Free The Girl Who Wasn't There by Ferdinand von Schirach

He said he must go now. His knee hit the iron table, and a bottle half full of beer tipped over. Senja Finks was so quick that Eschburg didn’t see her movement. It was an automatic reaction, unconscious, precise, sure. She caught the bottle with her left hand before it could smash on the rooftop below them. She was breathing no faster than before.
    Her kimono had fallen open. Her stomach was flat and hard. Eschburg saw the scars all over her torso, long weals as if they had been left by a whip. There was an owl under her left breast. At first he thought it was a tattoo; then he realized that someone had branded it on her skin with a hot iron.

19
    The exhibition of
The Maja’s Men
was a success. A TV cultural magazine programme had transmitted a preview, and on the afternoon of the opening there was a long line of people waiting outside the gallery.
    Sofia was wearing a black dress and had tied her hair back. She was slim and elegant as she moved among the guests, distributing business cards, laughing one moment and the next moment serious again.
    He thought of the ladder in her tights that had been bothering her before the exhibition, and how she had gazed out of the kitchen window that morning without saying anything. She had been watching a little boy playing in the yard. Then she had turned to him, and he had seen the question that she no longer asked and that he could not answer.
    Eschburg looked at Sofia. All this is possible only with her, he thought, the photographs, and still being with her, and enduring.
     
    Eschburg left the viewing, went back to Linienstrasse, packed a few things and went to the Charlottenburg municipal swimming pool. It had been built in 1898, three storeys high, a red brick building with a Jugendstil façade, its roof a structure of steel girders like a market hall.
    He went through the green iron door. At this time of day he was almost always alone here. He changed, showered, and let himself down the steps and into the pool. He swam a few lengths, fast and steadily. Then he turned on his back and looked up at the sky through the high glass ceiling. He breathed out and dropped to the bottom of the pool, where he stayed underwater until it hurt. The samurai of ancient Japan used to rise every morning saying, ‘You are dead.’ It made the idea of death easier. He thought of that now, and was at ease.
     
    Eschburg returned to his studio. There were prostitutes in high-heeled shoes standing in Oranienburgerstrasse; their wigs were very blonde or very black, and sweat left narrow runnels in their makeup.
    There was still a queue waiting outside the gallery. Eschburg carried on until he came to an art-house cinema, where he bought a ticket for the film that had just begun. He sat at the end of the back row. The sound in the cinema was loud, and the cutting of the film too fast; he couldn’t make out what was happening.
    After half an hour he left the cinema again. It was hardly any cooler. The pavements were full of people, buskers playing music outside a café, a few drunken tourists dancing.
     
    He walked the streets until he was tired. He stopped at a building site. It smelled of drains and shit. Eschburg looked down, and saw a fox lying among the pipes, its coat wet and full of sand. He stared at the dead fox, and then he thought the fox was staring back at him.

20
    When Eschburg came into the studio next morning, Sofia was already at her desk.
    ‘
The Maja’s Men
was sold yesterday,’ she said. ‘To a Japanese. You’re rich.’ She laughed.
    The iron hooks that had held it were still in the studio wall.
    ‘It would never have happened but for you,’ he said.
    She looked happy and tired.
    ‘Shall we go away?’ he said. ‘We could rent a house on Mallorca.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said.
    They had hardly slept for the last few nights before the exhibition. Sofia sat at the computer to search for holiday houses. Early the next day they flew out.
    They hired a car at the airport, and