Magic Hoffmann

by Arjouni, Jakob

  One evening Fred asked: ‘What is the position with your gambling debts?’

  Moni made a helpless gesture. She had hardly got to do any sewing these last few days, and the fees for the dance school still hadn’t been paid.

  ‘As soon as I have my money, I’ll pay off your debts,’ said Fred.

  Moni looked at him for a while, as if he she were weighing up different answers, then finally she shrugged.

  ‘Would be great.’

  Fred began to set aside a hundred and fifty marks from the four hundred that Moni brought him daily from the cashpoint. Who knew how long it might take for his money to come through? Fred’s only means of exerting pressure were the withdrawal notices that Nickel must have been getting in the last few days. But what would he, Fred, do if the account were suddenly closed? Shop Nickel and give up on the money? As soon as the police had Nickel, it would be all over for Fred. Then he couldn’t even pester Nickel’s wife. The police would have her under surveillance and would be just waiting for Fred to show up. If they weren’t doing that already. With the help of his identity card and their colleagues in Dieburg, it must be child’s play to find out that the schoolfriend and former fellow suspect in the bank robbery, Nikolas Zimmer, was living in Berlin Hönow - precisely where the wanted man, Hoffmann was last seen. The police had probably already paid Nickel a visit. At least he would then know how hopeless Fred’s prospects looked. A situation in which perhaps the only remaining pleasure lay in dragging other people down into the shit with you.

  By the end of the week he’d collected six hundred marks for Moni. Six hundred out of seven thousand. That evening she came home with a black eye. The creditors had become impatient. Stunned and unable to do the one thing that might help Moni, that is to pay up, Fred’s hatred for Nickel became boundless. He wanted to shop him right away, just to do him some damage. If he could only have phoned up and screamed at him. What was all this about having to wait months for a telephone? For some time Fred thought this was just a trick on Nickel’s part to keep him away. He’ d probably had the phone hidden in a cupboard.

  ‘And now for the good news,’ said Moni, while Fred put a damp facecloth on her eye. ‘I know where you can buy a passport.’

  Fred started. ‘Really?’

  After Moni had explained the procedure, she concluded: ‘all you need are passport photos - and money.’

  Fred fetched a bottle of champagne from the wash basin and poured two glasses.

  ‘I must go to Nickel’s.’

  ‘Are you mad? If they are looking for you anywhere, it will be there.’

  ‘Am I supposed to wait till he’s cleared off with the money, and maybe next time they’ll cut off your ears?’

  ‘Nonsense! It was an argument. I was cheeky, and the guy was stronger. You’re sometimes very sensitive for a bank robber.’

  Fred was taken aback. Then he said boorishly: ‘I had a different image of a ballet dancer as well...’

  It wasn’t meant to be unfriendly - in fact given Fred’s concept of ballet, it was something of a compliment - but that was how it seemed.

  Moni’s good eye watched him without expression. Then she raised her glass and said sharply: ‘Cheers then.’

  Maybe it was Fred’s lack of activity, the pressure weighing down on everything, the identical evenings - in any case the mood had suddenly evaporated, and neither of them knew what to do about it. They didn’t know each other well enough, and they were too exhausted.

  ‘I only meant...’

  ‘I’ve told you before, we’re not married. Don’t let’s have any weird conversations.’

  Shortly afterwards Moni went up to her room, and then the sewing machine started. Fred could hear it humming through the ceiling: I spit on your money. I’ll get by on my own, I always have done, and I don’t have to listen to any idiotic comments. Certainly not from some peasant who has just hit town. You have your forger, I’m tired, can’t bear to watch you sitting around and now I’m going to resume my exciting metropolitan life with exciting metropolitan people.

  It was the first night in a week they had slept apart, and Fred was struck by the thought, that even if everything went smoothly, they only belonged together for a short time. A time and a place. Every moment, or almost every moment, with Moni was glorious, but he wasn’t going to be able to stay here. Either way. And she wouldn’t come with him. It was time to take things into his own hands. Next morning, wearing sunglasses and a scarf over his mouth, Fred went to the post office and handed in a telegram: ‘Two more days and you can tell your wife: call me tomorrow in the slammer.’

