‘They’re saying it was neo-Nazis. One of the splinter groups. Probably unsanctioned,’ she said as she appraised two near-identical images of the politician.
‘That’s hardly surprising,’ I said. ‘He was popular with people they hated. That’s reason enough.’
‘It’s a mad world, isn’t it, when you kill someone simply because you don’t like them, or what they stand for.’ She sighed and gripped one of the transparencies and stared at it until I was sure she had forgotten I was there.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, surfacing. ‘I’ve hardly slept. These are good, you know. I may use one on the cover. What d’you say?’
‘Of course, yes,’ I replied. ‘Whichever you choose is fine by me.’ Only two of my photographs had ever featured on covers.
She glanced at the images again. ‘You know, I asked him that day, what he thought his chances were at the next election.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Oh, some rehearsed line about waiting and seeing. How it all depended on the electorate and one could never be too confident about the outcome. He didn’t answer the question, but then I didn’t really expect him to. I could tell he thought he had a good chance, though. I think that was the last thing I remember him saying.’
I looked out of her office window into the sunshine, at the passers-by below on Zähringerstrasse.
‘You’ve been to see Thomas, I trust?’
‘Um … not yet,’ I wavered. I tried not to recall the forgotten appointment, the humiliating phone call.
‘Really, you shouldn’t miss opportunities like that,’ she said. ‘Some of these are good. Very good indeed.’ She looked up at me once more with a glazed expression, not really seeing me.
* * *
Frau Lieser was standing half in, half out of the front door. That was the first thing. I hadn’t quite crossed the street when she called out shrilly, ‘Quickly, quickly!’ as I ambled towards the building. ‘You must come quickly!’ She beckoned me with her fat fingers, but I didn’t alter my pace. I hate to run. It seemed pointless for her to have gone to so much trouble.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked when I reached her.
She shooed me in and waved me upstairs. ‘Not a moment to lose!’ she puffed, lumbering behind me.
When I reached my door, she was still on the landing below. ‘Up, still up!’ she called.
I continued my ascent.
The door to Arî’s apartment stood wide open. I stopped outside and waited for Frau Lieser to chug up the stairs.
‘Better to go in!’ she wheezed when she finally arrived.
There was an acrid smell; for a moment I feared Arî had self-immolated, or worse, had been torched by racists. I had a vision of his charred skeleton, crisp as ten-minute toast, spread out on his sitting-room floor. Then he emerged from the kitchen with Clariss in tow, looking the same as always. How did my mind jump so wildly to these awful conclusions? There was the sound of other voices. Caroline and Dieter were sitting at the kitchen table. She was newly bald and dazed-looking while he had acquired a blue mohican. Dieter raised a hand in greeting. ‘There’s been a terrible fire,’ he explained, his tone flat as a ship’s horn. He waved limply at the wall, to a small charred area by the cooker, no bigger than a dinner plate. ‘You’ve just missed the fire brigade. The public services, they’ve saved us all,’ he continued in the monotone.
Caroline tittered.
Frau Lieser threw her a hateful look. ‘What’s to laugh about when we all could have been burned to cinders?’ she snapped.
Caroline giggled even more.
‘It’s all my fault,’ Clariss said. ‘I called the fire department. Big mistake.’
‘You’re right there,’ Dieter yawned. ‘We could be having a peaceful afternoon now.’
The fact that it was afternoon, in the middle of the week, seemed to have escaped his attention. Apart from the few tenants who had regular jobs, no one in the building seemed prepared to work. The punks slept and took drugs all day, Clariss spent the daylight hours trying on outfits or entertaining friends, Arî wasn’t allowed to work, the man occupying the apartment opposite Clariss’s rarely emerged; I wouldn’t have been able to identify him in a police line-up. The only inhabitants who led ‘productive’ lives were Frau Lieser, Helena, the woman who lived opposite her, and the Zimmermans, who worked enough for the entire building combined. They were never at home. Even on a Saturday morning I would catch one of them sprinting out of the building clutching a briefcase. I didn’t know their occupations, but they couldn’t have been very successful, judging from their accommodation.
