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Perhaps, said the consul, the
lawyer hadn't heard about the visit or she wasn't Klaus's lawyer yet or Klaus
had chosen not to tell her about it. Anyway, Klaus was, to all intents and
purposes, an American citizen and that posed a series of problems. Under the
circumstances, we have to tread carefully, concluded the consul, and it did no
good for Lotte to assure him that her son was innocent. In any case the
consulate had taken a hand in the matter and Lotte and Ingrid returned to Santa
Teresa feeling comforted.

The last two days they weren't able to visit Klaus or call him.
The lawyer said prison regulations didn't allow it, although Lotte knew that Klaus
had a cell phone and sometimes he spent all day talking to people on the
outside. Still, she didn't want to make a scene or challenge the lawyer and she
spent those days seeing the city, which struck her as more chaotic than ever
and of little interest. Before she left for
Tucson
she shut herself in the hotel room and
wrote a long letter to her son, to be given to him by the lawyer after she'd
left. With Ingrid she went to take a look at the outside of the house where
Klaus had lived in Santa Teresa, as one might visit a tourist site, and it
struck her as acceptable, a California-style house, pleasant to look at. Then
they went to the computer and electronics store that Klaus owned downtown and
found it closed, as the lawyer had warned, because the property belonged to
Klaus and he hadn't wanted to rent it since he was sure he would be released
before the trial.

Back in
Germany
she was suddenly aware that the trip had tired her much more than she'd
realized. She spent several days in bed, not setting foot in the office, but
each time the phone rang she was quick to answer it, in case the call was from
Mexico
.
In one of her dreams a warm, loving voice whispered in her ear the possibility
that her son really was the Santa Teresa killer.

"That's
ridiculous," she shouted, and immediately woke up.

Sometimes
the person calling was Ingrid. They didn't talk much. The girl asked how she
was and inquired whether there had been any new developments in Klaus's case.
The language problem had been solved through the exchange of e-mails, which
Lotte had translated by one of her mechanics. One afternoon Ingrid stopped by
with a present: a German-Spanish dictionary that Lotte thanked her for
effusively although secretly she was sure she would never use it. Shortly
afterward, however, as she was going through the photographs in the case file
the lawyer had given her, she found Ingrid's dictionary and looked up some
words. A few days later, and with no little astonishment, she discovered that
she had a knack for languages.

In 1996 she
returned to Santa Teresa and asked Ingrid to come with her. Ingrid was dating a
boy who worked at an architecture studio, though he wasn't an architect, and
one night the two of them invited her out to dinner. The boyfriend was very
interested in what was going on in Santa Teresa and at first Lotte suspected
that Ingrid wanted to travel with him, but Ingrid said he wasn't her boyfriend
yet, and she would be happy to come with Lotte.

The
trial, which was supposed to take place in 1996, was ultimately postponed and
Lotte and Ingrid spent nine days in Santa Teresa, visiting Klaus as often as
they could, going for drives around the city, and sitting in their hotel room
watching TV. Sometimes, at night, Ingrid would tell Lotte she was going to get
a drink at the hotel bar or go dancing at the hotel club and Lotte was left
alone and then she changed the channel, because Ingrid always chose shows in
English, and she preferred to watch Mexican TV, which was a way, she thought,
of being close to her son.

Twice
it was after five when Ingrid got back to the room and both times Lotte was
awake, sitting at the foot of the bed or in an armchair with the TV on. One
night when Ingrid wasn't there Klaus called and the first thing that came to
Lotte's mind was that he had escaped that horrible prison on the edge of the
desert. Klaus asked how she was, sounding normal and even relaxed, and Lotte
answered that she was fine and then she didn't know what to say. When she
regained control of herself she asked where he was calling from.

"Prison,"
said Klaus.

Lotte looked at her
watch.

"How is it
they let you make calls at this hour?" she asked.

"No
one lets me do anything," said Klaus, and he laughed, "I'm calling
from my cell phone."

Then
Lotte remembered the lawyer had told her that Klaus had a cell phone and after
that they talked about other things, until Klaus said he'd had a dream and his
voice shifted from casual and cool to a deeper register, which reminded Lotte
of the time she'd seen a German actor recite a poem. The poem she didn't
remember, it must have been some classic, but the actor's voice was
unforgettable.

"What did you
dream?" asked Lotte.

"Don't you
know?" asked Klaus.

"I
don't," said Lotte.

"Then I'd
better not tell you," said Klaus, and he hung up.

Lotte's first impulse was to
call him right back and keep talking, but it soon occurred to her that she
didn't have his number, so after a few minutes' hesitation, she called Isabel
Santolaya, the lawyer, knowing it was rude to call so late, and when the lawyer
finally answered Lotte explained, in a mix of German, Spanish, and English,
that she needed Klaus's cell phone number. After a long silence the lawyer
repeated the number until she was sure Lotte had gotten it right and then she
hung up.

That long silence, meanwhile, seemed to Lotte fraught with
questions, because the lawyer didn't put down the phone to go and find the
notebook where she had written Klaus's number, but rather remained silent on
the other end of the line, perhaps lost in thought, as she decided whether to
offer it. In any case, Lotte heard her
breathe
in the middle of the
silence, almost as if she could hear her
weigh
the two possibilities.
Then Lotte called Klaus's cell phone, but the line was busy. She waited ten
minutes and called again and it was still busy. Who can Klaus be talking to at
this time of night? she wondered.

When she went to visit him the next day she chose not to bring up
the matter or ask anything. Klaus, meanwhile, was the same as always, distant,
cold, as if he wasn't the one in prison.

