At a post office he looked in a phone book: no Nikolas Zimmer there either. Should he call Annette to ask if she’d given him the old address by mistake? He would rather have her believe he was wildly celebrating his reunion with Nickel, and not for a second had he thought about getting in touch with her, as promised. Aside from a visit to the town hall, and the inevitable contact with the police, who might well be looking for a robber and thug answering to Fred’s description, and an unthinkable call to Nickel’s parents, there was only one possibility.
Fred set off for the nearest tube station.
At the ticket office he asked the way to the Free University. Without a word the official shoved a tube map under the partition. When Fred failed to find a university he turned back to the counter.
‘Can’t you read,’ yelled the official, ‘it’s there, Thielplatz.’
Fred nodded: there it was. Thielplatz. Perfectly logical.
An announcement informed that the next train was delayed due to technical problems. Fred sat on a bench and lit a cigarette. Would he find Nickel at the university? If not, he would still have to ask Annette for help. She could go to the town hall for him, and anyway, she would certainly know some of Nickel’s Berlin friends. At the moment there was no reason to worry. On the contrary: Nickel had only failed to meet him in Dieburg because he hadn’t received his, Fred’s postcard, on account of the fact that he had moved house. Of course. And because not even Annette knew his latest address, he couldn’t have learned of Fred’s release from anyone else.
Fred leaned back and enjoyed the cigarette. Anyway, this little search for Nickel gave him the opportunity to look around Berlin a bit. While he was here…After all Berlin wasn’t just some dump, but… well, Berlin: history, war, East, air, bears, Kennedy…
The platform was filling up. Lunch break and the executive rush hour were approaching. Office workers with newspapers, umbrellas or shabby briefcases under their arms, most of them were silent, grey-faced, downtrodden, grim. A building full of stomach cancer, thought Fred cheerfully. They were all keeping their distance, as if afraid of catching Aids and cholera, as well as cancer. Only when the train arrived were such niceties abandoned, and they piled into the tightly packed carriages. Now the situation was reversed: if people had to stand in such close proximity to the rival germs, it seemed they wanted to respond with a full dose of their own - every cough, sneeze and sniffle imaginable was on display.
Fred changed trains at Wittenbergplatz and grabbed a window seat in an almost empty carriage. It smelled of plastic seats and damp shoes. The handful of passengers was either reading or dozing. In the corner sat a tramp, his forehead caked in dried blood, mumbling from time to time: ‘Better shit than red!’
Fred wondered how Nickel would look these days. Did he still have long hair and the beret? Shame he’d given up the snapping. Seemingly, according to Annette, because of poor prospects, whatever that meant. On the other hand German studies almost suited Nickel better. He’d always had a tendency to confuse talking with saying something. And boy could he talk! Nickel was capable of delivering entire lectures about subjects that would elicit from Fred a shrug at best. However these lectures often seemed fairly arbitrary to Fred. When it was possible to talk about something for hours, for him it was as if nothing at all was said. Once he had asked Nickel what kind of novel he should give Grandma Ranunkel for her birthday. Nickel named twenty.
‘I can’t afford twenty. Name one you find especially good.’
‘You can’t decide like that, it always depends.’
‘But there must be one you like better than the others.’
‘All have their advantages and disadvantages.’
‘Nickel, I want to give my Granny a book, not a tap.’
‘Then just give her an anthology.’
Nickel’s father owned a small hardware store and had read little in his life apart from screw diameters and saw blade sizes. He was suspicious of anything that didn’t have to do with building shelves or putting up hooks, and his head seemed to serve merely for putting pencils behind his ear. He thought with his stomach, and his stomach thought only one thing: I used to be slim, now I’m fat, and both are the fault of the lefties. His wife ran the household, was a member of the Rosicrucians - a Christian-vegetarian sect which met once a month to exchange articles of faith and recipes for Soya sausages - and reminded her husband on a daily basis not to be too generous, too gullible - which was about as necessary as insisting that someone with a club foot should limp.
