by Timur Vermes
“No,” I said assertively. “I do not work at the petrol station.”
I then turned my head upwards and to the side, offering the more photogenic angle to give the half-breed a clearer view of just who this was standing before him. The cleaner looked at me, more out of politeness than any apparent interest, but I received the impression that I was not entirely unknown to him. He leaned over the counter and studied my trousers, tucked impeccably into my high boots.
“I dunno … You famous fishing man?”
“Just try a bit harder, man,” I said forcefully, though feeling slightly deflated. Even with the newspaper seller, no genius himself, I was able to build on some prior knowledge. Now this! How on earth would I make it back to the Reich Chancellery if nobody had a clue who I was?
“A moment, please,” the non-native fool said. “I get son. Always watch T.V., always look at Intanet, know everything. Mehmet! Mehmet!”
The Mehmet in question soon appeared. A tall, moderately neat-looking youth shuffled to the front of the shop together with a friend or brother. The seed of this family was not to be underestimated; both boys wore clothes that must have once belonged to brothers who were even taller – they must be truly gigantic. Shirts like bed sheets, unfathomably large trousers.
“Mehmet,” his progenitor said, pointing at me. “You know this man?”
I could detect a spark in the eyes of this boy whom one could hardly call a boy any longer.
“Hey, man, yeah, of course! That’s the bloke who always does the Nazi stuff …”
Something, at least! There was no denying that his manner of expression was rather sloppy, but what he said was not altogether incorrect. “It is called National Socialism,” I corrected him sympathetically. “Or National Socialist policy, you could also say.” My identity validated, I cast “Cleaner Yilmaz” a look of satisfaction.
“It’s that Stromberg,” Mehmet said confidently.
“Epic,” his friend said. “Stromberg in your laundry!”
“No,” Mehmet corrected himself. “It’s the other Stromberg. The one from the send-up.”
“No way!” the friend said “The other Stromberg! In your laundry.”
I was keen to come back with a response, but was simply too exhausted. Who was I again? Petrol-pump man? Fishing man? Strom-man?”
“Can I have an autograph?” a delighted Mehmet asked.
“Yeh, me too, Herr Stromberg,” the friend said. “And a photo!” He waved a tiny instrument at me as if I were a dachshund and it a canine treat.
It was infuriating.
I took the receipt for my uniform, consented to have a souvenir photograph taken with these strange companions and left the cleaner’s, but not before I had signed two sheets of tissue paper with the colour pen I was handed. A brief crisis followed the autographing, when complaints were aired that I had not signed “Stromberg”.
“Look, it’s obvious,” the friend said reassuringly, although it was unclear whether he was trying to placate Mehmet or me. “That’s not Stromberg!”
“You’re right,” Mehmet agreed. “He’s not Stromberg. He’s the other one.”
I must concede that I had underestimated the enormity of the task facing me. Back then, after the Great War, at least I was the anonymous man from the heart of the Volk. Now I was Herr Stromberg – not the first Stromberg, but the other one. The man who always did the Nazi stuff. The man who did not care which name he put on a sheet of tissue paper.
Something had to happen.
Fast.
vi
Fortunately something had happened in the meantime. When, lost in thought, I returned to the kiosk I noticed two men in sunglasses talking to the newspaper vendor. They were wearing suits, but not ties; they were youngish, around thirty perhaps. The shorter of the two may even have been younger, but because of the distance between us I could not quite tell. I was surprised that, despite his manifestly good-quality suit, the older man was unshaven. As I neared them, the newspaper seller beckoned me over excitedly.
“Come here, come here!”
Turning to the men he said, “That’s him! He’s brilliant. He’s mad! Puts all the others in the shade.”
