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by Wolfgang Herrndorf


  She looked at the Sun with its eight flickering yellow and red arms, and later she offered to read the cards for the fat man for free. At that stage he’d already been awake for a while, and without ever changing from his sleeping posture in the slightest had been following the activity on the two tray-tables through squinted eyes.

  “What is it?” he grumbled, and Michelle explained it to him with the serenity of someone who had five of her favorite cards in her future. He immediately lifted his hands up defensively.

  “I can understand,” said Michelle. “It scares most people to learn something about themselves. Because they are afraid they’re not up for that kind of insight. That it’s too deep for them.”

  “What?”

  “Life,” said Michelle. “The past. The future. The connectivity.”

  “You’re interested in my future? In that case you’re interested in more things than I am.”

  This last sentence struck Michelle as dark and inscrutable, she didn’t immediately understand him, and the man continued: “I already know my future. You don’t have to tell me. My future is like my past, and my past is a pile of shit. You see this?” He pulled down the collar of his shirt to reveal a few thin scratches on his neck and below.

  “Were you on vacation?” asked Michelle cautiously.

  “Vacation! Shall I tell you what happened to me among those kaffirs?” Ignoring the fact that Michelle was shaking her head, he began to tell the story of his stay in Africa. Michelle tried to keep her facial expression under control. If at first his narration was reasonably consistent and even mildly amusing, it quickly became abhorrent and downright criminal. Only because of her good upbringing did she not dare to constantly interrupt his flood of words.

  “So, the cheapest room,” he said, and described in great detail his room and hotel, the clogged toilet, the bad food, the beach, the climate and the nights in the bars, many nights and many bars, and for some reason that Michelle could not figure out, always women in the bars. But none of it mattered, he said so himself, as he was nothing but an auto mechanic from Iowa and his ancestors had emigrated from Poland, that’s right, Poland, and he was a decent man—cross his heart—decent was his middle name. He didn’t make a lot of money, and this was his first ever vacation, but definitely his last one in horrid Europe.

  “Africa,” Michelle corrected.

  “Africa,” said the fat man. “It’s all the same.” A misunderstanding. Why else would a man come here? Because he’d been told that here—he pointed at the floor of the plane—the old and new worlds met. The women pretty, the morals loose, the parties bizarre. And the most important thing, as that Austrian neurologist correctly figured out, was that—and here he used a word ending in “ism” that Michelle had never heard. She wanted to ask about it but hesitated, and then by the next sentence came to think she must have misheard it, because the fat man went directly from “ism” to the declaration that you could hardly write home about the banging out here. There had only been one single fuckie fuckie and—bam!

  Thirteen cards flew simultaneously up into the air like a scared flock of birds. For a second Michelle grasped at the cards before her hands sought out something solid to grab hold of, and even as her body was still being flung around in her seat, she was less surprised by the jerking of the plane, of whose sound condition she had already convinced herself, than by the fact that she had suddenly thrown her arms around the fat, sweating man and was screaming for dear life.

  “A pothole,” said the drunk-sounding pilot over the loudspeaker. “We are flying through an area with turbulence.”

  “Turbulence,” said the fat man as if he hadn’t even noticed that a young, extremely attractive woman was hanging from his neck like he was her last hope. He helped her gather up the cards, she apologized, and he continued with his story without any discernible change in tone. A fortune, he said, it had all cost a fortune, and even the African women in the bars, even the smallest, even the blackest… they knew what he was after. And instead, nothing but foul smells, bugs, heat. Because what was more expensive than a woman? Michelle didn’t know. Two women, that’s what. And that’s when it happened all of a sudden.

  He coughed gruffly, covering his mouth with a napkin, and then stared at the dark-yellow discharge the way a child might look at a toy.

  “I’m enjoying your story,” said Michelle, still unsure what it was about, though she found having to watch him scrutinize his phlegm more unappetizing than anything he could possibly say.

  He gathered himself noisily, stuck the napkin in the crack between the two seats and stuffed it down with the palm of his hand.

  Anyway, he said, that’s when the man came up to him. Who seemed like a local. Or kind of in between. Dressed oddly, almost like a clown. And asked him to accompany him to his place.

  “Not what you think!” he bellowed, shoving his face very close to Michelle’s confused-looking face.

  Actually the man was only looking for an interpreter. And toward that end he had gone around to the people lying on the beach and asked if any of them knew Polish. And even though he himself didn’t really understand Polish, he’d spoken up. After all, his grandparents. And your, you know. And he had as a child. There were certainly things you could say here about languages and the ability to learn them. But anyway, he, like his entire family, was practical—and now he had lost his train of thought.

  “The man,” said Michelle, “the man whose place you went to.”

