Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys (Will Self)

by Will Self

  ‘What is the basis of assessment?’

  ‘The same as it's always been.’

  ‘Meaning . . .?’

  ‘Meaning that they did have an open order book, that they did have a capital fund – of some sort. Meaning that both have been subject to the one-on-one conversion rate, and those monies remain in escrow. Meaning that precisely, Herr Doktor.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, I know all of that. I know all of that.’

  It was late in the morning and Zweijärig was feeling no better – perhaps worse. He'd groped his way through the Unterweig file and now was attempting to discuss its contents with Hassell, his capitalisation expert. At least he'd taken the leap and got Frau Schelling to cancel the meeting with Bocklin and Schiele. ‘The unheard-of must be spoken.’

  ‘I'm sorry, Herr Doktor?’ Hassell was looking curiously at his boss. Zweijärig noted, inconsequentially, how pink Hassell's forehead was. Pink fading to white at the hairline, just like a slice of ham.

  ‘Ah, um, well . . .’ I spoke aloud? Zweijärig fumbled the ball of thought. What is this – am I really losing my marbles? ‘I mean to say, the conversion rate, Hassell, it remains as stupid today as when Kohl proposed it. It's wrecked our chances of building the economy the way we might wish to. It doesn't reflect the constitution – such as it was; and it doesn't accord with the law governing redistribution of fiscal apportionments to the Länder.’

  Hassell was staring hard at Zweijärig during this speech. It was about the closest he could remember his boss getting to discussing politics directly in the four years they'd worked together. He normally skated around such topics, avoiding them with something approaching flippancy. Hassell steepled his plump fingers on the edge of the desk, pursed his plump lips, and ventured a query. ‘So, Herr Doktor, would you have favoured Pohl's proposal? Do you think things would have gone that much smoother?’

  ‘Pohl-Kohl. Kohl-Pohl. It hardly matters which bloody joker we have sitting on top of the Reichstag. We're a nation of displaced people, Herr Hassell. We're displaced from our past, we're displaced from our land, we're displaced from each other. That's the European ideal for you, eh – we're closer to people in Marseilles or Manchester than we are to those in Magdeburg. It's an ideal of mass society rather than homeland, ach!’

  Zweijärig was, Hassell noted, breathing heavily, panting almost. His tie was loosened, the top button of his shirt undone. Hassell didn't wish to be intrusive, but he ought really to enquire. ‘Are you feeling all right, Herr Doktor?’

  ‘All right, yes, yes, Herr Hassell, I feel all right. I feel like the smart-aleck Westerner I've become, eh? Wouldn't you say?’

  ‘It's not my position, Herr Doktor –’

  ‘No, no, of course not, of course not. It's not your position. I'm sorry, Herr Hassell, I'm not myself today, I'm like Job on his dungheap – you know that one, d'you? It's in the Stadel, you should go and look at it. Job on his Dungheap. Except in our case the dungheap is built of glass and steel, hmm?’

  ‘Dungheap, Herr Doktor?’ said Hassell, trying to look unobtrusively over his shoulder, trying to see whether Frau Schelling was in the outer office.

  ‘Playing with shit, Herr Hassell, playing with shit. Have you ever heard the expression that money is shit, Herr Hassell?’

  ‘Herr Doktor?’

  ‘Money is shit. No, well, I suppose not. Y'know, there are ghosts here in Frankfurt, Herr Hassell, you can see them if you squint. You can see them walking about – the ghosts of the past. This city is built on money, so they say. Perhaps it's built on shit too, hmm?’

  And with this gnomic – if not crazy – remark, Herr Doktor Martin Zweijärig stood up, passed a sweaty hand across his brow, and made for the door of his office, calling over his shoulder, ‘I'm going for a glass of stuff, Herr Hassell. If you would be so good, please tell Frau Schelling I'll be back in a couple of hours.’ Then he was gone.

  Hassell sighed heavily. The old man was unwell, disturbed even. He was clearly disoriented; perhaps Hassell should stop him leaving the bank building? Ethics and propriety did battle in the arid processes of Hassell's mind for some seconds, until ethics won – narrowly.

  Hassell got up and quit the office at a near-jog, the bunches of fat above his broad hips jigging like panniers on a donkey. But when he reached the lifts Zweijärig had gone. He turned back to the office and met Frau Schelling. ‘The Deputy Direktor, Frau Schelling, do you think –?’

