Goodbye Lucille

by Segun Afolabi

  ‘I’ll bring in the photographs first thing Monday,’ I said.

  ‘Just don’t be late with them this … Look, they’re away again.’ And she was off.

  I crossed the street, walking in the opposite direction. I looked back at the crowd and from a distance it seemed small, insignificant. Only a few streets away and life was already different. The buildings were dirtier and daubed with graffiti: Turks Out! Down with the Wall! The SDP is shit! Henkelmann was unlikely to see any of this.

  I had almost decided against taking more photographs when I spotted a café on the other side of the road. I wanted to sit and drink something cold. Get out of the sun. Perhaps it would encourage me to continue. The heat had sapped my energy. As I approached the café, however, I realized I had made an error, but I was already over the threshold and momentum seemed to carry me through. The place was drab and ill lit, the floor covered in torn orange and brown linoleum. Three pinball machines stood at one end of the room, only one of which seemed to be functioning, although no one was using it. On the left, behind the counter, lounged a rotund woman of indeterminate age with a helmet of oily black hair. She looked as if she had always been there, had never moved from that position – like a waxwork dummy. There was no discernible expression on her face, simply a mask of ennui. I had an urge to prod her, to confirm she was still alive. I took a few shots with the wide angle to capture her at one end of the room, the pinball machines at the other. No one seemed to react to my presence.

  The only other occupants were two men and a girl of about six or seven. One of the men looked Turkish or Middle Eastern. He sat in an overstuffed chair with one leg slung over the side, as if he were in his own sitting room. He wasn’t drinking or occupied in any way I could discern. He sat watching me as if I had walked into his line of vision and he was simply waiting for me to move. Had I stepped to one side, I thought, he would merely have continued to stare straight ahead. He looked almost as bored as the woman.

  The only sign of life came from the girl who began to run at the other end of the café. She kept making noises, presumably in imitation of some object – a bird, a crying baby. I couldn’t tell. The screeching grated. She spun around the chairs throughout the café, then ran up and tapped each of the pinball machines in turn. Then she sidled up to the counter, where the woman ignored her completely, all the time making the strange noises. I wondered whether they were related in any way, whether her bird’s plea was a reaction against a mute mother. At one point she ran up to me, stopped and tilted her head back, making great moon eyes, until I thought she might fall over. I was sure she was going to say something, the way most curious children do, but then she snapped her head upright again and sped towards the back of the room, to the pinball machines.

  The other man was from somewhere in East Africa. I could read it in his features, the shape of his face, his narrow nose. I thought he might be Ethiopian, Somali maybe. He too was looking at me – then after a moment, I thought I glimpsed the hint of a nod, but he didn’t smile. I nodded in return, in any case, then turned and left. Walking away, it troubled me to realize no one had spoken in all the time I had been there.

  In the evening I felt disconnected. I called Lucille, although I couldn’t remember whether it was my turn to phone.

  ‘Fine time to call.’ She sounded distracted. ‘Dirty Den’s at it again. I don’t know why Angie puts up with him.’

  ‘What’s that? Is everything all right?’ I had no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, which could have meant anything.

  I was anxious about bringing up the subject of travelling to Berlin again, but she didn’t ask any questions and appeared uninterested in attempting any kind of conversation.

  ‘You heard from Pat and Louis lately?’ I couldn’t stand her parents, but I asked in order to have something to say.

  ‘They’re fine,’ she sighed.

  I felt the distance stretch between us like a taut wire about to snap. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you mean, “what’s wrong”?’

  ‘You sound … tired,’ I said. ‘I haven’t called at a bad time, have I?’

  ‘No, no, now is good. I’m not tired at all.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was so used to Lucille talking all the time, I found it impossible to deal with this taciturn creature at the other end of the line. ‘Suppose you’re busy at the moment – with work and everything?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, I was wondering … perhaps it’s the wrong time for either of us to visit?’

  ‘I thought you said you were travelling soon?’

