Out of the Line of Fire (6 page)

Gradually, the full story emerged and much was made of it in the papers at the time. Many of the articles that were written then have been reprinted over the last couple of days. It was like a horrible fairy-tale come true. Some reports remained sceptical about the girl’s story, implying that she had made it up, that, in fact, she had fallen pregnant to another lover and to avoid shaming her parents had run away until the child was born. Then she had either killed or abandoned it. Even some of the police refused to accept her account of what had happened and naturally there was a lengthy investigation into all of the circumstances of her disappearance and the disappearance of her child. Despite rigorous questioning and a number of psychiatric examinations, one of which was conducted by Dr Franz Werthold, Munich’s most eminent psychiatrist at the time, she stuck to her story. What she maintained happened was this:

She had left the office of the local stationery wholesalers where she worked late because it was the end of the month and there was a backlog of accounts to process. This was not unusual and, moreover, it had not been all that late—it must have been around seven o’clock. What little rush hour traffic there was in the town’s business district had cleared. It had rained earlier in the afternoon but despite this the night was warm and she was happy to be out in the clear evening air. She crossed Marienstrasse and began walking towards the laneway which joined it to Humboldtstrasse. From Humboldtstrasse she would catch the bus home to her parents as she always did. It was Thursday and her fiancé, she knew, would be waiting there for her.

She turned into the alley-way. It was well lit and she had no need to feel afraid. She recalled how the overhead lights transformed the polished cobblestones ahead of her into shimmering arcs of light, arcs which seemed to flutter like hundreds of tiny radiant wings as she moved towards them. She had the impression that she was floating, rather than walking, over them. Further along the narrow alley-way she noticed a car parked halfway up on the footpath, directly under one of the street lights. She could see the form of a man wearing a hat standing on the footpath examining what looked like a street map spread out on the car’s roof. As she stepped off the footpath to go around the car the man looked up and called her name. His voice sounded warm, familiar. She looked up at him as he stepped out in front of the car, but because of the light overhead and the shadow from the brim of his hat she could not make out his face distinctly. He said her name again in the same friendly tone and stretched out his hand as if to greet her. His gesture had seemed so natural that she had automatically reached out to him in return. It was only as his hand closed over hers that she was gripped by an overwhelming fear. A scream began to rise in her throat but it was already too late. An inexorable chain of events had been set in motion the moment she had turned into the laneway. She smelt the chloroform on the cloth he held to her face and felt herself grow faint.

When she came to she found herself in a lavishly decorated room. Her hands and feet had been tied to the arms and legs of an intricately carved chair and she was lightly gagged. The curtains were drawn and the room was lit by a single very elaborate chandelier suspended from the roof by a short piece of gold chain. She could see from the clock on the mantelpiece that it was just after eleven. She tried to free herself but could not. Then a heavy, wooden-panelled door on her left opened and a man walked in. He was well dressed and appeared to be in his early forties. He sat down in a chair opposite her. She began to struggle.

Then he spoke. His voice was clear, firm, reassuring.

In a moment, he said, I will untie you. You must understand that while you are here you will not be harmed by anyone, but there are a few things you should know.

She started to struggle again, then tried to scream, but it was useless. It was clear that, for the moment, she was powerless.

This room and the two adjacent rooms which will be your home for the time being have been completely sound-proofed and isolated from the rest of the house. I have spent a long time preparing for your stay. Everything you need has been provided for, but if there is anything I have overlooked then you have only to ask. You will be here for about twelve months, perhaps a little longer. At the end of this time you will be amply rewarded.

He got up and came over to her.

I hope, in the meantime, you will come to trust me but I can well understand that initially you will be fearful. I assure you that there is absolutely no need for this.

He walked behind her and undid the thin white cloth that had been tied across her mouth. Her immediate reaction was to scream for help. He made no attempt to stop her, as if to convince her of the truth of what he had said to her. She began to sob.

What do you want from me? she cried.

For many years, he said, I have wanted a child. My wife, unfortunately, was unable to have children and when she died I decided for a number of reasons never to remarry. And yet my desire to have a child remained unabated. The few women I considered suitable to be the mother of my child were either already married or would never have been persuaded to enter into a mutually satisfying business arrangement. Three years ago I began my search for the perfect woman or, at least, the woman I considered to be perfect as the mother of my child. Six months ago, I found her. That woman is you.

She looked at him dumbfounded.

Why me?

That’s simple, he said. I want a beautiful child. I couldn’t live with a child I didn’t think was beautiful. I want someone who is enchanting, someone on whom I can lavish everything I have to offer, which is considerable, someone, in short, who is perfect. If you could have been that child I would have had you. But seeing that that is impossible, I have chosen you to bear my child for me.

So for a little over a year he kept her in her luxurious prison. He forced himself upon her and she became pregnant to him. Eventually she gave birth to a baby girl. He had been overjoyed.

She had been allowed to suckle the child for a little over a month. He had been right—the baby was simply the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. Then, one morning after breakfast, she had felt a little drowsy and had lain down to sleep. When she awoke she was sitting in a bus shelter in a narrow street surrounded by high buildings. Her baby was not with her and she was seized with panic.

She had staggered to the end of the street thinking perhaps that she might see a car driving off, but there had been nothing. She was overcome with grief and was discovered not long after wandering through the back streets of Munich not far from the main railway station.

Her story was checked and rechecked. Advertisements were placed in all the regional and national papers pleading for the doctor who delivered the child to come forward. All international departures by train and air were monitored and a description of the man appeared on German television for weeks. All to no avail.

