Crabwalk Page 17

  My son obviously enjoyed this portion of his speech to the court. Using his hands, he provided the statistics on the ship's length, breadth, and draft. And in connection with the launching and christening of the ship by the “martyr's widow,” as he called her, he took the opportunity to exclaim reproachfully, “Here in Schwerin Frau Hedwig Gustloff's house was illegally expropriated after the collapse of the Greater German Reich, and later she was driven from the city!”

  Then he began to speak of the inner life of the christened ship. He provided information on the reception and dining rooms, the number of cabins, the swimming pool on E deck. Finally he summarized, “The classless liner Wilhelm Gustloff was and remains the living expression of nationalist socialism, a model to this day, and truly exemplary for all times to come!”

  It seemed to me that my son was listening to the applause of an imaginary audience after that last exclamation point; but at the same time he must have noticed the gaze of the judge, stern and warning him to cut it short. Relatively quickly, as Herr Stremplin might have said, Konny came to the final journey and the torpedoing of the ship. He characterized the appallingly large number of those who drowned and froze to death as a “rough estimate,” and compared it to the far smaller number of victims of other ship sinkings. Then he gave the number of survivors, expressed gratitude to the captains, skipped over me, his father, completely, but mentioned his grandmother: “Present in this courtroom is seventy-year-old Ursula Pokriefke, in whose name I bear witness today,” whereupon Mother stood up, white hair blazing and the fox around her neck, and took a bow. She, too, seemed to be appearing before a large audience.

  As if Konny wanted to put an end to the applause audible only to him, he now assumed a very matter-of-fact tone, expressing appreciation for the “valuable attention to detail” manifested by the former pursers assistant Heinz Schön, and regret for the continuing destruction, during the postwar years, of the Gustloff wreck by divers searching for treasure: “But fortunately these barbarians found neither the Reichsbank gold nor the legendary amber room…”

  At this point I thought I saw the all-too-patient judge nodding in agreement; but my son's speech sped on, as if under its own steam. Now he talked about the commander of the Soviet U-boat S-13. After his long imprisonment in Siberia, Aleksandr Marinesko had finally been rehabilitated. “Unfortunately he could enjoy the belated honor for only a short time. Not long after, he died of cancer…”

  Not a single accusatory word. Nothing along the lines of what he had posted on the Internet about “subhuman Russians.” On the contrary, my son surprised the judges and the juvenile magistrates, and probably even the prosecutor, by asking his murder victim Wolfgang Stremplin, as David, for forgiveness. For too long he had portrayed the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff on his Web site exclusively as a case of murder of women and children. Thanks to David, however, he had come to realize that the commander of S-13 had properly considered the nameless ship a military target. “If there is any guilt to be assigned here,” he exclaimed, “the supreme command of the navy, the admiral of the fleet must be indicted. He allowed a large number of military personnel to be put on board along with the refugees. The criminal here is Dönitz!”

  Konrad paused, as if he had to wait for unrest and shouts in the courtroom to settle down. But perhaps he was searching for words with which to conclude. Finally he said, “I stand by my deed. But I ask the high court to recognize the execution I carried out as something that can be understood only in a larger context. I know: Wolfgang Stremplin was about to sit for his university qualifying exams. Unfortunately I could not take that into consideration. A matter of greater import was, and is, at stake. The regional capital Schwerin must honor its great son at long last. I call for the erection of a memorial on the southern bank of the lake, in the place where I honored the martyrs memory in my own way, a memorial that will remind us and coming generations of that Wilhelm Gustloff who was treacherously murdered by Jews. Just as the U-boat commander Aleksandr Marinesko was finally honored as a hero of the Soviet Union a few years ago with a monument in St. Petersburg, it is imperative that we honor a man who gave his life on 4 February 1936 so that Germany might finally be freed from the Jewish yoke. I do not hesitate to say that there are likewise reasons on the Jewish side to honor the medical student who gave a signal to his people with four shots — by means of a sculpture either in Israel, where David Frankfurter died at the age of eighty-two, or in Davos. Or just a bronze plaque, that would be okay too.”

