The Snowman

by Jorg Fauser

  “You’re crazy. You don’t need any clapped-out desperado with receding hair and a sample case full of stolen coke.”

  “And how about you? You think you can do it alone. You know you can’t. Let’s at least try. Working together we have a chance.”

  “No, not together. We have even less chance together than working alone. Anyway, I don’t like sharing – either the profits or the expenses.”

  “Is that your last word?”

  “We’re not on stage, Cora.”

  “Do you have to make everything sound ridiculous?”

  “I don’t think your role in all this was particularly amusing, but I expect I’ll be having a good laugh about it in the end.”

  “I didn’t give you away, Blum.”

  “Perhaps not. But that was your role.”

  “I told you, Hermes—”

  “Cora, I don’t want to hear your side of the story any more. When I did, you said you didn’t have any stories, there weren’t any. And now I don’t have any desire to hear them. Or any time either.”

  “No, you never have time. You do make things easy for yourself, Blum. You let yourself off lightly when it gets serious. You let your friend Mr Haq down too. Speedy Blum rushing from date to date. Do you remember how I told you in Frankfurt you ought to just leave the coke in that locker? The stuff does for some people because they take too much of it. And it does for others even when they’re only selling it.”

  “And you say I make things easy for myself. Look, Cora, I really do have to leave now.”

  She made no effort to get up, so Blum rose on his own. She just looked at him.

  “Blum like a flower in bloom, no first name. But you’re missing more than a first name.”

  “I’m not missing anything. Only money, same as most people. Come on, Cora.”

  Even the most persistent have to give up some time. She painted her pouting mouth pink and slipped her fake fur on. Then she took a piece of paper out of her shoulder bag, put it on the wash-stand, looked at him once more with a strand of her ash-blonde hair falling between her big grey eyes, and disappeared. He stared at the door. Funny girl, Cora. First you saw girls like her as a dream, then you realized they were performing plays of their own. But life seldom doled out the best parts. He looked at the piece of paper. It was a drawing, a delicate line drawing in coloured pencils. He was mixing drinks in his bar down by the harbour, wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Even the awning was there, the words Bahamas Bar stood over the entrance, a parrot was perched on the counter between the peanut machine and the little barrel of rum, exactly as he had imagined it, and Cora was in the picture too, just coming down the steps into the saloon, waving to him as the drinkers at the bar raised their heads, and Blum – the Blum looking at the drawing – recognized in them all the people from whom he had fled.

  37

  Blum paid and got out of the taxi. A school class was just leaving the zoo. Their teacher was urging them to hurry, because the rain was beginning again. It had kept raining from time to time all through the middle of the day. A cold breeze blew from the harbour, and an old man with a beret and a dark coat was standing at the ticket office in front of Blum. The cashier seemed to know him; they were having a little chat. A regular customer. Patience, Blum told himself, and lit another HB. I mustn’t attract attention now. In the end he was allowed to shell out his own couple of guilders. The man with the beret disappeared into the reptile house. Blum went on, past the enclosures for the big cats. It was raining harder. The sample case of coke gleamed wet. Blum looked at the time. On the dot, in spite of Cora. He kept his left hand in his jacket pocket.

  Outside the elephant enclosure, a Javanese with a lot of gold jewellery was taking a photo of his Dutch girlfriend, a blonde with a receding chin. Probably a bombshell in bed, thought Blum. His steps were slower and slower. By now it was impossible to overlook the symbolism: the narcotics deal in the zoo, and in front of the cages of captive animals the trap was closing on him too. Although the customer had wanted to meet him in the Rijksmuseum, and the zoo had been Blum’s idea. There was the man now, over by the aviaries. The hell with it, thought Blum, he’s as nervous as I am. His hat was on the back of his head, his tie loose, his dark glasses looked ridiculous. But he was carrying a similar sample case. Two young girls were looking at the eagles, an Indian in a turban was talking to an Indian without a turban, otherwise there was no one to be seen except for a keeper pushing a wheelbarrow full of garbage away.

  “There you are,” said the customer, clearing his throat so much that Blum could hardly understand him.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you with those glasses on,” said Blum.

