Magic Hoffmann

by Arjouni, Jakob

  He lit a cigarette, and through the glass he watched a man sharpening the tips of his wooden fence. No, phoning wasn’t a good idea now. And it certainly wasn’t Magic, no Grand Entrance, no glamour. Nevertheless, he had to know whether Annette was in Berlin. Several cigarettes later the confusion in his head had cleared.

  He dialled Annette’s number.

  ‘Megastars Film and TV Production. Hello.’

  Fred didn’t dare breathe: it was her. Her voice hadn’t changed. He felt hot, and even if he had wanted to, he couldn’t have spoken a word.

  Again he heard ‘Hello?’ then he put the phone down.

  Well then. Fred wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was that simple. Now all he had to do was go to Berlin. What a terrific surprise! And what could they both do about the fact that his postcards hadn’t arrived? Sometimes he really was too suspicious.

  As he stepped on to a pavement that was glittering in the sunshine and set off for the woods, he was looking forward to the big city and a few days of high living before departing for Canada. If Annette and Nickel didn’t come to meet him, they would have had their reasons. He certainly didn’t want to be one of those jail birds who smell betrayal everywhere. Just because people on the outside were getting on with their lives. No, he was Magic Hoffmann, and what happened happened, and after that it was up to him.

  At home he packed his suitcase, then went to the station and bought a ticket. Luckily Grandma Ranunkel had left him a little money. Enough for the first few days.

  He pocketed the ticket and went to the phone booth to call his probation officer. She had visited him last week in prison. A short, fat busy woman, with a colourful skirt and frilly blouse, a round red face, and eyes that stared permanently, as if they were saying: ‘Don’t be deceived by my pleasant exterior, I know what goes down.’ During their brief conversation, Fred had assured her quite plausibly that he wanted nothing more than a job of work and some peace.

  ‘I wanted to register for a week’s holiday.’

  ‘But we have an appointment the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s why I’m registering.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Hoffmann, it’s not that simple. My time is limited, and in any case, you’re obliged…’

  ‘Listen: I simply have to get out, find some peace, and ah…get to grips with the last few years. Surely you understand.’

  ‘Get to grips - of course I understand, but…’

  ‘I’ll stay in the neighbourhood. I just want to go walking through the woods a little, camping, swimming in the lake - you know, the absence of nature in prison is really cruel for a country boy. The way I see it, the soul atrophies.’

  ‘Yes, hmhm, I can understand that.’

  ‘I knew you would. You’re sensitive. Not many people are.’

  ‘Well,’ she cleared her throat, ‘then we’ll simply postpone the appointment to next week.’

  ‘Let’s say the week after next, then I’ll have time to prepare. I feel one’s probation officer shouldn’t be like some supermarket shelf, from which you can pick and choose. Rather you have to seize the opportunity yourself - that’s my opinion anyway. That’s why I’d like to have a rough idea of my future when I next come to you. Or do you think that’s the wrong approach?’

  ‘No of course not, but… Very well then, in two weeks, but then it has to happen.’

  ‘Who could want it to happen more than I do? After all it’s my life, isn’t it? So. Many, many thanks.’

  Fred hung up and looked at his new watch. He had an hour to wait till the train left.

  5

  The cemetery lay under a thick carpet of leaves. The greenish twilight was interrupted only by a few rays of light, dancing over moss and stone. It was pleasantly cool and, with the exception of Fred’s Walkman, quiet. He was listening to Johnny Guitar Watson’s A real mother for ya, and the music was turned up so loud that a soft chi-boom wafted over the graves.

  Fred looked at Grandma Ranunkel’s gravestone and remembered her last visit to the prison. He had asked for cigarettes and music and she had turned up with biscuits and pyjamas. A week later she was dead. Her house now belonged to him. Fred’s father had built it for her before the accident. Shortly after Fred’s eleventh birthday the gas stove in the old bee-keeper's cottage out in the woods had exploded, and the collapsing timberwork had struck his father dead. Since Fred’s mother had left and Fred had gone to live with his Grandma, he had lived there alone, looking after his bees and playing piano. Fred thought about him only rarely. Even when his father was still alive, he had got used to the fact that he didn’t really exist, apart from the weekly walk and meal of spare ribs. Grandma Ranunkel did exist. Or used to exist. Occasionally Fred imagined actually sitting with his father in his garden, drinking schnapps. Time for vitamins, he always used to say: cherry, pear, plum. And it had been time for vitamins frequently. An empty bottle of Slivovitz hurled at the roof of the townbound Porsche, in which Fred’s mother sat blubbering with her Swiss civil engineer, had made Fred’s father legendary well beyond the boundaries of Dieburg.

