Magic Hoffmann (3 page)

Clash was once a smoke-filled drinking den with black walls, junk furniture, candles in empty beer bottles, a tiny dance floor and booming music. Fred had spent half his youth there: Clash had often been his living room and his bedroom for days on end, and it was there that he had done almost everything for the first time - at least those things for which there was a first time once walking and talking had been mastered.

For the last two years Clash had been called Coconut Beach, and it was a cross between a Greek taverna and a Caribbean holiday. There was white plaster on the walls, brown tiles on the floor and an imitation thirties fan rotated above the bamboo counter. Wicker chairs and tables were arranged in groups, and on the tables were cocktail menus and bowls containing dried banana flakes. Soft guitar music wafted from concealed speakers.

As he entered, Fred found himself hoping he had come to the wrong place. Walking slowly through the room, which was almost deserted at that early hour, he kept looking around in disbelief. A few beers with Schnapps chasers helped him to come to terms with the new decor, by dismissing it as garbage. Maybe this kind of elegant hula-hula establishment was fashionable in Grandma Ranunkel's day, he reflected. He didn't need to worry if he'd missed out on anything here. And the absence of Clash, well…he'd soon be saying goodbye to Dieburg forever.

It was now shortly after eleven and Fred drank whatever was going and felt magnificent. He sat at a table with two young women who knew him from the newspaper, and who spoke to him exactly as he imagined women would: in amazement. ‘Aren't you the one who robbed the bank that time?' Fred assented calmly.

The slightly shame-faced one with long dark hair, a centre parting and a pointed nose reminded him of Joan Baez. She wore a translucent, brightly embroidered dress which revealed her underwear. The other had a round, chubby face with an angular lacquered hairdo and was squeezed into a sailor's outfit. She squealed enthusiastically at any and all jokes, whereupon she rearranged her bust and neckline.

Time and again Fred raised his glass, yelled at the half-empty room: ‘Hey Gerda,
hasta la vista
!' and winked at the bar counter to the sound of squeals from his left. Gerda, who had worked at Clash in the old days, was hoping Fred would bugger off. Since his arrival the gags about sun tan lotion and sangria hadn't stopped. Four years of prison excused some things, but no matter how hopelessly behind the times you were, you didn't have to behave like a ticket tout. Beer and rye! Gerda shuddered. They only had rye in because of the construction workers who were building the aquarium.

Fred leaned over to Joan Baez. ‘I know about punch, but that thing…' he pointed grinning at her Melon and Campari Sundream with rose petals and a sugared rim, ‘…goes under pudding in my book.'

There was more enthusiastic squealing. Joan Baez didn't turn a hair. For the last hour she had wanted to learn something about prison and what it was like to be an inmate. Instead she had been forced to listen to teenage bragging and crude jokes.

‘Seems pretty daft to go out on the town and stuff yourself with fruit salad. It's a bit like robbing a bank to steal the biros.'

The squealing turned into a minor hysterical outburst, until an agitated Joan Baez declared that it really wasn't that funny. The sailor girl was briefly silent. In the perfumery where they both worked, Joan Baez was her boss. The irritated sailor straightened out her breasts, bringing a mildly idiotic expression to Fred's features. Then she reached for her cocktail and disappeared behind a bush made of peppermint leaves and orange peel curlicues.

Fred looked amiably from one to the other. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that Annette and Nickel hadn't collected him. Afterwards he would go with the girls to Dance 2000, and then… It was his first night of freedom. He took a slug of beer and waved at Gerda. Sweet Gerda. Pity for her that she had to work in such a dive.

Joan Baez leaned forward. ‘What sort of things do you learn in prison?' It was the third time she had asked the question, and the sailor girl had to restrain herself behind the peppermint leaves.

Fred nodded. ‘Table football,' and he shouted towards the bar, causing several guests to look around: ‘Hey Gerda, where the hell's the table football?'

Gerda turned away.

Fred stared at her back, perplexed. Then he murmured: ‘It's not easy for her,' and raising his index finger he announced: ‘There was a bar football table here,' as though that were akin to a genuine Rembrandt.

Groaning, Joan Baez raised her eyes to the ceiling.

‘But in those days I was just a decent midfielder and now I'm unbeatable. They called me Magic Hoffmann in the nick. I don't shoot any more, just stroke the ball round. Like this...' Fred performed a movement with both hands, as though he were letting two invisible ropes slip through his fingers.

