Magic Hoffmann E-Book

Jakob Arjouni

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 336

Beschreibung

Fred, Nickel and Annette share a dream, to escape to Canada, away from the crushing boredom of provincial Germany. Canada - where you can live free, rent a house on the lake, go fishing, become a famous photographer....but such dreams cost money...and money comes from...banks. But the great bank robbery goes horribly wrong, Fred is arrested but as in all good movies he doesn't grass up his friends. Four years later, Fred is out and heads for Berlin, a city in flux after the dismantling of the Wall. He is pursuing his money, his friends and still, his Canadian dream. But for Annette and Nickel life has moved on... Magic Hoffmann is a superb novel about contemporary Germany and about one man's refusal to be brought down by his country and his "friends".

Leseprobe

Fred, Nickel and Annette share a dream: to escape to Canada, away from the crushing boredom of provincial Germany. Canada where you can live free, rent a house on the lake, go fishing, become a famous photographer... but such dreams cost money... and money comes from... banks. 

The great bank robbery goes horribly wrong and Fred is arrested but as in all good movies he doesn't grass up his friends.

Four years later, Fred is out and heads for Berlin, a city in flux after the dismantling of the Wall. He is pursuing his money, his friends and still, his Canadian dream. But for Annette and Nickel life has moved on... Magic Hoffmann is a superb novel about contemporary Germany and one man’s refusal to be brought down by his country and his “friends”.

Jakob Arjouni was only 20 when his first bestselling crime novel was published in Germany and was such a literary prodigy that he had managed to create a substantial and durable body of work by the time of his death in January 2013 at the age of 48. This output includes the five pioneering novels featuring Kemal Kayankaya, a Turkish-German private eye, which began with Happy Birthday, Turk! in 1985. An immediate success, it was filmed by the director Doris Dörrie in 1992 and subsequently published by No Exit in 1995.

The final Kayankaya novel, Brother Kemal, which Arjouni wrote against the terrible knowledge of a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, will be published this summer by No Exit alongside reissues of the earlier books in the series.

Arjouni’s fascination with detective fiction was shaped by external influences. Two of his literary heroes were Raymond Chandler and Georges Simenon. From the American, he took the figure of the private eye as a flawed but honest outsider; from the Belgian, he learned the importance of psychological characterisation.

But while these mentors clearly informed the creation of Kayankaya, with the detective’s status as the son of Turkish immigrants giving a fresh twist to the tradition of the investigator as an odd one out, Arjouni brought to the form an eye for social and historical detail that was entirely his own. Kismet (2001) deals with the consequences in Europe of the Balkan wars, while One Man, One Murder (1992), which won the German Crime Fiction prize, has a background of sex trafficking. Characteristically, the final Kayankaya book explores the limits of free speech and religious tolerance as the private eye protects an author under death threat from Islamists at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Born in Frankfurt as Jakob Michelsen (Arjouni was a pseudonym), he had an early literary role model: his father, Hans Günter Michelsen, was a successful dramatist and Jakob wrote a number of early plays before settling on the novel as his preferred form. His father gave him inadvertent but invaluable research for his future crime stories because of a fondness for taking his family to restaurants in an area of the city that was in the process of transition from red-light district to international quarter. Pungently seedy details of the rougher parts of Frankfurt are a particular feature of the Kayankaya books.

While the Kayankaya novels were the basis of his initial reputation and income, they appeared at very wide intervals. Arjouni was prolific between them. Magic Hoffmann (1996) was a story of bohemians in Berlin planning a bank robbery. Chez Max (2009) was generally considered one of the most original and thoughtful fictional responses to 9/11: it was set in a dystopian Europe in 2064, where a fenced-off community hides from terrorism and unrest. The powerful English translation was by his regular interpreter in the UK, Anthea Bell.

Modest, blazingly intelligent and thoughtful, his work both inside the crime genre and beyond it makes Jakob Arjouni a formidable figure in modern German literature.

