Sorry (8 page)

Often it’s endless phone conversations with embarrassing confessions, and of course there are also customers who don’t want to talk at all and send their ideas by post. They are Tamara’s favorites. Cool and matter-of-fact, they ask for the agency’s help. Tamara’s job is to separate the serious from the non-serious cases. Of every ten commissions three are usually a waste of time.

Of course there are complaints, too. Customers who can’t get their heads around how the agency works. It goes too far for them, and it’s not how the customer would have imagined it. Kris insists that there’s no such thing as “too far.”

“If they don’t know what that means,” he explained to Tamara, “tell them forgiveness knows no bounds, that always sounds good.”

Many people see this as a Bible quotation. Frauke has taken it as a motto and incorporated it into the questionnaire.

Forgiveness knows no bounds
.

There were some imitators too, for a while, but they didn’t worry the agency. It’s not just about an idea, it’s about a philosophy. Kris quickly revealed himself as a master of forgiveness. His philosophy is the motor that drives the agency onward.

“Of course people can imitate our idea,” he says, “but our concept will remain a mystery to them.”

And if anyone were to ask what their concept was, all four of them would have to act mysterious, because the truth is that they have no idea of concepts. Kris has taught Wolf everything—the right words, the right gestures, when you have to be silent, when you have to talk. The rest is experience, that’s why it’s no wonder that the imitators had to shut up shop. They simply had no reasonable concept.

“Why didn’t you stay in Berlin?”

“Astrid, this is Berlin.”

“Wannsee isn’t Berlin, Tammi, it’s the East.”

Astrid flicks her cigarette butt into the water, as if to demonstrate to her sister what she thinks of the Wannsee. Tamara doesn’t want to contradict her; Astrid’s never been a star in geography. Instead Tamara says:

“We were getting cramped. The commissions were pouring in, and we were still in Kris’s apartment, coordinating everything from a single room. One evening Wolf had had enough.”

“I hate the fact that we’re still hanging around at Kris’s apartment,” he said. “I mean, commune or not, we’re really too old for this. We should stop behaving like amateurs. With every commission we’re making more than any of us has ever made in six months. Shouldn’t we do something with the money?”

They found a dilapidated villa on the Kleine Wannsee. Tamara couldn’t believe such things still existed. Except in films, of course. Every few minutes you heard the train running quietly in the background, and from the conservatory you could look out on to the shore of the Kleine Wannsee over breakfast. Of course there were a few reservations. Who in their late twenties moves to the edge of Berlin to renovate a villa? Either some kind of prehistoric hippies who inherited money from their parents, or crisply tanned film producers who have to invest their profits somewhere. But them?

They couldn’t have cared less.

The villa turned out to be a dream, a dilapidated dream admittedly, but they were living out that dream. Tamara still can’t grasp how quickly it all happened. The real estate agent took his cut, the bank waved them through, and the villa was theirs. Frauke’s father arrived with a gang of workmen, and together they knocked down walls, scraped off old wallpaper,
improved the floors, and put in new pipes, so that the villa was ready to be occupied by the beginning of January.

For the first week they walked speechlessly through the rooms. Everywhere there were freshly sanded floors, freshly whitened walls, rooms full of light. The stench of their youth lay behind them. All of a sudden everything was stylish and authentic; all at once they felt grown-up.

On the first floor are the living room, a library, and the kitchen; on the second floor Frauke and Tamara’s studies and bedrooms. The brothers take the top floor.

It’s perfect, it works so well that Tamara can imagine this arrangement going on to the end of her life. Out here on the Kleine Wannsee with a view of the water and access to a jetty.

Their very own paradise.

“It’s just perfect,” Tamara concludes. “That’s all. Nothing else has happened.”

Astrid is about to say something, when she hears someone calling behind her.

“Yoohoo, Tamara!”

The sisters turn round. Helena Belzen stands waving on the shore. She is seventy-four and wears a pullover that makes her look like the Michelin man. She has wrapped scarves around her hips and her neck, on her head she wears a woollen cap. In her right hand she has a shovel, in her left a bucket.

