I went on. ‘In any critical situations, please don’t be alarmed. I carry a gun, and will bring it out if necessary. If I have to throw you to the floor or get you into cover in any other way, I’ll try to hurt you as little as possible.’
‘I see.’ He frowned. Either he thought, as I did, that this was a good excuse if the fancy took me to push him into the nearest broom cupboard, or he really did feel a little queasy.
‘When you’re giving interviews, or you’re in contact with your readers, I’ll be as inconspicuous as possible, although I must insist that if I feel suspicious – and often that’s pure intuition – I shall have the person concerned subjected to a quick search for weapons or explosives. Unless, of course, he or she is well known to you or Frau Lipschitz.’
‘Okay …’ he said hesitantly.
Perhaps he hadn’t imagined my job in such concrete terms, with so much opportunity for hand-to-hand scuffling. Presumably there had been practical, objective reasons for the decision to hire a bodyguard: genuine concern for his safety and the endeavour to make sure he appeared at the Fair to the best possible advantage. However, his image of the bodyguard himself and the nature of his job had probably been more poetic than anything. A mixture of a cheerful companion, Prince Valiant and some Hollywood hero leaping out of a helicopter.
After the barman had brought me my mineral water, Katja Lipschitz asked, ‘What line do we take during demonstrations?’
‘Demonstrations?’
‘Well, there have been indications that there might be protests by Muslim groups at the publishing house’s stand.’
‘Was that in the threatening letters?’ I asked mildly.
‘We’ve had some anonymous phone calls.’
‘Well …’ I sipped my water. ‘Either it’s possible to talk to such people, or Herr Rashid and I go off to eat a beef sausage and wait for the demonstration to be over. Are these anonymous phone calls recorded on your answering machine?’
‘My secretary took them.’
‘You know, there’s quite a lot of time between an anonymous phone call and a face-to-face appearance with a possible police confrontation – time for the caller to consider the tempting idea of staying at home on Day X and lying comfortably on the sofa, putting the next DVD into the slot. Anonymous phone calls aren’t often followed up by action.’
‘How about cases of explosives?’ asked Rashid.
‘I assume that visitors to the Book Fair are checked as they come in.’
‘Well …’ Katja Lipschitz made a vague gesture. ‘The checks aren’t particularly rigorous.’
‘That’s a pity. Then we’ll have to look out for all bags standing around unattended. And if we’ – I gave them a good-humoured smile – ‘happen to overlook the one vital bag, then at least we acted in the cause of literature and enlightenment.’
‘Yes, well, very nicely put,’ said Rashid, while Katja Lipschitz made a face as if I had cracked a joke about blondes.
‘But don’t worry,’ I went on. ‘What was it I read the other day? In Europe, the risk of dying in an attack involving explosives is a hundred times less than the risk of choking on a mini-mozzarella. So watch out for the cold buffets over the next few days.’
Rashid tried to make eye contact with Katja Lipschitz. The glance he gave her when she finally looked his way said something like: Can you please get this conversation back on sensible lines at once! Then he took his half-litre cup of coffee and disappeared behind the still-towering foam mountain. Maybe they fixed it with hairspray. If your coffee didn’t come with a mountain of foam, Deborah had told me recently, it hardly stood a chance in the coffee trade today. Milky coffee foam had clearly surpassed beer foam as Germany’s number one foam. I was wondering if I would think it funny to warn Rashid of the dangers of overfoamed milk when Katja Lipschitz finally brought the pause to an end.
‘Herr Kayankaya, I understand that, based on your work and your experience, you take such a situation less seriously than we do. But please don’t forget: Malik is a writer, his world is his desk. The fact that a literary text – and one in which Malik openly pleads for greater tolerance and opposes any form of exclusion or oppression – that such a text, one that sets out to make the world a better and more peaceful place, has led to Malik’s having to fear for his physical safety if not, indeed, his life, is a shock that has affected all of us at Maier Verlag, but of course affects Malik in particular and will do so for a long time to come. We would be grateful if you would be a bit more sensitive.’
