The Method (14 page)

‘That’s Hutschneider,’ he says softly, flicking through
his
notes, ‘the associate judge. On the other side, Judge Weber from the Federal Office for Method Defence, two lay judges, the clerk of the court and the court administrator. A doctor and security personnel to keep an eye on you. They’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble on your account; you should be honoured.’

Instead, Mia feels a mixture of fear and irrational excitement, as if she were five years old and it was the night before her birthday, for which a magnificent celebration has been planned. She wishes that her party dress were a little more comfortable. She is wearing overalls made of paper that rustle whenever she moves. The doctor comes over to spray her with disinfectant for the third time this morning. At the request of one of the lay judges, he scans the chip in her upper arm.

‘Well,’ says Rosentreter. ‘This is it. No more mediation or meddlesome offers of help. Method Defence does things properly.’

‘Where
were
you?’ asks Mia. ‘First I can’t get rid of you and then you disappear. The court was on the point of assigning a new counsel.’

‘I was doing some research – a fascinating case.’

‘How nice to be able to continue your education.’

Rosentreter finally looks at Mia and beams at her brightly. He is impervious to sarcasm in his present state.

‘The case is open,’ declares Sophie. Her gaze takes in the room, sweeping over Mia as if she and Mia had never met and would never have reason to do so, least of all in their present roles. ‘The relevant parties are present. Let the charges be read.’

Barker rises cumbersomely from his chair.

‘Santé, ladies and gentlemen.’ He knows the charges by heart, but he opens his file all the same. ‘The defendant is charged with anti-Method activities and with spearheading an anti-Method faction. She is further charged with repeated misuse of toxic substances in the first degree. The prosecution calls attention to the following facts. First, the defendant is known to have made verbal attacks on the Method in private and public. According to the court’s main witness, Heinrich Kramer, she expressly blames the Method for the death of her brother. The defendant has also made it perfectly clear that she rejects the authority of the state.’ Barker leafs through his file. ‘I quote:
I want to be left alone … I can deal with the fallout from the incident without the intervention of the Method and its associated institutions
.’

‘Thank you, Barker,’ interrupts Sophie. ‘The judge is sufficiently acquainted with the defendant’s utterances. She was there.’

‘Second, the defendant was apprehended in a location known to Method Defence as a meeting point for suspected PRI sympathisers. According to the arresting officers, she was smoking a cigarette.’

‘The defendant’s recidivist tendencies are also known to the judge,’ says Sophie with a cynicism that doesn’t suit her.

‘When asked to explain her presence at the aforementioned meeting point, the defendant stated she was meeting
no one
. The prosecution believes that
No one
is the code name of a PRI activist.’

‘Pure conjecture,’ says Rosentreter. ‘I assume this is the prosecution’s idea of a joke …?’

‘Be so kind as to wait your turn,’ says Sophie. ‘Next time you speak without permission, I’ll assume you wish to leave the court.’

‘The prosecution calls Heinrich Kramer to the stand,’ says Barker. ‘The prosecution also calls for the defendant to be interrogated about her political views.’

‘Agreed,’ says Sophie. ‘Herr Rosentreter, what does the defence recommend?’

‘An immediate suspension of the trial,’ says Rosentreter. ‘The matter should never have been brought to court.’

‘You still want to pursue your application for exemption?’ asks Sophie with almost amused astonishment.

‘As a matter of fact, we’re applying for the court to be recused on suspicion of bias.’

There is a murmur of excitement.

The judge looks at Rosentreter, who returns her gaze unflinchingly. She leans over to Hutschneider and Weber and a whispered debate ensues.

‘Declined,’ she says at last. ‘The trial will continue. I advise the private counsel to consider his client’s well-being and stick to the rules. Frau Holl, please rise for questioning.’

