Kismet

Chapter 10

If Marilyn Monroe had gone through life in the company of a small, thin, spotty sister who wore braces on her teeth, you could have said Offenbach beside Frankfurt looked like the Monroe sisters side by side. Although there were hardly five kilometres between their boundaries, up to now I’d been there at most four or five times, and after my first visit I’d always needed extremely compelling inducements to go again. Unless you knew better, you drove into the town, down a street a hundred metres wide and lined by grey office blocks, until you were right out of it again, and glad to see a few faces appear on the advertisement hoardings on both sides of the road from time to time. I’ve no idea what the people of Offenbach did with themselves all day, but at least they carefully avoided their drive-through main road with its resemblance to an airport runway. The only evidence of any human life outside the eight-hour working day was the existence of the snack bars that had sprung up here and there in front of office facades, and the logos winking from dark corners and pointing the way to fitness centres and gambling salons. You felt this was the way a main thoroughfare would look after a deadly epidemic.

If you knew your way around a bit, there came a point where you turned off right to the town centre and came to a square about the size of a football field, its most impressive building apparently inspired by the need to give the bunker architecture of World War Two a chance in civil life. It was a huge, higgledy-piggledy, unplastered pile of concrete forcing its way up like a grey monster amidst the silvery department stores and brightly coloured shopping malls. Although signs promised you that the monster contained a pizzeria, ice cream parlour and supermarket, and in spite of the trouble taken to provide for something like an inviting atmosphere with outdoor flights of steps, airy passageways and terraces, you couldn’t shake off the feeling that the moment you set foot in the place you’d be arrested, shot, and processed into something. Or anyway, I couldn’t shake off the feeling. The typical citizen of Offenbach, at least if he liked doing drugs, hanging about aimlessly and supplying his environment with boom-boom music from a portable cassette recorders, just loved to linger outside and inside the building. And the citizen of Offenbach who was so tight that he pissed and threw up against the nearest wall instead of looking for a public toilet liked the building too. But the one who, of course, thought particularly highly of it was the citizen of Offenbach who had just failed his final school exams and was now in a hurry to become an established part of the great wide world of hanging about and throwing up.

The problem with the town, for anyone who didn’t know it, was that there was almost no means of finding your way anywhere except down the plague-stricken avenue and past the monster building. Once you’d done that Offenbach turned out not much uglier than Darmstadt or Hanau. The usual pedestrian zone, the usual box-like sixties buildings, the usual crimes freely and publicly committed in the name of municipal architecture. But the first impression stuck, affecting everything else. I had once found myself in Offenbach standing outside a perfectly normal little department store and thinking: good heavens, this has to be the ugliest little department store in the world.

So I drove past the monster, left the square behind, stopped by the side of the road and, opening my window, asked a young man who looked local for the street where the Adria Grill stood. He plucked his sparse moustache for a while and frowned all over his retreating forehead before he began to tell me. He took his time about it, and managed to make turning right twice and left once sound a very complicated business, but finally we had it. I thanked him and followed the route he had described.

Ten minutes later I parked the car in a quiet side street. Blocks of flats, bars, a garage, a gay sex shop. I walked a little way until I was outside the glass door with the words Adria Grill on it. The doorway and window were draped inside with crochet wall-hangings. The menu was up in a glass case by the door. It was Yugoslavian and International Specialities cuisine as found chiefly in Germany, so far as I knew: fifteen meat dishes with chips, five salads, two desserts and fifteen varieties of schnapps. The fact that this cuisine was now very seldom called after Yugoslavia, but after one of the tracts of land that had seceded from Yugoslavia over the past few years with strong support from the German Foreign Ministry, was indicated by the cocktail menu with little Croatian and German flags stuck on it: for five marks ninety-five you could drink a Genscher Sunrise.

As I entered the restaurant about fifteen men fell silent and turned their heads my way. They were sitting and standing more or less separately at tables and the bar, but they were all one party taking up the whole room. Most of them were around fifty and looked as if they always had been, as if they’d always been hanging around in bars and only went out now and then to get cheap suits and haircuts. The exceptions were two young men in their mid-twenties sitting in the darkest and most remote corner, with shaved heads and wearing flashy sports jackets. They all had beer glasses in front of them, and as I went up to the bar and wished the landlord ‘Good evening’, they all remained silent. Perhaps the swelling on my face was more impressive than it had seemed to me in the mirror at home. I hoped they’d decide to regard me as someone who’d had bad luck, not a thug.

