Self's Murder by Bernhard Schlink Page A

had killed himself and his wife during the Nazi rampages of the Kristallnacht. The nephew’s son and his wife had died childless in London, while his daughter had not managed to flee abroad in time. She had gone into hiding when the deportations to the concentration camps began and was never heard from again. There was nobody who could claim the inheritance.
    I got out of the tub and dried myself. If you ask me, Dorian Gray exaggerated. As one grows older one needn’t want to look twenty year after year, and it was no surprise that he didn’t come to a good end. But why can’t I look sixty-six? By what right did my arms and legs become so thin? What right did their former mass have to leave its old home and find a new one under my belly button? Couldn’t my flesh have consulted me before going off and resettling someplace else?
    I stopped grumbling and pulled in my stomach when I put on the corduroys I hadn’t worn in ages, a turtleneck, and a leather jacket, and before you knew it I could almost pass for sixty-six. Over breakfast I put on an old Udo Jürgens record. At quarter past twelve I was in Schwetzingen.
    Samarin took me to the apartment in the upper story, and as we walked through the old banking hall and the new office area, he and I played cat and mouse.
    “I hear you were at the Mannheim police station,” he said.
    “I took your advice.”
    “My advice?”
    “Your advice not to keep what isn’t mine. I gave it to the police. That way whoever it belongs to can go get it.”
    Welker was on edge. He barely listened to my report concerning the silent partner. He looked at his watch again and again, his head cocked as if he were waiting for something. When I finished my report, I expected some questions—if not about the silent partner, then at least about Schuler, the black attaché case, my going to the police, or my disappearance from Mannheim. Questions that were so pressing that they had to be answered on a Sunday morning. But no questions came. Welker sat there as if more important issues were at hand, issues he could barely wait to come up. But he didn’t say anything. He got up. I got up, too.
    “So that’s that,” I said. “I’ll be sending you my bill.”
    And yet this former client of mine might well be in jail by tomorrow morning and not get to see my bill for some years to come. Six? Eight? What does one get for organized crime?
    “I’ll walk you to your car,” Samarin said.
    Samarin walked ahead, I followed, and Welker walked behind me as we made our way through the offices and down the stairs. I took leave of the old counters with their wooden bars, the inlaid panels, and the benches with the green velvet cushions. It was a pity; I would have liked to sit on one of these benches for a while and muse over the currents and vicissitudes of life. By the gate I said good-bye to Welker. He was in a curious nervous state, his hands cold and sweaty, his face flushed, and his voice shaking. Did he suspect what I was going to do? But how could he?
    Samarin did not respond to my good-bye. He pressed the lower of the two buttons near the gate and it swung open. I went to my car, got in, and fastened my seat belt. I glanced behind me. Welker’s face was so tense, so desperate, that I was taken aback, while Samarin looked burly and grim, but at the same time pleased. I was glad to get away.
    I started the car and drove off.
     
     
     

PART TWO
     
     
     

— 1 —
     
Drive!
     
     
    I drove off, and at the same moment Welker leapt toward me. I saw his face, his gaping mouth and wide eyes, at the passenger-side window and heard his fists banging against the car door. What does he want? I thought. I stepped on the brake, leaned across the seat, and rolled down the window. He reached in, pulled up the lock, tore the door open, jumped into the car, slumped down on the passenger seat, reached over me, locked my door, did the same with his, and rolled his window back up, all the while shouting: