‘Evening. What’ll it be?’ The landlord, a massive man with a round, comfortable face, looked at me in a free and easy but friendly way.
‘A beer, please.’
He turned to the beer tap, and I looked around the room with an innocent expression, as if I noticed neither the silence nor the glances bent on me.
A few dusty fishing nets and two faded posters of Dubrovnik hung on the walls by way of decoration. Otherwise the place had bare wooden tables, stained beige linoleum on the floor, a jukebox flashing only faintly under layers of dirt, and pale green fabric lampshades in which bulbs too strong for them had burnt an irregular pattern of small, black-rimmed holes. The only relatively new and well-cared-for item was a large photograph in a frame with a removable back; it was enthroned behind the bar on top of the shelves of schnapps bottles. The photo showed a grey-haired man in a white admiral’s uniform with plenty of gold buttons and coloured braid, kissing another man on the cheek. All that could be seen of the other man was the back of his head.
The landlord brought me the beer. ‘Cheers.’
After I had smoked two cigarettes, ordered another beer, and looked ahead of me with determined naiveté, the guests got talking again one by one. Five minutes later loud, confused voices filled the room. Some of the men were speaking Croatian, many German, mostly in Hessian dialect. Their subjects of conversation were prices, the weather, sport, women. One of them fed some coins into the jukebox, and soon Bonnie Tyler was drowning them all out with Total Eclipse of the Heart.
I drank my second beer and ordered a third. When the landlord pushed the glass over to me, I beckoned him closer. He propped his round elbows on the bar and turned his ear my way.
‘If you don’t mind a direct question …’
He nodded and winked encouragingly at me. He probably thought, after my looking-like-a-sheep act, I wanted to ask the way to the toilet or something equally delicate.
‘… have you ever heard of the Army of Reason?’
For a moment his eyes seemed to stop looking at me but without actually closing, the way hands can suddenly stop in mid-gesticulation. Then he turned away in a leisurely fashion, as if at the end of a fairly long conversation between two guests about the meaning of life, went back to the tap and continued serving drinks. If he looked my way I was just a piece of furniture. If I’d left without paying he probably wouldn’t even have glanced up.
I stood around for a while, thinking. The first guests began ordering food, and I watched as the landlord leaned through an open hatch beside the bar, passed on orders and received plates. As far as I could see, there were two men working in the kitchen. The chef and a young assistant. I took a pen out of my pocket and wrote, on a beer mat: Two members of the Army of Reason rang this place on Thursday. I want to know who they were. I’m not leaving until I do.
Next time the landlord, loaded down with plates, tried pushing his way past me I got in his way and put the beer mat in his shirt pocket.
‘I’m waiting five minutes. If you still haven’t spoken to me then, you’ll be doing lousy business here this evening.’
He walked on without reacting. But soon after that the chef’s assistant appeared in the room, took over at the tap, and the landlord beckoned me over to the end of the bar.
‘I got no idea what yer talking about. I’m running a bar, I am, not a war.’
‘But you made off fast enough when I mentioned the Army.’
‘Hey, look at you! If a man what got a mug like that talks garbage, am I a shrink?’
I looked at his round face. Nothing about it indicated that he was lying. He was the image of a fat, comfortable man who didn’t like trouble in his life. And he managed to run this scruffy place so that a lot of people felt happy here and the takings were probably in tune. If one of his guests was the member of a gang extorting protection money, he wouldn’t want to know. However, he would take messages on the phone, pass them on, and keep his thoughts to himself. And he would act the simple clown for someone like me trying to worm those thoughts out of him.
I pointed to the framed photograph. ‘Who’s that?’
His gaze followed the direction of my finger, and when he looked at me again I saw something unpleasant in his eyes for the first time. Irritated, he said, ‘’S’our president, innit?’
‘Mine too? Never saw him look like that.’
‘S’posing you ain’t noticed, this here’s a Croatian restaurant. Thass my homeland, is Croatia, thass where my heart beats.’
‘Ah.’
‘So whass your line, eh? Asking questions, like?’ The amiable fat man was increasingly coming to resemble a fat slob with a fanatical light in his eyes.
‘Private eye,’ I said, and went on, without letting him get a word in, ‘You said you’re running a bar here, not a war. And you said your heart beats in Croatia. What’s that funny uniform your President’s wearing?’
First he said nothing, then he raised his voice. ‘Funny?’ And as there had been no music playing for some time now, the babble of voices died down too.
‘Whassa big idea? Funny!’
I looked from the presidential photo to the now red-faced landlord and back again. I myself didn’t know exactly what my idea was. But after more than a week I was at last beginning to get some idea of what kind of outfit the Army of Reason, with its silly name, might be. ‘Reason’ had come of the tosh Dr Ahrens talked, I felt sure of that. He had liked that word too much, whether because he linked it to some deeper meaning, or because he just thought it sounded interesting. But ‘Army’, I thought, was from somewhere else. For instance a place where war was thought a matter of honour and uniforms were smart. The word Army might be intended to make people think that instead of an average gang this bunch were something higher, something pure, serving a good cause. And perhaps they even were in a way serving what they called a good cause. They wouldn’t be the first gang to try sanitising their obscene business by using zero point such and such a percentage of the takings to throw a few crusts to the poor.
