The Sonderberg Case (7 page)

“The human soul, what a labyrinth. I thought I could find my way in it. No. I’ve lost my bearings. Listen to this: ‘An “entertaining” execution was organized in the old city [of Berdichev in Ukraine]: the Germans ordered the old men [Jews] to put on their tallith [prayer shawl] and their tefillin [phylacteries] and deliver a religious service in the old synagogue, praying God to forgive the errors committed against the Germans. They double-locked the synagogue doors and set the building on fire. Another instance of this kind of German “entertainment” is the story of the death of old Aron Mazor, whose profession was ritual butcher. The German officer who looted Mazor’s apartment ordered the soldiers to remove everything he had put aside. The officer stayed behind with two soldiers to “entertain” himself: he had found a big butcher’s knife and realized what Mazor’s profession was. “I want to watch you work,” he said and told the soldiers to go fetch the neighbor’s three little children.’”

And my grandfather added, “Poor Vassili Grossman, he is great and moving.” His narrative stops at this point. He doesn’t tell us what happened. Did Mazor obey the order to kill the children? Did he sacrifice himself rather than hurt them? But I’ll tell you: Mazor isn’t guilty. The Germans are. And I curse them. I will curse them to my dying day. I’ll curse them as I weep and as I hold back my tears. I’ll curse them by day and curse them by night. I’ll curse them in the
name of the dead and in the name of the living. I’ll curse them for Mazor and for Vassili Grossman.

He put his fists on his eyelids. So I wouldn’t see his tears.

Then, after a long silence, he added, “I hope this kind of narrative breaks the Messiah’s heart and makes the heavens weep.”

As for my father, I rarely saw him weep. Usually when my brother and I lingered at the table after a meal, or in his study, he liked to listen to us with an impassive air. He’s a good listener. He says that’s the way he is: he expresses himself by listening. The first thing he always taught his students was the art of keeping their ears open. He would look at me, his head tilted and frowning, and I knew not a single word I said escaped him, even if I was telling him about my day at school or the latest baseball game. Sometimes he took advantage of a pause to ask for an explanation, usually with just one word, such as “Why?” or “When?”

My brother Itzhak loves him, too, of course. But in his own way: he loves him and at the same time he’s afraid of him, or afraid because of him. He admitted this to me one day. We were adolescents and on our way home from the hospital where our father had undergone elective surgery. “When I see him, my chest becomes heavy with anxiety. And I don’t know why,” he said. In my case, it’s different: when I think of him, I get a lump in my throat. I’m in pain for him.

Since I started working at the newspaper, he had gotten into the habit of reading it more attentively and with
greater curiosity than the other dailies. He shares with me his thoughts on given columns. He doesn’t particularly like the articles that proclaim their commitment in the name of truth: “The truth of the journalist,” he often says, “is not the same as the philosopher’s. The former looks for facts, the latter is interested in what transcends facts.” When he talks to me about my articles, there’s a faint smile in the corner of his mouth. “You don’t have this problem. You’re concerned with artistic truth. That’s
one
truth but not
the
truth.”

One day I devoted an article to a play set in an Eastern European ghetto. I was harsh on its author, who had included too many erotic elements in the play for my taste. When I walked into my father’s study, he was reading my review. I wondered, Should I ask him what he thinks? The sad look on his face was enough for me. But I still don’t know if it was the play or my article that had made him unhappy. Retired, he spent all his time looking for ancient documents related to the Apocrypha, the book of Jubilees, so dear to his father. Nothing gave him greater childlike joy than others showing an interest in it. He was convinced that countless parchments of this kind, perhaps even the “Maccabees,” lay buried somewhere in the mountain caves near Jerusalem. Who would be so fortunate as to find them? One day I saw him in seventh heaven: he had just read a book annotated by One-Eyed Paritus. The latter referred to a manuscript titled “The End of Time” dating from the age of the Prophets in Judea. “Look,” my father said, jubilantly. “Look at what he says about anger burning the heart whose
ashes wait for hatred before being wiped out: ‘God alone has the right to feel it; not his creatures.’ Or envy, look at what the same Paritus has to say about it: ‘Be wary of those who seek to arouse envy: you, reader and student, envy another person’s virtues, but not the power or gold he might possess; what shines today will be dust or ashes tomorrow.’”

