Magic Hoffmann

by Arjouni, Jakob

  7

  Fred shoved Rudi back into the dining car, took his suitcase and walked happily to the nearest exit. Berlin, big city, big deal - you couldn’t put one over on Magic Hoffmann that easily. A clown like that would certainly have to get up earlier.

  An elderly gentleman explained to him that the next station lay in the former West Berlin. The train entered a curve and two churches appeared in the window, one half demolished and one in Mannheim style, in the midst of department stores and cinemas. Then the train came to a halt at Zoo station. Fred was propelled along the platform by a pack of screaming teenagers on a school outing. He looked around in amazement. The entire railway station of the capital city consisted of four tracks, two beer stalls and a ticket inspector’s hut. The pack huddled together and, shoulder to shoulder, descended a narrow urine-coloured, tiled stairway down into the station concourse. Gift shops, chip stalls, coffee counters - indistinguishable from hundreds of other stations in Germany.

  Fred went through a revolving door onto the forecourt and looked for a taxi driver to ask the whereabouts of a cheap hotel. Even if he was going to be living with Annette, he didn’t want to turn up on the doorstep with bag and baggage. That would make him seem too dependent.

  The usual gang of junkies, hookers and drunks loitered round the entrance to the station, and the stench of massed bodies and putrefaction hung over the square. The taxi rank lay on the far side. Fred forced his way through.

  Just as he was about to speak to the first driver he was shoved aside, and two blokes in leather gear eased themselves into the car, chatting loudly. The door shut and the car roared off. The next driver was already on his way to the boot.

  ‘Excuse me...’

  The man didn’t seem to have heard him. He opened the boot in silence and waited for Fred’s luggage. He was broad and squat, wore his hair short at the front and long at the back, and had a fleshy face with vacant eyes.

  Fred came closer. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Already did, chief.’ The voice was like his eyes.

  ‘Actually...’ Fred began, but at the same moment there was a scream behind him. He turned round and saw a young girl drop a plate of sausages in red sauce, yelling that there were fingernails in the sausage.

  Fred looked on dumbfounded. ‘Did you hear that?’

  The driver raised his eyebrows almost imperceptibly, ‘not everybody’s thing, currywurst,’ and as Fred glanced again at the red fragments, ‘it doesn’t say anywhere that there weren’t any fingernails in it, or hairs or dog-ends. And as long as nothing’s written down, anything’s possible. It’s also possible that I’m only hanging round here with my taxi the livelong day to admire our beautiful station and to chat to people who, when eating sausages, are accustomed to have known the pig in question personally.’ He shrugged. ‘Could also be that I’m driving customers around in order to earn money. As I said, nothing’s written down.’

  Fred explained carefully: ‘Actually I only wanted to ask you if you might know whether somewhere in the neighbourhood...’

  Bang! The boot was closed and the driver threw himself behind the wheel. Ten metres further on, he let an old lady in and roared towards the crossroads. Fred put the suitcase down and waited. He thought of the welcome sign upon entering Dieburg — Berlin seemed to welcome you by putting the garbage out.

  As the next taxi stopped, he yanked open the passenger door as fast as he could and yelled at the driver: ‘Just one thing. A cheap hotel near here.’

  The driver nodded calmly, took the cigarette out of his mouth and pointed in the direction of the half church. ‘Hotel Luck.’

  Fred crossed the street and ran over a drab, concrete square. The sky was grey and still, as if someone had laid a dirty plank over the city. The dull roar of traffic and hammering from the building sites filled the air. Then the babble of voices and scraps of music mingled in, and the nearer Fred got to the half church, the livelier the square became. Tour groups and balloon salesmen approached him, barefoot guitar players, gypsy children, bald women. Strange fragments of conversation whirled past his ears. He looked around curiously in search of men in turbans.

