Self's deception Read online

  Philipp downed the glass of good Alsatian riesling in one gulp and held it out to me. “We're having our spring festival at the yacht club on Friday. I'll take you along and you can have a nice chat with Eberlein.”

  “Eberlein's got a yacht?”

  “The Psyche. A Halberg-Rassy 352, sails like a three-quarter-ton vessel, top of the line.” Philipp's glass was empty again. “You call Eberlein sinister,” he said. “All I know is that people see him as an energetic, unconventional boss. The psychiatric hospital had taken a nosedive, and he put it back on track again. He is seen as a traditionalist in the field, but I don't think that a reformer could have gone a different route and done a better job. Wendt being his protégé doesn't fit the picture, though. Then again, one wouldn't expect him to esteem all doctors the same way—perhaps he likes Wendt particularly. But if Wendt, whom I've never heard of, is behind the mess you're describing, I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.”

  “And what about your shoes?” I asked. Philipp had knocked back the third glass, too, and rolled the stem between his fingers and looked unhappy.

  “Füruzan has moved in with me.”

  “Just like that?”

  He smiled sourly. “It's just like in that building and loan commercial. The bell rings, and there she is at my front door with all her earthly belongings, along with some furniture mover, to move her things into my apartment.”

  I was impressed. Ever since I'd known him he hit on women, took them out a few times, got them into bed, and that was that. Nurses and hospitals are exactly the same, was his motto: Either you get out quickly, or you're a hopeless case. So he was always particularly careful with nurses. Also because of the working atmosphere. And Füruzan, the proud, voluptuous Turkish nurse, brought everything tumbling down with the flick of a wrist.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Two weeks ago. I had to slam the door in her face. And then turn the key. It wasn't fair of her. I just couldn't handle it.”

  Turbo crossed the roof and came into the room from the balcony.

  Philipp said, “Here kitty, kitty,” and held out his hand. The cat marched straight past him. “See how things are with me? He can sense that I'm a castrated man and turns his back on me.”

  I sensed something else. Philipp hadn't just dropped by because we don't see enough of each other. As I brought out another bottle from the kitchen, he spilled the beans. “Thanks, just one more sip, I'll have to get going. And if Füruzan should call here and ask for me…I don't know if she'd do that, but if she does…could you…I mean, as a private investigator, you know how to handle these things. Could you tell her, for instance, that I had trouble with my car and that I had to take it to some mechanic you recommended who could only take a look at it this evening…I'm hanging around there, and he doesn't have a phone. How's that?”

  “Who's the other one?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands. “You don't know her. She's a student nurse from Frankenthal, but she's got a figure…breasts, I swear, she's got breasts like ripe mangoes and a bottom like…like …”

  I suggested pumpkins.

  “That's it, pumpkins. Or perhaps melons, not the yellow ones, the green ones with the red flesh. Or perhaps …” It was on the tip of his tongue.

  “Do me a favor and tell Füruzan that you and I went out,” I said to him, “and I won't pick up the phone tonight if it rings.”

  He left, and I sat there looking into the twilight thinking about my case and my friend Philipp. Füruzan didn't call. At ten o'clock Brigitte came over. My curiosity had been piqued: Before she slipped into her nightgown I took a quick, meticulous look. A pumpkin? No, and not a melon either, nor a muskmelon or a watermelon. A Belgian tomato.

  10

  Scott at the South Pole

  Chief Inspector Nägelsbach is always restrained and polite. He was that way when we met during the war at the Heidelberg Public Prosecutor's Office, and this was how he remained toward me when we became friends. We're both well past the age when friendships thrive on emotional outpourings.

  When I visited him the following morning at the Heidelberg police headquarters, I could tell right away that something wasn't quite right. He remained sitting at his desk and only shook my outstretched hand when I was about to withdraw it.

  “Please be seated.” He waved me to a chair by the filing cabinets, quite a distance from his desk. He frowned when I picked up the chair and brought it closer to his desk, as if I were invading his space.