‘OK, not funny. But a uniform. Does he like that sort of costume stuff, or is it the official dress of a Croatian president?’
By now there were no more clattering forks or clinking bottles to be heard, and the landlord and I were centre stage. I wondered how long, if the argument became more animated, our audience would confine themselves to watching and listening. And I estimated how many seconds it would take me to get out of the door.
After the landlord had stared at me for some time as if I wanted to steal his President’s gold buttons and use them as bog fittings, he pulled himself together and said, as calmly as he could. ‘Reckon we done enough talking. The beer’s on me. Push off.’
I shook my head. As I did so it seemed to me as if something was moving in the darkest part of the back of the room. I took a few steps back towards the door until I had a view of all the customers. There were no more real clues for me to pick up here; I had only to look into those stony faces to see that. Whether they’d understood what I was riling the landlord about or not – this was their landlord, their drinking-hole, and I was in the way. But perhaps I could kick up enough fuss for one or other of them to let something slip by mistake.
I couldn’t. Before my general announcement to the whole company – ‘There’s a gang of racketeers in Frankfurt at the moment calling itself the Army of Reason …’ – had died away, the door behind me opened, and several hands grabbed me at the same moment, knocked me off my feet and rammed me head first into the bar. There was a mighty crash, and everything went dark before my eyes for a few seconds. When it was light again, and I felt my arms twisted behind my back, the first thing I thought of was my pistol. It was about ten thousand kilometres away in my trouser pocket. The second thing I thought of was the way something had been moving at the back of the room. They must have gone out through another door and round outside the place. The third thing I realised, with relief, was that my nose had escaped the impact. Finally I reco
gnised the flashy sports jackets to left and right of me.
‘Whaddya want we do with this bastard, then?’
They were addressing the landlord. Berliners, judging by their accent. Did the Berliners have a finger in every pie now? I turned my head until I could look into the sodden eyes of one of the baldies. ‘That dulcet tone of voice, that elegant phrasing, anyone can see we have visitors from the capital.’
‘Shut your gob!’ he snarled, kicking me in the back of the knees.
‘How about we see who he is?’ said the landlord, sounding as friendly and casual again as he had when I arrived. I had definitely underestimated him.
While the two shaven-headed men went through my pockets, some of the guests left the restaurant in silence. The rest watched the show with interest. Some lit cigarettes, others sipped their beer. The only one in the room who seemed unhappy with the situation but couldn’t escape it was the chef’s assistant. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him fidgeting nervously with beer mats and turning his head aside at frequent intervals.
‘The bastard’s got a gun!’ cried one of the Berliners, cracking his heel into the backs of my knees again. Obviously he was used to knowing where and how to lash out. Another couple of kicks and I might even had been wishing he’d hit me in the face for a change.
He held my pistol in front of my face. ‘Whaddya call this, then? Come on, whaddya call this?’
‘Pistol, a pistol.’
‘Got it!’ cried his friend, proudly waving my wallet. While the knee expert held me down, the man who was so triumphant over finding a wallet in the inside pocket of a jacket was looking at my papers.
‘Kemal Ka … ka … What sort of a name’s that? Kaka … Krap, I call it. Kemal Krap!’ He laughed, held my ID out to his mate, and they both laughed. ‘Kemal Krap! Hey, that’s good!’
‘Why make it so complicated, lads? Why Kemal? Why not just Krap Krap?’
‘Keep your mouth shut, I said.’
This time his kick made my legs crumple, and for a moment I was hanging in the air by my arms, which were still twisted behind my back. When I screamed they dropped me, kicked me in the side so that I landed on my back, and the knee expert put his foot on my throat. My pistol was dangling in the air above me from his hand.
‘One more crappy remark like that and I finish this off.’
I briefly closed my eyes to show that I’d got the message. Meanwhile more guests were leaving the place. Were they thinking that the show was getting stronger all the time, and what was about to happen now was too unappetising for them? I turned my eyes to the tap. The chef’s assistant had stopped playing with beer mats, and was staring straight ahead of him, gritting his teeth. If this went on he was my only hope. I unobtrusively moved my arms. As far as I could tell from the feel of it, I’d only imagined them cracking.
‘You a Turk, then?’
‘I’m a Frankfurter.’
‘I said no crappy talk!’
The pressure on my throat was increased.
‘I thought the landlord wanted to know who I was,’ I gasped, ‘not just theories.’
Knee Expert frowned. ‘Whassat in aid of?’
Before I could answer, his friend pushed into my line of vision. ‘We got Turks back home too …’ He grinned down at me. ‘Been fighting them bastards two years.’ He spread the fingers of one hand and waggled them up and down. ‘Count ’em, you! That’s how many I done in. One more won’t make no difference.’
‘Yes, I hear that kind of thing goes on in Berlin.’
‘Berlin? You daft or what? Nope, in our country! Get an education, you layabout! Whaddya think them shitty Muslims are to us? Kemal Kraps, the whole bunch.’