  ‘I think he's ill, Herr Hassell– he's behaving very oddly. I called Frau Doktor Zweijärig just now. I hated going behind his back like that, but –’

  ‘You did the right thing, Frau Schelling. What did Frau Doktor Zweijärig say?’

  ‘Oh, she's noticed it as well. She's driving into town right now. She says she'll be here within the hour. But where has he gone?’

  ‘He said something about getting a glass of stuff. Do you think he's gone to Sachsenhausen?’

  ‘I doubt it, he can't stand the GIs there. No, there's a tavern near the station he often goes to. I'll bet he's gone there now.’ Frau Schelling shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Poor man, I do hope he's all right.’

  ‘Miriam and Daniel Green, this is Dr Grauerholtz . . . and this is Humpy.’ Philip Weston stood in the middle of his consulting room making the introductions. Dr Grauerholtz was a tiny little egg of a man, bald, bifocaled, and wearing a quite electric suit. The contrast between the two psychologists was straightforwardly comic, and despite the seriousness of the situation, Daniel and Miriam exchanged surreptitious grins and jointly raised their eyebrows.

  ‘Hello,’ said Dr Grauerholtz warmly. He had a thick but not unpleasant German accent. ‘Philip tells me that we have a most unusual young fellow with us today – you must be very proud of him.’

  ‘Proud?’ Miriam Green was becoming agitated again. Dr Grauerholtz and Philip Weston exchanged meaningful glances. Dr Grauerholtz indicated that they should all sit down. Then, with rapid, jerky movements he stripped off his funny jacket, threw it over a chair, reversed the chair, and sat down on it facing them with his elbows crossed on the back.

  ‘I don't think I will be in any way upsetting you, Mr and Mrs Green, if I tell you that my colleague has managed to do a rudimentary Stanford-Binet test on Master Humpy –’

  ‘Stanford-Binet?’ Miriam was becoming querulous.

  ‘I'm sorry, so-called intelligence test. Obviously such things are very speculative with such a young child, but we suspect that Humpy's IQ may be well up in the hundred and sixties. He is, we believe, an exceptionally bright young fellow. Now, if you don't mind . . .’

  Dr Grauerholtz dropped backwards off the chair on to his knees and then crawled towards Humpy across the expanse of carpet. Humpy, who had paid no attention to Dr Grauerholtz's arrival, was playing with some building blocks in the corner of the room. He had managed to construct a sort of pyramid, or ziggurat, the top of which was level with the first shelf of a bookcase, and now he was running toy cars up the side of this edifice and parking them neatly by the spines of the books.

  ‘That's a good castle you've got there, Humpy,’ said Dr Grauerholtz. ‘Do you like castles?’

  Humpy stopped what he was doing and regarded the semi-recumbent world authority on human-language acquisition with an expression that would have been called contemptuous in an older individual. ’Grundausbildung!’ he piped, scooting one of the toy cars along the shelf. Dr Grauerholtz appeared rather taken aback, and sat back on his heels. Daniel and Miriam gave each other weary looks.

  ’Grundausbildung?’ Dr Grauerholtz repeated the gibberish with an interrogative-sounding swoop at the end. Humpy stopped what he was doing, tensed, and turned to give the doctor his full attention. ’Ja,’ he said after a few moments, ’grundausbildung.’

  ’Grundausbildung für . . .?’ gargled the doctor.

  ’Für bankkreise,’ Humpy replied, and smiled broadly.

  The doctor scratched the few remaining hairs on his head, before saying, ‘Humpy, verstehen sie Deu
tsch?’

  ‘Ja,’ Humpy came back, and giggled. ’Geschäft Deutsch.’ Then he resumed playing with the toy car, as if none of this bizarre exchange were of any account.

  Dr Grauerholtz stood up and came back to where the adults were sitting. They were all staring at him with frank astonishment, none more so than Miriam Green. To look at her you might have thought she was in the presence of some prophet, or messiah. ‘Doc-Doctor Grau-Grauerholtz,’ she stuttered, ‘c-can you understand what Humpy is saying?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the Doctor replied. He was now grinning as widely as Humpy. ‘Quite well, I think. You see, your son is speaking . . . How can I put it? He's speaking what you would call “business German”.’

