Crime by Ferdinand von Schirach Read Free Book Online

lost control. Theresa was lucky; she only sprained her shoulder and had a couple of abrasions. Leonhard’s head got wedged between the back wheel and a boulder and burst open.
    During the first night in the hospital, his condition deteriorated. Nobody tested his blood; there were other things to do. Theresa called her father and he used the corporate Learjet to send a doctor from Frankfurt; the man arrived too late. Leonhard’s kidneys had released their poison into his bloodstream. Theresa sat in the waiting area outside the operating theater. The doctor held her hand as he spoke to her. The air-conditioning was loud, and the pane of glass Theresa had been staring at for hours was clouded with dust. The doctor said it was a sepsis of the urinary tract, engendering multiple organ failures. Theresa didn’t understand what he was telling her. Urine had spread through Leonhard’s body, and the chance of survival was 20 percent. The doctor kept talking, and his words gave her some distance. Theresa had not slept for almost forty hours. When he went back into the operating room, she closed her eyes. He had said “Decease,” and she saw the word in front of her in black letters. They had nothing to do with her brother. She said, “No.” Just “No.” Nothing else.
    On the sixth day after Leonhard’s admission to hospital, his condition stabilized. He could be flown to Berlin. When he was admitted to the Charité Hospital, his body was covered with black, leathery, necrotic patches that indicated the death of cellular tissue. The doctors operated fourteen times. The thumb, forefinger, and fourth finger of the left hand were amputated. The left toes were cut off at the joint, as was the front half of the right foot and parts of the back. All that remained was a deformed lump that could barely support any weight, with bones and cartilage pressing visibly against the skin.
    Leonhard lay in an artificially induced coma. He had survived, but the effects of the injury to his head could not yet be measured.
    The hippocampus is Poseidon’s pack animal, a Greek sea monster, half horse, half worm. It gives its name to a very ancient part of the brain within the temporal lobe. It’s where the work is done that transforms short-term memories into long-term ones. Leonhard’s hippocampus had been damaged. When he was revived from the coma after nine weeks, he asked Theresa who she was and then who he was. He had lost all power of recall and couldn’t hold on to any perception for longer than three or four minutes. After endless tests, the doctors tried to explain to him that it was amnesia, both anterograde and retrograde. Leonhard understood their explanations, but after three minutes and forty seconds he had forgotten them again. He also forgot the fact that he forgot.
    And when Theresa was tending him, all he saw was a beautiful woman.
    After two months, they were able to move together into their father’s Berlin apartment. Every day a nurse came for three hours and otherwise Theresa took care of everything. At first, she still invited friends to come for dinner; then she ceased to be able to bear the way they looked at Leonhard. Tackler came to see them once a month.
    They were lonely months. Gradually, Theresa deteriorated; her hair turned to straw and her skin lost its color. One evening, she took the cello out of its case; she hadn’t touched it for months. She played in the half darkness of the room. Leonhard was lying on the bed, dozing. At a certain point, he pushed off the bedclothes and began to masturbate. She stopped playing and turned away to the window. He asked her to come to him. Theresa looked at him. He sat up, asked to kiss her. She shook her head. He let himself fall back and said at least she could unbutton her blouse. The scarred stump of his right foot lay on the white sheet like a lump of flesh. She went to him and stroked his cheek. Then she took off her clothes, sat down on the chair, and played with her