‘Evening. What’ll it be?’ The landlord, a massive man with a round, comfortable face, looked at me in a free and easy but friendly way.

‘A beer, please.’

He turned to the beer tap, and I looked around the room with an innocent expression, as if I noticed neither the silence nor the glances bent on me.

A few dusty fishing nets and two faded posters of Dubrovnik hung on the walls by way of decoration. Otherwise the place had bare wooden tables, stained beige linoleum on the floor, a jukebox flashing only faintly under layers of dirt, and pale green fabric lampshades in which bulbs too strong for them had burnt an irregular pattern of small, black-rimmed holes. The only relatively new and well-cared-for item was a large photograph in a frame with a removable back; it was enthroned behind the bar on top of the shelves of schnapps bottles. The photo showed a grey-haired man in a white admiral’s uniform with plenty of gold buttons and coloured braid, kissing another man on the cheek. All that could be seen of the other man was the back of his head.

The landlord brought me the beer. ‘Cheers.’

After I had smoked two cigarettes, ordered another beer, and looked ahead of me with determined naivete, the guests got talking again one by one. Five minutes later loud, confused voices filled the room. Some of the men were speaking Croatian, many German, mostly in Hessian dialect. Their subjects of conversation were prices, the weather, sport, women. One of them fed some coins into the jukebox, and soon Bonnie Tyler was drowning them all out with Total Eclipse of the Heart.

I drank my second beer and ordered a third. When the landlord pushed the glass over to me, I beckoned him closer. He propped his round elbows on the bar and turned his ear my way.

‘If you don’t mind a direct question…’

He nodded and winked encouragingly at me. He probably thought, after my looking-like-a-sheep act, I wanted to ask the way to the toilet or something equally delicate.

‘… have you ever heard of the Army of Reason?’

For a moment his eyes seemed to stop looking at me but without actually closing, the way hands can suddenly stop in mid-gesticulation. Then he turned away in a leisurely fashion, as if at the end of a fairly long conversation between two guests about the meaning of life, went back to the tap and continued serving drinks. If he looked my way I was just a piece of furniture. If I’d left without paying he probably wouldn’t even have glanced up.

I stood around for a while, thinking. The first guests began ordering food, and I watched as the landlord leaned through an open hatch beside the bar, passed on orders and received plates. As far as I could see, there were two men working in the kitchen. The chef and a young assistant. I took a pen out of my pocket and wrote, on a beer mat: Two members of the Army of Reason rang this place on Thursday. I want to know who they were. I’m not leaving until I do.

Next time the landlord, loaded down with plates, tried pushing his way past me I got in his way and put the beer mat in his shirt pocket.

‘I’m waiting five minutes. If you still haven’t spoken to me then, you’ll be doing lousy business here this evening.’

He walked on without reacting. But soon after that the chef’s assistant appeared in the room, took over at the tap, and the landlord beckoned me over to the end of the bar.

‘I got no idea what yer talking about. I’m running a bar, I am, not a war.’

‘But you made off fast enough when I mentioned the Army.’

‘Hey, look at you! If a man what got a mug like that talks garbage, am I a shrink?’

I looked at his round face. Nothing about it indicated that he was lying. He was the image of a fat, comfortable man who didn’t like trouble in his life. And he managed to run this scruffy place so that a lot of people felt happy here and the takings were probably in tune. If one of his guests was the member of a gang extorting protection money, he wouldn’t want to know. However, he would take messages on the phone, pass them on, and keep his thoughts to himself. And he would act the simple clown for someone like me trying to worm those thoughts out of him.

I pointed to the framed photograph. ‘Who’s that?’

His gaze followed the direction of my finger, and when he looked at me again I saw something unpleasant in his eyes for the first time. Irritated, he said, ‘’S’our president, innit?’

‘Mine too? Never saw him look like that.’

‘S’posing you ain’t noticed, this here’s a Croatian restaurant. Thass my homeland, is Croatia, thass where my heart beats.’

‘Ah.’