Mark Lawson

noexit.co.uk/jakobarjouni/

Jakob Arjouni: 1964-2013

Praise for Jakob Arjouni

‘It takes an outsider to be a great detective, and Kemal Kayankaya is just that’ – Independent

‘A worthy grandson of Marlowe and Spade’ – Stern

‘Jakob Arjouni writes the best urban thrillers since Raymond Chandler’- Tempo

‘There is hardly another German-speaking writer who is as sure of his milieu as Arjouni is. He draws incredibly vivid pictures of people and their fates in just a few words. He is a master of the sketch – and the caricature – who operates with the most economic of means’ – Die Welt, Berlin

‘Kemal Kayankaya is the ultimate outsider among hard-boiled private eyes’ – Marilyn Stasio, New York Times

‘Arjouni is a master of authentic background descriptions and an original story teller’ – Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

‘Arjouni tells real-life stories, and they virtually never have a happy ending. He tells them so well, with such flexible dialogue and cleverly maintained tension, that it is impossible to put his books down’ – El País, Madrid

‘His virtuosity, humour and feeling for tension are a ray of hope in literature on the other side of the Rhine’ – Actuel, Paris

‘Jakob Arjouni is good at virtually everything: gripping stories, situational comedy, loving character sketches and apparently coincidental polemic commentary’ – Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich

‘A genuine storyteller who beguiles his readers without the need of tricks’ – L’Unità, Milan

Magic Hoffmann

Jakob Arjouni

Translated from the German by Geoffrey Mulligan

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Copyright

1

The thousand mark notes fluttered like swallows, turning circles against the setting sun. When Fred whistled through his fingers, they flocked down and slipped back into his trouser pocket.

‘It’s nonsense,’ said Nickel and tore Fred from his dreams.

They lay in the grass with a case of apple wine between them. The sun was shining.

Fred muttered with his eyes closed: ‘We could pay our debts and go to Canada - that’s what you’re always wanting to do.’ He opened his eyes and blinked against the blue sky. ‘All for just half an hour’s ... work.’

Nickel lay propped up on one elbow gazing over fields and meadows at the village below. Thirty metres away Annette was standing by the fence, stroking a calf and pouring apple wine down its throat. The calf seemed to like it. The other cows were watching the proceedings curiously.

‘You could buy that thingamajig,’ said Fred, ‘that camera thing ... you know ...’

‘The lens.’

‘Exactly. And a whole lot of other stuff. A complete kit. You could take fabulous photos of Canadian forests and ice hockey players and whatever else they’ve got over here. You’ll be famous, and in twenty years no one will ask if you once robbed a bank in Oberroden.’

‘Fabulous photos ... of prison maybe.’

Nickel finished the bottle, put the empty back in the case and fished out the next one. His movements were as clear and precise as ever, as if he wanted to demonstrate once and for all the replacing and removing of apple wine bottles.

‘We’re hardly going to get to Canada by hanging around and doing waiting jobs at the weekend.’

Fred grabbed a bottle as well. The calf had downed the first bottle, and Annette was raising a second to its lips.

‘And you,’ asked Nickel, ‘what do you want with the money?’

‘Presumably eating and drinking costs a few pfennigs in Canada as well.’

‘Two hundred thousand marks is a lot of pfennigs.’

Fred shrugged. ‘For me it’s enough just to have the money.’

‘And then?’

‘Nothing then.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘In interviews with rich celebrities you always hear how money isn’t important to them, but they’d use it to live on. With me it’s the opposite: I don’t need much to live on, but I like having it. In the cupboard or under the bed. I like touching it, counting it, looking at the date...’ he took a slug, ‘and apart from that we need living expenses, a Jeep, bear traps, that sort of thing.’

‘Bear traps!’

Nickel laughed. But at the same time a shiver of longing ran through him as he imagined the three of them in Canada. Vancouver, a house on the sea, endless forests, photos published in international magazines.

Annette returned with the empties under her arm. She was wearing a red summer dress with yellow spots. Against the background of the green field she looked like a large flower. A gently swaying flower. She threw the bottles onto the grass and herself down beside them. ‘Well?’ she asked, looking from one to the other.

‘I’d like to know,’ mumbled Nickel, ‘why you of all people reckon to have just discovered the perfect bank robbery, in Dieburg of all places. People have been trying it for centuries.’

‘If Einstein had thought like that he would have ended up a peasant,’ said Annette sniffily, and she closed her eyes and turned her face luxuriously towards the sun. ‘As soon as I can speak English properly I’m going to drama school in Canada.’