  The cassette had finished and Fred turned it over. When the music had started again, he searched for some prayer to offer up to Grandma Ranunkel on parting. ‘I’ll never forget you,’ he murmured by way of experiment and shook his head, ‘I’ll try to get in control of my life.’ No good either. ‘Hope they’re good to you up there and give you lots of little boys, so you can ban them from going to the swimming pool, cancel their pocket money and give them thousands of cherries to stone at the week-end.’

  As he was lost in these thoughts, the gardener for the cemetery approached him from behind. He was in his early twenties, a tall, thin youth with sad eyes. He trailed his rake behind him like some foolish toy. When he reached Fred, he tapped him timidly on the shoulder. Fred turned around. He had to look twice before he recognised Ka-K. Astonished, he removed the headphones.

  ‘Karl!’

  ‘F-F-Fred. Is it y-you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m out.’

  ‘Since wh-wh-when?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘T-t-terrific.’ enthused Karl, who had already forgotten that he had actually come over because several visitors to the cemetery had complained about the noise from the Walkman. They had been in the same class and he had always liked Fred. Since the bank robbery he thought Fred was without question the most exciting guy between Aschaffenburg and Darmstadt.

  ‘How’s th-th-things?’

  ‘Good. I’m going to Berlin.’

  ‘B-B-Berlin. T-terrific.’

  Karl looked on in admiration. Big, bad, thrilling Berlin. Once he almost went himself, but after someone had told him that people there spoke fearfully fast and were always in a rush, he decided to hand back the ticket. For Karl this journey meant that they hadn’t succeeded in breaking Fred’s spirit in prison.

  ‘A-a-and Annette?’

  Fred looked in to Karl’s gleaming, expectant eyes. ‘She’s waiting for me there. There’s going to be a big party.’

  ‘T-t-terrific.’ Karl was beaming. Someone like Fred should have it all: money, friends, fun. Then his gaze fell on the gravestone, and his broad smile vanished. ‘M-m-man, I’m so s-s-sorry about your Gr-gr-grandma.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Fred, refusing the sympathy. And glancing at his watch, he asked: ‘And how are you?’

  ‘Quite w-well. I’ve had the j-j-job here for a y-y-year. But the thing with the N-nazis is s-stupid.’

  Karl was playing with the handle of the rake. Normally he didn’t talk about the gang of skinheads that had been roaming around Dieburg, making him one of the regular victims of their assaults. He was ashamed of it. But he had no fear of Fred. And he was slightly hoping that Fred could give him some advice.

  ‘Nazis?’ Fred looked absent-mindedly across the graves to the town. It was ten minutes to the station on foot.

  ‘They c-c-come mostly at the w-w-week-end and trample on everything and sp-sp-spit at me. Wolfgang from N-n-nine
A is one of them. I have to have b-b-beer r-ready for them.’

  ‘Wolfgang?’

  ‘Suzie-is-a-38D Wolfgang.’ Karl chuckled with pleasure. Those were the days. Fred and some others had put a microphone in the school toilets, and the noises were broadcast over speakers in the playground. Wolfgang had taken a porno magazine to the toilet, and because he was a poor reader, he had been loudly deciphering the picture captions.

  ‘Well,’ said Fred, looking at his watch again, ‘I must be going. When I get back I’ll stop by at the week-end. Shove some Valium in their beer.’

  Karl looked at him doubtfully.

  ‘D-do you really m-m-mean that?’

  ‘Sure. And when they’re asleep, you can whack them in the face.’

  ‘That would be t-t-terrific.’ Karl was thrilled at the thought.