  By the church, he came across a row of folding tables covered in leaflets and badges. Behind one of them, a woman was collecting signatures against excessively high kerbstones which ruined dachshund’s spines. At the next table a young man in papal robes was promoting sex cures. When Fred noticed that the Pope was looking deep into his eyes, he moved along swiftly. He walked round the half church, and suddenly an overwhelming vista opened up: a boulevard, an avenue! Others might have said a perfectly normal shopping street, maybe a little broader than usual, maybe a little uglier than need be, but they didn’t come from Dieburg, and they didn’t have four years of prison behind them. The bright, glittering, noisy, intricate hustle and bustle seemed to Fred like a giant fun fair: cafés, restaurants, cinemas, department stores, avalanches of steel, yellow double decker buses, and in the midst of all that an endless swarm of people. He stood still and clicked his tongue excitedly. ‘Here we are. That’s Berlin. Fred’s in town!’

  The right place at the right time, he said to himself. And like the city dweller he had just become, he hurled a mocking curse in the direction of Dieburg: at those dudes in Coconut Beach, at the Schöllers and all the others who had treated him like a leper. What did those peasants know of the great, wide world? Fred could feel it: life pulsated here, and it would pulsate with him over to Canada. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal — even the streets over there had to be enormous.

  He dived into the throng and was swept down the Kudamm. He stopped in front of several bars and had a look inside. They all seemed very chic and modern. Above the entrance to a barn containing Christmas tree lights, glittering barstools and posters announcing a ‘Funny Dance Night with the Spandau Highway Sisters,’ stood a sign in large red letters, JIMMIS. Fred noted the name. Barely off the train, he thought, and here I am in the wildest part of Berlin.

  As he walked on, he was struck by the large numbers of people of all ages and classes wearing baseball caps. Must be a tournament in town, he figured, and decided to go and watch a game if he had time - to get in the mood for Canada.

  A few blocks further on he left the crowds, and at the end of a small, deserted street he soon found his destination: OTEL LU K. The neon letters shone dimly above a shattered glass door. Behind it, a dark stairway led to the first floor. Fred entered a hallway with a linoleum floor and dusty photos of racing cars on the walls. A lone window provided light. There would normally have been four, but three had been boarded up. At the end of the hall was an off-white counter with a bell-push. When Fred pressed it there was a rattling noise above him. Nothing else happened. His hands in the pockets of his overalls, he strolled along the hall looking at the racing cars. Fred in Luck, he thought with a smirk.

  Eventually the door behind the counter opened, and a thin grey-haired man asked in broken German what Fred required. When he answered: ‘A room for the night,’ the man indicated that he should wait and disappeared again. Shortly afterwards his son appeared.

  ‘You’d like a room?’ he asked hurriedly and wiped his hand over his mouth. A smell of burnt meat and aubergines accompanied him into the hall. The formalities were quickly accomplished. Fred paid for the night in advance, took the key and climbed the gloomy staircase. A frayed red carpet ran up the stairs and bits of the banisters were missing. He encountered no one, and no voices or noises of any description could be heard from the corridors to right and left. On the fourth floor he walked slowly from door to door, deciphering the faded numbers, until he stood before number thirty-one.

  The room smelled of mothballs and old upholstery. Fred threw his suitcase on the bed and opened the window. Almost everything in the room was brown: the curtains, the furniture, the carpet, the bedclothes, only the walls were grey and the lampshades pink. Fred went into the bathroom and washed his hands and face. While drying himself, he looked out of the window onto a courtyard c
ontaining wooden pallets, and a rear building which housed some offices. Permed women with padded shoulders sat in among the IKEA furniture and rubber plants, stirring their coffee, while their headsets rested by the phones. One of the windows was full of stickers: ‘Free Avus for free Berliners!’, ‘I love Müggelsee!’, ‘Schultheiss Beer - I’ll have one here!’, ‘Alabama Jeep Club, Neuköln’ and a painted bear announced: ‘Peoples of the world gaze upon this city: First to fifteenth February - Very special offers at Höpfner Furniture!’

  Fred observed the women more closely and imagined himself doing it with one after another of them among the rubber plants. This evening something had to happen. Did Annette have a new boyfriend? While she was going out with Nickel, Fred and she had never - or only very rarely. But before that all the time. Annette had always been very uncomplicated like that.

  He turned away from the window, went to his suitcase and took out a fresh T-shirt. If he ever had a friend in the nick, he would at least know what to arrange for his release, and on day one at that. Because if you waited too long, you started to think you had really forgotten how.

