by Jorg Fauser
After a while she asked: “Could I come and live on your island?”
“It wouldn’t be my island, Cora.”
“Your bar, though.”
“Yes, it would be my bar.”
“Could I visit your bar?”
“So long as you didn’t make a fuss. The fuss that women can make – well, that’s another story.”
“You know I don’t like stories.”
“I wouldn’t forbid you the place, not straight away,” said Blum smiling, and stubbed out his cigarette.
“I like you, Blum,” she said quietly, staring ahead at the straight, empty road.
“I like you too,” he murmured. It was a long time since a woman had last told him she liked him – the tourists and whores didn’t count – but now he sat silent in the rickety car, and in the silence he felt confusion and suspicion growing in him. Was Cora like the tourists, was she a whore too? Or was he so poisoned by suspicion that he could see nothing but calculation even in such words? They drove on, still in silence.
Finally Cora turned off the road where a path ran across the fields and parked the car outside a garden run wild. He saw the metallic gleam of a Mercedes 450. There was a white bungalow in the garden, and further away, on the outskirts of the woods, an old farmhouse. Smoke curled from its chimney. Blum recognized the man who came to the bungalow door as they walked through the garden. This time he was wearing a Shetland pullover instead of a duffel coat, but with his beret, his grey moustache and his jutting chin he could still have been Trevor Howard as Major Calloway, or at least Trevor Howard’s double.
25
“What’ll you drink – sherry, port, gin? Or would you like to try the local cider?”
“I’d like a beer if you have one.”
“Of course. Will you see to it, Margot?”
Margot saw to it. She was somewhere in her mid-twenties, an ethereal dark-haired beauty beside whom Cora was a figure in the purest rustic Baroque manner. The bungalow was well furnished, its rural style relieved by a good deal of glass and technological devices. The rugs alone were worth a fortune, Blum estimated, and among the pictures he spotted a Corot which wasn’t necessarily a forgery. You could see the back garden and the dilapidated-looking farmhouse through the glass wall of windows. A log fire crackled on the hearth. Not a bad life for a retired fashion photographer.
Margot brought the beer. Heineken. The master of the house drank a sherry, the women said they didn’t want anything. Instead, they kept a conversation going. After a while Margot said she wanted to show Cora something, and they went into the next room
“The girls are old friends,” said James, raising his glass to Blum.
“Cora says you’re only photographing frogs these days?”
James smiled as ironically as Major Calloway in the film when he is discussing Westerns with the writer Holly Martins. Not that Blum was any Joseph Cotten.
“Frogs will soon be extinct, did you know that, Blum?” He put another log of wood on the fire. Then he sat down in a leather armchair, crossed his legs in their white jeans, and said: “So you’re in the cocaine business?” What was it Calloway had said to Martins? “I didn’t know there were tigers in Arizona.”
Blum said something about a good opportunity. You took things as they came. These days you had to be adaptable. If something would make a profit you couldn’t hold back like a gentleman, those days were past. And who went about all day with a copy of the narcotics laws in his pocket?
Not James for one. “I have certain reasons for taking an interest in cocaine,” he said.
“I can imagine. You feed it to the frogs, do you?”
“Yes, Cora mentioned your sense of humour. Don’t you take it yourself?”
“I could develop a taste for it. Particularly with the stuff I have at the moment. Genuinely first class. Amazing what one can yet discover.”
“How do you mean?”
“At twenty I discovered a taste for sex, at thirty for whisky and now for cocaine. Where will it all end?”
“I’d say you were going onwards and upwards. May I try it?”
Blum handed him the pillbox. James took a pure gold cocaine set from the secret drawer of his desk and sniffed the snow through a ten-pound note. Bank of England notes, he said, were best for the purpose – only notes from the old series, though; the paper of the new ones wasn’t as good. Blum allowed himself a pinch too. The stuff flew up his nostrils as if of its own accord. He had not stinted, and the effect of the cocaine took his breath away for a moment. Carefully, he lit a cigarette. It did not explode. He slowly returned to his flesh and blood body, but his mind was still high in the air above the valleys. Ice sparkled in the sun on the glaciers.
