“Does that bother you very much?” But she didn’t wait for an answer. “I always had the feeling that no one understood me anyway, that no one knew who I was and what made me do this or that. And you know, when no one understands you, then no one can call you to account. Not even the court could call me to account. But the dead can. They understand. They don’t even have to have been there, but if they were, they understand even better. Here in prison they were with me a lot. They came every night, whether I wanted them or not. Before the trial I could still chase them away when they wanted to come.”
She waited to see if I had anything to say, but I couldn’t think of anything. At first, I wanted to say that I wasn’t able to chase anything away. But it wasn’t true. You can chase someone away by setting them in a niche.
“Are you married?”
“I was. Gertrud and I have been divorced for many years and our daughter is at boarding school; I hope she won’t stay there for the last years of school, and will move in with me.” Now I waited to see if she would say or ask anything. But she was silent. “I’ll pick you up next week, all right?”
“All right.”
“Quietly, or can there be a little noise and hoopla?”
“Quietly.”
“Okay, I’ll pick you up quietly, with no music or champagne.”
I stood up, and she stood up. We looked at each other. The bell had rung twice, and the other women had already gone inside. Once again her eyes scanned my face. I took her in my arms, but she didn’t feel right.
“Take care, kid.”
“You too.”
So we said goodbye, even before we had to separate inside.
CHAPTER NINE
T HE FOLLOWING week was particularly busy. I don’t remember whether I was under actual pressure to finish the lecture I was working on, or only under self-inflicted pressure to work and succeed.
The idea I had had when I began working on the lecture was no good. When I began to revise it, where I expected to find meaning and consistency, I encountered one non sequitur after another. Instead of accepting this, I kept searching, harassed, obsessed, anxious, as though reality itself could fail along with my concept of it, and I was ready to twist or exaggerate or play down my own findings. I got into a state of strange disquiet; I could go to sleep if I went to bed late, but a few hours later I would be wide awake, until I decided to get up and continue reading or writing.
I also did what needed to be done to prepare for Hanna’s release. I furnished her apartment with furniture from IKEA and some old pieces, advised the Greek tailor that Hanna would be coming in, and brought my information about social services and educational programs up to date. I bought groceries, put books on the bookshelves, and hung pictures. I had a gardener come to tidy up the little garden surrounding the terrace outside the living room. I did all this with unnatural haste and doggedness; it was all too much for me.
But it was just enough to prevent me from thinking about my visit to Hanna. Only occasionally, when I was driving my car, or when I was in Hanna’s apartment, did thoughts of it get the upper hand and trigger memories. I saw her on the bench, her eyes fixed on me, saw her at the swimming pool, her face turned to me, and again had the feeling that I had betrayed her and owed her something. And again I rebelled against this feeling; I accused her, and found it both shabby and too easy, the way she had wriggled out of her guilt. Allowing no one but the dead to demand an accounting, reducing guilt and atonement to insomnia and bad feelings-where did that leave the living? But what I meant was not the living, it was me. Did I not have my own accounting to demand of her? What about me?
On the afternoon before I was due to pick her up, I called the prison. First I spoke to the warden.
“I’m a bit nervous. You know, normally people aren’t released after such long sentences before spending a few hours or days outside. Frau Schmitz refused this. It won’t be easy for her.”
Then I spoke to Hanna.
“Think about what we should do tomorrow. Whether you want to go straight home, or whether we might go to the woods or the river.”
“I’ll think about it. You’re still a big planner, aren’t you?”
That annoyed me. It annoyed me the way it did when girlfriends told me I wasn’t spontaneous enough, that I operated too much through my head and not enough through my heart.
She could tell by my silence that I was annoyed, and laughed. “Don’t be cross, kid. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I had met Hanna again on the benches as an old woman. She had looked like an old woman and smelled like an old woman. I hadn’t noticed her voice at all. Her voice had stayed young.
CHAPTER TEN
N EXT MORNING, Hanna was dead. She had hanged herself at daybreak.
When I arrived, I was taken to the warden. I saw her for the first time-a small, thin woman with dark blond hair and glasses. She seemed insignificant until she began to speak, with force and warmth and a severe gaze and energetic use of both hands and arms. She asked me about my telephone conversation of the night before and the meeting the previous week. Had I picked up any signals, had it made me fear for her? I said no. Indeed, I had had no suspicions or fears that I had ignored.
“How did you get to know each other?”
“We lived in the same neighborhood.”
She looked at me searchingly, and I saw that I would have to say more.
“We lived in the same neighborhood and we got to know each other and became friends. When I was a young student, I was at the trial that convicted her.”
“Why did you send Frau Schmitz cassettes?”
I was silent.
“You knew that she was illiterate, didn’t you? How did you know?”
I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t see what business the story of Hanna and me was of hers. Tears were filling my chest and throat, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to speak. I didn’t want to cry in front of her.
She must have seen how I was feeling. “Come with me, I’ll show you Frau Schmitz’s cell.” She went ahead, but kept turning around to tell me things or explain them to me. Here is where there had been a terrorist attack, here was the sewing shop where Hanna had worked, this is where Hanna once held a sit-down strike until cuts in library funding were reinstated, this was the way to the library. She stopped in front of the cell. “Frau Schmitz didn’t pack. You’ll see her cell the way she lived in it.”
Bed, closet, table, chair, a shelf on the wall over the table, a sink and toilet in the corner behind the door. Glass bricks instead of window glass. The table was bare. The shelf held books, an alarm clock, a stuffed bear, two mugs, instant coffee, tea tins, the cassette machine, and on two lower shelves, the cassettes I had made.
“They aren’t all here.”
The warden had followed my glance. “Frau Schmitz always lent some tapes to the aid society for blind prisoners.”
I went over to the bookshelf. Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Tadeusz Borowski, Jean Améry-the literature of the victims, next to the autobiography of Rudolf Hess, Hannah Arendt’s report on Eichmann in Jerusalem, and scholarly literature on the camps.
“Did Hanna read these?”
“Well, at least she ordered them with care. Several years ago I had to get her a general concentrationcamp bibliography, and then one or two years ago she asked me to suggest some books on women in the camps, both prisoners and guards; I wrote to the Institute for Contemporary History, and they sent a specialized bibliography. As soon as Frau Schmitz learned to read, she began to read about the concentration camps.”