  On his way to the tube station he bought a map of the city and a bunch of flowers.

  8

  Annette was wearing a Marilyn Monroe mask, Fred was James Cagney. While Annette was at the counter stuffing money in a bag, Fred held a pistol to the neck of the second bank clerk. The customers were lying face down on the ground. It was all working like clockwork. Then the man behind the counter said: ‘We don’t have any more.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ shouted Fred, ‘afterwards old Hoppe’s son will walk in and draw half a million.’

  The man went red in the face. ‘Where from...?’

  ‘Do it.’

  Trembling, the man moved to a table at the back of the room.

  ‘But I have to put in a code. It takes half an hour for the money to come out.’

  Fred pressed the barrel into the other clerk’s neck. ‘Do you hear what he’s saying? He wants to put in a code, so the money doesn’t come out till you’re dead.’

  The clerk hissed: ‘Just do it, Mr Jürgs.’

  The money was already prepared in a case within a drawer that wasn’t even closed. Annette put the case into a holdall and shut the lock.

  ‘Okay,’ Fred took out the Superglue, ‘everyone to the paying-in counter.’

  He had bought a large tube so he could work with a brush. Carefully, he spread the glue over the melamine surface and ordered all six of them to raise their right hand.

  ‘Splat!’ he said, and after some grumbling and hesitation they all obeyed. Annette and Fred waited a moment till the hands were stuck fast, then they ran out of the bank and leapt into the car. Nickel drove off. A few hundred metres from the exit they turned into a lane, which led to the forest. They stopped by a small lake. After swapping their clothing for scout’s uniforms and putting the money into rucksacks, they threw everything else into the car and sank it.

  ‘Your shoes!’ said Nickel.

  Fred shook his head. ‘I’m keeping them. They bring me luck.’

  Shortly after, police sirens were howling. Wearing shorts and singing I Love To Go A Wandering, Annette, Nickel and Fred marched past several cop cars back to the station, and five minutes later they took the train to Dieburg. While the regional news that evening showed pictures of Annette and Fred in their film star masks, and the announcer described the robbery as ‘fiendishly sadistic,’ they sat in front of the television with a case of champagne, howling with laughter.

  Four days later, Grandma Ranunkel’s doorbell rang. A policeman wanted to examine her grandson’s shoes - the one with a record for drug offences.

  ‘Görlitzer station.’

  Fred opened the door of the train, which ran overground at this point, and merged into the stream of agitated people. They rushed down the stairs, past dogs and begging teenagers, until the stream dispersed in various directions, and people disappeared into houses, shops, pubs and courtyards. Seconds later, Fred was alone with the beggars. He unfolded his map and looked around for street signs.

  ‘Gi’s a mark man.’

  A green-haired type in tights and a motorcycle jacket sidled up to Fred. An Alsatian slobbered at his side. Wealthy quarter this Kreuzberg, thought Fred, even the beggars own dogs. He shook his head and ran off. It was shortly after half seven, and the cloudy sky was beginning to turn dark.

  Soon he realised that the area was anything but wealthy. The houses and streets were decaying, the pubs emitted a harsh stench of fags, beer and rancid fat, and old women wandered round with handcarts full of firewood. But they weren’t really poor either: more and more well-fed dogs approached him. Their young owners were admittedly only half as well fed and looked pitifully grey and ragged, but they didn’t seem to care about their appearance in the slightest. On the contrary: they paraded their self-satisfied earnestness, and seemed proud, as if their poverty were some kind of rare craft. Fred became more convinced that in Berlin, a sunny disposition was bad manners.

  The nearer he got to Annette’s address, the smarter the houses became, the cleaner and leafier the streets. Now the pedestrians looked like students or pianists, and the pubs smelled of food. When he stood in front of number fourteen, darkness had fallen, and it had begun to drizzle. On the ground floor was a bar with small, round, dirty windows, like portholes. A strange noise emerged, reminiscent of the juddering of a damaged fridge motor. Inscribed sheets hung from the windows above: ‘Never again’ or ‘Solidarity with’- the wind had covered the rest of the message.

