Self's deception (13 page)

34
Angels don't shoot at cats

That evening we sat in Murten, above the lake. From the terrace of the Hotel Krone we watched the late sailboats. In the evening lull they slowly made their way back into the harbor. The last steamer from Neuenburg forged past them with majesty, as if to prove the superiority of technology over nature. The sun set behind the mountains on the opposite shore.

“I'll go get my sweater.” Leo got up and stayed away a long time. The waiter brought me a second aperitif. Silence rose from the lake and swallowed the buzz of voices behind me. I turned around just as Leo came out onto the terrace through the glass doors. She hadn't put on a sweater. She wore a tight, long-sleeved black dress that reached from her neck to just above her knees, and black high-heeled shoes. Her pantyhose, the stole, and the comb in her luxuriant pinned-up hair were red. She took her time crossing the terrace. She sashayed her way around tables, and when she squeezed between chairs that were too close together she pulled her shoulders up so high that her breasts were tight within the dress. Where there were no obstacles she walked with swaying hips, her head held high. I got up, pulled her chair out for her, and she sat down. The guests on the terrace had followed her with their eyes because of her swinging hips, and also because her dress was bare down the back.

“You're gorgeous.”

We sat opposite each other. Her sparkling eyes—blue beneath a blue sky and sometimes gray or green beneath gray clouds—shone darkly. In her smile was delight at the game she was playing. A touch of seduction, a touch of complacency, a touch of self-mockery. She shook her head at my compliment, as if to say: “I know, but don't tell anybody else.”

The waiter suggested fish from the lake and wine from the opposite shore. Leo ate hungrily. Over dinner I learned that she had spent a year in America as a high school student, that jersey sweaters don't get wrinkled, that the shirt and jacket I'd bought at her suggestion in Belfort suited me, and that her mother had been a voice-over actress and had previously been married to a washed-up movie director. It was clear that her relationship with her mother was not good. She asked me what life as a private investigator was like, how long I had been one, and what I had done before.

“You were a public prosecutor?” She stared at me in amazement. “How come you gave that up?”

During the course of my life I have given many different answers to this question. Perhaps all of them true. Perhaps none. In 1945, they turned their back on me for having been a Nazi public prosecutor, and when they wanted the old Nazis again, I turned my back on them. Because I was no longer an old Nazi? Because the let's-look-the-other-way attitude of my old and new colleagues at the bar rubbed me the wrong way? Because I had definitely had enough of others laying out for me what is just and unjust? Because as a private investigator I am my own boss? Because in life you should never pick up again what you've put down for good? Because I don't like the smell of government offices? “I can't quite say, Leo. Back in 1945, being a public prosecutor was simply over for me.”

A cool wind rose and the terrace emptied. We sat down to finish our bottle on a bench that was shielded by a wall. Vully was an unpretentious local wine without frills that I had never tried before. The moon had risen and was mirrored in the lake. I felt a chill, and Leo snuggled up to me, warming and seeking warmth.

“My father stopped talking in the last years of his life. I don't know if he couldn't talk or just didn't want to. I guess a bit of both. I remember at first trying to have conversations with him—I'd talk to him about something or ask him a question. I hoped he'd tell me more about himself. There were also times when he'd try to speak, but only a croaking rattle would escape from his throat. Mostly he'd look at me with a kind of crooked smile that asked for forgiveness and understanding, but perhaps it was also the result of the minor stroke he'd had. Later I just sat by his bedside, held his hand, looked out the window into the garden, and let my thoughts wander. That's where I learned to be silent. And to love.”

I put my arm around her shoulder.

“That was actually a nice time. For him and for me. Otherwise it was sheer hell.” She took the pack of cigarettes out of my coat pocket, lit one, and smoked it, inhaling deeply. “He couldn't hold his piss or shit anymore in those last years. The doctor said his condition was psychological, not physical, which he also told my father. That was before things got really bad. The doctor wanted to help him, to give him a healing shock, but he accomplished the opposite. Perhaps my father wanted to prove that he really couldn't do anything else. It turned into a ritual between him and Mother, like a last dance that the two of them had before they were executed for a crime they had committed together. He would soil the bed, and his pride and dignity suffered. She would clean him up and change the sheets, her face turned away in disgust. He knew that he disgusted her, but that she would not shrink from tending him, even though she was slowly running herself into the ground. I shit on you, he wanted to tell her, but he could only tell her this by shitting on himself, and she could only show him that he was a pitiful shit by slaving over his shit.”

Later Leo again returned to the subject. “When I was a little girl I wanted to marry my father. All girls do. Then when I realized that that wasn't possible, I wanted somebody like my father. You see, I've always liked older men. But those last years with Father…How ugly everything had become, how spiteful, nasty, dirty …” She looked past me, her eyes wide. “Sometimes Helmut seemed to me like an angel with a burning sword, destroying, judging, cleansing. You wanted to know whether I loved him. I loved the angel, and at times cherished the hope that he would take his sword and burn away my fear. But perhaps the heat was too much. I have…have I betrayed him?”

