known already. Perhaps that was the point in fact: Judge Hart asked a few questions that could have opened up new avenues of thought, but nobody seemed to be particularly interested. Nothing was really at stake, and the ventilation in the rather chilly room left a lot to be desired – best to get it all over with as painlessly as possible, everybody seemed to be agreed on that. Nevertheless, interrogation of the witnesses for the prosecution took almost two hours.
Emmeline von Post, the defence’s so-called character witness, took up considerably less time (probably about a quarter of an hour, she didn’t check). All in all it was a rather painful episode. But nothing else could reasonably have been expected. Bachmann hadn’t told her that he intended to put Emmeline in the witness box – if he had, she would have prevented him. No doubt about that.
After Emmeline von Post had come to the stand, confirmed who she was and sworn the oath, barely half a minute passed before she burst out crying. Judge Hart adjourned proceedings while a female usher hurried up to administer a carafe of water, some paper tissues and a dose of humane sympathy.
Bachmann then managed to continue for a few minutes before she collapsed in tears again. Another pause ensued, with snuffling and more paper handkerchiefs, and when the poor woman finally seemed to be more or less composed, Bachmann took his courage in both hands and asked her the crucial question with no more beating about the bush.
‘You have known the accused almost all your life, fru von Post. Given your familiarity with her character, do you consider it credible that she would murder her husband with malice aforethought in the way that the prosecution has tried to suggest?’
Emmeline von Post – who naturally had no idea of what the prosecution had tried to suggest, as she had not had the right to be present in court until it was her turn – sobbed several times. Then she replied in a comparatively steady voice:
‘She would never hurt a fly. I can swear to that.’
Bachmann had no more questions.
Nor did Prosecutor Grootner.
Not even Judge Hart.
The final pleas were made on Friday, a performance confusingly similar to the opening session on Tuesday. When it was over Hart declared the proceedings closed. Sentence would be passed the following Thursday: until then Marie-Louise Leverkuhn would be remanded as had been the case since her arrest thirty-nine days ago – in cell number 12 in the women’s section of the jail in Maardam police station.
As she sat in the car taking her back to that cell she felt more relieved than anything else. To the best of her knowledge nothing had gone wrong during the trial (apart from the Emmeline von Post farce, but that had nothing to do with the main business), and all that remained now was a few days of waiting.
No more decisions. No questions. No lies.
It rained almost all weekend. Somewhere below her little window was a corrugated iron roof, on which the variations in the rain were just as clear as the notes from a musical instrument. She liked it: lying stretched out on the bed with the green blanket pulled up to her chin and the window slightly open… Yes, there was something deeply soothing about it. Something inside her was finally able to rest.
Something had come home after a long, long journey.
It was remarkable.
The chaplain came to see her as usual. A short visit on both Saturday and Sunday. He sat there in his corner half-asleep, as if keeping watch at a deathbed. She liked the idea of that as well.
Bachmann had threatened to put in an appearance and talk her through the situation, but she knew that it was no more than an empty promise typical of his profession. He had looked very depressed during the final days of the trial, and she had not encouraged him to come and visit her. And so he didn’t.
Ruth phoned on Friday evening and Mauritz did the same quite early on Saturday morning, but it was Sunday afternoon before Ruth’s large body flopped down on the chair.
‘Mum,’ she said after the initial silence.
‘Yes, what do you want?’ said Marie-Louise Leverkuhn.
That was a question her daughter was unable to answer, and not much more was said. After twenty minutes she gave vent to a deep sigh, and left her mother to her own devices.
It felt almost like a sort of victory when the door was locked behind her, Marie-Louise thought. It was strange that she should think that, of course, but that’s the way it was.
Things had turned out the way they had, and that’s the way it was. Only a few minutes after Ruth had left her, she fell asleep and had a dream.
She was on a train. It was racing through flat, monotonous countryside, at such a high speed that it was almost impossible to make out anything that flashed past the dirty and rather scratched window.
Even so, she knew that what was out there was life. Her own life. Flashing past at high speed. She was sitting with her back to the engine, and it soon became obvious that she was getting younger, the further they travelled. The same applied to her fellow passengers. The young woman sitting opposite her was suddenly no more than a little girl, and the elderly man in the corner with the shaking hands and bewildered eyes was soon transformed into a smart blue-eyed young man in uniform.
A journey backwards through life. On and on it went until everyone was only a small child, and when anybody in the carriage became so small that he or she looked like a new-born baby, the train stopped at a station. A few people in long, white coats with stethoscopes round their necks came on board and picked up the pink little lumps from the dirty seats. Made them all belch and cry a little, collected the blue ticket that they were all holding in their tiny hands, and left the train with the little creatures over their shoulders.
When it was her turn – it was an unusually big and fat doctor with wings on his back who lifted her up – it turned out that she didn’t have a ticket.
‘Haven’t you got a ticket?’ asked the angel sternly – she could now see that it was an angel. ‘In that case you can’t be born.’
‘Thank you, oh, thank you!’ She smiled up into his florid face. ‘If I can’t be born, I suppose that means I don’t need to live?’
‘Ho ho,’ said the angel cryptically and put her back down on the seat.
And so she continued the train journey into eternity, through the night of the unborn.
And she was happy. When she woke up she had butterflies in her stomach.
I don’t need to live.
Moritz also came on Sunday. At about half past six, just after the warder had been in to collect the dinner tray.
He had spent five hours in the car driving there, and seemed stressed and irritated. Although perhaps it was just his customary insecurity that lay behind it. He rang for coffee, said that he wanted some, but when it was actually standing on the shaky plastic table, he never touched it.
He also had difficulty in finding anything to say, just as Ruth had done. All they talked about was such things as prison routines and the situation on the candle-ring front in the run-up to Christmas. Mainly red and green this year, it seemed. She wished he would leave, and after half an hour said as much.
Perhaps he had assumed there would be this kind of difficulty, because he had written a letter. He stood up and produced it from an inside pocket in his ugly blazer with the firm’s emblem on the breast pocket. He handed it over without a word, then rang the bell and was let out.
It was only one and a half pages long. She read it three times. Then she tore it up into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet in the scruffy little booth in the corner of the cell.
It took a while. The pieces kept floating back up to the surface, and as she stood there pressing the flush button over and over again, she made up her mind what to do next.
She called the warder again, asked for pencil and paper, and shortly afterwards sat down at the little table to search for the right words.
The only surprise she felt at her decision was how easy it had been to make. Half an hour later she drank tea and ate a couple of sandwiches with an eager appetite, as if life was still something relevant to her.
