The Sonderberg Case (15 page)

AT NIGHT, HALF AWAKE, FEVERISH
, I sometimes talk to my dead brother.

“I miss you, you know.”

“I don’t know.”

“But I do. I made you laugh.”

“That’s good. But you don’t know me.”

“Not my fault. And you, do you know me?”

“Of course. We talk about you often, Dad and me.”

“You’re with him?”

“We’re together.”

“Since when?”

“Since always. We made the trip together.”

“In the leaded freight car?”

“Yes. In the dark. We were suffocating. Mom sang a song for me.”

“Which one?”

“My favorite lullaby. A prince and a beggar love the same girl. The girl loves beggars, so the prince leaves his palace to become a beggar.”

“A sad story.”

“For whom?”

“For the king?”

“But kings are never sad. Only princes are.”

“I’m sad; and I’m not a king.”

“So become a prince. What are you waiting for?”

“Me, too, I prefer beggars.”

“I believe you.”

And after a sigh: “What’s your name?”

“I’m not allowed to tell you. Where I come from, beggars have no names.”

Alika wakes me. “You’re crying in your sleep.”

On another night, I speak to my dead father. “I want to see you so badly, but you’re far away.”

“I’m not far away.”

“So why can’t I see you?”

“Because my world is not yours.”

“I envy my brother; he’s with you.”

“But we’re with you. We’re you.”

“Tell me a story.”

“A child is crying. He can’t stop crying. A sorcerer tries in vain to make him laugh. An angel tries to make him dream, in vain as well. God takes pity on him and makes him see the invisible and hear the inexpressible, and the child answers Him: since You’re so powerful, see to it that I stay with those who are absent.”

Alika pulls me out of sleep. “You’re moaning again.”

——

On yet another night, I speak to my dead mother. “Help me, please.”

“You’re suffering, my child. Tell me everything.”

“I don’t know anything about you anymore.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Show me your face.”

“I can’t. It’s forbidden.”

“Forbidden by whom?”

“By the good Lord.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps in order to separate the living from the dead.”

“But I don’t like this separation!”

“I don’t, either. But we can’t do anything about it. Neither you nor I.”

“Did you love me before …”

“Before what?”

“Before abandoning me?”

“Before saving you, you mean. Yes, I loved you. I loved you gently, passionately for the rest of your life.”

“Did you kiss me often?”

“All the time.”

“While talking to me?”

“While whispering words of love in your ear.”

“In silence, too?”

“Yes.”

“Kiss me, Mom.”

“I’m not allowed.”

“But you love me, you just told me so.”

“I love you, my child.”

“Then kiss me once, just once.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I want you to stay alive.”

Alika shakes me. “What’s happening to you? You’re delirious.”

Suddenly, I don’t know why, Jonas sprang to mind. The imperious editor of our editorial pages, he was perhaps the wittiest member of the staff. He hated his work; at least that’s what he claimed. All these people, he grumbled, who hold definitive and irrevocable positions on everything under the sun and beyond, it behooved him to correct them and censor them. A cynic, he resented them for foisting the role of bad guy on him. He kept complaining about this morning, noon, and night. Under the circumstances, why didn’t he request another position, I asked Paul. Because he was the only person who could do this thankless work without fearing his victims’ revenge, said Paul. Jonas wrote badly, but he knew how to help others write well. In the same way, he made people laugh, often through self-mockery—though he himself never laughed.

On the day he announced his retirement, the editorial
staff responded with a warmth he didn’t expect. He was convinced that everybody hated him.

We weren’t friends, but I invited him for a drink in the café across the street. I ordered a coffee and he a brandy. So early in the morning? A matter of habit. Could he be an alcoholic? No, a need to warm up. He’s always cold. A second brandy. He must be freezing. And for the first time, I noticed a sadness about him that made me feel ill at ease. And then I suddenly realized that I didn’t know anything about him: I didn’t even know if he was married. How could I question him about his private life without offending him?

“Listen, Jonas,” I said to him, “I have a suggestion. Why don’t we meet again tonight for dinner? Alika sometimes has her head in the clouds, but she just might surprise us with an excellent meal.”

He thought for a minute. I expected to be turned down. “My wife is waiting for me,” or some such thing. After all, we’d never been close. To sound him out gently, I added, “Feel free to bring someone.”

“I’ll come alone,” he said after hesitating for a long time. “But not to your house. I prefer a restaurant. And promise me not to speak about my old work or my plans.”

I felt like adding “or your wife,” but I restrain myself.

“I promise.”

We dined alone. Alika had gone to the theater and the twins were sleeping over at my parents’ house.

After a few banalities about the noisy ambience of New
York restaurants, the weather, and journalism’s overall decline, there was a long silence. Jonas seemed embarrassed. Why did he accept my invitation if he didn’t really want to come? The reason became apparent when he said, “At the time, I read your stories on the Sonderberg trial.”

It was already the distant past.

I expected devastating criticism, but instead he launched into a didactic analysis, at the end of which he said that he considers the defendant guilty.

I couldn’t help retorting, “What about the plain facts?”

“The facts have nothing to do with it. I’m not saying the young German killed his uncle. I’m just saying he’s guilty.”