  That same afternoon the chambermaid knocked at Fred’s door and told him he had a call. Fred raced down the stairs to reception and grabbed the receiver.

  ‘Yes’ he shouted breathlessly.

  ‘Nickel here. I have the money.’

  At first Fred didn’t know what to say out of sheer surprise and joy. It wasn’t only the money, but the fact that Nickel had kept his word, and for a moment even Nickel’s voice.

  ‘Man, that’s fabulous,’ shouted Fred. ‘Thank you!’

  Nickel was unmoved.

  ‘Where do you want to collect it?’

  ‘Come here and we’ll have a proper celebration.’

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t feel like celebrating.’

  ‘Man, Nickel!’ Fred began, and suddenly he was overcome by the need both to clarify and rectify a great deal. But there was an icy silence on the other end of the line.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘however you want to play it.’

  ‘I can be at Wittenbergplatz station in an hour.’

  Fred thought it over. It had occurred to him that Nickel might be under surveillance.

  ‘What about the department store next door?’

  ‘KaDeWe?’

  ‘Yes, and...’ Fred thought of a place where he could spot the surveillance. ‘There must be a customer’s toilet.’

  ‘Why?’ Nickel asked impatiently.

  Either he really understood nothing of Fred’s difficulties, or he was a good actor. At that moment Fred was struck by a suspicion that Nickel could have done a deal with the police: Fred and the remaining money from the robbery against his freedom. But would Nickel rather give the money to the police than to him?

  ‘So what now?’ came from the receiver.

  Or simply Fred against his freedom, without the money? Fred could picture the scene: a friendly officer in Nickel’s antique-laden living room, a pram, a female lawyer with the wife. ‘My dear Mr Zimmer, naturally we suspect that you participated in the bank robbery back then. But as I can see with my own eyes, you’re now on the straight and narrow, and we would be the last people not to appreciate that. Things have gone rather differently with your friend Hoffmann: he was scarcely out of prison when he was participating in robbery and violence, thereby proving that he is still not ready to join society. What I’m saying is: even if Hoffmann were to betray you out of sheer badness, something that would be entirely in character, we would turn a blind eye, provided, you lead us to him.’

  ‘Fred. This whole business is unpleasant enough. Could you please hurry it up a bit?’

  Fred held the receiver away from his ear. Would Nickel yell like that if the whole thing were a set-up. Would he not rather try and make him, Fred, feel secure? There was still the danger that he was being followed without knowing it.

  ‘OK, Nickel. In the customer’s toilet. On the ground floor. You go in and wait for me.’

  ‘I’d like to know what all this is about.’

  ‘Either way, it’s about a whole lot of money. Afterwards we’ll get mugged in the tube station. You know: young people today...’

  Nickel didn’t think that was funny. He mumbled, ‘In an hour then,’ and hung up.

  21

  Fred watched the entrance and the door to the toilets. Nickel had vanished behind it five minutes ago, and since then no-one suspicious had shown up. Fred came out from behind the shelving and weaved h
is way through shoppers and sales staff. He looked around once more, saw the usual department store hustle and bustle, then pressed the door handle. As he entered the toilet, he saw a row of doors to his right, urinals and hand basins to his left - no Nickel. Fred thought he had already fallen into the trap and wanted to run, when he heard a fart behind one of the doors.

  ‘Nickel?’

  Shortly afterwards Nickel emerged wearing a beige linen suit, and carrying a black suitcase under his arm. He stared grimly at Fred. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and his eyelids were seized now and again by a nervous twitch. His last week had consisted of a journey to Luxembourg, several discussions with his bank about different lines of credit and endless arguments with Lycka, who reproached him with his youth and particularly that part of it he had spent with Fred. ‘You wasted your time on a prole like that! I was ashamed in front of Heike. And why do you let him browbeat you? If I were you I’d arrange to meet him, then seduce him into travelling without a ticket. He couldn’t blame you for that, and his probation would be ... up the spout. He’d be nicely squared away for the next couple of years, then let’s see if he wouldn’t be content with a monthly payment!’

