The Weekend: A Novel Read online

  Suddenly it occurred to Andreas who Marko was. “You’ve done enough harm. If word reaches the press about our days here, you’ll get a writ from me, one from which you will never recover.” He had talked himself into action, left Marko, who was about to answer, standing where he was and turned to the startled Henner. “I know you can do something. But as far as these days here are concerned, the same goes for you: not a word in the press. If you write anything about Jörg’s first days in freedom and what he does and says, I’ll tear you apart in public.”

  “You’re right,” said Eberhard to Margarete. “The weather’s turning.”

  Marko grabbed Andreas by the arm. “We won’t let you and his sister lock him up. He didn’t get out of prison for that. He didn’t tough it out for that. The struggle goes on, and Jörg will take the place that suits him. We’ve waited for him long enough.”

  “Don’t touch me!” When Andreas said it again, he was shouting. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Will you help me bring in the garden furniture before it starts raining?” Again Karin tried to make peace. But although the two men went outside together, folded the table and chairs and carried them into the house, they still stuck to their guns. Andreas talked about the pardon and its conditions and the threat of probation, Marko of the struggle that had to be fought and won, the struggle that was Jörg’s life. Finally Karin sent Andreas in one direction and Marko in the other to look in the garden for lounge chairs.

  Then the first drops fell. Karin peered around, looking for the two squabblers, then said to herself that they would find their way to the house without her and went inside. She would have liked to go to bed with her husband, would have liked to lay her head in the crook of his arm and her arm over his chest, open the window and listen to the rustle of the rain. But she couldn’t run away from her mission to pacify and reconcile and heal. Ulrich was right in what he said about my mission, she thought, and she thought of Christiane, who had taken on an even greater one when only a child. She had been nine years old when her mother had died, and she had tried to take the place of her mother for her brother, three years younger than she, loving and punishing, comforting and distracting, cheering and urging. Karin was annoyed with herself for making the remark about Jörg being brought up without a mother; she had hurt Christiane. She would apologize to her, and perhaps by doing so entice her out of her nervous tension and into a conversation.

  Then she heard, they all heard, the scream.

  Eight

  Ulrich and his wife knew immediately that their daughter had screamed. They looked around searchingly—where had the scream come from? Seeing the puzzled parents, the others also realized that they hadn’t seen the daughter for quite some time. “When did she leave?”—“Where did the scream come from?”—“From the park?”—“From the house?”

  Then they all heard the clamor in the hall. Ulrich tore open the door, his wife and the others following him. Standing in the upstairs hallway were the daughter, naked, and Jörg in his white nightshirt.

  “You wuss. Fucking is fighting—wasn’t that your motto? Fighting is fucking? Why are you always looking at my breasts when you can’t get it up? You’re not a man. You’re a joke. You’re probably a joke as a terrorist too, and they locked you up to stop you looking at women’s breasts all the time. You’re a voyeur. You’re a joke and a voyeur.” She put as much rejection, contempt and disgust into her voice as she could. But she sounded more despairing than disgusted, and then she burst into tears.

  “I didn’t look at your breasts. I want nothing of you. Leave me alone, please, leave me alone.”

  What a picture, Henner thought. The hall was only faintly lit by candles, shadows twitched on the walls, Dorle and Jörg’s faces were indistinct, her nakedness and his nightshirt all the more present. Neither said anything; they were still facing each other, but antagonistically. It was a mysterious, ludicrous, wordless scene on a stage, with everyone craning his neck to see.

  Christiane snapped at Ulrich. “Get your daughter off his back!”

  “Don’t make such a big deal of it!” But he went up the stairs, taking his jacket off, laid it around his daughter’s shoulders and led her to the door at one end of the hallway.

  Jörg looked around as if waking from a dream, staring after the man in his shirtsleeves and the naked young woman with the man’s jacket thrown around her, as if he didn’t know who they were, looked down into the hall and into the embarrassed faces of the guests, said nothing, slowly shook his head and walked, with the dragging gait that Christiane had already noticed that morning, to the door at the other end of the hallway. The stage was empty.

