The Weekend Read Free Page B

happened back then?
    “Would you like to try the punch?” She held a glass out to him and he could tell that she’d asked him once already. He blushed.
    “Sorry.” He took the glass. “Love to.” It was punchwith white peaches, and the taste reminded him of his childhood, when there had been no yellow peaches, only white ones, and how his mother had planted two peach trees in the garden. He gave the empty glass back to Margarete. “I’ve finished the potato salad. Is there anything else I can do? Do you know where I’m sleeping?”
    “I’ll show you.”
    But Ulrich, his wife and daughter were coming toward them down the stairs. Little Ulrich with his tall wife and tall daughter. Henner let himself be greeted and hugged and taken out onto the terrace. Ulrich’s bumptious, cloddish qualities were too much for him, as they had been years before, and he was unsettled by the way his wife liked to throw her head back when she laughed, and the way his daughter posed around the place, bored and provocative, with her long legs crossed, short skirt, tight top and sulky mouth.
    “No electricity—we’ll have to go sit in my car if we want to hear the President. It said on the news a moment ago that he’s going to deliver his speech in Berlin Cathedral, and I’m willing to bet that he’ll announce Jörg’s pardon. Very nice, I’d have to say, very nice of him to do it, when Jörg is already out, when he’s been able to find a spot where the reporters and the cameras can’t find him.” Ulrich looked around. “Not a bad spot, not a bad spot. But he can’t hide out here forever. Do you know what his plans are? They take on people like him in the arts, working as stagehands or doing lighting or proofreading. I’d be happy for him to start in one of my dental labs, but that wouldn’t be chic enough for him. No offense, but because I gave up my studies tobecome a dental technician, you guys have always despised me a bit.”
    Again, Henner had to struggle to remember. When they’d gone to demonstrations Ulrich had always been there, and when there had been a butyric acid attack on a politician he had been the one who got hold of the harmless but foul-smelling liquid. Despised him? In those days they wouldn’t have despised a working Ulrich, they would have admired him. He told Ulrich that.
    “Really, forget about it. I sometimes read your pieces—excellent stuff. And the papers you write for—
Stern, Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung
—prime addresses. The intellectual side of things has never really been my scene; I mean, I follow it, but I stay out of it myself. But where business is concerned—I think with my dental labs I’m way ahead of you intellectuals. So everyone does his own thing, you, me and Jörg. That’s what I said to myself when I got Christiane’s call. Everyone does his own thing, I said to myself. Jörg screwed up, he paid for it and now he’s got to get his life back in order. It isn’t going to be easy for him. In the old days he didn’t know how to work and get on with people and live in peace with the world—why should he be able to do it now? I don’t reckon it’s something you learn in jail—what do you think?”
    Henner didn’t get a chance to say that he didn’t know. Karin and her husband came out of the house onto the terrace. Henner was glad to see a familiar face, and glad that he immediately remembered her name. She had been a vicar, and had become the bishop of a littlediocese, and he had interviewed her a few years before about the church and politics, and in the past year he had appeared with her on a talk show. On both occasions he had been glad to note that it had been no coincidence that he had liked her at university. Her soundness pleased him, so he forgave her for the marked gentleness and solemnity in her voice and her speech. Vicars just become unctuous, as journalists become boastful. And even though you can never tell with vicars how much their