  Fred entered the dismal hallway in a state of high excitement. On the wall to the right were letter boxes, and Fred found Annette’s name next to three others which he didn’t know. But where was the flat? Staircases to right and left, then another courtyard with two more staircases to the sides and one straight ahead. No panel of doorbells. Fred looked round the courtyard. Somewhere a vacuum cleaner droned, and he could hear bright laughter from the first floor. He had no alternative but to climb one staircase after another. Berlin bids you unwelcome. Even the nameplates seemed designed to make it difficult for strangers: they had been painted over or covered with stars made from straws, some were of pottery, one was even knitted. Often, in the dim light of the hallway, Fred could see only colourful chaos at first glance.

  On the third staircase, second floor, the door he had been looking for was suddenly in front of him. A silver sign gleamed above the names of Annette and the others: MEGASTARS INTERNATIONAL FILM PRODUCTION.

  Fred took a deep breath. Then he removed the slightly damaged bouquet from a plastic bag, ran a hand through his hair and pressed the bell. It took a while before he could hear steps coming from far away.

  The door opened slightly, and a cowboy put his head round. Pointed boots, jeans, brightly embroidered buckskin shirt. He was wearing shades and a dyed black goatee. ‘Yes?,’ he reeked of booze, ‘What is it?’

  Fred quickly hid the flowers behind the bag. ‘Is Annette there?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Well, I...’ curious question, thought Fred, ‘I’m a friend of hers.’

  ‘Is that right?’ The cowboy was watching him closely. ‘She’ll be back in about an hour.’

  The door didn’t move. Fred looked for a sign from the shades: Saloon closed to strangers. He looked over to the stairs. ‘Is that the waiting room for international film production?’

  Without a word, the cowboy opened the door. Only now did Fred notice the inverted baseball cap. The hall in the apartment was the length of two bowling alleys. Fred counted more than ten doors to left and right, while the cowboy walked ahead of him in silence. Several doors were open: kitchen, offices, empty rooms containing just a sofa or a mattress. As they reached an enormous double door, Fred asked: ‘Where’s the baseball tournament taking place?’

  The cowboy turned his head as he walked, and said out of the corner of his mouth: ‘Very funny.’ Then he shoved the door open and they entered a large, dark room,
where a crowd of people sat on the ground in front of a television set. Most of them were also wearing sunglasses and carrying vodka bottles. The cowboy bid Fred sit down. ‘Take a slug if you want.’

  Confused by the answer to his question about the baseball tournament and by the scene in front of the television, Fred knocked over a bottle, which rumbled noisily over the parquet. A few shades turned their heads, and one mumbled: ‘Better forget that slug.’

  Fred wanted to pursue the bottle, but as the flooring creaked beneath his feet he rapidly sat down.

  His gaze wandered round the high-ceilinged, old apartment. Again there was only one object in the room, the television. The walls were white, the only decoration being the polaroid portraits of cheerily grimacing youths pinned up beside the TV. Three doors and a window marked the edges of the room. Beneath the window Fred noticed two sleeping dogs. Why did Berliners like dogs so much?

  The TV was showing a Japanese video with Swedish sub-titles. Fred carefully fished up one of the vodka bottles that were lying around, and took care not to gurgle while drinking it. Once the vodka had begun to kick in, he leaned over to a short-haired character with a severe parting and earrings like machine guns. He pointed at her dark glasses, then at the TV, and whispered: ‘Eye test?’

  One rapid suspicious glance and the shorn head turned back to the film. Or are they blind, shot through Fred’s mind, and he could see himself dropping another clanger. No, blind people would hardly seek out a Japanese film, unless they were Japanese. Reassured, he raised the bottle again. Maybe dark glasses were just part of the film business, even if this seemed to Fred to be mildly illogical.

  On the TV two men were now going through a cave. The screen was dark. Their footsteps could be heard, and intermittently a snatch of Japanese dialogue. The shades looked on, spellbound.

  So these are Annette’s artist friends, thought Fred. Well, something similar would come up for her in Canada. When the film ended and the lights came on, Fred had drunk half the vodka bottle, and he was swaying as he stood up. The short-haired woman beside him was plucking fluff from her skirt. A short skirt from which fabulous legs emerged. When she looked up Fred said, smiling: ‘Hi, I’m Fred.’