Magic Hoffmann

1

 

The thousand mark notes fluttered like swallows, turning circles against the setting sun. When Fred whistled through his fingers, they flocked down and slipped back into his trouser pocket.

‘It's nonsense,' said Nickel and tore Fred from his dreams.

They lay in the grass with a case of apple wine between them. The sun was shining.

Fred muttered with his eyes closed: ‘We could pay our debts and go to Canada - that's what you're always wanting to do.' He opened his eyes and blinked against the blue sky. ‘All for just half an hour's ... work.'

Nickel lay propped up on one elbow gazing over fields and meadows at the village below. Thirty metres away Annette was standing by the fence, stroking a calf and pouring apple wine down its throat. The calf seemed to like it. The other cows were watching the proceedings curiously.

‘You could buy that thingamajig,' said Fred, ‘that camera thing ... you know ...'

‘The lens.'

‘Exactly. And a whole lot of other stuff. A complete kit. You could take fabulous photos of Canadian forests and ice hockey players and whatever else they've got over here. You'll be famous, and in twenty years no one will ask if you once robbed a bank in Oberroden.'

‘Fabulous photos ... of prison maybe.'

Nickel finished the bottle, put the empty back in the case and fished out the next one. His movements were as clear and precise as ever, as if he wanted to demonstrate once and for all the replacing and removing of apple wine bottles.

‘We're hardly going to get to Canada by hanging around and doing waiting jobs at the weekend.'

Fred grabbed a bottle as well. The calf had downed the first bottle, and Annette was raising a second to its lips.

‘And you,' asked Nickel, ‘what do you want with the money?'

‘Presumably eating and drinking costs a few pfennigs in Canada as well.'

‘Two hundred thousand marks is a lot of pfennigs.'

Fred shrugged. ‘For me it's enough just to have the money.'

‘And then?'

‘Nothing then.'

‘I don't get it.'

‘In interviews with rich celebrities you always hear how money isn't important to them, but they'd use it to live on. With me it's the opposite: I don't need much to live on, but I like having it. In the cupboard or under the bed. I like touching it, counting it, looking at the date...' he took a slug, ‘and apart from that we need living expenses, a Jeep, bear traps, that sort of thing.'

‘Bear traps!'

Nickel laughed. But at the same time a shiver of longing ran through him as he imagined the three of them in Canada. Vancouver, a house on the sea, endless forests, photos published in international magazines.

Annette returned with the empties under her arm. She was wearing a red summer dress with yellow spots. Against the background of the green field she looked like a large flower. A gently swaying flower. She threw the bottles onto the grass and herself down beside them. ‘Well?' she asked, looking from one to the other.

‘I'd like to know,' mumbled Nickel, ‘why you of all people reckon to have just discovered the perfect bank robbery, in Dieburg of all places. People have been trying it for centuries.'

‘If Einstein had thought like that he would have ended up a peasant,' said Annette sniffily, and she closed her eyes and turned her face luxuriously towards the sun. ‘As soon as I can speak English properly I'm going to drama school in Canada.'

They drank apple wine and forged plans. The plans became vaster and more colourful, the bank robbery smaller and simpler, the case of apple wine emptier. They laughed as they watched the calf staggering round the field, mooing ever more exuberantly, and Nickel suddenly became convinced: the world belonged to them, and the bank belonged to the world.

 

When Fred returned home that evening and sat down to dinner, Grandma Ranunkel said, as she was dishing up the stuffed cabbage and potatoes: ‘You look just like your father did when he was up to no good.' She was wearing her green and yellow striped dress, a dark apron and the brown cardigan which had been mended a hundred times. Her grey hair was, as usual, severely combed back and piled into a bun.

‘I've found work , Grandma.'

‘Well?' Not very convinced.

Fred nodded, ‘And it's a skilled job.'

Grandma Ranunkel lowered her spoon and eyed him sceptically from behind thick glasses.

‘Skilled? At what?'

‘At…well, there's no real word for it. I'd call it…' he reflected, ‘winning the lottery, but without the lottery.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Well…' he contemplated the steaming cabbage, ‘…someone dreams of becoming a rock star or travelling round the world. For example Nickel would like to go to Canada and become a photographer, but secretly he believes that he'll never really do it, and then I come along.'

Grandma Ranunkel frowned. ‘And?'

‘I develop strategies for people so that they can at least try,' and he added casually, ‘for payment of course.'

Grandma Ranunkel's face assumed an expression of pity.

‘Who would pay for such a thing?'

‘You'll see. Next Friday is my first consultation, and with the fee we can both go…'

‘But,' she interrupted, ‘who has employed you and where?'

‘It works by advertisements; I'll explain later.'

Shaking her head Grandma Ranunkel sat down opposite him at the table. ‘What kind of nonsense is this, child?'

‘Don't worry, Grandma , it's a job with a future…'

Four years later Fred was released from Dieburg juvenile prison.