‘See you in a minute,’said Fred, and he was about to set off, when Moni grabbed him and drew him to her. The people standing at the counter smiled.
They untangled themselves after a long kiss, and Fred went to the ticket counter with a heavy heart. His train left in half an hour. As he waited in the queue he cursed the Café Budapest. How wonderful it would be, to be able to stay in Berlin now. Where the sun was shining and everything looked magnificent. He had to pull himself together. Three more months till Moni had finished her school... Three short, godawful months... He would get everything prepared: furnish the house, build a big ballet room for Moni’s training, buy a sailing boat...
Suddenly the doors to the booking hall burst open, and a group of skins wearing paratroopers boots and bomber jackets marched in. Fred gave a start and turned away quickly. Then he glanced across casually to see if they were his friends from the tube. Maybe, maybe not - it was hard to spot differences with the gear they were wearing. Let’s have no trouble now, thought Fred. And as if they had listened to his silent plea, the skins went around with a friendly smile distributing fliers, bearing the caption: ‘So that no-one can claim ignorance later!’
The skins also gave the passengers, as a kind of promotional gimmick, baseball caps bearing the slogan: ‘Red, black or brown - Germans for German towns.’ The flier explained that scientific estimates placed the world’s population in the year 2020 at ten billion people, and that it was nothing to do with nationalism or racism if one said that Germany would be on a par with Zimbabwe, for example. All peoples and cultures were equal, but in that situation only the strong would survive - and the strong would be the ones that stuck together. ‘Think of your children and grandchildren, your husband or boyfriend, your wife or girlfriend - think of those you love!’
Fred accepted both flier and baseball cap, and breathed a sigh of relief when the skins left the booking hall. People round about him were reading the fliers, whispering, laughing and shaking their heads. Baseball caps were swiftly stuffed into pockets and jackets. Several stared with strenuous outrage in the direction of the closed doors, and with a sudden outburst of scorn, flung down both flier and baseball cap for all to see. Only a few children actually put the caps on.
Fred paid for his ticket, left the booking office and went to the left luggage lockers. He saw the skins swarming through the station. With a glance he reassured himself that Moni was still at the snack counter.
He put the key in the lock and opened the door. He looked around briefly before removing the black suitcase full of money. No-one was watching him. But something else made him pause: a second group of boot boys stormed through the main entrance, stopped at a command and gathered themselves into an attacking formation complete with truncheons and chains. In contrast to the skins they wore leather jackets and colourful spikey hair.
‘Oh shit!’ mumbled Fred, grabbing the suitcase and slamming the locker door.
Some twenty clenched fists punched the air, and a sound like a single piercing cry rang through the station: ‘Red Front! Nazis out!’ The slogan faded, and for a moment time seemed to stand still. The formation held their line provocatively, while skins, travellers and other members of the public were rooted to the spot, bewildered, terrified or stunned. Silence descended over the station, only the public address system could be heard. Then the first fliers hit the floor, and the skins took baseball bats from their jackets. The snack counter at which Moni was waiting lay almost exactly in the middle of the two groups of boot boys.
Fred ran. As he reached Moni, the skins were marching towards the formation, declaiming: ‘Red Front die!’ Those nearby beat a hasty retreat, and a kind of boxing ring formed in the middle of the station. A lone policeman stood at the edge desperately whispering into his walkie-talkie.
‘Quickly!’ hissed Moni, who had taken off her headscarf and was dragging Fred towards the exit. Suddenly the formation broke up and ran screaming at the skins. Before Moni and Fred knew it, they were in the middle of the fighting. Batons and baseball bats whirred around them, chains were swung, boots lashed out, fists slammed, people screamed with pain and hatred, others kept getting in their way. Everywhere was deafening, raging animal chaos. Fred, who had dragged Moni behind his back, was able to fend off the first blows with the suitcase, but then a skin appeared right in front of him, screamed ‘red swine!’ and knocked the case from Fred’s hands.
Fred yelled: ‘We’ve nothing to do with it. We’re only passengers!’ and was about to put his hands up as proof of their neutrality, when he got a kick in the stomach. Fred stumbled and blanked out for a moment. Then in the midst of the turmoil he heard a strange dull sound...
When Fred turned round, Moni was already on the ground. Fred was staggered, then he stood stock-still. Moni’s face was nothing but blood. A second blow with the baseball bat had shattered her skull.
Fred opened his mouth, but no sound came out. While the fight raged on around him, he flopped on his knees in front of Moni, grasped her head and lifted it into his lap.
He was still sitting like that when all the boot boys had long gone, a group of bewildered people had formed around him and police and ambulance were arriving.
Two nurses were leaning over Fred and asking him to release Moni’s head, but he seemed to hear nothing. His protruding eyes had a blind man’s stare. One of them gently moved Fred’s hands to one side, while the other grasped the corpse beneath the shoulders. They lifted her onto a stretcher and carried her away.
Then a policeman squatted down beside Fred, took his arm and asked him to stand up. Fred obeyed meekly. He was led to the snack counter and sat on a stool. The policeman disappeared, then returned quickly with a bottle of Schnapps.