At fourteen Nickel had begun to throw himself into everything that contradicted his parents desires for him to be a junior hardware store manager: Dieburg’s tea and freedom circle, Che Guevara beret, pan pipes lessons, photographs of baton-wielding policemen, school strikes, rain forests, books by women for women (and for Nickel) and - meat! In the steakhouse he could hoover up three farmer’s portions with bacon, and once at the school party he had shovelled down a whole tray of half cooked sausages. Sometimes Fred wondered if Nickel thought the more rotten the meat, the greater the protest against his mother.
Fred watched the tunnel lights flying past in the window. As a German scholar Nickel would be a real specialist in Canada and wouldn’t have to worry about his ‘prospects’ any more. If that wasn’t the reason for pursuing these studies anyway, and if he was still studying at all and Fred didn’t have to go and look for him elsewhere…
Four stations before Thielplatz three pretty girls with satchels got in, and Fred decided that a visit to the university was very definitely worthwhile.
The flat, Coca-Cola-coloured steel building ran along the street for between one and two hundred metres. In front of it was a broad strip of lawn with bushes, benches and concrete paths. Half hospital, half factory. A striking factory, for masses of people were standing around on the lawns and paths. They were eating and drinking, gesticulating and chatting, the ground was littered with fliers and a banner hung from the roof of the building: ‘SUCCESS THROUGH INCOME!’
The sky was now somewhat brighter, and it didn’t seem quite so improbable that the sun was hiding somewhere behind the grey plank.
Fred stood among a group of students on the edge of the street and waited with them until the stream of cars had passed. They were all carrying small, brightly-coloured rucksacks. Fred wondered if this was some kind of university uniform.
The road cleared and Fred followed a couple who were arguing about the derivation of the words ‘bread rolls’. That seemed to smack enough of German studies for him to dog their footsteps. They went along one of the concrete paths, past little groups laughing and debating, to the entrance and into a vast, endless hallway. A jumble of denim jackets, colourful glasses, ties and baseball caps swirled among tables laden with books and leaflets. The couple weaved their way skilfully through, a skip here, a side-step there, and Fred was struggling to keep up. Then they went up the stairs and into a side corridor, two left turns, one right and into another hallway - or was it the same one, Fred had lost his bearings - and finally at the end of the hall they came to a trestle table with a coffee machine and some plastic cups. More students sat round the table on the floor and did what they all seemed to do here: take a break. Fred’s couple came upon another couple: ‘Hiya!’ Embraces all round and the woman asked: ‘What are your thoughts on the bread roll question?’
Fred didn’t want to disturb them. He bought a coffee which cost fifty pfennigs and tasted like it, then he asked the young man with friendly dreads and ironed T-shirt if he could tell him where the German studies people might be.
The young man put the pot back carefully, then suddenly assumed such a sunny expression that Fred looked away in irritation.
‘Of course! The German studies girls are on the ground floor, one corridor along.’
Fred looked at those gleaming white teeth. German studies girls…?
‘Aha. And is there a porter you can ask if you’re looking for someone?’
‘I don’t think the gi
rls in the porter’s office can help. Anyway there’s a strike. And with a conspiratorial wink: ‘Freshman then?’
‘Fresh what?’
‘It was the same for me at the beginning. I didn’t get it at all,’ explained the young man, still looking at Fred as if they had just pulled of some stunt like swiping the blackboard wiper.
‘Hmhm,’ said Fred in the belief that he had a madman in front of him. ‘Well…’ he said and then ‘Good…’ and he nodded and turned away.
The young man yelled after him: ‘Good luck, it’s always tough at the beginning. But you’ll crack it!’
Fred disappeared hurriedly into the next corridor. Did they have village idiots in universities too? At the end of the corridor Fred came into a hall again. One side was made of glass. A dozen students were standing in front of it, looking out and roaring with laughter. Fred approached curiously and found himself gazing upon a well-tended inner courtyard with benches and small trees. On one of the benches an old man in blue overalls was sleeping, a pair of secateurs on his stomach. The secateurs were rising and falling to the rhythm of his breathing. The neck of a bottle protruded from his jacket pocket.