  Finally the presiding judge pulled himself together: “That will do!” Silence settled over the courtroom. My son s explanations, or rather his outpouring, had not remained without effect; but his speech could not affect the severity or leniency of the finding, for the court must have recognized the coherent insanity floating in the flood of his speech, delusional notions that had been subject to more or less convincing analysis by experts.

  On the whole I don't have much respect for this pseudo-scientific babble. But it's possible that one of the psychologists, a man who specialized in dysfunctional families, was not entirely off the mark when he attributed what he called Konny s “lonely act of desperation” to the defendant's growing up without a father, and dragged in my own fatherless origin and youth as a causative factor. The two other expert opinions pursued similar paths. Digging for dirt in the family backyard. In the end, the father is always to blame. Yet it was Gabi, with sole custody of the child, who did not stop him from moving from Mölln to Schwerin, where he ended up in Mothers clutches.

  She, and she alone, is to blame. The witch with the fox stole around her neck. Always a will-o'-the-wisp, as a certain someone is well aware; he knew her from before, and I'm sure it was more than a casual acquaintance. Whenever he talks about Tulla… he gets all worked up… brings up mystical stuff… Some Kashubian or Koshavian water sprite, Thula, Duller, or Tul, is supposed to have been her godparent.

  Her little head cocked, so that her stone-gray gaze lined up with the fox's glass eyes, Mother stared at the experts as they presented their findings. Sat there and listened unmoved as my failings as a father emerged as the pervasive theme of all the paper rustling — music to her ears. In the evaluations she appeared only in the margins. One assessment read, “The fundamentally well-intentioned care provided by the grandmother could not compensate for this at-risk youths need for parental attention. It seems probable that the grandmother's traumatic experiences, such as her survival of the disaster while pregnant, as well as her delivery in sight of the sinking ship, on the one hand made a powerful impression on her grandson Konrad Pokriefke, while on the other hand they had a disquieting effect because of his powerful imaginative participation in these events…”

  The defense attorney attempted to extend the line taken by the expert witnesses. This earnest man of my own age, hired by my ex, had not succeeded in gaining Konny s confidence. Whenever he spoke of an “unpremeditated, unintentional act,” and attempted to downgrade the murder to mere manslaughter, my son negated all his defender's efforts by offering up voluntary confessions: “I took my time and was perfectly calm. No, hate played no part in this. My thoughts were entirely practical. After the first shot to the stomach, which was aimed too low, I aimed the other three shots very carefully. Unfortunately with a pistol. I would have liked to have a revolver, like Frankfurter.”

  Konny presented himself as the responsible party. A gangly youth who had shot up too quickly, he stood there, with his glasses and curly hair, as his own accuser. He looked younger than seventeen but spoke as precociously as if he had taken a crash course in life. For instance, he refused to accept the notion that his parents shared his guilt. Smiling considerately, he said, “My mother is okay, even if she did get on my nerves with her constant harping on Auschwitz. And the court should quickly put my father out of its mind, as I've been doing for years — just forget him.”

  Did my son hate me? Was Konny even capable of hate? Several times he denied hating the Jews. I am inc
lined to speak of Konny's matter-of-fact hate. Hate turned down low. An eternal flame. A hate devoid of passion, reproducing itself asexually.

  Or perhaps the defense attorney was not mistaken when he presented the fixation on Wilhelm Gustloff that Mother had caused as a search for a father substitute? He offered the fact that the Gustloffs had remained childless. To a needy Konrad Pokriefke, this discovery had offered a gap that could be filled virtually. The new technology, the Internet in particular, permitted such an escape from youthful loneliness.

  It seemed to speak for the accuracy of this portrayal that when the judge allowed Konny to address this point, Konny spoke with enthusiasm, even warmth, of the “martyr.” He said, “After my research revealed that Wilhelm Gustloff's commitment to societal change was influenced more by Gregor Strasser than by Hitler, I saw him as my sole model, which was expressed many times and unmistakably on my Web site. It is to the martyr that I owe my inner discipline. To avenge him was my sacred duty!”