  “Right, the man with the place. And the pink Bermuda shorts. They had gone into the place and there in the middle of the room stood a machine. A gleaming chrome machine that he, even without any knowledge of Polish, immediately recognized as an espresso machine. Gigantic, the kind used in a cafeteria. Or a bar. Polish letters. Nothing particularly unique. But expensive. And now things got mysterious.”

  The word mysterious had its dependable effect on Michelle, and she tried to sit leaning in, crossing her legs, which was barely possible even with the tray-table closed. The fat man stood up because he thought she wanted to go to the bathroom, and it took a moment to clear up the misunderstanding.

  “And then,” said the fat man, “he just vanished.” The man, that is. He just wanted to know what type of machine he had there in his own place. Then he rushed out of the bungalow without any explanation or words—and that was it.

  “That’s crazy!” said Michelle, disappointed. She had no idea why the man was telling her all this.

  He was silent for a while. Then he smiled.

  “Now, of course, you want to know what I did,” he said. Michelle would like to have had longer to consider whether she really wanted to know or not, but she found herself suffering from some sort of mental hiccup and nodded with wide eyes.

  “I’ll always be my mother’s son,” said the fat man. And wasn’t the whole thing a sign. He went back down to the beach, where he was able to watch the bungalow. The door of which was still open. Until evening. And when the man never reappeared, he rented a handcart and hauled the machine off and exchanged it for money, whether that was right or wrong. It brought in eighty dollars, a tenth of its value at most, but since it had been his last day and all. Then off to the port for a full house. Two blacks and a white.

  Beg your pardon, she said, and he repeated: two super blacks and a white. The white one only as an alibi. She’d have to excuse him, but a man was a man and he couldn’t do anything about his preferences. In his case as black as coal. As black as hell. Or nothing at all. And, to cut to the chase, the end of the story was, they tried to kill him. He pulled down his collar again and drew his thumb across his neck.

  He came to in a gutter with no luggage, no money, no clothes, passport or airline ticket. Half a day at the American embassy. That was his past. And the future looked exactly the same, because that’s the way they were. Women. Always. His misfortune. For his entire life. He could be just as unfortunate without any cards being dealt.

  He snuffled, coughed heavi
ly again, looked searchingly at Michelle, dark brown from the desert sun, yes, her skin nearly black, and he suddenly smiled at her in such an awkward, solicitous way—a way that seemed to her rather common in men of his age, the result of a natural process, especially in combination with excess weight and thinning hair, in a way that also had an oddly childlike and innocent effect—that Michelle assumed he must hardly have been aware of the look on his face, or at least of the incongruity between his bloated, aged face and his youthful intentions.

  But she didn’t avoid his look either. On the contrary, she held his gaze. Like a highly sensitive instrument, she watched the smile spread across his face, watched as it froze, watched as it ebbed, insecure and twitchy, from his face again and disappeared. She watched as the big, strong man turned away from her, unsettled by her confidence, then turned back to her and tried once again to muster his leering smile, and the entire sequence, the inscrutable man in his animal awkwardness, reminded her so much of the lovable bull terrier she’d had as a child, found beneath the Christmas tree (covered in drool, a blue bow tied around its belly, with a light-brown leather leash) as a replacement for a canary that had died, that she felt an affinity germinating inside her which, surprisingly, she found herself embracing rather than opposing as her familiarity with the fat man increased, as it was as sure to do during the rest of the flight as the sun was to set each day. His wedding gift to her was a solarium. The marriage was long and happy.

  59

  Operation Artichoke

  And in such a war, it is a Christian act, and an act of love, to kill enemies without scruple, to rob and to burn, and to do whatever damages the enemy, according to the usages of war, until he is defeated.

  LUTHER

  “JUST A JOKE,” said Helen. She entered the room in white shorts, a white blouse, a white sunhat, white canvas shoes and with a large jute shoulder bag. She glanced at Carl over Cockcroft’s shoulder and then pulled from her bag a pair of green rubber gloves, a thick Arabic newspaper and a pair of pliers, all of which she handed to the Syrian.

  The Syrian opened the paper, took out the sports section and spread the rest carefully out on the floor.

  “How are you?” Helen asked, then pulled out a black plastic bottle. “You thirsty?”

  She unscrewed the bottle top, sniffed the opening and handed it to Cockcroft, who also sniffed it. Then the three of them—Helen, Cockcroft and the bassist—stepped out of the room. Even though the door wasn’t closed all the way, Carl couldn’t make out even a word of their conversation. When they returned, Cockcroft gave the Syrian a signal. He pulled himself away from the unpleasant match results of the Primera Division, stuffed the sports section into his waistband and stationed himself behind the rattan chair. He wrapped his vice-like hands around Carl’s head. From the front, the bassist grabbed Carl beneath his chin, and Helen put the black bottle to his lips while holding his nose at the same time.

