Kismet

Chapter 5

The building where I lived had a small open cubby hole at the end of the corridor on each storey where you could keep bicycles and sledges. When I was outside the door of my flat, taking the key out of my pocket, I heard a rustling in the cubby hole. I turned and looked at the dark, door-sized gap in the wall. I’d been imagining something of this nature ever since the afternoon. Outside my office, or in a quiet side street, or here. When nothing else happened I asked, ‘Romario?’

The rustling came again. Then a shoe with a platform sole emerged into the light, followed by a long, thin picture of misery. His clothes were crumpled and hung off him as if they’d been stuck to the wrong parts of his body, his hair, usually accurately sprayed into shape, was flying about in all directions, and the left-hand side of his head had pale crumbs all over it.

A feeble wave with his sound hand. ‘Hi. I was waiting for you.’

‘So I see. Forgotten how to use a phone?’

‘I’ve been trying all day! But either you weren’t in, or it was engaged…’ He passed his tongue over his lips, cast an anxious glance at the stairs, and hesitantly came towards me. ‘I’ll explain it all to you, but couldn’t we…?’

He indicated my door. I looked at him without enthusiasm. I didn’t want anything explained to me, I wanted to go to bed and watch sport on TV, like Slibulsky. I felt like asking Romario whether he couldn’t stay in the bicycle cubby hole until tomorrow morning. ‘What are those crumbs on your head?’

Surprised, he put his hand to his cheek and then looked at it. ‘Oh, those.’ He ran a hand through his hair and over his face. ‘I had some savoury breadsticks with me, so when I got tired in there I must have put my head on the packet.’ He attempted a smile. ‘I brushed them all off. Don’t worry, I won’t mess your flat up.’

‘You set my mind at rest.’

After I’d closed the door behind us and propelled Romario in the direction of the kitchen, I asked, ‘When did it dawn on you what a bloody stupid idea it was to set the Saudade on fire?’

‘But… but I didn’t set anything on fire!’

‘Oh, come on, Romario! First thing this morning the boss of the gang, or the coordinator or whatever he is, called those guys’ mobile and asked where they were. Which means he didn’t know they were dead, so he didn’t send anyone to get revenge for them and smash up your place. What’s more, you got out alive. Which you’d hardly have done if the Army of Reason had been involved.’

He shifted restlessly on the spot, making a big deal of holding his bandaged hand as if to say that his quota of rough treatment had been met one hundred per cent. And he kept glancing at the kitchen chairs, but didn’t quite like to sit down uninvited. ‘Maybe someone quite different torched the place. Someone from the offices upstairs, or the owner of the building to get the insurance. Or it was an accident, or…’

I dismissed all this. ‘Insurance, yes, but that was your idea. You were drunk, you realised you were never going to get your place clean after people had been bleeding all over it, and suddenly you had this brilliant idea for getting rid of the extortionists and cashing in yourself in one go. Perhaps you’d had something of the sort in your head for quite a while. I mean, the Saudade wasn’t exactly a goldmine.’

‘The Saudade was like my…’

‘Yes, yes, like your girlfriend. But rather an expensive girlfriend for some time. That doesn’t matter to me. Two things do, though: first, I hate fires and I hate arsonists, specially when they’re lighting their fires in the middle of town among blocks of flats and gas mains. Second, when we saw the Saudade blazing away ahead of us I though you were in it, and it was my fault. That would have been the third death down to me, and it was a horrible thought. Literally sickening. It was only when the caretaker here said some idiot had been trying to get into my flat with the wrong keys that it dawned on me you must have survived.’

Romario had bowed his head and was now trying to glance up at me with the expression of a frightened rabbit, but as he was a good twenty centimetres taller than me he looked more like an alarmed stag, with antlers of lacquered hair sticking out all whichways.

‘I didn’t know where to go. I was afraid to go to my flat, I’m in the phone book, and those murderers were probably waiting for me there. And then.’ He raised his head and looked at me as if to say: very well, this is the truth, here you are and I hope it makes you happy, but don’t forget what a great guy I must be to tell you even when it does me no credit. In fact what he said was, ‘And then the fire spread so fast that I had to leave my wallet in the Saudade. My ID, money, credit cards — all gone. I couldn’t even take a hotel room.’

