I thought of Schuler. I’d have liked to hear him once again tell his tales: why Lieutenant Welker and the Prussian had gotten into an argument, what had been the fate of the young Weller girl after her beloved had met his death, much like Romeo-except that in this case the families were not hostile to each other, but too friendly. I would have liked to have known when Bertram and Stephanie had fallen in love. I blew out the flame and drank. I wished Schuler could have recovered his sense of taste and smell before he died.

Then I opened the attaché case. It was chock-full of money, used fifty-and hundred-mark bills.

13 Shadowed

No, I didn’t consider stuffing the bills into a suitcase along with a few shirts and pants, sweaters, underwear, toothbrush, and razor, heading to the Frankfurt airport, and getting on the first plane to Buenos Aires. Or the Maldives, the Azores, or the Hebrides. My life here in Mannheim is complicated enough. How would it be someplace else, where I don’t even speak the language?

I didn’t look for a hiding place for the money, either. As it is, I would surely tell all under torture. I lowered the rolltop of my filing cabinet, squeezed the few old files into one of its compartments, and slid out the bottoms of the other compartments, making enough space for the attaché case. Then I pulled the rolltop shut.

I didn’t count the money. There was a lot of it. Enough to give someone reason to put the fear of God into a man. Thinking of my final meeting with Schuler on the sidewalk-the way he staggered toward me waving his arms, his grimacing, his hoarse whisper-I felt that someone must have frightened him to death.

Nägelsbach sounded no happier on the phone than he’d been when I had seen him.

“What was it, an accident or a murder?” he asked me. “As you know, each has its own department.”

“All I want to know is when Schuler’s body will be sent over to Forensics.”

“Yes, I know, so you can call your friend at the Mannheim municipal hospital, who’ll then put in a quick call to Forensics. By the way, what are you doing… I mean, on Tuesday… my wife… you see… tomorrow’s my last day, and we would be delighted if you and your girlfriend would come by. Are you free?”

He sounded worried that nobody would come to his party. He and his wife struck me as never really needing friends, as if they were quite self-sufficient, and there were times when I envied that. They’d sit in his workshop, he working on a matchstick model of the Munich Palace of Justice, she reading aloud to him from Kafka’s The Trial, and before bed they’d have a glass of wine together. Does marital harmony last only till retirement?

As I drove to Schwetzingen I was shadowed. Even as I walked to my car, just around the corner from my office, I had the feeling that someone was following me. But whenever I turned around nobody was there, and such feelings can be wrong, even if Brigitte believes that feelings always tell the truth and that only thoughts tell lies. There wasn’t much traffic on the autobahn. The beige Fiesta I noticed in my rearview mirror after the Mannheim intersection passed me when I pulled over on the shoulder near Pfingstberg, drove on, and disappeared from view around the next bend. But when I drove on and then passed a truck and looked into my rearview mirror, there it was again. I repeated my little maneuver a few hundred yards from the Schwetzingen exit. When he passed me I tailed him until he took the exit. I drove on and then, a few kilometers beyond Brühl, pulled over the shoulder onto a bumpy dirt road.

I was not surprised to find a police car outside Schuler’s place. No one was parked outside the old warehouse. I rang and managed to get in, but I couldn’t open the door to the archives. When I drove off, I once again saw the Fiesta in my rearview mirror.

I felt tired-tired of a world in which a harmless, malodorous old archivist could at the drop of a hat be frightened to death. A world in which there were too many used fifty-and hundred-mark bills. In which someone could snoop about in my office and shadow me in a beige Fiesta without my knowing who he was and what he wanted. I felt tired of being at odds with my case. It didn’t interest me and couldn’t interest my client, either. What interested me instead was my client himself, and the death of his wife and his archivist. And that I was interested in this was, needless to say, of no interest to my client. But what was his interest? And why had he hired me for a case that surely could not be of interest to him?

The message on my answering machine sounded as if Welker had read my mind. “Hello, Herr Self. Can you drop by tomorrow? I haven’t heard from you in a while and would like an update. As things stand, time’s not on our side, and…” He covered the mouthpiece and there was a sound on the line like in the shell from the Timmendorf beach in which my mother had me listen to the sea when I was a little boy. In between I heard mumbled words that I couldn’t make out. Then Samarin came on the line: “We know that Herr Schuler came to see you, and that he left some money with you. You must help us see to it that his reputation isn’t ruined by this one foolish act. The money belongs back in the bank. Come by tomorrow at three.”

I was tired of the game Welker and Samarin were playing. I didn’t call either of them. I decided to call Georg the following day in Strasbourg to see what he’d come up with. I also decided to call Nägelsbach on his last day at police headquarters. I had forgotten that I had been shadowed by a Fiesta.

14 Not empty-handed

But the driver of the Fiesta had not forgotten me. At eight thirty the following morning he was at my front door, ringing the bell. He rang many times. Later he explained to me that he had been quite considerate; he had kept ringing even though he could have easily gotten the door open. The lock was a joke.

When I opened, he stood there skulking like a salesman, his face both defiant and dispirited. He looked to be about fifty, not too tall and not too short, not fat and not thin, his cheeks covered in spider veins and his hair sparse. He was wearing pants of some dark synthetic fabric, light gray loafers, a light blue shirt with dark blue edging on the pocket, and an open parka. His parka was the same beige color as his car.

“So it was you,” I said.

“Me?”

“Who was shadowing me yesterday.”

He nodded. “That maneuver of yours near Schwetzingen wasn’t bad, but I knew where you were heading. You went off the autobahn just like that? Over the shoulder and onto a dirt road?” He spoke with magnanimous amiability. “What about the blue Mercedes? Did it follow you onto the dirt road?”

I didn’t want to let on that I had no idea what he was talking about, but he saw that right away.

“Are you telling me you didn’t notice him? As for me, you only noticed yesterday.”

“I’d be happy enough not to notice you today, either. What do you want?”

He looked hurt. “Why are you talking to me like that? I didn’t do anything to you. I just wanted-”

“Well?”

“You are… I am…”

I waited.

“You are my father.”

I’m not the fastest person and never have been, and with the passing years I haven’t gotten any faster. More often than not my emotions are slow to react, and I might notice only at noon that someone had offended me in the morning, or I might realize in the evening that someone had said something nice to me at lunch that would have pleased me. I don’t have a son. And yet I didn’t burst out laughing or slam the door in his face, but invited him into my living room and had him sit on one sofa while I sat on the other.

“You don’t believe me?” he said, and then nodded. “I see you don’t believe me. We don’t even exist for you.”