“Do you know whether there was an ancient Greek coin called a mine in French?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. What do you find interesting about mines?”
“Nothing… I’m just wondering if the name is the same in French.”
“You ask strange things.”
“And do you have O? The letter O? The other volume?”
“Astonishing, this curiosity. No, sorry. As I mentioned, this is all I received from my predecessor.”
A razor-thin sliver of moon hung between rocket-shaped minarets when the two men stepped out of the building around midnight. The air was warm and dry. Dr Cockcroft had given up on the sleeves and thrown the lab coat carelessly over his shoulder. He didn’t look like either a doctor or a painter, more like a mad scientist in a movie; he slapped his patient on the shoulder jovially, told him to come back anytime and mumbled something about a secret desert disease that would probably soon be known as Cockcroft Syndrome.
“What was the name of your predecessor?” asked Carl.
“Sorry?”
“What was his name?”
“No, no. Believe me… you’re no Austrian. And besides, he was supposed to have been short and wiry. You’re more average height and wiry. Geiser. Or Geisel. Ortwin Geisel.”
He waved goodbye with stiff cordiality as Carl crossed the street with his head down. On the other side, Carl stepped into the shadow of an entryway and turned around. He saw Cockcroft disappear unsteadily into the building. After a few minutes the light in the practice went out. A few moments later Carl could make out a bearded silhouette through one of the blinds on the second floor. He waited a while longer, hurried across the street and pulled a ring of keys from his pocket. Carl had four safety keys. He quietly tried one after the other. None fitted.
It was more of a relief than a disappointment.
Helen, who was waiting in the bungalow, put an arm around his shoulder. Carl took it for a gesture of tenderness initially, then he noticed that there was no tenderness in her facial expression. She was supporting him. He was unsteady on his feet.
“So?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” he said.
“Did you have trouble trusting him?”
“That’s the same thing he asked.”
“Whether you found it difficult to trust him?”
“Whether I found it difficult to trust you.”
“So? Do you?”
Carl didn’t answer.
“Did he at least seem halfway competent?” asked Helen as they lay next to each other in darkness on the bed. “Or more like his flyer?”
Once again he didn’t answer for a long time. “He’s definitely not a charlatan,” he said after Helen’s breathing had already become smooth. “A charlatan would have put more effort into seeming like a real doctor.”
34
The Banana
God made some men small, and some men large; but Colt made them all equal.
AMERICAN SAYING
THE WOMAN, the trusted woman, trying to put one over on you… your longtime wife who is using the situation to play out an exquisite joke… How had Dr Cockcroft formulated it exactly? Of course it was nonsense. Carl knew that it was nonsense. But the words kept welling up in the boundless vacuum of his mind and floating around like iridescent bubbles in the dulled spheres of his consciousness.
Their first chance encounter, a gas station in the desert. An American tourist in shorts, a friendly bungalow. His not-wife, his longtime not-wife, Helen, whom he had no reason to mistrust, who had taken such tender care of him. She had looked through his things. So he didn’t feel bad going through hers.
First he went through her suitcase, then he rummaged through the entire bungalow. She had carelessly thrown her underwear and a couple of sweaters in the armoire, the rest was still in the suitcase or within a meter of it. Two blazers, socks, a silk evening gown. A yellow outfit, a white outfit, an empty notebook. A tiny dressing case, needle and thread. No make-up, no body-care products. An American newspaper, apparently unread. A clipping from a local paper denying French atomic espionage without mentioning who had made the claim and why. A clipping from an English-language paper with the results of the American baseball league. On the back of it an article on Harold Pinter. A pair of reading glasses with one of the arms held to the frame by adhesive tape, a pair of handcuffs and another larger pair of handcuffs, maybe ankle cuffs if that was the right word, a baton, a robe and two pairs of jeans. A beach-ball racquet and a hard rubber ball. And at the very bottom of the suitcase a solid wood case about the size of a large cigar box, that could not be opened with his sturdy fingernails. Inside was apparently a heavy, asymmetrical object. Carl had just tossed a stray bright-green bikini that had been wrapped around the box back into the suitcase when he heard a noise behind him.
“Is this payback?” The owner of the bikini was leaning against the doorway with her arms crossed, smiling. Next to her was a bag of groceries.
Carl didn’t have time to replace the look of disgust on his face with a mien of surprised innocence.
“What are you, a cop?” he yelled. He held up a pair of handcuffs and the baton and glared angrily at his definitely-not-wife. He looked like a little boy who wanted to know the truth about all sorts of secrets. Carl couldn’t read her face, couldn’t read her gestures either, and then Helen got explicit and explained that some bees liked to pollinate their flowers with handcuffs, and that the long rubber device that he had in his hand wasn’t a “baton”. She spoke of freedom in America and used the word modern.
At first Carl was silent. Then he saw himself with the dubious objects in each hand and carefully laid them back in the suitcase. With an unsteady look, he said: “And I can’t get that wooden case open.”
“A .357.”
“What?”
“A .357 Magnum,” said Helen, smiling in her eccentric way.
