Kismet

Chapter 20

Two months later Romario opened his new bar, Rommy’s Irish Pub. We had met by chance on the underground just as I came back from four weeks in Corsica.

‘Why an Irish pub?’ I asked, baffled.

‘Because there isn’t one around here yet, and people like pubs. Guinness, whiskey, Irish music — goes down great.’ Romario was wearing a new, slightly shiny suit with big leather buttons, coloured trainers with about four layers of sole, he had blow-dried the hair above his forehead into a surfer’s-paradise wave that enclosed a large hole full of air in its tall curve, and was beaming as if embarking on the project of his life.

‘I got the money from the insurance, see?’

‘What will there be to eat?’

‘In the pub? Did you ever eat anything in a pub?’

‘No, but I’ve only ever been in one two or three times, and then only because I had to. The beer’s like gnat’s piss, but you still drink it to help you put up with the music.’

‘Oh, you…!’ He laughed, and brushed his finger-tips on my shoulder.

‘And now I’m naturalised I had no trouble at all with a licence and rental agreements. Honest, Kemal, you’ve no idea how grateful I am to you. It all went so well with Hottges: fast and friendly, no trouble at all. We even went out for a drink together a few times, and he’d have come to the opening, but now he’s had himself transferred to Braunschweig.’

‘Oh yes?’

Romario waved it away. ‘Family business of some kind. A pity, eh? The two of you could have met again. I still haven’t quite worked out how it is you know each other, but I can give him news of you if you like. We sometimes talk on the phone.’

‘You talk to one another on the phone?’

‘It’s just that, among Frankfurters,’ he said, winking at me, ‘and I’m a Frankfurter now, I’ve got it all in black and white. Well, anyway, he misses the city a lot.’

‘Tell me, Romario, is it that I’ve been away so long, or is there something different about you?’

‘What…? Oh, I must get out here. Right, I’m counting on you and Slibulsky. You’ll get written invitations. See you.’ He got out of the underground train and set off, waving.

The party was a typical Romario occasion. The invitation card was adorned with a shamrock leaf which had eyes and a smiling mouth, and said: Rommy’s Irish Pub, Guaranteed Good Company and a Happy Atmosphere. The card added, with an exclamation mark, that you had to show it to get in. Either he had really imagined something like bouncers on the door, massive men who had to stay on watch outside, and a pub full to bursting with the rich, beautiful and famous, or else possession of a German passport had given him a taste for border checks of every kind. In fact he could think himself lucky if a few curious passers by came in from the street during the afternoon to join our small party and not let the atmosphere bother them. I’ve no idea if the place was really anything like an Irish pub. But it did resemble the kind of bar that you seldom remember next day, because you went into it only at the end of an evening’s boozing when everywhere else was closed. Halfway sober, hardly anyone would choose to sit in a tunnel twenty metres long, with only one window, beige woodchip wallpaper and dark brown, wiry wall-to-wall carpeting. Little blue globes like nightlights with yellow shades stood on the tables, providing minimum lighting and making it feel as if the committee of the local euthanasia group normally met here. In addition, at least to start with, the music was that typical Irish hoppety-hop fiddling and yodelling that always made me wonder whether the Irish listen to it themselves or just produce it for export as part of their successful folklore myth, advertising the fact that there may be nothing to eat in the pub but it’s cheerful.

Slibulsky and I were sitting on one of the corner seats upholstered with imitation green corduroy, drinking whiskey, and Slibulsky was working out how much we might get for the BMW still standing in his garage, always remembering the smashed the stereo system. Next week the ad appeared in the paper with an asking price of eighty thousand.

Zvonko and Leila were sitting on another upholstered corner seat, their heads close together, and seemed to have entirely forgotten the presence of the chattering Brazilian transvestites, former Saudade customers putting back Guinness for all they were worth, and a handful of people who looked as if they wished they’d been invited somewhere else. Leila was working three times a week as an ice cream vendor now, and that was how she had met Zvonko. In the mornings she took a language course, and after the summer holidays she was going to start school. Slibulsky and Gina had seen about enrolling her and getting her a residence permit, had given her a room of her own in their flat, and more or less adopted her. We didn’t see each other often, and when we did it was in company. Once we had gone for a walk alone together, had found almost nothing to talk about, and we had probably both been relieved when we said goodbye. Those few days together — the hopes, sometimes the fun — belonged to another time and were only in our way now. Occasionally, when I came to eat a meal or fetch Slibulsky, our glances met for longer than necessary, and it all came back to me.

