Magic Hoffmann

by Arjouni, Jakob

  ‘What do you think this is, a cocktail party?’ she said in her Swabian dialect.

  ‘Good evening,’ replied Fred cheerily, ‘I’m looking for Mr Mustermann.’

  As if she hadn’t heard, and as if she felt her remark to be fairly valuable, she repeated: ‘a cocktail party’.

  Fred thought the moment she opened her mouth, her haircut seemed like a set of curlers. ‘I understand. Sorry about the suit. If you could please tell me...’

  ‘He should chop wood!’ was spat venomously from one of the seats, and after a pause: ‘We all chop wood.’

  Fred looked around uncertainly for the speaker.

  ‘Or do you think you’re too grand to chop wood? Let me tell you something, you rich creep: I’m proud to chop wood!’

  Unanimous murmurs: ‘me too... me too...’ The guitar howled.

  Fred nodded carefully. ‘Of course, chopping wood is a great thing, but...’

  ‘Two hours every day. And you?’

  ‘Well, I...’

  ‘You should have to chop for five hours. Good hard wood. It’s good for here...’ He tapped his head, then he yelled: ‘password?’

  ‘Pardon?’ Fred didn’t think anyone here would be in a state to forge anything more than beer labels.

  ‘Nobody gets in here without a password. This is war!’

  Suddenly, a pale young man with hair like chives leaned towards Fred from out of the gloom and shouted in amazement: ‘But this is Fred!’

  Fred was startled.

  ‘Of course. Fred Hoffmann.’

  Then Fred recognised little Schmitti. He had been two classes below him. Fred had barely had anything to do with him. One of those kids with ironed shirts, trousers at half mast, a wisp of down on their upper lip and spots, who were only noticed in school when their digital watches went off in class. And him here of all places...?

  ‘Schmitti, man, what a surprise.’

  Schmitti hauled himself up out of the car seat, knocking over bottles, and approached Fred on shaky legs. He too was wearing enormous leather boots that looked as if they’d been borrowed from his big brother, skin-tight jeans, and a T shirt, bearing the legend ‘Let Germany perish!’ With his long thin body, he resembled a stork that had climbed into two stove pipes.

  ‘Fred! I almost didn’t recognise you. What’s this funny gear you’re wearing?’ Then he shouted over his shoulder: ‘He’s all right. Robbed a bank!’

  ‘So he could buy a silk suit?’ came the complaint from the gloom.

  ‘Well,’ Fred fumbled with his tie, ‘it’s a long story. How about bringing me to Mustermann. I’ll explain everything on the way.’

  ‘OK, old mate!’

  Old mate. Fred sighed silently. He would have to depend on someone like Schmitti.

  Schmitti whistled, and a large black dog padded out from behind the chairs. ‘Antifa, to heel!’

  The door closed, and the guitar gradually became quieter. With the dog in the lead, they made their way through the junk and down the stairs.

  ‘When did you get out?’

  ‘Couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘You’ve changed quite a bit.’

  ‘Me...?’ Fred looked at Schmitti from the side. ‘Maybe. What’s all this with the password?’

  ‘It’s necessary,’ said Schmitti before he slipped in his boots and clattered down two steps at once. ‘The enemy is all around us.’

  ‘What enemy?’

  ‘Those who want to destroy us. Speculators, cops, fascists, bourgeois - the whole crew.’ Schmitti stood on the step and declaimed with fiery eyes: ‘Where dreams cease, reaction begins!’

  ‘Well...’ Fred nodded and tried to smile reassuringly.

  ‘You should know best how this fiendish system works. They locked you up like a dog!’

  Now Fred remembered: Schmitti had had a thing about zoology, kept turning up at school with amphibians and toads.

  ‘Believe me, I didn’t forget you. Whenever I was in Dieburg I always asked after you. It was a great thing, the bank robbery.’

  ‘Yes...’

  ‘What do you want from Mustermann?’

  ‘Is that really his name?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Schmitti tried to look important, ‘but I can’t reveal his real name.’

  ‘I need a passport.’