  ‘ “Business German"?’ queried Philip Weston. ‘Isn't that a bit unusual for an English child of two and a half?’

  Dr Grauerholtz had taken his bifocals off and was cleaning them with a small soft cloth that he'd taken from his trouser pocket. He looked at the three faces that gawped at him with watery, myopic eyes, and then said, ‘Yes, yes, I suppose a bit unusual, but hardly a handicap.’ He smiled, a small wry smile. ‘Some people might say it was a great asset – especially in today's European situation, yes?’

  Humpy chose that moment to push over the pyramid of building blocks he'd made. They fell with a delightful local crash; and Humpy began to laugh. It was the happy, secure laugh of a well-loved child – if a tad on the guttural side.

  They found Herr Doktor Martin Zweijärig sitting on the pavement outside the station. His suit was scuffed-about and dirty, his face was sweaty and contorted. All around him the human flotsam streamed: Turkish guest workers, junkies, asylum-seekers and tourists. There was hardly an ethnic German to be found in this seedy quarter of the European financial capital. Zweijärig was conscious, but barely so. The stroke had robbed him of his strength – he was as weak as a two-year-old child; and quite naturally – he was talking gibberish.

  DAVE TOO

  ‘Perhaps . . .’ Dr Klagfarten leaves this word dangling for a while – he likes to do that. ‘Perhaps the blackbird is the real object of your sympathy. After all, it cannot leave the room, whereas you can.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ I don't leave the word dangling. I leave it crashing, falling to the floor between us, like a bull at a corrida, and collapsing in undulations of muscle and dust, crumpling on to the hard, deathly ground.

  Dr Klagfarten tries another tack. ‘I'd like to see you again this afternoon, about another matter – you recall, I mentioned it yesterday?’ How typical of the man, that ‘recall’.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ I'm struggling to my feet. I sit facing Dr Klagfarten for these sessions, inhabiting a low armchair of fifties ilk, wooden arms, cushioned base underslung with rubber straps.

  Dr Klagfarten sits some way off, behind a white wooden table which does service as his desk. He's a thin man, quite bald, with an expressive, sensitive face. His lips are alarmingly sensual for a middle-aged psychiatrist. He twists them constantly this way and that in a moue of intense, emotive contemplation. He's doing it now. Doing it as he says, rising from behind the table, ‘Well, see you at three this afternoon then.’

  And I sort of hunch up, half turn on my way to the door and go ‘Y'mf’ by way of assent.

  What does Dr Klagfarten want, in the midst of his carpeted enclave? That's what his consulting room is like – a carpeted enclave. A modern room, cream of wall, thick of pile. And that pile, after a session of curdling monologue, seems in danger of creeping up the walls, providing further insulation, further deadening. What does he want of me? To slide my hand beneath the curiously thick and defined lapel of his jacket? To caress the front of his shirt; unbutton it, bend, slide tongue and lips in; seek out a depressed, sweaty nipple? Is that what Dr Klagfarten wants?

  I woke this morning with the radio burbling in my ear. If I'm alone – which I am more and more nowadays – I always sleep with it on, so that the World Service mixes with my dreams. So that I dream of a riot of headscarved Dr Klagfartens, stoning Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. As I came to consciousness a politician was being interviewed. ‘We have to make some terms for the long-term,’ he said, and then later he also said, ‘I'm going to sit down and think about it – I think.’ There's something about these broadcast contexts that does it to people, makes them repeat themselves. It's as if, halfway through their sentence, they lose some sense of what it is to be themselves, they flounder in the very moment of articulation, asking, ‘Who am I? Who the fuck am I?’ And the only answer that comes back is that they are the person who has just said ‘actually’ or ‘term’ or ‘policy’ or ‘whatever’, so they have to say it again. Are compelled to say it again.

  Dr Klagfarten's consulting room is in the old administration building. It's a blocky thing of weeping concrete and square, green-tinted windows, which project out, as if the interior of the structure were swelling, slowly exploding. As I cross the car-park I look over my shoulder, once. Dr Klagfarten stares down at me from his window. He lifts a hand and carefully swivels it at the wrist, suggesting the possibility of valediction. And as he does this a great gout of chemical smell, like air-freshener, comes into the back of my throat. I gag, turn, walk on.

