Kismet (13 page)

I couldn’t. Before my general announcement to the whole company – ‘There’s a gang of racketeers in Frankfurt at the moment calling itself the Army of Reason …’ – had died away, the door behind me opened, and several hands grabbed me at the same moment, knocked me off my feet and rammed me head first into the bar. There was a mighty crash, and everything went dark before my eyes for a few seconds. When it was light again, and I felt my arms twisted behind my back, the first thing I thought of was my pistol. It was about ten thousand kilometres away in my trouser pocket. The second thing I thought of was the way something had been moving at the back of the room. They must have gone out through another door and round outside the place. The third thing I realised, with relief, was that my nose had escaped the impact. Finally I recognised the flashy sports jackets to left and right of me.

‘Whaddya want we do with this bastard, then?’

They were addressing the landlord. Berliners, judging by their accent. Did the Berliners have a finger in every pie now? I turned my head until I could look into the sodden eyes of one of the baldies. ‘That dulcet tone of voice, that elegant phrasing, anyone can see we have visitors from the capital.’

‘Shut your gob!’ he snarled, kicking me in the back of the knees.

‘How about we see who he is?’ said the landlord, sounding as friendly and casual again as he had when I arrived. I had definitely underestimated him.

While the two shaven-headed men went through my pockets, some of the guests left the restaurant in silence. The rest watched the show with interest. Some lit
cigarettes, others sipped their beer. The only one in the room who seemed unhappy with the situation but couldn’t escape it was the chef’s assistant. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him fidgeting nervously with beer mats and turning his head aside at frequent intervals.

‘The bastard’s got a gun!’ cried one of the Berliners, cracking his heel into the backs of my knees again. Obviously he was used to knowing where and how to lash out. Another couple of kicks and I might even had been wishing he’d hit me in the face for a change.

He held my pistol in front of my face. ‘Whaddya call this, then? Come on, whaddya call this?’

‘Pistol, a pistol.’

‘Got it!’ cried his friend, proudly waving my wallet. While the knee expert held me down, the man who was so triumphant over finding a wallet in the inside pocket of a jacket was looking at my papers.

‘Kemal Ka … ka … What sort of a name’s that? Kaka … Krap, I call it. Kemal Krap!’ He laughed, held my ID out to his mate, and they both laughed. ‘Kemal Krap! Hey, that’s good!’

‘Why make it so complicated, lads? Why Kemal? Why not just Krap Krap?’

‘Keep your mouth shut, I said.’

This time his kick made my legs crumple, and for a moment I was hanging in the air by my arms, which were still twisted behind my back. When I screamed they dropped me, kicked me in the side so that I landed on my back, and the knee expert put his foot on my throat. My pistol was dangling in the air above me from his hand.

‘One more crappy remark like that and I finish this off.’

I briefly closed my eyes to show that I’d got the
message. Meanwhile more guests were leaving the place. Were they thinking that the show was getting stronger all the time, and what was about to happen now was too unappetising for them? I turned my eyes to the tap. The chef’s assistant had stopped playing with beer mats, and was staring straight ahead of him, gritting his teeth. If this went on he was my only hope. I unobtrusively moved my arms. As far as I could tell from the feel of it, I’d only imagined them cracking.

‘You a Turk, then?’

‘I’m a Frankfurter.’

‘I said no crappy talk!’

The pressure on my throat was increased.

‘I thought the landlord wanted to know who I was,’ I gasped, ‘not just theories.’

Knee Expert frowned. ‘Whassat in aid of?’

Before I could answer, his friend pushed into my line of vision. ‘We got Turks back home too …’ He grinned down at me. ‘Been fighting them bastards two years.’ He spread the fingers of one hand and waggled them up and down. ‘Count ’em, you! That’s how many I done in. One more won’t make no difference.’

‘Yes, I hear that kind of thing goes on in Berlin.’

‘Berlin? You daft or what? Nope, in
our
country! Get an education, you layabout! Whaddya think them shitty Muslims are to us? Kemal Kraps, the whole bunch.’

‘I see.’ I tried to look expressionless. ‘What a wonderful education in foreign languages you get in your native land! Amazing!’