‘Actually I meant an apprenticeship or a profession. That sort of thing.'

‘Oh that,' said Fred, indicating his distaste. ‘I'm gong to Canada with some friends.'

‘Nice work! What's the pay like?'

Immediately, the sailor girl emerged from behind the peppermint leaves and seized the opportunity to make up for her blunder. She worked herself up to such a frenzy of squealing in Joan Baez's honour, that the whole room fell silent and the other customers turned to look at them delighted by such a jolly creature. Some seemed pleased that the laughter was clearly at Fred's expense. His tasteless jokes were hard to take, and now his antediluvian gym shoes, his torn blue overalls and his village idiot's hairdo were an offence to the cultured eye. These days, just about every refuse collector in Dieburg wore a pink or turquoise C&A leisure shirt to work. Fred looked into Joan Baez's long pale face, which despite her youth was already marked by overtime and neon light, and wondered why she of all people was showing such an interest in the notion of a profession.

‘I worked in the woodwork shop,' he said, ‘but now when I smell sawdust I feel ill. It's like with cows and steaks: a tree is beautiful, a table too, everything in between is shit.'

Joan Baez looked at Fred's heavy hands around the beerglass and laughed out of politeness. ‘These days you have to be prepared to compromise.'

‘These days?'

‘Unemployment.' she said, and her stare suggested that the word finally signalled the end to the genial part of the evening.

‘Unemployment…' Fred shrugged his shoulders, ‘means nothing to me.'

‘Is that right…?' Joan Baez raised her eyebrows, ‘and if you're out on the street with millions of others…?'

‘Where?' Fred asked, turning to the window. Joan Baez and her colleague exchanged glances.

‘The way I see it is,' he said after a pause in which he had waited for even a mild squeal, ‘there are two types in the nick: those who graft all day, and those who lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. The only difference is that the former are less conscious of the time they've done, and the latter have more time to look forward to a soft mattress.'

‘And what's that got to do with normal life?'

‘They all get out in the end,' said Fred and winked cheerily at the sailor girl. But she looked across at her supervisor who was observing Fred, unmoved. Then Joan Baez laughed briefly and reached for her handbag. ‘We really must be going.' Then she added waspishly: ‘We have work to do in the morning.'

At first Fred thought he had misunderstood, but he saw Joan Baez rise to her feet, straighten her dress and pick up her cardigan, and his mouth opened in astonishment. The sailor girl was also surprised, and pointed timidly at her half-full glass.

Joan Baez dismissed it. ‘This one's surely on our friend Magic. A man who earns money by travelling to Canada. And if he runs short he can just rob another bank.'

This made sense to the sailor girl, and besides she found it very funny. After she had taken a rapid gulp of her drink, and as she grabbed her cigarettes, she opened her mouth and her squeal resounded through the room, almost causing Fred to black out. The sound only died away as the door slammed behind them.

Silence. Everyone was looking at Fred. He pressed himself into the armchair, clasped his hands round his arms and stared intently at the door. Then conversation was resumed, and soon the noise reached its former level.

Fred looked around carefully. Gradually his head cleared …what in the name of God had happened? Didn't they just laugh? Did being out of a job somehow cramp your style with women these days? And they'd agreed to go to Dance 2000, cut loose, shake a leg, Rock'n'Roll…

Fred looked at his watch. Annette and Nickel wouldn't turn up this late. Dance 2000 was a dead loss now. He couldn't go alone, it just wouldn't look right. He had to arrive in style, just like he'd planned: Magic Hoffmann, who could squeeze more enjoyment out of life than anyone else, in spite of four years in the nick…that's exactly how it was…or would have been, only not today, or not exactly.

He lit a cigarette and looked around again. Nobody seemed to be watching him. Should he go home? Was that how his first night of freedom would be?

He downed his glass and waved at Gerda. When she finally turned round, he grinned and yelled: ‘The drinks are on me.'

 

Dawn was breaking as Fred awoke on a bench in the pedestrian precinct. It took a moment for him to grasp where he was and to realise that he was not in his cell. Then he came to with a start.

Dieburg was still sleeping. Closed shutters, barred up shop windows, a fading street light. The first birds were chirping. Otherwise it was silent.

