Jakob Arjouni - Brother Kemal

Rashid stared at me for a moment, baffled, then he looked at the black plastic table in front of him and said, in a tone suggesting that he was overcome by exhaustion, ‘I have to go to the toilet, and then I think it would be best if we went to the Fair.’

‘There’s one more thing I’d like to get clear, Herr Rashid.’

Rashid got up from the sofa and asked, turning away from me, ‘And that is?’

I noticed Katja Lipschitz’s fingers digging into the arms of her chair.

‘I appreciate the fact that you address me as a friend, indeed I take it as a great compliment. But over many years I’ve found that excessive familiarity with the person I am protecting can lead to moments of carelessness in my work. So let’s keep it formal until the end of our contract.’

Rashid cast me a quick, expressionless glance over his shoulder. ‘Whatever works for you.’ And he went off slowly, almost dragging his feet, in the direction of the toilets.

I wondered whether I ought to accompany him, but then decided that my work didn’t begin until we were at the Book Fair. I thought it most unlikely that Rashid would run into any danger in the toilet.

I sipped some water and turned to Katja Lipschitz. She was still sitting in her chair all tensed up, fingers digging into its arms, eyes turned on the floor.

‘Was that sensitive enough?’

She looked up and scrutinised me as if she were asking herself — in as many words, unusual as they might be in her mouth but surely satisfying — what damn whore had brought me into the world? Then she said, ‘You know very well that you’d be fired if there was any chance of finding a replacement for you in the next half an hour. What possessed you to speak to our author like that?’

‘And what possessed your author to treat me like a fool? “My protector!” ’

‘It was a sign that he liked you!’

‘He doesn’t know me at all. Why would he like me? For my origin?’

She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe I didn’t make it clear enough at our last meeting: Malik Rashid is a great, a fantastic, a very special author, recognised and celebrated all over the world. If at first his behaviour or his style is not easy for you to comprehend, then it may be because you seldom mix with artists and intellectuals.’

I remembered what Valerie de Chavannes had said about her husband: ‘Well, maybe your job doesn’t allow you much experience with people whose approach to life doesn’t conform to the usual standards.’ Obviously I didn’t exactly strike the ladies of upper-class Frankfurt society as a man of the world.

Katja Lipschitz went on: ‘The thought processes of creative minds are often more convoluted and their conduct in public clumsier than ours. Because they think too much!’

God knows no one could say that of you, she said with her eyes.

‘Because they try to understand things in all their complexity! And sometimes make them more complicated than they really are. I am sure Malik thought seriously about the way to meet you. Do you know what he said to me on the phone two days ago?’

Being unable to think of anything sensitive, I didn’t reply.

‘He said how uncomfortable the situation was for him! Giving a grown man instructions about his most intimate affairs. For instance that he’d have to be accompanied to the toilet. Or the other way around, taking instructions from you. The idea that he couldn’t go anywhere or do anything he liked. He probably thought it all over carefully — whether a formal or informal approach would relax the situation more.’

‘You ought to have suggested that formality is best between adults at the start.’

‘Don’t be so uppity!’

‘You mean that as an Oriental I …’

‘Argh!’

‘Oh!’

She leaned forward angrily, picked up her coffee, and disappeared, like Rashid, behind a mountain of milky foam.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I think with that everything’s cleared up now.’

Katja Lipschitz was still hidden behind the foam.

‘All that remains is for me to wish us all a happy working relationship.’ I raised my glass of water. ‘Here’s to three relatively calm days as uneventful as possible.’

She lowered her cup far enough for us to look into each other’s eyes. ‘Please just do your work as well as you can. The situation is what it is, and Malik Rashid is Malik Rashid. I’m sure you’re professional enough to accept that going forward. If there are any more disagreements or supposed problems, or anything else, please turn straight to me. I’ll be the person you talk to for the next three days — and no one else. Malik needs his strength for the fair, and don’t even think of approaching members of our staff …’

She was searching for the right word. I helped her out. ‘To pester them?’

She took a sip of her coffee. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll be as invisible as possible.’

‘Good, Herr Kayankaya, I’m glad to hear it.’

She put down her mug of cappuccino and said, ‘Excuse me, it’s the Book Fair and I have things to do.’ Then she tapped a text message into her iPhone and checked her emails. Time passed, and Rashid did not come back. I wondered if he suffered from diarrhoea, and imagined the two of us having to go to the toilet together every half an hour for the next few days.

When he finally did come back his temper had greatly improved.

‘Right, Herr Kayankaya,’ he said in a conciliatory tone. ‘Let’s do it whatever way you think is right.’

Katja Lipschitz looked relieved.

On the way to the Fair, the mood in our taxi was suddenly really good. Rashid asked Katja Lipschitz who else was coming, maybe Lutz Whosit or ‘witty Bodo’, how many interviews he was giving, where we could get a quick bite to eat before the evening’s event, and he seemed as happy as a child, even if he groaned now and then, ‘My God, what a strain this is going to be!’

And to me, he said, ‘You wait and see, the Book Fair is hell!’ But he was beaming all over his face.

The Book Fair wasn’t hell, it just smelled a bit like it. Huge halls over several stories, each with a floor area about the size of two football fields, were filled partition after partition with the stands of millions of publishing houses, right to the last corner. A sweating, unwashed, perfumed crowd of humanity, drenched in alcohol, hungover and smeared with hair gel, pushed its way along aisles and past stands, up and down escalators, into toilets and through entrance doors, never stopping. The greasy vapours of sausages, pizza, Chinese food, Thai curry and chips wafted overhead, invisible radiators seemed to be turned up to maximum — or maybe it was just all those bodies producing such heat — and only the few doors opening and closing brought any fresh air into the place.

From Maier Verlag’s small hospitality room behind me came the odours of filter coffee stewing on a hotplate, egg and Harz cheese rolls that no one touched and smelled stronger as the day went on, and a homemade coconut and banana cake brought by a young American author for the staff of the firm — For you guys, for all the amazing work you do! It seemed to be made of Bounty bars and rotting fruit.

The stand of Maier Verlag was about twenty-five metres long by five metres wide. Portraits of authors and posters of book jackets hung on the walls, stacks of new releases lay on several shelves. The seating consisted of simple wooden benches and chairs, with small round tables and on each a dish of biscuits and another of salted crackers. A part of the wall some five metres wide in the middle of the stand, as well as a table positioned there with four chairs in front of it, differed from the rest of the furnishings. The wall was adorned with a fishing net, two plastic lobsters, a plastic octopus, a bottle with a letter inside it, a small buoy and five copies of Hans Peter Stullberg’s new novel hanging in the net. Its title was An Occitanian Love . The table was in the classic French bistro style, with an iron foot and a marble top, the chairs were folding wooden garden chairs in red and yellow. ‘The colours of Occitania,’ as Katja Lipschitz explained to us.