They drank apple wine and forged plans. The plans became vaster and more colourful, the bank robbery smaller and simpler, the case of apple wine emptier. They laughed as they watched the calf staggering round the field, mooing ever more exuberantly, and Nickel suddenly became convinced: the world belonged to them, and the bank belonged to the world.

When Fred returned home that evening and sat down to dinner, Grandma Ranunkel said, as she was dishing up the stuffed cabbage and potatoes: ‘You look just like your father did when he was up to no good.’ She was wearing her green and yellow striped dress, a dark apron and the brown cardigan which had been mended a hundred times. Her grey hair was, as usual, severely combed back and piled into a bun.

‘I’ve found work , Grandma.’

‘Well?’ Not very convinced.

Fred nodded, ‘And it’s a skilled job.’

Grandma Ranunkel lowered her spoon and eyed him sceptically from behind thick glasses.

‘Skilled? At what?’

‘At…well, there’s no real word for it. I’d call it…’ he reflected, ‘winning the lottery, but without the lottery.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Well…’ he contemplated the steaming cabbage, ‘…someone dreams of becoming a rock star or travelling round the world. For example Nickel would like to go to Canada and become a photographer, but secretly he believes that he’ll never really do it, and then I come along.’

Grandma Ranunkel frowned. ‘And?’

‘I develop strategies for people so that they can at least try,’ and he added casually, ‘for payment of course.’

Grandma Ranunkel’s face assumed an expression of pity.

‘Who would pay for such a thing?’

‘You’ll see. Next Friday is my first consultation, and with the fee we can both go…’

‘But,’ she interrupted, ‘who has employed you and where?’

‘It works by advertisements; I’ll explain later.’

Shaking her head Grandma Ranunkel sat down opposite him at the table. ‘What kind of nonsense is this, child?’

‘Don’t worry, Grandma , it’s a job with a future…’

Four years later Fred was released from Dieburg juvenile prison.

2

White ankle-high gym shoes with black stripes. Did people still wear such things these days? Fred pulled the laces tight and made a knot. Outside the others were going to the workshop. A few of them knocked on the door.

‘Have a good one, Magic!’

‘Depend on it.’

Fred hadn’t slept a wink all night. Overtired and euphoric as he was, life on this particular morning seemed dead simple to him. Four years ripped out of your life, pack your bags, sunrise. Nobody could touch him now. And if the shoes were out of fashion, he would bring them back into fashion. It wouldn’t be the first time. Earlier in Dance 2000…

He shut the zip of his blue overalls and looked at himself in the mirror. The broad, angular chin, which seemed so reluctant to grow a proper beard, the bulging, slightly puzzled eyes, the protruding ears and the medium-length dirty-blond hair, which he had cut himself since he was fourteen; he piled it up in his fist at the top of his head and snipped the overspill. He hadn’t changed, no question. And he was proud of it. They hadn’t ground him down. Neither attempts at rehabilitation by the authorities, nor invitations to criminal scams from other inmates had got through to him. The prison had just been a waiting room in which he sat most of the time with his eyes and ears closed.

The initial admiration of his fellow prisoners for the slick bank robbery , and for Fred’s refusal to grass on his mates in court, rapidly gave way to indifference in the face of someone who kept out of everything and seemed interested in nothing, other than fishing and log cabin construction. Some felt he was dumb, others a loudmouth; quite a few thought he was both. In fact Fred was both dumb and clever. Extraordinary foolishness alternated with staggering cunning. Thus he grasped extremely quickly which warders he had to win over in order to be left alone, but it took him a very long time to realise why his peaceable cell neighbour kept challenging him to wrestling matches in the gym, even though Fred was much stronger. Once Fred had allowed him to win for fun and, lying beneath him for the first time, had felt something hard pressing down on his navel. When Fred wasn’t interested in something, he didn’t grasp it, and then he became a loudmouth. His failure to understand was not quiet and discreet, but loud and arrogant, all guns blazing. He explained to the guys in the prison woodwork shop, who were all more skilled than him, that filling your head with dovetail joints and veneering was a mug’s game. It wasn’t without good reason that his contact with his fellow prisoners became rapidly limited to table football and the exchange of porno mags. Besides, Fred found the misery and rage of the others distasteful - wrong to mope around in jail, he thought. Free, rich and healthy you could afford to moan. But captive, tyrannised by screws, without women, and unhappy with it…?

