The Jewish Messiah

Hard Nuts to Crack

FOR THE FIRST TEN MINUTES, the uniformed guard of the department store ignored Xavier and his wheelbarrow. Then he decided that he’d been lenient enough. He walked up to the boys, holding his walkie-talkie in one hand. He hadn’t been working security for very long and was afraid that, at crucial moments, he might not exude enough authority. “Hey, you there,” he said. “You’re not allowed to park vehicles here.” It may have been a blind wall, but no vehicles were supposed to park there.

“This isn’t a vehicle,” Xavier said, “this is a wheelbarrow.” He was slapping his arms against his chest to keep warm.

“A wheelbarrow is also a vehicle,” the guard said. “I’ve been tolerant — I let you stay here for a while, I gave you enough time to beat it — but you’re still here. So now I have to act. I gave you a finger, now you’re trying to take the whole hand. Now I’m giving you two minutes.”

“This is a wheelbarrow,” Xavier said. “To carry my friend in. We’re going to see a doctor. He was beaten up. And Mrs. Müller just went in to buy us a sweater.” His lips had turned blue; he kept waving his arms to keep warm.

Xavier believed there was no reason to be ashamed of the truth. Before long, Mrs. Müller would come out of the department store with two sweaters; then he’d see the look on the guard’s face.

A crackling sound came out of the guard’s walkie-talkie, and he raised it to his ear. There was no voice, just more crackling.

He sighed, turned down the volume of the walkie-talkie, and took a good look at the half-naked boy. He recognized him from somewhere; the kid had probably been picked up a few times before. The hard nuts to crack always came back. No matter what you did to them, they were like junkies. The hard nuts to crack didn’t scare easily, you had to lock them up.

“Maybe you think,” the guard said, printing the boy’s face in his memory, “that I don’t know about your kind.” He was young, twenty-three, but he was ambitious, and he had a child.

“I studied petty crime,” the security guard told Xavier. “I know all about shoplifters. Ask me a question about shoplifters.”

The guard looked expectantly at Xavier, but Xavier had no questions in mind.

“Come on,” the guard said, “what do you want to know?”

“I’m waiting for Mrs. Müller,” Xavier said quietly.

“Then I’ll ask myself a question. How does the shoplifter operate? The shoplifter operates in groups of four or five. Lots of Southern Europeans or Bulgarians, often young Gypsies too, who learned it from their parents, who learned it in turn from their parents. There’s nothing they can do about that — it’s in their blood. And this is where it happens.” The guard looked around, as though finding himself in the zoo, before a cage full of rare birds. “In this alley is where I deal with the shoplifter.”

A crackling sound came from his walkie-talkie again. He turned down the volume. “Where was I?” he asked.

Xavier hopped from one foot to the other, but that didn’t help against the cold, either. He laid his hand on Awromele’s head and hoped Mrs. Müller would show up soon with those sweaters.

“The professional shoplifter does not operate alone. That’s where I was. The seventeen-year-old girl who steals rouge, that’s shoplifting, too, but the major damage is done by the professional. One group causes a fuss, the other group makes their move. It’s an old trick. I think you’re here to cause a fuss. That’s why you’ve got a wheelbarrow, that’s why you’re half naked. That’s why there’s some guy dying in the wheelbarrow. I can tell from your face that I’ve got it right. Are you the shoplifter who’s supposed to cause a fuss?”

“I’m cold,” Xavier said, pounding even harder on his bare chest. There was still some mud sticking to his back. Arguing made no sense in cases like this, especially not in the state he was in. “Mrs. Müller is buying us a sweater; she’ll be right back. Then we’ll leave. I’m not here to cause a fuss.”

“I do not,” said the guard, taking another step forward, “and I’m being completely honest about this, I do not have the authority to arrest you. As long as nothing has been stolen, we’re not allowed to lay a finger on you.” There was melancholy in his voice.

“Yes,” Xavier said. “You’re right about that.” He needed to stay on this man’s good side, especially looking the way he did now. Friends, that was the most important thing in a squeeze. He prayed to King David for friends. More friends.

“Are you trying to run away?” the guard asked. And he took another step forward. He had chased many a shoplifter before. If necessary, he was prepared to run all the way to the next tram stop. He’d trained for it, too. Other people trained in order to lose weight. Not him, he was skinny enough already; he trained in order to keep up with the shoplifter, to jump one when the time was right.

“I’m waiting for Mrs. Müller,” Xavier said. He could barely keep it up anymore, he had to pee that badly. But he didn’t dare to do it here, not with the guard standing beside him.

