Female on Fire: The Ice Valley Revisited

Wood

The time has come, the walrus said,

To talk of many things,

Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax,

Of cabbages and kings,

Why the sea is boiling hot

And whether pigs have wings.

(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

INTRODUCTION: MEET THE USUAL SUSPECTS.

No epoch considers itself complete, no generation its high hopes come true without their respective legends and myths. Hardly surprising, therefore, that every era likes to uphold its myths like unmistakable symbols of distinction whenever possible.

The moment sloppy everyday usage started trivializing such literary hand-me-downs as legend and myth, unambiguousness happened to be the first victim falling by the roadside. Quixotic attempts on the part of venerable linguist purists at redressing the situation by fighting the windmill sails of custom with the double-edged sword of definitions, were obviously doomed from the outset.

Because therein lies the flaw of definitions, does it not, that they will charm us with the promise of uniqueness and lucidity but, hardly put to the test, find themselves lamentably unable to keep their word. Instead of delivering the true McCoy, they will resort to ever new alleged exceptions. Thus, to me, they resemble hardened criminals trying to wriggle their necks out of the noose by forever shifting the goal posts and by confessing only what has already transpired, anyway.

So why not go for that time-honoured investigative ploy of rounding up the usual suspects and see what our bunch of witnesses make of them.

Something that hits the unbiassed observer's eye right away are the suspects' impressive criminal records in the swindle and deception section. From wilful deceit to false pretences and downright fraud almost everything contained in the respective articles of the penal code is represented.

Not a pretty sight, I agree, but I'm afraid that, for the moment, we'll have to grin and bear it.

As opposed to her somewhat unkempt auntie Saga, her with the long sparse grey hair all dishevelled and a face wrinkled like that of a Shar Pei and the quarrelsome disposition of a Rottweiler, the cool, casual Legend with her matted dreadlocks comes across a great deal more lackadaisical. To the extent that she has no need of her auntie's notoriously large casts of dramatis personae, she can afford a certain nonchalant randomness, and does.

Every now and then, the legend will even be contented to see herself adequately represented by one of us mortals, only. Let me refer you to such prominent examples as the so-called boxing legend Muhammed Ali, the racing legend Ralf Schumacher, the cooking legend Paul Bocuse or the fashion legend Karl Lagerfeld, to mention but a few.

Since in all of these cases the practical handle „legend" obviously appraises an objectively verifiable and generally recognized lifetime achievement, there can be no doubt whatsoever about its positive connotation now.

Or can it? If and when I hear serious historians state that, for instance, the political and moral renewal claimed to have been the result of the turmoil caused by the generation of '68 is a mere legend, affable Dr Jekyll suddenly turns into sinister Mr. Hyde.

One and the same term designating a concept and its very oppposite, all at once, is one of those magic acts where the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. It would take an experienced politician to sort that one out. Or perhaps a fictional character of Humpty Dumpty's intellectual calibre.

Whenever I use a word, or so his famous quote runs, it means precisely what I want it to mean. At a first glance, Solipsist semantics carried to such extremes might show us an easy way out. On second thoughts, though, its likely to lure us deeper yet into the terminological maze we were frivolous enough to have entered. Without a common language, we only risk getting to where Humpty Dumpty already find himself, in Wonderland. Next, please.

What stares us in the face when looking at Myth with its proud Greek pedigree, is its grammatical gender. In an environment heavily dominated by females, Myth's the odd man out, literally. Coincidence? Not, if we are to believe thee criminologists. Which, at least in this instance, we should perhaps hesitate to do. For, as we all know, they never grow tired of assuring us that in the world of crime, there is no such thing as coincidence. A rather brash claim in the face of the facts, if you ask me. Without being a stickler for statistics, I would however maintain that no other line of human activity owes its success, both individual and collective, so much to coincidence and happenchance as does that of criminal investigation department.

Never mind. Instead, let's try and find out what's so virile about myth. Better even, let's ask the professed specialists in the matter. Any lady around forty, with her thin lips and hanging corners of her mouth clearly marked by the exasperating experience, will, with more than just a tinge of sarcasm in her voice, probably be pointing at the total lack of merit.

