The Sinner (6 page)

I liked those stories. There was something hopeful, almost
promising, about them. If a wretched little moorland village could
develop into a nice little town, everything else could get better too.

On that particular night Father had told me about the Black
Death, so when I woke up and heard him groaning I immediately
thought of the plague and was afraid he'd caught it. But then I saw
he was holding his sin in his hand. To me it looked as if lie was
trying to yank it off. He didn't succeed.

If both of us yanked together, I thought, I was sure we'd manage
it. I told him so and asked if I could help. Father said there was no
need. He got out of bed and went to the bathroom. There was a
big pair of scissors in the bathroom, so I thought he meant to cut
it off.

But a few days later I saw it was still there. Well, I would also have
been scared to cut off something so firmly attached to me. I wished
with all my heart that it would fall off by itself or go bad and be
washed out by pus like the splinter in my palm.

Father smiled when I said this. Stowing it away in his pants, he
came over to the bathtub and soaped me. "Yes," he said, "let's hope
it falls off. We could pray that it does."

I can't recall if we did, but I expect so. We were forever praying
for things we didn't have or didn't want to have, like a craving for
lemonade. That often tormented me.

Which reminds me of an occasion when I was in the kitchen with
Mother - I must have been four. I still didn't believe she was really
my mother. Everyone said so, but I already knew how to lie and
thought everyone did.

I was thirsty, so Mother gave me a glass of water. Just ordinary
tap water, and I didn't want it. It tasted of nothing. Mother took
the glass away. "In that case," she said, "you can't be thirsty."

I was too, and I said I'd sooner have some lemonade. Grit always
had some lemonade. Mother didn't like me going over there, but
she didn't have time to worry about what I got up to, so I seized
every opportunity to escape from her and spend time with my real
family.

I'd been playing next door that day too, but Grit wanted to pay
someone a visit. She had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances.
A lot of people invited her over because her husband was away at
sea so often. She called to her girls to come inside and get washed
and changed. I asked if I could come too, but the answer was no,
"my mother" wouldn't allow it. So I had to go home.

I remember the occasion vividly. It was early one afternoon at
the end of July or the beginning of August, and very hot outside.
The kitchen window was open, and everything - all the shabbiness
of my surroundings, for which there was no financial reason - was
bathed in brilliant sunlight.

Father worked in an office in Hamburg. He sometimes told me
about it, and I knew, even at the age of four, that he earned a
good salary. We could have lived more comfortably than we did.
My parents had done so in the old days. They often used to treat
themselves to nights out in Hamburg, where they dined and danced
and so on.

But Father had needed a lot of money himself since Magdalena's
birth, and the hospital was expensive too. The doctors at Eppendorf
were surprised by Magdalena's survival. She paid many visits to
the hospital, sometimes for another operation, sometimes just for
a few days' observation. Mother always went with her, and Father
had to pay for her bed and board. It was the same old story every
time they came back: another few weeks, a month or two at most.

We shared our home with death, and Mother fought for every
extra day of life. She never let Magdalena out of her sight, not
even at night, which was why Father slept in my room. There were
only two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. My parents never expected to have children when they bought the house, so the
second bedroom would have been a guest room.

Mother was standing at the stove when I asked her for some
lemonade. It was an electric stove. We also had a refrigerator, but
the rest of the kitchen amenities comprised the clumsy old secondhand furniture my parents had bought after their marriage.
Everything in the house was old, Mother included.

She was forty-four at this time. A tall woman with a thin face,
she looked much older than her age. She had no time to spare for
herself. Her stringy grey hair hung down to her shoulders. When it
grew too long she cut some off.

She was wearing a coloured apron and stirring a saucepan.
Putting the tumbler in the sink, she turned to me and said:
"Lemonade?"

Mother had a soft voice and always spoke quietly, so you were
compelled to listen hard. She shook her head as though she found
it utterly incomprehensible that I could have had such an absurd
idea. Then she went on in her quiet, deliberate way. "Do you know
what they gave our Saviour when He was dying and said He was
thirsty? They took a sponge soaked in vinegar and put it to His lips.
A mug of water would have rejoiced His heart and alleviated His
sufferings, but He didn't complain - and He certainly didn't ask for
lemonade. What does that tell you?"

This can't have been the first such conversation I had with
Mother, because I already knew the answer by heart: "That our
Saviour was always content with His lot."

Me, I was never content. I was a difficult child. Stubborn, quicktempered and egotistical, I wanted everything all for myself; and
if I wasn't stopped, I simply took it. That was the only reason
why Magdalena was so sick, Mother explained. Magdalena had
come from Mother's tummy, and I had been in Mother's tummy a
short while before. I'd used up all her strength, which would have
sufficed for at least three children, so there'd been none left for
poor Magdalena.

I didn't care when she told me such things. Although I wasn't
intent on being a bad person, being good wasn't so important where my sister was concerned. I didn't like Magdalena. To me,
she was just an object like a piece of wood. She couldn't walk or
speak - she couldn't even cry properly. If something hurt her, she
squealed. Most of the time she lay in bed, or sometimes for an
hour in an armchair in the kitchen. But that was on an especially
good day.

I couldn't say what I thought, of course. I had to say the
diametrical opposite, but at that I was an expert. I always said
what people wanted to hear. Mother was satisfied with my answer.
"Don't you also think you should follow our Saviour's example?"
she asked. I nodded eagerly, and she went on: "Then go and beg
Him for strength and grace."

I was still thirsty, but I knew she wouldn't even give me the glass
of tap water until I'd prayed, so I went into the living room.