‘I see.’ I tried to look expressionless. ‘What a wonderful education in foreign languages you get in your native land! Amazing!’
‘You watch yer step,’ said the landlord, coming into the small circle of space above me. ‘You ain’t bin acting none so friendly here. You insult our President, you made fun of our country. Dunno why, we’re peaceful folk, we never done you no harm. Fact is, I wouldn’t mind teaching you a lesson – but forget it. You clear out now, and you hear this: show yer face in here again and you’ll be thinking of today real sad, remembering how pretty it once wuz. Get it?’
‘And how.’
The landlord was still looking into my eyes rather as if he was not too happy with the decision to let me go, but in the end he nodded to the Berliners and disappeared behind the bar. Knee Specialist looked disappointed.
‘This beggar’s a lucky beggar too,’ he said, and couldn’t refrain from letting me feel once more how quickly my larynx would be crushed if he wanted. Finally he took his foot away.
It was some time before I could get to my feet and follow him to the bar. As if the last ten minutes hadn’t happened, he was standing there casually watching the chef’s assistant draw him a beer.
‘My pistol, please.’
He slowly turned his head and looked surprised. ‘What pistol?’ And to his mate, standing next to him, ‘Imagining things, ain’t he? Potheads, all these guys.’
‘They ain’t allowed no beer, see? Knifing folk, screwing bints, all that shitty drugs stuff, they can have that. But there ain’t nothing for Allah in a beer.’
They looked at me with relish.
I leaned both arms on a bar stool to take the weight off my knees and looked down at the floor, exhausted. While that foot had been on my throat, there’d been no room left for pain. Now it was quickly taking over all the parts of me that had been abused over the last ten minutes. I sighed. ‘The gun’s registered. If I lose it I have to report the loss and say where and when it happened. A lie risks me my job, and I’m not telling any lies for you. So either you finish me off now after all, or you give me my pistol, or this place will be full of cops tomorrow.’
I looked at the floor again, fumbled for a cigarette in my pocket, lit it, and waited for whatever they decided. By now everything was hurting so much that I felt almost indifferent to it. Only I didn’t want to look at them any more. Except when I shot them.
‘Take the magazine out, give him his gun, then maybe he’ll go.’
Soon after that something fell into my jacket pocket. Without even turning round again, I staggered out of the door.
Chapter 11
I was sitting in the car on the other side of the road from the Adria Grill waiting – smoking, listening to the radio, dozing. My face throbbed, my shoulders were burning, and when I moved my knees something in them seemed on the point of breaking. I dropped off to sleep from time to time, waking with a start from fevered dreams a moment later. Mostly the dreams were about fighting. Once companies of men dressed in costume with bright plumes and golden shirts of mail like something out of a historical film were clashing, stabbing and hacking each other to pieces with spears and swords. There was blood everywhere, and severed heads lying about, and techno music boomed out from the surrounding forest. Two eyes were blazing in the middle of this bloodbath and wouldn’t stop looking at me, although the body they belonged to was dead. I was the only one who had a gun, but it wouldn’t do what I wanted. When I put the safety catch on it fired wildly all over the place, and when I took the safety catch off and pressed the trigger there was just a click. Then the techno music got louder and louder, changed to a deafening rattle, and I woke up. The rattle came from the radio. The tuning of the channel had slipped.
Just before one in the morning the light behind the crochet drapes finally went out. I rubbed my forehead, lit a cigarette, and checked yet again that I’d loaded the pistol with the spare magazine.
Ten minutes later the landlord and his two employees came out into the street. The landlord locked up, nodded to the others, and they all set off in different directions. I forgot my knees and my shoulders, got out of the car, closed its door quietly, and followed the chef’s assistant. I got him in a dark side alley. I quietly made my way to within ten metres and then ran at him. At about the same mom
ent as he spun round in alarm the muzzle of my pistol pressed against his chest.
‘Don’t make a sound!’
I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him into the entrance of the nearest building. His slight body was trembling like an animal’s. Only now did I realise how young he must be. Twenty at the most.
‘Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen to you.’
‘Please …’ he begged, gasping for breath. ‘Please … I’m not one of them!’
‘I know. Take it easy.’ I patted him on the shoulder. ‘I only want you to explain a few things to me.’
‘But I don’t know anything. I’m only his nephew. I’m working there to earn money. I don’t have anything to do with that lot.’
He was talking so fast that I could barely understand him. He never took his eyes off the pistol, but at the same time turned his head as far away from it as possible.
‘Listen: I’ll put it away if you promise not to try anything silly.’
‘What?’ He wasn’t listening to me.
‘The pistol. Look …’ I put it in my jacket pocket. ‘Better now?’
He stared at the opening of the pocket for a moment longer before looking hesitantly at my face, as if expecting to see a monster. ‘What … what do you want?’
‘I want you to tell me what you’ve heard at work, or from your uncle, about the Army of Reason.’
‘Army of Reason?’
‘Could be you’ve never heard the name mentioned. It’s a gang that started extorting protection money in Frankfurt about two weeks ago. I assume the Adria Grill is the place where they meet, if only for a beer.’
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