  ‘I … I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘What I mean is, I’m not sure. Even if I am, it doesn’t mean we can’t see each other.’

  ‘Were you thinking of coming over?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that. I didn’t say …’

  ‘Or I could come to you,’ she suggested.

  ‘Well …’

  ‘It’s been ages, you know. It’s unnatural to spend so much time apart. I have to get out of this city.’ She had discarded her earlier reserve. ‘Let’s decide on a date now,’ she said. ‘Tell me when’s good for you and I’ll arrange my holiday around that. Sound fair?’ She went to fetch her diary. I sat down, then lay on my back against the cool floorboards, and waited.

  ‘How about this weekend?’ she asked when she returned.

  ‘I’m busy all week.’

  ‘Next weekend then. I can take from Thursday off and part of the next week too.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘I won’t be able to book time off for three weeks after that. It’s either around this weekend or the next. You decide.’

  ‘Next then,’ I said, although it didn’t feel like my decision. I hung up, stupefied.

  I drew a bath, despite the warm weather. I had been on my feet all day and the city grime felt like a second skin. I drew it the way I like it – steaming hot so I could barely stand the temperature – and lowered myself in by degrees. Aunt Ama used to warn that a too-hot bath was harmful. She claimed it wouldn’t get you any cleaner, and that you might be scalded, or, worse, you would never be able to have children. Half the time I hardly listened to her.

  After my bath I put on Wes Montgomery’s A Day in the Life and fussed about in the kitchen before settling on two tins of sardines and half a loaf of bread. I sank into a cushion on the sitting-room floor and devoured the sandwiches, drained a bottle of beer. I thought it a shame not to savour the taste properly, but I was hungry. I had a fleeting memory of Uncle Raymond asking me not to bolt my food, but then I wasn’t sure whether it was an actual memory or a fantasy I had conjured up out of guilt. I drifted back into the kitchen and opened another beer, trying to concentrate on the warm, rich sounds of the music. But the heat and the alcohol had made me drowsy. It seemed only moments later when the telephone screamed, jolting me out of unconsciousness.

  ‘Hallo, hallo …Vincent? Have you … have you heard?’ A voice garbled.

  ‘What? What? Who’s that?’ I groaned in my half-sleep. ‘Marie? What is it?’ Morning sunshine streamed in through the windows of the apartment. I wondered how I had been able to sleep so comfortably on the sitting-room floor.

  ‘Henk … Henkelmann’s dead,’ she panted. ‘Henkelmann.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘He was killed. Yesterday. Last night, I think.’ She sounded as if she had been running up stairs. ‘It’s not on the news yet, but rumours are circulating. I got a call from a friend at a news agency.’

  Thoughts spilled into my head. If I had stayed yesterday, I might have taken a better, more valuable photograph. More pictures for the archive.

  ‘It was long after I had gone. I was one of the last people there,’ she continued. ‘I didn’t even get a chance to interview him properly. I don’t understand it. Why would anyone want to kill him?’

  ‘Listen, I’ll work on the pictures now and get them to you as soon a
s I can.’ There was no rush for them as the magazine is published monthly, but I felt I ought to do something immediately.

  I worked all day on the photographs, snacking on boiled eggs and sardines, drinking cold beer. I threw open all the windows and then the front door. Clariss’s clip-clop clamoured up and down the stairs, the Zimmermans opposite left early for work, Frau Lieser hollered from her window on the ground floor, a dog barked intermittently from her apartment. I couldn’t seem to keep out the heat. Early next morning the newspapers were full of it.

  MYSTERY OF

  SLAIN POLITICIAN

  Berliner Morgenpost 6 July 1985

  A body believed to be that of Social Democratic Party politician Heinrich Henkelmann was discovered early yesterday morning beside an overgrown path in the outlying village of Lübars, writes Peter Müller. At 6.35 a.m. on Friday, police received a telephone call from a young farmer out exercising the family dog at the location where, according to police reports, the body of the politician lay drenched in blood. As details begin to emerge about the killing, the full extent of the horrific act is only now coming to light.

