The Pledge

“​‘You rightly wondered,’ he finally continued, ‘that I’m still living in a hotel. I didn’t want to confront the world. I wanted to deal with it skillfully, I’d almost say mechanically, but I didn’t want to suffer with it. I wanted to be superior to it, not lose my head, control it all like a technician. I looked at the murdered girl, and that was bearable; but when I stood in front of her parents, I suddenly couldn’t bear it any longer, I had to get away from that godforsaken house, and so I promised by my eternal soul that I would find the murderer—just to turn my back on those suffering people, and I never gave a moment’s thought to the fact that I couldn’t keep this promise because I was going to Jordan. And then I allowed the old indifference to rise up in me, Locher. That was so horrible. I didn’t fight for the peddler. I allowed everything to happen. I became my old impersonal self, “Nobody Home,” as some people call me. I slipped back into the calm, the superiority, the formality, the inhumanity, until I saw the children at the airport.’