13

Can’t you see how Sergej is suffering?

Sergej Mencke was lying in a double room in the Oststadt Hospital on the garden side. The other bed was currently unoccupied. His leg was suspended from a kind of pulley and held in place at the correct slant by a metal frame and screw system. He’d spent the last three months, with the exception of a few weeks, in hospital and looked correspondingly miserable. Nonetheless I could clearly see that he was a handsome man. Light, blond hair, a longish, English face with a prominent chin, dark eyes, and a vulnerable, arrogant cast to the lips. Unfortunately his voice was petulant, maybe just as a result of the past months.

‘Wouldn’t it have been right to come and see me first, instead of bothering my entire social world?’

So he was one of those. A whiner. ‘And what would you have told me?’

‘That your suspicions are pure fantasy, they’re the product of a sick brain. Can you imagine mutilating your own leg like this?’

‘Oh, Herr Mencke.’ I pulled the chair to his bed. ‘There’s a lot I wouldn’t do myself. I could never cut open my thumb to avoid washing up. And what I, as a ballet dancer without a future, would do to make a million, I really couldn’t say.’

‘That silly story from scout camp. Where did you dredge that one up from?’

‘From bothering your social world. What was the story with the thumb again?’

‘That was a completely normal accident. I was carving tent pegs with my pocket knife. Yes, I know what you want to say. I’ve told the story differently, but only because it’s such a nice one, and my youth doesn’t provide many stories. And as for my future as a ballet dancer . . . Listen. You don’t exactly give the impression of a particularly rosy future yourself, but you wouldn’t go breaking a limb because of it.’

‘Tell me, Herr Mencke, how did you plan to finance the dance school you’ve talked about so often?’

‘Frederik was going to support me, Fritz Kirchenberg, I mean. He has stacks of money. If I’d wanted to cheat the insurance company I’d have thought up something a little cleverer.’

‘The car door isn’t that silly. But what would have been cleverer?’

‘I have no desire to discuss it with you. I only said if I’d wanted to cheat the insurance people.’

‘Would you be willing to undergo a psychiatric examination? That would really facilitate the insurance company’s decision.’

‘Absolutely not. I’m not going to have them tag me as mad. If they don’t pay up right away, I’m going to a lawyer.’

‘If you go to trial you won’t be able to avoid a psychiatric examination.’

‘Let’s wait and see.’

The nurse came in carrying a little dish with brightly coloured tablets. ‘The two red ones now, the yellow one before and the blue one after your meal. How are we today?’

Sergej had tears in his eyes as he looked at the nurse. ‘I can’t go on, Katrin. Nothing but pain and no dancing ever again. And now this gentleman from the insurance company wants to make me out to be a cheat.’

Nurse Katrin laid her hand on his forehead and glowered at me. ‘Can’t you see how Sergej is suffering? You should be ashamed of yourself! Leave him in peace. It’s always the same with insurance companies; first they make you pay through the nose and then they torture you because they don’t want to cough up.’

I couldn’t add anything to this conversation and fled. Over lunch I noted down keywords for my report to the Heidelberg Union Insurance. My conclusion was neither that of deliberate self-mutilation, nor mere accident. I could only gather together the points that spoke for one or the other. Should the insurance not wish to pay they wouldn’t have a bad case.

As I was crossing the street, a car spattered me from head to toe in slushy snow. I was already in a foul mood when I reached my office and the work on the report made me all the more morose. By the evening I’d laboriously dictated two cassettes that I took round to Tattersallstrasse to be typed up. On the way home it struck me I’d wanted to ask Frau Mencke about little Siegfried’s tooth-extraction methods. But now I couldn’t care less.