“Helena, this is my sister Astrid,” Tamara explains.

“Pleased to meet you,” says Helena, pointing with her spade to the dinghy. “Isn’t it a bit cold to be rowing about on the lake?”

“Tell that to my sister,” says Astrid.

“How are you two?” asks Tamara.

“Joachim’s taking his radio apart again, and I can’t keep out of the garden,” Helena replies, shaking the bucket. “I could spend the whole day burrowing about in the earth. Are we seeing each other on Sunday?”

“I’ll bring cake.”

“Wonderful!”

Helena waves goodbye and disappears into the undergrowth of her garden.

“Are you having a kaffeeklatsch with the old girl?” Astrid whispers.

“She’s invited me four times, it gets embarrassing eventually. And I like the Belzens. Wait till you see her husband. They’re a dream couple.
The day we moved in, they moored on our side and brought us a bag of salt and fresh bread.”

“What do you need parents for?” Astrid says and looks back at the villa. “I still can’t believe it. If you weren’t my little sister, I’d push you in the water right now, is that clear? Shit, why doesn’t stuff like this happen to me? Have you any idea how many guys I’ve picked up in the faint hope that one of them might have enough money to buy me something like this? I hate you, do you know that?”

“I know.”

“So what are you grinning about?”

“Maybe because it’s so cold?”

“Very funny, Tammi.”

They grin at each other.

“Can I at least see the joint from inside, before you banish me back to my pathetic little life?”

Tamara lowers the oars into the water and sets course for their pad.

I
T WAS HALF A
day before they managed to track down Julia Lambert.

The job center plays its cards close to the vest, so Kris tries to find her new workplace indirectly. Frauke helps him with that. It takes them fifteen minutes to log on to the employment agency.

“How illegal have you just been?” Kris wondered.

Frauke held her thumb and index finger a millimeter apart.

Julia Lambert has been with the company for a week. The office with a view of the parking lot is like a waiting room. Cardboard boxes in the corner, electric cables temporarily installed, a dusty plant by the window. Probably Julia Lambert isn’t entirely sure whether it’s worth making this workplace entirely her own. Her hesitation is like the one of the four prints on the wall that hangs at an angle. “You must have heard that we’ve split up.”

Kris nods, Hessmann’s secretary told him everything. The boss himself didn’t want to say anything on the subject.

“I was amazed you didn’t lodge a complaint,” says Kris.

Julia laughs briefly.

“How do you take action against someone like Hessmann? He has more lawyers than employees. And who would believe me? What proof do I have? For a while I thought about burning down the office building, but can you imagine where that would have got me?”

In jail
, Kris thinks, and agrees, she did the right thing.

“I’m here to apologize to you,” he says.

“You?”

“Me.”

“Why you?”

“My agency represents Hessmann. Since we took on the commission, it’s a personal thing for me if my client makes mistakes. I’m something like his conscience. And you can bet that someone like Hessmann wants to have a clean conscience.”

She doesn’t react, she looks at the card.

“Hence Sorry?”

“Because we apologize.”

“For other people?”

“For other people, yes. Do you want to tell me what happened in your own words?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?”

Julia Lambert nods and clasps her hands. The card is in front of her on the table. Kris shouldn’t force it now. Her gestures are unambiguous. But it’s a good sign that she set the visiting card down on the table faceup. Kris can see the logo, he’s very pleased with the logo. They look at one another. Kris will keep his mouth shut until Julia Lambert speaks first. She needs time to think about his words.

Her history is typical. Since Sorry took on its first commission, there have been several such cases. Her boss had an affair with her and fired her when he craved fresh meat. You could call that the end of a career. The secretary, of course, put it differently.

Julia Lambert is someone who learns from her mistakes. Kris can see that she will get back on her own two feet all by herself. But he also sees that she’s still preoccupied by her humiliation. Not being able to defend herself, being totally subject to the word of someone who was first her boss, then her lover, and finally her boss again.

Where the emotions are concerned, we all cave in sooner or later
, Kris thinks, and is glad to keep the thought to himself.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Julia Lambert says after a minute.

