Georg Letham (8 page)

And if what I had done made no sense, what he did was no better. Without giving me any counsel (at that point there were still many expedients that might have saved me), he sprang shakily out of bed, dressed in frenzied haste, rushed behind my back (I stood trembling at the window, looking out) to the door, then through the hall and down the stairs. It all happened in no time. Despite his age, he moved so fast that he was able to overtake the cabdriver. For the latter, drowsy as drivers often are at such a late hour, had trundled off at a crawl after carefully counting the fare he had taken from the old servant and placed in the breast pocket of his leather jacket. My father leaped into the old crate, and away they went. I did not hear what he shouted to the cabdriver, I only saw him wave to the old servant, who had run after him and was still standing there despondently; then he had the cab roar off at high speed.

I will now be extremely brief, despite the fact that what follows, what I wish to get out of the way in this section, the eleventh, is the bread and butter of that literary genre considered the most enthralling in our era, namely, the detective novel. What concerns me here is facts, such as
those of the original “torpedo” episode, which dates back at least fifteen years now and in which my father plays a starring role, and then facts that did not come to light until after my sentencing, and also those later facts surrounding the figure of that friend (as I have actually only been able to call him since he ceased to be one) of my youth, Walter.

First, however, comes my return home (I went on foot, made detours, and it took me almost an hour), my surprise upon finding two burly uniformed policemen waiting for me on the dark landing. They brutally but adroitly seized me the moment I came through the entryway and turned on the stair light. And as, between them, I climbed our staircase with its clean, soft, dark blue velour carpet, half unconscious yet still composed, heart pounding madly, with teeth clenched and thus silent, their hands on my shoulders, I heard from above, through the open door of my apartment, the choked cries, the howling sobs of my stepdaughter, alternating with the soothing, solemnly drawling, oleaginous voice of my son-in-law, whose bromides, whose sonorous gentleness, kindness and manly compassion aroused in me the desire to throw up.

But, speaking of such things, I was now thrown upon the mercies of official justice. From that point on, I was never free again.

If only my father had listened sensibly that night, instead of cravenly running off! In comical disarray, the ends of his tie hanging down around his scrawny old man's neck, one of his suspenders dragging on the ground from under his coat, so that he tripped over it, he had valiantly fled from me, his son, because I had made him an unwelcome confession, one for which the grand old connoisseur of human nature had not been prepared. Yes, if only my father had consummated his life as an anarchist by showing at that moment that he was still equal to
existence as it was, is, and will remain, yes, truly, if, in the expected war of all against one, he had bravely fought on the side of his best student, on the side of his sole
blood
relative, namely, my humble self, if he had at least
tried
to understand me at the point when I was involved with experiments quite different from his own, then everything would have turned out differently.

Far weaker, more morally mediocre, more banal spirits, such as my brother, whom he had always ridiculed by comparing him with me, have done far better. But now is not the time for that, when I am marching upstairs between the two police officers to be confronted with my son-in-law and my stepdaughter–and my victim. Poor old lady, who might have done me the favor of
voluntarily
departing this life if there had been some particular pleasure in it for her and some particular advantage for me! She loved me, after all. She was just made that way. The good dowager, over fifty, had endured all sorts of experiments (her loveless first marriage, for example) and had needed all that in order to arrive at a proper understanding of herself. Death at the moment of the greatest pain and pleasure was doubtless in her mind–here we had always understood one another. But her relatives had no grasp of the thing whatever, any more than did, later on, the superficial official justice that was not even at the level of a serving girl, and least of all popular morality as represented by the press. To the papers it was just a vulgar slaying, a kind of insurance murder by poison, I was a Landru with Toxin Y, and they simply let the facts speak for themselves (and against me) as brutally and nakedly as possible.

But how was this disaster possible? It all happened as quickly as a test-tube reaction.

Nothing could have been simpler. My wife, the only person who
knew me, at least to some degree, the only person who saw me as I really was, at least from a certain angle, and who in only that way had any use for me, had for a long time not concealed from her relatives her dim perceptions, her fears, and her psychological insights. It was she herself who had had the idea that she should be protected from me, that she should be placed in isolation, even declared legally incompetent. Sensibly or foolishly, she had wanted to be saved from herself. It was she herself who had instructed that my correspondence be read when the circumstances were important, but that it not be shown to her. Her doglike dependence on me and her fear for her own life, these had battled within her–she had conducted experiments no less than I. Alongside these experiments were the usual diversions, amusements such as befitted her age, her finances, and her social position, all falling under the rubric of
bridge
, of course not an adequate means of fulfillment. One day she had given in to her destructive or self-destructive urges, had come to me. That had been in the afternoon. In the evening, when I entered the apartment and camped downstairs in the study, she had called her daughter and her son-in-law and in presentiment of her fate had summoned the two of them. The strange telephone calls, all three of them (or were there only two?), were from these relatives, though they came too late in any case.

And I, as confident as a sleepwalker, had behaved more idiotically than any idiot! Think of it! I leave the scene of the crime without having scrupulously destroyed the most important piece of evidence. I fail to mention the fact of my wife's death to the servants, to the neighbors encountered in the street that night. And that's not all! I make the most unnecessary disclosure imaginable to my father, an entirely irrelevant person in this regard, and produce in him an equally idiotic reaction,
namely, his flight to City X on the next Nordbahn train. The next day he fails to appear at work (for the first and last time in his life!). The noose tightens around my neck still more–through my own doing and his. If he had at least given me the money, if not a hundred thousand, then at least enough for me to get a cab and drive back, I would have been at the scene of the crime an hour earlier, would have destroyed the vial in time. Only the first four hours were critical. After that nothing could have been proven. I would have had to hold out with my wife for those four hours.