  “Open your mouth. Open up. Open up. It doesn’t taste good but it’s not poisonous.”

  It really did taste bad. And it really wasn’t poisonous. Something very medicinal. Bitter. Soapy.

  Once she had poured most of the contents of the bottle down his throat they let him go and stepped back quickly. Yellow fluid surged out of Carl, and as he was still gulping and coughing they undid his restraints. He flopped weakly to the ground. They ordered him to undress, but his red and blue arms no longer responded to him. They kneeled over him and took off his clothes. Then they dragged him over to the spread-out newspaper and tried to get him to crouch down above it. But he kept falling over. Finally the Syrian held him upright by his hair. The two of them reeled back and forth.

  Helen wiped a few splotches from her blouse. Cockcroft balled up an empty cigarette pack. The bassist rolled up his sleeves.

  “Want me to take over?”

  “How long does it take?”

  “What does it say on the bottle?”

  “Do you feel anything yet?”

  “No.”

  “Give me the bottle.”

  “Do you feel anything yet?”

  “When did he last go?”

  “He hasn’t.”

  “What about before?”

  “The day before. And then not again. If you paid attention.”

  “Now watch. Watch. Whoa.”

  While Carl emptied the contents of his gut onto his heels and the newspapers, the Syrian shook him by the hair as if emptying a bag.

  His grip loosened a little while later, and Carl fell limply to the side. His head thudded to the ground. He stopped moving. Little black dots moved directly in front of his eyes. Ants. He heard a clicking noise and looked over the stream of feelers at the bassist, who was putting on the green rubber gloves. Carl had kept himself together for a long time but now he started to cry.

  Using a pocket knife, the bassist poked around in the excrement. Squatting in front of the newspaper with his hands hanging between his knees, he used the blade to cut up little chunks of dung and smear them on the paper as if he were spreading butter on bread.

  Cockcroft, Helen and the Syrian stood behind him with their arms crossed. That they were engrossed in something warm and foul that had just left his body filled him with great melancholy. There was something symbolic about this act, something horrid, a dark inkling that they might also separate him from other parts and products of his body and seize them. Carl’s gaze returned to the ants.

  After the bassist had spread the excrement across the entire newspaper like Nutella across a giant piece of bread, he proclaimed with the facial expression and inflection of an eight-year-old: “Nothing here,” and three sets of blue eyes and one set of black eyes turned to the man lying naked on the floor, sniffling.

  With her foot Helen shoved Carl’s clothes over to him, and after he had more or less dressed himself they tied him up in the chair again.

  “So, on to the second option,” said Cockcroft. And then to Helen: “He’s yours.”

  60

  Legends of Perseverance

  There has been a good deal of discussion of interrogation experts vs. subject-matter experts. Such facts as are available suggest that the latter have a slight advantage. But for counterintelligence purposes the debate is academic.

  KUBARK MANUAL

  THE NARROW BUT VERY STRAIGHT line of black dots swarmed past the right side of Carl’s chair toward the back of the cave, where he could no longer follow them with his eyes. On the other side they headed off under the metal door to freedom carrying orange-colored granules.

  While Carl was still thinking about the fate of the ants, Helen sat down facing him. The rest had left the room. She pulled a cigarette out of a pack but did not light it, instead she began to talk in her strangely lifeless, half-comatose way while gesticulating with the cigarette in one hand and the lighter in the other. She crossed her legs, and Carl yanked at his restraints as if he were in pain. In fact they had not tied them as tightly as they had the first time, and his right hand, which he could barely still feel (he didn’t dare look at it), was working its way out of the cords one millimeter after another. He said: “You know that I don’t know anything,” and Helen said: “I don’t know anything.” As if to show him that she did not wish to be interrupted, she pulled the black case over with her foot and then lifted it into her lap, where it rocked back and forth on her white shorts and bare thighs.