  When the prosecutor then questioned him quite insistently about the reasons for his despising the Jews, he said, “You have that all wrong. In theory I have nothing against the Jews. But like Wilhelm Gustloff, I hold the conviction that the Jew is a foreign body among the Aryan peoples. Let them all go to Israel, where they belong. Here they cannot be tolerated, and there they are urgently needed in the struggle against a hostile world around them. David Frankfurter was totally right when he made the decision to go to Palestine as soon as he was released. It was perfectly fitting that he found a job in the Israeli ministry of defense later.”

  In the course of the trial one could gain the impression that of all those who spoke, only my son was speaking his mind. He got to the point quickly, kept sight of the larger issues, had a solution for everything, and brought the case into focus, while the prosecution and the defense, the trinity of expert witnesses, as well as the presiding judge, the associate judges, and the juvenile magistrates were all groping around, searching for motives, invoking God and Freud as guides. They tried repeatedly to portray the “poor young man” as a victim of social circumstances — a failed marriage, a skewed school curriculum, and a godless world — and finally even to declare him guilty of “the genes passed down to Konrad from his grandmother, by way of his father,” as my ex had the gall to theorize.

  Next to nothing was said about the actual victim, the almost-graduate Wolfgang Stremplin, who had transformed himself online into the Jew David. He was left out of the picture in embarrassment, figuring only as a target. The defense attorney even suggested that he could be charged with provoking trouble by misrepresenting the facts. Although the idea that Stremplin had only himself to blame remained unspoken, it lurked behind casual remarks such as, “The victim veritably offered himself,” or, “It was more than irresponsible to translate the Internet conflict into real life.”

  At any rate, the perpetrator received sizable doses of compassion. That probably explains why the Stremplins left town before the verdict was announced, but not before they had assured Gabi and me, in a cafe across from the courthouse, that they certainly did not want to see Konrad punished too harshly, and their son would no doubt have concurred. “We see ourselves as completely free of anything that might amount to a desire for revenge,” Frau Stremplin said.

  If I had been there simply on a professional basis, as a journalist, I would have criticized the reduced finding of manslaughter as “too lenient,” if not as a “miscarriage of justice.” As it was, leaving my obligation as a journalist aside and concentrating entirely on my son, who received his sentence of seven years in juvenile detention without emotion, I was horrified. Lost years! He will be twenty-four if he has to serve the entire time. The daily contact with criminals and genuine right-wingers will harden him, and once he is freed, he will presumably commit another crime and land in jail again. No! This verdict cannot be accepted.

  But Konny refused to take advantage of the opportunity to appeal that his lawyer pointed out to him. I can only repeat what he is supposed to have said to Gabi: “Hard to believe that I got only seven years. They slapped eighteen years on the Jew Frankfurter, though of course he served only nine and a half…”

  He didn't want to see me before he was taken away. And while still in the courtroom, he hugged not his mother but his grandmother, who reached only to his chest, even in her spike heels. When he had to go, he glanced around one more time; perhaps he was looking for Davids or Wolfgangs parents and realized they were missing.

  When we found ourselves standing outside the regional courthouse on Dremmlerplatz, and I could finally light up a cigarette, it turned out that Mother was furious. She had taken off the fox, and with that neck decoration for official occasions she had also dropped her stilted High German: “You can't call that justice!” Furiously she ripped the cigarette out of my mouth and stomped on it, as a substitute for something else she wanted to destroy, yelled for a while, and then talked herself into a frenzy: “That's a crime! There's no justice anymore. They should've nailed me, not the boy. No, no, I was the one who gave him that computer thinga-mabob, and then gave him that gun last Easter, because they personally threatened my Konradchen, them skinheads. One time he came home bleeding — they'd beaten him up. But he didn't cry, not one bit. No, no. I had that in my drawer for ages. Bought it right after the changeover at the Russki mart. Real cheap. But in court not a soul asked me where the thing came from…”

  * * *

  The do not enter sign he posted at the very beginning. He strictly enjoined me from speculating about Konny's thoughts, from creating scenarios based on what he might be thinking, perhaps even writing down what might be going on in his head and presenting it as suitable for quoting.