Before I could nod and say, ‘Sorry,’ or something of that nature, there was an angry interjection from behind the mound of foam. ‘That’s nonsense, Katja! I don’t want to make the world a better place, if anything I only want to make literature better! You might as well say I wanted to change the world! And there’s your nice little UNESCO scribbler! Off I go into the paperback African Narratives series!’
Katja Lipschitz froze. I scratched my chin and tried to think of something as sensitive as possible to say. Rashid lowered his cup and shot angry, scornful glances at me. ‘As for you, you’d better read my book! Here you are, working for me, and you haven’t a clue about it! My novel has nothing to do with your self-indulgent world of mini-mozzarellas!’
‘I’m glad to hear that, Herr Rashid. Just now I was afraid, for a moment … well, since you know your way about first-class hotels so well, and if I remember correctly your central character is, well, sexually indeterminate – for a moment I wondered whether the story in your novel is set in the world of flight attendants or interior decorating … if you see what I mean? Something along those lines. But you know,’ I went on fast, before he could throw his coffee cup at me, ‘I’m just a bodyguard. I never studied at university and I must confess, to my shame, that my reading matter has been confined to the daily TV programmes for far too long. So I’m glad you’ve given me such a personal incentive to make up for that. I’ll read your book as soon as I can, and I really look forward to it. However …’
I stopped. They were both staring at me with their mouths slightly open, as if they were watching acrobatics in a circus. Was I about to break my neck? Would they break it for me?
‘Well, since I’ll be close to you most of the time over the next few days, I’m wondering whether you wouldn’t be uncomfortable if I carried your book around with me? I mean, it’s possible that people might get the idea that as your bodyguard I was, so to speak …’ I gave a short laugh, ‘forced to read it. So, I can simply read it at night. I can get through it by Sunday, and then I’d be delighted to talk to you about it. When does one get the chance to discuss an author’s work with the author himself?’
Rashid stared at me for a moment, baffled, then he looked at the black plastic table in front of him and said, in a tone suggesting that he was overcome by exhaustion, ‘I have to go to the toilet, and then I think it would be best if we went to the Fair.’
‘There’s one more thing I’d like to get clear, Herr Rashid.’
Rashid got up from the sofa and asked, turning away from me, ‘And that is?’
I noticed Katja Lipschitz’s fingers digging into the arms of her chair.
‘I appreciate the fact that you address me as a friend, indeed I take it as a great compliment. But over many years I’ve found that excessive familiarity with the person I am protecting can lead to moments of carelessness in my work. So let’s keep it formal until the end of our contract.’
Rashid cast me a quick, expressionless glance over his shoulder. ‘Whatever works for you.’ And he went off slowly, almost dragging his feet, in the direction of the toilets.
I wondered whether I ought to accompany him, but then decided that my work didn’t begin until we were at the Book Fair. I thought it most unlikely that Rashid would run into any danger in the toilet.
I sipped some water and turned to Katja Lipschitz. She was still sitting in her chair all tensed up, fingers digging into its arms, eyes turned on the floor.
‘Was t
hat sensitive enough?’
She looked up and scrutinised me as if she were asking herself – in as many words, unusual as they might be in her mouth but surely satisfying – what damn whore had brought me into the world? Then she said, ‘You know very well that you’d be fired if there was any chance of finding a replacement for you in the next half an hour. What possessed you to speak to our author like that?’
‘And what possessed your author to treat me like a fool? “My protector!” ’
‘It was a sign that he liked you!’
‘He doesn’t know me at all. Why would he like me? For my origin?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe I didn’t make it clear enough at our last meeting: Malik Rashid is a great, a fantastic, a very special author, recognised and celebrated all over the world. If at first his behaviour or his style is not easy for you to comprehend, then it may be because you seldom mix with artists and intellectuals.’
