Men of Snow (34 page)

‘Yes. He seems to be accelerating his relationships at the moment.’

‘But he advises you well?’

‘Yes, Wolf, other than with women, seems to know what he’s doing.’

‘So here’s to a prosperous future Franz,’ she said, raising her glass.

‘I thank you,’ he replied, knowing she meant it.

                                          -------------------------------------------------------------------

He was listening to the early morning financial news. He had left a message at Wolf’s Swedish hotel the night before telling his broker he needed to speak with him as soon as possible.

As he prepared for his morning run he was going through some of his ideas for new investments. It was a well repeated process. He would study the markets for a few weeks, discuss them with Wolf in his plush city centre office before he came up with his new plan. Sometimes they disagreed. It was then that Franz knew he was onto something. However sharp Wolf might be he was still more conservative in his approach. Franz enjoyed the greater risk.

‘It’s my money so let’s just go with it,’ he had often said to his broker.

Wolf would look puzzled and then worried. His face showed all his emotions, something which helped Franz to trust both him and sometimes his judgement.

‘I don’t think this is good,’ Wolf would try, ‘but you’re usually right so I’d better arrange it.’

It was no longer the money. Franz had the life style he wanted. It was more the game, the risk and the satisfaction of being successful when his investments reaped their rewards.

‘You must be rich by now,’ Angela would tell him.

His lawyer was always probing how much he was actually worth.

‘I’m not rich Angela,’ he would inform her, ‘I’m not poor, but I’m not rich.’

‘You live within your means,’ she would try.

‘Yes. Of course, what else would you expect?’

He had known Wolf for almost as long as he had Angela. It was another strictly professional relationship. With Wolf it could be fraught with the unexpected such as his sudden fishing trip to Sweden. There was not the same predictability as there was with Angela, but Wolf had always been a strong support.

Switching off the radio he picked up his keys, locked the door and started down the marble stairway. He had lived in the same apartment for the last twenty five years. Hochner was its janitor who was there every day either to clean the stairs or check the lighting. Once a week Hochner would give the stairs a complete wash down. Franz gave him money every Christmas, knowing that the janitor kept a careful check on everything that happened in the apartment block, especially watching its security camera screens every night. Hochner had promised to always inform Franz of anything out of the ordinary.

‘Winter has come early this year Herr Brucker,’ the janitor had said when they met on the stairs the day before, ‘Reminds me of other times, other places. Once you’ve gone through the harshest of winters it’s something you never forget.’

Franz knew to what he was alluding. Hochner was always keen to talk about the war.

‘It’s almost the same with the heat, but that I could manage. It’s the cold that gets you. No wonder the Poles and Russians drink so much. I hear the Russian government has tried to ban screw tops on vodka bottles, it’ll never make any difference.’

‘You seem to know a lot Hochner about the citizens east of here.’

‘Used to know them too well.’

‘But not anymore.’

‘It’s like this Herr Brucker. There are things you never forget. It....it must be the same for you if I’m not mistaken.’

‘Good morning Hochner,’ he had said quickly.

‘Not that I’m implying anything, you understand,’ the janitor had tried.

‘Of course not,’ had been Franz’s last words, knowing that Hochner would try again. It had been going on for years, these attempts to draw him out.

Running in the darkness always seemed to require less effort. As he approached the park he could see the industrial lights by the docks and the high shadows of the waiting ships. Hamburg was a symbol of Germany’s resurrection, a city now of wealth and progress. To Franz it showed the strength of the German people, again turning history completely around.

There was hardly anybody about this early winter’s morning as he jogged along the tracks he knew so well. His breathing was steady, his lungs taking in each mouthful of frozen air as he concentrated on the ice thinly spread over the paths. He used to run down by the river, pacing himself against some of the ships on their way to the North Sea, their lights glazing the water as he kept up with their speed. Having a ship for a running partner was exhilarating. It made him feel part of its motion, listening to its engines churning the propellers, glancing up to its decks way above him. Hamburg was the centre for so much activity. It had been completely rebuilt after the British had fire bombed the city, another atrocity that been ignored for too long. With victory came justification. To Franz it was obscene the disparity between the criticism of the two sides. More people had been killed in that one bombing raid on Hamburg than all those who had died in the London blitz and yet one had become the story of heroes while the other had been forgotten, the consequence of a war being lost.

Gradually he speeded up his pace. Such thoughts about the war produced the adrenalin. Eventually his mind would empty. He would become just the action of his running, the movement of his arms and legs together as a balanced process that pushed him through the semi darkness, his breath condensing in front of him as he turned at the end of the park. There was no duality. There was only this immersion of his brain, of himself into his body’s activity, into its habitual stages of motion.

The sky began to lighten. He tried to slow down a little as he ran beside the frozen pond, its trees stiffly bent over and reflected in the ice. Running made him feel part of the day, of the park, of his city. He enjoyed the effort. It made him feel clean and cleared out. His will was the source of the body’s energy captured in each step. He was more alive, aware of himself and his environment. It was the same when he went walking every autumn in the Alps.