  According to Detective Chief Inspector Udo Schlottke, ‘It [the body] is almost certainly that of Heinrich Henkelmann. Documentation discovered on the deceased and in a nearby abandoned vehicle points to this, although official confirmation is still pending following conclusive ID.’

  Difficulties surrounding a swift identification relate to the particularly gruesome nature of the crime. The attack was of such a frenzied nature, according to Dr Alexander Riesner, head of Accident and Emergency at Humboldt Hospital where the body was examined, that ‘much of the cranium had collapsed, the zygomatic bone was crushed on one side. The frontal bone, the temporal and sphenoid bones, the maxilla, the list goes on – even a section of the parietal – all had been openly fractured. Repeatedly’, Dr Riesner explained to a group of waiting reporters. ‘Several of the victim’s fingers had been broken, smashed in various directions in an apparently futile attempt to ward off the blows. Whatever kind of instrument was used – and one can only speculate here – it would have taken a considerable degree of strength or length of time, probably both, to inflict such extensive damage. The attack may, in all probability, have continued long after the victim had expired. No human being would have been able to withstand such savagery for more than a few minutes.’

  The victim was left unrecognisable. ‘It was,’ continued Dr Riesner, ‘as if the assailant or assailants had been trying to remove all trace of the subject’s identity – namely, his face.’

  Henkelmann, a successful entrepreneur in his own right, was known to maintain interests in many private fields. Rumours suggest that the killing may be connected to a business endeavour gone awry. Perhaps there were links to a mafia-type organization? A more plausible motive, however, lies with his political career, a career that was beginning to scale new heights. He was popular with younger Berliners and minorities, those eager for more effective change, and some suggest that the killing may have had a connection with one of several neo-Nazi organizations. Some even go so far as to hint at foul play among one of the opposition parties, although this has been merely speculative. Inspector Schlottke, heading the search for the attacker/s, has dismissed speculation saying, ‘No motive for this attack will ever be discovered until the murderer or murderers have been apprehended.’

  What is certain, however, is that the central office of the SPD now lies in a state of shock and incomprehension at the murder of the ebullient politician who had been strongly tipped to succeed at the next elections. Berliners also remain quietly stunned, and residents of the peaceful hamlet of Lübars are trying to come to terms with the fact that their once idyllic village community is now the site of one of Berlin’s most horrific recent crimes.

  Mayor Joachim Olbrich has described Thursday’s attack as ‘an act of madness’ and has appealed for calm and vigilance in the apprehension of the murderer/s.

  Police investigators have stated that no weapons have yet been discovered at the site, although teams of officers and local volunteers are painstakingly sifting through surrounding fields and countryside. Heinrich Henkelmann leaves behind a wife and two teenaged sons.

  Murder of a politician, pages 2–3

  Leader comment, page 15

  Obituary, page 16

  5

  ARÎ RAPPED ON the door and then lingered on the landing as if he had forgotten why he had knocked. I asked him in and returned to work. From the darkroom, I could hear him pacing about the apartment.

  ‘You’ll have a drink?’ I asked when I emerged for a beer.

  He shook his head and smiled, but his eyes were bloodshot and he seemed shrunken in his grey suit.

  ‘You’ve heard about Henkelmann?’

  ‘Yes.’ He waved away the question as if it were age-old news. ‘It’s what everybody talks about – Henkelmann, Henkelmann,’ he said. ‘I tell Ezmîr you take his picture.’ Ezmîr was a fellow Kurd who had been stabbed in the eye with a soldier’s knife.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Ezmîr no likes politician,’ he said.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I do not think too much about it. Is a bad thing, this thing that happen. They decide law. They say for you to come or go. They have power over my life, so sometimes I listen to what they say. But I don’t care even one pfennig for them.’ He sat down heavily and was quiet again.

  I took a swig from the can.

