After a while the images of the courtroom I’d appeared in, of the hangings I’d had to attend, of green and grey and black uniforms, and of my wife in her League of German Girls outfit began to fade. I could no longer hear the echo of boots in long corridors, no Führer’s speeches on the People’s Receiver, no sirens. John Wayne was drinking whisky, I was drinking Southern Comfort, and as he set off to tidy things up I was with him all the way.
By the following midday, the return to sobriety had become a ritual. At the same time it was clear the drinking was over. I drove to the Golden Gate Park and walked for two hours. In the evening I found Perry’s, an Italian restaurant I felt almost as comfortable in as the Kleiner Rosengarten. I slept deeply and dreamlessly, and on Monday morning I discovered the American breakfast. At nine o’clock I gave Vera Müller a call. She would expect me for lunch.
At half past twelve I was standing in front of her house on Telegraph Hill with a bouquet of yellow roses. She wasn’t the blue-rinsed caricature I’d envisaged. She was around my age and if I had aged as a man as she had as a woman, I’d have had reason to be content. She was tall, slim, angular, wore her grey hair piled high, over her jeans a Russian smock, her spectacles were hanging from a chain, and there was a mocking expression hovering round her grey eyes and thin mouth. She wore two wedding rings on her left hand.
‘Yes, I’m a widow.’ She had noticed my glance. ‘My husband died three years ago. You remind me of him.’ She led me into the sitting room through the windows of which I could see Alcatraz. ‘Do you take Pastis as an aperitif? Help yourself, I’ll just pop the pizza into the oven.’
When she returned I had poured two glasses. ‘I had to confess something to you. I’m not a historian from Hamburg, I’m a private detective from Mannheim. The man whose advertisement you answered, not a Hamburg historian either, was murdered and I’m trying to find out why.’
‘Do you already know by whom?’
‘Yes and no.’ I told my story.
‘Did you mention your connection to the Tyberg affair to Frau Hirsch?’
‘No, I didn’t dare.’
‘You really do remind me of my husband. He was a journalist, a famous raging reporter, but each time he wrote a piece, he was afraid. It’s good, by the way, you didn’t tell her. It would have upset her too much, because of her relationship with Karl. Did you know, he had an amazing career again, in Stanford? Sarah never adapted to that world. She stayed with him because she thought she owed it to him for his having waited so long. And at the same time he only lived with her out of a sense of loyalty. The two of them never married.’
She led me out onto the kitchen balcony and fetched the pizza. ‘One thing I do like about growing older is that principles develop holes. I never thought I’d be able to eat with an old Nazi prosecutor without choking on my pizza. Are you still a Nazi?’
I choked on my pizza.
‘All right, all right. You don’t look like one to me. Do you sometimes have problems with your past?’
‘At least two bottles of Southern Comfort’s worth.’ I told her how the weekend had been spent.
At six o’clock we were still sitting together. She told me about her start in America. At the Olympic Games in Berlin she’d met her husband and moved with him to Los Angeles. ‘Do you know what I found most difficult? Wearing my bathing suit in the sauna.’
Then she had to leave for her night shift with the help line. I went back to Perry’s and merely took a six-pack of beer to bed with me. The next morning I wrote Vera Müller a postcard over breakfast, settled the bill, and drove to the airport. In the evening I was in Pittsburgh. There was snow on the ground.
4 Demolishing Sergej
The cabs that took me to the hotel in the evening and to the ballet the next morning were every bit as yellow as those in San Francisco. It was nine, the ensemble was already in the midst of a rehearsal, at ten they took a break and I was directed to the Mannheimers. They were standing in tights and leotards next to the radiators, yoghurt in hand.
When I introduced myself and the subject of my visit, they could hardly believe I’d come all this way just for them.
‘Did you know about Sergej?’ Hanne turned to Joschka. ‘Hey, I mean, I feel just devastated.’
Joschka was startled, too. ‘If we can help Sergej in any way… I’ll have a word with the boss. It should be fine for us to start again at eleven o’clock. That way we can sit down together in the canteen and talk.’
The canteen was empty. Through the window I looked onto a park with tall, bare trees. Mothers were out with their children, Eskimos in padded overalls, romping around in the snow.
‘All right, I mean, it’s really important for me to share what I know about Sergej,’ she said. ‘I’d find it, like, absolutely awful, if someone thought… if someone got the wrong… Sergej, he’s so incredibly sensitive. And he’s so vulnerable, not at all macho. You see, that’s why he couldn’t have done it for starters, he was always terribly afraid of injuries.’
Joschka wasn’t so sure. He stirred the contents of his Styrofoam cup with a little plastic stick, contemplatively. ‘Herr Self, I don’t think Sergej maimed himself either. I just can’t imagine anyone doing that. But if anyone… You know, Sergej was always having crackpot ideas.’
‘How can you say such mean stuff?’ Hanne interrupted him. ‘I thought you were his friend. No way, that makes me, like, really sad.’
Joschka placed his hand on her arm. ‘But, Hanne, don’t you remember the evening we were entertaining the dancers from Ghana? He told us how, when he was a boy scout, he deliberately cut his hand with the potato peeler to get out of kitchen duty. We all laughed about it, you too.’
‘But you got it completely wrong. He only pretended he’d cut himself and wrapped a large bandage around it. If you’re going to, like, distort the truth like that… I mean, really, Joschka…’
Joschka didn’t appear convinced, but didn’t want to quarrel with Hanne. I inquired about the shape, and mood, Sergej was in during the last few months of the season.
‘Exactly,’ said Hanne. ‘That doesn’t fit with your strange suspicion either. He believed completely in himself, he absolutely wanted to add flamenco to his repertoire, and tried to get a scholarship to Madrid.’
‘But, Hanne, he didn’t get the scholarship, that’s the thing.’
‘But don’t you get it, the fact he applied for it, that had so much power somehow. And his relationship, that was finally going well in the summer with his German professor. You know, Sergej, he isn’t gay, but he can also love men. He’s absolutely fantastic that way, I think. And not just something brief, sexual, but like, really deep. It’s impossible not to like him. He’s so…’
‘Sweet?’ I suggested.
‘Yeah, sweet. Do you actually know him, Herr Self?’
‘Uh, could you tell me who the German professor is you mentioned?’
‘Was it really German, not law?’ Joschka frowned.
‘Oh, crap, you’re demolishing Sergej. He was a Germanist, such a cuddly guy. But his name… I don’t know if I should tell you.’
‘Hanne, the two of them hardly made a secret of it considering how they carried on round town. It’s Fritz Kirchenberg from Heidelberg. Maybe it’s a good idea for you to talk to him.’
I asked them about Sergej’s qualities as a dancer. Hanne answered first.
‘But that’s beside the point. Even if you’re not a good dancer you don’t have to hack your leg off. I’m not even going to discuss it. And I’m still convinced you’re wrong.’