Fred ran a hand through his hair. At last he was through with the porno mags! He wasn’t handsome. Nevertheless, with his more or less deliberate, moronic charm and his easygoing manner he had had plenty of success with women. Why should that have changed? The moment he was released he would get to see blouses, dresses, asses and legs; life would begin again - just like it was before only with two hundred thousand marks instead of loose change in his pocket.

Fred closed the suitcase, sat up on the edge of the bed and smoked a last cigarette.

Shortly afterwards the warder fetched him and brought him to the gate. The warder informed the guard through the intercom: ‘Fred Hoffmann for release.’

The first layer of steel moved aside and they entered the gate lock. The guard eyed them searchingly through the bullet-proof glass, then he pressed a button and the second layer opened up.

‘Best of luck, Hoffmann.’

‘Thanks, but now I don’t need any.’

‘Now you need it more than ever.’

Fred shook his head. ‘I have friends,’ he intoned in English. And money, he thought, but of course he couldn’t say that.

The guard groaned. ‘Cut out the English crap. Otherwise they’ll all think you’re an imbecile and you’ll never get a job.’

‘Actually,’ said Fred, ‘where I’m going I’ll only find work if I can speak English - that is if I want to work.’

They shook hands, and Fred stepped out into the empty, sun-drenched street. The gate closed behind him. It took a moment for him to get used to the light.

Opposite was a kiosk behind which were bright apartments with open windows and colourful flower boxes. There was the scent of lilac in the air, and the trees lining the street were green. It was quiet apart from the rustling of leaves and the chirping of birds. Was this not spring, was this not a beginning, thought Fred; what a wonderful world!

He put the suitcase down and took off his jacket. Apart from the man in the kiosk there was no one to be seen. On the postcards he had written: between ten and eleven. His watch showed shortly before eleven.

He picked up his suitcase and strolled over to the kiosk. The attendant, a balding forty year old, was dozing over a newspaper.

‘Morning.’

The attendant woke up with a start. ‘Oh! Morning.’

Fred laughed. ‘Spring fatigue?’

‘Mhmhm. What can I get you?’

‘A bottle of fizz. Make it your best.’

Since his arrest Fred had drunk no alcohol, apart from the aviation fuel secretly distilled in people’s cells. That was a long time for someone who enjoyed the stuff in every halfways enjoyable form.

‘My best?’ the attendant scratched his chin, ‘Faber?’

‘Is that your best?’

‘Sort of. It’s my only one.’

While the attendant shuffled over to the freezer, Fred took another look down the road to right and left.

‘What’s the time?’

The attendant placed the bottle down and looked at his watch.

‘Just after half eleven.’

‘Mine must have stopped…’

‘Would you like a glass?’

Instead of answering, Fred tapped the watch face. The attendant yawned. ‘Not the latest model then?’

Fred looked up and stared briefly at the attendant without expression. Then he returned to his watch. The attendant raised his eyebrows. How sensitive these young folk today were in matters of fashion. He asked amiably: ‘So, a glass?’

‘One for you too.’

‘For me?’

Fred nodded, removed his watch and threw it in the bin. ‘This is a celebration.’

The attendant was about to shake his head when his gaze fell on Fred’s suitcase. He had run the kiosk opposite the prison gate long enough to know what small shabby suitcases meant around here. A juvenile prison, no real hard cases, none who thought about suddenly finding themselves on the other side of the wall years later. Many of them wanted to have a drink with him, and mostly he did them the favour. He shuffled to the back again and fetched two plastic cups.

‘Only for the toast though.’

Fred laughed. ‘Sure, and let’s see how often we toast.’

He tipped the first cup back in one and closed his eyes briefly. ‘What a feeling.’

Thereafter they drank in silence. Fred watched the street and the salesman watched him. Daft eyes, he thought, sort of goggle-eyes. On the other hand, none of the other youths had shown such a determined look while enjoying their first bottle on the outside. No curiosity, no uncertainty, nothing. It was as if he had trained for a boxing match for which the bell might sound at any minute.