  Christiane and Ingeborg looked as if they were about to run up and take care of their brother and daughter. Karin, feeling that this would make everything even more awful, put her arms around both of them and led them back to the table. “It’s all a bit much this evening. For everyone and all the more for Jörg and our youngest. Things won’t look so bad tomorrow.”

  “We’re leaving tonight.”

  “Let her sleep it off. She may not even want to leave. She may not want to leave things like that, but somehow impose a kind of order on it all. She’s a strong girl.”

  Marko saw her as a bit of a babe more than anything, and jabbed Andreas in the side with his elbow. “What’s up with Jörg? Why chuck her out of bed? Does he want to be a Muslim and martyr—on earth, battle and prayer and women only in heaven, an endless supply of virgins?” He shook his head. “He’s never …”

  Andreas turned away without a word. But when he was about to climb the stairs, Jörg came toward him. He had taken off his nightshirt and put his jeans and shirt back on. “That was an unlovely situation, and I wouldn’t like the evening to end with it.” It was a great effort for him to look at Andreas; his eyes kept drifting away, and he kept forcing them back to look into Andreas’s eyes. Then he walked over to Henner and Karin’s husband, who were in conversation, and repeated the sentence. Andreas had followed him, Marko had joined them too and heard the sentence, and now they stood facing him waiting for him to continue. When they realized that he had prepared only one sentence, he realized that it wasn’t enough. “I’m … I’ve cut a poor figure, I know. Christiane had a nightshirt made for my first night in freedom, because I like nightshirts and you can’t get them anymore, and I put it on. I had no idea you would all see me in it.” He realized that even that wasn’t enough. “She and I … we had a misunderstanding, just a misunderstanding.” Now it was OK. He had regretted what had happened, he had acknowledged that he had not cut a good figure, he had admitted that they had misunderstood each other—he had done his part, and the others should leave him alone. He looked at them all. “I’ll have another glass of red wine.”

  Nine

  Ulrich sat by his daughter’s bed. She had pulled the covers up to her chin and turned her head away. Ulrich didn’t see her crying, only heard it. He laid his hand on the covers, felt her shoulder and tried to give his hand a comforting, calming heaviness. When the tears subsided, he waited for a while and then said: “You mustn’t feel humiliated. He’s just the wrong one.”

  She turned her tear-stained face to him. “He hit me, not hard, but he did hit me. That’s why I screamed.”

  “You were too much for him. He didn’t want to hurt you—he only wanted to get rid of you.”

  “But why? I’d have done him good.”

  He nodded. Yes, his daughter had thought she would do Jörg good. Not that that had been her intention; she hadn’t thrown herself at him to do him good. Or because she had suddenly fallen in love with him. She had wanted to sleep with the famous terrorist so that she could say she had slept with the famous terrorist. But she wouldn’t have wanted to do it if she hadn’t told herself she would do him good after all those years in jail.

  He remembered how he had collected famous men. He had started with Rudi Dutschke. He was still a schoolboy—he skipped school, went to Berlin and didn’t let up until he had me
t Dutschke and exchanged a few words with him about the struggle in the schools. The others thought he was very left-wing, and he put up with that and sometimes fell for it himself. But in fact he knew that all he wanted was to have experienced them in person: Dutschke, Marcuse, Habermas, Mitscherlich and finally Sartre. He was particularly proud of that one; again he simply set off, not by train this time but by car, and waited for two days outside Sartre’s apartment building until on the third day he was able to talk to him and spend a few minutes with him in the café drinking espresso. Then a woman came to the table and he left—he was still annoyed about the fact that he hadn’t recognized Simone de Beauvoir, and hadn’t, with a charming remark, suggested to the pair that he join them for dinner. His French had been good back then.

