Jakob Arjouni - Brother Kemal

‘Where’s Rashid?’

‘Where do you think? In the back of the van. So scared he’s shitting himself. What a stench!’

We were standing about ten metres apart. Abakay tossed his cigarette end into the gravel, swaying as he did so, and shouted, ‘Totally disgusting!’ and sniffed noisily. He seemed to be in a bad way; he had probably had a lot to drink with the coke, and I made the mistake of thinking I was both mentally and physically superior to him just because I was sober. Not even the pistol in his jacket really scared me. The barrel was pointing all over the place, but not at me. Abakay looked as if he might collapse at any moment.

It had been way too long since I’d been in a cheap dive. Every second brawl in a bar followed the same pattern: the guy who was falling-about drunk almost toppled off his bar stool, someone said, ‘Come on, old boy, you’ve had enough.’ And then suddenly the drunk could do things with that bar stool … hit the nearest man over the head with it, for instance, or fling it into the shelf of bottles behind the bar. And then four or five men would throw themselves at him all at once, only to find that they couldn’t control the drunk in his unbounded rage.

That was exactly what happened to me. I had forgotten that quantities of coke and alcohol didn’t make a man incapable of such an explosion. And Abakay exploded! All of a sudden he came at me with wild, long strides, screaming. He suddenly snatched the pistol from his jacket and fired it into the air, and before I could even move my own gun in his direction the butt of his smashed into the middle of my face. I fell backwards, feeling the blood spurt from my nose. At the same moment Abakay first kicked the pistol out of my hand with his black cowboy boots, and then, with two neat dance steps, took a run-up and kicked me twice in the belly with all his might. I threw up.

‘Hey there, Kayankaya, you fuck-face! Not as fast as you used to be, right? Know what I’m going to do now? Work you over the way you worked me over — that’s fair, right? No more and no less. Know what my chest looks like? Like some shitty geometrical drawing!’

I lay writhing in the gravel, and could look up just far enough to see the knife that he drew out of his boot.

‘No!’ I wanted to scream, but it was only a gurgle.

‘No? What do you mean no, you wanker?’ This time he kicked me lower down, and I simultaneously screamed and pissed myself.

‘Well, well, well, didn’t you know? Always better to go to the toilet before you leave the house. And that’s nothing yet — do you know my balls are still swollen? The hospital doctor fears there’ll be permanent damage … hear that? Permanent damage! And your doctor will say so too — you can piss your pants full again to that!’

‘Abakay … let it …’

‘Well, if you say so. Right, I’ll just go home …’

He laughed. Then he bent down and held his knife in front of my nose. ‘My geometrical pen …’

This time I intended to gurgle and sound as pitiable as I could. ‘No, please … stop it …’

At the same time I was crawling away from Abakay. It was meant to look like an act of pure despair. I hadn’t the faintest chance of getting away. As soon as Abakay liked he could simply plant his boot on my neck, or shoot me in the legs, or anything else. And confident in that sense of absolute power he looked at me, grinning, as I neared the garbage bin on all fours, with vomit dripping from my chin.

‘Very brave! Know what I’m thinking of as I see you screw up like that? Which would leave more permanent damage, a kick in the ass from behind with the toe of my boot drawn up, or from in front with my heel going right into your soft parts …?’

‘Abakay, let it alone … believe me, you don’t have a chance …’

‘What was that?’

I crawled on, on and on.

‘Go home, that’s best …’

‘You’re an odd one, eh? Shall I tell you something? Sure, I’ll go home — just as soon as your balls are kicked to mush. Right, that’s enough talk …’

I was still about half a metre from the garbage bin when he kicked me in the stomach again. Another gush of vomit, and then everything went black before my eyes.

When I came back to my senses, Abakay was sitting astride me, cutting open my shirt and T-shirt.

‘Ah, good morning … Here we go. I thought we’d start with building blocks, go on to circles and end with some nice straight lines — they’re sure to look pretty …’

‘Let it go …’ I whispered. ‘Please …’ And at that moment I was asking as much for my own sake as his. But of course he didn’t understand that.

He mimicked me. ‘Please, please, please! Dear Erden, I treated you like dirt, but please, please don’t hurt me now!’

He was holding my arms down on the ground with his knees, the way children do fighting in the school yard. My right hand was still about half a metre from the garbage bin.

‘Right,’ he cried finally, when my chest lay bare before him and I was breathing heavily, and he swung his knife in the air like a magic wand. ‘Watch out, or it may go into your eye!’

He was still laughing when I reared up strongly and threw him over to one side. He landed in the gravel, knife raised, and went on laughing. ‘A bit of action at last!’ He could still easily have stabbed me. He watched me turn and crawl on.

‘So where do you think you’re going?’ With an amused expression, he propped his elbow in the gravel and leaned his head on his hand. ‘Throwing yourself away in the garbage?’

I managed to grasp the pistol hidden in the shadows. I’d have liked to go on lying there. Every fibre of my body longed to sleep for a moment in the soft, warm, comfortable gravel.

‘And now, asshole?’

‘Now no more geometry,’ I whispered as I turned round and shot him first in the face and then, to make quite sure, in the chest.

It took me about twenty minutes to get to my feet. I put my pistol away, staggered over to the little tower, picked up the second pistol and stood there breathing heavily. For a while I looked at the gloomy scene: Abakay, the drizzling rain, the garbage bin, the Langnese advertising cardboard. I’d had no choice. In his mood just now, Abakay wouldn’t have stopped short at slitting my chest open and kicking me between the legs. One way or another, he’d have crippled me.

Finally I pulled myself together and staggered over to the delivery van.

The key was in the ignition. I could hear Rashid kicking the bodywork of the van from inside. I started the engine, and Rashid howled. They must have promised him his freedom and now he thought something had gone wrong.

Cautiously, I drove down the street and through the West End, then past the old opera house and to the Frankfurter Hof. I parked the delivery van in a nearby side street, wiped my fingerprints off the steering wheel and the knob of the gear lever, got out and opened the door to the boot. In fact, Rashid stank even worse than I did. He was wrapped in sticky tape like a mummy, with only his nostrils free. With the help of my pocketknife I removed the tape from his ears first.

‘Don’t worry. It’s me, Kayankaya. You’re safe now.’

He tried to say something. With a jerk, I tore the tape off his mouth. Bits of skin and stubble came off with it, and blood seeped through his cheeks in several places. He groaned with pain and began shedding tears.

‘Thank you …’

‘I’m sorry, I must leave your eyes taped up for a moment. For your own safety. You don’t need to see the car we came here in. It’s the kidnappers’ vehicle, and the less you know the better.’

The better for me too.

Then I began unwrapping his body. At first he could move his arms and legs only with difficulty. After that I led him down the street to a driveway, where I carefully removed the tape from his eyes.