  “Oh, the glasses. You think they’re too conspicuous?”

  “You must know they are.”

  “Then I’ll take them off. And the case . . .?”

  “Yes, it’s in there. And do you have the money?”

  “Ha, ha, that’s a good one! Did you think I’d come with a load of poker chips?”

  “Show me, then.”

  “Shall we go a little further . . .?”

  They went a little further and found a bench, but the Indians were strolling along behind them. They stopped in front of the bench. The Indians stopped too, gesticulating vigorously.

  “Could look a little odd sitting on a bench in the rain. This wouldn’t have happened to us in the Rijksmuseum.”

  “There are far too many people there,” said Blum.

  “But we’re going to get drenched!”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Let’s go into the monkey house. It’s dry there.”

  “But it’ll be crowded there too.”

  “Just a few schoolkids, they won’t bother us.”

  “You like monkeys?”

  “I heard the gorillas here are really enormous.”

  So that’s where the trap’s to be, thought Blum. In the monkey house.

  Not only a shady character, tasteless too. If a man was a criminal at fifty, did he have to be a tasteless criminal at fifty-five?

  He nodded. “I like gorillas myself.”

  They made for the monkey house. Blum glanced back. The Indians were just settling down on the bench. Chacun à son goût. A couple in leather jackets and blue jeans were disappearing into the monkey house. Blum stopped.

  “What bad luck. Those two know me. From the hotel. It wouldn’t be particularly clever to do it in there.”

  The customer looked bothered. “So what do you suggest?”

  “Let’s go over to the big cats’ house.”

  “No, I can’t stand the stink there.”

  “Look, don’t you feel this is getting ridiculous? We’re doing a 50,000-mark deal, and you get worked up about the stink of the big cats . . .”

  “I never liked the idea of the zoo anyway.”

  “Let’s go into the reptile house.”

  “Why not the café?”

  “Oh, come on, for heaven’s sake! In a café! How many witnesses do you want?”

  “We wouldn’t have had any witnesses at all in my hotel room.”

  “No, just three gorillas to knock me out.”

  “Your suspicious nature isn’t making things any easier.”

  “We’ll go to the reptile house. Or do have you anything against crocodiles too? Did you know crocodiles have existed for 18 million years? They’ve seen so much already that they won’t take any interest in our dirty little deal.”

  The customer looked decidedly alarmed. He was clutching his sample case in one hand and using the other to hold on the dark glasses that kept slipping off his nose.

  “You’re planning something. The reptile house. Why the reptile house? Do you have your friends waiting there? Is that where you’re planning to snatch my money?”

  “Who’s talking about a suspicious nature now? You have persecution mania, you do. How am I to know you have the money in your case at all?”

  “And how am I to know you have the – th
e stuff in yours?”

  “Well, let’s go to the reptile house and take a look. You can see how hard it’s raining. We’re looking really ridiculous! You get my case, I get yours, and if everything’s okay you never need step inside the zoo again in all your life.”

  “Who ever heard of doing a deal in the zoo!”

  “There’s a first time for everything. Now, let’s go. We’ve been standing outside this bloody monkey house far too long.”

  The customer, a bad case of nerves, was sweating. “Then I’ll take a look round the reptile house first,” he said. “I have to feel it’s safe, you understand.”

  Poor bastard, thought Blum, he’s cracking up. Well, I can understand that. Let him. Either he has the money, in which case you can afford to wait a minute yourself, or he doesn’t, and then it makes no difference anyway.

  “Okay, I’ll give you five minutes and then follow you in.”

  The customer nodded, straightened his glasses, and went back the way they had come, walking much too fast, going past the enclosures with the beasts of prey to the reptile house. Blum followed him slowly, an HB in his hand, drawing greedily on it from time to time. The Javanese was now taking snapshots of his fiancée in front of the flamingos. In the rain and the dim haze, he looked the one truly exotic creature in this twilit place full of jungle flora and fauna, but Blum had only to glance at his sample case to know that there could be nothing more exotic than a man of around forty in a wet blazer, walking into the reptile house of Amsterdam Zoo with five pounds of cocaine inside cans of shaving foam, hoping to strike lucky at last. Unless it was his customer, the man of fifty-five with his Trevira suit and his dark glasses, searching the reptile house for hidden hitmen.