Everything had indeed been worked out down to the last minute in Fred’s head:

Reunion with Annette and Nickel, then down to Clash, and later to Dance 2000 with some woman on his arm, and a discussion of Canada to follow the next morning. If prison did serve some purpose, then it was as a kind of advanced school for making plans, and Fred had qualified with flying colours.

A young couple turned into the street and approached rapidly. She was blonde and plump, he was tall and dark. Both carried something under their arm and they seemed to be in a hurry. Annette and Nickel, no doubt about it. Fred turned abruptly to the attendant and grabbed the bottle. ‘Let’s have one more.’ They mustn’t see that he was waiting.

‘Thanks, but not for me.’

The attendant drained his cup and threw it in the bin. When he looked up, he gave a start. The young man was staring at him again. This time his look reminded him of the crazies from the Knights of Saint John home out in the woods.

‘I have to get back to work.’

‘Let’s talk…’

Fred leaned forward and suddenly began to speak of a tramp who was known by everyone in Dieburg, and who kept cropping up in anecdotes which they told as jokes, even though no one had seen him for years. The nearer the couple came, the louder Fred talked and the wilder the story became. Then the couple had almost arrived at the kiosk and Fred turned round while in full flow, as if by chance, beaming at the trees as well as at the two young people…But they were the wrong ones. Loaded down with washing powder, cat litter and nappies, they glanced briefly at the kiosk and walked on.

Fred was struck dumb.

‘And then?’ asked the attendant, ‘what did he do with the ladder?’

‘With the ladder?’ Fred stared absently. The couple’s footsteps became quieter, until they disappeared into the next doorway.

‘What’s the time?’

‘Quarter to twelve.’

Fred drained the cup and poured some more, his gaze fixed on the corner from which the couple had emerged. The attendant waited a little, then he shrugged his shoulders, sat back on his chair and opened a magazine.

‘He hid it first,’ said Fred after a while , ‘then it became damp and rotten, and in the end he junked it. From which you can deduce once again,’ he was careful to grin casually, ‘that crime doesn’t pay… What do I owe you?’

The attendant named his price, and Fred took a roll of notes, bound by a rubber band, out of his pocket. He’d seen that on TV. He loosened the rubber band, placed a twenty mark note on the counter, snapped it back and nodded. ‘Keep the change. If you see two people waiting by the gate over there today, could you please inform them that Fred is celebrating at Clash tonight?’

The attendant said he’d try to keep an eye out. Fred picked up his suitcase, tapped his forehead, ‘Bye bye,’ and strolled down the street. A warm wind caressed his neck.

No, he wasn’t furious. A little irritated, but not furious. Maybe Annette and Nickel had missed their train. No reason to worry. We’ve all been late…

Fred was almost better at adapting to changed circumstances than at forging unshakeable plans.

Grandma Ranunkel’s small white house stood at the edge of the forest between an abandoned wadding factory and a tree nursery. The forest glowed bright green, and several branches grew above the roof and walls: a sign that the house had been uninhabited for some time. Unpruned branches were rare in Dieburg.

Once inside, Fred encountered stale, musty air. The rooms were dark and the electricity had been turned off. Fred felt his way through the living room. When he raised the blinds and opened the windows, he could see cheap fifties-style furniture beneath thick layers of dust. He stood still for a moment and looked around… Here again. But he remained unmoved by the sight of these familiar objects, or rather he didn’t allow himself to be moved. He was beginning a new life, and this house had no place in it. He would sell it. That too he had planned for a long time.

He went into the kitchen, looked in cupboards and drawers and rummaged through the dining room. Then he worked his way through the other rooms, until he found an open bottle of Dujardin in Grandma Ranunkel’s bedside table. He sat with the bottle at the open kitchen window and kept an eye out for Annette and Nickel coming down the street.

What if he had sent the postcards too late? Or if Annette and Nickel had moved house again?

He attacked the bottle until he was drunk. At about four, he left the house and went to the nearest phone booth.

As a precaution he had neither telephoned Annette and Nickel since his arrest, nor had they visited him in prison. He deduced from Annette’s few, deliberately trivial letters that she and Nickel had split up and that she had moved away.

Admittedly she had written down the new address, but the last letter had no return address and gave notice of a further move. From Nickel, the most nervous of them, he had only received postcards bearing no surname. Not a word about Dieburg, let alone Annette - the prison post inspectors must have taken Nickel’s postcards for the routine greetings of a distant relative.

