The Weekend (11 page)

Ilse herself felt as if she were waking up from an anesthetic.
That is my work
, she wanted to make Jan think with his last glance into the bedroom, and as he passed the weeping chairman’s wife he was to think it coldly and proudly, and at the same time with a shudder of horror. Just as she looked at her work.

When Christiane had cleared up and washed the breakfast crockery and emptied the basins and filled the jugs in the rooms, she went back to the terrace. Everyone had left. Even Karin and her husband, who had helped her in the kitchen and then joined her on the terrace, had disappeared.

Christiane had made plans; for a boat trip on the nearby lake, a picnic in the park, dancing on the terrace. But, sitting alone on the terrace, she no longer had any confidence that anyone was interested in that. She was also worried about bringing everyone together again. Jörg would accuse Henner of betrayal again, and Henner—what would Henner say? What would Jörg make of it if Henner rebuffed his accusation?

She caught herself wishing Jörg back in jail. Or at least in a place where he was safe—safe from information that confused him, from contacts that seduced him, from dangers for which he was no match. Most of his years in jail had not been a bad time. At first it was bad, when the prison administration wanted to break Jörg’s strength and he fought back with stubborn aggression against them by going on hunger strikes. But then the administration and Jörg learned to leave each other in peace. Jörg was almost happy. And he was never so much hers as during the years in prison.

She stepped outside the gate. Ulrich’s Mercedes and Andres’s Volvo were gone—all the guests could have gone off on an outing in the two big cars. Disappointed, concerned and relieved, she went into the house, picked up a lounge chair and was about to go lie on the terrace. But there was already someone there; Christiane recognized the voices of Jörg and Dorle. She set the lounge chair down, tiptoed through the room and leaned against the wall next to the open folding door.

“I was just terribly disappointed. That’s why I was so horrible. I’m sorry.”

At first Jörg said nothing. Christiane imagined him sobbing a few times and letting his hands rise and fall. Then he cleared his throat. “Of course I can see what a … a gorgeous woman you are. I just can’t.”

“Don’t be formal—call me Dorle.” She laughed softly. “Dorothea—I’m a gift from the gods. Take me. If you were with men in prison and now … I like that.” She laughed her soft laugh again. “I like being fucked in the ass.”

“I’m … I’m.…” He didn’t say what he was. He was weeping. He was weeping with the pitiful, halting sounds he had as a child. Christiane recognized them, and was irritated again. If her brother had to weep, it should be powerful, manly weeping. Dorle wasn’t like that. “Weep, little one,” she said, “weep.” When he didn’t stop, she went on talking. “Yes, little one, yes. It would make you weep, everything would make you weep, everything. My brave one, my sad one, my unhappy one, my little boy blue.” At last Christiane was so annoyed by the comforting singsong that she wanted
to intervene. Did Dorle, if she couldn’t boast about sleeping with the famous terrorist, want to brag that he had wept with her and she had comforted him? But when Christiane stepped out onto the terrace, she saw Jörg and Dorle. He was sitting stiffly on his chair, eyes closed, shaken with weeping, and Dorle standing behind him bending over him, arms on his chest, rocking him. Jörg in his pain and Dorle in her attempt to comfort him looked so helpless that Christiane didn’t want to intervene after all.

So she sidled off. In the corridor she collided with Marko. “I was looking for you.” He grinned at her. “We’ve got to talk.”

“Do you know where the others are?”

“The two couples and Andreas drove to a ruin. They’re not staying long. But you and I don’t need long either.”

“Does it have to be now?”

“Yes.” Marko turned around, went into the kitchen and leaned against the sink. “I’ve prepared a declaration that I’d like to give to the press tomorrow on Jörg’s behalf. Jörg will be hesitant.”

Christiane was already annoyed with herself for following Marko into the kitchen. Now she was going to have to hear about his obsessions! “I’ll advise him not to. Anything else?”

He grinned at her again. “I don’t know how you’d like things to be between you and Jörg in future. Are you fond of him? He’s fond of you—still.”

“I’m not going to talk to you about my brother.”

“No? Not even before I talk to your brother about you? Or will I get coffee poured over me?”