No, if the old man was at fault, it lay deeper, it went back a long time. What had happened now was incidental. Why accuse him–I could have hired a cab even with no money in my pocket and paid the driver when I got home. I always had enough money around for that. I had just had a fit of blindness and stupidity. For what else can you call it when a thinking person, one with such a high opinion of himself that he believes he is capable of discovering the invisible scarlet-fever virus, when such a person advertises the visible proof, the palpable evidence of his criminal act, even though what he wants to do, what he has to do, is conceal it. I had run to the old man to confess to him, thereby helping him atone for
his
old sins. And on top of that the experimental error mentioned above, one of the grossest type. What had happened to the vial containing Toxin Y? Instead of destroying it (washing it out under the tap, scratching off the label, tossing the empty vial out onto the street, along with the syringe)–instead of doing that, I throw the glass container, stoppered, containing a quite considerable residue of Toxin Y, into the toilet bowl in my wife's small, almond green private lavatory. And do I at least pull the chain, to wash the thing into the sewer main?
By no means. And the syringe? No, this too I fail to destroy. It remains in the bedroom, lying on a glass tabletop. I was so used to having it around, that precisely made, delicate little instrument!

So I considerately put weapons into my enemies' hands. My wife's sudden death, my unwillingness to prevail upon the neighborhood physician however reluctant he was to come at night, my refusal to attempt the recommended camphor or caffeine injection (we had camphor and caffeine in the house because my wife had become a hypochondriac after her illness and knew about their effects), the syringe with the slightly bloody needle on the night table next to the lamp, above all the little vial that now lay on the mirrored tabletop, conscientiously placed in evidence and open to official scrutiny, its label already half dry!–And the handwriting, becoming clearer every moment as the label dried, was mine and no one else's.–What remained of the whitish crystalline powder could be identified from my experimental animals as extremely toxic, as a first-quality coagulant poison; my wife's blood could and would be analyzed; everything pointed in one direction, and any amateur would be able to provide rigorous proof of the crime. That is, prove
what
had occurred. But to prove
why
it had occurred? That was the task of the court. But only the person who had understood all this could
sit in judgment
. Ultimately only I could judge this murder.

The case was so hopelessly clear that lying was obviously not a practical response. Given that the crime was one that needed to be understood in psychological terms, it may seem that a more promising approach might have been to present oneself to the judges trying the case as an entirely
bestial, pathological personality who had acted in a fit of unbridled rage and who therefore–and this is what rules out this at-first-blush viable approach–belonged, not on the scaffold, nor in prison or the penal colony for life, but permanently under lock and key. Many people would undoubtedly find the prospect of lifelong confinement in an asylum a better fate than execution or deportation. But I did not.

I lived through several weeks in the psychiatric observation unit of the remand prison infirmary. With the help of my lawyer, my father had seen to it that I be subjected to a court-ordered mental examination. I endured one grilling after another by doctors and intelligence tests that lasted for hours and made me appear an idiot; I attempted, while in constant visible, audible, and tangible proximity to raving, raging, shrieking, howling, babbling, self-lacerating, excrement-eating persons, in the presence of the authentically mentally ill, of persons with incurable intellectual and emotional disorders, I attempted, summoning all my strength and all my resources, to feign illness. But I did not keep it up long enough–and I will say: though their very lives may depend on it, ninety out of a hundred men are not capable of feigning severe mental illness, beyond a certain point, without falling prey to it.

For me the universe has never been built on entirely sound foundations. I have already said that in my youth I became, under the influence of my father, an anarchist, an atheist, and a negativist to the point of being a cynic. In addition to this the internal pressure (call it conscience or whatever you want, you will never grasp it), in addition lack of sleep, in addition the continuous observation, the formulaic questions, driven into an unstable person's soul as though with a sharp chisel, of the court psychiatrist, “court” being the operative word, in
addition the bad food, the squalor, the latter all the worse the more one gives in to one's own destructive urges and wrecks everything there is to be wrecked in one's cell. (Who is not tempted now and again to smash everything in sight to bits?)

No one who has not experienced it could imagine the boundless exhaustion and enervation produced by being constantly face-to-face with oneself, the nights, the dreams, and nothing but a hostile atmosphere on every side–yes, Georg Letham the younger, did you expect a seaside holiday?

No matter, the day comes when your resistance breaks and you capitulate. Like a true madman I yearned to speak rationally, eat normally again, and it was high time. I was skeletally emaciated, and any force of mind I may have had was gone. My bones were poking through my skin, causing sores on the thin, dry, withered skin at the small of my back and beneath my shoulder blades.

Most terrible of all was that, one night, toward daybreak, I realized I had no hope of hope anymore. And that I had had no “hope of hope” since that rainy night. It was toward morning, at an hour when the truly criminally insane and the malingerers alike, through either natural tiredness or the effect of soporifics (usually scopolamine in powerful doses), grew quiet and slept. I was the only one for whom the effect of the soporific never lasted until breakfast (or what went by that name–a bowl of soup and a piece of bread, no spoon, no sharp-edged utensils). I was never able to sleep through until six. Ideas and words became a confusion then, thinking a sluggish muddle, difficult to describe.

That night I lay on my stomach to protect the skin on my back. It may be that the circulation in this unnatural position put particular strain on the cardiac muscle, burdened the pulmonary artery–I don't know
why, but I had to get out, I couldn't stand myself any longer. I reported my “recovery” to the alarmed senior attendant, finding the words with difficulty, I wanted to have the doctor, the examining magistrate, my father, my attorney, you name it, I don't know who all, summoned in the middle of the night, but the management had its immutable rules, I was told to be patient. I was a confessed criminal, and alone.