  I came straight to the point. “A case has taken me to the State Psychiatric Hospital. There's something fishy going on there. Can you tell me if the police have been there recently?”

  “I am not in a position to provide you with such information. That would be against regulations.”

  We have never kept to the regulations, but made each other's work and life easier. He knows I can be trusted with the confidential information he gives me, just as I know I can trust him with the information I provide him. I couldn't figure out what was going on. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing.” He peered at me hostilely through the small round lenses of his glasses. I was about to say something curt, then I realized that his expression was not one of hostility, but unhappiness. He had lowered his eyes and was looking at the newspaper. I got up and came to his side.

  “Cork Monuments of Italy.” It was a newspaper article about an exhibition in Kassel of cork models of ancient buildings, from the Pantheon to the Colosseum, that had been made in Rome by Antonio Chichi between 1777 and 1782. “Read the last bit!”

  I quickly ran an eye down the column. The article ended with a quote from a Leipzig art dealer who, in 1786, had proclaimed that these masterful cork models were the best possible medium for conveying a precise and sublime impression of the original monuments. In fact I would have mistaken the picture of the model in the paper for the real thing if it had had the right background.

  “I feel like Scott when he reached the South Pole, only to find the tent Amundsen had pitched. Reni wants us to drive over to Kassel this weekend. She says I could see for myself that it's comparing apples and oranges. But I don't know.”

  I didn't know either. When he was fifteen, Nägelsbach had begun building models of major monuments out of match-sticks. From time to time he would attempt to build something else, like Dürer's Praying Hands or the golden helmet of Rembrandt's Man in a Golden Helmet, but his mission in life, to which he was going to devote his retirement, was to build a model of the Vatican. I know and value Nägelsbach's works, but to be honest they did not achieve the kind of illusion of reality that those cork models did. What could I tell him? That art was more a matter of creation than an attempt to portray reality? That in life the goal wasn't as important as the journey? That today the world remembered Scott, not Amundsen?

  “What are you working on right now?” I asked him.

  “On the Pantheon, of all things. For four weeks now. Why didn't I go for the Brooklyn Bridge?” His shoulders drooped.

  I waited for a bit. “Can I drop by again tomorrow?”

  “It's the State Psychiatric Hospital, right? I'll call you when I have the information.”

  I drove back to Mannheim with a deep feeling of futility. My old Opel purred over the asphalt. Sometimes the tires thumped over the yellow bumps marking the shifting of lanes where road work was being done. Failure late in life is no easier to bear than failure when one is young. It might not be the first time one is knocked down, but it might well be the last.

  Back at my office, Salger's strained voice sounded from the answering machine. He was most anxious for news and wanted me to leave a message on his machine with an update on my investigation. He was sending another payment. His wife was also anxious for news. He didn't want to keep pestering me, but he did until my answering machine cut him off after two minutes.

  11

  Pictures from an exhibition

  Nägelsbach didn't keep me waiting. He t
old me he had put his ear to the ground but hadn't found out much. “I can tell you the long and the short of it on the phone.” But I wanted to meet with him instead. “This evening? No, I can't. But I'll be back in the office tomorrow morning.”

  It was to be a drive I shall never forget. It was almost the end of everything. At some construction near Friedrichsfeld, where neither a center planting nor barriers separate the lanes of the autobahn, a large furniture truck skidded, crossed my lane toward the embankment, and rolled over. I froze. The truck slid across my lane; my car was headed toward it as if to ram it, and the truck grew bigger, came nearer, and towered above me. I didn't brake or swerve my car to the left. I simply froze.

  Within a fraction of a second everything was over. The truck had rolled over with a loud crash: Brakes screeched, horns blared, and a car that had careened out of its lane side-swiped another car that had come to a standstill. I stopped on the shoulder of the autobahn and got out but couldn't walk a step. I began shivering; I had to tense my muscles and grit my teeth. I stood there and saw the line of cars grow longer, the driver of the truck climb out of his cabin, a crowd of onlookers cluster around the rear door that had burst open, and the arrival of a police car and also an ambulance that immediately drove off again. My teeth kept chattering.