  “Where do we start now? You might be asking yourself why such an uproar is being made over such a trifle. Because whether you realize it or not, it is a trifle. To us, anyway. Any student knows the system, and the whole thing isn’t so sophisticated that a few smart people couldn’t put their heads together and assemble it. But it’s sophisticated enough that we can’t set up a raging export business with it. Nor do we want to. Not to mention that other crap would be transported via the same route.” Helen held up the cigarette and lighter then let both arms fall again. “You’re not the first who has tried. You’re just the first that we caught. Or the
second. But the first living one, so you will be the first to share his knowledge with us. Because, as you probably understand, this little game isn’t about whether you tell us the truth. That’s not up to you. What is up to you is only the point at which you decide to tell us the truth. You can keep tormenting yourself, you can drag things out, but you can’t avoid the inevitable. If you have been well trained in how to act in the case of interrogation scenarios—which we have to assume is the case—you know this as well. You know that you can hold out for a while against blunt force with willpower, autosuggestion and similar tricks. Assuming you are good at it. Maybe a day or two. Maybe even three; stranger things have happened. Carthage,” she motioned behind her with her thumb, “claims to know somebody who held out for five days. But I don’t believe it. It’s just one of those legends about the brave soldier who despite being burned with glowing coals doesn’t betray his brigade, his homeland, his family, and who is subsequently immortalized in monuments, where he’s depicted with two intact marble eyes staring off onto the horizon, happy still to have all four limbs. But those are either legends. Or the interrogators were inept. In most cases they were inept. And at least in this area I can put your mind at ease.” Helen put the cigarette between her lips, lit it and blew the smoke up at the ceiling, gouged with chisel marks.

  “And I can make your decision somewhat easier for you, too. By telling you what we know. So you don’t think there’s anyone or anything you need to conceal. Or could conceal. Because, what do we know? We knew the handover was to take place in Tindirma. And approximately when. We knew who was handing it over, but not to whom. There was a reservation at the hotel for a man named Herrlichkoffer. Herrlichkoffer is German and it means something like splendid suitcase. You know the name? No? I actually believe you. We located this splendid suitcase at the airport in Targat and followed him to Tindirma, and we lost him there. He didn’t turn up at the hotel. Obviously we could have picked him up before that, but we didn’t know whether he had the thing with him. Or where it is. We didn’t even know exactly what it was or in what form it would be transported. We knew only where it came from, which research facility it came from. Then it took us nearly twenty-four hours to find the man again. But apparently nothing had happened in the meantime. He sat day after day in a café as if he had an appointment that someone failed to show up for. We put a guy in front of the café with a radio link in his ear and he reported: nothing. Either he was blind, or our man had got suspicious. But perhaps he also wasn’t our man at all. And then came the massacre. In the commune. And that’s where we made a teeny weeny mistake. Though anyone else would have made the same mistake. Because, what was it, after all? A group of communists and hippies and longhairs, politically confused, four dead, a bunch of money missing… of course, we thought, we’re after the wrong guy. We needed to get into the commune. But our people didn’t manage to get inside. They had cut themselves off from the outside world, what with all the press and everything. And mourning. And when it emerged that an old college friend of mine was inside, they had me brought in. I was in Spain at the time. But after I’d paid a visit to the commune and Michelle explained to me that money hadn’t actually been involved, that it had just been a crazy, sex-crazed Arab, this Amadou squared, at that point we’d completely lost the trail. Herrlichkoffer had disappeared into thin air, and the criminal potential of those hippies wouldn’t have been sufficient to smuggle a chocolate bar through Swiss customs. So, the case was blown. My thoughts had already wandered toward home when this Arab crossed my path. At the gas station in the middle of the desert. Bleeding, disoriented, seeking help and apparently on the run. I only picked you up because I had an inkling. I thought, who knows. All your talk of memory loss, I knew that was bullshit. My first thought was: just a sob story to elicit sympathy. An Arab looking for a white woman. I was ninety percent sure. At least that’s what I reported the first night. But I wasn’t entirely sure. We weren’t entirely sure for a long time. It wasn’t until Bassir grabbed you… what a catastrophe. A few people here nearly lost their jobs over that. A hundred men following you, and they just stuffed you into the trunk of a car. I’ve never seen such a collection of idiots. A bunch of amateurs. The whole team. We didn’t even have twenty-four hours to put it together and get to the desert. I couldn’t even get a flight, I had to come by ship from Spain. Two others got delayed in New York. All the things that our little Torah pupil had to do all alone! The flyer for the psychologist’s office. I nearly keeled over when I took it out of the mailbox. Introductory rates! That’s how it went the entire way. You really have no idea what it is like to try to put together a team in August. Two of us couldn’t even speak French. We didn’t have an Arabic translator at first, we had to fly one in from Belgium, and he’s lying in the hotel with a stomach bug. Our radio man is hard of hearing, comes from Iowa, and thought he was in Libya for the first forty-eight hours. Two nearly died of thirst while searching for the mine. And Herrlichkoffer was already dead before we were able to connect with him. A minor mishap. On and on. And the fact that Bassir could just pluck you away—like I said. An unbelievable foul-up. But the fact that you kept throwing yourself into the arms of this collection of idiots should make it clear to you that you’re not the brightest bulb, either.”

 

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