Angels do not shoot at couches and cats. I told her that, but she wasn't listening.

35
A nation of cobblers

I had put in a call from Niedersteinbach to Tyberg in Locarno. He told me he was looking forward to our visit. “You're bringing a young lady with you? My butler will prepare two rooms. I won't let you stay in a hotel, and that's that! You must stay at my place.” We reached his Villa Sem-preverde in Monti above Locarno at teatime.

Tea was served out in the arbor. The table and chairs were made of granite and were pleasantly cool in the heat of the summery afternoon. The Earl Grey gave off a strong aroma. The pastries were delicious, and Tyberg was attentive. And yet something wasn't quite right. His attentiveness was so formal that it struck me as forced and distant. I was taken aback: He had been so warm on the phone. Could it be because Judith Buchendorff, Tyberg's secretary and personal assistant, whom I had known slightly longer and better than I had known him, was away doing research for his memoirs? Or was the distance between us the kind of distance common between people who became important to each other under certain circumstances, but who in fact have nothing in common? Were we like vacationers, classmates, or war buddies who meet again?

Tea was served out in the arbor. The table and chairs were made of granite and were pleasantly cool in the heat of the summery afternoon. The Earl Grey gave off a strong aroma. The pastries were delicious, and Tyberg was attentive. And yet something wasn't quite right. His attentiveness was so formal that it struck me as forced and distant. I was taken aback: He had been so warm on the phone. Could it be because Judith Buchendorff, Tyberg's secretary and personal assistant, whom I had known slightly longer and better than I had known him, was away doing research for his memoirs? Or was the distance between us the kind of distance common between people who became important to each other under certain circumstances, but who in fact have nothing in common? Were we like vacationers, classmates, or war buddies who meet again?

After tea, Tyberg gave Leo and me a tour of the gardens, which extend far up the mountain behind the house. In his office he showed us the computer on which his memoirs were being written and told us how he had struggled to find the right title. “My whole life has been dedicated to the chemical industry—the only title I could think of was
He Who Touches Pitch and Sulfur
.” But that reminded him too much of verse one of
Jesus Son of Sirach
, chapter thirteen. In the music room he opened a chest and took out a flute for me and then sat down at the grand piano. We played Telemann's Suite in A Minor, and after that, just as we had once before, the B Minor Suite by Bach. He played far better than I, and we started off shakily. But he knew where he had to slow down for me, and soon enough my fingers remembered the much-practiced runs. Above all, the two of us understood Bach the way one can only understand Bach when one is pushing seventy. That Tyberg and I came together so naturally and felicitously in his music convinced me that I had only imagined the atmospheric disturbances. But after dinner the storm broke loose.

With his full head of white hair, his gray beard, and bushy eyebrows, Tyberg looked like an elder statesman, a visionary Russian dissident, or Santa Claus after a Christmas party. His brown eyes stared at me sternly. “I have given the matter much thought, wondering whether I should talk to you privately. Perhaps it would make the matter easier. But then again it might make it harder, and I don't want to have to ask myself if I tried to skirt the issue.” He got up and began pacing up and down behind the table. “Do you think we don't have German television here? Do you think you can simply come to the Tessin, an old man and a young woman, playing father and daughter, grandfather and granddaughter, or come visiting me in the guise of Uncle Gerhard and his young girlfriend?” Judith had first introduced me to him as her uncle Gerhard, and for him I had always remained Judith's “Uncle Gerhard,” though he was well aware that it had only been a matter of incognito. “We have cable television here in Locarno, Uncle Gerhard, and I get twenty-three channels. And I'm not the only one who watches the Tagesschau around here—there are hundreds of Germans living here. You could argue that mug shots give a distorted picture, and blond hair can change one's looks to some extent”—he looked sternly at Leo—”but it didn't take me more than fifteen minutes to recognize you. And I'm not the only one here who has a good eye for people. There are many artists, painters, and actors in Monti, for whom a careful eye is part of what they do. All I can say is that it was a crazy idea to come here.”

“It was my idea,” I said.

“I am aware of that, Uncle Gerhard. I'm not reproaching her. Nor am I reproaching her—or you—for the crime they're after her for. For now, we are only talking about an indictment, not a conviction. I'm sorry I am being so brusque.” Tyberg looked at Leo with a quick smile. “At my age, one aims to be as charming as possible to young ladies. But the matter is too important. It also has to do with an old story between Gerhard and me. Did he tell you how we met?”