  A man got out of the car that had come to a stop behind my car and walked up to me. “Do you need a doctor?” I shook my head. He took hold of my arms, shook me, made me sit down on the embankment, and lit a cigarette. “Would you like one, too?”

  All I could think of was that you're not supposed to sit on the bare ground in any months that have an “r” in them, and it was April. I wanted to get up, worried about my bladder and prostate, but the man held me down.

  After the cigarette, I pretty much came around again. The man was talking up a storm—after a few sentences I had already lost the thread. When he left, I didn't even remember what he looked like. But now I was capable of making a statement to the police without trembling.

  Car by car, the traffic was waved past the capsized truck, its back door wide open. Its contents had fallen onto the autobahn, pictures from an exhibition in Mannheim. They were to be recovered and placed under the charge of the curator of the Mannheim Kunsthalle. I drove to Heidelberg along an almost empty autobahn.

  The information Nägelsbach had found came from the file of a colleague of his who was on sick leave. “His reports are in quite a bad state. It seems he's not been well for some time. But one thing's clear, there's been trouble off and on at the psychiatric hospital over the last few years.”

  “Trouble? What do you mean? Trouble, as in a patient falling out a window and breaking his neck?”

  “Good God, no. I'm talking about small slipups and glitches. I guess 'trouble' isn't even the right word. It's things like a failure in the hot-water supply, food that's gone bad, workers finding windows they had stacked in the courtyard smashed, a patient being released a few days too late, an attendant falling from a ladder—I don't know if any of this is even significant. And the reports were never made by the management, but always by patients, their families, or anonymously. If only one didn't have to be so goddamn careful nowadays in wards and institutions …”

  “Do the problems go beyond what happens in any large institution?”

  Nägelsbach got up. “Follow me.” We went out into the corridor, turned around the corner, and looked out the window into the courtyard of the police headquarters. “What do you see, Herr Self?”

  On the left, three police cars were parked, and on the right the ground was dug up and pipes were being laid. Some of the windows looking out on the yard were open, some closed. Nägelsbach looked up at the blue sky, across which a fresh wind was blowing little white clouds. “Wait a few more minutes,” he said. And then, as a cloud covered the sun, the blinds suddenly closed in all the windows. The cloud moved on, but the blinds remained closed.

  “Of the three cars down there, two are almost always here because they need repairs, the sewer pipes have already been dug up once this year and then covered up again, and every summer the blinds come up with some new prank. Would you say that all this is within the bounds of what can happen in any large institution? Or is this the work of terrorists, liberationists, anarchists, or skinheads?” Nägelsbach looked at me blankly.

  We went back to his office. “Do you have anything on a Dr.Wendt?”Iasked.

  “One moment. The computer terminal is in another office.” He came back with a blank expression on his face. “There's nothing in the computer. But the name rings a bell. I don't know if that's for any specific reason. I'll have to look through the paper files that we'll be shredding for security reasons, which can't be pulled up on the computer. I'll try to do it as fast as I can, but it might take a while. When do you need this?”

  I said “yesterday” and meant it. But what I had to do was clear even without a file on Wendt. Wendt was my lead, regardless of whether the lead was hot, warm, or cold. I had to dig up what sort of man he was, who his friends were, if he'd had dealings with Leo. Leo and her friends were not supposed to get wind of my investigation. But with Wendt I didn't have to mind my p's and q's.

  12

  In vain

  I followed Wendt when he came out of the psychiatric hospital at about seven. He got into his car and drove off in the direction of Heidelberg. I'd been waiting for two hours and thrown my butts out the window because the ashtray was full. Sweet Aftons have no filter and are environmentally friendly cigarettes that burn out completely.