  ‘Honestly?’ Schmitti’s eyes lit up. ‘Are you planning something else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why...’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Hey, you trust me, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course, Schmitti, but I’m not planning anything right now.’

  ‘But the passport...?’

  ‘Does this Mustermann do forged papers then?’

  ‘Actually, I’m not at liberty... But why else would you be here?’

  ‘Schmitti, how would it be if you left the whole thing to Mustermann and me?’

  ‘OK, OK. I only wanted to say that you can depend on me one hundred per cent.’

  They went out of the door on the ground floor and crossed a courtyard crammed with small vans, bikes and broken furniture to a narrow concealed external staircase, which led down to the cellar. Schmitti lit their way along a dark corridor with a torch, until they reached a small empty room and Schmitti pressed the light switch. Sooty brick walls and heating pipes covered in cobwebs could be seen by the light of the bulb. Fred only noticed the door when Schmitti leaned against it. It was a wooden board with a layer of stones stuck to it.

  The door opened ponderously, and bright neon light shone out. For a moment Fred saw a printing press, then a bundle of hair intervened. The man could have been anything between thirty and sixty. Through the dirty-blond hair of his head and his beard, which hung in clotted locks over his chest, one could see only his eyes and sense his lips, from which a roll-up dangled. He was wearing jeans, clogs and a greasy orange T-shirt.

  ‘Are you the passport man?’ he asked Fred.

  Fred nodded.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘Your contact sent me to the loft, and then...’

  ‘Do you have the photos?’

  Fred handed them over.

  ‘The money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man made a gesture in Schmitti’s direction, and Schmitti and the dog returned to the dark corridor.

  ‘Show me,’ said the man.

  Fred hesitated for a moment, then he reached into his breast pocket and took out ten thousand marks. He fanned out the notes, and the man nodded.

  ‘Fine. You can collect it in half an hour.’

  ‘What sort of name will I get?’

  ‘We’ll see. Whatever I have available. I’ll tell you right now, you’ll barely get through a police check point with it.’

  ‘I want to sign on a ship.’

  ‘It’ll be good enough for that.’

  The man disappeared and the door closed again. Fred lit a cigarette and was about to sit down on a box in the corner, when Schmitti returned.

  ‘Hey, you don’t want to wait around here the whole time. Let’s go to my place, and I’ll make us some tea.’

  ‘You know, maybe he’ll need to ask me something else...’

  ‘Rubbish, it’s all fixed! Let’s go, it’ll be much more comfortable.’

  The walls and ceiling were painted with mauve stars and slogans, fifties standard lamps cast a yellow light, at the window stood two school desks full of cacti, and there was a smell of turpentine and dirty dog. The floor was concealed beneath a coat of mauve paint. In a basket, also painted mauve, Antifa lay slavering at a plastic bone. Fred squatted on a grey mattress in front of a low wooden table, while Schmitti leafed through albums in the corner. Schmitti’s tea tasted vile. Fred put down the mug and read the slogans on the walls.

  ‘The good old Doors?’ asked Schmitti over his shoulder.

  Shortly afterwards, they sat opposite each other to the sound of melancholy chords, and Fred wondered if Jim Morrison’s floor had also been mauve.

&n
bsp; Riders on the storm, riders on the storm...

  Schmitti was sitting cross-legged and nodding his head. ‘What do you think of my pad?’

  ‘Fabulous.’

  ‘Each of us has his room and can do what he wants with it. It was a lot of work. You can see what a state the house is in.’

  ‘Hmhm.’

  ‘Have you seen my cactus collection?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fred replied rapidly.

  Schmitti happily took a sip of tea, and his head nodded a little more energetically, as he said: ‘I’m totally thrilled you’re here - honestly. Another drop of tea?’

  ‘Thanks, I still have some.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know how we live and work together here?’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘You’re not very political then?’

  Fred shrugged and sneaked a look at the time. Only fifteen minutes to go...

  Schmitti raised his eyebrows and shook his head, as if to say, let’s hope for the best. ‘One should take some interest in the country one lives in.’

  ‘I thought,’ Fred pointed at Schmitti’s T-shirt, ‘it was meant to perish.’

  ‘But you have to do something to achieve that.’