Leo shook her head. I was filled with admiration for her. She sat there unperturbed, looking at Tyberg attentively and somewhat puzzled. She did not return his smile, nor did she rebuff it with a hard look. She was waiting. Every now and then her hands fiddled with a cigarette or brushed crumbs off her long white summer dress.

“But we can let that matter rest. I shall do things the way the Bedouins do. You can be my guests for three days. But I will ask you to leave my house on Saturday.”

I stood up. “It wasn't my intention to put you in danger, Herr Tyberg. I am sorry if—”

“I'm surprised you don't understand. It's not a question of danger. It's just that I don't want to have anything to do with this flight from justice. The police are seeking Frau Salger, and she should be brought before a judge and found innocent or guilty. I would be glad to join you in hoping that she will be found innocent. But it is not my right, nor yours, Uncle Gerhard, to interfere in matters that are the job of the police and a court of law.”

“What if they don't know their job? Something is wrong with their preliminary proceedings. First of all, they are looking for Leo without saying why. Then they make a public appeal for information, announcing an attack that is months old as if it happened yesterday. And they bring in people and faces that have nothing to do with the whole thing. No, Herr Tyberg, there's something fishy here.” Tyberg's words had initially made me feel inconsiderate and reckless. I knew I wasn't putting him in any real danger, but the issue was not my view of things, but his. I had been ready to accept his reproaches, but the conversation was now taking another turn.

“You're not the one to judge that,” he said. “You have to go through channels, there are public officials, there are investigative committees that deal with—”

“I can't just stick my head in the sand. There's something fishy about this, and the way the police are handling things definitely isn't aboveboard. If you want to know, the—”

“No, I don't want to know. Let's say everything that you're worried about is true—have you spoken to the commissioner in charge of the police officers who have acted wrongly? Have you spoken to your political representative? Have you contacted the press? I'm not saying you should stick your head in the sand, but how can you take it upon yourself to—”

“Take it upon myself?” I got angry. “I've been a man who minds his own business, a cobbler who has stuck to his last too often in life. As a soldier, as a public prosecutor, as a private investigator, I did what I was told, it was my job, and I didn't go messing about in matters that were in other people's domain. What we are is a nation of cobblers who mind their own business, and look where it's gotten us.”

“You're talking about the Third Reich? If only everyone minded his own business But no: The physicians were not satisfied with curing patients, they had to advance the Volk and racial cleansing. The teachers were not satisfied with teaching reading and writing, they had to teach fighting for the fatherland. Judges did not ask what was just, but what they deemed to be good for the nation, what the Führer wanted; and as for the generals—their trade is to fight and win battles, not to transport and shoot Jews, Poles, and Russians. No, Uncle Gerhard, unfortunately we are not a nation that minds its own business!”

“What about the chemists?” Leo asked.

“What about them?”

“The chemists of the Third Reich—I wonder what, in your view, their business was and if they stuck to it?”

Tyberg looked at Leo with a frown. “I have been asking myself that question ever since I started working on my memoirs. I incline to the opinion that a laboratory is a chemist's business. But that would mean that others always bear the responsibility, and that we scientists are never responsible, and I can see the snag in that, especially when it comes from the mouth of a chemist.”

For a while nobody spoke. The butler knocked, and then cleared away the plates. Leo asked him to compliment the cook for the corn biscuits with oxtail and green peppers that had been served as an appetizer. “Polenta medallions,” he corrected her, flattered, as he himself was the cook, and the reintroduction of polenta as a culinary delicacy was a cherished objective of his. He proposed that we step into the drawing room for a liqueur.

Leo got up, came over to me, and looked at me question-ingly. I nodded. “You don't have to come upstairs, Gerhard. I'll pack your things, too.” She gave me a quick kiss and I listened to her steps as her bare feet pattered on the stone slabs of the stairs. The floorboards upstairs creaked.

Tyberg cleared his throat. He stood behind his chair, his shoulders drooping, his arms resting on the chair back. “At our age we don't get to know and treasure that many people that we can afford to lose them. Please don't leave now.”

“I'm not leaving in anger, and I'd be happy to come back another time. But Leo and I—we really belong in a hotel.”

“Let me have a word with her.” He left the room and returned a little while later with Leo. She looked at me ques-tioningly again and I smiled at her questioningly. She shrugged her shoulders.

We spent the evening on the terrace. Tyberg read to us from his memoirs, and Leo found out how his and my paths had crossed during the war. The candle, by the light of which Tyberg was reading, flickered. I could not interpret the expression in Leo's eyes. At times bats rustled over our heads. They flew toward the house, and right before the wall their flight veered off abruptly into the emptiness of the night.

The following morning I was alone. Leo's things were no longer in the room. I looked in vain for a note. It was only later that I found one in my wallet in place of the four hundred francs I had changed in Murten. “I need the money. You'll get it back. Leo.”