‘Siegfried liked getting out of chores. In school, as well, where he was in my class in the first and second year. You know, he was a frightened child – and a cringing one. I don’t understand much about medicine, beyond first aid, of course, which I need as senior teacher and scoutmaster. But I would think you need a certain level of courage for self-mutilation, and I can’t imagine Siegfried having that courage. Now his father, on the other hand, he’s made of different stuff.’
He was showing me to the door when he remembered something else. ‘Would you like to see some photos?’ The pictures in the album were of various combinations of scouts, tents, campfires, bicycles. I saw children singing, laughing, and fooling around, but I could also see in their eyes that the snapshots were engineered by Senior Teacher Jungbluth. ‘That’s Siegfried.’ He pointed to a rather frail blond boy with a reticent look on his face. A few photos later I came across him again. ‘What’s wrong with his leg?’ His left leg was in plaster. ‘Right,’ said Senior Teacher Jungbluth. ‘An unpleasant story. For six months the accident insurance tried to stick me with negligence. But Siegfried just had a careless fall when we were in the stalagmite caves in Pottenstein, and broke his leg. I can’t be everywhere at once.’ He looked at me seeking agreement. I was glad to concur.
On the way home, I took stock. Not much remained to be done on the Sergej Mencke case. I still wanted to take a look at Philipp’s young scholar’s thesis, and I’d saved my visit to Sergej in the hospital for last. I was tired of them all, the senior teachers, the army captains, the gay German professors, the whole ballet scene, and Sergej too, even before I’d seen him. Had I grown weary of my profession? In the Mischkey case I’d already let my professional standards drop, and as for my distaste for the Mencke case, it wouldn’t have been there before. Should I call it quits? Did I want to live beyond eighty anyway? I could get my life insurance paid out, that would feed me for twelve years. I decided to talk to my tax adviser and insurance agent in the new year.
I drove westwards, into the setting sun. As far as my eye could see the snow gleamed in a rosy hue. The sky was tinted the blue of pale porcelain. In the Franken villages and small towns I drove past, smoke unfurled from the chimneys. The homely light in the windows rekindled old desires for security. Homesick for Nowhere.
Philipp was still on duty when I looked him up in the station at seven. ‘Willy is dead,’ he greeted me dejectedly. ‘The idiot. To die of a burst appendix these days is just ridiculous. I don’t understand why he didn’t call me; he must have been in terrible pain.’
‘You know, Philipp, I’ve often had the impression in the years since Hilde’s death that he didn’t actually have the will to live.’
‘These silly husbands and widowers. If he’d just said the word, I know women who’d make him forget any number of Hildes. What’s become of your Brigitte, by the way?’
‘She’s running around in Rio. When’s the funeral?’
‘A week from today. Two p.m. at the main cemetery in Ludwigshafen. I had to see to it all. There’s no one else. Would a red sandstone gravestone with a screech owl on it meet with your approval? We’ll pool resources, you, Eberhard, and me, so that he gets planted decently.’
‘Have you thought of the announcements? And we’ll have to inform the dean of his old faculty. Could your secretary do that?’
‘That’s fine. I wish I could join you to have a bite to eat. But I can’t get away. Don’t forget the dissertation.’
And then there were three. No more Doppelkopf. I went home and opened a can of sardines. I wanted to try empty sardine cans on my Christmas tree this year and had to start collecting them. It was almost too late to get enough together before Christmas. Should I invite Philipp and Eberhard next Friday for a funeral feast of sardines in oil?
‘Door-Induced Fractures’ was fifty pages long. The system underlying the work emerged as a combination of doors and breaks. The introduction contained a diagram, the horizontal of which depicted the various fracture-inducing doors, and the vertical the door-induced fractures. Most of the 196 squares contained figures revealing how often the corresponding constellation had cropped up at the city hospital in the last twenty years.
I looked for the line ‘car door’ and the column ‘tibia fracture’. At the point they met I found the number 2 and afterwards in the text the respective case histories. Although all names had been removed I recognized Sergej’s in one. The other dated back to 1972. A nervous cavalier, while helping his lady into the car, had shut the door too swiftly. The study could only cite one case of self-mutilation. A failed goldsmith had hoped to gain heaps of gold with his insured, and broken, right thumb. In the furnace cellar he had placed his right hand in the frame of the iron door and slammed it shut with his left. The affair only came apart because, with the insurance money already paid, he had bragged about his coup. He told the police that as a child he’d attached his wobbly milk-teeth to the door handle with a thread and pulled them out. That’s what had given him the idea.
The decision to call Frau Mencke and enquire about young Siegfried’s methods of tooth extraction was one I put on ice.
Yesterday I’d been too tired to stay up to watch Flashdance, borrowed from the video rental on Seckenheimer Strasse. Now I slid in the cassette. Afterwards I danced under the shower. Why hadn’t I stayed longer in Pittsburgh?
10 Stop thief
In Basle Judith and I took our first break. We drove off the autobahn into town and parked on Münster-Platz. It was covered in snow and was free of aggravating Christmas decorations. We walked a few steps to Café Spielmann, found a table by the window, and had a view over the Rhine and the bridge with the small chapel in the middle.
‘Now tell me in detail how you set this up with Tyberg,’ I asked Judith over a bowl of muesli, which was particularly delicious here, with lots of cream and without an overabundance of oat flakes.
‘During the centenary when I was assigned to him he invited me to look him up if I was ever in Locarno. I mentioned this and said I had to chauffeur my elderly uncle,’ she placed a soothing hand on mine, ‘to look for a holiday home there. I added that he knew this elderly uncle from the war years.’ Judith was proud of her diplomatic move. I was concerned.
‘Won’t Tyberg throw me out on the spot when he recognizes me as the former Nazi prosecutor? Wouldn’t it have been better to have told him straight out?’
‘I did consider it, but then perhaps he wouldn’t even have let the former Nazi prosecutor over his threshold.’
‘And why elderly uncle, actually, and not elderly friend?’
‘That smacks of lover. I think Tyberg was interested in me as a woman, and perhaps he wouldn’t see me if he thought I was firmly attached to someone else, especially if I brought this someone with me. You are a sensitive private detective.’
‘Yes. I’m perfectly willing to face up to the responsibility of having been Tyberg’s prosecutor. But should I confess to him in one fell swoop that I’m your lover, not your uncle?’
‘Are you asking me?’ She said it abruptly yet playfully, and got out her knitting as though settling down to a longer discussion.
I lit a cigarette. ‘You’ve interested me as a woman time and again, and now I wonder whether I was just an old dodderer to you, avuncular and sexless.’
‘What are you after now? “You’ve interested me as a woman time and again.” If you were interested in me in the past then leave it. If you’re interested in the present then say so. You always prefer taking responsibility for the past rather than for the present.’ Knit two, purl two.