The Sinner (19 page)

The chief gave her no time to think. He rustled up a snack from
somewhere. Just a few biscuits and some fresh coffee. He told the
other man to make it less strong this time. His voice seemed to
reach her through a layer of cotton wool. He kept asking about
Cologne. Why had she opted for that particular city? Bremen or
Hamburg would have been nearer. Where had she obtained the
money for such a long train journey?

"I stole it," she muttered, staring at the floor. "From my mother.
Nearly eight hundred marks. That covered my ticket and a few weeks'
living expenses. I found a job at once. Somewhere to live too."

"Where?"

She quoted Margret's address! She was so confused, nothing else
occurred to her. It was a second or two before she realized what
she'd said - and, almost simultaneously, realized how hopeless it
was. If he checked her statement, as lie undoubtedly would, he'd
soon discover where the lies ended and the truth began.

Her heartbeat speeded up; her hands became moist at the
thought of getting Margret into trouble. She'd made a big mistake.
She should have said she'd run away with Johnny. Not immediately,
not until August. August was important, she didn't know why. At
the moment she didn't know much in general, there were too many
things going through her head.

Give up! She had heard of people who cracked under interrogation, people whose resistance was broken by a constant reiteration of the same questions. Not her! She summoned up all her
remaining energy. There was always something left in the tank.
Her eighteen-year battle with Mother had made her strong and
taught her how to tell stories that left no loose ends. She should
probably be grateful to her for training her so indefatigably.

Outwardly, she seemed to have surrendered at last. She looked
up for a moment, gazed sadly into the chief's eyes and bowed her
head again, lowering her voice as well. Inside, she was grimly selfcontrolled and taut to breaking point. She clasped her left hand with
her right and wiped off the sweat on her skirt. She had resumed
her seat long ago. Her shoulders sagged. Georg Frankenberg was
dead; they couldn't ask him for confirmation.

It was only a whisper: "You'll find out anyway, so ... Yes. I did
have a reason for going to Cologne - I didn't tell you the truth
because I was so ashamed. The thing is, I went around with Johnny
for a while. Do you understand? He didn't take me home at all that
night we went to Hamburg. The others had gone, leaving us in the
cellar on our own. He wanted me to stay with him, so I ... He
made love to me, and it was wonderful. Now we belong together, I
thought. That was in August. Did I say it was in August?"

The chief nodded, and she spun him a yarn about the weeks
they'd spent together, and about a trip to Cologne, where Johnny
planned to visit a friend of his. He'd called him several times on
the way to warn him of their arrival, but in vain. And once he'd
written down the number on a piece of paper and sent her to call
him. And later, when she was back home, she found the slip of
paper and called the number when her mother threw her out. A
young woman answered. She enquired after Johnny, but the name meant nothing to the woman, who advised her to call again that
evening when her husband was at home.

A short break. She took a sip of coffee and waited, almost with
bated breath, to see if this lie would also generate some images.
Nothing happened. She bit off a tiny piece of biscuit but could
hardly swallow it. The biscuits were coated with chocolate, every
crumb of which had meant a death sentence for Magdalena.

The chief was watching her intently. She'd made another
mistake. This "going around together for a while"! How had they
travelled to Cologne to visit Johnny's friend? In what car, if the
silver Golf belonged to the fat boy?

Hurriedly, before the chief could follow this up, she lied on.
"That night I called the number again. The husband answered.
This time I asked for Horsti. `His name is Georg Frankenberg,' he
said with a laugh. `Not even he knows why he hit on that name, the
idiot.' He asked what I wanted with Georg Frankenberg. I simply
said I'd been a friend of his and would like to see him again. In that
case, the man said, I must come to Cologne."

Werner floss gave his boss a meaningful look, but it was
superfluous. At that moment Rudolf Grovian smelled a rat and
felt compelled to question everything he'd heard so far. "His name
is Georg Frankenberg ..." Those had been the man's words. He
didn't know what to make of them. Georg Frankenberg had been
Frankie to everyone except his parents, even to his wife. That
robbed the friend from Cologne of all substance. In spite of this,
he asked: "This man - did lie also have a name?"

She could detect the mistrust in his voice, but he didn't seem to
have registered her blunder about the car, and she now doubted
if Margret was involved or he'd have said so straight out. All that
interested him was Georg Frankenberg and the names of any
friends who could confirm her story.

"I'm trying to remember," she said. "It was an odd name, but I
can't think of it just at present. I'm very tired."

`And his telephone number?"

"I'm sorry, I've forgotten it. I never could remember numbers."

"The address?"

She shrugged. "I don't remember," she said softly. "Maybe the
name and address will come back to me tomorrow A person can't
remember things to order, you know"

"Yes, I know," Grovian said. `And if a person is lying through
their teeth, their memories aren't worth much anyway. So you
acted on the man's suggestion?"

She nodded mechanically. A dam seemed to have broken in her
head. A chaotic jumble of images and words poured through the
breach and swirled around in her brain. The four people on the
blanket beside the lake. The tune. The apples from the supermarket
and the ones from the allotment. The story she'd told and the film
in which a young man and a girl descended a flight of stairs.

Dislodged by the flood, names went tumbling through her head
like boulders. Mother, Father, Magdalena, Horsti, Johnny, Margret,
Gereon. Masses of names - too many of them. Some she'd never
heard before - ridiculous names like Billy-Goat and Tiger. Her
face twitched as if she were on the verge of tears.

"I should have saved myself the trouble. Frankie wanted nothing
more to do with me."

"Who's Frankie?" Grovian asked.

She gave a start. "What?"