‘Shame we don’t have a camera!’ shouted a girl, wiping the tears from her eyes.
‘A photo to die for.’
‘Live and let live.’
‘The bearable lightness of being!’
‘Bellissimo!’
Fred looked around the courtyard to see if he had missed anything. He hadn’t, and mildly bewildered he went to the staircase.
The usual turmoil awaited him down below. He forced himself past people and rucksacks until he came across a pair of large dark eyes behind a table, piled with books. The accompanying mouth wore red lipstick and was engaged in talking to someone. Fred forced his way to the table, and while he was waiting to question this beauty about German scholars and Nickel and to exchange a few words with her, he leafed through books like Economics Today and The Stock Market Made Simple.
Suddenly an amplified voice boomed from the entrance to the hall, and everyone went silent. Heads turned in the direction of the loudspeaker, and when Fred stood on tiptoes he could see a tall thin man in a black polo neck with short hair and dark glasses standing on a rostrum. His narrow, earnest face seemed highly intelligent to Fred, his voice and his manner of speaking were so clear and insistent that each word seemed perfectly chosen. The man seemed to have invented talking. After a while Fred began to repeat certain sentences in his head like the choruses of pop songs.
What the man was saying was pretty much as follows: budding academics were the guarantee of a stable future in the most socially important professions, and therefore they were demanding a framework for undisturbed optimum conditions for learning: civil service salaries for all students from the intermediate exam onwards, and pension, health and life insurance for life.
Fred was curious, finding the demands both bold and at the same time somehow boring, but he wasn’t really surprised. In the meantime he had got used to the feeling of being on some kind of strange planet. The natives talked either insanely or beautifully, laughed at sleeping gardeners, entertained each other with the naming of bread rolls and carried their gear on their backs like boy scouts or mountaineers.
The speaker raised his fist. Against competition and adaptability! For equal financial conditions and independent learning, for an academic cadre without fear of the future and with the courage to make changes! For freedom in security! For a better next millennium! For our country, for Europe and for the whole world! Thank you friends!’
Applause broke out, the audience clapped and cheered for minutes on end, and some were shouting ‘Encore!’ The faces next to Fred seemed strangely transfigured, as if they were going to war. Gradually the crowd began to calm down and disperse, and Fred turned swiftly to the beauty. She had her arms folded and was staring dubiously at the now empty podium.
‘Sorry, I’m looking for someone…’
‘Hm?’
‘Nikolas Zimmer. I’m new here, and I thought maybe you would know him. He is a… German scholar.’
The beauty frowned. This made her even more beautiful. It made Fred dumber.
‘You mean the one with the kid?’
Fred shook his head. ‘No, no. Nikolas Zimmer from Dieburg.’
‘That’s it, he’s from some Godforsaken place.’
‘He’s fairly tall with long, dark hair.’
‘Exactly, and sideburns. I’m in the same Walser course as him.’
Fred asked: ‘Why with a kid?’
‘Probably because his girlfriend got one, or how does it work in Dieburg?’
She began to straighten the pile of books. Fred watched in a daze as her hands moved across the book jackets. Nickel with a child… Was she taking the mickey?
‘Do you know where I could find him?’
‘We’d normally have a lecture the day after tomorrow, provided the strike is over.’
‘Where?’
‘Over there…’ she pointed to a passage leading away from the hall, ‘third door on the left.’
‘And are you sure it’s his child?’
‘In any case it calls him Daddy, and he calls it his darling.’
Fred attempted to imagine Nickel with a child on his arm. It had to be a mistake.
‘Maybe he’s working as a baby-sitter.’
The beauty paused, placed her hands on the books and cocked her head to one side. ‘Listen. I barely know your friend. The best thing would be to ask him all this yourself the day after tomorrow. And anyway I’m working here.’
