The Execution of Justice Read online

  Research in the Public Library: Why not narrate the family history of the Steiermanns? I just received another postcard from Kohler—the last one was four weeks ago, the cat-and-mouse game continues; he says he wants to visit Samoa later, he’s going first from Hawaii to Japan—on a luxury liner, while here I was, in front of the board of review and its president, Professor Eugen Leuppinger. The famous criminal attorney, dueling scars on his face, poetic, totally bald, received me in his office; Vice-President Stoss, athletic, ever so manly, modest, merry, and matter-of-fact, was also present. The gentlemen were decent to me. There was no avoiding my being tossed out, the canton senate would request it in any case, and so it would be wiser to steal the march on them, but it was regrettable, one felt the grief a father would, one understood right down the line, sympathized, and was casting no blame whatever, and yet, man to man, hand to your heart, I really did have to admit that, particularly for lawyers, a certain official course of conduct was indicated in a given milieu, that one might indeed put it this way: The more disreputable the one, the more irreproachable the other had to be; the world was, sad to say, a ghastly philistine place, especially our dear hometown, intolerably so, and if only he, Leuppinger, could just slam the door behind him and take off for the south; but that was not the heart of the matter; naturally prostitutes were people too, indeed people of value, poor people, to whom he was personally indebted, he would admit it right here in front of me and his colleague Herr Stoss, for a great many things, warmth, sympathy, understanding, and it went without saying that the law was also there for whores, to use that ominous word, though certainly not in the sense of promoting their trade, and I had to recognize as a lawyer that certain suggestions I had given the demimonde, although incontestable in a juridical sense, had occasioned devastating effects; a knowledge of legal stratagems was catastrophic when placed in the hands of certain circles of society, the police were simply beside themselves, the bar’s board of review certainly did not want to dictate here, was not out to terrorize people for their views, was in fact quite liberal, but, well, I knew how it was, statutes were statutes, even unwritten ones; and then, when Stoss had to leave for a moment, Leuppinger asked me, all hail-fellow-well-met, if I couldn’t provide him with a certain telephone number so that he could get better acquainted with a certain lady with a fantastic body (Giselle), and then, when he had to leave for a moment, Stoss, all retired jock, asked the same thing. Two weeks later I was disbarred. So here I sit, stone-broke, sometimes at the café that doesn’t serve alcohol, sometimes at the Monaco, living more or less on the charity of Lucky and Giselle, with time on my hands, scads of time, which for me is the worst thing possible, and therefore: Why not write up the chronicles of the Steiermann family, which is why I am sitting now in the public library—except, of course, they got quite high-handed when I showed up with a bottle of gin—why not be thorough, painfully scrupulous, why not reveal their background, and anyhow, what are the Steiermanns without the background of their family history and stories? The name is deceptive, the primal Steiermann immigrated, like so many industrialists, from the north, but did so way back in 1191, when a south German duke came up with the wicked notion of founding what is now our federal capital. As is well known, that notion met with success, and so the Steiermanns are prototypical Swiss. As far as the founder of the house is concerned, Jakobus Steiermann, he can be numbered among those scoundrels known to every race and rank; he came to roost in a pirate’s nest up on the cliffs above the green river (in those days four hard days’ march distant); he was a criminal who, by slipping out of Alsace, had managed to save his head from the Strasbourg executioner; he first got a job as a mercenary in his new hometown but later took up the armorer’s trade—a wild, soot-covered fellow. And so down through the centuries the Steiermanns remained tightly bound up with the bloody history of the city; as armorers they manufactured the halberds with which the locals thrashed away at Laupen and St. Jakob, in particular