“Very clean,” said James, who was resurfacing too. “Hardly cut with anything.”
“Hardly? Not at all! Straight from the producer.”
“Really? Did you buy it there yourself?”
“Not exactly, but the people I got it from are 100 per cent reliable. They buy only the very best of the best. This stuff comes straight from the Andes. Peruvian flake, if you know what that means.”
“And how much do you have for sale?”
Blum flicked a mote of dust off his sleeve. He saw Cora and Margot walking up and down the garden, with a Dalmatian running around among the hedges.
“You can have enough,” he said. “The question is, can you afford it? This stuff is bloody expensive.”
There was a superior smile on James’s face. Calloway, with his major’s salary, couldn’t have afforded that smile.
“Within reason, I can pay any price. You see, I’m buying for various acquaintances who don’t want to feature personally in any deal. All of them people at the very top – of industry, the press, art, politics.”
“Politics?”
“How do you think politicians can stand the job? Wine tastings and beer festivals aren’t always enough for them.”
“I thought only Hitler needed this kind of thing.”
“Hitler was an eccentric. Today cocaine is a status symbol, and the more stylish politicians would like to be in on the act. I myself, of course, am entirely non-political, but it can sometimes be useful to have such connections.”
“Naturally,” said Blum. “Of course, that doesn’t exactly lower the price.”
“Politicians don’t earn much, my dear fellow.”
“No one believes that these days, not even people at beer festivals,” said Blum. He was enjoying this conversation. Things were definitely looking up.
“What would you want for 100 grams?”
“Only 100 grams? Why not take a pound? Then I can give you something in the nature of a discount for quantity.”
But James played it down. He stroked his moustache as if to ensure that every single hair was in place – perhaps he had given up smoking and now didn’t know what to do with his fingers – and frowned heavily. Later, perhaps, he said; he was sure they would keep in touch. As he spoke his eyes wandered over the figures in the garden.
“A hundred grams would do for a start. Of course, I shall have to find out if we can come up with the money in a hurry . . .”
Blum’s hand holding the beer glass was suspended in mid-air. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t suppose you’d be particularly happy with a cheque. So we must get the cash together.”
Blum put the glass down on the table without drinking from it. “Why do you all have such trouble finding cash? Everyone keeps saying cash is in short supply, cash is difficult, cash is a problem. And yet you’re all rolling in money.”
“You yourself, as a businessman . . .”
“Oh, never mind the soft soap! You just see me as a miserable rat of a dealer to be strung along until you can pull a fast one on me—”
“I don’t see why you’re so agitated—”
But there was no holding Blum now. All his anger and pent-up fears insisted on breaking out at last. He could understand wretched add
icts having difficulty getting the dough together, he said, but they’d do it and pay cash down, even if it was all in small change. As for the smart alecs in the arts and crafts line, he was fed up to the teeth with them. And if politicians were going to plead cash-flow problems, they’d better buy their stuff by the gram on the open market. Or next time they went on some foreign development aid trip . . .
“If you have two days to spare,” James finally said, soothingly, “of course you can have your cash.”
“But I don’t have two days to spare. Didn’t Cora tell you? You’re forgetting that I’m running all the risk in this business.”
“I’ve been buying cocaine for years, and I’ve never yet heard of one of the big dealers being busted. Suppliers maybe, yes. They picked one up in Munich the day before yesterday. You’ll have heard about it. I hope it wasn’t your man. But dealers really are very seldom busted . . .”
“It wasn’t my man. You think I’d be stupid enough to have the stuff packed in coffee cans?”
James did not think so. He took another small pinch.
“Get me political protection,” said Blum, tapping out the rhythm of his remarks with a cigarette, “and I’ll accept any kind of payment – even in stocks and shares.”