‘So whass your line, eh? Asking questions, like?’ The amiable fat man was increasingly coming to resemble a fat slob with a fanatical light in his eyes.

‘Private eye,’ I said, and went on, without letting him get a word in, ‘You said you’re running a bar here, not a war. And you said your heart beats in Croatia. What’s that funny uniform your President’s wearing?’

First he said nothing, then he raised his voice. ‘Funny?’ And as there had been no music playing for some time now, the babble of voices died down too.

‘Whassa big idea? Funny!’

I looked from the presidential photo to the now red-faced landlord and back again. I myself didn’t know exactly what my idea was. But after more than a week I was at last beginning to get some idea of what kind of outfit the Army of Reason, with its silly name, might be. ‘Reason’ had come of the tosh Dr Ahrens talked, I felt sure of that. He had liked that word too much, whether because he linked it to some deeper meaning, or because he just thought it sounded interesting. But ‘Army’, I thought, was from somewhere else. For instance a place where war was thought a matter of honour and uniforms were smart. The word Army might be intended to make people think that instead of an average gang this bunch were something higher, something pure, serving a good cause. And perhaps they even were in a way serving what they called a good cause. They wouldn’t be the first gang to try sanitising their obscene business by using zero point such and such a percentage of the takings to throw a few crusts to the poor.

‘OK, not funny. But a uniform. Does he like that sort of costume stuff, or is it the official dress of a Croatian president?’

By now there were no more clattering forks or clinking bottles to be heard, and the landlord and I were centre stage. I wondered how long, if the argument became more animated, our audience would confine themselves to watching and listening. And I estimated how many seconds it would take me to get out of the door.

After the landlord had stared at me for some time as if I wanted to steal his President’s gold buttons and use them as bog fittings, he pulled himself together and said, as calmly as he could. ‘Reckon we done enough talking. The beer’s on me. Push off.’

I shook my head. As I did so it seemed to me as if something was moving in the darkest part of the back of the room. I took a few steps back towards the door until I had a view of all the customers. There were no more real clues for me to pick up here; I had only to look into those stony faces to see that. Whether they’d understood what I was riling the landlord about or not — this was their landlord, their drinking-hole, and I was in the way. But perhaps I could kick up enough fuss for one or other of them to let something slip by mistake.

I couldn’t. Before my general announcement to the whole company — ‘There’s a gang of racketeers in Frankfurt at the moment calling itself the Army of Reason…’ — had died away, the door behind me opened, and several hands grabbed me at the same moment, knocked me off my feet and rammed me head first into the bar. There was a mighty crash, and everything went dark before my eyes for a few seconds. When it was light again, and I felt my arms twisted behind my back, the first thing I thought of was my pistol. It was about ten thousand kilometres away in my trouser pocket. The second thing I thought of was the way something had been moving at the back of the room. They must have gone out through another door and round outside the place. The third thing I realised, with relief, was that my nose had escaped the impact. Finally I recognised the flashy sports jackets to left and right of me.

‘Whaddya want we do with this bastard, then?’

They were addressing the landlord. Berliners, judging by their accent. Did the Berliners have a finger in every pie now? I turned my head until I could look into the sodden eyes of one of the baldies. ‘That dulcet tone of voice, that elegant phrasing, anyone can see we have visitors from the capital.’

‘Shut your gob!’ he snarled, kicking me in the back of the knees.

‘How about we see who he is?’ said the landlord, sounding as friendly and casual again as he had when I arrived. I had definitely underestimated him.

While the two shaven-headed men went through my pockets, some of the guests left the restaurant in silence. The rest watched the show with interest. Some lit cigarettes, others sipped their beer. The only one in the room who seemed unhappy with the situation but couldn’t escape it was the chef’s assistant. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him fidgeting nervously with beer mats and turning his head aside at frequent intervals.

‘The bastard’s got a gun!’ cried one of the Berliners, cracking his heel into the backs of my knees again. Obviously he was used to knowing where and how to lash out. Another couple of kicks and I might even had been wishing he’d hit me in the face for a change.

He held my pistol in front of my face. ‘Whaddya call this, then? Come on, whaddya call this?’

‘Pistol, a pistol.’

‘Got it!’ cried his friend, proudly waving my wallet. While the knee expert held me down, the man who was so triumphant over finding a wallet in the inside pocket of a jacket was looking at my papers.

