“There’s a hollow feeling in the pit of everyone’s stomach, even, apparently, the defendant’s. He lowers the sheets of paper and shakes his head indignantly. No, he says resolutely, he won’t go on. They have forced him to read his text in order to hinder him from communicating something of extreme importance. He is visibly agitated and gets to his feet after all, but so shakily that the papers and the blanket slide from his lap. Göring, who sits next to him, tries to pull him back on the bench by the tail of his jacket. But Hess shoves Göring’s hand aside and hisses to him that he has to let him do his duty. He stands there, large. Stands there and moves the periscopes of his eyes about as though seeking something.

•

“He seeks it far, far beyond the table with the Last Supper figures of the eight judges facing him on the long wall, far behind the now empty witness stand on the short wall to his left and the glass lock-up booth next to it; behind it, the simultaneous translators are waiting for his next words in order to instantly recolor them into French and English and Russian and let them whir up like a bright flock of birds.

“As a rule, one scarcely hears it, this bright flock of words. It whirs up and scatters, slipping into the rusty and encrusted headphones made of former Wehrmacht supplies and hanging from every seat in the courtroom, albeit seldom used. And even though the words trickle out as dwarves from the uselessly dangling earphones, it is so still in this room that you can hear every one of them. The periscopes of the defendant Rudolf Hess sweep through the space.