“You don’t mean that seriously.”
“I do.”
“We’re not living in some banana republic, for heaven’s sake. Political protection, give me patience! Your own stuff has gone to your head.”
Blum lit his cigarette and blew the smoke in James’s face.
“As I said, I keep well out of it.”
“But you’re right in the middle of it, my dear fellow. Let me tell you something, right now I’m getting myself political protection from the USA. You don’t believe me? Then call this number. An office in Frankfurt. The ICA. Obviously it’s a cover organization. Ask for a Mr Hackensack. Harry W. Hackensack. My friend Harry. Of course that’s not his real name, but Hackensack will do. Go on, call him. He’ll tell you. Banana republic? You must be joking.”
James wore a rather pained expression. He really must have learned it from Trevor Howard.
“I’ll do no such thing, Blum. We had better agree on the price now. I really am not particularly interested in the details of your trade.”
“I knew it – the way you see it I’m only a supplier, I’m inferior.” Just in time, Blum noticed the changed expression in his customer’s eyes, and put the brakes on. After all, he was not a frog. Then James smiled his impersonal smile again.
“How much do you want for 100 grams, then?”
“Fifteen grand.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“It’s a lot of cocaine too.”
“And you’d have to give some kind of discount for payment in cash.”
“You’re not going to haggle over a stupid few hundred marks?”
“I was thinking of a couple of grams.”
“Okay, I don’t mind splashing out – I’ll leave you the pillbox. There’s at least six grams in there.”
James nodded, and rose rather stiffly from his armchair. “Then I’ll go and phone the interested parties.”
“I don’t have much time, mister,” Blum warned him.
“I thought time was of the essence in your profession. The beer’s in the kitchen.”
Blum got himself another. He drank it slowly, watching the sun sink behind the fir trees, as Cora and Margot disappeared into the farmhouse. I like you, Blum. What did she mean by that? She might as well have said: I like my steak well done. He knew that was not so, but he couldn’t keep back the thought. Such vague language blurred everything. You knew where you were with whores and tourists. A pair of shoes for Fatima of the Kasbah, a torrid holiday romance for the hairdresser from Hameln. I like you, that sounded definite enough, but all it meant was: now we’re quits. But why did Cora want to be quits with him?
When he had drunk his beer James came back and said everything was going smoothly. “You’ll get your money this evening.”
Blum looked at his watch. It was twenty past five. “What do you mean by this evening?”
“Patience, Blum, patience. A couple of hours – maybe eleven or twelve o’clock. There’s all you need here – Margot can cook a meal, there’s plenty to drink in the house, you can read or go for a walk or watch TV, and if you want to go to bed there are plenty of rooms over in the farmhouse. The people who live there are understanding folk, you won’t be in their way.”
“The people who live there?”
“I let a few people who’ve had certain difficulties in town stay there.”
“That’s very nice of you, James, but I don’t know if I can hang around that long. We really wanted to leave for Amsterdam this evening.”
“You’re buying in Amsterdam?”
“Edam cheese, yes.”
They stared at each other. James forced himself to make a casual gesture. “Have a drink, Blum. Scotch?”
He drank J&B. Where else had he drunk J&B recently? With Hermes. Hermes and James. There must be a link. J&H. The ex-photographer and the ex-dealer. Frogs and daughters. Blum helped himself to another Scotch, but added plenty of soda. He wandered around the big room, looked at the pictures, and in a corner, under two crossed Turkish sabres, found a slate slab on which someone had written in chalk: “At ten man becomes an animal, at twenty a madman, at thirty a failure, at forty a swindler and at fifty a criminal.”
“Who wrote that?” he asked James, who was putting a book back on the shelves.
“A Japanese poet. I found it in Henry Miller. How old are you, Blum?”
“Thirty-nine,” said Blum.
