Magic Hoffmann (16 page)

 

The sounds of a violin concerto could be heard in the empty staircase. The higher Fred climbed, the louder it became. On the fourth floor he stood briefly and listened. Then he went into his room, closed the door and threw himself on the bed. He lay there in the dark without moving. The music was right above him.

The fat man's hand kept coming into his mind, how it had grappled under Annette's blouse. Fred didn't even know exactly what had disturbed him so much. After all he was no stranger to an easy, not to say brazen manner where sex was concerned. But Fred didn't feel that that was what it was about. Just as a warder didn't hit a prisoner so as to caress him. Not in front of other prisoners. And Annette? With that swine? And she with enough money in Switzerland...

Fred closed his eyes. Every time he met Annette he would see the hand on her breast and the fat grey tongue in her mouth, and she would know it.

The music stopped and went back to the beginning. Fred tried to forget le Parisien. He thought of tomorrow, of Nickel, his wife, the child, dinner. And he pictured a black leather suitcase, filled to the brim with hundreds. How he opened it, removed a wad, counted it, how the notes rustled. Or thousands? How big were two hundred thousands? Would he be able to forget Annette and Nickel with all that money in his pocket? Cash gave you broad shoulders and a spring in the step. This he knew.

Fred tried to fall asleep to the image of the suitcase full of money, but the fat man's hand kept intervening. After a while he got up and washed his face. Again the music stopped and went back to the beginning. Should he go up? He knew he wasn't likely to appeal to Moni - even if he ever had or ever would do, whatever he imagined by that. On the other hand he was leaving the day after tomorrow, and she wasn't in her room all that often. Maybe they could drink a glass together, just for fun. And if there was a man upstairs - there had to be some reason for all this romantic carry on - then he would simply leave.

What happened happened, and after that...well.

He climbed to the fifth floor and knocked. It took a while for the door to open, and Moni emerged wearing a crumpled baby-blue trouser suit, shrouded in candlelight and music. She wore her long blond hair loose and had donned a garish mask of lipstick, rouge and eye shadow. Her feet were squeezed into pointed white patent leather boots. She smiled when she recognised Fred.

‘Well?' Moni yelled, to be heard above the music.

‘Well?' Fred yelled back.

She waved him in, closed the door and showed him to the only chair. As she leaned over a candle to the amplifier to turn down the music, Fred saw that she was paler and more tired than usual beneath the make-up. A lemony perfume mingled with sweat and stale smoke.

‘And here I was, thinking they'd caught you,' she stood up, ‘I knocked at your place a few times.'

Of course, the wanted photo. Fred had completely forgotten about it.

‘Knocked at my place?'

‘Well, we're partners now.'

She laughed happily, then grabbed her chest as she was seized by a fit of coughing. She turned away and bent over. Fred, who was pleasantly surprised by the knocking and the partner business, was shocked at such a rattle coming from a body as slight as this. He stood up and made to fetch a glass of water, when the coughing gradually died down, and Moni impatiently waved him back into his seat. She reached for a handy scrap of material, spat into it and threw it into a corner. Then she rubbed her weeping eyes. Eventually her face resembled a painter's palette.

‘It's OK. I'm just not in the best of form.'

‘Of course.' Fred looked at the empty bottles and overflowing ashtrays on the floor. ‘Is there something to celebrate?'

‘Not a thing. Drink, Capt'n?'

Fred nodded, and Moni disappeared into the bathroom, re-emerging with two water glasses full of white wine. She pressed one into his hand and they clinked glasses. ‘Your good health!'

Then she sat down on the bed and sank into a pile of clothes. As she fished a cigarette from the pack, she asked: ‘Well? Did you find your friend?'

Fred hesitated, then nodded vaguely. ‘Hmhm.'

‘Sounds great.'

‘Well, it was...' Fred drank a sip and thought briefly, ‘different than I'd imagined.'

‘If you have to search for your best friend, maybe that's not the best start to a reunion.'

