When I reached my bicycle I noticed that I was still holding the cigarette. I threw it into the gutter, unlocked the bike and rode away.
Without thinking about it, I cycled through the starlit night in the direction of the railway station district. I simply wanted to feel the pedals under my feet and the cool air in my face. Suddenly I saw the brightly lit ads for brothels and striptease clubs coming towards me, and I cycled on to a small, grubby dive that I knew had an old nineties jukebox.
I locked my bike and entered the gloomy room, which smelled of beer and unwashed bodies. Three old drunks sat at the bar in silence, looking up briefly when I joined them.
‘A large beer,’ I said to the landlord, who had greeted me with a wink. Then I went over to the jukebox, looked through the titles and found what I wanted. Soon afterwards the bar was full of the sound of Whitney Houston’s ‘Greatest Love of All’.
The drunks looked up in surprise. One of them grinned at me when I went back to the counter. After a while the man next to him began rocking his head dreamily in time to the music.
After my second beer I paid, wished everyone ‘a good rest of the night’ and left the bar feeling better.
At home I ate an apple, watched the nightly news and waited for Deborah to come home.
Chapter 17
Three weeks later Deborah and I were sitting over a late Sunday breakfast in the kitchen at the farmhouse table, which was laid with Deborah’s homemade fruit muesli, soft-boiled eggs prepared by me, fresh country bread, salted butter and a pot of Assam tea. We had been up late the evening before, eating and drinking in the wine bar with Slibulsky, Lara and Deborah’s sister long after it had closed, and now I felt more like a beer and some rollmops as a hangover cure than the hand-picked organic tea. But I couldn’t do that to Deborah. Sunday breakfast in our West End world, which was fragrant with fresh apples and mangoes this morning, was sacred to her.
While Deborah disappeared for a moment I leafed through the new number of the Wochenecho. In the cultural section I looked at the list of best-selling books, and found Journey to the End of Days at number four. I couldn’t help smiling, and I was genuinely pleased for Rashid. For five days of captivity and praying, I thought it was his just reward.
Deborah came back with two wine glasses, opened the fridge door and took out a bottle of champagne.
‘Hello? I thought Sunday was our alcohol-free day?’
Deborah smiled mischievously, and her cheeks were glowing, although we hadn’t touched a drop yet. ‘There’s something to celebrate!’
She put the glasses on the table and untwisted the wire round the cork.
‘Sweetheart, you look as if you’d seen Father Christmas, the Easter bunny and a few angels all at once.’
She said nothing, just poured the champagne and raised hers aloft. I raised mine as well and asked, ‘Can you tell me what we’re drinking to?’
Her eyes were bright, and her voice shook slightly. ‘I’m pregnant!’
My mouth dropped open, and then I said, ‘Who’d have thought it!’ Next moment I broke into a grin, and it just slipped off the tip of my tongue: ‘And who’s the father?’
Deborah’s glass crashed into the wall above my head, and splinters of glass and champagne dripped on my head and shoulders. I shook myself before standing up and taking Deborah in my arms. She didn’t return my embrace, but stood as stiff as a piece of wood, put her head back and looked at me fiercely.
‘The father’s my only remaining customer,’ she said at last. ‘Some shitty little Turk.’
‘Little isn’t right,’ I objected. ‘It’s a cliché.’
And then at last she let me kiss her.
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Brother Kemal kk-5 Page 18