Fred's clothes were clammy. He shook himself, flopped his feet onto the pavement and rubbed his face. Then he came across the crusted blood, which ran from the back of his right hand up his forearm. Slowly it came back to him: he had wanted to give Gerda a farewell embrace, but something must have gone wrong because seconds later someone had grabbed him and hurled him into the street.

He leaned to the side and threw up into a tub of flowers. He had always had a weak stomach. At least he had managed to get drunk on his first evening. That always seemed to work.

In his pocket were a twenty note and some loose change. He must have spent six hundred marks, almost his entire prison wage.

He picked himself up and staggered home. The streets were empty. In the distance he could hear the first cars on the main road to Frankfurt. Had Annette and Nickel returned in the mean time?

But he could tell from a distance that his ‘Am at Clash' note was still stuck to the front door. That was that: his postcards hadn't arrived. Or else…

He ran faster, forgetting his hangover. When he reached the door, he tore the note off and crumpled it up. Could it be that they knew of his release and still didn't come to collect him? Or maybe they perhaps planned to leave it till the weekend.

He opened the door and entered the hall. Pale light filled the long, narrow room with its rose-patterned wallpaper. Grandma Ranunkel's winter coat still hung on the coat stand. Should he wait for Annette and Nickel here? Between these desolate walls, without electricity or running water and with no Clash in the evenings.

He slammed the door. He had no time to lose, and certainly not in Dieburg. He would get hold of their addresses, travel to Berlin and fetch the two of them. And if they thought that after four years a day or two wouldn't matter to him, then they thought wrong.

 

In the supermarket on his way to the Schöllers Fred bought a bottle of French red wine for Annette's mother.

He had known her since he was a kid, and had he been able to choose a mother, she would have been first choice: big and strong with huge breasts, lively green eyes and a fine narrow face. At home she went around mostly barefoot, dressed only in a bathrobe. She didn't always do up the belt, and it was a small miracle that Fred hadn't emerged from childhood with a permanent squint. When she went out she put on make-up and perfume and wore flimsy outfits that the neighbours always thought were too short. She liked to have people around her, was always throwing garden parties and dinner parties, and even the fustiest of her husbands civil servant friends was captivated by her charm and her love of life. As far as Fred was concerned, the fact that she had never visited him in prison was only a way of ensuring no further suspicion fell upon Annette.

It was shortly after nine, the sun was behind the house, and the Schöllers front garden lay calmly in shadow. Nothing had changed. The garden was still a sort of Mediterranean oasis in comparison to its meticulously laid-out neighbours with their beds of pansies and little fir trees. At the Schöllers the grass hadn't been mown, shrubs and flowers mingled in wild confusion, and sage and rosemary grew in brown earthenware pots.

The original Happy Family. Fred could picture them, how they cooked together cheerfully, then sat down at the dinner table, how they laughed about the same things, were interested in the same subjects and even held more or less the same opinions about what was in the newspapers. Fred's father had once said, either the parents had a screw loose or the children had no guts - but he never had a good word to say about the Schöllers anyway.

Fred pushed open the garden gate, went to the front door and rang the bell. Nothing happened. He rang again, till the curtain in the first floor window moved and somebody coughed. Then Fred could hear steps on the stairs and he took the bottle out of the bag. When the footsteps stopped, a voice croaked from behind the door, asking who was there. Fred shoved the bottle back.

‘Fred Hoffmann . I wanted to speak to Mrs Schöller.'

‘Fred?'

The door opened, and Fred's heart stood still. It was Mrs Schöller - or what was left of her: shrunk down to a small, pointed, tumorous beer gut, her face a battlefield of festering pustules, rutted lips and glassy bloodshot eyes. Like a cave animal avoiding the light, she remained in the dimness of the hall. Fred could detect a putrid stench of sweat.

He tried not to make his shock apparent. Just like in the old days when he had been up to some mischief, he gave a cheeky grin and called out: ‘Well then, Mrs Schöller,' as if he were hoping to give her back her former appearance by adopting the old manner.

‘Fred. So you're out at last.'

‘Since yesterday.'

‘Come in.' But at the same moment she looked to one side, as if something had occurred to her. She gathered up her bathrobe and ran a hand through her clotted hair. When she looked up her gaze was full of fear. ‘I mean, if you would like to. You can see…things have changed somewhat.'