Typically male - lazy, slothful, and mendacious, or something to that effect is likely to be her verdict. If she is a pharmacist, teacher, or reverend with a knack of ancient Greek, she might wish to add a layer of heavy-handed irony by elucidating that the noun mythos is but a slip of the tongue away from zythos, which, as you've probably guessed, means beer.

The female chronically suffers from hyperbole, as William Shakespeare so rightly puts it somewhere or other. Or was that Billy Wilder? No matter. As a member of this systematically and deliberately underrated, frequently maltreated and positively endangered species which is man, in the narrower sense of the word, I cannot help admitting that, in the mythical context, personal merit, irrespective of what kind, albeit perfectly possible and even desirable as it may be is by no means indispensable.

In other words: who or what turns into a myth where and at what point in time depends, not so much on us, but on circumstances. Or, to be even more precise, on the reception of chance and circumstance by the wider public.

In everyday speech, Janus-faced myth and legend seem to have become interchangeable. Like the saga, on the other hand, myths, those epic narrative silverbacks claim respect and tend to resent scepticism.

More likely than not, it's this mental rigidity going with old age which led to the myths' downfall. Because it didn't take long until no-one would believe another word of their cock-'n-bull stories. On the contrary, self-styled experts started re-visiting and fine combing such prominent cold cases as the gory murders of the treacherous Atrides and the horrible crimes allegedly perpetrated by clubfooted Oedipus.

You know, I don't for a moment believe it was he who did it, an elderly lady obsessed with criminal literature whispered into James Thurber's ears, as the two members of the audience happened to leave the theatre together after a performance of Macbeth.

In view of this inexorable erosion of the myth, you would probably have a hard time trying to find another dim-witted archaeologist who, Schliemann-like, might set out looking for the remains of Troy with nothing but his e-book version of the Iliad in his knapsack. Let alone Plato's Atlantis or Poe's Eldorado, all rightly shrugged off as no more than topographical archetypes.

Which, come to think of it, is a real shame. Because, whichever way you look at it, we are all of us very much in search of lost time from the moment we are born. We had become accustomed, in that context, to setting our hearts and minds on that handy little code called myth. Perhaps because, in our heart of hearts, we always knew that the genie, once out of the bottle, would never be cajoled back into it.

Easy does it, said the hangman to the delinquent waxing a little fidgety with anticipation, Haven't you heard? All comes to him who can wait.

And, by the look of it, he may be right, because all seems not lost, as yet. Engendered by the daily scandalmongering of modern media, myths and legends appear to be popping up all over the place like so many mushrooms, poisonous ones, too, most of them, so better not run your tongue over their surface. If their disturbingly brief half-life is a reliable gauge of their quality, that can hardly serve us as a consolation.

This sorry state of affairs may primarily be due to myths being incurable eclectics choosing their materials somewhat indiscriminately. One moment they will rummage in the rubbish bins of more recent history, the next, they will dig into the garbage containers of turbulent everyday life. What good is to come out of such mindless forays into the dark?

If anything did pass the test of time as a true treasure trove for myth-creation, it's the wider complex of what we are happy to call capital crime. Capital for once not in the sense of Marx and FTSE, but as derived from Latin capita, or head. Thereby referring, of course, to that generally overrated part of our anatomy which culprits convicted of murder one risked forfeiting during an execution more often than not performed publicly as a general deterrent.

The overall dogma being that taking somebody's life in a premeditated and perhaps unnecessarily cruel fashion for the basest, yet most common of motives such as jealousy, greed, lust, blood thirst and what have you, constitutes the breaking of a taboo.

So does farting in public, yes, I agree. Except that the latter example of misdemeanour represents no immediate threat to our individual and collective safety, I hope. Nor does it attack or undermine social cohesion. Murder, however, does. Which is why it must not only not go unpunished but had better be seen to get sanctioned by the supreme form of retribution which is putting the culprits to death. An eye for an eye and all that.

Nowadays, such rather barbaric customs that are public executions have almost totally vanished and will be met with in the more primitive of societies, only. In the US, where it survived in some federal states, it's applied with a vicious kind of vengeance hardly less cruel than the original crime it is supposed to punish. To have delinquents wait literally for decades to be executed at a time when, in many cases, they're bound to have become more or less oblivious of their act and may have undergone a process of soul-searching and catharsis seems thoroughly undignified and inhuman.

