Guilt (2 page)

The judge called us into his room one by one. I wore a robe, because I didn’t know you don’t wear robes to such meetings. When the review of the remand in custody began, I talked too much, the way you talk when you’re young and you think anything’s better than saying nothing. The judge only looked at my client; I didn’t think he even listened to me. But something else was standing between the judge and the man, something much older than our code of legal procedure, an accusation that had nothing to do with the laws as written. And when I had finished, the judge asked once again if the man wished to remain silent. He asked quietly, with no inflection in his voice, while he folded up his reading glasses and waited. The judge knew the answer, but he asked the question. And all of us in the cool air of the courtroom knew that the legal proceedings would end here and that guilt was another matter entirely.

——

Later we waited out in the hall for the examining magistrate to render his decision. We were nine defense lawyers; my friend and I were the youngest. The two of us had bought new suits for this hearing. Like all lawyers we were exchanging jokes; we didn’t want the situation to get the better of us, and now I was one of them. At the end of the hall a sergeant was leaning against the wall; he was fat and tired and he despised every one of us.

That afternoon the judge vacated the warrant; he said there was no proof, the accused had remained silent. He read out the decision from a sheet of paper, although it was only two sentences long. After that, everything was still. The defense had been the right one, but now I didn’t know if I should stand up until the woman recording the court proceedings gave me the decision and we left the room. The judge could have rendered no other verdict. The hall outside smelled of linoleum and old files.

The men were released. They left by a rear exit and went back to their wives and children and their lives. They paid their taxes and kept their credit good, they sent their children to school, and none of them spoke of the matter again. But the brass band was dissolved. There was never a formal trial.

The young girl’s father stood in front of the court; he stood in the middle of the flight of steps as we went past to right and left; nobody touched him. He looked at us, red-eyed from
weeping. It was a good face. The town hall opposite still had a poster advertising the anniversary celebration. The older lawyers spoke to the journalists, the microphones glittered like fish in the sun; behind them the father sat down on the courthouse steps and buried his head in his arms.

After the remand hearing, my study partner and I went to the station. We could have talked about the defense victory or about the Rhine right there next to the rail tracks, or about anything at all. But we sat on the wooden bench with its peeling paint, and neither of us felt like saying a word. We knew we’d lost our innocence and that this was irrelevant. We remained silent as we sat in the train in our new suits with our barely used attaché cases beside us, and as we journeyed home, we thought about the girl and the respectable men, and we didn’t look at each other. We had grown up, and when we got out, we knew that things would never be simple again.

Nina was seventeen. She sat outside the subway station at the zoo, a paper cup with a few coins in it in front of her. It was cold; there was already snow on the ground. She hadn’t imagined things would be this way, but it was better than any alternative. The last time she had phoned her mother had been two months ago, and her stepfather had answered. He had cried and told her she should come home. And it all came back to her: his sweaty old man’s smell, his hairy hands. She hung up.

Her new friend Thomas also lived in the station. He was twenty-four, and he looked after her. They drank a lot, the hard stuff that warmed you up and let you forget everything. When the man came toward them, she thought he was a john. She wasn’t a prostitute and she got furious if men asked her how much it cost. One time she spat in someone’s face.

The old man asked her to come with him, he had a warm apartment, and he didn’t want sex. He just didn’t want to be alone at Christmas. He looked respectable, he was maybe sixty or sixty-five, thick overcoat, polished shoes. The shoes were always the first thing she checked. She was freezing.

“Only if my friend can come too,” she said.

“Of course,” said the man; in fact he’d like that even better.

Later they sat in the man’s kitchen. There was coffee and cake. The man asked if she’d like to take a bath, it would do her good. She felt uneasy, but Thomas was there. Nothing can happen, she thought. The bathroom door had no key.

She lay in the bathtub. It was warm and the bath oil smelled of birches and lavender. She didn’t see him at first. He had closed the door behind him, dropped his trousers, and was masturbating. It was nothing serious, he said, smiling uncertainly. She could hear the television in the other room. She screamed. Thomas pushed the door open and the handle caught the man in the kidneys. He lost his balance and fell over the edge of the bathtub. He landed next to her in the water, his head on her stomach. She lashed out, pulled her knees up, trying to get out, away from the man. She hit him on the nose, and blood ran into the water. Thomas grabbed him by the hair and held him under the surface. Nina was still screaming. She stood up in the bath, naked, and helped Thomas by pressing on the man’s neck. It’s taking time, she thought. Then he stopped moving. She saw the hairs on his ass and punched his back.

“Swine,” said Thomas.

“Swine,” said Nina.

They didn’t say anything more after that; they went into the kitchen and tried to think clearly. Nina had wrapped a towel around her. They smoked. They had no idea what to do.

Thomas had to get her things out of the bathroom. The man’s body had slid onto the floor and was blocking the door.

“You know they’re going to have to lever the door off its hinges with a screwdriver?” he said in the kitchen as he handed her her clothes.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Otherwise they won’t get him out.”

“Will they manage?”

“It’s the only way.”

“Is he dead?”

“I think so,” he said.

“You have to go back in. My wallet and my identity card are still in there.”

He searched the apartment and found 8,500 deutschmarks in the desk. It said “For Aunt Margret” on the envelope. They wiped away their fingerprints, then left the apartment. But they were too slow. The neighbor, an elderly woman with strong glasses, saw them in the arcade.

They took the suburban train back to the station. Later they went to a snack bar.

“It was terrible,” said Nina.

“The idiot,” said Thomas.

“I love you,” she said.

“Yes.”

“What is it? Do you love me too?”

“Was he the only one doing something?” asked Thomas, looking straight at her.

“Yes. What are you thinking?” Suddenly she was afraid.

“Did you do something too?”

“No, I screamed. The old swine,” she said.

“Absolutely nothing?”

“No, absolutely nothing.”

“Things are going to get tough,” he said after a pause.

A week later they saw the poster on a pillar in the station. The man was dead. A policeman knew them from the squad room in the station. He thought the neighbor’s description might fit them, and they were taken in for questioning. The old lady wasn’t sure. Adhesive tests were done on their clothing and compared to fibers from the dead man’s apartment. The results were inconclusive. The man was recognized as a john; he had two previous convictions for sexual assault and intercourse with minors. They were released. The case remained unsolved.

They had done everything right. For nineteen years they had done everything right. Using the dead man’s money they had rented an apartment; later they moved into a row house. They had stopped drinking. Nina was a salesgirl in a supermarket; Thomas worked as the stores supervisor at a wholesaler. They had gotten married. Within the year she’d given birth to a boy, and then twelve months later a girl. They made their way; things went well. Once he got into a fistfight at the company. He didn’t defend himself; she understood.

When her mother died, she relapsed. She started smoking marijuana again. Thomas found her at the station, in
her old spot. They sat on a bench in the Tiergarten for a couple of hours, then drove home. She laid her head in his lap. She didn’t need it any more. They had friends and were close to his aunt in Hannover. The children were doing well in school.

When the science had advanced sufficiently, the cigarettes in the dead man’s ashtray underwent molecular genetic analysis. All those who had been under suspicion back then were summoned for a mass screening. The document looked threatening: a shield, the inscription “President of Police of Berlin,” thin paper in a green envelope. It lay on the kitchen table for two days before they could bring themselves to talk about it. There was no avoiding it; they went, nothing more than a cotton swab in the mouth, it didn’t hurt.

A week later they were arrested. The chief commissioner said, “It’s better for you.” He was only doing his job. They admitted everything, they didn’t think it mattered any more. Thomas called me too late. The court could not have ruled out an accident if they had kept quiet.