Nevertheless: they had an agreement that he would send them a card as soon as he knew when he would be released and that they would collect him, and it didn’t matter how long ago this was, a deal was a deal, and it was up to Annette and Nickel to ensure he had their correct addresses…

Fred unfolded Annette’s letter with her Berlin telephone number. Suddenly he felt uneasy. He hung up and looked for a cigarette. He had waited four years for this moment, four years and eighteen days. If Annette wasn’t on the train or already in Dieburg, he would hear her voice now. Not the voice that had entertained him the whole time in the cell, that intimate voice that mostly told him what he wanted to hear, but her real voice - her voice four years on. The blood pounded in his temples. He smoked two cigarettes and tried to find the right form of words. Finally he dialled the number and held his breath. The phone rang briefly.

‘Zernikow,’ replied a woman. A television droned in the background.

Fred cleared his throat. ‘Hello, may I speak to Annette Schöller?’

‘What, who?’ she screamed over the noise of the TV.

‘Annette Schöller,’ repeated Fred.

‘Never heard of her. Who the Hell… hey, Jessica! Leave the bloody computer alone. I’ve told you a hundred times, that’s not a toy, it’s your Dad’s, and he’ll belt you one if he finds out …Hello.’

‘Annette Schöller. She… she was probably the previous tenant.’

‘And? Does that mean I’ve won something?’

‘What? No, but…’

‘What then?’

Well, if you could give me the new address for…’

‘I know, I know: wee Annette. But previous tenants’ addresses aren’t my problem. Look in the phone book.’

‘Okay. But maybe you could tell me whether Annette’s post is being forwarded?’

‘You think I’m a postman?’

The woman hung up, and Fred pressed the phone cradle. For a moment he felt like he had those first days in prison, when everything seemed to rush by and the lads took the piss out of him at every opportunity. Strange attitude these Berliners.

Then he rang directory enquiries, but without success: Annette’s name was not listed. Next he called Nickel’s old Berlin number, but nobody answered.

He went back to Grandma Ranunkel’s house and stuck a note on the door: Am at Clash. Then he set off to visit a couple of old friends. But the answer was always the same: he or she had spent the last two or three years in Munich, or Frankfurt, or Hanover, or Berlin, or Tübingen…

3

Clash was once a smoke-filled drinking den with black walls, junk furniture, candles in empty beer bottles, a tiny dance floor and booming music. Fred had spent half his youth there: Clash had often been his living room and his bedroom for days on end, and it was there that he had done almost everything for the first time - at least those things for which there was a first time once walking and talking had been mastered.

For the last two years Clash had been called Coconut Beach, and it was a cross between a Greek taverna and a Caribbean holiday. There was white plaster on the walls, brown tiles on the floor and an imitation thirties fan rotated above the bamboo counter. Wicker chairs and tables were arranged in groups, and on the tables were cocktail menus and bowls containing dried banana flakes. Soft guitar music wafted from concealed speakers.

As he entered, Fred found himself hoping he had come to the wrong place. Walking slowly through the room, which was almost deserted at that early hour, he kept looking around in disbelief. A few beers with Schnapps chasers helped him to come to terms with the new decor, by dismissing it as garbage. Maybe this kind of elegant hula-hula establishment was fashionable in Grandma Ranunkel’s day, he reflected. He didn’t need to worry if he’d missed out on anything here. And the absence of Clash, well…he’d soon be saying goodbye to Dieburg forever.

It was now shortly after eleven and Fred drank whatever was going and felt magnificent. He sat at a table with two young women who knew him from the newspaper, and who spoke to him exactly as he imagined women would: in amazement. ‘Aren’t you the one who robbed the bank that time?’ Fred assented calmly.

The slightly shame-faced one with long dark hair, a centre parting and a pointed nose reminded him of Joan Baez. She wore a translucent, brightly embroidered dress which revealed her underwear. The other had a round, chubby face with an angular lacquered hairdo and was squeezed into a sailor’s outfit. She squealed enthusiastically at any and all jokes, whereupon she rearranged her bust and neckline.