IT IS BECAUSE OF
Werner Sonderberg that, one fine spring day, I found myself in court, in the bosom of the justice system. Not as a lawyer, as my mother had wished, but as an interested observer. And above all as a drama critic.

This was the boss’s idea. Rather original, not to say harebrained. To tell the truth, I had tried to dissuade him.

“I haven’t studied law, Paul, as you know. I’ve never attended a trial, and never set foot in a courtroom. Do you want me to make a fool of myself? My area of expertise is theater!”

“That’s just it. Trials are
like
theater. All those who participate in them are playing a part. In England, the judges wear wigs. In France it’s robes. When the lawyer says, in his client’s name, ‘we plead guilty or not guilty,’ it’s as if he himself were guilty or not guilty, too. It’s theater, I tell you. In a criminal trial, especially with a jury, there’s always suspense and drama. That’s why the readers are interested in it.”

“And the defendant, Paul?” I replied. “Is it a game, for him, too?”

“It’s up to you to tell us.”

That’s how, from one day to the next, the aforementioned Werner Sonderberg, nephew of Hans Dunkelman, burst into my life.

I remember: a Sunday, late afternoon. I return from the theater and find a meeting of the editors. They’re preparing the layout. The Middle East is on the front page as usual, as well as a speech by the president at a midwestern university. Then the secretary of state’s televised statement on the subject of bilateral negotiations with Moscow on nuclear disarmament. I listen with only half an ear. My thoughts remain focused on the hapless actors who had to perform in an avant-garde comedy that never took off. Thank God, it won’t have a long run. But how can I express this without being nasty? I’m lost in these considerations when I hear voices getting louder. It’s Paul losing his temper.

“The trial of the year, as they say, starts next week and we are unprepared?”

“Our two legal reporters are away,” says Charles Stone, the old-timer in charge of the metropolitan desk. “James is on vacation and Frederic is getting married.”

“Couldn’t he pick a better time?”

“Maybe he could have,” Charles says, “but not his fiancée.
As she sees it, happiness is much more urgent. She’s not a journalist.”

Contrary to what everyone feared, Paul did not explode. Head bent down, hiding his anger, he started to search in his mind for someone who might fit the bill, and I had no trouble figuring out why he was hesitating. No one appealed to him. So-and-so wrote too slowly; another lacked precision and sparkle; another really had to be kept in his assigned job. And suddenly his eyes met mine.

And that’s how I found myself spending hours delving into the archives of our newspaper, looking for material I could use in my first legal column. And after that? Tomorrow is another day. God is great.

Werner Sonderberg is a young German of twenty-four. Born in a town near Frankfurt, he moved with his mother to France, where he attended secondary school. After his mother’s death, he came to the United States to get a master’s degree in comparative literature and philosophy at New York University. Intelligent, hungry for knowledge, as an uprooted person he made a lot of friends at the university; he was even known to have had a few passing affairs. His teachers treated him kindly and predicted an outstanding career for him in his adopted country. Until then, nothing to report. No police record. No alcohol, no drugs.

One fine morning, a wealthy compatriot, Hans Dunkelman,
came to visit him, claiming to be his relative; at the time, Werner didn’t understand: Was he an uncle, a distant cousin? His name didn’t ring a bell. Strongly built, dressed with meticulous elegance, he must be a wealthy industrialist, an investor or stockbroker, thought the young man.

They were often seen together. So much so that Werner’s girlfriend, Anna, a young brunette with cheerful eyes, complained about it to their mutual friends.

“When I want to spend an evening with him,” she said, pouting, “I have to make an appointment. I know, he told me, the man is his uncle, the only living member of his family. But still there’s a limit, don’t you think?”