  Dave is waiting for me in the café – as he said he would. He's a very tall, very jolly man, and I think of him as my closest friend. ‘Howdy!’ he cries as I come in through the door. The café is a long, tunnel-shaped room. Near the back a counter is set on the right, and on the very edge of this a Gaggia huffles and burbles, sending out little local weather systems. Dave is under one of these clouds. ‘Howdy!’ he cries again. Maybe he thinks I haven't seen him, or maybe he's just reminding himself that he's Dave.

  I can't blame him for that. It's such a common name, Dave. There are two other Daves who are usually in the café at this time of the morning. Dave and I call them, respectively, Fat Dave and Old Dave, by way of differentiating them both from him and each other. Fat Dave, who's the owner's rather dim-witted brother, mans the Gaggia. He's a barrel of a being with a bucket for a head. He wraps an apron around his abdomen, ties it with a cord as tight as a ligature, and leaves his big white arms bare. These are constantly in motion, scooping, twisting and pulling at the Gaggia. It looks as if he is deftly, but without much feeling, making love to the coffee machine.

  Old Dave is an altogether grimmer figure. He sits, face down to his racing paper, a roll-up made from three strands of tobacco stuck on his lower lip. He never says anything. We only know his name, because from time to time Fat Dave will refer to him in passing, thus: ‘Yairs, Dave there used to . . .’ or, ‘Y'know Dave over there, he could tell you a thing or two about . . .’ It seems that this is the fate of these two particular Daves. To be caught, their sembled identities bookending the café, leaning into one another's being.

  My Dave is eating a full English breakfast. The eggs have been turned so that a small skin of white has coagulated over the yoke. It has the aspect of a cast over an eye. Dave looks up at me as I sit down opposite him, smiles, then looks down, spears the yoke with his fork, spears a bit of bacon with same, tucks the whole, gnarled mass into his mouth. ‘Yungf’,’ he says, and then, ‘Have you seen her?’ I sigh. ‘No, yungf'-yungf’, tell me, have you?’

  I shrug, inexpressively, ‘Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I have.’

  ‘And?’ He's sawing at the fried bread.

  ‘She understands . . . sort of. She, she accepts that maybe I have to . . .’ I can't bear to say this, it's so trite. ’Have to find out who I really am. I feel so . . . well, you know, we've talked about it. I feel so amorphous, so shapeless, so incoherent. I don't feel as if I know myself any more. Especially after a morning like this, when I'm up early and talking to Dr Klagfarten before I'm awake, before I've had an opportunity to, sort of, boot up my identity, become who I really am –’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, I know what you mean entirely.’ Dave has set his knife and fork down, he's kneading one hand with the other, he's completely engaged in the mat
ter, abandoning himself to the discourse – perhaps that's why I like him so much. ‘I sometimes feel the same way myself, exiguous, wavering, fundamentally peripheral – ‘

  ‘And full of fancy words, ha!’ We both laugh, our shared laugh, my wheezing giving a windy accompaniment to his percussive ho-ho-hos. And in the moment of this laugh I'm at one with Dave, I feel a real kinship with him. I feel he and I are essentially similar, that no matter what differences may arise between us, of belief, of intent, we will share the same basic character. It's only with Dave that I feel comfortable discussing Dr Klagfarten – or rather, discussing what Dr Klagfarten and I discuss.

  It's odd, because I'm sensitive about the therapy, and sensitive about my relationship with Dr Klagfarten, who far from being a distant or impersonal presence in my life, is actually well known in some of the circles I move in. But predictably, it was Dave who ran into him socially. He was at a party in Davyhulme given by some zoologists. According to Dave, Dr Klagfarten was very jolly, drank deep, and sang revolutionary songs in a fine, warm baritone, much to everyone's enjoyment. I find this clip of Dr Klagfarten at play difficult to reconcile with the benign severity he always evinces towards me. I even find it hard to imagine Dr Klagfarten as being anything but a shrink. How could anybody whisper lovers’ endearments to him? What could they call him? Klaggy? Farty? The mind boggles.

  Lovers’ endearments. Her endearments. I don't feel I deserve them. Or perhaps worse – I don't quite believe they're directed at me. When Velma looks at me with what are meant to be loving eyes, I see too much comprehension, too much calculation. It's as if she were looking at my face in a spirit of having to do something with it, make it work.

  I sign to Fat Dave that I want a double espresso, and turn back to Dave.