  His Lycka, his little lawyer.

  ‘Hello Nickel,’ said Fred and was met by silence. Nickel stepped forward and handed him the suitcase.

  ‘I’ve deducted what you have drawn from my account. I hope you didn’t buy a car this morning.’

  Fred looked into Nickel’s cold eyes. He could feel that the suitcase was made of plastic.

  ‘Don’t you want to check it,’ asked Nickel, as if checking it would be embarrassing.

  Fred didn’t answer. How would Nickel deal with someone if he was really being mucked about, and hadn’t done the mucking about himself, as was the case here?

  Fred opened the suitcase and gazed at a layer of thousand mark notes. He was wide-eyed. A shudder ran through him. He suppressed the urge to punch his fist in the air and let out a yell. With trembling hands he closed the suitcase and gave back the credit card. Nickel cast a wary eye over it before pocketing it.

  Fred ran his tongue over his dry lips. He would have liked to go and have a drink with Nickel now, to celebrate and say: let bygones be bygones. But the look in Nickel’s eyes made him think better of it.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going through your head, but that was the deal, I’ve taken nothing from you. We can still talk to each other.’

  ‘To each his own,’ answered Nickel, and before Fred could reply, he continued: ‘And I don’t want to talk to a hoodlum. As you can imagine, I’ve been doing some thinking these last few days. Such as how you lured me into this robbery. Look at you gawping! And only to get tangled up in your madness. We meant nothing to you. Then you went to jail and played the big hero. You should have betrayed us! That would have put an end to all this strutting about. And now you come back, and I offer to share what’s taken me four years to build up, and again, all you can think of is yourself: Canada! Instead of being accommodating and accepting developments, that perhaps don’t quite correspond to what you had imagined, but which have actually happened. Your dream, your Canada, that’s all that counts - what we dream, where we live, you don’t give a damn!’

  Fred stared at him open-mouthed. Had Nickel learned that off by heart? Had he too been involved in films in the meantime? Did they teach you stuff like that at university, or had Lulla prompted him?

  Fred cleared his throat uneasily. ‘I don’t know what your concept of “hoodlum” is, and what you mean by “we”, but if it’s that I want my money, and you would prefer to have kept it, then “hoodlum” is fine by me.’

  ‘You really don’t get it. We means Annette and I. I phoned her yesterday, and she told me how you behaved at her place. But that kind of thing is probably normal for you.’

  How he had behaved at Annette’s? Fred couldn’t get over his astonishment. Did Nickel mean the puking in the kitchen? Or that he hadn’t wanted to take part in the film? And why were they phoning, when they had both told him that they couldn’t abide each other? ‘We’ seemed to mean not so much ‘we’ here as ‘not you’.

  ‘How did I behave then?’

  ‘Like someone who has no respect for other people’s way of life.’

  ‘And my way of life?’

  ‘You don’t mind how you live, as long as other people suffer as a result.’ As he spoke, Nickel managed, despite being of equal stature, to look down on Fred like looking on dirt. ‘Nonetheless I wish you all the best. I think you’re going to need it, because what goes around comes around - both good and bad.’ Before he reached the door, he turned round again. ‘By the way: the police came by. They didn’t tell me why they are looking for you, and nor am I interested: it’ll be some piece of lunacy. I wonder if you’ll ever understand that the rules and laws of living in society apply to you as well. In any case I said I didn’t know where you were staying, and that I had nothing more to do with you - the latter being the truth from here on in.’

  Some time after Nickel had gone, Fred was still leaning against the wash basin, trying to make sense of Nickel’s dressing down. All this moralising because he’d had to close his account in Luxembourg? A few days ago Fred would have been bowled over by that. Now...

