The Sinner (15 page)

"I won't pretend he raped me. It was lovely, and I wanted it. I
was a bit squiffy, my one fear being that he'd get me pregnant. I'd
never been on the pill, you see.

"`Don't worry,' Johnny told me, 'I'll take care.' I relied on what
he'd said, but my period failed to materialize. I was beside myself
with fear. Johnny gave me some money and told me to buy a test
kit from the chemist's. `If it's positive,' he said, `we'll simply get
married.'

"It was positive. Johnny seemed overjoyed when I told him. `So
I'm going to be a daddy,' he said, hugging me delightedly. `My
parents will be amazed. I'll introduce you to them tomorrow Think
of some excuse so your mother lets you out and tell her you'll be
gone a while. We'll meet in the car park at two. Don't give up if I'm
half an hour late. Wait for me.'

"I waited till seven that evening. He didn't show up. I never saw
him again. I did my best to find him, but that didn't amount to
much. I didn't know his real name or where he lived.

`All I could remember was that we'd driven along the autobahn
that night, in the direction of Hamburg. But we were sitting in the
back, and I was too wrapped up in him to notice anything much.
I didn't even know if we'd been at his parents' house or a friend's.
I drove around for weeks, searching for the place. I thought some
detail might occur to me while driving.

"Father parked his car in a side street when he came home from
work every evening, so Mother didn't notice anything. I told him I
needed to keep my hand in, and he accepted that.

"I couldn't tell him I was pregnant and had no one else to confide
in. In the end I realized my quest was hopeless. I waited another
few weeks for Johnny to get in touch - lie knew my name and
address, after all. I couldn't believe anyone could be such a louse,
but the girls who'd been with him before me said: `Did you really
imagine lie was serious about you?'

"By the end of October I could see my bump was getting bigger.
My mother, who had noticed that I often felt nauseous, insisted on my seeing a doctor. So I left home, hitching a lift into the blue.
Then I tried to kill myself. I threw myself in front of a car. I lost the
baby -it was a girl, you could already tell. Nothing much happened
to me, just a few scratches on the face. And the miscarriage, of
course.

"I had to go home again, but my mother wouldn't have me in
the house. Trying to die and killing my baby in the process was
the gravest sin a person could commit, she said, and she threw me
out.

"I went to Cologne and found work there. A year later I met my
husband and got married. But I never got over what had happened.
My mother's right: I'm a murderess. I killed an innocent child.
Ever since my son's birth I've wondered what it would be like for
him to have an elder sister to love him - to do everything for him
and always be there for him.

"This afternoon, when I sawJohnny with that woman ... At first
I only saw him from behind. It can't be him, I thought, but then
he sat up and I heard him speak. And then the woman played that
tune. My tune, `Tiger's Song' .. .

"I thought ... I don't know what I thought. Everything happened
so incredibly fast. Automatically, in a way."

At these last words she looked up, gazed into the chief's eyes,
and felt relief surge through her like a warm liquid. His face had
softened. He believed her story, but then, it was a good story. And,
since it was based to a very small extent on the truth, no one could
disprove it.

The little apartment in Cologne in which Margret Rosch had given
her niece a temporary home overlooked a busy street. This didn't
bother her in the winter. She aired it briefly night and morning,
but in the summer it often became unbearable. If the windows
were open, they let in the noise of the traffic and the all-pervading
stench of exhaust fumes. If they were shut, the heat built up inside
until you felt you were in an incubator.

Margret had come home shortly after nine that Saturday night
five years ago, having spent the afternoon and evening with an old
friend of hers. She never described him as anything other than a
friend. Achim Mick, a physician with a practice of his own in the
city centre, had been her lover for the past twenty years.

Margret had never been married, and now it wasn't worth it
any more. After all those years as his mistress, the thought of
giving up her personal freedom didn't appeal to her, even though
Achim was urging her to do so. He'd now been a widower for over
a year.

Margret had never pressed him or uttered the word "divorce",
and she had only once asked him to do something for her - or
rather, for her brother and her niece. That had been five years
ago - and illegal. She later regarded it as a bad omen that Achim
had felt obliged to remind her of it today of all days. "Blackmail"
might have been a better word.

She'd said goodbye to him earlier than planned to avoid an
altercation, so she wasn't in the best of moods when she entered
her apartment. The place was stuffy, but it was late enough to open
all the windows. The traffic had diminished, and it was several
degrees cooler outside than in.

She took a lukewarm shower. Then, because the restaurant
dinner they'd planned had come to nothing, she fixed herself a
light supper. After that she read a few pages of a novel to take her
mind off her disappointment and misgivings.

At eleven there was a movie on TV she wanted to see. When
she turned on the set a good-looking evangelist was earnestly
discoursing upon our Saviour, humanity's shining example.

Margret promptly forgot about her own problems, all except for
her friend's "Don't forget what I did for you." Forget? How could
she? She'd taken a far bigger risk than Achim Mick. She felt a
sudden upsurge of cold fury, saw for a fraction of a second her
younger niece's anguished, blue-tinged face, heard Elsbeth's soft
voice murmuring a prayer. The scent of lighted candles seemed
to sting her nose. The impression was so real, she couldn't help
sneezing.

She blew her nose, picked up her book again and concentrated
on the text while the good-looking evangelist continued to expatiate
for a minute or two. No one who had experienced what Margret
had experienced could endure listening to him, although she had
experienced it only sporadically. Four times a year for a couple of
days at most, and not at first even then. She hadn't started visiting
her brother regularly until Wilhelm expressly asked her to. Cora
had been nine at the time, and when Margret departed she uttered
a prayer as fervent as the ones Elsbeth murmured in the living
room: "Take care of Cora, Wilhelm. You must do something about
her, or she'll go to the dogs."