‘The searching was OK.' Fred thought briefly again. ‘I almost came looking for you last night too.'

‘What!' Moni looked up, astonished. The whites of her eyes were marked with fine streaks of blood. ‘Why didn't you? You could have saved me. You wouldn't have found me though.'

‘Are there so many gambling joints round here?'

She lowered her cigarette and frowned. ‘How do you know that?'

Fred pointed at the bedside table. ‘I saw the cards and the chips.'

‘When?'

‘When I woke up last night, I came up here briefly.' He shrugged. ‘The door was open. Did you lose?'

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment longer, then she nodded. ‘All the money from the jackets. And the same again. All because of a king!'

‘The same again?'

‘I borrowed it.'

‘What do you play?'

‘Poker.'

‘Well, you need luck for that.'

‘Nonsense. You need skill. I made a stupid mistake. Moronic!'

For a while she stared furiously at the carpet, then suddenly gave a start: ‘Something big - that would do the trick.'

Fred raised his eyebrows. ‘Something what...?'

‘Counterfeit money or coke or a bank robbery - something worthwhile.'

Fred saw Moni disappear into the bathroom again and return, this time with the bottle. She poured for herself and him, eyed him briefly and asked: ‘Feeling ill?'

‘Me? No. I was thinking of a friend who once planned something like that, but then...'

‘Do you earn good money on a ship?'

‘Well, if you save up...'

‘I can only save when I've something to save.'

‘Anyway, a bank robbery is not a simple matter.'

‘If you're lucky.'

‘No, it's like poker.'

‘What's so difficult about a bank robbery? In with a pistol. Out with the money.'

‘Just a moment,' Fred shook his head, ‘something like that has to be thought through. It needs to be planned down to the last second. Arrive, rob, scarper. And stay relaxed all the time. Not everyone can do it. And location is important, and when and with whom. I mean...' He paused. Moni stood in the middle of the room, the glass to her lips, without drinking, and observed him over the rim. ‘You learn a great deal at sea...?'

Fred avoided her gaze. ‘This friend told me about it.'

‘And did he do it?'

‘He had plans to anyway.'

‘I don't know anyone who'd have the nerve. At the end of the day they're all just drunk and spouting a lot of hot air.'

‘Well, all...'

‘You'd have to find something where the police don't get involved. For example if you were to shaft the Russians - you wouldn't land up in prison, just six foot under.'

‘I'd stick with ballet.'

‘Exactly! But between sewing jackets and a little gambling, I barely get to do it.' Fred found a little gambling a strange way of putting it for the thirteen thousand marks lost

‘The business with the Russians isn't a bad idea at all. And afterwards you just take off - on a ship for example...'

Fred pretended he had to burp. Then he quickly took a sip of wine. Somehow the conversation had got on to the wrong track. As if Moni suspected something. Was that why she was looking at him so strangely the whole time?

‘It's quite the thing with ships.'

Moni sighed. She turned away and took a few teetering steps through the room, till she reached the edge of the bed. Through half-closed eyes, she saw Fred wedged between the arms of the chair, his legs crossed, both hands clutching his glass.

‘It's quite the thing with women too, eh?'

‘Pardon?'

‘Well, four years at sea...'

Fred looked at her, perplexed, and there was a pause.

He started to shift around uneasily in his chair. ‘I don't understand.'

‘Precisely.'

For a moment she stared absently at the floor, then she suddenly fell back onto the bed with the glass in her hand. The bedsprings squeaked, wine went everywhere, and Moni heaved a sigh. Now Fred could only see her white boots, decorated with silver stars at the calf, which protruded from a pile of hats and clothing. He sipped his wine in confusion and said not a word. The candles burned quietly, and the violins droned on. Fred observed the boots, as if they might give him a clue.

‘I've terrible back pains!'

Fred looked up from the boots and craned his neck. ‘Pardon?'

‘Back pains. I wonder what might help?'