  ‘I have bad feeling,’ he said eventually. ‘I think they will not let me stay.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Just bad feeling, is all,’ he said. ‘Sometimes … Sometimes I think someone follows me.’

  I was used to hearing about Arî’s trials. He confided in me at least once a month, told me someone was either stalking or harassing him. I wasn’t overly concerned this time. ‘Why do you think you’re being followed?’

  ‘Last week, I go to Pfaueninsel. It is hot. We are feeling very good, you know? I am with my friends – Karwan, Mehmet, Ezmîr.’ He counted them on his fingers. ‘I am feeling very happy. When we are coming back, at first I do not notice – but on train, I see a man sitting. I see him before, I am sure. He is looking at us. When I look at him, he look away, so I know he is watching. I thinking he will get off at next stop, but no.’ Arî shook his head.

  ‘We change train and he follows. Karwan ask me why I am like this, being so nervous. I tell him someone from police is following.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘Well … soon he get off train,’ he said.

  ‘You know, Arî, no one is keeping you under surveillance. The police don’t do things like that. Even if they had the resources, they wouldn’t. What are you to them, anyway?’

  He shrugged; he was never convinced when I tried to assuage him. He could always find a loophole, a no man’s land where there was no justice.

  At the end of the day I had to confess I didn’t know all that much about Arî, about his life before, where he had been, what he had been involved in. I didn’t really know whether people were followed, whether immigration officials ever tried to catch people out in order to deport them. It wasn’t something that concerned me. I knew Arî suffered, though, each day as he waited for the result of his asylum application. I could only try to ease his paranoia, which, to me, seemed limitless.

  ‘I’ll keep my eyes and ears open,’ I said. Empty words designed only to fill space.

  ‘Karwan say to me, if they take us to Turkey again, we will go – maybe to Holland.’ He was already planning the next move when he seemed to have a perfectly strong case to stay here.

  The phone rang and he looked at me as if here was news he had been dreading all along.

  ‘Hallo!’ A voice, artificially breezy, a mediocre saleswoman. I couldn’t place it. There was a short silence. ‘Hallo, this is Claudia.’

  Claudia, I thought. Who is she? I glanced at Arî, who looked as if he thoug
ht I was going to hand him over to the authorities.

  ‘Claudia …’ I rolled out the name as far as possible, making it flat and thin like pastry.

  ‘You don’t remember me?’ Gone was any artifice and in its place something more hesitant.

  ‘Yes, of course I do!’ I laughed. ‘Claudia, how could I forget?’

  ‘You don’t remember? At the Atlantic.’ She mentioned B and Tunde, and a woman’s name I didn’t know. The Atlantic, of course. The vivacious smiler; her less glamorous friend.

  ‘Claudia!’ I didn’t recall giving her my number, but then much of that night was lost to me. What did she want? Was she angry? Was she pregnant?

  ‘You didn’t call,’ she said, ‘for such a long time. I thought I would phone. To see how you are.’

  ‘Oh … I’ve been very busy, you know … work.’ I didn’t even have her number.

  ‘Yes, of course. Work.’ She sounded relieved and frightened at the same time.

  ‘In fact, I was working when you phoned.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Should I call later?’

  ‘No, no, it’s all right.’

  Arî watched me, but now with more an expression of bemusement than concern.

  ‘I was just phoning to see how you are,’ she said again.

  What did she want me to say, this woman whose name and face I had forgotten?

  ‘Yeah, doing good. Busy.’ I dragged out the nonsense words.

  ‘Well, perhaps when you’re free some time, we could meet up for a drink or something?’ It was an effort for her. The dogged persistence impressed me.

  ‘Yeah, sounds good to me,’ I said. ‘Listen, I’ll phone you.’ The relief of knowing there was no way I could reach her went some way to easing the guilt.

  ‘This one isn’t bad. It’s a bit grainy, though,’ Marie murmured as she pored over the transparencies. I had decided to show them all to her, not only the ones I thought were suitable. A considerable section of the magazine was to be devoted to Henkelmann, and Marie needed additional material.