Each year he booked in the same hotel following the same high mountain routes. Only once had he returned to his childhood village. He had hired a car and driven over one afternoon from the next valley. It was something he had resisted doing for many years. He saw no point in a return. Time changed everything. His house might have been the same and the narrow cobbled streets, but he had been different. He stood there in front of the house’s familiar main door, six windows and sharp angled roof. It seemed smaller than he remembered. There were flower boxes for each window and TV aerials attached to the chimney stack. His memories were of granny waiting to capture him in her afternoon sleep, of aunt Hildegaard and her hero husband’s picture above the fireplace in the front room. The ones of his mother and father had been more difficult. In fact he had tried not to think about either of them. He knew how much he could still resent his father and the way his mother had just acquiesced to her husband in everything of importance, even though she had been far more understanding than him. They had both failed their son, their only child. So his stay in the village had been short. He had walked around the rest of the place, had taken the path down to the lake and then back to the car to drive out of the valley knowing he would never return.

                                          --------------------------------------------------------------------

The defender made the tackle and in one move had retrieved the ball and passed it to the midfield. In seconds the ball was out to the winger before being crossed for the stocky centre forward to rise above everybody else and head it straight past a despairing goal keeper.

Franz watched the TV images with satisfaction. The German national team were at the height of their powers, a combination of strength, solid tactics, a methodical approach, few mistakes and a final end product that meant one victory after another. Their play was essentially Germanic. He understood how influenced the team was by the country’s expectations and tradition of playing in a certain way, the German way, which meant forcefulness balanced with ability, quick thinking, careful preparation and the determination never to be beaten. They were all the ingredients that had always stimulated his sense of nationality. His pride in the team and its success were evidence of his passion for his country that had never changed, especially when that meant beating the Dutch. That for the genuine German football supporter was always the best, to see the white and blacks take apart the orange show offs in the fiercest of European games. When this happened the whole of Hamburg would spend a night of celebration.

Wearing a tracksuit and sipping iced water and lemon he watched the rest of the match against the Portugese this time with the German team completely dominant. He liked the predictability of it all. Every match began with a confident sense of how things would develop. The response now he was nearing seventy was a little more subdued than it used to be, but there was still the clenched fist  whenever the Germans scored.

Once in a while when he was working he had accepted Victor or Michael’s offer to join them in the company’s corporate seats to watch Hamburg. The pride in his city was there but not as strong as that for his country, especially as there were some seasons when the city’s team lost more than they won. Victor was usually well gone on drink before the match started whereas Michael would spend too much of the second half feeding himself on what the company chef had concocted for half time. Franz found their overloud support artificial. He knew that the football meant very little to them except as a way of entertaining clients. Everything was for the business. Franz was there to offer his expertise as well as ensuring everybody knew that on that day the company was sponsoring the match.

‘Come on Franz, lighten up,’ Victor was often telling him when they were at a game, ‘Act like a real Hamburg supporter.’

‘And how is that supposed to go?’ he had asked him.

‘Like everybody else around here.’

‘Drunk and loud you mean.’

‘Yeh, why not, drunk and loud, what the hell’s wrong with that?’

Victor would be smiling and frowning at the same time. It had been his idea when Franz had been working at the company for a few years to secretly organise a high class prostitute for his birthday.

She had knocked on the door of his apartment one night. Franz found out later that Hochner the janitor had been in on the surprise, Victor having talked to him the week before to have it all arranged.

The prostitute had certainly been good looking, tall, dark haired, dressed sophisticatedly with a soft, endearing voice. Franz’s immediate response had been to show her to the door, furious that his line manager could think this was something he would appreciate. Franz for a start detested surprises as well as the idea of somebody at his door late at night. From this time on he had never wholeheartedly trusted Hochner. He did not like the idea of the janitor knowing things about him that he did not.

‘It was supposed to be a birthday surprise Herr Brucker,’ the janitor had explained the next day, ‘Herr Marx said it would be ok. ‘

‘Well it wasn’t,’ Franz told him, ‘I thought we agreed that whatever was happening around here I would be the first to know.’

‘But this was different. This was about you Herr Brucker.’

Bronia the woman called herself in a voice that he found hard to ignore. It was when she had asked him what he wanted her to do and he was about to tell her that he realised how his response had come from other such moments in the past. He had watched her take off her coat and place it carefully over the chair. For the first time in years Chantelle crossed his mind. He had looked at the prostitute then and had wanted to hurt her, to somehow obliterate her. In seconds he had grabbed her arm and pushed her back out of the door to see her eyes moistening with tears as she had staggered down the first steps before turning to him.

‘You are not a gentleman Herr Brucker. I am not to be treated this way.’

Franz had thrown her coat down at her before slamming the door shut trying to control himself, hating more than ever what Victor had tried to do.

In the office the next day he could tell they were all waiting for him to say something about the night before. His deliberate silence confused them. Even the genial Michael had seemed unsure when he had met Franz in the company’s executive canteen.

‘So your birthday yesterday Franz,’ he had tried as they had sat at the same table.

‘Where’s Victor?’ had been his response.

‘Out meeting a client, he should be back this afternoon.’

And then Franz had said nothing else, not a word as Michael had attempted conversation, obviously wondering what had gone wrong.

That afternoon he had found Victor in his office. He looked up at Franz’s entry, forced a smile and said,

‘So Franz, how was last night?’

‘Why? Was something supposed to have happened?’

Victor had waited then, trying to work out his chief logistics manager’s mood.