Self's Punishment

The door burst open and my guests were asking for me. ‘Where are you hiding, Gerd? Furuzan is going to do a belly dance for us.’

We cleared the dance floor and Philipp screwed a red lightbulb into the lamp. Furuzan entered from the bathroom in a veil and sequined bikini. Manuel and Jan’s eyes popped out of their heads. The music began, supplicating and slow, and Furuzan’s first movements were of a gentle, languorous fluidity. Then the tempo of the music increased and with it the rhythm of the dance. Roschen started to clap, everyone joined in. Furuzan discarded the veil, and let a tassel attached to her belly button circle wildly. The floor shook. When the music died away Furuzan ended with a triumphant pose and flung herself into Philipp’s arms.

‘This is the love of the Turks,’ Philipp laughed.

‘Laugh all you like. I’ll get you. You don’t play around with Turkish women,’ she said, looking him haughtily in the eye.

I brought her my dressing gown.

‘Stop,’ called Eberhard as the audience was ready to disperse. ‘I invite you to the breathtaking show by the great magician Ebus Erus Hardabakus.’ And he made rings spin and link together and come apart again, and yellow scarves turn to red; he conjured up coins and made them disappear again, and Manuel was allowed to check that everything was above board. The trick with the white mouse went wrong. At the sight of it, Turbo leapt onto the table, knocked over the top hat it had supposedly disappeared into, chased it round the apartment, and playfully broke its neck behind the fridge before any of us could intervene. In response Eberhard wanted to break Turbo’s neck, but luckily Roschen stopped him.

It was Jan’s turn. He recited ‘The Feet in the Fire’ by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Next to me sat an anxious Hadwig, silently mouthing the poem with him. ‘Mine is the revenge, saith the Lord,’ thundered Jan at the end.

‘Fill your glasses and plates and come back,’ called Babs. ‘It’s on with the show.’ She whispered with Roschen and Georg and the three of them pushed tables and chairs to the side and the dance floor became a small stage. Charades. Babs puffed out her cheeks and blew, and Roschen and Georg ran off.

‘Gone with the Wind,’ called Nagelsbach.

Then Georg and Roschen slapped one another until Babs stepped between them, took their hands, and joined them together. ‘Kemal Ataturk in War and Peace!’

‘Too Turkish, Fuzzy,’ said Philipp and patted her thigh. ‘But isn’t she clever?’

It was half past eleven and I went to check there was plenty of champagne on ice. In the living room Roschen and Georg had taken over the stereo and were feeding old records onto the turntable: Tom Waits was singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’, and Philipp tried to waltz Babs down the narrow corridor. The children were playing tag with the cat. In the bathroom Furuzan was showering away the sweat of her belly dance. Brigitte came through to the kitchen and gave me a kiss. ‘A lovely party.’

I almost didn’t hear the doorbell. I pressed the buzzer for the front door, but then saw the green silhouette through the frosted glass of the apartment door and knew the visitor was already upstairs. I opened up. In front of me stood Herzog in uniform.

‘I’m sorry, Herr Self…’

So this was the end. They say it happens just before you’re hanged, but now the pictures of the past weeks went shooting through my mind, as if in a film. Korten’s last look, my arrival in Mannheim on Christmas morning, Manuel’s hand in mine, the nights with Brigitte, our happy group round the Christmas tree. I wanted to say something. I couldn’t make a sound.

Herzog went ahead of me into the apartment. I heard the music being turned down. But our friends kept laughing and chattering cheerfully. When I had control of myself again, and went into the sitting room, Herzog had a glass of wine in his hand, and Roschen, a little tipsy, was fiddling with the buttons on his uniform.

‘I was just on my way home, Herr Self, when the complaint about your party came through on the radio. I took it upon myself to look in on you.’

‘Hurry up,’ called Brigitte, ‘two minutes to go.’ Enough time to distribute the champagne glasses and pop the corks.

Now we’re standing on the balcony, Philipp and Eberhard let off the fireworks, from all the churches comes the ringing of bells, we clink glasses.

‘Happy New Year.’

Bernhard Schlink

Bernhard Schlink is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The Reader; a collection of short stories, Flights of Love; and three other crime novels, The Gordian Knot, Self Deception, and Self Slaughter, which are currently being translated into English. He is a visiting professor at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, in New York. He lives in Bonn and Berlin.

Walter Popp

Walter Popp was born in Nuremberg and studied law at the University of Erlangen. He started a law practice in Mannheim before moving to France in 1983. He now lives in a Provencal village with his teenage daughter and works as a translator.

***