Christiane shook her head wearily. “Leave me in peace.”

“Will do. You make sure he lets the declaration go out. I can’t stop him putting two and two together and working out that you’ve betrayed him if Henner rebuts the accusation. If it can only be someone from a long time ago, and if it wasn’t his old friend … But I won’t say anything.” He laughed. “That business with the coffee was really stupid. Maybe Henner would have defended himself against Jörg’s accusation so skillfully that he wouldn’t have believed him. Sometimes truths sound like lies.”

“Leave me in peace.”

“The declaration has to go to the press tomorrow, and if you haven’t persuaded him by tomorrow morning, I’ll have to do it. And I’ll persuade him by telling him what you’ve done.” Marko suddenly looked seriously at Christiane. “What possessed you? Fear for Jörg? Better to live in prison than die in freedom? I don’t get it.” He shrugged. “And it doesn’t matter anyway.” He moved away from the sink and left the kitchen.

Can I throw Marko out of the house? Can I get Henner to take the blame for the betrayal? Can I discredit Henner in such a way that Jörg doesn’t believe him? Can I get Andreas involved? Can I soften the declaration? Can I run away? Can I get Jörg to understand why I had to do what I did?

Christiane remembered giving the police the tip-off.
She had given it anonymously, and that made her feel as if she had not really given it, as if the tip-off had somehow given itself. She remembered the relief she had felt when Jörg was safe in prison. She remembered the fear she had felt while he was free. It wasn’t the fear that you have for someone who won’t give up climbing mountains or hang gliding or driving race cars. It was a knot in Christiane’s belly that tied fear and pain and guilt together. The pain of having lost Jörg already, the fear of losing him completely, the guilt of not saving him while she could have done so with a simple tip-off. With this betrayal, too, she was piling guilt upon herself. But what was that guilt compared with Jörg’s life!

Then came the prison years, in which she had given Jörg everything. Christiane had thought that would let her pay the price for the guilt of betrayal. Wasn’t that enough? Now she was to be deprived of Jörg’s love as well? If that was how it was to be, then that was how it would be. Christiane realized with astonishment that she could think something that had previously been unthinkable without the world coming to a standstill and life coming to an end.

She went to the spot in the park where her telephone worked. Previously there had been a pond here, and as always when she telephoned, Christiane wondered if the ground was still damp and that was responsible for the reception. She dreamed of repairing the channel from the stream to the hollow of the pond and from the hollow back to the stream and filling the pond again.

She called Karin. She had stopped taking pleasure in her plans, and encouraged Karin to drive to the castle by the lake, which wasn’t very far away. “Take your time. I’ll have an aperitif ready for six.”

On the way back, through the trees she saw Margarete and Henner sitting on the bench by the stream. At first it gave her a stitch, then it sat easily with her mood of renunciation and farewell. She would be left with her work and her apartment in town and her house in the country. Her work with patients and colleagues—that was fine. But she would have liked to enjoy the apartment and house with someone, with Margarete, with Jörg, with—the thought had crossed her mind a few times since the night before—Henner.

She walked around the house and through the gate to the road. Her neighbor, the former chairman of the farming co-op, who was displaying his collection of old
agricultural instruments in a big barn and a big field, and leaning on a fence hoping for visitors, spoke to her. Had the young man found her all right? He had been polite, had said hello and thank you and left. Christiane was pleased that her neighbor was speaking to her. Although she had lived here for two years, he didn’t normally greet her, and as a former holder of office he was the model for other residents of the village. But when she asked if the young man had seemed like a reporter, she immediately sensed suspicion and rejection. What could there be to report from the manor house? What was actually going on this weekend? Why were so many cars parked outside the gate? She told him about the old friends whom she hadn’t seen for a long time and who had finally come to visit. He made threatening hints; if something improper was going on and the reporters didn’t find it, they could be pointed in the right direction.

Christiane walked on, past the dilapidated vicarage, past the church that had been under renovation for years, and would be for years to come, past the old staging post, past the village pond with the war memorial. She didn’t meet anyone. As she went by the bus shelter, three boys were sitting on the plastic seats, drinking beer. They looked at Christiane in silence and scared her with their unexpected presence. Yes, she was an outsider here—it fit her mood.