‘Why didn’t you go to the bank?’

‘My branch is just round the corner from the Saudade, and I really didn’t want to show my face there.’

‘All right.’ I pointed to the chairs. ‘Sit down. Want a drink?’

‘Yes, please. Thanks.’ Slowly and ponderously as an old man, he lowered himself to one of the chairs, his bandaged hand still prominently displayed in what he assumed was the centre of my field of vision. ‘Would you have anything to eat too? I haven’t eaten a thing all day except those salty breadsticks.’

I muttered a yes, put vodka and glasses on the table and slammed down a can of sardines, a can opener, and the packet of crispbread I’d started in front of him. ‘Sorry, but that’s all I have.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ he replied, looking at the sardine can as if he’d seldom thought anything less fine in his life. I poured vodka, we drank, Romario said, ‘Ugh!’ and added, ‘Oh wow, on an empty stomach!’ and then we both relished a couple of full minutes in which he tried to open the can with his elbows and one hand. When I finally reached over and removed the lid for him he thanked me effusively, and I came very close to throwing the can in his face, opener and all.

‘So now what?’

‘Well…’ Romario drizzled the last remains of oil from the can on a piece of crispbread and stuffed it into his mouth. When he’d finished munching, he said, ‘I’ve been thinking I could go underground until I see how things work out…’

He looked at me expectantly. I looked expressionlessly back.

‘So well, I was thinking, well, it only crossed my mind, and only if you didn’t object, whether… well, whether I could maybe stay with you for a few days.’

I examined him for a while, wondering whether he might for some strange reason enjoy my company, or if he was just so washed up and on his own that he’d put up with any amount of harassment for a place on a sofa. I poured myself more vodka and lit a cigarette. ‘Why on earth didn’t you just fly off for a few weeks in the south, like we agreed…’ It wasn’t a question, it was a sigh. To my surprise I got an answer.

‘But I couldn’t!’ said Romario, and even for this occasion, which wasn’t exactly short on desperation, he made an unusually desperate face.

‘What do you mean, you couldn’t?’

‘I…’ He looked at the floor. ‘I can’t fly anywhere. Except Brazil, but I don’t have the money for that. You’re right, the Saudade wasn’t making much these days, and well, let’s face it, I’m skint. I could just about have paid for a ticket, but then getting there and not even being able to invite the family and my old friends out for a meal — I can’t face that.’

‘Brazil’s not the only place in the world. We could have scraped up a few marks for a package trip to Mallorca.’

He raised his head, his face suddenly twisted with rage. ‘I told you, I can’t fly anywhere, just like that! I’d need a visa, and a visa takes time, and in the end I guess I wouldn’t get one either!’

‘Hold on… you don’t mean you only have a residence permit, do you?’

‘That’s what I mean, yes.’

‘Oh no. But you were always saying how you’d been to the Cote d’Azur and so on in summer.’

For a moment his gaze bored into me as if he were assessing the chances of suing me for mental cruelty. But then he looked down at the floor again, his shoulders, a moment ago energetically braced, drooped, and he said in an exhausted tone, ‘That’s what I said, yup.’

‘And where were you really?’

‘In my flat.’ The words were coming out in robotic tones now. ‘Sometimes I took a tent and went to camp by the artificial lake for a few days.’

‘Tell me,’ I said, grinding out my cigarette and leaning over the table, ‘this isn’t some sob story you’re pitching me, is it?’

Without looking up, he shook his head. ‘Can I have a little more to drink?’

‘Help yourself.’

He poured some more, drank, and put the glass down. Suddenly he seemed curiously calm. As if he were under hypnosis. Hands flat on the arms of the chair, fixed gaze on the table in front of him, he explained, ‘I’ve lived and worked here and everything for over twenty years. Every year I have to go to the Aliens’ Registration Office and get my residence permit extended by the guys there. Some of them haven’t been in this world as long as I’ve been in Frankfurt, and they don’t much mind whether they’re here or in Bielefeld. I do mind. I earned my first money in Frankfurt, I rented my first flat of my own here, I was really in love for the first time here. There’s not much left of any of that, but the city reminds me you can start up somewhere and succeed. And never mind how things are going, it gives me pride. I’ve learned its language, I can tell Heinninger beer from Binding, I know where to get the cheapest car tyres, and I know more bars than any native of the city.’