the standard model made by Adrian Steiermann (1212–1255). The family also possessed a chartered license to produce executioner’s axes and instruments of torture for all the bishoprics of southern Germany. Their fortunes rose steeply, the blacksmiths on Kesslergasse gained a name and fame. Adrian’s son, the bald-headed Berthold Steiermann the First (Berthold the Black of the saga?), now set to work producing firearms. Even more famous was Berthold’s great-grandson, Jakobus the Third (1470–1517). He built such famous guns as the “Four Evangelists,” the “Great Psalter,” and the “Yellow Urian.” The tradition of cannon-making that Jakobus had continued was abruptly halted by his son Berthold the Fourth, who as an Anabaptist forged nothing but plowshares, but it was soon resumed by Berthold’s son, who reopened the smithy and began the production of the first grenades as well—though it is true that when the grenades were fired, both he and the cannon were blown to shreds. So much for the truly ancient history. Vivid personalities all, relatively honest, and politically successful—a mayor, two purse-bearers, a high bailiff. In the succeeding centuries, the armor shop gradually became a modern industrial enterprise. The family history gets more complicated, the motifs begin to become covert, the threads are spun out invisibly, the angles and connections aren’t just national but international. What was lost in color was gained back in organization, especially in the first half of the nineteenth century, when a latter-day descendant of the primal Steiermann moved to the eastern region of our country. This was Heinrich Steiermann (1799–1877), and he must be regarded as the real founder of the Trög Machine and Armament Works, which came to full bloom under his first grandson, James (1869–1909), and especially under his second grandson, Gabriel (1871–1949). To be sure, no longer as the Trög Machine and Armament Works, but as the Trög Amelioratory Works, Ltd. For in 1891, the twenty-two-year-old James Steiermann became acquainted with the seventy-one-year-old English nurse Florence Nightingale, under whose influence he transformed the weapon factory into an “Amelioratory Works” for prostheses, which, subsequent to his early death, his brother Gabriel expanded to produce every imaginable kind of prosthesis—hands, arms, legs—and nowadays the Amelioratory Works provides the world with endoprostheses (artificial hips, joints, etc.) and extracorporeal prostheses (artificial kidneys, lungs). “World” is no exaggeration. All this was achieved by stubborn enterprise, by quality control, and above all by the resolute exploitation of market conditions through the ruthless acquisition of all foreign prostheses manufacturers (primarily small operations). This new generation understood the possibilities that the neutrality of our nation offers a manufacturer of prostheses—the freedom, that is, to supply all parties: the victors and the vanquished of the first and second world wars, and nowadays, governmental regulars, partisans, and rebels. Their motto is: “Steiermann for the Victims,” even though these days, under Lüdewitz, the production of the Amelioratory Works is again verging more on its original character—the concept of prosthesis is an elastic one. A person will automatically use his hand to try to defend himself against a blow; a shield thus becomes a prosthesis for the hand, or a stone he might throw, a prosthesis for his balled hand, i.e., his fist; once this dialectic is understood, weapons, which the Amelioratory Works has again begun to produce, clearly fall under the concept of prosthesis: tanks, submachine guns, and artillery can be considered a further development of the hand prosthesis. As you can see, a successful clan. And if the Steiermanns were to a man simple, crude, uncomplicated fellows, faithful husbands, often given to drudgery but more often to greed, showing occasionally a refreshing sovereign contempt for the intellect, who got no further at art collecting than one of the weaker versions of the Island of the Dead, and who sponsored nothing but soccer when it came to athletics (and that only modestly, as evidenced by the precarious position of the Trög Soccer Club in the A League), the women were of a different caliber. Either great whores or great churchgoers, though never both together, whereby the whores were always ugly, with heavy cheekbones, long noses, and wide, tight-lipped mouths, whereas