“If he didn’t kill him, what is he guilty of?”

“Guilty of having abandoned a man who was going to die.”

“But how could Werner have known that ahead of time?”

“Maybe he should have.”

I told him I disagree. You can’t blame a person for not being a prophet or a psychologist. A man is guilty only if he has actually killed someone. And suddenly I realized that Jonas’s lips were trembling. Was he sick? I fell silent. So did he. The food before us was getting cold. Then he started talking about Albert Camus. Of the fear this writer arouses in him.

“You might have read his novel
The Fall
. The story of the judge who blames himself. He had witnessed the suicide of a young girl in Holland. That was really all. But he was
there. That was enough. Could he have intervened? Probably not. But he was present. He saw. Hence his guilt.”

I felt like pointing out to him that Werner’s uncle was all alone when he died, too far away for anyone to see him; at any rate, his nephew wasn’t with him. But Jonas continued: “Your young German also saw. He was actually the last person to have seen his uncle, yet he left. His departure is an act that implicates him. An act that had the value of a judgment. He condemned his uncle to solitude. Hence to death. To suicide.”

Here again, I was about to tell him he’s too strict and unfair and, whatever he may think, Werner may have decided to leave the old man precisely so as not to pass judgment on him. But once more he silenced me with a hand gesture.

“For Camus, the choice is between innocence and guilt; for me, it’s between arrogance and humility. The question is not whether we are all guilty, but whether we are all judges.”

“Are we judges, you and I?”

After pausing for a moment, he said, “I was one.”

Jonas told me of a dream. He was in the lobby of a hotel. At night. He saw a rather beautiful woman walk toward the exit. She seemed depressed and unhappy. Jonas was surprised by one thing: she didn’t have a purse. Only a kind of envelope in her hand. Where could she be going? To meet a lover? The next morning they knew: she had gone to meet
death. They found her under a tree, with the empty envelope next to her. Jonas broke off and I was about to ask him if he felt guilty when he woke up, but I didn’t dare. Jonas lowered his head to avoid my gaze.

“It wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare.”

That was all. He didn’t say anything else. Nor did I.

Today, I think about his words again: “We are all judges.”

But then, as our sages wonder, who will judge the judges?

FINALLY, THE MEETING WITH
Werner Sonderberg. He and I and his Anna are in the lobby of his hotel, not far from Times Square. Travelers come and go. At the bar, guests are talking and laughing; we could be at a fair on a summer evening. I immediately ask him the question I’m sure he was expecting.

“Why did you want to see me?”

“To see you again,” he corrects me.

“Very well. See me again. Why?”

After a pause, Werner suppresses a smile before replying in a sober but tense voice, “You wanted to see me again, too. Am I wrong?”

“Not really … but in the past, yes, during the trial. Then it was too late. I didn’t think it was possible.”

“Why not?”

“It all seems such a long time ago.”

He exchanges glances with Anna—as though he were consulting her: Should he be frank with me or prevaricate? A good couple. A real one. Their complicity is obvious.
Everything he knows, she knows, too. Their marriage and the years have changed them. That’s normal. Earlier, at the time of the trial, they weren’t married yet. He seems both more solid and more vulnerable. When he was before his judges, before the media, he always seemed absent. Not anymore.

“Personally,” he goes on, “I wanted to see you because I read your newspaper reports at the time. And during the entire proceedings I wondered whether you thought I was guilty. Your articles take sides. You hesitated, you had your doubts. I found this—how should I put it?—morally interesting. Remember, I was a philosophy student at the time; for me, everything was related to metaphysics. That’s why I wished to meet you. But what about you? Why did you want to meet me?”

“I was puzzled by your attitude. ‘Guilty and not guilty’ may be an acceptable answer for a philosopher, but not as far as the law is concerned. The judge explained it to you. But for me, your refusal to choose reflected the most serious problem man can confront: that of ambivalence. In the tradition I belong to, it isn’t an acceptable option. Since you were innocent, why didn’t you say so plainly? You would have spared yourself quite a bit of trouble. You would have benefited from doubt. Some people among us were ready to believe you from the first day.”

“First of all,” Werner immediately replies, “I never considered myself innocent. I said guilty
and
not guilty. From the standpoint of the truth, this ‘and’ was important. And
do you really believe that everything is crystal clear in life? That it’s always this or that, one or the other: good or evil, happiness or sadness, fidelity or betrayal, beauty or ugliness? You’re not that naive. Admit it, a clear-cut choice, so distinctly drawn, would be too easy, too convenient.”

What could I say in response? What he said isn’t wrong. Purity is legitimate only in chemistry. Not in the intrigues of the soul.

Once again, Werner looks at Anna questioningly: Should he show all his cards, exchange them for new ones, or just stop the game? His attitude reminds me of my first years with Alika: whatever we did, we both wanted to do. We acted under the same impetus. Werner makes up his mind. He leans toward me.

“What if I told you that Hans Dunkelman was not my uncle? Would you be surprised?”

“Yes, I have to say I would be. But I’d be most surprised by the fact that you hid this information during the trial. That served no purpose. The question wasn’t whether Dunkelman was your uncle or someone else, but whether you were the person who killed him.”