He paused, reached for the bottle and poured us some more. Everything about him seemed calm, except that the neck of the bottle clicked against the rims of our glasses a little too often and a little too fast.

‘But like I said, every year I have to go and beg to be allowed to stay another year. Every year I have to prove I have work and a place to live and I’m not costing anyone money. And then I sit in that waiting-room with all the other poor fools who’ve cleaned their shoes and put on clean shirts so as to make a good impression on Herr Muller or Herr Meier, and they’re all sweating and smoking and some of them have to sit on the floor because there’s not enough chairs, and after three or four hours when your turn finally comes you’re just a crumpled, stinking Thing and you’d almost agree with Herr Muller or Herr Meier if he looked at you as if to say, what’s a pathetic creature like you doing in our lovely country?’

He stopped and looked absently at his hands, lying there on the arms of the chair and playing dead.

‘I mean, it’s one day a year when they make it very clear that this is no place for you. Or two days if there’s some piece of paper missing and Herr Muller or Herr Meier wants to harass you. And of course those are the days when you’re moving house or starting a new job or opening a business or, like I said, you want to go away. But all the other days in the year I’m the kind that gets stopped in the street by people asking me where which underground train goes or where to find the nearest post office. And I’d like you personally, and all of you, everyone to think of me that way.’ He looked up. ‘Other days I’ve managed to complain about the weather in Frankfurt without anyone giving me that stupid line about why don’t I go back to sunny Brazil if I don’t like it here? But would they still have not asked it if they knew how I’ve had to crawl to people with rubber stamps sitting at desks for the last twenty years, and that this is probably never going to end.’

I looked at his grey, unshaven face and slowly shook my head. I’d have been sorry for anyone else. Not because circumstances or the laws were the way they were and gave people problems — any kind of circumstances and laws did that, and at some point I’d realised that sympathy in that context was just a relatively respectable way of folding your hands and doing nothing. But when someone made life-determining rules for himself in secret and stuck to them, never even wanting to know that no one cared in the least whether he kept them or broke them, then I really did feel for him.

Or I normally would, anyway. Obviously Romario had used up any such feelings that I had in reserve for him last night, leaving nothing.

I lit my next cigarette and poured more vodka. ‘I’ve no idea who’d have asked you what. But most people really don’t mind whether you have to crawl or not. Anyway, I could have got you your papers within a week.’

‘What?’ he exclaimed, and at last life returned to Tango Man. His eyes cleared, his gaze was turned on me both hopefully and incredulously, and in a surprisingly sharp tone that wasn’t going to tolerate any trickery, however kindly intended, he added, ‘What do you mean?’

‘I know someone who can do it for you. All official. I’ll call him tomorrow.’

For a moment he seemed to be wondering where the snag was. Then he said, ‘Kemal, that would be really…’ And he looked as if he was going to embrace me.

I hastily dismissed his gratitude. ‘That’s OK. It won’t cost me anything. In fact it’ll be fun.’

‘Fun?’

I nodded, put back the last of my vodka and got to my feet. ‘Nothing to do with you.’ I looked into his wide, shining eyes, and shuddered at the thought of Romario keeping this expression on his face from now until he got his papers. A grateful Romario was almost more unbearable than an ungrateful one. And anyway I knew that as soon as the visa was in his hands the familiar chicken-livered swaggerer would be back. Perhaps he wouldn’t fancy its colour, or he’d have preferred his height to have been given as a couple of centimetres taller.

‘I have to go to bed now. You can sleep on the sofa tonight. And find yourself somewhere else in the morning.’

‘Yes, sure,’ he agreed eagerly, getting to his feet too. ‘Anything you like. I really don’t want to be a burden to you.’

‘Well, that’s great. And where there’s a will, luckily, we all know there’s a way.’

Romario stared at me, then laughed with some difficulty and winked as if to say: I know you, Kayankaya, old fellow, tough outside, soft at heart.

Everything suggested that he would often get lost along the way.