  A puma from the Andes lay in its cramped cage in the corner, but when Blum stopped in front of the bars it rose and looked around, as if searching for some way of escape. Was it coincidence? There was no coincidence involved in this game. He looked at his watch. Perhaps only two minutes had passed, but never mind – he couldn’t wait any longer.

  A class of schoolchildren was pouring out of the reptile house, and it took Blum some time to get through the entrance into the low-built, long building. The reptiles were behind glass on one side of it, and on the other side behind bars and lying in basins of water, in a sultry, putrid miasma meant to simulate the atmosphere of alligator swamps and the banks of the Nile. Blum’s customer was nowhere in sight. The reptile house was empty except for the man in the beret who had spent so long chatting at the ticket window. A crocodile fan. He was standing by the basin containing the really big ones. Blum went over to it too. The stench was overwhelming. Perhaps the old man was absorbing the swampy climate as a rejuvenation cure, because he didn’t look quite so old now. Blum addressed him in English.

  “Did you see a man wearing a hat? He must have been in here just now.”

  The man cast Blum a brief glance, but said nothing.

  “A friend of mine, you see. We were going to meet here.”

  The man glanced fleetingly at Blum’s case, and then said, also in English: “Yes, there was a man in here, but he obviously didn’t like the air of the place.” He smiled. “A lot of people don’t.” The smile disappeared. “He suddenly went berserk. Very regrettable. There were children in here. They took him away.”

  “I think you’re lying to me,” said Blum.

  The man shrugged his shoulders. “What do I care about your friends? I come here to look at the animals.”

  He turned his back on Blum and walked slowly on. Blum stared after him, and then examined the basin of crocodiles. Some were drifting in the muddy water, others lying by the verge, crawling over each other, opening their jaws, eyeing each other without moving, waiting – but it was a timeless waiting, a waiting that had lasted 18 million years. Blum turned and left the reptile house.

  The rain had suddenly stopped. The sky had actually cleared. The Javanese was standing at the kiosk by the exit buying a stuffed toy tiger as a souvenir for his fiancée. Blum made his way through the turnstile. A man came towards him. That feeling of panic again. The lookout man . . .

  “Mr Blum? I was asked to give you this.”

  He put an envelope into Blum’s hand, and next moment he had disappeared. Blum couldn’t have said what he looked like. He opened the envelope.

  Will expect you at 20.00 hours tomorrow

  Roxy Bar, Ostend

  Best wishes, Harry W. Hackensack

  38

  When the train crossed into Belgium Blum heaved a sigh of relief. He had had quite enough of Holland for the time being. Even the cows looked more normal in Belgium. The little country railway stations with their rusty ads for Stella Artois and their sooty brick buffets, the railwaymen’s housing estates along the canals, where children were fishing and geese walking through the lush grass, the smoke from factories ripe for demolition that merged with the soft grey light to form a misty veil – it might not be Miami, Maracaibo, Macao, but it was what Blum most needed after all this insanity. Sober peace and quiet.

  His only companion in the compartment seemed to feel the same way, for it was not until they were over the border that he took off his blue plastic raincoat and put down the book he had been doggedly reading ever since Amsterdam. Then he took a pure white handkerchief from the inside jacket pocket of his black suit, carefully cleaned his rimless glasses, and spoke to Blum in unctuous tones. Blum shrugged his shoulders.

  “Sorry, I don’t speak Flemish.”

  “Ah, you are German! I am delighted, of course.”

  “Why of course?”

  “The Germans have done so much to spread the word of the Lord. Do you have toothache, sir?”

  “Yes, all of a sudden. Like someone exploring the root with an icepick.”

  “Well, I am no medicine man, and I can’t give you dental treatment, but I can pray for you.”

  “I wouldn’t like to impose on you.”

  “Oh, but why? Prayer, you see, is a force-field linking us to the divine grace. Prayer awakens us to healing, so Duncan Campbell taught.”

  “What was his name again?”