‘Perhaps a massage?'

‘Really? Well, we could give it a go...'

Fred carefully put his glass down and went trembling to the bed. Moni lay there, her arms outstretched, her eyes closed.

‘You'd have to turn over.'

Her head moved gently. ‘Don't want to.'

 

The window was open. The sky was like liquid marble. Fred lay in Moni's bed and watched the clouds going by. Something was sticking into his back, but he felt too good to shift aside. When he finally did, he realised that he had slept on a high-heeled shoe. He held it in front of him and looked at it dreamily.

When Moni got up in the morning to go to her ballet lesson, she had given him a kiss. Fred had pretended to be asleep and had secretly watched her getting dressed. Then the door shut, and Fred went back to sleep with the image of Moni in his mind as, naked and smoking a cigarette, she appraised the pile of clothes like an opponent, to see whether it would have a suitable garment for her or whether she might just give up wearing clothes.

Some time during the night he had told her the truth. About the bank robbery, prison and about his travel plans. He didn't know whether Moni had believed him, but at the time he didn't care. He had even asked her if she'd like to come too, and she had answered drunkenly: ‘Why not? Where exactly is Canada?'

He dug a pack of cigarettes out from under the bedclothes, lit one and smoked it on an empty stomach.

He got up around midday, dressed without showering, so as not to wash off Moni's scent, and went to the Ku'damm. In the Kempinski, a luxury hotel, he ordered a hearty breakfast. Afterwards he had exactly twenty marks left. It didn't bother him that several guests were giving him filthy looks. He grinned at them over his eggs and bacon: Yes, look here, this is Magic Hoffmann after a magic night!

He spent the afternoon strolling down the Ku'damm. In the shops he sought out what he might buy tomorrow, and he asked about Frankfurt- Canada flights in a travel agency. He didn't give his departure date any thought. The pressure was off. Tonight, once the business with Nickel was over and done with, he would see Moni again, and that was the only thing that interested him at the moment.

When the shops closed, he went to the underground.

 

The carriage emptied from one station to the next, until only Fred and two women of around forty with pale puffy faces remained. Shopping bags were arranged around their feet. While they were talking, they reached into the bags almost incessantly and shoved sweets, crisps, chocolate bars and small salamis in their mouths. The train was now travelling above ground, and outside identical new houses flashed by. They were surrounded by flat empty spaces with the odd patch of grass, red sand and puddles full of garbage. It was dusk, and most windows were lit up. There were parking spaces between the houses and muddy paths, trampled into the sand. Fred searched in vain for bars, restaurants or shops. No wonder the rents are cheap here, thought Fred, but it's cheap in Greenland too - didn't mean you had to move to Greenland.

‘So he was a kidney donor,' said one woman, as she ripped open a Milky Way.

‘Of course,' replied the other with a sweet in her cheek.

‘And he bought himself a Datsun with the money.'

‘Yes, the Japanese ones last.'

‘Not this one. Two months later he drove it into a wall.'

‘No!' The woman with the sweet almost choked.

‘Totalled.'

‘Who?'

‘The car.'

‘Oh my God!'

‘He kept the parts - steering wheel, doors and so on - and hung them up in his room. Now he sits on the back seat waiting for the appointment for his operation.'

‘So what do you get for one?'

‘Enough for a new car, he says. Now he always wears an eyepatch - as practice.'

During the conversation, Fred had leaned closer to the women, in order to hear better. Now they clammed up suddenly, and Fred sat back. Did he understand correctly? Or was this yet another Berlin joke, like in Ringo's bar? Driving the passengers away...

At Hönow station he followed the women down a staircase onto the forecourt. Desolate countryside to left and right, a road ahead of him, isolated yellow points of light beyond it. Other passengers streamed past him and turned corners towards the houses, until he was left on his own. Meanwhile it was almost dark. He crossed the road and came upon a small lake. Around it the black facades of villas stared at him. The only sound was a gentle ripple. The yellow lights had disappeared. He walked down the street past a dilapidated hut, festooned with faded pictures of sausages and fried eggs and looked for the route described by Nickel. A gentle wind sprang up, and the leaves on the trees rustled all along the street.

