Self's Punishment

The next morning in my letterbox I found a bulk mail delivery from the Rhineland Chemical Works that contained a perfectly worded statement on the incident. ‘RCW protects life,’ I discovered, also that a current focus of research was the conservation of the German woodlands. Yes, well then. The delivery included a small plastic cube with a healthy fir-seed suspended in it. How cute. I showed the object to my tomcat and put it on the mantelpiece above the fireplace.

Out on my stroll around the neighbourhood I picked up my week’s provision of Sweet Afton, bought a warm meatloaf sandwich, with mustard, from the butcher on the marketplace, visited my Turk with the good olives, watched the Green Party members at their info-stand on Parade-Platz fruitlessly trying to disturb the harmony between the RCW and the population of Mannheim and Ludwigshafen. Among the bystanders I noticed Officer Herzog being supplied with fliers.

In the afternoon I sat in Luisenpark. It costs something, just like Tivoli. So at the beginning of the year, for the first time, I’d acquired a year’s pass. I wanted to get my money’s worth out of it. When I wasn’t watching pensioners feeding the ducks I read Keller’s Green Henry. Frau Buchendorff ’s first name had led me to the Judith in the book.

At five o’clock I went home. Sewing a button onto my dinner jacket took me a good half-hour with my dodgy arm. I took a taxi from the Wasserturm to the RCW restaurant. There was a banner stretched over the entrance with Chinese characters on it. On three masts flew the flags of the People’s Republic of China, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the RCW, flapping in the wind. To the right and left of the entrance were two Rhineland maidens in folk costume, looking about as authentic as Barbie dolls dressed as Munich beer-maids. The procession of cars was in full swing. It all looked so upright and dignified.

9 Groping the decollete of the economy

Schmalz was standing in the foyer.

‘How’s your little son doing?’

‘Good, thank you. I would like to talk and thank you later. I’m tied up now.’

I went up the stairs and through the open double-doors into the large reception room. People were clustered in small groups, the waitresses and waiters were serving champagne, orange juice, champagne with orange juice, Campari with orange juice, and Campari with soda. I ambled around a bit. It was like any other reception before the speeches were given and the buffet is opened. I sought familiar faces and found the red-haired girl with the freckles. We smiled at each other. Firner drew me into a circle and introduced me to three Chinese men whose names were made up of various combinations of San, Yin, and Kim, as well as Herr Oelmuller, head of the computer centre. Oelmuller was trying to explain computerized data protection in Germany to the Chinese. I don’t know what they found so funny about that but in any event they laughed like the Hollywood Chinese in a Pearl S. Buck adaptation.

Then came the speeches. Korten was brilliant. He covered everything from Confucius to Goethe, left out the Boxer Uprising and the Cultural Revolution, and touched on the former RCW branch in Tsingtao solely to weave in the compliment to the Chinese that the last head of branch there had learned a new process for the production of ultramarine from the Chinese.

The Chinese delegation leader replied no less elegantly. He recounted his university years in Karlsruhe, took his hat off to German culture and the economy, from Boll to Schleyer, spoke technical jargon I didn’t understand, and closed with Goethe’s ‘The Orient and Occident can no longer be divided’.

After the president of the Rhineland-Palatinate’s speech even a less superb buffet would have seemed exciting. For my first helping I chose the saffron oysters in a champagne sauce. Good thing that there were tables. I hate the stand-up receptions where you have to juggle cigarette, glass, and plate – really you should be spoon- fed at them. I spotted Frau Buchendorff at a table with a free chair. She was looking charming in her raw-silk, indigo-coloured suit. The buttons of her blouse were there in their entirety.

‘May I join you?’

‘You can get another chair, unless you plan on perching the Chinese security expert on your lap straight away?’

‘Tell me, did the Chinese pick up on the explosion?’

‘What explosion? No, seriously, they were up at Castle Eltz first thing yesterday, and then they tried out the new Mercedes on the Nurburg Ring. When they got back, everything was over. Today the press has really been going at it, mainly from the meteorological angle. How’s your arm? You’re something of a hero – that couldn’t get into the papers, of course, though it would have made a lovely story.’

The Chinese lady appeared. She had everything that German men who dream of Asian women could dream of. Whether she was in fact a security expert I wasn’t able to establish either. I asked whether there were private detectives in China.

‘No plivate plopethy, no plivate detectives,’ she answered, and asked whether there were also female private detectives in the Federal Republic of Germany. This led on to observations about the waning women’s movement. ‘I’ve lead almost evelything published in Gehmany in the way of women’s books. Why is it that men in Gehmany ahrite women’s books? A Chinese man would lose face.’

Fohtunate China.

A waiter brought me the invitation to Oelmuller’s table. On the way I selected a second course of sole roulades, Bremenstyle.

Oelmuller introduced me to the gentleman at his table, who impressed me with his skill in arranging his sparse hair over his head: Professor Ostenteich, head of the law department and honorary professor at Heidelberg University. No coincidence that these gentlemen were dining together. Well, back to work. Since my talk with Herzog, a question had been bothering me.

‘Could the gentlemen explain the new smog model to me? Herr Herzog of the police talked about it, said it is not entirely uncontroversial. What, for example, am I to understand by the direct recording of emissions?’

Ostenteich felt called upon to lead the discussion. ‘That is un peu delicat, as the French would say. You should read the expert opinion by Professor Wenzel that most meticulously lays out the relevant distribution of powers, and unmasks the legislative hubris of Baden-Wurttemberg and the Rhineland- Palatinate. Le pouvoir arrete le pouvoir - the Federal law on Emissions Protection blocks any special paths the states might choose. Added to that is freedom of property, protection of entrepreneurial activity, and a company’s privacy. The legislature hoped to disregard that with a single stroke of the pen. But la verite est en marche, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe still exists, heureusement.’

‘And how does this new smog alarm model work?’ I looked at Oelmuller invitingly.

Ostenteich didn’t relinquish his lead quite so easily. ‘It’s good that you enquire about the technical side of things, too, Herr Self. Herr Oelmuller can explain all that to you in a minute. The crux, l’essence, of our problem is: the state and the economy only have a mutually beneficial arrangement if a certain distance prevails between the two. And, please allow me this rather bold metaphor: here the state has overstepped itself and groped the decollete of the economy.’ He roared with laughter, and Oelmuller dutifully joined in.

When quiet had again descended, or, as the French would say, silence, Oelmuller said, ‘Technically the whole thing isn’t a problem at all. The basic process of environmental protection is the examination of the vehicles of emissions – water, or air – to check the concentration of harmful substances. If an emission exceeds the accepted levels, one attempts to trace its source and shut it off. So, smog may be created if some factory or other emits more than their allowance. On the other hand, smog may also be created if the level of the emissions at the individual factories remains within the stated limits, but the weather cannot cope.’

‘How does whoever’s in charge of the smog alarm know what sort of smog he’s dealing with? He surely has to react quite differently to each.’ The business was beginning to enthrall me. I postponed my next trip to the buffet, and shuffled a cigarette out of the yellow packet.

‘Correct, Herr Self, indeed both sorts require a different reaction, but they’re difficult to tell apart using conventional methods. It’s possible, for example, that traffic has to be stopped and factories have to grind to a halt