Timur Vermes - Look Who's Back

“The Roumanians?”

“Oh excuse me, General, I’m most terribly sorry, sir . You are, of course, perfectly right. Who gives a fig about the Roumanians? Naturally, Herr General here will always march to Warsaw, to Cracow. He does not look left, he does not look right, and why should he, by Jove? The Polack is a pushover, the weather is fine, the troops exceptional… but whoops! What is that? All of a sudden the shoulder blades of our troops are shot through with tiny holes, and out flows the noble blood of German heroes. And why? Because out of nowhere millions of Roumanian bullets have peppered the backs of hundreds of thousands of our infantrymen. But how can this be? How did this happen? Did our young general here maybe, possibly, perchance forget the military alliance between Poland and Roumania? Were you ever in the Wehrmacht, man? With the best will in the world I cannot picture you in the field. You could not find the way to Poland for any army on earth; you cannot even find your own uniform! I, on the other hand, can tell you at any hour, any minute, where my uniform is.” I thrust my hand into my breast pocket and slapped the receipt on the table. “At the cleaner’s!”

A curious noise came from the older man, Sensenbrink, and two jets of coffee shot from his nostrils onto my shirt, the newspaper vendor’s and his own. The younger man sat there in bewilderment while Sensenbrink began to cough.

“That,” he wheezed, bent double under the table, “that was unfair.”

He felt in his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief and painstakingly liberated his respiratory passages. “I thought,” he gasped, “I thought at first it was going to be some sort of military skit, a bit like that Instructor Schmidt character. But the remark about the cleaner’s, that just killed me.”

“What did I tell you?” the newspaper seller said in jubilation. “Didn’t I say the guy’s a genius? And he is.”

I was unsure how to interpret the coffee fountain and the comments that followed. Although I was not keen on either of these broadcasting types, the situation had been no different in the Weimar Republic. It was unavoidable that I would have to put up with weasels like these for a while. Besides, thus far I had not said anything, at least not anything of what I had to say and was minded to say. Despite this I detected a significant degree of approval.

“You’ve grilled that burger to perfection,” Sensenbrink said. “Classic. Set it all up, then wallop! — out with the punchline. And it comes across as über-spontaneous! But you prepared the routine in advance, didn’t you?”

“Which routine?”

“The Poland routine! You’re not going to tell me you did that off the cuff?”

This Sensenbrink fellow actually seemed to possess a more profound understanding of the issue. One does not produce a Blitzkrieg off the cuff, either. Why, maybe the man had even read his Guderian.

“Of course not,” I said. “The Poland routine had been planned down to the finest detail by June ’39.”

“Well?” he asked, examining his shirt with a mixture of regret and amusement. “What other clubs have you got in your bag?”

“What do you mean, ‘other’? What clubs? What bag?”

“You know, a programme,” he said, “or other texts.”

“I have written two books!”

“Extraordinary,” he marvelled. “Why didn’t we pick you up on our radar years ago? How old are you, actually?”

“Fifty-six,” I said soberly.

“Of course,” he laughed. “Have you got a make-up artist, or do you do it yourself?”

“Not usually, only when filming.”

“Only when filming,” he laughed again. “Excellent. Look, there are one or two people in our company I’d like to introduce you to. Where can I touch base with you?”

“Touch what?” I asked.

“Where can I get in contact with you?” he explained.

“Here,” I said firmly.

The newspaper vendor interrupted me, adding, “I told you that his personal circumstances at the moment are a little… unsettled.”

“Oh yes, that’s right,” Sensenbrink said. “You are, how should I put it, currently homeless…?”

“For the time being I am indeed without fixed abode,” I conceded. “But I am certainly not without a Heimat!”

“I understand,” Sensenbrink said, and turned to Sawatzki. “Well, that’s no good, is it? Sort something for him. The man needs to sharpen his pencils. I don’t care how good he is, if he turns up in front of Frau Bellini looking like that he’ll be scrap metal before he can open his mouth. It doesn’t have to be the Adlon, does it?”

“A modest dwelling will suffice,” I said in agreement. “The Führerbunker was not exactly Versailles.”

“Excellent,” Sensenbrink said. “Do you really have no manager?”

“No what?”

“Forget it,” he said, flapping his hand. “That’s settled, then. Now, I don’t want to let the grass grow long on this one; we should try and diarise it this week. You’re going to get your uniform back soon, aren’t you?”

“Maybe this evening,” I reassured him. “It is a Blitz cleaner’s, after all.”

Sensenbrink fell about laughing.

Even taking into account the dramatic events I had already experienced, the first morning in my new quarters was one of the most arduous in my life. The great conference at the production company had been delayed, which did not bother me. I was not so presumptuous as to deny that I had much work to do in familiarising myself with this present era. By chance, however, I came across a fresh source for such information: the television set.

The structure of this apparatus had changed so substantially since its initial development in 1936 that at first I simply failed to recognise it. To begin with I assumed that the dark, flat plate in my room must be some bizarre work of art. Then, taking into consideration its shape, I speculated that it might serve as a means of storing my shirts overnight without them creasing. There were many things in this modern world to which I had to accustom myself, based as they must be on new discoveries or a passion for outlandish design. Now, for example, it was deemed appropriate to install a kind of elaborate washing galley for guests in place of a bathroom. There was no longer a bathtub, but the shower — a glass cabin — was more or less housed in the room itself. For several weeks I took this to be a sign of the modesty, nay, squalor of my billet, until I learned that in contemporary architecture circles these sorts of things are regarded as creative and remarkably progressive. Likewise, it was another coincidence which alerted me to the television set.

As I had forgotten to hang the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door to my room, a cleaner entered just as I was attending to my moustache in the washing galley. I turned around in surprise, she apologised, promising to return later and, as she was leaving, she caught sight of the apparatus my shirt was hanging in front of.

“Is there something wrong with the telly?” she asked, and before I could reply she picked up a small box and turned on the device. An image appeared at once, which changed each time she pressed the buttons on the box.

“No, it’s working,” she said, satisfied. “I just thought…”

Then she went, leaving me full of curiosity.

Carefully I took the shirt from the screen, then reached for the little box.

So this was a modern-day television set. It was black, with no switches or knobs, nothing. Holding the box in my left hand I pressed button number one, and the apparatus started up. The result was disappointing.

The picture was of a chef, finely chopping vegetables. Unbelievable! Having developed such an advanced piece of technology, all they could feature on it was a ridiculous cook! Admittedly, the Olympic Games could not take place every year, nor at every hour of the day, but surely something of greater import must be happening somewhere in Germany, or even in the world! Shortly afterwards a woman joined the man and provided an admiring commentary on his knife skills. My jaw dropped. Providence had presented the German Volk with this wonderful, magnificent opportunity for propaganda, and it was being squandered on the production of leek rings. I was so furious that I could have hurled the entire apparatus out of the window, but then it occurred to me that there were many more buttons on the little box besides the simple on/off one. So I pressed number two. The chef vanished at once, only to be replaced by another chef, who was grandiosely discussing the differences between two varieties of turnip. This one had a floozy standing next to him too, who marvelled at the pearls of wisdom that fell from the lips of this “Turnip Head”. In irritation I pressed number three. I had not imagined the modern world would be like this.