Suddenly a gigantic concrete block, lit up pink, rose out of the void. Hotel Tradition stood in neon letters over the filthy walls. A police car was parked in front of it. Fred veered quickly into the next gravel road, and after wandering aimlessly for a while to get away from the car, the yellow lights appeared again. After a couple of hundred metres he recognised pointed roofs above the lights, and shortly afterwards he came upon a small cross-roads leading into Nickel's street. He couldn't find any house numbers, so he read the names on the garden gates. The voices of TV heroes emerged from behind closed blinds.

Then he found the name he was looking for: Zimmer-Klose, done in pottery.

Nickel opened the door and beamed as he approached Fred with open arms. He had an apron on, a wooden spoon in his hand, and he was wearing a chef's hat. ‘At last!' he shouted, and after he had embraced Fred and patted him on the back, he performed a quick pirouette and asked: ‘How do you find me?'

‘You mean the hat?'

‘Don't I look like Bocuse?'

‘Like what?'

‘You again,' Nickel punched him on the shoulder, ‘what a wag!'

Then he took Fred to one side and whispered: ‘Annoyingly, a friend of Lycka's has dropped by and we couldn't send her away. Lycka knows about everything, but in front of Heike we'd better not talk about...you know what I mean.'

‘And when will we talk about you know what?'

‘After dinner. I've prepared everything.'

Nickel showed Fred down a short hall into the living room. The enormous room took up almost the whole ground floor. With polished floor boards, beams on the ceiling, white plaster walls and any amount of antique peasant furniture, the room looked like it belonged in a lifestyle magazine. Lighting was provided by candles throughout the room and a ceiling lamp of colourful stained glass. The outline of a garden with fruit trees could be seen through a sliding glass door. The only thing that stood out from the rustic idyll was the dining table with its orange plastic table cloth and blue Chinese bowls, spoons and teacups.

Two women stood at the sliding door. Two women, one type: sociable, clever, self-confident. Both had oval faces, pointed noses and practical short haircuts. Both wore flat shoes, freshly washed jeans and dark pullovers. Both had rolled up their sleeves, and they greeted Fred with a powerful handshake. And both gave him an old-fashioned look when he turned his back on them.

Then they sat down at the orange plastic table cloth, and Nickel served dinner. There was rice, rice and rice. Accompanied by tea. No alcohol, no mounds of meat. Fred tried not to show his surprise.

‘I thought you wouldn't know these different preparations. This one's with onions and various spices, this one's with aubergine paste, this is with mango - all vegetarian, try them all,' insisted Nickel, as if trying out what was on the table were somewhat weird.

‘Why be extravagant when simple things taste better, don't you think?'

Then he laughed and Lycka and Heike joined in. Students, Fred remembered.

In fact Lycka was an articled clerk in a lawyer's office. Having moved to Berlin three years ago from Hildesheim, she met Nickel at a church function. A wild man, she thought as he stood next to her with his beret and long hair, listening closely to the lecture about vanished Indian cultures. Admittedly she'd subsequently talked him out of the beret, and the length of the hair often came up for discussion, but from the point of view of their character and common interests she felt they went well together. They had planned the pregnancy, then bought the house so the child would have a garden, then conceived the child, produced the child, and now they were thinking of planning a second. They had a large circle of friends, looked after an elderly neighbour and went to the cinema once a week. They still felt comfortable in the East, even if the initial enthusiasm had given way to a more sober assessment. Lycka used a humorous comparison to explain the situation to good friends from the West: very pleasant but rather simple-minded people, in whose company she felt like a white woman in the bush; she often wore grimy clothes deliberately, and she always took the trouble to give good advice.