Cynics will maintain that it's called capital punishment because it will preferably hit the destitute, and among them, mostly the blacks. And so, the ghost of a Karl Marx and a Friedrich Engels are to be met where, according to a majority of Americans, Socialists belong - on death row.

Yet even without that Damoclean sword hanging over their head, the accused in a trial don't stand face to face with their respective opponents in some tedious legal haggle over the clearing mutual claims but have to answer to „the people". That's not just a trifling procedural detail but something of a sea change.

„The people - precisely who are they? In German criminal courts, you will have to look very closely to find so much as a trace of them. This is mainly due to historical reasons, of course. After our horrific experience with Nazi supreme judge Freisler's People's Courts", the pendulum swung back and hit our traditional Jury Courts that survived the Second World War by name only, finally to be done away with altogether.

Good riddance, as they say. Then again, Freisler and friends having been dead for more than half a century, we may be allowed to re-visit the matter briefly. Because, whatever objection you may rightly put forward against the theatrical and show elements of Anglo-Saxon criminal courts relying on the jury system, the demonstrative confrontation of accused and jurors remains of a highly symbolic and practical value nothing to do with political ideology.

The awkward, creepy feeling of being under constant close scrutiny by twelve randomly chosen jurors who will note and interpret each and every twitch of the accused's facial muscles and body language in general is bound to exercise a high degree of psychological pressure on the man or woman in the dock that even the most hardened criminals will find difficult to fend against.

I wish the same could be said of the discrete chambers of German criminal courts, so snug and cosy by comparison you cannot help wondering, on occasion, who, in this setup, are the accused and who are the victims or their next of kin. Therein lies an element of de-penalisation of criminal procedure sometimes hard to bear.

Anyway, no trial of any kind without the ins and outs of the case having been duly ascertained and presented in a manner that will stand up in court. A condition that does stretch the forces of both the police department and the DA's office on many occasions. And since both authorities tend to have a fair number of other cats to skin, unsolved cases will soon end up in the bottom of the stack of files, analogue or digital. Before you know it, the case gone cold will rot away in very much the same manner as does the corpse of the victim that is the object of the file.

Beware of generalizations, I hear you object. And right you are, of course. The long history of crime and punishment abounds with examples of particularly persistent detectives taking unsolved cases very personally and following leads, on and off, over the decades as man trailers will refuse to lose track of a scent across the woods and fields or the streets and alleys of a conurbation rife with confusing smells and odours of any kind.

Such devoted attorneys of the dead deserve a very special homage and our deeply felt gratitude at this juncture, irrespective of whether or not their never-tiring efforts are crowned by success. As that universally accepted principle of Roman law states, no-one can be obliged beyond their capabilities.

How would you like passing large parts of your working life staring at the mangled, mutilated, scorched or decayed bodies of homicide victims and then spend hours and days trying to extract a confession from some evil-minded, cold-blooded, psychopathic or mindless son of a bitch? Precisely. The mere fact that there are men and women out there prepared to take such ordeals upon themselves in our name and stead merits our unqualified esteem.

Which is not to say they should for that reason be kept aloof of our occasional questions and nagging doubts.

For there is also the very opposite category of cases that, even though officially closed as solved, obstinately refuse to fall into oblivion. Why should this be so? Perhaps because, when it comes to the point, the people, those folks the German justice system prefers to keep at arm's length, have a fine sense for the sometimes not even that subtle difference between law and justice.

Whenever cases such as the murder of Berlin student Benno Ohnesorg, in 1867, or that of policewoman Michèle Kiesewetter some forty years later, have not, in the public eye, been investigated as fully as they should have or were even ultimately covered up, they risk turning into cancer growths rapidly spreading their metastases. Before long, those will attack all parts of the judiciary and corrode people's trust in the integrity and independence of the judiciary. That's a frequently underrated risk of destabilisation from inside, going hand in hand with entire societies' external decay.

„Metastasis" in this figurative sense is but another name for myth. Some ways and means of myth-creation can very well be illustrated by a cold case that did not catch much attention in our Western and Central European countries but managed to obtain myth status in far-away Norway and other parts of Scandinavia. Although pretty unique in some respects, it can nevertheless serve almost as a role model in others.

I am of course referring to the case of the so-called Ice-Valley Woman.

No, don't sweat it. This is not about a more recently discovered