  Then he locked himself in one of the cubicles and did what he had been waiting four years for: he counted the spoils. Note for note, bundle for bundle. Nickel had counted correctly. There were a hundred and ninety seven thousand and two hundred marks in the suitcase.

  Fred shoved twenty five thousand in his trouser pocket and slammed the door behind him. Several customers turned to stare and a firm jaw came towards them: Magic Hoffmann was back!

  Fred called Moni’s suggested contact for the forged papers from the nearest phone booth. He said the code word, and they agreed a meeting place and a price. Fred had to turn up that evening with photos and money at an address in Kreuzberg. The word ‘passport’ didn’t occur once during the conversation.

  Afterwards he went to the station, avoiding the Café Budapest, and put the suitcase in a left luggage locker. He scarcely noticed the policemen, who were prowling through the concourse. The money made him feel invincible. Next, he fixed himself up with a new haircut. He explained to the hairdresser that he had to visit his aunt next week and wanted to look as neat and pleasant as possible. He departed with short hair and a mild quiff. Then he bought a dark blue pinstripe suit, black shoes, white shirts, a tie and a pair of spectacles with plain glass. He kept the clothes on and went back to the station to have some passport photos taken in the booth.

  By the time he had done all this, it was shortly after seven. His appointment in Kreuzberg was at nine. Time to tell Moni the news and to celebrate with a bottle. He took a taxi back to the hotel and gave the driver a princely tip.

  When Fred entered the hotel lobby and made to go past the reception desk with a brief greeting, the boss of the hotel called him: ‘Hey, where are you going?’

  Fred stopped and removed the glasses. ‘But it’s me, number thirty-one.’

  The manager leaned across the counter so he could look Fred up and down.

  ‘My God! Have you won the lottery?’

  A satisfied grin spread across Fred’s face, and he nodded. ‘Yeah. The jackpot!’

  Fred ran up the stairs, knocked on Moni’s door and went into the room. But she wasn’t there. He wrote her a note to say she need have no more worries about her debts and that he would be back around eleven.

  22

  The taxi came to a halt in a dark street in front of a dilapidated row of houses. On the other side was wasteland. The Wall had once stood there. Now strips of sand alternated with grass, rusty car wrecks lay around and broken iron bars rose up out of the ground. The sky was dark and hazy, but there was no rain. All the street lamps had been vandalised, and illumination was provided by the handful of windows where lights burned. The squeal of a table-saw emerged from one of the entrances.

  The taxi driver
named his price and took the money.

  ‘Are you sure you’re in the right place?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s just...you don’t often get suits like that around here.’

  Fred shrugged and got out. When the tail-lights had disappeared round the next corner, he went down the street, looking for number twenty-one. He stood in front of a facade that was peppered with holes. The door was open. He looked around briefly, then he entered the dismal hallway, that was lit by a filthy bare light bulb. The contact had described the way to the loft. There he was to ask for Mustermann. Fred climbed the creaky stairs till he could go no further, turned into a corridor at the end of which he came upon a second staircase, climbed some more stairs and arrived at a large dark loft full of junk. He flicked his lighter. Through the middle of the loft ran a wall, in which there was a door which was ajar. A general din mixed with the sound of voices emerged from behind it.

  Fred knocked. When no-one answered, he went in. In the second part of the loft, oil lamps revealed a bunch of torn, discarded car seats, which lay around with the beer crates and wooden cases between them serving as tables. In the corner two vast speakers reached for the ceiling, and a half naked young man was thrashing about on an electric guitar. He moved as if was plugged into the mains. Scattered among the chairs were young men and women with leather jackets, iron chains and various wildly colourful hairdos. With their heavy leather boots planted on the cases and their beer bottles in their hands, they eyed Fred mistrustfully. Fred wondered if Moni’s contact wanted to play a joke on him.

  One of the leather boys stood up heavily and sidled across to Fred. As they approached, Fred recognised that it was a she. Her head was half shaven, and orange dreads hung from the other half. Metal spikes protruded from her nose and lips. Her chin provocatively thrust forward, she stood before him and cast a long look at Fred’s clothing.