  ‘Or you get someone to replace you at the week-end.’ Fred began to manoeuvre himself gradually towards the exit.

  ‘W-w-won’t work. The other gardener is an Arab, and th-that would be even more st-stupid.’

  Fred was bored with the subject. He wasn’t interested in Nazis. Or in Karl, for that matter. He wondered whether to buy provisions in the supermarket. At the exit he took his leave of Karl, promised to come by some time, and a few metres further on, he had forgotten him.

  6

  The train slowed down, bumping along over uneven track. The glasses in the dining carriage clinked. Empty fields went by the window, then a cobbled path that led to a group of small of tumble-down houses. There were scythes next to the front doors, rusty hoardings, old car tyres, an outside toilet. The only new items on the houses were enormous, grey satellite dishes, which perched on the roofs like artillery directed against extraterrestrials. In the background was a grain silo, from which a tree-lined asphalt road led through the barren, brown landscape. The sky was grey, and everything seemed to be floating in porridge.

  ‘First time you’ve travelled through the former workers’ and peasants’ state then?’

  Fred looked away from the window. For some time he had felt that the red-faced man opposite had been watching him. He wore a shabby, grey suit with a gaudy tie, his fingers sported two fat gold signet rings, and his blond hair had been blow-dried airily upwards. He had entered the dining carriage after Fred and was on his fourth or fifth beer.

  He gave a broad grin, ‘or rather, idiots and unemployed people,’ and laughed loudly.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  Fred nodded. ‘First time. Why?’

  ‘Because you’re taking in the monotonous landscape and these derelict dumps as if they were by Monalisa.’

  ‘By who?’

  ‘The painter. Where do you come from then?’

  Much amused, he shook his head and waved at the waitress.

  ‘Two Pils and two vodkas for my young friend and I.’

  Then he grinned again. ‘You’re the first person I know, apart from the Japanese, who has never travelled through the East.’

  Fred didn’t want the man’s vodka. Like misers who get annoyed at the meanness of others, Fred disliked strangers who came across a little too brash. ‘And you’re the first person, apart from the Japanese, who has grinned at me so often in such a short time.’

  The man was taken aback, then burst out laughing again.

  ‘Sorry my friend, the grinning gets on my nerves too but I can’t give it up, it’s part of the job. I’m a rep. Do you know what for?’ Without waiting for Fred to answer, he leaned forward and whispered: ‘Fruit machines, territory Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Cool Rudi.’

  Fred looked uncomprehendingly. Rudi frowned.

  ‘You know what fruit machines are, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but...’

  ‘Well then. Why aren’t you laughing? Fruit machines in the East - that’s hysterical. I’ve palmed them off with fruit machines when they had no regular electricity, and western currency was completely inconceivable to most of them. It’s as if you’d set up games in India where people had to shove slices of bread in the slot, you get it?’

  Fred nodded, ‘Understood,’ though in reality he didn’t understand at all.

  Mecklenburg-Vorpommern sounded to him like Swaziland. He had never been in the DDR and had experienced reunification in prison as a boring TV series: complete with plastic cars, priests and drunks. On the morning after the wall came down the prison governor gave a brief speech, but apart from the usual ten percent who were interested in everything, the inmates didn’t bother to look up from their plates. Fred was all the more astonished to see on the TV how many people at the windows of BMWs broke into tears of joy at the imminent prospect of absorbing twenty million poor folk. In one programme a farmer from Vogelsberg related how he had woken his family in the middle of the night to celebrate the freedom of his brothers and sisters with schnapps and sausages. Sure, thought Fred, people can always find a reason to get pissed. But the hue and cry on TV grew ever louder, and the governor gave more and more breakfast speeches, and even in the cells they suddenly boasted of pride, nationhood and unity, and Fred realised that people were being driven by something that he didn’t understand. There was a musical celebration in the gym on the ninth of November the following year, and at the end they all hummed the national anthem while the director conducted. Fred sang along cheerfully, then yelled the word ‘freedom’ like a battlecry. The singing broke up, and while Fred was basking in the glory of his jailbird’s humour, the others turned round to look at him. In the belief that he had been elected to joker for the day he sang again on his own: unity and justice - then he bellowed - and freedom! The word echoed round the gymnasium walls and he laughed, but no-one else joined him. Slowly he grasped that he must have interrupted something.