Wilhelm had nodded each time. "I'll do my best," he promised.

Margret didn't know whether lie really did his best and how much
he could do. She didn't know much about him in general. There
was eighteen years' difference in age between her big brother and
herself, their mother's spoilt little afterthought.

Wilhelm had already volunteered for the Wehrmacht when
Margret was born. He came home once in the ensuing years, but
she didn't remember him. Her home at that time was in Buchholz,
the little town near Luneburg Heath to which Wilhelm moved
later. In the spring of 1944 Margret and her mother left their old
home and went to the Rhineland, where relatives of her mother
still lived. Her big brother was often mentioned after the move, but
Margret didn't get to know him until she was ten years old, and
Wilhelm already a broken man.

It was never talked of openly. From the few allusions he made
over the years, Margret inferred that he'd taken part in executions in
Poland. Members of the civilian population, women and children
included. Under orders. If he'd refused he would probably have
got a bullet in the back of the neck or been strung up. Wilhelm,
who couldn't see the matter in that light, had never come to terms
with it.

He didn't stay long in the Rhineland with his mother and sister.
His father had been killed in France, and he wanted to go back to
Buchholz, perhaps because he hoped to rediscover some measure
of his youthful innocence there.

Instead he found Elsbeth, a beautiful young woman from Hamburg. An almost ethereal-looking creature with pale golden hair
and a china-doll complexion, Elsbeth had shared the post-war fate
of many German girls: she became pregnant by a member of the
Allied occupation forces. She hadn't carried the child to term. By the
time Margret learned that she'd got rid of it with a knitting needle
and almost died as a result Elsbeth was a lost cause. But it was one
explanation, and explanations were the most important thing of all.

Margret had often spoken of this during Cora's eighteen
months with her. They'd spent countless nights discussing guilt
and innocence, faith and morality, Cora's parents and their long
years of childlessness. Elsbeth's company had gradually dispelled
Wilhelm's gloom and awakened his joie de vivre, his love of laughter
and dancing. Margret described how he'd begun to enjoy life, how
he and Elsbeth had gone travelling - a week in Paris, three days in
Rome, the Oktoberfest in Munich, the Prater in Vienna.

Elsbeth refused to miss Cologne's annual carnival, so they used
to visit the Rhineland once a year. She had the odd drink on those
occasions, but one glass too many would put her into a melancholy
mood and prompt her to talk about love, sorrow and the heavy
burden of guilt she carried.

Elsbeth was nearly forty when she became pregnant for the
second time. Wilhelm, then pushing fifty, was exultant. He invited
his mother and sister to Buchholz after Cora's birth, insisting
that they come and admire that gift from heaven, their little
granddaughter and niece, a pretty baby with his dark hair and a
healthy appetite. The birth had taken a lot out of Elsbeth. She lay
there in hospital, pale, weak and almost drained of blood but as
overjoyed as Wilhelm.

"Have you seen her yet, Margret? Go on, the nurse will show
her to you. Everyone here says they've seldom seen such a pretty
baby. And how strong she is! She can hold her little head up all by
herself. I never thought I'd hold a child of my own in my arms.
And such a beautiful one! If He's given me such a wonderful gift,
God must have forgiven me. A child like that is well worth a little
self-sacrifice. I'll soon get over it."

But before Elsbeth could recover she became pregnant again
- with Magdalena, the candidate for death. Her ductus Botalli,
which connects the aorta to the pulmonary artery and normally
closes at birth, was open, and she also suffered from several septal
defects. The vestibules of her tiny heart were affected, as were both
chambers. There were other vascular abnormalities as well. The
left-hand chamber of the heart was not fully developed, and the
abdominal aorta displayed saclike formations or aneurysms. The
affected section was too big to be removed completely, and the
doctors suspected that other vessels were also affected.

Margret was a nurse. Nobody needed to tell her that the blue
baby stood no chance, despite undergoing six operations in as
many months. One of the surgeons told Wilhelm: "The thing
that's beating in your daughter's chest isn't a heart, it's Swiss
cheese. It looks as if someone has gone to work on it with a knitting
needle."

Unfortunately, Elsbeth either overheard that remark or had it
relayed to her by a thoughtless nurse.

But no matter how little time the doctors gave her, Magdalena
proved them wrong. She even duelled with leukaemia and won.
Elsbeth, who attributed this to the power of prayer, intensified
her efforts to an extent that any normal person would have found
intolerable.

Although aware of the situation in her brother's home, Margret
had done nothing about it, pleading the physical distance between
them and the impossibility of leaving their old mother on her own.
Her visits to Buchholz had been rare for the first few years after
Magdalena's birth. She would look in, put her head in the sand
and go home again.

Then her mother died. Wilhelm attended the funeral in Cologne
on his own, Elsbeth being unable to get away. They sat together
that night, Margret and the brother who was old enough to be her
father. He hummed and hawed for a while before coming out with
it: would she pay them a visit in the next few weeks, and would she
have a word with Elsbeth, woman to woman, about a normal man's
needs? He found it hard to be explicit. The fact that he managed it, when they were such relative strangers, showed Margret how
desperate he was.

"I've considered divorcing her, but that would be irresponsible.
I don't want to shirk my responsibilities, but things can't go on like
this. I can't take it any more."

After at least two minutes he added: "I've been sleeping in the
other bedroom ever since Magdalena's birth. She won't let me go
near her, no matter what I say. I used to go to a woman who took
money - I didn't know what else to do. It was wrong, I know, and I
stopped it a while back."