‘I’m only glad someone quick-thinking was here.’ Frau Lieser sprang to Clariss’s defence. ‘Who knows? I could have had a pile of rubble on my hands. Even deaths.’
I looked at the spot of damage on the wall and the cooker, and then at Arî who had kept out of it all. He seemed fascinated by the discussion, as if he were merely an observer rather than the cause of the trouble in the first place.
‘Well, I guess it’s all over now,’ I said. ‘We can go back to our apartments.’
‘I thought we’d be here for ever,’ Caroline moaned without getting up from the chair. ‘I’m dying for a nap.’
6
THE FIRST TIME we went swimming together, I took Lucille to my local pool in Kentish Town. It was crowded with families that swam in packs and screaming school children. People moved about in short, maniacal hops, unable to swim for more than a few metres. All one could do was splash and paddle, then rest momentarily. We remained for an hour, darting about idiotically. After ten minutes, I was tired of getting nowhere.
‘Come on, it’s fun!’ Lucille cried. She waved her hands, flicking water delicately as if she were having the time of her life. Despite growing up surrounded by the Indian Ocean, she didn’t know how to swim. I asked if she wanted to learn; I could teach her, I suggested. Lucille pushed her hands in front of her as if about to launch into an elegant stroke. At the vital moment her face rumpled and her arms waved the water aside.
‘That’s better,’ I said, encouragingly.
‘Really?’ She looked dubious. ‘Do you really think so?’ Then, when she had summoned up enough courage, she began the manoeuvre all over again.
‘Your legs,’ I called. ‘Try to move your legs, like this.’ And I showed her. I held her afloat with my arms curled underneath her stomach. I felt her kick and sway and I imagined us together, naked in the pool, without the interfering crowd. Her body was lithe and strong, but lacked coordination in the water. She wasted energy thrashing to no avail. We made a proper pair – her tall and slender, me taller still, but spread out like a great soufflé.
People clung to the edge of the pool – kicking their legs, laughing, sinking, spluttering – still managing to almost drown. We found a space by the side and stayed there.
‘Why don’t you show me a dive?’ Lucille said. She had seen others diving at the deep end.
‘Too many people,’ I squinted, wiping the water from my eyes. ‘It’s not safe.’ I was loath to heave myself out of the pool, beached then waddling on the side. I didn’t want people snickering at my body, the way they had when I was a child. Not in front of Lucille. ‘Some other time,’ I promised. I would have dived for her, over and over again, had it been only the two of us.
A man using small, elegant breaststrokes swam past. His head dipped beneath the surface without the slightest splash, then rose slowly, a few thin strands of silky hair clinging to his scalp. His pale, thin arms sliced through the water before him, though his skin hung in folds as he swam. On land he might have been a frail, arthritic creature, but the water seemed to make him supple, loosening his joints, invigorating the muscles. He smiled as he swam, navigating his way patiently through the crowd.
‘Look! Over there!’ Lucille pointed. There was a flurry of activity at the deep end, a commotion caused by a group of boys racing in some of the lanes. The frantic whirr of
arms and legs churned the water to a white froth. When the first boy touched the wall at the shallow end, other swimmers applauded. He tried to appear nonchalant, wiping his face, taking deep exaggerated breaths. When the last boy struggled to the end, people clapped again, but more enthusiastically this time, and he looked about himself, pleased and slightly bashful.
A lifeguard approached the group, crouched down, and spoke quietly to them. He was probably handing out a warning. He didn’t seem annoyed, though, and he smiled and sauntered back to his chair.
‘Look at that,’ I sneered. ‘Give them a scrap of power and it goes straight to the head.’
‘Oh, but he’s fit, though,’ Lucille replied, more to the woman beside her, dismissing my comment. They both cackled and kicked out their legs and sighed and giggled again.
I didn’t have a reply to that and fell silent until Lucille nudged me and laughed. After that I forgot about it.
One of the boys from the racing group moved to an isolated corner by the ladder at the shallow end. He seemed to have lost something and kept peering into the water through the slits of his eyes. He stooped and focused suddenly and I thought he had found whatever he was looking for, because he made a lurching movement with his head. But then something poured out of him and I realized he had been sick. He was quick and secretive about it, and when he finished, he looked about himself. Thinking no one had noticed, he splashed the water in order to disperse the mess.
