Jakob Arjouni - Kismet

It’s a funny thing how some women always make a really big deal of their independence just when they’re about to mess things up. Or what I’d call mess things up.

There was little I could do but go back into the living room and mingle. In the process I took plenty of fluids and let a small, crisp woman in glasses deliver me a lecture on sexual stimulants in classical antiquity. Interesting the way she did it in a tone of voice as if she were reading aloud the instructions for using an electric iron. Then there was supper, and I found myself sitting at one end of the table between Four-Eyes and a man who kept saying ‘Tasty, tasty’. Now and then I cast a surreptitious glance at Gina. She was sitting at the other end of the table beside her boss talking exuberantly. But occasionally she fell silent for a moment, and I thought I sensed her looking at me. Slibulsky was between a young man with rings on his fingers and a shaved, spotty neck, and a woman who kept putting her head on one side as she listened, smiling as if she were talking to a set of soft, pink stuffed toys. They were conversing with each other across Slibulsky, discussing who would be appointed to a post about to fall vacant. Slibulsky stoically put forkful after forkful in his mouth and didn’t look as if he planned to follow any conversation for as much as two sentences together. He must have been envying Leila, who had retreated to watch TV in the bedroom.

Iris, the bespectacled woman, seemed intent on having a serious conversation with me during the meal. She didn’t seem to mind what the subject was. In her instructions-for-use tone, which did not change in spite of her increasing tipsiness, she moved from the digital future of archaeology to the destructive effects of popular tourism, and from the subject of what I did in my holidays to the relationship between the sexes in general.

‘Do you agree that the crucial mistakes, the mistakes that will lead to a rift some time later, are made at the very beginning, perhaps even at the first meeting?’

‘Hm, er… I don’t know. Perhaps sometimes.’

‘Aha.’

‘Why aha?’

‘Interesting: perhaps sometimes. Conversely, that would mean: perhaps sometimes not.’

In one respect she was phenomenal. So tight by now that she was practically squinting and her remarks were really sheer nonsense, she kept on uttering them in the same slightly slurred, entirely unemotional way, without any intonation at all, as if talking was her job, and a badly paid one at that.

When we left the table and sat down on sofas and chairs I took my chance to slip away from Four-Eyes, and went into the bedroom to say goodbye to Leila.

‘As soon as there’s any news tomorrow I’ll call you.’

‘OK. Went well?’

‘Of course.’ I stroked her head.

‘That in the kitchen, just joke, you know?’

‘I know. Try to sleep a bit.’

She nodded, and we smiled at each other.

‘See you tomorrow.’

As before, I found Slibulsky in the kitchen. He was sitting at the table drinking schnapps.

‘I have to go. There’s a lot to do tomorrow.’

‘You’re telling me,’ he muttered to himself, sounding sozzled.

‘Is it just those people annoying you, or is there something else?’

‘Aren’t they enough to annoy anyone?’

‘Yes, sure. Well… look after Leila.’

‘Don’t worry.’

As I left I waved to Gina, received a cool nod in return, and then I was on the stairs at last. Although it wasn’t very friendly of me, as soon as the front door of the building closed behind me I’d forgotten Slibulsky and Gina.

At ten in the morning on the dot I got into the car and drove off to the station district. The sun was shining, and it had turned warm again overnight. In the streets people were strolling about, talking, doing their Saturday shopping or having the first drink of the weekend outside cafes. I had wound the window down. Laughter, children’s shouts, and fresh air smelling of flowers wafted in. Frankfurt this morning felt like a mixture between a meadow by an open-air swimming pool and a busy village square.

But when I turned into Kaiserstrasse the atmosphere changed. At first it was simply quieter, although it was usually noisier in the red-light and gambling district than anywhere else in town. Especially on Saturdays, even in the morning. After all, the weekend customers from Little Whatsit and Lower Thingummy wanted value for their petrol money. They rose with the lark and were up and down the corridors of the brothels from nine in the morning onwards.

The closer I came to the Albanian’s headquarters, the New York, the emptier the pavements became, until there was almost no one around at all any more. Here and there a druggie who’d been kicked aside, or a few travellers with their bags on the way to or from the station. They too sensed the curious atmosphere and were looking around nervously. Only when you looked closely could you see all the heads crowding together behind the dark windows of bars and half-open striptease club doors, looking down the street. Suddenly a siren broke the silence, and next moment an ambulance raced past me. The siren faded into the distance, and it seemed even quieter than before. Then I saw at least twenty blue lights flashing outside the corner building of the side street where the New York stood. I drove slowly up, stopped at the police barrier, and lit a cigarette with trembling hands. Instead of the New York — a three-storey disco with a restaurant and billiards room, adorned outside with a profusion of neon tubing — I saw blue sky. The building opposite which had been the German boss’s residence lay in ruins too, and there wasn’t much left of two of its bars apart from the last wisps of smoke. But there were any number of charred bodies. They were being carried out of the ruins by firefighters and doctors with protective face masks, and laid in a row on the pavement. I couldn’t see the end of the row.

‘You out of your mind? Get away from there!’

One of the army of policemen standing about, all of them looking helpless and unable to take it in, had spotted me. Tapping his forehead, he came over.

‘What d’you think this is?’

‘All right.’ I waved him away and drove to the next corner. There I stopped and tried to get my breath under control. Now I knew what it was I’d forgotten to tell the Albanian. Outside the Ahrens office building in the evening: ‘Right, lads, see you Saturday. Work in the morning first, pleasure in the evening!’ — ‘Don’t worry, boss, the faggots will get what faggots always hope for — they’ll die in their sleep.’

What with thinking about Stasha Markovic, it had simply slipped my mind.

No one must ever know, I prayed, as someone opened the left back door of the car and I felt the muzzle of a pistol on the nape of my neck.

‘Get moving.’

I saw the Albanian’s bloodstained face in the rear-view mirror. He smelled of smoke.

I said nothing, and even if I’d wanted to say anything I probably couldn’t have uttered a sound. All my concentration was bent on driving fairly fast and not causing an accident.

‘Turn right up ahead there.’

I obeyed orders, and vaguely realised that we were driving out of town.

‘At least you were punctual.’

I cautiously nodded.

‘Keep going straight ahead. My God, what a frightful car!’

Quarter of an hour later we were standing beside the car surrounded by fields of potatoes and cabbages, the Albanian still had his pistol pointed at me and was demanding to know everything I knew about the Army of Reason. I told him almost all of it.

‘Croats?’ he exclaimed, and for a moment I was sure he was going to pull the trigger. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have found out who exactly was behind it in half an hour! And I have people down there, just a day and the Army would have been…!’ He flung his hand heavenward.