Read Self's Murder for Free Online Page B

congratulations!”
    “Congratulations? It’s true I was delighted at first. But …” He took a deep breath. “We’ve got this new chief. One of those energetic, efficient young men. Needless to say, he doesn’t know us like the old chief did. But he’s not particularly interested in us, either. So he walks up to me and says: ‘Herr Nägelsbach, you’ll be getting a Federal Cross of Merit when you leave. I’ll be needing a few pages on you.‘ ‘What for?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know anything about you, but I’m sure you know all there is to know. I want you to write down for me why you deserve the ribbon in your buttonhole.‘ Can you imagine?”
    “That’s what new young bosses are like nowadays.”
    “I told him there was no way I’d do that, to which he replied that it was an official order.”
    “And?”
    “He just laughed and went on his way.”
    “The ‘official order‘ bit is just a silly joke.”
    “The whole thing’s a silly joke. Federal Crosses of Merit, official orders, the years I sat here, the cases I worked on: so funny, you could split your sides. I realized that much too late. If I had realized it earlier I could have had a lot more fun.”
    “Haven’t we always known that?”
    “Known what?” He was hurt and defensive.
    “That we could have had more fun in life.”
    “But …” He didn’t go on. He looked out at the trees again, then at his desk, then at me. The hint of a smile flitted over his mouth. “Yes, perhaps I have always known it.” He pushed his chair back and got up. “I’ve got to head out. Did you jot down old Herr Weller’s address? The Augustinum retirement home in Emmertsgrund. The other parents are dead. By the way, he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. He just some times acts like he does when you ask him a question he doesn’t like.”
     
     
     

— 11 —
     
Quick cash
     
     
    E mmertsgrund, Heidelberg’s newest residential development, lies on a slope above Leimen. The attractive apartments of the Augustinum retirement home face westward and have a view of the Rhine plain, just as the beautiful hospital rooms of the Speyerer Hof Clinic do. A cement factory lies at the foot of the hill, emitting pale, fine dust.
    Old Herr Weller and I sat by the window. The two rooms of his apartment were filled with his own furniture, and before we sat down he told me the story of every piece. He also told me about his neighbors, with whom he didn’t get along; the food there, which he didn’t like; and the roster of social activities from folk dancing to silk painting, in which he wasn’t interested. His failing eyesight prevented him from driving, so he was stuck in the Augustinum and felt lonely. I don’t think he really believed that I was collecting donations for the German War Graves Commission, but he was lonely enough not to care who I was. What’s more, we’d been both wounded in action in the Poland Campaign back in the war.
    I invented a son, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson, and he told me about his family, and about the death of his daughter.
    “Don’t your son-in-law and grandchildren come to see you?” I asked him.
    “He hasn’t come since Stephanie died. I don’t hold it against him, but he does have a bad conscience. As for my grandkids, they’re off at school in Switzerland.”
    “Why should he have a bad conscience?”
    “He should have looked after her. And he shouldn’t have gone in for all that nonsense with that former East German bank.”
    While old Herr Weller had been complaining about his living conditions, there was a hint of whining in his voice. Now he spoke resolutely, and I felt the authority he must have once commanded.
    “I thought it was all milk and honey with those banks in our new eastern states,” I said.
    “Let me tell you something, young man”—he was my age, but to my amazement actually addressed me as “young man”—“you don’t have a background in banking, so I don’t expect you to know any