Slibulsky had told me that Leila had hired a colleague of mine to find her father. She had enough money. One of the two suitcases we’d taken away from the refugee hostel was full to the brim, as I also learned from Slibulsky, with gold plates, jewellery and banknotes. Stasha Markovic must have been fairly raking in the money on her own account. The video cassettes were still at my flat. When I came back from holiday I finally managed to clear them away into the back corner of my wardrobe. Lying there in the dark at night, I sometimes felt as if they were enriched uranium or some such thing, and would send invisible radiation through the wood of the wardrobe and the whole flat. Leila didn’t ask about them. Perhaps by now she had guessed at some of it, and was deliberately leaving the cassettes with me. Or the thought of what they showed hurt so much that she was simply blocking out their existence for the time being.

I hoped it would never occur to Leila to hire any reasonably competent detective to find out in exactly what accident, how and where her mother had died.

While Slibulsky got us another drink, Zvonko was talking to Leila and making her laugh. Even through the dim light, I could see her eyes shining, and her overcrowded-bistro-table face changed for a moment and wore an enchanting expression of pure, relaxed happiness. I quickly looked away.

‘And how’s things going with Gina?’ I asked when Slibulsky came back with two full glasses.

‘Oh, we don’t see much of each other at the moment, working too hard, both of us, but it’s OK,’ he murmured, dismissing the subject, and moved swiftly on to talk about the World Cup. France were perfectly acceptable as world champions, we agreed, although we’d both been betting on the Dutch. A Zinedine Zidane poster had been hanging in Slibulsky’s office for the last week, and we neglected no opportunity this afternoon to rib Romario about the Brazilians: instead of playing football, we suggested, that admittedly good-looking team would do better to earn a living advertising men’s fragrances or diet fruit-juice drinks — just so long as they didn’t keep monopolising every other sports programme with claims of how they always won in the final. Unfortunately none of that really bothered Romario much; he wasn’t particularly interested in football. Possibly he was backing the German team these days. Or the Irish.

After a while Slibulsky took over as DJ. In honour of the occasion he stayed with Irish music, but it suddenly sounded different, and soon the first couples were dancing to Carrickfergus by Van Morrison and the Chieftains. I drank whiskey at the bar and was talking to a drag queen about the proposed move of Frankfurt Central Station to an underground concourse when a set of fingernails painted turquoise appeared beside my elbow.

‘Well, did you get your million packet soups?’

I turned and saw Miss Chewing-Gum’s smiling face, slightly flushed with alcohol.

‘Well, what a surprise! Where’ve you been? When I next went to see Ahrens there was no one on the switchboard.’

‘I gave notice. I wasn’t staying in a place where the clients come out looking like you did. And I’d have reached that point soon anyway. What happened to you wasn’t the only thing I wasn’t supposed to see. The whole business was probably a gangster outfit. They hired me just to sit around so that it would look halfway straight on the surface.’

‘Halfway is the right word for it. Are you reading your women’s mags at home now?’

‘I’m reading them at my new desk in my new job with a haulage firm. And as you like words, you ought to understand these: a place is nothing but a gangster outfit if anyone and everyone, without exception, right down to the woman on the switchboard, is a gangster who works for the firm or wants anything from the firm. What were you planning to feed your earthquake victims, cream of cocaine soup?’

I shook my head. ‘Forget it. Anyway, I never did any business with Ahrens. What would you like to drink?’

She hesitated, and looked inquiringly at me for a moment. Then she said, ‘That Irish stout of theirs, I haven’t eaten yet.’

‘Hey, Romario, a Guinness.’

I excused myself to the drag queen and guided Miss Chewing-Gum to one of the upholstered seats.

‘So as I see it, you find fulfilment in your work during the week and go to exciting opening parties at the weekend. Do you live here?’

‘Round the corner. You forget the delightful men I meet at the opening parties.’

‘Ah, yes. Do they invite you out later to smart restaurants when you haven’t eaten yet?’

‘They go on their knees to me for that.’

‘I’d get scratch-marks, on this carpet.’

‘That’s all part of it.’

It turned into an evening which gave neither of us any cause for complaint. On Sunday we watched nature films and comedy shows on TV, and on Monday I set out in search of a new office.