Fred nodded as she disappeared behind the table, returning with a handful of books and distributing them on the piles.
After a while Fred asked: ‘Is that fun?’
‘For God’s sake!’
She sold a few books, then she took a croissant out of a paper bag and bit into it. With her mouth full she asked: ‘Maybe a brief essay on interest rates for the journey home?’
‘I don’t think that would speed my journey.’
‘Hardly,’ she laughed.
‘The guy making the speech earlier on, was he some kind of…’
‘Idiot,’ she interrupted and shoved the rest of the croissant into her mouth. ‘Good-looking though.’
‘Well,’ Fred shook his head, ‘at first glance, maybe.’
‘At tenth too. Besides he’s uncomplicated and knows what he wants.’ She crumpled the paper bag and threw it under the table. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t be going out with him.’
On his way to the underground Fred thought about babies for the first time in his life. His experiences were limited to impenetrable wailing creatures that sat in nappies and could stare at a fixed point for hours on end. And he thought of the few young fathers he had met previously in Dieburg: either foolish with pride or miserable, mostly in a hurry and whatever happened with their arses stuck in a sofa for the next fifteen years.
The woman was undoubtedly wrong.
12
That evening Fred was seated with a new, and according to the hairdresser, sharp haircut, in a bar near Ku’damm eating liver. Two small girls sitting at the next table with their parents were giggling, and the words pop singer reached Fred’s ears several times. Fred himself found the haircut not at all bad. Once he had got rid of the blow-dried effect, the face apart, he could pass for Willy de Ville’s blond brother. Meantime he had decided to ask Annette for help. Swallow his pride - he didn’t want to wait for Nickel till the day after tomorrow. Besides, he had to know whether Nickel really did have a child. The thought was as sobering to Fred as the notion of Canada as a one week package tour.
He left the pub and headed for Ku’damm. He called Annette’s number from a phone booth, it was busy. Opposite him, a bar sign shone: Ringo’s Place. A schnapps and a phone call in the warm.
Fred crossed the street and opened the door into a small wood-panelled cave. Above the counter hung carnival garlands with coloured bulbs, which cast a sof
t orange light over the room. Three regulars were slumped silently over their beer, each at his own table. A dog was asleep in the corner. Hit songs tootled from a transistor radio. Anyway, anyway, we’ll be happy any day… The landlord sat on a stool by the beer tap, doing the crossword. He had a narrow yellowish face, the features sagging, as if asleep: cheeks, nose, chin, the sparse hair - even the eyes seemed ready to fall out of their sockets at any moment through exhaustion and weariness.
Fred went to the counter and asked if he might make a call. The landlord nodded, pointed at a phone in the corner, and Fred ordered a schnapps. The landlord shoved a glass towards him without a word, poured and buried himself again in his down and across, while Fred went to the phone. Still engaged. Back at the counter he downed the schnapps and leafed through an evening paper. He read the weather forecast and was about to put the paper down, when he caught sight of a computer likeness. It showed the face of a young man with a large chin and unusually protruding eyes. Underneath was written: blond, mid-twenties, brown corduroy trousers, check shirt, probably from South Germany, wanted for theft and grievous bodily harm. Yesterday evening around ten o’clock…
The print swam in front of Fred’s eyes, and Fred thought he was going to be sick. After glancing at the landlord, he folded the paper and rested his elbow on it. He observed himself unobtrusively in the mirror between the rows of bottles. It was the eyes. Even if the drawing wasn’t particularly accurate, those two bovine globes were unmistakable.
Again he looked across at the landlord, then he turned round carefully and watched the other guests. Had they read the paper already? Were they all just waiting for a signal to pounce on him? But nobody seemed to be paying him any attention. More than ever, he had to find Nickel fast. With studied indifference, he jammed the paper under his arm and went to the phone again. This time he got through. After many rings someone finally lifted the receiver.
Magic Hoffmann Page 10