She looked out for the young man her neighbor had talked about. Was he walking through the village as well? Was he asking people questions about her? Had he found out that Jörg had been pardoned and that she, his sister, lived here? She looked at the license plates of all
the parked cars—a reporter would probably come from Berlin or Hamburg or Munich. Then she found her watchfulness undignified and told herself to stop it. She had also had enough of her mood of renunciation and farewell. Being cheerful was out of the question, but being sad was mixed with defiance. She wanted to be done with them, the reporters and Marko and young brats, and if the people she loved didn’t want her, they could go to hell.

Her proud defiance survived until she was back on the road to her house. It wasn’t long, but it was bleak: on one side the dilapidated vicarage, the rusting agricultural implements, the damaged wall of Christiane’s property, on the other side, gray disused warehouses and the sheds of the farming co-op. The road wasn’t paved; with every step Christiane swirled up pale dust that hung long enough above the ground to follow her like a trail. As if the cloak of the past were hanging from my shoulders, she thought as she turned around—and the fear was there again, the fear of losing Jörg, of losing Margarete and having nothing left but work. It wasn’t hot, but the sun stung, and Christiane suddenly felt like hurting those who hurt her.

Dorle and Marko were sitting on the terrace. “Jörg has gone to his room to sleep. Marko is just telling me what a hero Jörg is and that the world should get to read a declaration that will finally show them as much.” She smiled at Christiane, woman to woman, both knowing that men are not heroes, but little boys, or big ones at best. Then she smiled at Marko. “Can you tell me why the hero begged for mercy?”

Christiane didn’t actually want to hear Marko advocating his press declaration, or have Dorle turn her into an accomplice. But then she sat down anyway.

“He didn’t beg for mercy. He put in an application, the way you put in applications for leave or driver’s licenses or permission to do construction. And why not?”

“Doesn’t mercy mean what happened to me was actually right, but pretty please may I be spared?”

“That may be how others see it. For the revolutionary it’s simply about the chance to get out and go on fighting. If the chance presents itself, he takes it. He flees, and for his flight he tricks people and lies, he fights before the court and goes from the first to the second and third authority, he puts in applications.”

“What nonsense.” Christiane was furious. “Jörg didn’t lie before the court so that he could get out. When he was in jail he didn’t make all the applications that would have made it easier for him. He was on hunger strike, more than once.”

Marko nodded. “Hunger strikes are part of the revolutionary struggle. Suicide is part of the revolutionary struggle. They demonstrate to the world that the state doesn’t control its prisoners, that they are not objects, but subjects. And that their struggle is selfless, if necessary self-destructive, suicidal. I didn’t say the revolutionary gives everything to get out. If the struggle can be fought in jail, he fights it in jail. But the days of hunger strikes and suicides are past. The struggle must be fought outside. That’s why Jörg made the application.”

“Well, hmm. I think a request for mercy demonstrates
to the world that the state can act and should act. That’s OK too. Who gains if Jörg rots in jail?” Dorle yawned and got to her feet. “I think I’m going to have a lie-down. When does the program continue?”

“There’s an aperitif at six. But I could use some help—can you come to the kitchen at five?”

Dorle nodded and left. Was she going to Jörg? Christiane didn’t care. Dorle wouldn’t take Jörg away from her. The danger came from Marko.

He immediately went on: “Do you understand now? Without a declaration everyone sees things as Dorle does. Jörg, whose strength they broke. Jörg, who climbed down. You can’t want that to be all that’s left of him! And how’s he supposed to go on living with that? It would mean his whole life was nothing.”

“Let that be his business. Why do you want to put him under pressure?” But as soon as she said it, she understood Marko. She saw Jörg’s animated face when Marko had praised and urged him the previous night, and she heard again how eloquently Jörg had spoken about the legacy of the struggle as they walked through the park at night. At the same time she saw Jörg with his sloping shoulders, dragging gait and agitated gestures. Marko had understood that without pressure it would be a matter of chance whether Jörg decided for or against the declaration. “Can I read it?”