Guilt Read Online Free PDF

opened his eyes, he saw the teacher’s purse lying overturned in the doorway.

    The headmaster had been put in touch with me by the school’s lawyer. He told me what had happened and asked me to represent the interests of the school. He knew the teacher had had a particularly close relationship with Henry, closer than with any of the other pupils, and although he’d always trusted her, he was now worried that her death might have something to do with this.
    ——
    When I reached the school five days after the events, the old slaughterhouse was still blocked off with red-and-white crime tape. The DA said the investigating authorities had no cause to suspect the art teacher. The detectives found her diary. I exercised my right to review the file, and read it in my hotel room.
    Then there were the pictures. The police found them in Henry’s cupboard. He had recorded it all, rapid watercolor sketches on hundreds of sheets of paper; every humiliation was there, every humiliation of his and every desire of his torturers. The pictures would become the main evidence at trial; no one would be able to deny a thing. Not one of the sketches showed the art teacher; her death really had been an accident. I wasn’t able to speak to Henry, who had been taken home, but there were almost fifty pages of interview transcripts, and I talked to his friend for many hours.
    By the end of the week I was able to reassure the headmaster. Henry’s parents were not going to sue the school; they didn’t want their son’s case to become public knowledge. The DA’s office didn’t intend to put the school administration on trial. The criminal action against the students would not be a public one; they were just seventeen, and the only issue would be their guilt. My brief mandate was thus at an end.
    A lawyer who was a friend of mine and was defending one of the young men told me later that they had all confessed and had been sentenced to three years in juvenile detention. They had not been charged with the death of the teacher.

    Some years afterwards, when I was in the neighborhood, I phoned the headmaster and he invited me to coffee at the monastery. The old slaughterhouse had been torn down and was now a parking lot. Henry had not returned to the school. He was ill for a long time and now works in the screw factory where he had already served his apprenticeship. He has never gone back to drawing.
    That evening I drove back down the same allée along which Henry had been driven to the school by his parents so many years before. I saw the dog too late. I braked and the car skidded on the gravel road. The dog was huge and black; it took its time crossing the road and didn’t even look at me. In the Middle Ages such dogs were supposed to pull mandrake roots out of the ground; people believed the plants would scream when dug up and the scream would kill people. The dogs obviously didn’t mind. I waited until it disappeared between the trees.

Children
    Before they came to take him away, things had always gone well for Holbrecht. He had met Miriam at a supper given by friends. She was wearing a black dress and a silk shawl with brightly colored birds of paradise on it. She taught at the primary school; he was the sales representative for an office furniture company. They fell in love, and after that time was over they still got along well together. At family parties, everyone said they made such a good-looking couple, and most of them meant it.
    A year after the wedding they bought a semi-detached house in one of the most respectable suburbs of Berlin, and five years later they had almost paid it off. “Ahead of time,” as the local branch manager of the Volksbank said. He always stood up when he saw Miriam or Holbrecht at the counter. Holbrecht liked that. There’s nothing to find fault with, he thought.
    Holbrecht wanted children. “Next year,” said Miriam. “Let’s enjoy life a little longer.” She was twenty-nine, he was nine years