I refused to allow myself to be rushed. The true Führer senses at once when others attempt to seize control of a situation. When others say, “Quick, quick,” the true Führer always endeavours to forestall an acceleration of proceedings and avoids being hurried into an error. How does he achieve this? By displaying prudence while others scuttle around like headless chickens. Of course, there are moments in which speed is necessary, for example when caught inside a blazing house, or when essaying a pincer movement to encircle a large number of English and French divisions and grind them down to the last man. But these situations are rarer than one might imagine, and in everyday life prudence – always closely allied with keen resolve – holds the upper hand in the overwhelming majority of cases, just as in the horror of the trenches the survivor is often the man who strolls along the line with a cool head, puffing away on a pipe, rather than bustling back and forth like a washerwoman, snivelling all the while. Pipe-smoking is naturally no guarantee of survival in a crisis; pipe-smokers have been killed in world wars, too. Only a simpleton might assume that smoking a pipe would offer some sort of protection. On the contrary, survival is perfectly possible without a pipe, even without any tobacco at all. I, who have never smoked, am testament to that.
Such were my thoughts as the newspaper vendor approached me impatiently. He practically shunted me like a mule over to the small “conference”. I may have appeared somewhat hesitant; although not insecure, I would have felt more confident in my uniform. But nothing could be done about that now.
“Here he is,” the newspaper seller repeated with uncustomary excitement. “And these,” he said, indicating the two men, “are the people I told you about.”
The older man was standing at one of the high tables. With one hand in his pocket, he was drinking coffee from a paper cup, a receptacle I had frequently seen used by workers over the past few days. The younger of the two put down his cup, pushed his sunglasses up to just below his short hair, which was styled with an excessive volume of cream, and said, “So you’re the boy wonder. Well, you need to work a bit at the uniform.”
I gave him a brief, superficial glance and turned to the newspaper seller. “Who is this?”
The vendor went red in the face. “These gentlemen are from a production company. They make programmes for all the major channels. MyTV! R.T.L.! Sat 1! Pro Sieben! All the private ones! That’s about right, isn’t it?” This last question was aimed at the two gentlemen.
“That is about right,” the elder man said patronisingly. Then he took his hand from his trouser pocket and offered it to me. “Sensenbrink, Joachim. And that’s Frank Sawatzki, he works with me at Flashlight.”
“I see,” I said, shaking his hand. “Hitler, Adolf.”
The younger one smirked, a rather haughty smirk to my mind. “Our mutual friend has just been raving about you. Go on, say something then!” With a grin he put two fingers to his top lip and said in a strangled voice, “Ve hav been returning fire sinz qvarter to six!”
I turned to the man and scrutinised him closely. Then I permitted a short period of silence to descend on proceedings. Silence is often underestimated.
“So,” I said. “You wish to talk about Poland. Poland. Fine. What exactly do you know about the history of Poland?”
“Capital: Warsaw. Invaded 1939, divided with the Russians …”
“That,” I interrupted him “is merely what the books say. Any old halfwit could root that out. Answer the question!”
“But I …”
“The question! Do you not understand German, man? What! Do you! Know! About! The history! Of Poland!”
“I …”
“What do you know about Polish history? Do you know the contexts? And what do you know about the Polish racial mix? What do you know about Germany’s so-called Po
land policy after 1919? And seeing as you mention returning fire, do you have any idea where?”
I paused briefly to allow him to regain his breath. One must choose the apposite moment to crush one’s political opponent. Not when he has nothing to say. But when he is attempting to say something,
“I …”
“If you heard my speech, then surely you must know how it continues.”
“The …”
“I’m sorry?”
“But, I mean we’re not …”
“Let me help you: ‘Henceforth …’ – now do you know how it goes?”
“…”
“‘Henceforth bomb will be met with bomb.’ Write it down, maybe someday you will be interrogated again about great quotations in history. But perhaps you are better in the field. You have 1.4 million men at your disposal and thirty days in which to conquer an entire country. Thirty days and no more, for in the West the English and French are feverishly preparing for war. Where do you begin? How many army groups do you create? How many divisions does the enemy have? Where do you expect to meet the greatest resistance? And what do you do to prevent the Roumanians becoming involved?”
“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.
vii
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.
