Blue Night
Page 17
‘I’ve been meaning to ask: have you heard from Joe?’ I say.
He looks at me with that expression that men learn very young and never unlearn: in one ear and out the other. I’m not remotely interested in what you just said.
I try to look back just as indifferently, but it’s a bit like looking at the TV test card.
I was on the phone to Wieczorkowski yesterday. He’s not back at work yet, much to his annoyance. He says he’ll start climbing the walls soon. And he’s got time to mull over theories about Joe’s disappearance. Either, Wieczorkowski says, Joe really did make it home to the mountains and is playing at being Heidi’s grandpa. Or else he went on a big harbour tour and is lying at the bottom of the North Sea in concrete boots.
‘Couldn’t he still be in Hamburg?’ I asked.
‘You’re offended because he didn’t say goodbye to you.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I can’t stop thinking about the man, same as you. And his bloody bank box in Switzerland.’
‘There is no bank box now,’ Wieczorkowski said.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘You don’t think he trusts us, do you? You’re not thinking about that bank box because you want to leave it in peace, are you?’
That comes to mind as I slip deeper and deeper into the Faller stare. And I wonder who I can actually trust.
It’s still not completely dark; there’s still a strip of light on the western horizon. But the floodlights are on already, and they’re on in people’s heads too, because FC St Pauli has brought in a new coach for the end of the season. An old Marxist with a good brain and a big heart and a legendary thigh injury. Everyone’s happy when a guy like that arrives. The right man for the relegation battle. But it feels like we’re always in the relegation battle.
A relegation battle like that doesn’t make me nervous.
What makes me nervous is not standing in my spot in the south stand fan block.
I’m sitting in a VIP box.
The head of security here is marrying Faller’s daughter in two months, and that’s why we’re all invited. Faller, Calabretta, Schulle, Brückner, Rocco and Carla and Klatsche and me, and a few other people I don’t know – friends of Faller’s son-in-law-to-be. We asked Brux and Tschauner too, but they support HSV.
Which is fair enough.
So now we’re sitting in these weird seats, which is all wrong ’cos we ought to be standing. But if you want to invite someone to a St Pauli match, then it has to be in the VIP boxes. Because they’re empty.
The stands are all full.
Absolutely jam-packed solid.
So I’m sitting. And watching. And I don’t feel right.
And I keep finding myself thinking about the graffiti that someone sprayed on a house wall round the corner from me:
‘Where’s the VIP lounge now, you cunts?’
Here, people; the lounge is here. Please don’t hate me for it. It’s almost kick-off. We’re waiting for you.
Here they come.
I look at the players and have the feeling, yet again, that they’re getting younger every week.
They start running and jostling and jumping and tackling; they let themselves get hemmed in and break out and win corners and none of it achieves anything much, and after just twenty minutes they’re hoofing it long.
I’m not angry with them. I know what it’s like. Anyway, it’s not a proper match for me today. Because we’re sitting down.
Klatsche’s sitting next to me. He’s starting to get better. He closed his bar for a couple of weeks and took care of his gran instead of the nightlife. He says she needs it more than all the rest right now. And he says he needs a fresh start. So tomorrow he wants to begin with a bit of renovating. We’ve bought blue paint. I said: But I’ll paint the cellar.
I keep taking his hand. You know, just between beers.
On my other side, a young woman is sliding around in her seat. She has blonde hair piled up in a bun; a heavy fringe falls into her face. She looks very friendly; there are some people whose eyes are always smiling. She’s holding a glass of white wine in her hand, and when our eyes meet for the third or fourth time, she raises her glass and says: ‘Silvaner.’
I raise my Astra and say: ‘Beer.’
‘No,’ she says, ‘this is Riesling. I’m Silvana.’
I say ‘Oh’ and ‘Sorry’, and then she laughs and I laugh too, and now it’s official – all I can think of is booze.
Probably I need a fresh start too.
And maybe a fresh coat of paint.
Carla and Rocco are sitting behind me, having a whale of a time.
‘Hi, Beer. Such a pretty name.’
I shrug.
‘You guys can call me what you like.’
Sometimes all I can do is shake my head over myself. So I give the first half up as a bad lot, and stop pretending to concentrate in the forty-fourth minute. Carla always calls this kind of thing a ‘hard-fought bugger all’.
Then it’s half-time.