When the rice had been distributed, Nickel raised his steaming teacup. ‘If I may toast in Chinese, so to speak: to my friend Fred! As you know,' he turned to the women, ‘he has been travelling for a long time. Now he's back home.' He blinked at Fred. ‘And I hope we never depend on the post again for so long to hear from each other.'

They clinked glasses, and the women looked curiously at Fred. Fred nodded, said ‘thank you' and burned his tongue.

Nickel resolved: ‘Enjoy!'

All four leaned over their bowls, and Fred chewed away, his initial dismay giving way to reassurance - at least the rice hadn't been spiced with his two hundred thousand. Still the uneasy feeling remained that each tiny element of the decor had cost more than the entire meal, and that the recipes seemed to come from Nickel's Rosicrucian mother. Yesterday evening Nickel had answered the question about his parents by saying he'd had nothing to do with them for a long time and that was fine by him. Did Nickel know his cooking was just like his mother's?

For a while they talked about this and that. Heike was studying Romance languages and literatures, but before that she'd had a go at architecture and theatre studies and even philosophy, and that led to a lot of refined debate. Then Lycka told a few anecdotes about life in a lawyer's office, Nickel cursed - without reason, but nonetheless vehemently - typical German behaviour, whereupon Heike complained about a professor who was giving her bad, that is to say racially motivated, marks. Her grandfather had been Belgian, and you could spot it a mile off. ‘Culture is culture,' agreed Nickel, ‘it's what differentiates people. And I don't mean that judgementally. Of course there are certain cultures which can tolerate each other less well. Such as the Rumanian - now, if I'm to be quite honest...'

He left the sentence unfinished and smiled at the assembled company. Heike nodded and helped herself to more rice. ‘I always notice it in the university canteen: the others load up their plates so much...' she made a sweeping gesture, ‘I only take this much...' She looked as if she were stroking a mouse. ‘And then they keep asking me if I'm not hungry, and then I understand: my grandfather was Belgian. These Teutonic portions are not for me.

Nickel and Lycka nodded and chewed noisily in agreement. Fred observed Heike from behind his spoon and felt she was putting on a fair bit of weight, despite the small portions. Not out of the question that her father was Belgian.

‘There are two sides to everything,' said Nickel, ‘naturally we're in favour of multiculturalism, but when you see what's going on around the world - well, I'm just happy our borders are secure against fanatics.'

Lycka nodded. ‘And if anyone needs to protect themselves against fanatics, it's us - with sane immigration laws Hitler couldn't have become Chancellor!' She laughed, and Heike and Nickel joined in. Fred felt as if he were back in maths class, when his fellow pupils had all cheerfully worked out the decimal place, like rolling off a log.

‘The worst thing these days is this uranium smuggling.' Lycka continued. ‘If a Russian brings one full suitcase in, that's enough to poison the whole of Germany. Just imagine: a single Russian! And how many come every year...? If it were up to me, and I say this as a mother: the Russians...' she made a gesture like a conductor silencing an orchestra.

Then they talked about all kinds of other horrors in the world - hunger, drugs, wars - and they were all of the view that central Europe must stick together. Lycka kept doling out the rice, and eventually Nickel enquired if Fred had found his way with no problem. Fred told them about the remarkable conversation he'd eavesdropped on in the tube, and asked if it could really have been about cars. Whereupon the other three looked at each other and laughed, and Nickel said: ‘Yes, yes, the Ossis and their cars.'

Fred looked anxiously round the table, but nobody seemed to want to explain the thing to him. He had already been struck several times by this amused repetition of sentences and these cryptic smiles. As if this were some game: whoever doesn't know what we're not saying is out.

After the third portion of rice, Fred put his spoon down. ‘Nickel, how about you show me your son?'

‘But...' Nickel pointed to his newly filled bowl.

‘Sorry, but I don't have that much time.'

Nickel and Lycka exchanged glances.

‘All right then.' Nickel dabbed at his lips with the serviette. ‘But you'll have to be quiet.'