The Valkyrie Song

3

Armin Lensch wasn’t sure what hurt most: his bruised testicles or the laughing and taunting from his mates. He had staggered after them as they had made their way to a pub near Hans-Albers-Platz, they had found a table and Armin had squeezed into the corner, sipping tentatively at his beer, hoping the nausea would subside.

‘Police brutality — that’s what it was. Police brutality…’ he said in earnest and was greeted with howls of laughter.

‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Karl, leaning in close. ‘That wasn’t police brutality — that was you having your ass kicked by a girl. Did you see the fucking size of her? You got your ass kicked by a little girl.’

‘She caught me unawares,’ muttered Armin.

‘No, she didn’t, she caught you in the balls!’ More laughter.

‘Fuck you,’ said Armin, shoving past them and wincing at the surge of pain in his groin. ‘Fuck the lot of you.’

He staggered out into the cold night air. The nausea followed him out of the pub and collided with him. He voided his gut onto the pavement. A couple of passers-by cursed at him.

‘Fuck the lot of you,’ he said again, under his breath. He would make the bastards pay. Who did they think they were? Armin and his friends all worked in the Neustadt-Nord part of Hamburg. They all worked there but Armin was the star. He was the one who was going to the top. And he would get all the help he needed: now that he had found out what he had found out. He started to walk back in the direction of the Spielbudenplatz and Reeperbahn. He would get a taxi there. He thought about the cop who had kneed him in the groin. He wasn’t going to let her get away with that. Here, now, he was just like everybody else with too much drink in them. But outside the Kiez, in his normal life, he was somebody. He was connected. He would make the bitch pay. But the thought of her made him want to cry: to be beaten up by a fucking woman. For Armin, women were good for only one thing. He had seen them at work. Getting promotions over him. He knew how they managed that, the whores. He had had a lot of girlfriends, but nothing that had lasted too long. Normally they would get out of line and Armin would give them a slap and they’d get all hysterical on him. Fuck them. Fuck them all.

Armin walked on, his internal rage and the ache from his groin making him blind to all around him. He stopped. Where the fuck was he? He had thought he knew his way around the Kiez well enough, but he must have taken a wrong turning. He took a moment to reorient himself and took the next right. He saw the Reeperbahn ahead of him but he was further up than Spielbudenplatz. Still, it wouldn’t be difficult to find a taxi. At that moment he caught sight of a beige Mercedes and his hand went up. An automatic reaction: in Germany, all taxis were beige; all beige cars were taxis. He eased himself with a moan into the back seat.

‘Eppendorf…’ he said between his teeth.

‘Are you okay?’ asked the driver. ‘You don’t look well.’

Fucking great, thought Armin. A female taxi driver.

‘Just take me to Eppendorf,’ he said. The woman driver shrugged, started the car and took a left into the Reeperbahn.

It was only after she took the wrong turning at the end of the Reeperbahn and he realised that they were down by the river that Armin noticed that there was no meter in the front of the taxi; nor was there a certificate on display with the driver’s name, photograph and City of Hamburg licence.

By which time it was too late.