  How much is in the genes, he wondered. He had never told his daughter about his passion for collecting, so she couldn’t have copied her passion for collecting from him, only inherited it. He remembered, a few years ago, seeing her threading new laces into her sneakers, always crosswise, on the left-hand shoe the lace leading to the right over the one leading to the left and on the right-hand shoe the lace leading to the left over the one leading to the right, so that in the end they were laced in a mirror image of each other. He himself did exactly the same thing and he had never done it in front of her or even in her presence.

  “Will you please open the window, Papa?”

  He got to his feet, opened both casements of the window, let the cool, damp air and the rustle of the rain into the room and sat back down by the bed.

  His daughter looked at him as if trying to read in his face the answer to the question that she had not yet even asked. Then she summoned her strength. “Can we leave tomorrow morning? Before I have to see any of the others?”

  “Let’s see how we feel tomorrow morning.”

  “But if I don’t want to see the others, I don’t have to—promise?”

  When was the last time he had turned down a request from her? He couldn’t remember. But neither could he remember a request aimed at escape. She had always wanted to have something, a dress, a piece of jewelry, a horse, a trip, and he had taken her requests as an expression of her hunger for life: she couldn’t get enough of life and all that it offered. Hunger for life, vital energy—didn’t the two belong together? Had his daughter not always looked for challenges? He had been happy to give her the horse because at seven she was a bold equestrian, and the trip with her friend to America, because at the age of sixteen they both wanted to explore the country by Greyhound bus.

  “I’ve always admired you for your courage.” He laughed. “You’re a spoiled brat, I know, but you’re not a coward.”

  She couldn’t hear him anymore. She had gone to sleep. No pouting now; her face had a sweet, peaceful, childlike expression. My angel, Ulrich thought. My angel with the blond curls and the full lips and the high breasts. Ulrich had never understood fathers who were sexually attracted to their daughters before puberty, or Humbert Humbert, who loves not the woman in Lolita but the child. But he felt for the fathers and teachers who were overwhelmed by the femininity of their daughters or pupils. No, he didn’t just feel for them; he was one of them. Again and again it took all his strength actually to look at his daughter when she talked to him and not to look at her lips, not to stare at her bouncing bosom when she came downstairs, or her bottom when she went upstairs in front of him. And in the summer, when her blouses and shirts revealed the tops of her breasts and her walk not only made her breasts dance but made her skin quiver in little waves—it was a torment, a sweet, proud torment, but a torment nonetheless.

  Did Jörg have no eyes in his head? Or was he so stubborn that he could see beauty only in female revolutionaries, in whom everything was ideologically sound? Or had he turned gay in prison? Or kicked the habit? Simply kicked the habit? Ulrich was glad that nothing had happened between his daughter and Jörg. He didn’t know much about her sexual experiences. He hoped she would experience love and happiness and not come to harm. But he couldn’t imagine Jörg being the right one for her. But glad as he was, by rejecting his daughter, Jörg had insulted him. That was foolish, and it was even more foolish that he wanted to avenge himself. He knew it, but it didn’t help. Besides, Jörg and Christiane had always been arrogant in their treatment of him, and he had always hated them for it. But he hadn’t known what to do with his hatred.

  He listened. His daughter was snoring quietly. The rain rustled in the leaves of the trees and on the gravel in front of the house. Sometimes it gurgled in the gutter. A saxophone played; it sounded as if the slow, sad tune came from a long way away. Ulrich wearily hoisted himself from the chair, closed one casement, left the other open a crack, tiptoed to the door and carefully opened and closed it. Now he heard the saxophone more clearly—it was coming from downstairs. He knew the tune, but couldn’t remember what it was called and who played it. The old days—the more time he spent with his old friends, the more clearly he remembered what he and they had wanted and done back then, the more alien the past became to him.

  That one’s life could slip away like that. He tried to remember his childhood, his school, his first marriage. He assembled images, events, moods. He couldn’t say, That’s what it looked like in the old days, that happened in the old days, that’s what I felt like in the old days. But outwardly he saw it as a film, and he felt cheated. Then he grew annoyed. Why must I too dig around in the past? I don’t normally do that. I’m a practical person. I concern myself with now and with tomorrow.