‘Did you see that?’ I said to Lucille.
‘See what?’
I told her we had to leave, so we inched our way towards the ladder at the deep end. I looked back at the boy who had vomited; he had joined his friends again. People were swimming in the area where he had been sick and I told myself I would never swim in a public pool again.
B was pacing in the entrance hall when we arrived. He glanced at his watch.
‘We’re not late, are we?’ I asked.
‘No, no, no!’ he protested. ‘Not at all, at all, man. What’s a few minutes, eh? Come in, come in.’
We were definitely late.
‘Lucille, it’s been too long. Why does he hide you away all the time?’
‘I’m beginning to wonder that myself,’ she smiled.
‘Oh, Angelika!’ he called to a woman striding towards us. ‘Angelika dear, my friends are here at last.’
Angelika also checked the time, but she flicked out her arm and adjusted the watchstrap, then squinted at the face for several seconds.
‘What wonderful weather we are having,’ B began to gabble. He was ordinarily placid, but now he seemed on edge.
I ignored him.
We went through the formality of introductions.
Tunde was already seated when we arrived at the table. Next to him was the type of woman who could cause heads to turn, cars to crash – the only kind Tunde ever dated. This one had deep olive skin, black hair that licked her waist, penetrating green eyes, breasts the size of cantaloupes.
‘This is Isabel,’ he announced. I had seen her before, but couldn’t remember where. On a billboard or on television, perhaps the cover of a magazine.
‘Why don’t you sit next to Angelika?’ B nudged me. ‘You can get to know one another.’ It was a round table so it hardly made any difference, but in his nervousness he didn’t appear to notice. He plumped down beside Lucille, already exhausted, and removed his glasses, wiped them with a napkin, then put them on again. ‘Angelika recommended the restaurant. She says it’s the best Chinese food outside China.’ He laughed a little hysterically, then turned to his belle and winked.
I got a good look at Angelika as she turned to grin at B. I had imagined someone else, not the sturdy matron sitting next to me. She wasn’t fat, but she must have had a constant struggle keeping off the pounds. It was the way she was built – big bones. I could relate to that. B’s previous girlfriends had verged on the glamorous, though they were never in Tunde’s league. She looked thirty going on fifty. She appeared to be flouting all the rules.
‘It’s not so expensive here,’ she said to Lucille. ‘The best food at the best prices, yes?’ She seemed pleased with herself. ‘We speak English, okay?’ she continued, as though we hadn’t been speaking in English all along. ‘It’s better, so we all understand, only …’ She glanced pitifully at Isabel, then looked hurriedly away. ‘See, even the locals come here!’ She pointed to an adjacent table. We all turned. A young Chinese family was sharing out dishes. They halted momentarily when they noticed the sudden attention. I hoped they hadn’t understood.
Lucille asked for wine while B and I ordered beers.
‘Only half a glass of your finest white wine for me please,’ Angelika warned the waiter. ‘And a glass of cold spring water, yes? I am a woman, after all, and I must keep my figure,’ she giggled. She tucked a loose lock of auburn hair coquettishly behind her right ear. She seemed like a woman who might once have been beautiful for the briefest moment, and known it, and never quite come to terms with the loss.
‘Let us have champagne,’ Tunde beckoned the waiter. ‘Make it two bottles.’ He proceeded to order the most expensive item on the wine list, then turned to Isabel and continued to coo. He was a true sybarite; his parents had provided amply for him in his pursuit of pleasure. His taste was so keen it needed no fine-tuning, whereas my discernment was blunt as the back of a bus. My own parents were gone. They had been smashed in a car crash long ago and there was no accounting for that.
‘What do you recommend?’ I summoned up the courage to speak to Isabel.
She looked at my held-out menu and smiled sweetly and shrugged. Perhaps that was another asset to being beautiful; you could leave your manners at home and still be desired.
Angelika was locked in conversation with B and Lucille, while Isabel and Tunde hooted over nothing in particular. The drinks arrived and they kept the champagne for themselves.