One day, she couldn’t control her anger. “Werner just told me he was going to take time off in the mountains with that Dunkelman. Without me. Take time off from what, from whom? From me maybe? I can’t get over it!”

Indeed, Werner and his uncle went to the Adirondacks, not far from the Canadian border, but the nephew returned alone. Taciturn, he refused to answer when Anna quizzed him about his uncle’s absence.

“We separated,” he finally said by way of explanation, looking annoyed. “That’s all. And I hope I never see him again.”

“But why? What happened?” asked the young student. “Did you quarrel?”

Werner shrugged his shoulders as if to say, don’t harp on it.

Obviously preoccupied, he preferred to remain alone, as
though he felt estranged from love and happiness. Anna tried in vain to make him relax. This was the first time such a thing was happening to them. He seemed cut off from the outside world, impervious to his girlfriend’s attentions.

Several days later, alerted by a passing tourist, the local police discovered Hans Dunkelman’s corpse at the foot of a cliff. Accident, suicide, or murder? Did he throw himself into the void? Did he succumb to malaise? Did someone push him? The autopsy revealed a high alcohol content in his bloodstream. At the hotel where Werner and he had rented two rooms for a week, they found the name of his nephew, who had returned to New York precipitately.

Two days later, Werner Sonderberg was arrested and charged with murder.

After rereading and correcting my introductory article on the trial, I leave the newspaper office and go home. It is night. Alika welcomes me, looking surprised.

“It’s late. What happened?”

I tell her about the turbulent meeting of the editorial staff, but the solution Paul found doesn’t please my wife.

“Don’t tell me you’re giving up the theater.”

“Don’t be afraid. We’ll still be going to all the good plays … if and when there are any.”

“How are you going to be able to juggle the two issues, writing reviews and summarizing the trial proceedings?”

“No problem: the trial takes place during the day. And it
won’t last long. A few days. Maybe a week. That’s what everyone says.”

“But are you sure you can handle this sort of assignment?”

“No, I’m not. But Paul is sure. You know him; he’s stubborn. Once he gets an idea into his head, he won’t budge an inch. And he’s a friend. I’ve got to trust him.”

Alika is just as obstinate as Paul, and she isn’t convinced. But she becomes resigned.

“Let’s hope these few days go by quickly … and pleasantly.”

But the trial would have many surprises in store for us.

Very early the next morning, I’m barely awake when I get a phone call from Paul.

“I read your piece. It’s going on the front page. But let me be frank: it’s not what I expected of you. You just made a compilation of what others have written. Too many facts, too many details. In a word, too dry. You’re not a machine. Think of your passion for the stage. The courses you took. These are the tools you should use. Each person has to come alive, every sentence has to be effulgent, and everything has to revolve around the main character.”

“I see. You shouldn’t have …”

“Don’t take it badly. But on reading you, one has the impression that you’ve never heard of this crime, am I mistaken?”

“No, you’re right,” I say in a weak voice. “You’re always right. But I warned you that…”

“That you’re not the right man for the job. Yes, I know. You’re wrong. Trust me: you can do better and you will.”

“I’ll try, Professor.”

We both hang up at the same time.

“I should have listened to you,” I say to Alika, who is still half asleep. “I shouldn’t have agreed to it.”

“Agreed to what?”

I let her sleep.

First session.

Room number 12 in the New York County Criminal Court is packed. Photographers, reporters, lawyers, legal correspondents, the German consul. They all seem to know one another. Habitués, apparently. They all speak at the same time: the weather, the baseball and football games. The stock market. The latest gossip. I can’t make sense of it. I don’t know anyone. I don’t belong to their world. Estranged from myself, I sit quietly in my corner, pen and pad in hand, my eyes wandering around the setting where a man’s future will be hanging in the balance. Will he find freedom again? Will he lose it forever? Will he win back the right to happiness? Will he become a respectable member of the human family again, or remain one of humanity’s black sheep? And what about me, what am I doing here? Where do I fit in?