Despite it all, on this second visit to Mexico Lotte didn't feel
as lost as she had the first time. Sometimes, as she was waiting at the prison,
she talked to the women who were on their way to visit the inmates. She learned
to say:
bonito niño
or
lindo chamaco,
when the women had children
in tow, or:
buena viejita
or
simpática viejita,
when she saw the
inmates' mothers or grandmothers wrapped in shawls, waiting in line for the
start of visiting hours, impassive and resigned. She herself bought a shawl on
the third day of her stay, and sometimes, as she walked behind Ingrid and the
lawyer, she couldn't help weeping, and then the shawl hid her face and afforded
her some privacy.

In 1997 she returned to
Mexico
, but this time she traveled
alone because Ingrid had found a good job and couldn't come with her. Lotte's
Spanish, which she had set out to learn, was much better now and she could talk
on the phone with the lawyer. The trip went off without incident, although as
soon as she got to Santa Teresa, she understood by the expression on Isabel
Santolaya's face and then the overly long embrace into which the lawyer folded
her that something strange was going on. The trial, which passed as if in a
dream, lasted twenty days and at the end Klaus was found guilty of four
murders.

That
night the lawyer drove her back to the hotel, and since she made no move to
leave, Lotte thought she had something to say and didn't know how, so she
offered to buy her a drink at the bar, although she was tired and wanted nothing
more than to go to bed and sleep. As they drank next to a big window from which
one could see the lights of the cars as they passed along a broad avenue lined
with trees, the lawyer, who seemed as tired as Lotte, began to curse in
Spanish, or so Lotte thought, and then she began openly to cry. This woman is
in love with my son, thought Lotte. Before she left Santa Teresa, Isabel
Santolaya told her that the trial had been plagued with irregularities and
would probably be declared a mistrial. In any case, she promised, I'm going to
appeal. During the car trip back, Lotte thought about her son, whom the verdict
hadn't affected in the slightest, and the lawyer, and she thought that the two
of them, in a strange but also natural way, made a good couple.

In 1998, a mistrial
was declared and the date was set for a second trial. One night, as she was
talking to Isabel Santolaya on the phone from
Paderborn
, Lotte asked point-blank whether
there was something else between her and Klaus. "There is," said the
lawyer.

"And isn't it
too hard for you to bear?" asked Lotte. "No harder than it is for
you," said Isabel Santolaya. "I don't understand," said Lotte,
"I'm his mother but you're free to choose."

"No one's free
to choose in love," said Isabel Santolaya. "And does Klaus feel the
same way?" asked Lotte. "I'm the one who sleeps with him," said
Isabel Santolaya curtly. Lotte didn't understand what she meant. But then she
remembered that in
Mexico
,
as in
Germany
,
all prisoners had the right to conjugal visits or visits with their partners.
She had seen a TV show about it. The rooms where the prisoners stayed with
their wives were unbearably sad, she remembered. The women tried to make them
nice but all they managed to do with their flowers and scarves was turn the sad,
impersonal rooms into sad, cheap, whorehouse rooms. And that was in nice German
prisons, thought Lotte, prisons that weren't overcrowded, that were clean,
functional. She didn't want to imagine what a conjugal visit would be like in
the Santa Teresa prison.

"I think it's admirable
what you're doing for my son," said Lotte. "It's nothing," said
the lawyer, "what Klaus gives me is priceless."

That night, before she fell asleep, she thought about Isabel
Santolaya and Klaus and imagined the two of them in
Germany
or any part of
Europe
and she saw Isabel
Santolaya with a big belly, expecting Klaus's child, and she slept like a baby.

In 1998 Lotte traveled to
Mexico
twice and spent forty-five
days in total in Santa Teresa. The trial was postponed until 1999. When she got
to
Tucson
on the flight from
L.A.
she had problems with the people at the
rental car agency, who refused to rent to her because of her age.

"I'm
old but I know how to drive," said Lotte in Spanish, "and I've never
had one damn accident."

After wasting half the morning arguing, Lotte hired a taxi to take
her to Santa Teresa. The driver's name was Steve Hernandez and he spoke Spanish
and as they crossed the desert he asked what brought her to
Mexico
.

"I'm
here to see my son," said Lotte.

"The next time you come," said the driver, "tell
your son to pick you up in
Tucson
,
because this isn't going to be a cheap ride."

"If only I
could," said Lotte.

In 1999 she returned to
Mexico
and this time the lawyer came to meet her in
Tucson
. It wasn't a good year for Lotte.
Business in
Paderborn
wasn't going well and she was thinking seriously of selling the shop and the
building, including her own flat. Her health wasn't good. The doctors who
examined her couldn't find anything wrong, but sometimes Lotte felt incapable
of performing the simplest tasks. Whenever the weather was bad she got a cold
and had to spend several days in bed, sometimes with a high fever.

In 2000 she couldn't go to
Mexico
but she talked to the lawyer
once a week and got all the latest news. When they didn't talk on the phone
they kept in touch by e-mail and she even had a fax installed at home to
receive the new documents that kept appearing in the case of the murdered
women. Over the course of the year Lotte strove conscientiously to be healthy
so she could travel the following year. She took vitamins, hired a physical
therapist, visited a Chinese acupuncturist once a week. She followed a special
diet with lots of fresh fruit and salads. She stopped eating meat and ate fish
instead.

When
the year 2001 came she was ready to embark on another trip to
Mexico
, although her health,
despite all her efforts, wasn't what it used to be. Nor were her nerves as
steady, as shall be seen.

While
she waited at the Frankfurt airport for the flight to
L.A.
, she went into a bookshop and bought a
book and a few magazines. Lotte wasn't a good reader, whatever that means, and
if every once in a while she bought a book it was usually the kind written by
actors when they retire or when it's been a long time since they've made a
movie, or biographies of famous people, or those books by TV personalities,
supposedly full of interesting stories but in fact with no stories at all.