‘Go on,’ says Rosentreter to Mia, who has been listening to the proceedings with the bemusement of someone adrift in a foreign language. She stays seated until Rosentreter pokes her in the ribs; then she rises, rustles around the dock in her paper suit and sits at the little table in front of the judge’s lectern.

‘Do I have to take an oath?’ she asks.

‘You’re not
entitled
to take an oath,’ says Sophie. ‘Oaths are reserved for witnesses. In future, you might want to
look
for a lawyer who can brief you on basic legal procedures. In the event that … you’re arrested again.’

‘Frau Holl, we’d like to confirm a few personal details,’ says Barker.

‘I’m a scientist,’ says Mia, ‘not a terrorist.’

There is laughter from the public gallery; the judge restores order with a threatening gesture.

‘Come on, Frau Holl,’ says Barker. ‘It’s not like you to hold back with your opinions. This is your chance. What do you think of our political system?’

‘Science,’ says Mia, ‘broke up the long-standing marriage between humankind and the transcendental. The soul, progeny of this union, was given up for adoption. It left us with the body, which became our main concern. The body is temple and altar; our highest god, our greatest sacrifice; sacred and enslaved. Logically speaking, it was inevitable. Do you see what I mean?’

‘No,’ says Barker.

‘Absolutely,’ says Sophie. ‘Please go on.’

‘The sort of person who recognises the logical inevitability of a development is not the sort of person who swims against the tide. For such a person, swimming against the tide is pointless, futile. So you want to know what I think about anti-Method activities? The PRI? Revolution?’ Mia is becoming animated. She rolls up the sleeves of her paper overalls. ‘Revolution is when the many rise up against the few, the few being a handful of people who make the decisions at any one time. In all other respects, the few and the many are the same.’

She turns to Kramer as if her explanation were
intended
for him alone. He lifts his chin and signals for her to face the judge.

‘What would you think if you saw a pack of wolves attacking and killing its leader?’ she says. ‘You’d think it was natural, wouldn’t you? You’d think it was nature’s way of finding a new leader for the pack. It’s that simple! We can talk about revolution, power and oppression, politics, the Method, economics, private interest and the common good, we can use a thousand new words for describing matters that seem complicated and important, but it all comes down to one thing: a human arrangement. Since the gods are no longer in the picture, it’s irredeemably banal. A pack of wolves that get rid of their leader every few years.’

Barker shuffles in his seat. He looks like a loose collection of bones barely held together by his robe.

‘I’m not sure the defendant’s statement was intelligible to the court,’ he says.

‘On the contrary,’ says Sophie. ‘Frau Holl has made it clear that she can’t see the sense in revolution, since revolution is a conflict between two groups of humans, and humans, as the court would agree, are identical in worth. The judge accepts the statement as admissible evidence.’

‘Pardon me,’ says Hutschneider, ‘but in the same statement Frau Holl asserted that a pack, um, I mean, a society should replace its leader, or rather, its government every few years.’

‘The point is,’ says Mia, ‘I want nothing to do with it. My brother accused me of supporting the Method only because I despised humankind. He was probably right,
but
it doesn’t change the fact that I believe in the Method.’

‘If the defendant’s belief in the system is grounded in her contempt for humanity, it follows that she despises the state,’ says Hutschneider craftily, jabbing the air with his pen as he speaks.

‘Is this a courtroom or a debating club?’ asks Barker, running his fingers around his collar as if he were overheating.

‘First official caution,’ says Sophie.

‘The system teaches us to think rationally,’ says Mia. ‘Everything about me is rational. At school I was taught to approach every problem from at least two different sides. Logic splits everything into two opposing parts. At the end of the process, you get zero.’

‘Ha, now I see where she’s coming from,’ exclaims Barker. ‘Frau Holl is campaigning for freedom from
consequences
.’

‘Logic makes me sit on the fence. I’m forever in between. I can’t decide for or against: I’m not in the least bit dangerous.’

‘I suspect the opposite is the case,’ says Hutschneider darkly.

