off my coat, folded it, put it on a rock, and sat on it. The coast fell away steeply, beneath me bright sailing boats were crisscrossing, and a freight ship ploughed its gentle path.
I had planned to live at peace with my past. Guilt, atonement, enthusiasm and blindness, pride and anger, morality and resignation – I’d brought it all together in an elaborate balance. The past had become abstract. Now reality had caught up with me and was threatening that balance. Of course I’d let myself be manipulated as a prosecutor, I’d learned that much after 1945. One may question whether there is better manipulation and worse. Nevertheless, I didn’t think it was the same thing to be guilty of having served a putative great, bad cause, or to be used by someone as a pawn on the chessboard of a small, shabby intrigue I didn’t yet understand.
The stuff Frau Hirsch had told me, what did it amount to exactly? Tyberg and Dohmke, whom I’d investigated, had been convicted purely on the strength of Weinstein’s false testimony. By any standard, even the National Socialist one, the judgment was a miscarriage of justice and my investigation was wrong. I’d been taken in by a plot made to trap Tyberg and Dohmke. My memory of it started to come back. In Tyberg’s desk hidden documents had been found that revealed a promising plan, essential to the war effort, initially pursued by Tyberg and his research group, then apparently abandoned. The accused repeatedly stressed to me and to the court that they couldn’t have followed two promising paths of research at the same time. They had only put the other one on a backburner, to return to later. The whole thing was under the strictest secrecy and their discovery had been so exciting that they’d safeguarded it with the jealousy of the scientist. That had been the only reason for the cache in the desk. That might have got them off, but Weinstein reported a conversation between Dohmke and Tyberg in which both agreed to suppress the discovery to bring about a quick end to the war, even at the price of a German defeat. And now this conversation had never actually taken place.
The sabotage story had unleashed outrage at the time. The second charge of racial defilement hadn’t convinced me, even then: my investigation hadn’t produced any evidence that Tyberg had had intercourse with a Jewish forced labourer. He was sentenced to death on that account, too. I pondered who from the SS and who from the economic side back then could have set up the conspiracy.
There was a constant flow of traffic over the Golden Gate Bridge. Where did everyone want to get to? I drove to the approach, parked my car beneath the monument to the architect, and walked to the middle of the bridge. I was the only pedestrian. I gazed down onto the metallic gleaming Pacific. Behind me limousines whizzed by with a callous regularity. A cold wind blew round the suspension cables. I was freezing.
With some trouble I found the hotel again. It soon turned dark. I asked the porter where I could get a bottle of sambuca. He sent me along to a liquor store two streets away. I scanned the shelves in vain. The proprietor regretted he didn’t have sambuca, but he did have something similar, wouldn’t I like to try Southern Comfort? He packed the bottle in a brown paper bag for me, and twisted the paper shut round the neck. On the way back to the hotel I bought a hamburger. With my trench coat, the brown paper bag in one hand, and the burger in the other I felt like an extra in a second-rate American cop film.
Back in the hotel room I lay down on the bed and switched on the TV. My toothbrush glass was wrapped in cellophane, I tore it off and poured myself a shot. Southern Comfort really doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to sambuca. Still, it tasted pleasant and trickled quite naturally down my throat. Nor did the football on TV have the least bit in common with our football. But I understood the principle and followed the match with increasing excitement.
After a while I applauded when my team had made decent headway with the ball. Finally I must have whooped when my team won, because there came a knocking through the wall. I tried to get up and thump back, but the bed kept tipping up at the side I was trying to get out of. It wasn’t that important. Main thing was that topping up the glass still went smoothly. I left the last gulp in the bottle for the flight back.
In the middle of the night I woke up. Now I felt drunk. I was lying fully clothed on the bed, the TV was spitting out images. When I switched it off, my head imploded. I managed to take off my jacket before falling asleep again.
When I woke up, for a brief moment I didn’t know where I was. My room was cleaned and tidied, the ashtray empty, and the toothbrush glass back in cellophane. My watch said half past two. I sat on the toilet for a long time, clutching my head. When I washed my hands I avoided looking in the mirror. I found a packet of aspirin in my toilet bag, and twenty minutes later the headache was gone. But with every movement the brain fluid slapped hard against the walls of my skull, and my stomach was crying out for food while telling me it wouldn’t keep it down. At home I’d have made a camomile tea, but I didn’t know the American word, nor where I’d find it, nor how I’d boil the water.
I took a shower, first hot, then cold. In the hotel’s Tea Room I got a black coffee and toast. I took a few steps out onto the street. The way led me to the liquor store. It was still open. I didn’t begrudge the Southern Comfort the previous night, I’m not one to nurse a grudge. To make this clear I bought another bottle. The proprietor said: ‘Better than any of your sambuca, hey?’ I didn’t want to contradict him.
This time I intended to get drunk systematically. I got undressed, hung the ‘Do not disturb’ sign outside my door and my suit over the clothes stand. I stuffed my worn undershirt into a plastic bag provided for the purpose and left it out in the corridor. I added my shoes and hoped that I’d find everything in a decent state the next morning. I locked the door from the inside, drew the curtains, turned on the TV, slipped into my pyjamas, poured my first glass, placed bottle and ashtray within reach on the bedside table, laid my cigarettes and folder of matches next to them, and myself in bed. Red River was on TV. I pulled the covers up to my chin, smoked, and drank.