“I don’t believe it.”
Helen shrugged as she tossed the box into the suitcase, slammed it closed, pushed Carl out of the bedroom and sat down at the breakfast table.
“I don’t believe it,” Carl repeated. He turned his chair around. Helen poured herself a cup of coffee, grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl, pointed it at him and said: “I wouldn’t go unarmed among you lot.”
35
Risa, Known as Khach-Khach
These bullets are not meant to kill. They are mainly used to create serious wounds, and to incapacitate the enemy. After all, seriously wounded soldiers take the enemy more time and money to treat than dead soldiers.
DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE BELGIAN
ARMS MANUFACTURER F. N. HERSTAL
THE MAN WHO WAS SITTING alone all the way at the back of the dark bar was named Risa, but he was known as Khach-Khach. He had a nervous, observant face with three vertical scars running from his forehead to his chin. He was about twenty. He was left-handed.
At the age of six he had watched as his parents, grandparents, four sisters, a brother-in-law and all of his relatives, as well as two other Tuareg families, a handful of rebels and several bystanders had been laid down in a row in the desert sand and staked. Then a tank rolled over their bodies so they exploded like tubes of toothpaste. Until he was ten he lived in a prison camp north-east of the Empty Quarter. He spent two summers at an army school where a fat Spaniard offered free classes. Risa was the most intelligent student the school had ever seen. He learned to read and do math and landed an apprenticeship with a tanner. The tanner’s workshop sat in the shadow of the mountains of garbage, and one day a giant black man in colorful clothes and lots of gold jewelry on his fingers came to the door. The tanner kneeled on the dirt floor in front of him, then gathered up all the money he had and placed it at his feet. The black man took the money and he also took Risa. He housed Risa in the basement of his magnificent villa. He bought him clothes and gave him food. For a year Risa learned how to deal with businessmen and weapons. He served as a courier and took care of the accounting. He killed a man for the first
time at age thirteen.
These days he lived on a small island off the coast. Twice a week he came to the mainland to do business. A fat gold ring, inherited from his mentor, glittered on his right hand. Risa was flipping through a feature on underwear in the American edition of Vogue magazine and didn’t look up when a somewhat insecure-seeming man addressed him.
“I heard you were selling something?” asked the man.
“N-n.”
“You’re not selling anything?”
“Fuck off.”
Carl looked undecidedly at an empty chair at the table. He didn’t dare sit down.
“Someone told me you were selling something.”
“Drugs are back there.”
“Not drugs.”
Risa lifted his scarred face, gave Carl a quick once-over and looked toward the exit just as a boy disappeared out of it. He looked at the bartender. The bartender shrugged his shoulders.
“Just some information,” said Carl awkwardly.
“What do I have to do with it?”
“Someone said you were the right person.”
“I’m not the right person.”
“I thought—”
“You thought what?”
“Or perhaps you know someone who knows.”
“Who knows what?”
“Someone who can give me some information.”
Risa waited a moment to see whether the strange apparition in a yellow blazer and salmon-colored Bermuda shorts would dissipate into thin air on its own, then he said: “I can give you information on how you can get out of here alive in the next ten seconds.”
“Please.” Carl reached for the back of the empty chair and pulled it a few centimeters in his direction. “I’ve been out all day. Somebody told me that you—”
“Who?”
“A boy.”
“What boy?”
“I don’t know… a boy. He brought me here.”
“How did you know him?”
“I didn’t know him. Somebody referred me to him.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t know him either.”
“Are you from Westinghouse?”
“No.”
“From El-Fellah?”
“No.”
“You come in here alone, nobody sent you, and all you want is some ‘information’?”
“Research.”
“Then fuck off.”
Risa turned back to the colorful photos. Underwear, underwear, lipstick. Five women on a platform. Two women on a sofa. Cigarettes. When he looked up again and saw the man still standing there, he suddenly swung his fist up and stopped it just below Carl’s chin. Carl didn’t flinch. It was impossible to read Risa, whether he was boiling with anger or just amusing himself, and the lack of transparency in his facial expression convinced Carl that this was the man he was looking for.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
Evening wear and coats, underwear, a woman with two Great Danes. A woman in black boots. A woman in white boots. Risa didn’t answer.
“I really don’t want to buy anything,” said Carl.
“Where do see anything to buy?”
“I know. I just wanted—”
“You wanted to get me something to drink?”
“Love to,” said Carl, ignoring the sarcastic look of his counterpart. He called out something to the bartender. The bartender stood with his arms crossed and didn’t move.
Beach fashions, beach fashions, bathing suits. A woman crouched down naked, wearing only a pair of sunglasses. Risa looked up quickly and casually, flipped through a few more pages and held two fingers in the air. The bartender filled two marmalade jars with a clear fluid and brought them to the table. Carl waited a few seconds, pulled the chair out and sat down. A ten-watt bulb over the table diffused the darkness.