Time and again Fred raised his glass, yelled at the half-empty room: ‘Hey Gerda,hasta la vista!’ and winked at the bar counter to the sound of squeals from his left. Gerda, who had worked at Clash in the old days, was hoping Fred would bugger off. Since his arrival the gags about sun tan lotion and sangria hadn’t stopped. Four years of prison excused some things, but no matter how hopelessly behind the times you were, you didn’t have to behave like a ticket tout. Beer and rye! Gerda shuddered. They only had rye in because of the construction workers who were building the aquarium.

Fred leaned over to Joan Baez. ‘I know about punch, but that thing…’ he pointed grinning at her Melon and Campari Sundream with rose petals and a sugared rim, ‘…goes under pudding in my book.’

There was more enthusiastic squealing. Joan Baez didn’t turn a hair. For the last hour she had wanted to learn something about prison and what it was like to be an inmate. Instead she had been forced to listen to teenage bragging and crude jokes.

‘Seems pretty daft to go out on the town and stuff yourself with fruit salad. It’s a bit like robbing a bank to steal the biros.’

The squealing turned into a minor hysterical outburst, until an agitated Joan Baez declared that it really wasn’t that funny. The sailor girl was briefly silent. In the perfumery where they both worked, Joan Baez was her boss. The irritated sailor straightened out her breasts, bringing a mildly idiotic expression to Fred’s features. Then she reached for her cocktail and disappeared behind a bush made of peppermint leaves and orange peel curlicues.

Fred looked amiably from one to the other. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that Annette and Nickel hadn’t collected him. Afterwards he would go with the girls to Dance 2000, and then… It was his first night of freedom. He took a slug of beer and waved at Gerda. Sweet Gerda. Pity for her that she had to work in such a dive.

Joan Baez leaned forward. ‘What sort of things do you learn in prison?’ It was the third time she had asked the question, and the sailor girl had to restrain herself behind the peppermint leaves.

Fred nodded. ‘Table football,’ and he shouted towards the bar, causing several guests to look around: ‘Hey Gerda, where the hell’s the table football?’

Gerda turned away.

Fred stared at her back, perplexed. Then he murmured: ‘It’s not easy for her,’ and raising his index finger he announced: ‘There was a bar football table here,’ as though that were akin to a genuine Rembrandt.

Groaning, Joan Baez raised her eyes to the ceiling.

‘But in those days I was just a decent midfielder and now I’m unbeatable. They called me Magic Hoffmann in the nick. I don’t shoot any more, just stroke the ball round. Like this...’ Fred performed a movement with both hands, as though he were letting two invisible ropes slip through his fingers.

‘Actually I meant an apprenticeship or a profession. That sort of thing.’

‘Oh that,’ said Fred, indicating his distaste. ‘I’m gong to Canada with some friends.’

‘Nice work! What’s the pay like?’

Immediately, the sailor girl emerged from behind the peppermint leaves and seized the opportunity to make up for her blunder. She worked herself up to such a frenzy of squealing in Joan Baez’s honour, that the whole room fell silent and the other customers turned to look at them delighted by such a jolly creature. Some seemed pleased that the laughter was clearly at Fred’s expense. His tasteless jokes were hard to take, and now his antediluvian gym shoes, his torn blue overalls and his village idiot’s hairdo were an offence to the cultured eye. These days, just about every refuse collector in Dieburg wore a pink or turquoise C&A leisure shirt to work. Fred looked into Joan Baez’s long pale face, which despite her youth was already marked by overtime and neon light, and wondered why she of all people was showing such an interest in the notion of a profession.

‘I worked in the woodwork shop,’ he said, ‘but now when I smell sawdust I feel ill. It’s like with cows and steaks: a tree is beautiful, a table too, everything in between is shit.’

Joan Baez looked at Fred’s heavy hands around the beerglass and laughed out of politeness. ‘These days you have to be prepared to compromise.’

‘These days?’

‘Unemployment.’ she said, and her stare suggested that the word finally signalled the end to the genial part of the evening.

‘Unemployment…’ Fred shrugged his shoulders, ‘means nothing to me.’

‘Is that right…?’ Joan Baez raised her eyebrows, ‘and if you’re out on the street with millions of others…?’

‘Where?’ Fred asked, turning to the window. Joan Baez and her colleague exchanged glances.