It was just as shabby and old-fashioned in appearance as the
kitchen. A threadbare sofa, a coffee table on spindly, crooked legs
and two armchairs. But no one entering the room had eyes for the
worn-out furniture.

The first thing that met your gaze was the altar in the corner
beside the window It was really just a cupboard minus the top half,
which Father had had to saw off. In front of it stood a hard wooden
bench on which you were only allowed to kneel. The makeshift
altar was draped in a white cloth embroidered with candles, and
on it stood a vase of flowers, usually roses.

Roses were very expensive, but Mother bought them gladly even
when the housekeeping money ran short. Making a sacrifice to our
Saviour couldn't fail to fill one's heart with joy, she said. My heart
was never filled with joy. It was filled with the supposition that I'd
been given away. My real mother, Grit Adigar, must have realized a
long time ago that I was a bad person. She didn't want Kerstin and
Melanie to suffer in consequence and end up as sick as Magdalena;
that was why she had taken me to live with this woman who knew
exactly how to make a bad person good.

But if I showed everyone that I was a good girl, if I prayed
diligently enough and didn't sin - or not so anyone noticed - I felt
sure I would soon be restored to my real family for evermore.

I can't imagine that everyone genuinely believed my invalid
sister's survival to be dependent on my good conduct. In any case,
it would mean that I could never go home again - that I would
have to remain with this peculiar woman and our Saviour for all
eternity.

The Saviour stood on the altar between the vase of flowers
and four candlesticks containing tall, white candles. But he didn't
actually "stand" there: he was nailed to a twelve-inch wooden cross
with tiny nails. His back was also glued to it. I took him down and
examined him one day when Mother wasn't around.

I'd only wanted to see if he could open his eyes. Mother claimed
he could gaze deep into people's hearts and see all their sinful
desires. But his eyes didn't open even when I shook him, waggled
the crown of thorns on his head, which was bowed in agony, and
tapped his tummy with my knuckles. It sounded as if I'd tapped
the tabletop.

I didn't believe he could catch me out. I had no respect for him,
only for Mother, who compelled me to kneel before him three or
more times a day and beg for grace and strength and mercy. He
was supposed to purify my heart, but I didn't want a pure heart.
I had a sound one - that was good enough for me. He was also
supposed to give me the strength to go without things. I didn't want
that either.

I always had to go without - without sweets, lemonade and other
treats. Like the cake Grit Adigar regularly offered us. She baked
them herself - one every Saturday, thickly sprinkled with icing
sugar - and on Monday she would turn up bearing a plate with
three or four slices on it. They were a bit dry already, but that
didn't matter. Mother always declined them. The very sight of the
plate made my mouth water.

If I stared at it for too long, Mother said: "You've got that greedy
look again." And she would send me off to the living room, where
I kneeled before the cross on the cupboard in the corner, the one
on which the Saviour had shed his blood for the remission of our
sins.

She felt momentarily puzzled as she kneeled beside the dead man,
seeing his blood and the horror on the others' faces. The platinum
blonde didn't want to be touched by her or helped to her feet and
shepherded away. She lashed out at Cora with both fists. The seated
man told Cora to leave her alone, which she did. Ute didn't concern
her.

She apologized to Gereon for cutting his arm, but he punched
her in the face again. The seated man had long since ceased to be
seated. He was kneeling opposite her, examining his dead friend,
but since this was a timeless moment, something for eternity, he
had to remain the seated man. "Stop that, damn you!" he yelled
at Gereon. "Give it a rest!" Gereon ignored him. `Are you mad?"
he shouted at Cora. "Why did you do it?" She didn't know It was
embarrassing somehow

She would have liked to be alone with the dead man, just for a
minute or two, so as to be able to look at him in peace and savour
the emotions the sight of him aroused in her: satisfaction, boundless
relief and pride. It was as if some disagreeable, long-deferred task
had been accomplished at last. She almost said: "It is finished." But
she didn't; she merely sat there feeling good.

She continued to feel so even when the first policemen turned up:
four uniformed officers. One of them asked if the knife was hers.
When she confirmed this, he asked if she had killed the man with it.

"Yes, of course," she replied. "It was me."

The policeman said they would have to detain her. She need not
make a statement, was entitled to a lawyer and so on.

She got to her feet. "Many thanks," she said. "I don't need a
lawyer, everything's fine." And it was. Everything was absolutely
fine. The joy, the inner peace - she had never experienced such
wonderful sensations before.

A policeman told Gereon to take her clean underclothes and ID
from the shoulder bag and hand them over. She wasn't allowed to
touch the bag herself, she was only allowed to take her skirt and Tshirt. She forgot about a towel.

Gereon proceeded to rummage in the bag. "You must be out
of your mind!" lie snarled. "You stabbed me too!" She answered
him in a calm, controlled manner. Then Gereon handed her
underclothes to the policeman, who had no choice but to pass
them on to her with a neutral expression.

They allowed her to freshen up. Two uniformed officers escorted
her to the staff washroom in the low building beside the entrance.
The washbasin was filthy, the mirror above it cloudy and spattered
with countless splash marks, but she could see her face well enough.
She felt her right temple. The skin there was broken, and her right
eyelid badly swollen. She could only see through a narrow slit on
that side, but it didn't worry her.

She ran the tip of her tongue over her upper lip, tasted blood and
thought of the wooden figure in the corner of the living room, of
the red paint on its hands and feet and the wound in its side, from
which several thin threads trickled down. She knew it was only
paint, even at the age of four. But the blood of the man, the blood
on her face and body was genuine. And there lay redemption.