It had taken him almost the entire morning to find his way here. First he had asked on the street what part of town he should go to in order to have some fun. People sent him to the harbor. There he cautiously asked about weapons. One person had sent him to the next. The more concrete his questions became, the more vague the answers became. Finally Carl had let a boy lead him five or six blocks into a shanty town and he’d landed in this hole. The boy demanded a dollar for his services, three times as much as all the rest, which is why Carl chose him.
Risa moved the jar to his lips, closed his eyes and smelled the woody aroma of the home-made liquor. “If you don’t want to buy anything, why all the commotion?”
“Like I said—”
“You think you can fool me,” said Risa. “But you can’t fool me.”
Carl was silent.
“You want to buy something.”
“No, I—”
“Then sell something.”
“No.”
“Buy or sell.” Risa’s voice had taken on a threatening overtone.
“So you are selling something?”
“No.”
“Okay, fine,” said Carl, thinking for a moment. “Let’s suppose I wanted to buy something. Or let’s suppose I wanted to buy something and was to ask someone who wasn’t selling anything and had nothing to do with that sort of thing where one might get hold of something.”
“Let’s suppose you’re a poof.” Risa leaned over the table and moved Carl’s chin from side to side with two fingers.
“Good,” said Carl, ready to compromise. “Let’s suppose I’m a poof. And as a poof, naturally I have no clue about this particular subject area and need some information. Like how much it costs.”
“How much what costs?”
“Mines, for instance.”
“What kind of mines?”
“A mine. Any kind.”
“Any kind? You want to know how much any kind of mine costs? So you came here?”
“The most expensive kind.”
“The most expensive? One with a lot of bang, or what?”
“Yeah. But the main thing is that it’s expensive.”
“No,” said Risa. “No, no, no, no! With a lot of bang, or expensive?”
“It’s about the price.”
“You want to buy some kind of mine—and the main thing is that it’s expensive?”
“I don’t want to buy it.”
Risa tilted his chair back and forth. He tapped the flat of his hand on the bandages on Carl’s head. “What’s the story? Did you have your brain removed?”
“In a way.”
“In a… so you admit that you have some damage?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going to put one over on me.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“The last cop who tried that—”
“I’m not a cop.”
Risa drank a sip and put the jar down in front of him. He rolled up the magazine and put it in the right pocket of his jacket. Simultaneously he reached inconspicuously into the left pocket. Two guests who were sitting further back in the darkness of the bar jumped up and ran to the exit. The bartender ducked beneath the bar. A chair fell over.
“Let us suppose,” said Risa quietly, “that I really had heard something about the thing that you are talking about. Weapons.” The corners of his mouth stretched out to reveal two rows of gleaming white teeth, very slowly, just the way he’d seen Burt Lancaster do it. “And let us also suppose that you really have no interest in it. That you don’t want to sell me anything, that you don’t need any weapons, and that you’re not a cop. Let us suppose that you really are just—how did you put it—doing research.”
“Right,” said Carl fearfully.
“Journalistic research. What for? So you can publish pacifist articles crusading against landmines in the leading journals of Europe’s intelligentsia and make the world a tiny bit nicer and more morally upstanding?”
Carl tried to read the facial expression of his counterpart and decided to subtly nod.
“Let us suppose that I believed you. I don’t believe you. But let’s suppose
I did. Wouldn’t even the stupidest journalist first pose other questions?”
“What sort of questions?”
“Questions about the source, the availability, the range? And if it’s about the price, wouldn’t you have to specify the type?”
“What type?”
“What type?” Risa took both hands out of his pockets and put them on the table in front of him. “You asked about a mine! That’s like asking: How much is a fruit?”
“But I told you: the most expensive fruit.”
“And that’s it? The most expensive fruit? That’s what people in Europe are interested in?”
“I never said anything about Europe.”
“And that’s it? You want to know how much the most expensive mine is? Why are you asking me of all people? Anyone could answer that.”
“But nobody else answered.”
“Any idiot on the street can answer that.”
“The problem is that none of the idiots that I asked answered. No more than you. Because they all think that I want something. Or that I’m acting like I want something. But I don’t want anything and nobody will tell me.”
“Because everyone knows.”
“I don’t know.”
“Because you are an idiot. Look at this!” Risa grabbed the lapel of Carl’s yellow blazer. “I wouldn’t even tell you your name when you’re dressed in this clown outfit. Put on some decent clothes. It’s not good for your health to look like that. And it’s also not good for your health to be so clueless. Got it? And you’re clueless. You have absolutely no clue.”
“True. I have absolutely no clue. And you’re the expert, which is why I’m here.”
“I’m no expert.”
“No. Okay.”
“Who said I was an expert?”
“Nobody said it. Sorry. Of course you’re no expert. But unlike me, you at least know there are different types of mines that cost different amounts. Probably. And you probably also know how much they cost because everyone on the street knows. I’m not after anything more than that.”
“My glass is empty,” said Risa after a long pause. Carl pushed his own glass, which he hadn’t touched, across the table to him. Risa drank it down in one gulp and said: “It’s empty again.”
Sand Page 18