  He said, “No one knows what he was thinking and is thinking now. Every mind is sealed, not just his. A no-man's-land for word hunters. No point to opening up the skull. Besides, no one says out loud what he thinks. And anyone who tries to is already lying in the first words that come out. Sentences starting with 'At that moment he was thinking…' have never been anything but crutches. Nothing is locked tighter than a mind. Even progressively harsher torture doesn't produce complete confessions. Even in the moment of death, a person can cheat in his thoughts. That's why we can't know what Wolfgang Stremplin was thinking when the decision to play the Jew David on the Internet was ripening within him, or what literally was going on in his head as he stood in front of the Kurt Bürger Youth Hostel and saw his bosom enemy, who had called himself Wilhelm on line, and now, as Konrad Pokriefke, pulled a pistol from the right pocket of his parka and after the first shot to the stomach fired three more shots that hit his head and its sealed-in thoughts. We see only what we see. The surface doesn't tell everything, but enough. So no thoughts, including none thought out ex post facto. If we use words sparingly, we'll get to the end more quickly.”

  It's a good thing he can't guess the thoughts that against my will come creeping out of the left and right hemispheres of my brain, making terrible sense, revealing anxiously guarded secrets, exposing me, so that I am horrified, and quickly try to think about something else. For instance, I thought about a gift I could bring my son in Neustrelitz, something to show I cared, suitable for my first visit.

  Since I had had all the newspaper coverage of the trial sent to me by a clipping service, I had in my possession a photo of Wolfgang Stremplin that appeared in the Badische Zeitung. He looked nice, but not distinctive. A boy about to leave school for the university, perhaps, certainly old enough for military service. While his mouth smiled, his eyes had a slightly mournful expression. He wore his dark-blond hair unparted and slightly wavy. A young man whose head tilted to the left above his open collar. Possibly an idealist, thinking who knows what.

  I might add that the press coverage of my son's trial was disappointingly slim. Around the time of the proceedings, both parts of the now united Germany were experiencing a series of right-wing extremist criminal acts, among them the attempted killing of a Hungarian in Pot
sdam with baseball bats and the beating of a retiree in Bochum that led to his death. Skinheads were striking everywhere, relentlessly. Politically motivated violence had come to seem routine, likewise appeals addressed to the right and expressions of regret by politicians who supplied those committing acts of violence with tinder, concealed in asides. But perhaps it was the undeniable fact that Wolfgang Stremplin was not a Jew that diminished interest in the trial, for initially, right after the deed, there had been banner headlines all over the country: jewish fellow citizen shot! And cowardly murder motivated by anti-semitism!

  The caption to the photo of Wolfgang echoed this sensationalism: “The victim of the most recent act of anti-Semitic violence.” I snipped off this caption.

  So when I paid my first visit to the juvenile detention center — a pretty run-down place that seemed ripe for demolition — I had the newspaper photo of Wolfgang Stremplin tucked into my breast pocket. Konny even thanked me when I pushed the piece of newsprint, folded only once, toward him. He smoothed it with his hand, and smiled. Our conversation dragged, but at least he was speaking to me. In the visitation room we sat opposite each other; at other tables other juvenile detainees also had visitors.

  Since I have been forbidden to try to read my son's thoughts from his forehead, all that remains to be said is that face-to-face with his father he was closemouthed as always, but did not give me the cold shoulder. He even favored me with a question about my journalistic work. When I told him about a story I was doing on Dolly, the miracle sheep cloned in Scotland, and her creator, I saw him smile. “Mama will certainly be interested in that. She's fascinated by genes, especially mine.”