  ‘I’d rather do something for myself. Apropos, shouldn’t we slowly...’

  ‘If everyone thought like that. I mean, political work isn’t everything, but without political work, it all comes to nothing.’

  ‘Maybe, Schmitti, but it’s above my head. Besides, I’m leaving in a week, and I couldn’t care less if everyone here is working to make something perish or not. Now I’d like...’

  ‘You couldn’t care less if fascism is on the doorstep?’ Schmitti’s voice was almost tripping over itself.

  ‘I don’t have a doorstep.’

  There was a pause. Schmitti stared furiously at Fred.

  ‘So you don’t take it seriously? Reunification, burning refugee hostels, Neo-Nazis, terror on the streets, non-Germans who don’t dare to walk around! To begin with it’s only ever other people, but when it eventually gets you? Or one of your friends!’

  At worst my friends are stuffing themselves with mushy rice, thought Fred and stood up.

  ‘Thanks for the tea, I’d like to go back down now.’

  ‘I really wouldn’t have thought it, that you’d be just another bourgeois. Looking after your own back yard, not giving a damn what happens to anyone else.’

  Fred hesitated. He’d just heard something similar that morning.

  ‘Listen here, Schmitti, I’ve been out of jail for two weeks now, and I hear Germany, Germany from all sides, and somehow it always sounds the same. You’re the third person to give me a hard time because I simply want to get away. You can all kiss my arse.’

  And then Fred left the room. He found his way into the cellar, and five minutes later the stone wall opened and Fred got his passport: Hans-Jörg Heim, born: Bielefeld, resident: Berlin Tempelhof.

  When Fred emerged from the cellar, the clouds had dispersed, and for the first time since he had been in Berlin, the moon shone. The courtyard was bathed in milky light, and the wet cobbles gleamed. Fred stood still and breathed deeply. A huge weight fell from his shoulders... Admittedly not everything in recent weeks had gone according to plan, but now the world was his oyster again: he had his money and a passport. What happened happened, and after that, at last it was up to him again.

  He drank two glasses of champagne to himself and his future in the nearest bar, then he had them phone for a taxi to take him back to the Hotel Luck.

  23

  Next evening Fred took Moni to dinner at le Parisien. He didn’t care if Annette was there. This was to be his last evening in Berlin, and le Parisien was the finest and most expensive restaurant he knew. He ordered champagne, and Moni, who wore a kind of aviator’s outfit of dark red felt, with a hairdo backcombed specially for the occasion by her hairdresser that resembled a pointed sea slug, translated the menu for him. She had often heard of le Parisien as the archetypal Berlin artist’s restaurant, but she had never been there. Like Fred, she was thrilled by the decor. They were both barely conscious of the other guests.

  After they had ordered from all parts of the menu and the waiter, who failed to recognise Fred with his pinstripe suit and new haircut, had gone, they talked about Fred’s journey. He wanted to cross the border into Holland and board a freighter with passenger cabins bound for Canada in Rotterdam. Moni wanted to visit him in September.

  ‘I’ll definitely have a house by the time you come: with a terrace overlooking the lake and a wooden jetty with a boat and water skis.’

  ‘Have you ever been water skiing?’

  ‘Sure... old sailor’s sport!’

  They laughed and gave another champagne toast. Soon the first bottle was empty and Fred signalled for the next one.

  ‘I imagine the orchard will begin right behind the house,’ Fred explained, drawing with his finger on the table, ‘roughly this big. At the back is the factory where the apple wine is pressed and bottled. And up above in neon letters: HOPEMAN’S APPLE WINE.’

  ‘What does apple wine taste like?’

  ‘Like sharp apple juice with a shot of alcohol.’

  Moni pulled a face.

  ‘But much, much better.’ said Fred rapidly.

  When the waiter brought the champagne, Fred asked if they served apple wine, whereupon the waiter answered that they had an excellent French cidre, but Fred, who didn’t know whether the waiter would play one of his little tasting games again, declined.

  The waiter disappeared, and Fred declared: ‘September is harvest time. You’ll be able to taste enough then.’ And he raised the refilled champagne glass. ‘Three more months...’