  “Our teacher Duncan Campbell, the great Scottish preacher, Herr . . .?”

  “Schmidt,” said Blum.

  The man had a head much too large for his small, thin body, encased in black cloth beneath which he wore a black pullover leaving the collar of a white shirt free. There was not an ounce of fat on his face either, but great energy lay around the narrow mouth and the hard blue eyes. He offered a bony hand.

  “And I am Brother Norman.”

  His handshake was like a steel clamp. These lunatics were a perfect pest. And this one a cleric into the bargain!

  “Where did you learn German?”

  “Oh, I’ve had plenty of opportunity. And we have a large community in Germany.”

  “I see. What’s your church, if I may ask?

  “The Church of Prayer, Herr Schmidt. As Duncan Campbell taught us, prayer is the unifying force-field in which all the barriers that have separated human beings for so long are removed. Let me see if I have a German edition of our little introductory pamphlet in my case.”

  “Oh, please, don’t trouble. I travel light, you see.”

  “I’m sure a leaflet will fit into your case, Herr Schmidt.”

  Wasn’t that a rather insinuating look? Never mind, the train was passing through the suburbs of Antwerp, and Blum had to change here.

  “As it happens, my toothache’s gone away. So you did help me. Pleased to have made your acquaintance, Brother Norbert.”

  “Norman. Are you getting out here?”

  “Yes, I want to have a look round Antwerp.”

  “And where are you going then, Herr Schmidt?”

  “Well, I’m on holiday. Just travelling about at random. Goodbye!”

  Blum got out of the train and strode off to the station buffet, where he ordered sandwiches and coffee. At about this time two weeks ago he had been going down to St Paul’s Bay w
ith the Australian. Verbum dei caro factum est. Odd, religion followed you everywhere, it kept on intervening. He took the picture of the Virgin Mary out of his breast pocket. It was rather damp and had a slightly mouldy smell. Madonna salvani. Still, it had lasted this long, which was more than you could say of many human beings. He put the little picture away again and patted the sample case affectionately. We’ll soon find the right place for you, baby. Blum will look after you. We’ll soon be there. He hadn’t felt so cheerful in a long time.

  As he was making for the Ostend express, he saw Brother Norman waiting on the next platform. Find someone else to preach to. He went to the front of the train and made himself comfortable in a first-class carriage.

  On the way through Flanders the sky grew darker and darker. In Ostend a strong wind was blowing, there were showers of rain, and gleams of sunlight over the sea. Blum handed in the case at the left-luggage office. Now he had a left-luggage receipt again. He put it in his wallet with the Madonna. A Sealink ferry was just leaving the dock. The sea air refreshed Blum. He walked past the docks to the Visserskaai, which led to the promenade. The Old Town lay beyond.

  The bars smelled of fish and chips. Tourists stood outside the souvenir shops, holding on to their umbrellas and converting Belgian francs into English pounds and German marks. Blum determined not to let himself be palmed off with Belgian francs. You’d never get rid of them except in the casino. A poster announced a performance by Shirley Bassey, another a lecture on the Bermuda Triangle. Blum felt almost at home. Suddenly there was a heavy shower. Large black mastiffs were racing along the empty beach. Ebb tide. Time for a drink. And there was the Roxy Bar. A reddish neon sign promised real entertainment. It was only five-thirty, but Blum was always susceptible to such temptations.

  39

  The Roxy Bar proved to be a shabby hostess nightclub. Dim lights illuminated a long, narrow room like a tunnel. There was a kind of bar at the entrance, and niches on both sides of the long room containing plastic-topped tables, wooden benches with worn cushions, small lamps with plastic shades. On the walls, which were papered in a clerical strawberry red, hung dusty pin-up photos, while the long tunnel of the room ended at a small platform with an old piano on it, and Blum wasn’t sure if the two women in aprons and headscarves scrubbing the platform represented Real Entertainment or were cleaning ladies. Intoxicated sales reps and seamen sat in some of the niches, complaining of their fate or of the girls here, who were dozing or telling jokes in loud voices. A jukebox was belting out a hit, and the smell was like the atmosphere of a second-class waiting room.