Free Self's Murder by Bernhard Schlink Page B

last car I came face-to-face with seven or eight young men with shaved heads, black jackets, and military boots, standing there as if they’d been waiting for me.
    “Hey! Granddad!”
    I wanted to keep going but they wouldn’t let me through, and when I tried to sidestep them they wouldn’t let me pass. They forced me back toward the outer edge of the platform. The metro line here crosses the Landwehr Canal like an elevated railway, and I could see the dark water beneath me.
    “Where are you heading, Grandpa?”
    On the opposite platform I saw some youths who were looking at us with interest. Otherwise the platforms were empty. “To my hotel and to bed.”
    They laughed as if I’d just uttered the greatest one-liner. “To his hotel!” one of them hooted, leaning forward and slapping his thighs. “To bed!” Then he said: “You were there, right?”
    “Where?”
    “With the Führer, where else? Did you ever get to see him?”
    I nodded.
    “Give Grandpa some of your beer; he saw the Führer.” The leader of the pack nudged the young man next to him, and he offered me his can of beer.
    “Thank you, but I’ve already drunk enough this evening.”
    “Did you hear that? He got to see the Führer!” the leader announced to his pack; he also yelled it out to the youths on the opposite platform. Then he asked me: “And how did you greet him?”
    “Come on, surely you know that.”
    “Show me, Grandpa!”
    “I don’t want to do that.”
    “You don’t want to show us? Then do as I do!” He clicked his heels together, flung his right arm into the air, and yelled: “Heil Hitler!” The others didn’t utter a sound. He brought his arm down. “So?”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “You’d rather take a swim down there?”
    “No, I just want to go—to my hotel, and to bed.”
    This time nobody laughed. The leader came closer and I edged back until I felt the railing against my spine. He raised his hands and patted me down, as if he were searching for weapons. “You’re not wearing a life jacket, Grandpa. You might drown. If you get water in your nose—” With a jolt he jammed his index and middle fingers into my nostrils and pushed my head backward until I was at the point of losing my balance. “So?” He let go of me.
    My nose was smarting. I was frightened. I couldn’t think fast enough: Should I play along? Would that be cleverer? Was that cowardly? Was it some sort of betrayal? Was this and what it symbolized worth getting hurt or getting pneumonia? They grabbed hold of me and I stuttered out a “Heil Hitler.” The leader of the pack told me to say it louder and I said it louder, and when he again said, “Louder!” and they let go of me, I stood on the platform and shouted as loud as I could: “Heil Hitler!”
    Now they were laughing again and clapping. “Bravo, Granddad! Bravo!” But their leader shook his head silently until all the others fell silent and then said: “He didn’t raise his arm, though, did he? It doesn’t count without the arm.” They stared at him and then at me and then at him, and they understood before I did. They grabbed me by the arms and legs, hooted, and swung me back and forth—“one, two, three”—and as the metro came thundering into the station, they flung me over the railing into the canal. When I surfaced, I could still hear them hooting.
    The stone embankment on the near side was too steep, but I made it to the other side and managed to climb onto the street across a wooden landing. Two taxis didn’t stop, but the third driver had plastic covers on his seats, so twenty minutes later I was back at my hotel and under a hot shower.
    I hadn’t come to any great harm. The following morning, the side of my body that had hit the water was a single big bruise. I also had a runny nose and a slight fever. But my injury was elsewhere. I’d had a chance to make up for the wrongs I had done in the old days. And when does one ever get such a chance? But I’d done