“Let me tell you about the procedure. When I catch the shoplifter, I keep him here till the police arrive. Sometimes that takes a while — they’re short-staffed. They don’t show up for every single shoplifter.”

Xavier nodded; he took Awromele’s good hand and squeezed it gently. His bladder was about to explode.

The guard searched for his lighter, found it after a while, and, with a satisfied look on his face, lit a cigarette.

“If the shoplifter decides not to wait for the police voluntarily, we exert a moderate form of physical duress. When we speak of physical duress, what are we talking about?” The security guard inhaled. Sometimes he’d had to wait more than an hour for the police to show up. Sometimes they only showed up when you told them they could pick out something to take home. A pair of jeans, a bottle of perfume, a nice vase. Quid pro quo. “There are a number of possibilities. This is what they teach you in class. I sit on him. I assume a seated position on top of the shoplifter. And then I keep sitting there until the police finally show up. Simple, but effective. I’ve been working here for a little over four months, and so far there have been nine occasions on which I have had to sit on a shoplifter, and let me tell you, it’s not a lot of fun. Not for the shoplifter, and not for me.” He inhaled again. The guard preferred not to — he lost sleep over it — have to sit on the shoplifter; he had nightmares about it. Sometimes they were men; occasionally they were women, children — that happened, too. He had to sit on them. It wasn’t his fault. The department store did all it could to keep this from happening. But they came back, the gangs of children, they came back, and it seemed like they had his number. As though they knew he didn’t like to do it.

Xavier nodded.

The guard looked at the smoke he had exhaled.

“First you apply pressure to the throat of the shoplifter,” he said solemnly, “and as you do that, you slowly lower his body to the ground. Then you sit on him with your full weight, on his chest, on his stomach, applying pressure to his throat the whole time, in order to discourage him from struggling. If the proper authorities are too long in coming, then they sometimes have to call an ambulance for the shoplifter. These are unpleasant incidents.” That never happened very often with him. And when it did happen, he would skip lunch afterwards. Then he would take a walk through town and ask himself: Did I deal with the situation correctly?

“In ninety percent of all cases, everything is fine,” the guard said. “No one has to call an ambulance. The percentage of shoplifters who die in custody is negligible.” He ground out his cigarette with his shoe.

Xavier nodded again. He had to pee so badly now that he really couldn’t hold it anymore.

“Look,” the security guard said, “we’re standing here, talking man to man, so I can tell you that sometimes there are customers who complain, who say: It’s Friday afternoon, we come into the department store with our children to have some fun shopping, and the first thing we see is you sitting on a shoplifter. So they send a letter to the management: ‘We come to your store with young children and see situations to which we do not wish our children to be exposed.’ I can understand that, as a private individual. I have a child myself. For a little girl of five or six, a man of my size sitting on a shoplifter, applying his full weight, is not a pretty sight. But the management covers my back. Because I do everything by the book. Don’t forget, it has a preventive effect as well. There are plenty of potential thieves walking around, and they hesitate: Are we going to buy it, or are we going to pocket it? Well, then they see me sitting on the shoplifter and they figure: Let’s take this one to the cash register. Twenty, maybe thirty percent of my work is preventive. Setting a good example, showing what happens to people who set a bad example. I wouldn’t want you to take it personally, because we’re talking here man to man, but take someone like you, for instance, standing here like this with your wheelbarrow. You’re setting a bad example.”

Xavier had stopped pounding his bare chest to keep warm. All he did was hold Awromele’s hand. “I’ll be gone in a little while,” he said, “I’m going to the doctor. We’re just waiting for Mrs. Müller. She’s coming right back with two sweaters.”

The guard took a few steps forward. He was standing right in front of Xavier now. “So what are you guys going to steal today?”

Xavier looked around; there was no one else in the alley.

“Nothing,” Xavier said. He smiled as brightly as he could, and added: “We’re on our way to the doctor.” But it was no use anymore, he couldn’t help it, he peed in his pants. It felt pleasant for a moment, warm and soothing, like a bed for which you’ve been longing all day. Then it began to cool.

The guard turned off his walkie-talkie. He didn’t seem to notice that Xavier had peed in his pants.

“We’re not part of a gang,” Xavier said. His jogging pants were completely soaked now, and the moisture was no longer warm — it was cold, ice-cold. Strange the way urine cools off so quickly. He picked up the wheelbarrow and put it down again a few yards away. He wanted to get out of this alley, he needed to find a doctor.

