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would rather have gone off with friends, but he had no money. That was how Tackler wanted it. He took his son to one of the building sites, handed him over to the foreman, and told him to “really let him have it.” The foreman did what he could, and when Leonhard threw up at the end of the second day from exhaustion, Tackler said he’d get used to it. He himself had sometimes slept on building sites with his father when he was Leonhard’s age and shat in the open air like the other bar benders. Leonhard shouldn’t get any ideas he was “better” than the others.
    Theresa had vacation jobs, too; she worked in the company bookkeeping department. Like Leonhard, she received only 30 percent of the average salary. “You’re no help; you actually create work. Your pay is a gift, not something you’ve earned,” said Tackler. If they wanted to go to the movies, Tackler gave the two of them a total of ten euros, and since they had to take the bus, it was only enough for one ticket. They didn’t dare tell him that. Sometimes Tackler’s driver took them into town secretly and gave them a little money—he had children himself and knew his boss.
    Other than Tackler’s sister, who was employed in the company and had always given up every one of her secrets to her brother since her own childhood, there were no relatives. The children began by fearing their father, then hated him, until finally his world became so alien to them that they had nothing more to say to him.
    Tackler didn’t despise Leonhard, but he loathed his softness. He thought he had to harden him; “forge” him was the way he put it. When Leonhard was fifteen, he put up a picture in his room of a ballet production he had gone to with his class. Tackler tore it off the wall and roared at him that he’d better be careful or he’d be turning gay. He was too fat, Tackler said to Leonhard; he’d never get a girlfriend like that.
    Theresa spent every minute with her cello and her music teacher in Frankfurt. Tackler didn’t understand her, so he left her in peace—with one exception. It was summertime, shortly after Theresa’s sixteenth birthday. She went skinny-dipping in the pool. When she came out of the water, Tackler was standing at the edge. He’d been drinking. He looked at her as if she were a stranger, picked up the towel, and began to dry her. As he touched her breasts, he smelled of whiskey. She ran into the house. She never used the pool again.
    On the rare occasions they all had dinner together, conversation revolved around Tackler’s themes of watches, food, and cars. Theresa and Leonhard knew the price of every automobile and every famous make of watch. It was an abstract game. Sometimes their father showed them financial statements, stock market and business reports. “This will all belong to you someday,” he said, and Theresa whispered to Leonhard that he was quoting from a movie. “The inner self,” he said, “is nonsense.” It gained no one anything.
    All the children had was each other. When Theresa was accepted at the conservatory, they decided they would both leave their father together. They wanted to tell him at dinner and had rehearsed it, working out how he would react and what their responses should be. When they began, Tackler said he didn’t have time today, and disappeared. They had to wait for three weeks; then Theresa took the lead. The two of them thought that if she were the one, Tackler would at least be unable to hit her. She said they were both going to leave Bad Homburg now. “Leave Bad Homburg” sounded better, they thought, than saying it directly. Theresa said she was going to take Leonhard with her, that they would make their way somehow.
    Tackler didn’t understand, and kept eating. When he asked Theresa to pass him the bread, Leonhard screamed, “You’ve tortured us enough,” and Theresa, more quietly, said, “We don’t ever want to become like you.” Tackler let his knife drop onto his plate. It