I remembered what Valerie de Chavannes had said about her husband: ‘Well, maybe your job doesn’t allow you much experience with people whose approach to life doesn’t conform to the usual standards.’ Obviously I didn’t exactly strike the ladies of upper-class Frankfurt society as a man of the world.
Katja Lipschitz went on: ‘The thought processes of creative minds are often more convoluted and their conduct in public clumsier than ours. Because they think too much!’
God knows no one could say that of you, she said with her eyes.
‘Because they try to understand things in all their complexity! And sometimes make them more complicated than they really are. I am sure Malik thought seriously about the way to meet you. Do you know what he said to me on the phone two days ago?’
Being unable to think of anything sensitive, I didn’t reply.
‘He said how uncomfortable the situation was for him! Giving a grown man instructions about his most intimate affairs. For instance that he’d have to be accompanied to the toilet. Or the other way around, taking instructions from you. The idea that he couldn’t go anywhere or do anything he liked. He probably thought it all over carefully – whether a formal or informal approach would relax the situation more.’
‘You ought to have suggested that formality is best between adults at the start.’
‘Don’t be so uppity!’
‘You mean that as an Oriental I …’
‘Argh!’
‘Oh!’
She leaned forward angrily, picked up her coffee, and disappeared, like Rashid, behind a mountain of milky foam.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I think with that everything’s cleared up now.’
Katja Lipschitz was still hidden behind the foam.
‘All that remains is for me to wish us all a happy working relationship.’ I raised my glass of water. ‘Here’s to three relatively calm days as uneventful as possible.’
She lowered her cup far enough for us to look into each other’s eyes. ‘Please just do your work as well as you can. The situation is what it is, and Malik Rashid is Malik Rashid. I’m sure you’re professional enough to accept that going forward. If there are any more disagreements or supposed problems, or anything else, please turn straight to me. I’ll be the person you talk to for the next three days – and no one else. Malik needs his strength for the fair, and don’t even think of approaching members of our staff …’
She was searching for the right word. I helped her out. ‘To pester them?’
She took a sip of her coffee. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be as invisible as possible.’
‘Good, Herr Kayankaya, I’m glad to hear it.’
She put down her mug of cappuccino and said, ‘Excuse me, it’s the Book Fair and I have things to do.’ Then she tapped a text message into her iPhone and checked her emails. Time passed, and Rashid did not come back. I wondered if he suffered from diarrhoea, and imagined the two of us having to go to the toilet together every half an hour for the next few days.
When he finally did come back his temper had greatly improved.
‘Right, Herr Kayankaya,’ he said in a conciliatory tone. ‘Let’s do it whatever way you think is right.’
Katja Lipschitz looked relieved.
On the way to the Fair, the mood in our taxi was suddenly really good. Rashid asked Katja Lipschitz who else was coming, maybe Lutz Whosit or ‘witty Bodo’, how many interviews he was giving, where we could get a quick bite to eat before the evening’s event, and he seemed as happy as a child, even if he groaned now and then, ‘My God, what a strain this is going to be!’
And to me, he said, ‘You wait and see, the Book Fair is hell!’ But he was beaming all over his face.
Chapter 11
The Book Fair wasn’t hell, it just smelled a bit like it. Huge halls over several stories, each with a floor area about the size of two football fields, were filled partition after partition with the stands of millions of publishing houses, right to the last corner. A sweating, unwashed, perfumed crowd of humanity, drenched in alcohol, hungover and smeared with hair gel, pushed its way along aisles and past stands, up and down escalators, into toilets and through entrance doors, never stopping. The greasy vapours of sausages, pizza, Chinese food, Thai curry and chips wafted overhead, invisible radiators seemed to be turned up to maximum – or maybe it was just all those bodies producing such heat – and only the few doors opening and closing brought any fresh air into the place.
From Maier Verlag’s small hospitality room behind me came the odours of filter coffee stewing on a hotplate, egg and Harz cheese rolls that no one touched and smelled stronger as the day went on, and a homemade coconut and banana cake brought by a young American author for the staff of the firm – For you guys, for all the amazing work you do! It seemed to be made of Bounty bars and rotting fruit.