‘You watch yer step,’ said the landlord, coming into the small circle of space above me. ‘You ain’t bin acting none so friendly here. You insult our President, you made fun of
our country. Dunno why, we’re peaceful folk, we never done you no harm. Fact is, I wouldn’t mind teaching you a lesson – but forget it. You clear out now, and you hear this: show yer face in here again and you’ll be thinking of today real sad, remembering how pretty it once wuz. Get it?’

‘And how.’

The landlord was still looking into my eyes rather as if he was not too happy with the decision to let me go, but in the end he nodded to the Berliners and disappeared behind the bar. Knee Specialist looked disappointed.

‘This beggar’s a lucky beggar too,’ he said, and couldn’t refrain from letting me feel once more how quickly my larynx would be crushed if he wanted. Finally he took his foot away.

It was some time before I could get to my feet and follow him to the bar. As if the last ten minutes hadn’t happened, he was standing there casually watching the chef’s assistant draw him a beer.

‘My pistol, please.’

He slowly turned his head and looked surprised. ‘What pistol?’ And to his mate, standing next to him, ‘Imagining things, ain’t he? Potheads, all these guys.’

‘They ain’t allowed no beer, see? Knifing folk, screwing bints, all that shitty drugs stuff, they can have that. But there ain’t nothing for Allah in a beer.’

They looked at me with relish.

I leaned both arms on a bar stool to take the weight off my knees and looked down at the floor, exhausted. While that foot had been on my throat, there’d been no room left for pain. Now it was quickly taking over all the parts of me that had been abused over the last ten minutes. I
sighed. ‘The gun’s registered. If I lose it I have to report the loss and say where and when it happened. A lie risks me my job, and I’m not telling any lies for you. So either you finish me off now after all, or you give me my pistol, or this place will be full of cops tomorrow.’

I looked at the floor again, fumbled for a cigarette in my pocket, lit it, and waited for whatever they decided. By now everything was hurting so much that I felt almost indifferent to it. Only I didn’t want to look at them any more. Except when I shot them.

‘Take the magazine out, give him his gun, then maybe he’ll go.’

Soon after that something fell into my jacket pocket. Without even turning round again, I staggered out of the door.

I was sitting in the car on the other side of the road from the Adria Grill waiting – smoking, listening to the radio, dozing. My face throbbed, my shoulders were burning, and when I moved my knees something in them seemed on the point of breaking. I dropped off to sleep from time to time, waking with a start from fevered dreams a moment later. Mostly the dreams were about fighting. Once companies of men dressed in costume with bright plumes and golden shirts of mail like something out of a historical film were clashing, stabbing and hacking each other to pieces with spears and swords. There was blood everywhere, and severed heads lying about, and techno music boomed out from the surrounding forest. Two eyes were blazing in the middle of this bloodbath and wouldn’t stop looking at me, although the body they belonged to was dead. I was the only one who had a gun, but it wouldn’t do what I wanted. When I put the safety catch on it fired wildly all over the place, and when I took the safety catch off and pressed the trigger there was just a click. Then the techno music got louder and louder, changed to a deafening rattle, and I woke up. The rattle came from the radio. The tuning of the channel had slipped.

Just before one in the morning the light behind the crochet drapes finally went out. I rubbed my forehead, lit a cigarette, and checked yet again that I’d loaded the pistol
with the spare magazine.

Ten minutes later the landlord and his two employees came out into the street. The landlord locked up, nodded to the others, and they all set off in different directions. I forgot my knees and my shoulders, got out of the car, closed its door quietly, and followed the chef’s assistant. I got him in a dark side alley. I quietly made my way to within ten metres and then ran at him. At about the same moment as he spun round in alarm the muzzle of my pistol pressed against his chest.

‘Don’t make a sound!’

I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him into the entrance of the nearest building. His slight body was trembling like an animal’s. Only now did I realise how young he must be. Twenty at the most.

‘Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen to you.’

‘Please …’ he begged, gasping for breath. ‘Please … I’m not one of them!’

‘I know. Take it easy.’ I patted him on the shoulder. ‘I only want you to explain a few things to me.’

‘But I don’t know anything. I’m only his nephew. I’m working there to earn money. I don’t have anything to do with that lot.’

He was talking so fast that I could barely understand him. He never took his eyes off the pistol, but at the same time turned his head as far away from it as possible.

‘Listen: I’ll put it away if you promise not to try anything silly.’

‘What?’ He wasn’t listening to me.

‘The pistol. Look …’ I put it in my jacket pocket. ‘Better now?’