After filling a plastic cup for Fred, he asked: ‘I’m sorry, but... could you possibly give us the victim’s name?’
He had sat down on a stool next to Fred, and his hand rested on Fred’s shoulder. He was plainly uncomfortable with having to bother him.
After a while Fred answered in a monotone: ‘Moni Sergejev.’
The policeman took the hand off his shoulder and wrote in a pad.
‘And your name?’
Fred didn’t react.
‘Please understand, we need you as a witness... you must want the perpetrators to be caught and sentenced as swiftly as possible?’ The policeman paused. ‘Forget it,’ he said and stood up, ‘we can do this later.’
But he was wrong. While his hand rested helplessly again on Fred’s shoulder, a second policeman, clearly his superior, arrived and demanded: ‘Your name please!’ And when Fred remained silent, he threatened: ‘Otherwise we’ll take you down to the station. It is our duty to ascertain the names of the witnesses.’
Fred slowly raised his eyes and stared at the officer.
‘Hans-Jörg Heim.’
‘May we see your identity card?’
Fred reached into his pocket and handed him the passport. Two minutes later the policeman received the information on his walkie-talkie: ‘Stolen.’
‘Well Mr Heim. Something appears to be not quite right. I’m afraid we’ll have to take you with us for further questioning.’ He pointed at Fred’s luggage. ‘Are those your things?’
Fred looked at the black case containing his money, then he shrugged slightly and nodded.
24
Three and a half years later it was snowing in Dieburg at Christmas. On the twenty-fourth of December half a metre of snow lay on the town, and the white flakes kept falling. There was joy all around, and Mr Scheibel, the manager of the Edeka shop, was standing in the doorway greeting passers-by with a cheery: ‘This year’ll do then.’
As darkness fell, he sat down behind the till and counted the day’s takings. It was just after five and he wanted to close early today. Wife and kids were waiting. The shop was silent, apart from a soft scraping sound coming from the storeroom.
Mr Scheibel’s assistant was arranging the cases of drinks. Four candles burned on the till, castin
g their light on the ledger. Good business today: chocolate-coated almonds, raisins, hazelnuts, vanilla sugar, rum - at Christmas people preferred going to the small corner shops than to the out of town supermarkets.
At half five Mr Scheibel was about to shut the door, when a young man rushed into the shop, asking for candied lemon peel. Shortly afterwards the doorbell rang again, and a young woman came looking for chocolate milk. When the man and the woman saw each other, they said, as if with one voice: ‘No!’
Annette and Nickel went up to each other, and after a brief hesitation, they embraced.
‘What are you doing here?’ Annette asked, laughing.
‘Christmas,’ answered Nickel, ‘what can you do? The old folk insist on it.’
Annette nodded. ‘That’s how it is. And we do them the favour.’
Nickel grinned. ‘As long as we survive!’
When Mr Scheibel returned to the till with candied lemon peel and chocolate, he heard the woman ask: ‘So what are you doing with your German doctorate?’
‘I’m sort of a general secretary on a committee for saving Europe.’
‘For saving Europe...? I thought South America was your speciality.’
‘That was before. Everything in its time. And you?’
‘I’m a mother.’
‘No! Really?’
‘Mother and housewife. I’d never have thought it possible, but to be quite honest: it’s wonderful!’
‘I know. To start with you think, well...but then...Lycka says the same.’
‘Roger - you must know him from that soap Kreuzberg - Harder Than Steel - he says: What’s important is the nest. Maybe it seems fairly conventional at first, but after a while you notice that there’s a lot of truth in it.’
‘But I’d be the last person to contradict him.’
Annette and Nickel smiled at each other.
‘Well,’ said Annette, turning to Mr Scheibel: ‘I’d like three bottles of cola too,’ and to Nickel: ‘Roger is addicted to cola - totally crazy.’
Nickel shook his head. ‘Imagine.’
Mr Scheibel called to the store room: ‘Case of cola, Hoffmann!’
Annette and Nickel looked at each other. Then they nodded knowingly.
Fred came through the grey plastic flaps, that separated the store room from the shop, paused for a moment and eyed the customers. Then he carried the case of drinks to the till, stood next to it and looked at the floor.
Annette and Nickel were in a hurry. ‘What do we owe you?’
Scheibel took the money, and Annette and Nickel murmured: ‘Happy Christmas,’ and left the shop.
When the sound of the doorbell died down, Scheibel turned to his assistant and frowned at him. ‘Something wrong, Hoffmann?’
Fred kept his eyes to the floor and said quietly: ‘Call me Hopeman, Scheibel. I told you a hundred times: Call me Hopeman!’
This ebook edition published in 2013
by No Exit Press, an imprint of Oldcastle Books
P O Box 394, Harpenden, AL5 1XJ
www.noexit.co.uk/arjouni
First published in German by Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich 1996
Copyright © 1996 Jakob Arjouni & Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich
First published in the UK in 1998 by No Exit Press
The right of Jakob Arjouni to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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ISBN
978–1–84243–770-4 (print)
978–1–84243–771-1 (epub)
978–1–84243–772-8 (kindle)
978–1–84243–773-5 (pdf)
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Magic Hoffmann Page 21