The emotional stress of her harrowing experience, and the agony of the investigation after it, left her a broken woman. Her once beautiful young face quickly vanished in the years that followed. She was haunted by the memory of her terrible ordeal and by the fact that out of it a child had been born, a child who, at the very moment she had begun to love it, had been cruelly taken from her. Unable to accept her story, her fiancé had broken off their engagement and when, eventually, she had returned to work she had been unable to concentrate and her employer had been forced to let her go. For years she lived with her parents in a state of isolation and severe grief.

Eventually, however, she was able to find work again and although she never married the wounds began to heal. But her face had changed irrevocably and she no longer took the same care over her appearance as she once did. In 1978 both her parents died and she moved to Frankfurt where she got a job as a ticket clerk with one of the airlines. I think you can guess what happened from here.

He took a sip of his now cold coffee and looked around. The two women opposite, both of whom had been listening intently to his story, looked quickly away.

Well?

Well what?

You can’t just stop there. What happened?

Well, apparently she had been sitting at her desk checking through the morning’s ticket sales when he arrived at the next counter. She had heard him say to her colleague: ‘Good morning, my name is Bessermann and I have tickets reserved for my daughter and myself for Buenos Aires’. Even before he had finished his sentence she had recognized his voice. Her hands were trembling as she looked across at the man standing on the other side of the counter. His hair had gone grey and he now wore thick glasses and a short beard. For a moment she thought perhaps her mind was playing tricks on her. She sat there shaking, waiting for him to speak again. Her colleague handed him his two tickets. He thanked her and turned to leave. It was only then that she found herself looking into the face of a young girl who moments before had stood concealed behind him, a girl who was the mirror image of the person she herself had been years before.

After a number of hurried phone calls between airport security and the Frankfurt and Munich police he and his daughter were detained at the baggage check-point before boarding. Initially he had denied everything, but the police were suspicious enough to be able to compel him to postpone his return flight for a day or two.

I listened as Wolfi related the sensational events of what he said had become one of Germany’s most notorious trials, how each new piece of evidence had come to light, what a field day the media had had.

They’re treating it like a real-life fairy-tale. You wouldn’t believe the length that some of these papers will go to to get a story. But being there, actually being there was incredible. And you know, looking at his daughter I can understand in a way why he did it.

He took out a folded newspaper photograph of a young girl.

I had to admit she was
very
striking.

Who’s to say that the very existence of this young girl doesn’t justify the strange circumstances surrounding her birth. If the same thing happened in some primitive tribe in Africa or Samoa or God’s knows where, no one would think twice about it. But the moral righteousness of some of the things that have been written about the trial has to be seen to be believed. I mean, it’s all relative, isn’t it.

He looked back at the photograph in his hand.

It’s all relative, he repeated to himself.

The incredible never happens in fiction, only in reality. The writer has a duty to report what is true, not what he or she would like to be true. How are these two statements to be reconciled?

Wolfi may have been wrong about Pirandello having studied at Heidelberg, but he was right about Antonietta’s insane jealousy of her daughter. One day she openly accused Lietta of committing incest with her father. Lietta was so appalled by what her mother had said that she tried to kill herself. She used an old revolver which she found lying about the house. But fortunately the barrel had been blocked by rust and the bullet stuck.

When Raymond asks Meursault to visit a prostitute with him in Camus’ novel
The Outsider
, he refuses. As readers we ask ourselves: Why? Why is Meursault’s refusal important in the definition of his character? That is, we immediately place the character Meursault within a fictional context. We acknowledge then his fictional existence yet, at the same time, demand that his character remain credible. Credible according to what criteria? Against the criterion of reality? Hardly.

Rereading the novel we become aware of how carefully constructed it is. Its construction becomes, literally, the definition of the character Meursault. Camus’ initial problem was how to make Meursault’s final, perhaps irrational act, the act of killing the Arab on the beach, plausible. Technically then, the process of narrative construction is retrospective and linear. In simple terms: he knew what the end point was, how then was he to go about achieving it?

Does this not, however, involve some dishonesty, what Sartre called ‘mauvaise foi’ [bad faith], on the part of the novelist? He is obliged to conceal and reveal at the same time, to include, exclude, manipulate and shape his characters with some ulterior purpose in mind. And isn’t it exactly this which, in the end, leaves us dissatisfied with Camus’ novel as a whole? Isn’t it this which separates Camus from a novelist like Kafka before him or Handke after him whose novels develop in a more organic way, in which to a large extent no real end point is ever reached. Or is this to beg the question?

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.

[Whereof one cannot speak, thereof must one be silent]

Wittgenstein’s famous statement expresses paradoxically what he saw as the ineffability [Unaussprechlichkeit] of human existence. It cryptically details language’s ultimate incapacity to articulate the world. In the end he came to the view that language was essentially powerless.

At first it is difficult to make out what is happening the camera is so close. Slowly it draws back and what appeared at first to have been moving abstract patterns in soft pinks reveal themselves to be the fingers of a hand slowly separating the soft folds of a pair of lips—genital lips. The pubic area which is now visible is completely bare, it has been shaved, and the woman’s fingers and her labia glisten under the camera lights. As the camera moves further back it becomes clear that the fingers are those of another woman. The woman with the shaved pubic hair is lying with her buttocks over the end of a dark, armless leather lounge. The design is conspicuously modern, probably Italian. Her left leg is drawn back so that her foot rests along the back of the lounge, while her right leg rests on the left shoulder of the woman kneeling in front of her. The makers of the film obviously had an eye for aesthetic detail since one of the women, the one lying on the lounge, is blonde, while the other is dark. They are both young.