  Beer and vodka appeared at the table. Cool Rudi yelled ‘Cheers!’ and they downed the vodkas.

  Outside, rape fields were speeding by.

  ‘How old are you, my dear fellow?’ Rudi trumpeted.

  Without looking away from the fields, Fred answered: ‘Twenty-four.’

  ‘Then you’re still a young pup.’ He laughed. ‘And what are you going to do with your life?’

  Fred would prefer to have answered that he only knew what he wasn’t going to do with his life: such as fruit machine representative for Mecklenburg-Thingammy. But then Grandma Ranunkel’s wish that he should make a start in the local EDEKA warehouse and work his way up to sales director suddenly occurred to him, and to give her a little joy up above, and because it was out of the question to mention Canada to someone like Rudi, he said: ‘EDEKA salesman.’

  ‘EDEKA salesman?’ Rudi turned away. ‘At your age you must at least want...’ he paused for thought, ‘...to get rich.’

  When Fred didn’t respond, he said: ‘It can’t be true...’ then broke off and seemed genuinely disappointed.

  Fred looked out of the window. They were travelling through thick birch forests. The vodka began to kick in, and Fred stretched his legs. Had the Schöllers called Annette and told her of his visit? Did they talk to each other at all? In the two or three years before the bank robbery, Annette had turned away from her Happy Family and only ever seemed to argue with her father, and now that her mother was more or less gone...Fred pictured himself sitting with Annette of an evening under the Brandenburg Gate - in his imagination one always sat under the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin - and they were finally able to talk about everything.

  After a while he asked: ‘Which is the correct Berlin station to alight at?’

  ‘The correct...?’ Rudi tilted his head sceptically to one side, then he cheered up. ‘Just stick with me, I’ll show you.’

  Shortly afterwards they reached Potsdam, and Rudi ordered more beer and vodka.

  ‘Just look at those houses. All garbage. We didn’t expect to get Switzerland, but at least they could have given us something like Austria.’

  Sooty apartment facades flashed by, dusty grey windows, faded signs for bakeries and cobblers.

  Twenty minutes later they e
ntered Berlin. Fred pressed his face to the window. So this was the city he had seen so often on TV. But soon he seemed to be on an accelerated tour of Hessen. At first gigantic steel edifices rose up, grey and windowless, surrounded by motorways, which reminded him of Mannheim or Offenbach. Then came tall, fifties-style buildings next to tea-coloured civil service construction - Darmstadt - then old buildings with stucco facades in various pastel shades - Wiesbaden. Where were the skyscrapers, palaces, television towers, Brandenburg Gates? The further the train entered the city, the more Mannheim, Darmstadt and Wiesbaden mingled, the more bricks, chrome, concrete, decayed walls, tawdry modern turrets, houses like bunkers and UFO-like structures seemed to be hurled together at random. Fred remembered the paeans of praise which his history teacher had lavished on the women of the ruins - he had probably never taken a look at the results.

  Still, Fred was impressed. He had never seen so many houses in one place. Like many provincials he veered between so what and wow, look at that.

  Rudi had stood up. ‘I’m just going to the loo. We don’t get out at Zoo station. Wait for the main station.’

  He winked at Fred and went to the glass door that led to the first class compartments. Fred wondered why he had brought his coat with him, then he caught the suspicious look in the waitresses eye. Suddenly he leaped up. As he burst out of the dining car, Rudi looked around in astonishment and began to run. A large family was blocking the way, and by the time Fred had shoved the last grandchild aside Rudi had almost reached the next door. Then two enormous rucksacks appeared before him in the aisle, followed by a couple. Rudi stood still, and Fred ran into the back of him at full speed. They fell down together in a tangle of rucksacks and legs.

  Rudi gasped: ‘So you need to go too?’

  ‘Right away. And the waitress is also bursting, but she’d like to cash up first.’

  Rudi rubbed his shoulder and sighed. ‘You look mad enough as it is.’

  The woman winked at her friend and smiled. ‘Wild town, Berlin.’