Crime by Ferdinand von Schirach Read Free Book Online Page A

eyes closed. She waited until he fell asleep, stood up, used a towel to wipe the sperm off his stomach, covered him up, and kissed his forehead.
    She went into the bathroom and vomited.
    Although the doctors had ruled out any possibility that Leonhard could recover his memory, the cello seemed to move him. When she was playing, she seemed to feel a pale, almost imperceptible connection to her former life, a weak reflection of the intensity she missed so much. Sometimes Leonhard actually remembered the cello the next day. He talked about it, and even if he couldn’t make any connections, something did seem to remain captured in his memory. Theresa now played for him every evening, he almost always masturbated, and she almost always collapsed in the bathroom afterward and wept.
    Six months after the last operation, Leonhard’s scars began to hurt. The doctors said further amputations would be required. After doing a PET scan, they told her he would also soon lose the power of speech. Theresa knew that she wouldn’t be able to bear it.
    The twenty-sixth of November was a cold, gray autumn day; darkness came early. Theresa had put candles on the table and pushed Leonhard to his place in his wheelchair. She had bought the ingredients for the fish soup in Berlin’s best market; he had always liked it. The soup, the peas, the venison roast, the chocolate mousse, even the wine were all laced with Luminal, a barbiturate she had no problem obtaining to treat Leonhard’s pain. She gave it to him in small amounts so that he wouldn’t vomit it up again. She herself ate nothing and waited.
    Leonhard grew sleepy. She pushed him into the bathroom and ran water in the big tub. She undressed him. He barely had the strength anymore to haul himself into the tub by using the new handles. Then she took off her own clothes and got into the warm water with him. He sat in front of her, his head leaning back on her breasts, breathing calmly and steadily. As children, they had often sat in the bath this way, because Etta didn’t want to waste water. Theresa held him in a tight embrace, her head on his shoulder. When he had fallen asleep, she kissed his neck and let him slide under the surface. Leonhard breathed in deeply. There was no death struggle; the Luminal had disabled his capacity to control his muscles. His lungs filled with water and he drowned. His head lay between her legs, his eyes were closed, and his long hair floated on the surface. After two hours, she climbed out of the cold bath, covered her dead brother with a towel, and called me.
    She confessed, but it was no mere confession. She sat for more than seven hours in front of the two investigators and dictated her life into the record. She rendered an account of herself. She began with her childhood and ended with the death of her brother. She left nothing out. She didn’t cry; she didn’t break down. She sat as straight as a die and spoke steadily, calmly, and in polished sentences. There was no need for intervening questions. While her statement was being typed up, we smoked a cigarette in an adjoining room. She said she wasn’t going to talk about it anymore; she had said all there was to say. “I don’t have anything else,” she said.
    Naturally, she was ordered to be detained because of the murder charge. I visited her almost every day in prison. She arranged for books to be sent in, and didn’t leave her cell even when the prisoners had their yard exercise. Reading was her anesthetic. When we met, she didn’t want to talk about her brother. Nor did the imminent trial interest her. She preferred to read to me from her books, things she’d sought out in her cell. It was like a series of lectures in a prison. I liked her warm voice, but at the time I didn’t understand: It was the only way she had left to express herself.
    On the twenty-fourth of December, I was with her until the end of visiting time. Then they locked the bulletproof glass doors behind me. Outside,