‘Kemal Ka… ka… What sort of a name’s that? Kaka… Krap, I call it. Kemal Krap!’ He laughed, held my ID out to his mate, and they both laughed. ‘Kemal Krap! Hey, that’s good!’

‘Why make it so complicated, lads? Why Kemal? Why not just Krap Krap?’

‘Keep your mouth shut, I said.’

This time his kick made my legs crumple, and for a moment I was hanging in the air by my arms, which were still twisted behind my back. When I screamed they dropped me, kicked me in the side so that I landed on my back, and the knee expert put his foot on my throat. My pistol was dangling in the air above me from his hand.

‘One more crappy remark like that and I finish this off.’

I briefly closed my eyes to show that I’d got the message. Meanwhile more guests were leaving the place. Were they thinking that the show was getting stronger all the time, and what was about to happen now was too unappetising for them? I turned my eyes to the tap. The chef’s assistant had stopped playing with beer mats, and was staring straight ahead of him, gritting his teeth. If this went on he was my only hope. I unobtrusively moved my arms. As far as I could tell from the feel of it, I’d only imagined them cracking.

‘You a Turk, then?’

‘I’m a Frankfurter.’

‘I said no crappy talk!’

The pressure on my throat was increased.

‘I thought the landlord wanted to know who I was,’ I gasped, ‘not just theories.’

Knee Expert frowned. ‘Whassat in aid of?’

Before I could answer, his friend pushed into my line of vision. ‘We got Turks back home too…’ He grinned down at me. ‘Been fighting them bastards two years.’ He spread the fingers of one hand and waggled them up and down. ‘Count ’em, you! That’s how many I done in. One more won’t make no difference.’

‘Yes, I hear that kind of thing goes on in Berlin.’

‘Berlin? You daft or what? Nope, in our country! Get an education, you layabout! Whaddya think them shitty Muslims are to us? Kemal Kraps, the whole bunch.’

‘I see.’ I tried to look expressionless. ‘What a wonderful education in foreign languages you get in your native land! Amazing!’

‘You watch yer step,’ said the landlord, coming into the small circle of space above me. ‘You ain’t bin acting none so friendly here. You insult our President, you made fun of our country. Dunno why, we’re peaceful folk, we never done you no harm. Fact is, I wouldn’t mind teaching you a lesson — but forget it. You clear out now, and you hear this: show yer face in here again and you’ll be thinking of today real sad, remembering how pretty it once wuz. Get it?’

‘And how.’

The landlord was still looking into my eyes rather as if he was not too happy with the decision to let me go, but in the end he nodded to the Berliners and disappeared behind the bar. Knee Specialist looked disappointed.

‘This beggar’s a lucky beggar too,’ he said, and couldn’t refrain from letting me feel once more how quickly my larynx would be crushed if he wanted. Finally he took his foot away.

It was some time before I could get to my feet and follow him to the bar. As if the last ten minutes hadn’t happened, he was standing there casually watching the chef’s assistant draw him a beer.

‘My pistol, please.’

He slowly turned his head and looked surprised. ‘What pistol?’ And to his mate, standing next to him, ‘Imagining things, ain’t he? Potheads, all these guys.’

‘They ain’t allowed no beer, see? Knifing folk, screwing bints, all that shitty drugs stuff, they can have that. But there ain’t nothing for Allah in a beer.’

They looked at me with relish.

I leaned both arms on a bar stool to take the weight off my knees and looked down at the floor, exhausted. While that foot had been on my throat, there’d been no room left for pain. Now it was quickly taking over all the parts of me that had been abused over the last ten minutes. I sighed. ‘The gun’s registered. If I lose it I have to report the loss and say where and when it happened. A lie risks me my job, and I’m not telling any lies for you. So either you finish me off now after all, or you give me my pistol, or this place will be full of cops tomorrow.’

I looked at the floor again, fumbled for a cigarette in my pocket, lit it, and waited for whatever they decided. By now everything was hurting so much that I felt almost indifferent to it. Only I didn’t want to look at them any more. Except when I shot them.

‘Take the magazine out, give him his gun, then maybe he’ll go.’

Soon after that something fell into my jacket pocket. Without even turning round again, I staggered out of the door.