  He wouldn’t leave the next day.

  Ten

  When the saxophone had faded away and Christiane had clicked the off button on her little portable player, most people took their leave. “Good night.”—“Sleep well.”—“See you tomorrow morning.”

  Ilse stayed sitting at the table, although she realized that Jörg and Marko would have preferred not to have her there. Marko wished he could be rid of Christiane as well, but she wouldn’t have budged for anything in the world, and Jörg kept her at the table, turning toward her as he turned toward Marko, filling her glass as well. The tension among the three of them was so powerful that Ilse sensed an exciting electric crackle and simply refused to yield to her shyness, which was urging her to disappear unnoticed.

  At first she listened. Then she found what was being said uninteresting. The words that Jörg, Christiane and Marko exchanged seemed to her as random as the pieces with which players do battle on a board. The struggle among the three of them was reflected not in words, but in their voices, expressions, gestures. In Christiane’s shrill aggression, in Marko’s brown-nosing. Marko presented himself as the inevitable winner, and Christiane grew more and more desperate. Jörg spoke no less than the other two, and no less loudly. Increasingly, Ilse understood that he wasn’t really fighting. The other two were fighting. They were fighting for his soul.

  And he was enjoying it. It wasn’t just the wine that loosened his tongue, turned his face red and freed his gestures. It wasn’t just the warm candlelight that softened his wrinkles. What brought him to life was being at the center of things and sensing how important, how precious he was to Christiane and Marko. It rejuvenated him. So much so that he kept spurring them both not to give up their fight over him.

  “He’s still little more than a child,” Jörg said soothingly to Christiane, who accused Marko of nearly costing Jörg his pardon with his welcome address at the conference on violence, in response to which Marko had to present himself as the young but alert revolutionary who had every right to woo Jörg.

  “You would like to incapacitate me,” Jörg said reproachfully to Christiane, who didn’t want him to meet the organizers of the conference, whereupon she had to assure him how reflective and superior she thought he was.

  Marko wouldn’t let go. “I don’t want you to get involved with everything and everyone. But we need you. We don’t know how to fight the system. We argue and argue, and sometimes a few of us organize an action, and there’s a fi
re outside the state attorney’s office or an alarm in the station, and the trains are late, but that’s kids’ stuff. If we joined forces with our Muslim comrades we could really get things going. They with their power and we with what we know about this country—together we could really strike where it hurts. But then along come people who say, Don’t do it with them, we might as well be working with the far right; and a few say, exactly, why not work with them, and then there are the old discussions you know so well, whether it should be violence against people or against property or no violence at all—we need someone with authority. The other RAF people ate humble pie and wept and repented and apologized—not you. You have no idea what kind of authority you have.”

  Jörg shook his head. But only because he wanted to hear more: about how steadfast he had been in jail and about the admiration of the young members and his authority over them and his responsibility. Yes, Marko assured him, his authority meant responsibility, and he couldn’t leave the young ones in the lurch.

  How could Christiane respond to that? By saying he should take his time. “You haven’t been out of jail for twenty-four hours and …”

  “Take his time,” sneered Marko. “Take his time? He’s had to take his time for twenty-three years. He has held out for twenty-three years to become the model that he is now. You’d have sent Nelson Mandela from Robben Island to the Bavarian mountains for a spring holiday—am I right?”

  Nelson Mandela? Ilse looked at Jörg—he gave a slightly embarrassed smile, but didn’t protest. Was his hunger for recognition so great? How starved would I be after twenty-three years? Could I resist Marko? He was good. When he looked straight at Jörg with his open face, his blue eyes, it was as if he were trustingly placing his youth at Jörg’s feet. She wondered whether or not Jörg believed in a revival of the struggle against the system, a collaboration with Al Qaeda and himself as a role model—he believed in Marko’s admiration, and believed that Marko was not alone in it.