“There, you see? And I’m forty-nine”
26
It was cold outside. The last of the daylight was fading behind the woods. Mist over the meadows, crows on the branches of the fruit trees. Blum swore as his ankleboots sank into the muddy ground. Bloody shit, bloody filth, bloody crazy. Five pounds of coke and still no land in sight.
A rotting kitchen garden lay in front of the farmhouse. Weeds rambled over rusty tin cans. Scraps of a woman’s blouse hung on a dead tomato plant leaning sideways. From the house – its roof was covered with moss – he heard loud metallic clanging, groaning, some kind of singsong. Carefully, Blum made his way up the slippery steps and opened the door.
The clanging and singing came from a room on his right. The door to the room was not locked, and Blum slowly opened it. The noise drowned the squeal of the rusty hinges. They were squatting on a pile of old mattresses in a big, smoky, unheated room, muffled up in sweaters, jackets, blankets and curtains, about a dozen men and women all with the same long hair and pale faces, drumming on baking tins, saucepans, fuel canisters and tar barrels, bawling out their song to the sound. It was like the party in Munich all over again:
“Awawawa-ah!”
“Ululululu-uh!”
“Awawawawa-ah!”
“Ulululululu-uh!”
Candles and incense sticks were burning here too, and one man was stripping in front of the company; there was no snake coiled around his torso, but a whiplash that he was using to strike himself in time with the jungle sounds. His shadow danced over the wall, where the plaster was flaking away. Blum closed the door again, turned and opened the door opposite. This was the kitchen. In contrast to the exterior of the house it was comfortable, clean and warm. There was even a fridge, and a kitten purring in front of a saucer of milk. Two young men in dark caftans were sitting on a window-seat in the corner in front of the remains of a meal. One was reading out figures from a sheet of paper while the other fed them into a pocket calculator.
“Comes to 456,787.92,” he said.
“Deutschmarks or dollars?” asked Blum.
They gave him no more than a fleeting glance. “Meetings only on Sundays,” said the man with the calculator, and went on with his sums. Blum thanked him for the information and closed the door. Suddenly he realized that his nerves were stretched to breaking point.
Cold sweat stood out on his forehead. His hand trembled as it held his lighter to a cigarette. The next door was ajar too, and before Blum opened it he heard Cora’s voice. His hand slowly withdrew.
“I haven’t told him,” said Cora.
“I wouldn’t either if I were you.” That was Margot.
“But that wouldn’t be fair. I mean, I owe him something.”
“Suppose you do tell him. You can’t know how he’ll react.”
“Oh, he’s too old to rant and rave or anything.”
“But if you simply go on this way . . .”
That was enough for Blum. He didn’t want to know any more. Perhaps he really was too old to rant and rave, but he was certainly not too old to realize what was going on. He’d been right; he ought to have relied on his instinct from the first. They’d planted her on him. Of course they knew he liked her type. Your tastes were no secret by the time you were forty. And now she was wondering whether to come clean. The classic case – she’d fallen for him. It might sound improbable, but the most improbable answer was always the right one. The more improbable the more likely to be right. And where there was money involved it was always safe to assume that everyone was out to cheat you. He quietly left the house and went back to the bungalow. Deception and betrayal, betrayal and deception, brothers down the ages. James was sitting in his armchair, putting a film into a camera. The Dalmatian beside him growled.
“It’s okay, Orlando. This is Herr Blum, our new cocaine dealer. Kind of looks as if he doesn’t like you, Blum.”
“Too bad for him. Who was your old dealer, then? Hermes?”
James frowned. So I was right, thought Blum. He wondered if he’d reach the VW if James set the dog on him. He had no experience of fighting off savage dogs with a flick-knife. But the dog didn’t look savage. He too was only a double, like his master. Blum supposed he’d just have to write off the six grams in the pillbox.
“Ah, you mean Hermes in Munich,” said James. “But he retired ages ago. Isn’t he breeding horses now?”
“Daughters,” said Blum.