Jakob Arjouni - Kismet

‘So you’re Herr Kayankaya’s niece.’ Frau Beierle gave Leila a friendly nod. ‘Do you live in Frankfurt too, if I may ask?’

Leila let the corners of her mouth turn down in what I thought was rather too theatrical a way, and looked at me as if she had been beaten.

‘Er… she’s only been here two months. My brother married a Bosnian woman, so you see…’

‘Bos-nian!’ repeated Frau Beierle slowly, and sketched the movement of clasping her hands over her head in distress. ‘Oh, the poor child!’

‘Yes… well, it hits some people one way, some another. I’m trying to get her into a private boarding school while she has to stay here. State schools don’t take pupils short-term just like that, and after all, the child can’t sit at home all day alone and… well, she prays a lot, but she must go back to learning something too.’

‘Quite right. At her age learning’s what matters most. Particularly learning how to learn.’ She emphasised this last sentence word by word, while her friendly glance conveyed her doubts of whether I knew what she meant.

‘You put that so well. Just what I think myself. And the way things look, I’m afraid, she won’t be able to go back to Bosnia in a hurry…’

Leila did something in between sniffing and swallowing and passed her hand over her face, leaving a heartrending pastry crumb there.

‘I’m sorry, darling.’ I bent over to her. ‘But those are the facts. That’s why you’re going to that nice boarding school. Remember how much we liked it when we went to see it?’

‘What kind of boarding school is it?’ asked Frau Beierle.

‘Oh, well…’ I leaned back and sipped my juice. ‘Well, it’s a cross between a Koran school and a grammar school specialising in sport. Very recently founded. In the middle of the forest, very secluded, only women teachers on the staff — wonderful. Not yet recognised by the state in Germany yet, unfortunately, but as you said, learning in itself is the greatest good of all.’

I had no idea how she managed it, but Leila now had real tears running down her cheeks.

I gave Frau Beierle a look that appealed for understanding. ‘We’d better go now, I think. If we could just settle up first…’

While she went into the next room to fetch her cheque book, and Leila drank her juice in short order, perfectly unmoved, I said quietly enough for it to sound like a whisper, but just loud enough to be heard in the next room, ‘I know you’re unhappy because I can’t pay the boarding school fees at the moment, dear, and you’d like to be back at school so much. But as your father may have told you, what we say where I come from is: bring a thirsty man a glass of water and he’ll reward you with rain. And my job is to bring people back what they’re missing, the way the thirsty man misses a glass of water. Do you understand? It’s not always a sweet, clever dog like Susi. Sometimes it’s only a bicycle I find, but because it’s worth so much to the owner he pays me as if I’d found him his Mercedes. Of course that kind of thing doesn’t often happen in Germany, because the culture here is different. But now and then it does turn out like that, perhaps I’ll strike lucky in the next few weeks or months, and then…’

Suddenly Leila’s face assumed that downtrodden expression again, and I turned to the door. ‘Oh, Frau Beierle, there you are. I was just telling Leila where that beautiful statue in your garden came from…’

The slightly ironic smile became a knowing one, she shook her head, put a hand on my shoulder, and said as if to a small child who’s trying to act like a grown-up, ‘Oh, Herr Kayankaya, you don’t have to pretend to me. I know you can’t think of anything just now but your niece and your family. Even if you weren’t what I expected in some respects, I mean in the qualities arising from your origin — perhaps rightly, I don’t want to be dogmatic about that — I’m well enough acquainted with your ways of thinking and feeling to be able to work out that you weren’t giving your niece a lecture about an old statue.’

‘Well… er… I…’

‘Now, you listen to me…’ With two firm strides she went over to the table, made out a cheque, waved it energetically in the air to dry the ink, and pressed it into my hand. ‘And no argument. Of course this is mainly for your excellent work — you can’t imagine how happy I am to have my Susi back — but it’s also a little contribution to help you out in your present situation. Your niece,’ she added, nodding and smiling warmly at Leila, who now looked as if she were on a course of depressive drugs, ‘is such a delightful girl, and I’d be really glad if you can get her into that boarding school.’

For a moment I hesitated, then I moved as fast as I could. Effusive thanks, put the cheque away without looking at it, get to my feet, unobtrusive sign to Leila to hurry, step by step to the front door accompanied by a never-ending farewell monologue, final handshake: ‘If there’s ever anything else… ’ ‘… Oh, of course, I’ll certainly turn to you’, then down the gravel path, into the car, stop round the next corner to look at the cheque… five thousand marks!

‘Is OK?’

‘… Yes, it’s OK.’

‘What we do now?’

‘Now…’ I put the cheque away and beamed at her. ‘Now you wipe that chicken-feed off your face and we go and drink champagne!’

We sat in the bar of the Hilton Hotel for almost two hours, polished off two bottles of champagne, ate caviar on toast and laughed over Frau Beierle. Leila imitated all three of us in turn, and explained how she’d managed those tears.

‘Easy, I think hard of sad thing, then they come. Do just like that!’ And she snapped her fingers. ‘Am going to be actress, you see.’

She enjoyed the champagne and so did I, and after we had given points from one to ten to all the alcoholic drinks the two of us knew, it was agreed that we had just been consuming the best of them all. Then we told each other about our first drinks. With me it was quick: alone in my room at the age of thirteen, putting back a bottle of apple brandy in one go. Instead of appearing at my heartthrob’s party a little later, all relaxed and witty as I’d planned, I found myself in hospital next morning.

‘Me, was my father’s birthday. I twelve. I drink secretly in kitchen. Then I go at night to house next door where boy I love live, and I go to window like this.’ She tapped the air with her hand. ‘I take flowers too. Then I suddenly very ill, and the boy come, and I go like this.’ She leaned forward, retching and letting her tongue hang out of her mouth. ‘Was all over with boy. But good that way. He always so stuck-up, playing piano, top of class at school. Later I am glad I.’ and she did a little more heavy breathing ‘. all over him. Afterwards all were angry, my father, my mother. But I drink not often, I don’t like because it make me tired, and when life normal, you know, I have soooo…’ and she flung her arms wide apart ‘… so much to do, I not want to sleep.’

If it hadn’t been for Gina and Slibulsky’s dinner at eight, we’d probably have ordered a third bottle.

On the way to the car Leila linked arms with me.

‘When my mother come, we drink champagne again?’

‘You bet we will. The three of us will drink the bar dry.’

And then, for a moment, I was breathless. Tomorrow the crunch would come — whatever the outcome. I’d been trying not to think of that all day. Suddenly it almost knocked me flat.

As we drove through the empty evening streets to Sachsenhausen, the radio was playing Van Morrison’s Whenever God Shines His Light, and there was a fine sunset glowing behind the tower buildings for the first time in a week. As if everything was all right now.