‘We should take a trip to Wannsee,’ B announced. ‘All of us. Maybe this weekend. What do you say?’
‘Good idea,’ I replied, glancing at Lucille.
‘Yes, I’d love to come,’ she said. She looked at me and it was understood; we would find an excuse not to go. The thought of spending more time with Angelika dismayed me.
‘Someone’s made a wrong choice here,’ Angelika pointed out in a kind of singsong, jabbing a chopstick in the direction of a slab of meat, drowned in a pool of oil. ‘Don’t touch that one, dear,’ she warned B. ‘It will make you fat, yes? Not so good for the heart.’
I realized the odious-looking dish was mine, as everyone else had already claimed their meals.
‘There’s an art to ordering good food, yes?’ Angelika continued, waving her chopsticks at B. ‘It’s like painting, dear. One false stroke and you have ruined a masterpiece. Some people have a gift for it, and some … are not so fortunate.’
Angelika and I must have started off on the wrong foot. Halfway through the meal, it dawned on me she did not like me one bit. I harboured similar feelings about her. It was unfortunate we shared the same friend. She was in the middle of explaining to Lucille the high drama of being a secondary school teacher when she spotted the waiter.
‘China tea for the ladies!’ she shrieked at the passing man. She half raised her hand and waved to him as if she were imitating her unbelievably eager pupils.
‘Beer for me,’ B said. ‘And another for my friend.’
The waiter started to clear away a few of our empty dishes.
‘Don’t you think tea would be better, dear?’ Angelika said sweetly. ‘Three beers – it’s a bit much, no?’
‘Yes. Yes, you’re right, dear,’ B agreed without pause.
Angelika smiled.
‘So, tea for five?’ the waiter clarified.
‘No. Tea for four. Beer for one!’ I had begun to shout.
There was a silence. B glanced at Angelika. Angelika looked at Lucille as if she felt pity for her. Lucille gazed down at the table. Isabel and Tunde had left the conversation long ag
o. I stared at the offending piece of meat. No one had dared touch it and I could see it being carried away at the end of the meal, a look of triumph smeared across Angelika’s face. I picked up my chopsticks and tried to winch the meat onto my plate. It was heavy, far too bulky for chopsticks. I kept lifting it a few inches above the table before it fell back into the dish with a splash. I tried again. Everyone stared in silence. Even Isabel.
‘Stop that!’ Lucille gasped.
I must have been drunk because I didn’t think anything of it. I picked up the meat with my fingers and proceeded to devour it. It was cold now; it had been ignored for too long. It was tough and gristly and I could feel the oil coating my mouth and throat, but I was determined to finish it.
‘Do you have any plans for the summer?’ I heard Lucille ask Angelika, but she couldn’t be distracted from the spectacle of me.
‘We’re not sure,’ B said. He passed more food round the table, first to Angelika and then to Lucille and Isabel. ‘It depends on money. It’s so hot this year, we might stay here.’
‘Oh no, we will go away, even for one weekend,’ Angelika stated.
‘Yes, of course, dear,’ B said. ‘Maybe to Spain.’
‘Spain!’ Angelika shrieked. ‘Maybe you go on your own!’
‘No, not Spain. Somewhere else,’ B panicked. ‘We’re still deciding.’
It was difficult to know what B actually thought now. As far as I was concerned he had wandered into a maze with no exit.
‘What is it that you do, exactly?’ Angelika turned to me.
‘Me? I take pictures.’ I did a hand mime.
She scowled.
‘A photographer.’
‘Oh!’ she said, then went quiet.
I took a long swig of beer and felt the elixir spread to my limbs and spill into my head. All the irritations of the evening were beginning to dissolve. B dropped some noodles onto the table. Isabel sipped her champagne. From time to time Tunde reached under the table and stroked her thigh. I could not help but notice the way her cleavage floated above her half-eaten sweet and sour pork. She sipped champagne and bobbed her head about in a mock dance. I realized where I had seen her before – the Latin American woman at the club. The clothes and the hair were different now, but she was the same person who had electrified the dance floor.
Goodbye Lucille Page 6