‘Frau Holl,’ says Sophie, and does something she has never done in court: she reaches back and unties her hair, ‘in our previous conversations we talked about the connection between personal well-being and the common good. Can you explain your views to the court?’

‘The state,’ says Mia obediently, ‘is there to serve humanity’s natural desire for life and happiness. Power is legitimate only in so far as it serves this goal. The state
must
unite the well-being of the individual and the whole.’

‘Many of us are working very hard to achieve precisely that,’ says Sophie. ‘We’re doing well, I think you’d agree.’

‘Maybe you are,’ says Mia softly, ‘but maybe it’s not enough. Maybe for a system to be legitimate, it has to be infallible, which is humanly impossible, per se.’

‘Did you hear that?’ crows Barker. ‘Now we’ve got her! Frau Holl is suggesting that errors in the interpretation of the Method would justify …’ His voice cracks with excitement and he loses his thread. ‘The prosecution demands—’

‘Your Honour,’ says Rosentreter, who has been sitting with his eyes half closed, showing no sign of whether he has actually been following the progress of the trial, ‘the defence would like to lodge an application for evidence relating to the Moritz Holl verdict to be heard by the court, the material in question being relevant to the current case.’

Mia meets Sophie’s eyes, and there is a moment of calm. In the fields beyond the city, mouldering fences topple over without a sound. The wind turbines stretch into the distance, rotating slowly and ponderously, as if the blades were turning the wind, not the other way round. And yet, thinks Mia, wind and wind alone is the reason for the light being on in the room while people interrogate each other about their political views. The world, Mia thinks, is a reflection on the outer surface of her mind. By the time the moment passes, she has forgotten the nature of Rosentreter’s request. She hadn’t understood it in the first place.

‘Granted,’ says Sophie.

Sophie has signed her professional death sentence. It is ironic that her reservations revolve around the likely reaction of Messrs Hutschneider and Weber. The associate judges will doubtless be furious with her decision. The introduction of new material will drag out the hearing and in any case it is common knowledge that this nice guy Rosentreter is way out of his depth. The case is politically sensitive, and the last thing Sophie needs is a floundering private counsel. All the same, she grants him his intermezzo. She has to. For one thing, it’s the correct decision in procedural terms, since Moritz Holl features prominently in the arguments put forward by both prosecution and defence. Quite apart from that, Rosentreter has gone to a great deal of trouble. As he sits there, his desk covered with sheets of paper, sorting and re-sorting his documents as if weighing up where to begin, Sophie feels sorry for him. She mistakes his barely contained excitement for nerves.

In the same way that Rosentreter thinks of himself as nice and is held to be so by others, Sophie thinks of herself as good and is thought of as such. Part of being good is always striving to do everything just right. A good person will want to illuminate every aspect of a case, even if the defendant is irksome and Messrs Barker, Hutschneider and Weber will be late for their lunch. A good person will respect other people’s hard work, even if the person in question perspires heavily, throws documents over the side of the desk, and fails to find the port for his memory key. With these thoughts in mind, thoughts that, incredibly, take no more than a fraction of a second to pass through the human brain, Sophie,
who
can’t be held responsible for anything, marches to her doom.

At last Rosentreter finds the right slot for his memory key. Mia’s face disappears from the screen to be replaced by Moritz: boyish, handsome, smiling mischievously, with, as they say, a roguish look in his eye. Mia, who isn’t prepared for the picture, turns away and buries her face in her hands. Rosentreter raises his index finger; the image changes and a strange photograph lights up the courtroom. Pictured on the screen is a perfectly round, flat disc, under which various bean-shaped items are swimming. Their crooked bodies are a grainy black with white casing.

‘Blood,’ says Rosentreter, ‘but not the standard variety.’

He raises his finger again. The next image shows a huge number of white bubbles and a reduced number of red ones. ‘A high concentration of white blood cells. You can clearly see the leukocytes.’