  Route 3 is a smooth ride, and Wendt hit a good speed in his little Renault. From time to time I lost him, but caught up with him again at traffic lights, followed him down the Rohrbacher Strasse and through the Gaisberg tunnel, around Karlstor and up Hauptstraße. My Opel rattled over the cobblestones. We both parked in a garage beneath the Karlsplatz. Wendt pulled into a handicapped parking space, I into a well-lit parking space for women. Wendt got out of his car quickly, rushed up the stairs, and ran across the square, up Hauptstraße, past the Kornmarkt and the Heilig-Geist church. I couldn't keep up with him. His silhouette in the billowing beige raincoat grew smaller. I stopped at the corner of the city hall, pressing my hand to my side and trying to ease the pounding and stinging.

  After the Florin-Gasse he hurried into a doorway over which hung a sign with a golden sun. I waited for the pounding in my side to grow weaker. The marketplace and the main street were quiet. It was too late for people to be shopping, and too early for strolling. On the houses around the marketplace a tax-advantaged historic renovation spree had left its mark. I noticed that in the niche at the corner of the city hall the stone statue of a prisoner of war was missing. He had stood there waiting for decades in a long coat, with hollow cheeks and emaciated hands. I wondered who might have taken him back home.

  Beneath the sign of the golden sun was the Ristorante Sole d'Oro. I peeked inside. Wendt and a young woman were being given menus. Across the street, in the Café Bistro Villa, I found a table by the window where I could keep my eye on the restaurant's entrance. Long after the cassata, while I was on my second espresso and second sambuca, Wendt and his companion came out onto the street. They sauntered past a few houses to the Gloria movie theater. I watched the movie from three rows behind them. What I remember of the movie is the desperation of a woman who is becoming schizophrenic, and images of grand old facades, of a table festively decked on a terrace overlooking the sea, and of the sun hanging large and red in a hazy evening sky. As I came out of the theater I was dazed by the images and let my attention slip. Wendt and his companion were gone. A thick stream of students was moving down the main street, some with bright caps and headbands, along with American, Dutch, and Japanese tourists and loud young people from the provinces.

  In the garage I waited for Wendt a long time. When he finally turned up, he was alone. He drove slowly: Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage, Kurfürstenanlage, along the Neckar River as far as Wieblingen. There he parked at the end of t
he Schuster-gasse. I couldn't make out the house number but saw him opening the garden gate and then closing it, walking around the house, and then disappearing down some stairs. Then the windows of the basement apartment lit up.

  I drove home through the villages. The full moon cast its white light on fields and roofs. That night the moon kept me awake for a long time, and then I dreamed about it. It shone onto a terrace with a festively decked table, and I waited in vain for guests I had not invited.

  13

  Yes and no

  One of the advantages of advancing years is that people believe everything you tell them. A man my age is simply too weary to try his hand as a con artist or a marriage swindler— what would he need the money for, anyway?

  When I introduced myself as Wendt's father, his landlady didn't doubt my word for a minute.

  “Ah, so you are Dr. Wendt's father!”

  Frau Kleinschmidt eyed me inquisitively. Her flowery smock enclosed a good three hundred pounds, which protruded in small bulges between the buttons. The lower buttons had got in the way of her bending down and so were open, and her blue and pink petticoat peeked out. Frau Kleinschmidt had been busy with her strawberry beds when I had gone down the stairs to Wendt's basement apartment, rung the bell, and knocked on the door in vain. When I came back up the stairs, she had called me over.

  I looked at my watch, and shook my head: “My son said he'd be home by five today. It's already a quarter past, and he's still not here.”

  “He's usually never back before a quarter to seven.”

  I sincerely hoped that today would be no exception. Twenty minutes earlier his car had still been parked outside the psychiatric hospital. I had taken up my post at four thirty, got fed up with waiting, and remembered the trustworthiness of the elderly. “I know he usually works till six or even later, but he told me he'd get away earlier today. I'm in Heidelberg on business and have to leave this evening. May I sit down on the bench for a moment?”