The guard took up a position in front of the wheelbarrow. It was not a lot of fun, but someone had to do it. And he always did his best to be reasonable. He was a human being. A human being in uniform has to put up with all kinds of prejudices. That’s why he always talked to shoplifters, to explain the procedure. So they knew what was going to happen.

“We’re not part of a gang,” Xavier said. “You have to believe me.” The more he begged, the less credible he sounded, but he didn’t want this guard to sit on him, not now, not in his condition. And definitely not on Awromele. He picked up the wheelbarrow and put it down again a few yards farther away.

“It’s your word against mine,” said the security guard, approaching Xavier slowly. “Who do you think they’ll believe? In the past, when times were different, we gave the shoplifter the benefit of the doubt. But that’s not possible anymore. We have to set examples. Soon we’re going to start checking bags — everyone who comes into the department store will have to open his bag. We’re doing battle on two fronts. On the one front, we do battle against the thief, and especially in organized form; on the other front, we do battle against the terrorist. Starting next month, we’ll look in the bags of everyone who comes in here. We guards have a serious responsibility. We have to make the customer feel safe. And in that way the strange situation can arise in which we, the adversaries of the shoplifter, are transformed into the guardian angels of the shoplifter. Because the terrorist does not distinguish between the paying customer and the customer who comes here to rip off goods.”

The guard took a deep breath. He didn’t usually talk this much. His colleagues were always staring at the TV in the canteen. His neighbors were never home. His child never said much. The only ones he could actually talk to were the shoplifters.

“You’re wondering,” the guard said, “What kind of example could he possibly be setting if he sits on me now? Who’s going to see us in this alley? There’s no one here. Don’t kid yourself. Thousands of eyes see us. Thousands of eyes are looking at us. Ten thousand people are counting on us.” The guard pointed up at the sky, and, indeed, Xavier saw two video cameras attached to the blind wall.

“The management sees us, too,” the guard said. “The management is not stupid. The management says: A customer who doesn’t feel safe doesn’t buy anything. Customers like that mean the end of our department store, and do you know what that means? It means that a thousand people are out of work. So, if I sit on you in a minute, if I start applying pressure to your throat to discourage you from putting up a struggle, then that’s not something between you and me. It’s much bigger than that — it’s about the good example and the bad example, it’s about good and evil.”

Xavier felt like running away, but he couldn’t leave the wheelbarrow with Awromele in it behind. Never again would he leave Awromele behind. Never again.

The guard was standing right in front of Xavier now, and had already laid his hand on the throat of the boy in whom he saw the shoplifter. He was poised to carry out the procedure he had learned in class.

“Please,” Xavier said. “I’m on my way to the doctor. That’s all I want, a doctor, for him.” The guard looked the boy in the eye, but instead of forcing Xavier to the ground and sitting on him, he began caressing Xavier’s Adam’s apple with two fingers.

He smelled the scent of urine.

The guard went on caressing Xavier’s Adam’s apple.

The boy trembled. The guard could see the fear in his eyes. Christ, did that boy tremble! He was afraid, afraid of him, the security guard. He put his mouth up close to Xavier’s ear. He flicked his tongue in and out of the ear of the trembling boy. “We’re trapped,” the guard said in a whisper. “We’re all stuck in the trap. They’re everywhere. In every business, every organization, at every train station. You don’t recognize them, but they’re everywhere.” Then he took a step back and straightened his uniform. “Do you promise never to come back here again?” he asked. “Do you guys promise to stop stealing?”

Xavier nodded.

The security guard caressed Xavier’s Adam’s apple with two fingers again, and brought his face closer to Xavier’s once more; for a moment it seemed as though he was going to bite Xavier on the nose; then he let him go.

“Get out of here,” the guard said. “Go, quick, before I change my mind, little Gypsy.”

Xavier had thought he wouldn’t be able to, but he picked up the wheelbarrow and pushed it along the blank wall in the direction of the shopping street. His wet underpants chafed against his body.

“A thousand eyes are looking at you,” the guard shouted after him. He turned his walkie-talkie back on.

GESINE MÜLLER left the children’s department. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea after all to offer those boys sweaters. It only encouraged dependency. Before you knew it, they wouldn’t be able to stand on their own feet. They had to stay far from the machinery of the social-welfare organization, because once you were caught in it you could never get out.

She stopped and looked at the coats, but the prices were completely out of the question. Armin was breathing heavily again. Was her dog about to have another coronary? She held his head between her shins and whispered his name lovingly. She had done the wrong thing; she shouldn’t have become involved with those boys. One sick dog was enough.