“No one said anything about
having to,”
Kris replies. “Hessmann knows he made a mistake. And you know that he would never personally admit it to you. People like Hessmann make things easy for themselves. He changes his women as often as he changes his tie.”

Her eyebrows contract, Kris could bite his tongue.
How can I be such an idiot? What is this? A chat over a glass of beer?
He has universalized Julia Lambert, and made a crude mistake.

“I’m sorry. The image was inappropriate.”

“Keep talking.”

“I’m not here to offer you money,” says Kris, although that’s exactly why he’s here. “Money is comfortable, and I think you’re concerned about more than comfort.”

Bull’s-eye. She doesn’t nod, she doesn’t shake her head, her right hand has found the business card again, and is turning it around in her fingers. She waits for more.

“As you know, Hessmann has contacts. The business listens to him. And when I see where the job center has sent you …”

Kris sums up her office with a wave of his hand.

“… then I think you deserve better.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“I like it here.”

“No, you don’t.”

She stops turning the business card around. She doesn’t contradict him.

Thank God
.

“Where do you want to go?” Kris asks.

“Simple as that?” she asks back.

“Simple as that. I’ll find you a better position in a different company, in return you accept Hessmann’s apology and leave the fury and hurt behind you; that’s my offer.”

Kris knows it’s never that easy to leave fury and hurt behind. But he thinks Julia Lambert ought to hear that the possibility exists, and that a better job than the last one represents a good kind of revenge.

The phone rings. Julia Lambert lets it ring and presses two buttons so that they can have some peace. The phone falls silent.

“From when?” she asks.

“Hessmann gave me carte blanche where you’re concerned. That is to say, whenever you like. No one wants to live with guilt. Not even Hessmann.”

Julia Lambert laughs for the second time since Kris has been with her. It’s a restrained laugh, but it’s still a laugh that comes from deep down.

Good
.

“He’s been able to live with it pretty well for the last six months,” she says. “I doubt he had any sleepless nights.”

The sarcasm is clearly audible. Kris is still not on safe terrain. It’s the way Julia Lambert sits there. Tense, suspicious.

The whole thing could be one big joke
.

“Here’s my suggestion,” Kris says and gets to his feet. “I invite you out to dinner now, and while we’re eating, you tell me which companies you’re interested in, what position you think you could do or would like to have, and what an appropriate wage might be.”

Kris stretches out his hands so that she can see he isn’t hiding anything, that he’s on her side. No tricks.

“What do you think?”

Her nostrils flare, her mouth has opened a crack, not a word comes out. Enough sarcasm. She’s excited, she’s understood. Kris can see that Julia Lambert likes his offer. It has happened. She belongs to him.

“You did
what
?” Wolf asks in the evening when they’re sitting in the villa’s conservatory.

“I had dinner with her.”

“No, no, no, I mean that carte blanche …”

Wolf leans forward and taps his brother twice on the forehead.

“… what kind of an idea is that?”

“I thought it would be appropriate.”

“And what did Hessmann say?”

“What did you think he said?”

“You did what?”

Hessmann’s voice was shrill, then there was a faint crackle on the line and Kris knew that someone was listening in. Ten minutes before, Kris had said goodbye to Julia Lambert and promised to call the next day. Then he had phoned Hessmann from his car.

“How do you think that’s going to work?”

Kris heard the panic in Hessmann’s voice. Panic isn’t good. Panic can lead to short-circuited reactions. Kris was relieved that he wasn’t talking to Hessmann alone. Whoever else was listening at the other end, it meant that Hessmann had to restrain himself. Kris cleared his throat and said how he imagined the solution to the problem:

“You get Miss Lambert a job at one of the two companies she named. You know you can do that. Then you and Miss Lambert will be quits. Peace.”

Again there was that faint crackle on the line; Kris listened into the silence that followed. For a few seconds he was sure that the connection had been broken, then he heard a loud intake of breath and Hessmann said his thank-you, and that it had been a pleasure working with the agency.