the pious ones were women of exquisite beauty. As far as Monika Steiermann goes, who unexpectedly was to play a major role, indeed a double role, in the Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler affair, judging by her looks she belonged to the churchgoers, by her lifestyle, to the great whores. After the death of her parents (Gabriel Steiermann married Stefanie Lüdewitz in 1920), who were killed in a plane crash on a flight to London (or more precisely: were lost, since neither parents nor their private plane was ever found), and after the tragic end of her brother, Fritz, who went diving off the Côte d’Azur and never resurfaced, she (born in 1930) inherited the handsomest fortune in our country, and the prostheses firm was directed by her maternal uncle. Monika’s lifestyle was, to be sure, more difficult to direct. The wildest and often most ridiculous rumors about this girl circulated, hardened then into almost-certainties, dissolved again, were denied—always by Uncle Lüdewitz—and for precisely that reason were believed anew, until they were surpassed by other, even grander, scandals, outdoing all the rest, and the sport began all over again. People gazed with disapproval on this amoral heiress of countless millions, but with secret pride as well, with envy (she can have anything she wants), yet with gratitude—they were getting something for their money. La Steiermann was the official “world-ranked femme fatale” of a city whose reputation on the one hand was kept afloat by the desperate, strenuous efforts of local authorities, churches, and community organizations, only to be called into question on the other by its hustlers—it was they, and our banks, not our hookers, who gave our city international renown. People breathed what was almost a sigh of relief. Our twofold reputation for being simultaneously both prudish and queer was placed on a correction course toward more commonplace vices by La Steiermann. The young lady grew ever more popular, especially after our mayor began weaving her into the notorious extemporaneous speeches and hexameters to which he frequently treats us after official ceremonies have dragged on for hours, when some literary prize is being awarded, for instance, or on the occasion of the anniversary of some private bank or other. But there was a very definite reason why I feared meeting Monika Steiermann a second time. I had come to know her through Mock. Back in my Stüssi-Leupin days. His studio near Schaffhauserplatz was overheated in the winter, the cast-iron stove glowed red, the air was downright toxic from pipes, cigars, and cigarettes, everything incredibly filthy besides, with wet towels eternally draped around unfinished torsos, between them piles of books, newspapers, unopened letters, wine bottles, whiskey bottles, sketches, photographs, shaved smoked beef. I had come to see the statue that Mock had made of La Steiermann, was curious because he had told me he was going to paint the statue. The sculpture stood in the middle of the overwhelming disorder of the studio, frighteningly realistic, life-size and true in every detail. Made of plaster of Paris, painted flesh color, as Mock explained. Stark naked and in an unambiguously ambiguous pose. I gazed at the statue for a long time, amazed that Mock could do this too. He was usually a master of intimation: he worked free-style, with a few blows heaving what he wanted out of his stones, which often weighed in at several hundred pounds. An eye emerged, a mouth, a breast maybe, a vagina, he didn’t need to hew the rest, from such hints the fantasy of the observer would create the head of a Cyclops perhaps, or some beast, or a female. Even when he made molds, he made do with the barest essentials. You must mold just as you sketch, he would say. All the more astonishing, then, was his procedure here. The plaster seemed to breathe, and above all was painted to perfection. I stepped back and then moved in close again; to make the illusion more perfect, he must have used human hair for the head and pubic area. And yet the statue had nothing doll-like about it. It radiated a remarkable plasticity. Suddenly it moved. It got down off the pedestal, not deigning me a glance, walked to the back of the studio, looked for, found, a half-full bottle of whiskey and drank. She was not made of plaster of Paris. Mock had lied. It was the genuine Monika Steiermann.