The stand of Maier Verlag was about twenty-five metres long by five metres wide. Portraits of authors and posters of book jackets hung on the walls, stacks of new releases lay on several shelves. The seating consisted of simple wooden benches and chairs, with small round tables and on each a dish of biscuits and another of salted crackers. A part of the wall some five metres wide in the middle of the stand, as well as a table positioned there with four chairs in front of it, differed from the rest of the furnishings. The wall was adorned with a fishing net, two plastic lobsters, a plastic octopus, a bottle with a letter inside it, a small buoy and five copies of Hans Peter Stullberg’s new novel hanging in the net. Its title was An Occitanian Love. The table was in the classic French bistro style, with an iron foot and a marble top, the chairs were folding wooden garden chairs in red and yellow. ‘The colours of Occitania,’ as Katja Lipschitz explained to us.
When we arrived, Rashid had commented dryly on the special presentation of Stullberg’s novel with, ‘On account of his back trouble.’
There was a whole shelf full of copies of his own novel, Journey to the End of Days, with a quotation from Le Monde above it. ‘Seldom have relevance of content and formal expression achieved such perfect symbiosis.’
‘A great quotation,’ said Katja Lipschitz.
‘Well, Le Monde is always Le Monde,’ agreed Rashid.
And I said, ‘Makes you want to read it right away.’
Katja Lipschitz gave me an expressionless look before pointing to the corner next to the hospitality room. ‘We thought you could sit there. You’ll have a good view of the stand, and you’ll be relatively inconspicuous. Malik will be interviewed by journalists and talk to readers and booksellers at the table in front of you.’
‘Great,’ I said, putting the bag containing my ironed shirt and pin-stripe suit for the evening occasion with Dr. Breitel down on the chair intended for me. Rashid pushed his gleaming black rucksack with a little Canadian flag patch sewn onto it and the inscription Vancouver International Writers’ Festival in red under the table, explained that he was going off for a moment to see people, and began walking round the stand saying hello to the publishing staff; with a hug an
d a kiss on both cheeks for the women, and a hearty handshake for the men. ‘Great book, Malik!’ ‘Immensely touching!’ ‘A really important text!’ ‘My favourite new book this year!’
While Katja Lipschitz turned away to use her phone, I looked around for places where Rashid and I could take cover if need be. In front of us was the aisle with the constant flow of visitors to the Book Fair, to the right the Maier Verlag tables where staff members were discussing sales figures, developments at the Book Fair, personal details, events they were going to attend and the latest Book Fair gossip – ‘Gretchen Love!’ – ‘She’s bound to be on the non fiction best-seller list next week!’ – ‘Crazy!’ – ‘Scandalous!’ To our left there was the partition between Maier Verlag and the neighbouring publisher. On that partition was Rashid’s shelf with new copies of his novel, some three hundred of them, the quote from Le Monde blown up large, and a photo of Rashid propping his head on three fingers and looking as amused and superior as he had when I walked into the lounge of the Harmonia Hotel.
So the only possible cover was the hospitality room. But by the time we had got the sliding door behind us open and closed again, and flung ourselves down among the trays of rolls and crates of bottled water, any assassin worth his salt would have finished off Rashid with a knife taken from the nearest pizza trolley and disappeared into the throng of visitors again.
Besides my suit for that evening, my bag also contained a baseball bat, pepper spray and a pair of handcuffs. I unzipped it and placed the handle of the baseball bat close to the side of the bag so that I could get at it as quickly as possible. I also took my pistol out of my back holster behind me and put it in the right-hand side pocket of my corduroy jacket. No one could spot the gun there, and I could shoot through the jacket itself.
‘I hope you’ll be careful with that.’ Katja Lipschitz came up to me and pointed to my jacket pocket. ‘I’ve been observing you. I mean, there can also be exuberant fans who might want to embrace Malik.’
Brother Kemal Page 12