"Who's Frankie?" he repeated, finding it difficult to give the
question a neutral wrapping. He glanced at Hoss triumphantly.
That was what he'd been waiting for. To him, it was confirmation.
"You said Frankie wanted nothing more to do with you, Frau
Bender. Who is Frankie?"

She wasn't aware of what she'd said, had forgotten she'd heard
the name beside the lake. "What did I say? I'm sorry, I'm awfully
tired."

She clasped her forehead. Her eyes roamed across the desk and
came to rest on Werner Hoss as if he could put an end to the
torture. Torture, that's all it was. Her head was full to bursting
like a drawer with too much stuffed into it. Now the contents were
spewing out.

But she couldn't find the little knife she needed so badly. She
should have tidied everything first. If she had, she would have discovered that the knife wasn't in the drawer. It was lying on the
table on which the lemons had been sliced, visible to everyone who
walked in, but she hadn't seen it because she was too low down,
and the table too high. And standing at the table was a short, fat
man. He'd sprinkled some white powder on the back of his hand.
He licked it off, drank something and bit into a slice of lemon.

"Tell him to stop," she mumbled, still looking at Hoss. "Tell him
to leave me alone, or I'll go mad. I'm seeing things, stupid things.
You'd laugh yourself sick if I described them to you."

She shook herself like a wet dog and looked down at her hands.
"Something very silly happened to me once," she said. "I can't
remember it, and I don't want to. I've walled it off. Lots of people
do that with experiences they can't handle, Achim told me. They
build a wall across their brain and hide their painful memories
behind it. Achim said you must tear down the wall and digest those
memories or you'll never know any peace. Personally, I found the
wall solution a very good one."

She paused, lost in thought, then raised her head and looked at
Hoss again. "The brain is incredibly capacious," she said, addressing
him alone. "You don't need even half of it in order to think - less
than forty per cent, I believe, but it may be the other way round.
Maybe thinking takes up sixty per cent. Did you know that?"

Hoss nodded.

She gave a melancholy smile. "Wonderful, isn't it? It's like an
attic where you store all your junk. It worked too - until Christmas.
Then it all came back. When I hear that tune it leaps over the wall
like the wolf jumping out of the sand box. It may have something
to do with the birth of our Saviour, I don't know I don't know what
it's about at all. I wake up and there's nothing there. It's better
that way too - it worried me. I still feel it today, when I have that
dream."

The melancholy smile faded. She drew a deep breath. "It
happened to me once as a child," she went on eagerly. "But that
was another dream - I could always remember that one. I enjoyed
it too. I enjoyed being an animal."

That dream about the wolf was awful. But it was wonderful as
well. My dearest wish had been fulfilled. Magdalena wasn't with
us any more, and it wasn't my fault. Mother didn't want to be
with us either; she went on kneeling beside the empty pram. And
Father had the bucket of apples. I thought he must have known in
advance it would happen, or he would have filled the bucket with
greens and potatoes.

I woke up feeling light as air, although it quickly dawned on
me that it hadn't really happened. But that was what I found
so wonderful. I knew it was one of the very gravest sins to
wish a person dead. You would some day have to suffer endless
torment.

Mother always said that hundreds of little demons armed with
red-hot pincers would rip the flesh from my body in tiny little
shreds, so my flesh would last for all eternity. She showed me
pictures of this being done to other people. But I couldn't help it if
I only dreamed it, so it definitely wasn't a sin.

I was still feeling light as air when I got up in the morning. It
was going to be a very special day, I felt. At first I even thought a
miracle had occurred, but it hadn't. Everything turned out quite
differently.

In the afternoon Mother had to go shopping. She sent me
upstairs to keep an eye on Magdalena. Standing beside the bed as
usual, I thought she was asleep, but as soon as the front door shut
she opened her eyes and said: "Will you read to me?"

It was the first time Magdalena had spoken to me. She didn't speak much in general, and then only to Mother. I hadn't a clue
what to say.

`Are you deaf, or don't you understand German?" she said.

"What do you want me to say?" I asked.

"Nothing. Just read me something."

I wasn't sure Mother would approve. "I think it'd be too tiring,"
I said.

"For you or for me?" she said. "Shall I tell you what I think? I
think you can't read at all."

I was so surprised to find I could have a normal conversation
with her, just as I could with the kids in the playground, that I spoke
without thinking. "You bet I can read," I said. "I can read even
better than Mother. I don't mumble, I read loud and clear, and I
put the stresses in the right place, the teacher says. My classmates
aren't half as good."

"I'll believe that when you've read me something," she said. "Or
won't you because you don't like me? Go on, admit it. Nobody
here likes me, I know that. But I don't care, I don't like anyone
either. Why do you think I've kept my mouth shut till now? Because
I don't talk to fools. I save my breath for people with something
sensible to say."

So I took the Bible from the bedside table and read a passage
Mother often read, the one about the miracle our Saviour
performed when a woman touched the hem of his garment. I
don't know if my conscience was pricking me because Magdalena
had said we didn't like her, or whether I wanted to show her how
well I could read. I may also have been feeling rather proud that
she'd spoken to me at all.

I took a lot of trouble over my reading. She listened with her
eyes shut. Then she said: "Now the bit about Mary Magdalene
washing the Saviour's feet and drying them on her hair. I like that
bit best of all."

When I'd finished reading that passage as well, she said: "But
I'm out of luck."

I didn't know what she meant. "Well," she went on, "our Saviour
isn't wearing any clothes, just a little cloth around his tummy. Think we could dress him up? We could try, if you took him off the altar
and brought him up here. We'll dress him in a handkerchief, and
I'll touch the hem. After that I'll wash his feet and dry them on my
hair. It's bound to do me some good."