  “You’re the fourth person to fall for it,” Mock said, “and you made the dumbest face. And you don’t know anything about art either.”

  I left. The statue of painted plaster, which was standing in another corner of the studio, was picked up the next day. By an agent of Freiherr von Lüdewitz, the uncle who managed the Trög Amelioratory Works, Ltd.

  *

  Monika Steiermann I: The further I get with this report, the harder it becomes to tell the story. Not only is the report getting confused, my role is also becoming equivocal. I am no longer able to state whether I was dealing on my own, or if others were dealing through me, or if in fact I was the deal. Above all, my doubts are growing whether it was pure chance the way Lienhard brought Monika Steiermann into it. I had had no luck with my furniture dealer. He had in fact had a fictive expert from Rome declare genuine a Renaissance armoire that had been made on Gagerneck and had then affixed the fictional signature to it—something that escaped my notice, but not Jämmerlin’s. But the trip to Caracas still lay before me, and in the midst of the preparations Ilse Freude announced a certain Fanter, another one of Lienhard’s men. To my amazement in walked Fanter, a fat man smoking a Brissago, wearing the uniform of a policeman, having served his city in that capacity for two decades.

  “You’re crazy, Fanter, to appear in public like that.”

  “It’ll be useful, Herr Spät,” he sighed, “it’ll be useful. Monika Steiermann called. She needs a lawyer.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “She’s getting beat up.”

  “By whom?”

  “Dr. Benno,” Fanter replied.

  “And why?”

  “She caught him in bed with another woman.”

  “Then she should beat him up. Funny, isn’t it? And why should I be the one to worry about La Steiermann’s problems?”

  “Lienhard is no lawyer,” Fanter answered.

  “Where is she?”

  “Why, with Dr. Benno.”

  “Damn it, Fanter, don’t beat around the bush, where’s Benno?”

  “You’re the one beating around the bush with your questions,” Fanter declared. “Benno is beating up Monika Steiermann at the Breitingerhof. The Prince von Cuxhafen is there too.”

  “The auto racer?”

  “That’s the one.”

  I called the Breitingerhof and asked for Dr. Benno. The manager, Pedroli, came to the phone. Who was calling?

  “Spät, I’m a lawyer.”

  “He’s beating up Steiermann again,” Pedroli laughed. “Go to your window, you can hear it.”

  “I’m over on Zeltweg.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Echoes all over the city,” Pedroli declared. “The guests are fleeing my five-star hotel.”

  I had parked my Porsche on Sprecherstrasse. Fanter got in next to me, and off we drove.

  “Use Hegibachstrasse,” Fanter said.

  “The long way around,” I objected.

  “Not to worry. La Steiermann can take a lot.”

  At a stop sign near Klusstrasse, Fanter got out.

  “Drive by here on your way back,” he said.

  End of October. The trees red and yellow. Leaves in the streets. As I pulled up, Monika Steiermann was already waiting in front of the Breitingerhof, wearing nothing but a man’s black pajamas, its left sleeve missing. Tall. Red-haired. Cynical. Beautiful. Freezing. Her left eye was blackened and swollen shut. Had been struck across the mouth. Her naked arm badly scratched. She waved at me, spitting blood in a wide arc. Benno was raging at the hotel entrance, he, too, bruised and scratched, held back by two bellhops, the hotel windows full of people. Curious, grinning onlookers surrounded Steiermann, a policeman was directing traffic. In a white sports car sat a glum young blond man, Cuxhafen, presumably, a young Siegfried, obviously ready to pull away. Pedroli, the small and agile manager, came out of the hotel and laid a fur coat over Steiermann’s shoulders, an expensive one I’m sure, I don’t know anything about furs. “You’re freezing, Monika, you’re freezing.”

  “I hate fur coats, you asshole,” she sai
d and flung the fur over his head.

  I stopped next to her. “Lienhard sent me,” I said. “Spät, I’m a lawyer. Spät.”

  She climbed painfully into the Porsche.

  “Beat to a pulp,” I observed.

  She nodded. Then she stared at me. I was just about to drive off, but her gaze disconcerted me.

  “Haven’t we met somewhere before?” she asked, speaking with difficulty.

  “No,” I lied and pulled away.

  “Cuxhafen is following us,” she said.

  “So what.”

  “He’s a race driver.”

  “Formula one.”

  “We won’t be able to shake him.”

  “The hell we won’t. Where to?”

  “To Lienhard’s,” she said, “to his house.”

  “Does Cuxhafen know where Lienhard lives?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t even know Lienhard exists.”

  At the stop sign at Hegibachstrasse I pulled obediently to a halt. Fanter was standing on the sidewalk in his police uniform, walked over to the Porsche, demanded my license. I gave it to him, he checked it, nodded politely. Then he turned to Cuxhafen, who had had to pull up behind me, and started carefully checking his ID. Then he walked all around his car, slowly, fussily, constantly checking the papers. In the rearview mirror I noticed Cuxhafen cursing. I saw as well how he had to get out, how Fanter dug out a notebook, and then I drove down Klusstrasse toward the lake, down Höhenweg, onto Biberlinstrasse and then to Adlisberg, just for safety’s sake made several detours, then raced up Katzenschwanzstrasse to Lienhard’s bungalow.