‘The way I see it is,’ he said after a pause in which he had waited for even a mild squeal, ‘there are two types in the nick: those who graft all day, and those who lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. The only difference is that the former are less conscious of the time they’ve done, and the latter have more time to look forward to a soft mattress.’

‘And what’s that got to do with normal life?’

‘They all get out in the end,’ said Fred and winked cheerily at the sailor girl. But she looked across at her supervisor who was observing Fred, unmoved. Then Joan Baez laughed briefly and reached for her handbag. ‘We really must be going.’ Then she added waspishly: ‘We have work to do in the morning.’

At first Fred thought he had misunderstood, but he saw Joan Baez rise to her feet, straighten her dress and pick up her cardigan, and his mouth opened in astonishment. The sailor girl was also surprised, and pointed timidly at her half-full glass.

Joan Baez dismissed it. ‘This one’s surely on our friend Magic. A man who earns money by travelling to Canada. And if he runs short he can just rob another bank.’

This made sense to the sailor girl, and besides she found it very funny. After she had taken a rapid gulp of her drink, and as she grabbed her cigarettes, she opened her mouth and her squeal resounded through the room, almost causing Fred to black out. The sound only died away as the door slammed behind them.

Silence. Everyone was looking at Fred. He pressed himself into the armchair, clasped his hands round his arms and stared intently at the door. Then conversation was resumed, and soon the noise reached its former level.

Fred looked around carefully. Gradually his head cleared …what in the name of God had happened? Didn’t they just laugh? Did being out of a job somehow cramp your style with women these days? And they’d agreed to go to Dance 2000, cut loose, shake a leg, Rock’n’Roll…

Fred looked at his watch. Annette and Nickel wouldn’t turn up this late. Dance 2000 was a dead loss now. He couldn’t go alone, it just wouldn’t look right. He had to arrive in style, just like he’d planned: Magic Hoffmann, who could squeeze more enjoyment out of life than anyone else, in spite of four years in the nick…that’s exactly how it was…or would have been, only not today, or not exactly.

He lit a cigarette and looked around again. Nobody seemed to be watching him. Should he go home? Was that how his first night of freedom would be?

He downed his glass and waved at Gerda. When she finally turned round, he grinned and yelled: ‘The drinks are on me.’

Dawn was breaking as Fred awoke on a bench in the pedestrian precinct. It took a moment for him to grasp where he was and to realise that he was not in his cell. Then he came to with a start.

Dieburg was still sleeping. Closed shutters, barred up shop windows, a fading street light. The first birds were chirping. Otherwise it was silent.

Fred’s clothes were clammy. He shook himself, flopped his feet onto the pavement and rubbed his face. Then he came across the crusted blood, which ran from the back of his right hand up his forearm. Slowly it came back to him: he had wanted to give Gerda a farewell embrace, but something must have gone wrong because seconds later someone had grabbed him and hurled him into the street.

He leaned to the side and threw up into a tub of flowers. He had always had a weak stomach. At least he had managed to get drunk on his first evening. That always seemed to work.

In his pocket were a twenty note and some loose change. He must have spent six hundred marks, almost his entire prison wage.

He picked himself up and staggered home. The streets were empty. In the distance he could hear the first cars on the main road to Frankfurt. Had Annette and Nickel returned in the mean time?

But he could tell from a distance that his ‘Am at Clash’ note was still stuck to the front door. That was that: his postcards hadn’t arrived. Or else…

He ran faster, forgetting his hangover. When he reached the door, he tore the note off and crumpled it up. Could it be that they knew of his release and still didn’t come to collect him? Or maybe they perhaps planned to leave it till the weekend.

He opened the door and entered the hall. Pale light filled the long, narrow room with its rose-patterned wallpaper. Grandma Ranunkel’s winter coat still hung on the coat stand. Should he wait for Annette and Nickel here? Between these desolate walls, without electricity or running water and with no Clash in the evenings.

He slammed the door. He had no time to lose, and certainly not in Dieburg. He would get hold of their addresses, travel to Berlin and fetch the two of them. And if they thought that after four years a day or two wouldn’t matter to him, then they thought wrong.

4

In the supermarket on his way to the Schöllers Fred bought a bottle of French red wine for Annette’s mother.