The stadium announcer is standing in the middle, talking.
About a charity thing.
They like to do charity at half-time.
I’m still not quite all there.
They can do Chastity at half-time too, I think, and even I don’t know which drawer I pulled that out from, and then I think I must be cracking up.
Standing in the centre circle is Gjergj Malaj.
His brother’s there too. The classy brother who used to run his slightly less classy businesses for him.
They’re actually standing there, both of them, the two best organised criminals in this city, or maybe even the whole of Germany, handing out cheques for nurseries for special-needs kids.
We all sit stock still in our VIP box.
Nobody says a thing. But the rage is with us. Hanging like an oozing red mass over our heads.
Schulle lets a little air through his teeth; it’s like a hissing from another dimension.
This doesn’t seem to bother anyone else in the stadium.
They’re clapping or not listening or singing the same song for the hundredth time.
‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ I say and stand up, and at that precise moment, shots are fired, barely audible, and the Albanian and his brother topple over.
One.
Two.
Lights out.
They have little red holes in their foreheads.
Nobody’s clapping any more.
Except Faller.
He claps slowly and dreamily, as if someone’s just played a particularly enchanting melody that really spoke to his heart.
Everyone else is screaming.
‘Faller,’ I say, watching one of the empty VIP boxes above the stadium’s south stand. Someone just moved up there. Stiff and spectral, but I saw it.
‘Faller, how did he get up there? He’s not even out of the wheelchair yet.’
Faller doesn’t look at me. He stares into space. His world seems to have switched into slow motion. There are the merest hints of tears in his eyes, but he doesn’t look remotely sad.
‘Faller,’ I say again, ‘how the hell did he get up there?’
‘I really couldn’t tell you,’ says Faller, and he stands up, pulls his hat over his brow and leaves.
Calabretta lights a cigarette.
THANKS
Werner Löcher-Lawrence and Thomas Halupczok.
Tom Bernhardt of the State Criminal Investigation Office, Saxony, Holger Vehren of Hamburg Police, Christian Meinhold of the federal police in Pirna and Johann Pechthold from the Dresden customs office.
Rico Hanke, Nicole and Robin Schulz, Dorthe Hansen, Christian Sobiella, Kerstin Busse and Gitta Ohlsen-Vongehr.
The Kurhaus in general and Silvana, Babsi, Markus, Gunther, Christoph and Daniel in particular.
And of course Domenico, Rocco and my parents, because they keep putting up with it and making time for me.
* * *
The quotation from Arthur
Fellig was taken from Weegee’s New York, Reportagen eines legendären Photographen, 1935–1960 (Schirmer/Mosel, 2000). English version: Weegee: The Autobiography (Annotated), (Devault-Graves Digital Editions, 2013)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Simone Buchholz was born in Hanau in 1972. At university, she studied philosophy and literature, worked as a waitress and a columnist, and trained to be a journalist at the prestigious Henri-Nannen-School in Hamburg. In 2016, Simone Buchholz was awarded the Crime Cologne Award as well as second place in the German Crime Fiction Prize for Blue Night, which was number one on the KrimiZEIT Best of Crime List for months. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.
Follow Simone on Twitter @ohneKlippo and visit her website: simonebuchholz.com.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Rachel Ward is a freelance translator of literary and creative texts from German and French to English. Having always been an avid reader and enjoyed word games and puzzles, she discovered a flair for languages at school and went on to study modern languages at the University of East Anglia. She spent the third year working as a language assistant at two grammar schools in Saarbrücken, Germany. During her final year, she realised that she wanted to put these skills and passions to use professionally and applied for UEA’s MA in Literary Translation, which she completed in 2002. Her published translations include Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang and Red Rage by Brigitte Blobel, and she is a Member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.
Follow Rachel on Twitter @FwdTranslations, on her blog www.adiscounttickettoeverywhere.wordpress.com, and on her website: www.forwardtranslations.co.uk.
COPYRIGHT
Orenda Books
16 Carson Road
West Dulwich
London SE21 8HU
www.orendabooks.co.uk
First published in the United Kingdom by Orenda Books 2018
Copyright © Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin 2016
English translation © Rachel Ward 2017
Simone Buchholz has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–1–912374–01–4
eISBN 978–1–912374–02–1
The translation of this work was supported by a
grant from the Goethe-Institut London
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.