He stared at the opening of the pocket for a moment
longer before looking hesitantly at my face, as if expecting to see a monster. ‘What … what do you want?’

‘I want you to tell me what you’ve heard at work, or from your uncle, about the Army of Reason.’

‘Army of Reason?’

‘Could be you’ve never heard the name mentioned. It’s a gang that started extorting protection money in Frankfurt about two weeks ago. I assume the Adria Grill is the place where they meet, if only for a beer.’

At the words ‘extorting protection money’ he jumped, and I saw him checking up on opportunities for escape out of the corner of his eyes. I stood a little more foursquare in front of him and shook my head. ‘Don’t even think of it. If you help me we’ll never see each other again, and no one will know that you talked to me. If you don’t, I’ll tell your uncle that you phoned me and tried to sell me information.’

‘Are you crazy?’ It burst out of him before he turned his eyes away and stared at the ground, lips compressed. I waited. Standing there in front of me now without a kitchen apron on, he looked like a youth from another period. He wore pointed shoes with leopard-skin trim, a pair of suit trousers much too large for him, a white shirt with a starched collar, and he had a crew cut. Perhaps his favourite band was The Who, and either that was usual in Offenbach or he had a good chance of leading a revival in three or four years’ time.

‘I … look, I’m going to university in the autumn, I wanted to work through the summer so as not to have to take a job during my first year. I never specially liked my uncle – why am I saying specially? Not at all. But I couldn’t find anything better … I had no idea what I was
getting into. Imagine it, you just want to earn some cash, and suddenly you’re right in a …’

He stopped and stared ahead of him again. I lit myself a cigarette and registered the adrenalin closing down for the night in my body, while pain took over again. After a while he raised his eyes and pointed cautiously to my jacket pocket with one finger.

‘They took the bullets out, didn’t they?’

‘I had a spare magazine in the car.’

‘Oh.’ He made a face as if thinking of something really disgusting to eat. ‘… Would you have shot me?’

‘Let’s say at least I wouldn’t have let you get away.’

He thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. ‘They really took you apart.’

‘Yes, and it hurts, and I want to go to bed. Tell me about the protection money gang.’

‘OK,’ he sighed. ‘But you’ll have to …’

‘I won’t have to do anything,’ I snorted. Only just now he’d been close to shitting himself, and now he was a little too inclined to have a cosy chat for my liking. ‘You either trust me or you don’t. I’ll wait another five minutes. If I haven’t heard anything that interests me by then, I shall get your uncle out of bed this very night, and you can start thinking of some place to go and study abroad.’

It took him a little more swallowing, marking time on the spot and looking at the ground, but finally, head bowed, he talked. He turned out to be a bright, inquisitive lad, and half an hour later he’d answered a great many more questions than I had meant to ask.

The Adria Grill functioned as a meeting place for Croatian nationalists who liked to have a drink together, and also for German Nazi and Ustasha fans who were
seeking salvation as mercenaries in the Bosnian war. True, the war was officially over, but there were still paramilitary bands of all political colours as fond as ever of murdering each other in the name of a Greater Croatia, Greater Bosnia or Greater Serbia – for a good fat fee. Checking up on the mercenaries and dispatching them was organised by a tall, thin man who was always very smartly dressed, but whose name was never mentioned. He turned up in a Mercedes three times a week and held audience for one or two hours in the back room of the Adria Grill. He hadn’t turned up this evening, and Zvonko – that was the boy’s name – had seen his uncle go to the phone several times after I was flung out to call this man, but without success.

‘Was he there last Thursday?’

‘Thursday … yes, of course, that was the evening when the palefaces didn’t turn up. That’s what I call them to myself. Their faces are powdered and they wear blond wigs. They first turned up two weeks ago, and at the start I thought they were cranks of some kind, a cult or something. How would I know? Suppose Jesus is blond and loves Croatia. You wouldn’t believe what weird characters come into that place. Sometimes I think Yugoslavia and the war was like winning the lottery for all the weirdoes who have some kind of obsession going that won’t get them anywhere here. I heard one of the interviews. The man kept saying how he couldn’t stand his wife any more, that was all he talked about. And he went off there, and the first thing he did was probably to shoot ten Bosnian women between thirty and forty. And then he said Croatia was a wonderful country because of its literature and music. I mean, sometimes it’s quite funny.’