  Moni raised her glass and smiled: ‘Deal’s a deal!’

  Fred paused for a moment...Yes, a deal’s a deal - what a sweet and wonderful princess.

  ‘To Canada,’ said Moni, and they drank.

  Over cognac and coffee Moni said for the first time that she loved him, and Fred remembered one of Grandma Ranunkel’s old sayings: partings bring fair weather.

  ‘And I’ll try to audition with a few ballet companies in Canada.’

  Fred was speechless. He looked into Moni’s eyes, which were shimmering in the candlelight, and felt as if he were sinking into soft warm cream. After four years of prison and four weeks of setbacks, after Annette and Nickel, the police and the manhunt, after all that shit, here he was sitting in the finest restaurant with money to burn, and this woman, who he believed would know a hundred more attractive men, wanted to follow him to Canada... Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head: Magic Hoffmann goes lucky!

  ‘You’ll be the greatest prima ballet thingammy in all America.’

  Moni laughed. She could scarcely believe it herself, but on the evening when she had left Fred’s room because of his stupid remark about ballet dancers, and on subsequent occasions sitting in front of her sewing machine, she realised: this strange peasant with the goggle eyes had done it to her. She didn’t want him to go, still less that he should be caught by the police, so there was only one possibility. Moni was amazed at how quickly she got used to the idea of leaving Berlin. Of course it was only a thought, and they were cheap, but Moni wasn’t a dreamer, and she didn’t waste any time on meaningless thoughts.

  At the end of the evening Fred suggested going to Ringo’s bar for a night-cap.

  The landlord recognised Fred and was visibly pleased that he had grasped the fact that there was no need to fear the police in his bar. Two of the old boys were there as well, and all congratulated Fred on his charming companion. Several rounds of malt whisky later, Moni and Fred were drunk. Fred declared Berlin to be a magnificent city, and he was pressed into coming back soon, and Moni had to state how many children she wanted to have with Fred, and whether he would treat her like such a pretty little thing deserved.

  Everyone embraced as they departed, then Fred and Moni staggered home. The moon shone and they kissed in doorways
.

  ‘Maybe I will come in August.’

  ‘Or in July?’

  ‘Why not June?’

  ‘Yes, why not?’

  ‘Then let go, I have to go home quickly and pack.’

  They laughed.

  ‘Main thing is you come,’ said Fred.

  ‘I’ll come,’ Moni swore.

  The fresh air sobered them up. They reached the hotel and climbed to Moni’s room. It was their last night, and as the birds began to sing, they slept, exhausted, in each other’s arms.

  Next day the sun shone for the first time since Fred’s arrival. And all Berlin seemed to have dolled itself up. The first green shoots were appearing on the trees along the street, windows stood open, music drifted out, the pavements were full of men in bright lightweight shirts and women with airy blouses, and the cafes had put out tables. So Grandma Ranunkel’s saying was right.

  The taxi that had stopped in front of the hotel had the windows wound down, and the driver’s arm hung casually in the sun. Fred threw his suitcase in the boot and sat down with Moni in the back seat.

  ‘Zoo station, please.’

  The driver turned round. ‘Is this some kind of joke? Those few metres?’

  Fred gave him a twenty mark note. He was hung over, and the nearer his departure, the sadder he became. Again and again he had contemplated staying a few days longer, but the risk of being caught by the police once more was too great. Moni wore a headscarf and hid her face behind enormous sunglasses. During the past two days of farewell she hadn’t got around to paying off her debts with the seven thousand marks Fred had given her, and she was afraid of running into her creditors now of all times. Even with money it wouldn’t be a pretty sight, and anyway, she had more important things on her mind this particular morning.

  ‘You’ll write with your address?’

  Fred nodded. ‘As soon as I have one.’

  Moni leaned across to his ear: ‘Take your time at the Dutch border. Stay at a hotel if you have to, and take a look around.’

  ‘It’ll be OK.’

  ‘And call me when you’re in Rotterdam.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The taxi stopped at the entrance to the station, and they got out. In the concourse, Moni stayed with Fred’s suitcase at a snack counter.