A Shadow of Myself

by Mike Phillips

  ‘Yes,’ he muttered, almost as if he was talking to himself. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  That was how it had begun.

  On that first day George had asked the obvious question. Why bother with stealing cars?

  ‘It’s a cover,’ Valentin explained patiently. Victor could run a more or less legitimate business dealing in taxis, cars, and car parts. No one would ask questions about his money.

  ‘But they’re stolen cars,’ George protested.

  Valentin shrugged.

  ‘Who cares?’

  On the morning that Valentin stole the Jaguar they had been in business for nearly two years and there was still no sign of the supply of paintings drying up. The cars were no problem. Valentin had become an expert in choosing the right models – BMWs, Jaguars, Porsches, the occasional top-of-the-range Volkswagen. The streets seemed to flow with the rich, hot scent of their shining metal, sweetened by luxurious spicy touches of leather and rubber; and there was practically no risk apart from the actual moment of opening a door. When Valentin climbed into a motor in the morning he knew that by nightfall it would have travelled a distance of more than a thousand kilometres and across several borders. This was his only regret, he told George. Sometimes the pleasure he experienced when he sat in front of the wheel of a beautiful car was almost as good as sex, and when he drove it into one of the garages they used he would feel the insane desire to keep it, to remain wrapped in the clinging embrace of soft warm leather, if only for a little while longer.

  ‘Verrückt,’ George had muttered. ‘You’re crazy.’ But, at the same time, he reflected that it was just as well. Their zones of responsibility had divided themselves, as it seemed, quite naturally. George’s job was to sell the paintings. Valentin boosted the cars. Since their first experience with the dealer, Gunther, George had set out to inform himself about the art objects he was handling. He read catalogues and visited galleries, museums and auction rooms, checking the prices carefully, matching his estimates with them. He read about Feofan Grek, and Rublyov and Ushakov, and then leaving icons behind he read about the Wanderers group, the Peredvizhniki, Surikov and Repin, and then Mikhail Vrubel and Diaghilev. Before he had progressed very far, however, he had realised that Levitan, whose painting he had sold to Gunther for a few thousand marks, was a classic example of the nineteenth century Peredvizhniki. The landscapes were famous and highly valued, and he learnt also that there were collectors not far away who would have given him ten or twenty times the amount without a single question. ‘Idiot,’ he muttered to himself from time to time, as he turned the illustrated pages or sat at the back of an auction watching the bidding. ‘Idiot.’

  It was a new world in which George immersed himself. At first his wife Radka was puzzled, then delighted at his new-found interest. When he resigned as manager of one of the rent-a-car firms at the airport, the job he’d held down for five years, she had almost panicked, convinced that he was about to return to his old ways. But he’d surprised her with the amount he earnt buying and selling antiques, as he called them. Later on, as the stream of money swelled into something like a flood she began to worry again. But, for a while, George’s happiness with his end of the bargain was complete. Valentin’s adventures didn’t tempt him at all. He had gone boosting with the Russian a couple of times and he hated it all, the rush of excitement as they approached the car, the sucking dread of a humiliating arrest, the stupid babbling euphoria of the escape. George was content to leave that side of the business to his cousin, and when Valentin ran off at the mouth about cars, as he usually did, he merely listened patiently, an ironic smile curling on his lips.

  As Valentin swung right climbing up MaxBreuerallee towards the Bahnhof in Altona he was telling George that the Jaguar’s engine made the wrong sort of noise.

  ‘Like a tank, except it doesn’t smoke and stink of kerosene.’

  ‘You never drove a tank,’ George said automatically.

  Valentin looked round at him, his expression suddenly clouded.

  ‘I’ve smelt plenty.’

  It was a smell George also remembered with an uncomfortable clarity. Once upon a time it had been so familiar that he could go for days without noticing it. But there was still one occasion that he associated with the smell of kerosene and the grinding rumble of the armoured engines, and Valentin’s remark had made his mind leap to it, like turning the knob on a pair of binoculars and suddenly seeing a distant scene in sharp focus, as if close enough to touch.

  He was in the army then, twenty years old, only a boy. His unit had been sent over the border on a mission of fraternal assistance against saboteurs and subversives. That’s what they’d been told in the political briefings anyway, but no one in the unit believed it. The invasion of 1968 was nearly ten years in the past, but the boys already knew that they would face scorn and pointing fingers rather than the open arms of a grateful population. The column had made a stop near Karlovy Vary, a long way short of Prague. It was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was shining brightly. They were in no hurry, the soldiers had been told, and when the little row of armoured vehicles parked by the side of the country road, some of them went off to piss in the meadow or sprawl under the shade of the trees.

  George stood leaning against a tank, smoking a cigarette. He was thinking of his mother. She had clung to him, muttering endearments, her cheeks wet with tears: ‘Malcheek. Chelovechek. My little man.’ Then, after he had turned away, she gripped his elbow and brought her mouth close to his ear. ‘Trust no one.’

  He was one of the first to see the girls. They looked German with their fair hair and long brown legs gleaming in the sun, but he guessed that they were local. Two of them were mounted on a man’s bicycle, the third trotted alongside, heads up, consciously ignoring the staring eyes of the soldiers who were getting up from the roadside and standing on tiptoe to get a good look at the girl’s ass as she pumped and wriggled on the high saddle. There were a few whistles, but nothing excessive. Everyone had been warned about how to behave to the local inhabitants.

  At first George thought that the girls hadn’t noticed him and that they would go past without a look, but as they drew opposite him, the bicycle braked, stopped, and the two girls dismounted. Facing him across the width of the road the three looked not unlike women he had known for most of his life. The tallest, the one who had been pedalling the bicycle, wore her hair twisted into a long plait which fell over her shoulder and the breast on the right. She was sweating a little, breathing hard, her skin flushing underneath the tan.

  ‘Negro,’ she said, smiling at him, ‘why are you here in our country?’

  George stood frozen on the spot, unable to speak. His mind was a blank, except for the disappointment which was sweeping through his entire body. For a moment he had been gripped by a fantasy in which he lay under the trees with these three beauties, stroking their thighs and sucking at their nipples.

  Without taking her eyes from his the tall girl put her hand on her crotch, above the light cloth of her dress, and moved it up and down.

  ‘You want some, negro?’

  It struck him that she spoke good German, just as they had been told the locals would, and he had heard the same invitation before, couched in exactly the same words. But her voice had deepened into a tone of anger and contempt and the expression on her face was twisted into a mask of hatred, her lips sneering and scornful. George knew what hatred and contempt looked like. He’d seen it enough, but now he was gripped by a curious and irresistible desire to know one thing. Did she hate him because he was German, or because he was a black man?

  He straightened up and opened his mouth to ask, but the group leader’s voice cut in before he could get the words out.

  ‘Say nothing. That’s an order. These whores are sent to provoke us.’

  The girls’ eyes switched to the sergeant standing behind him, and they all laughed, almost in unison, and still with the same edge of contempt.

  ‘Go home, negro,’ the tall
girl said. ‘Wherever you come from. And take your friends with you.’

  The girls giggled in chorus, to George’s ears an angry insolent sound which matched the contempt in their eyes. Then they turned and walked away, still ignoring the catcalls and whistles which now reached a crescendo as they walked the gauntlet of the soldiers’ eyes. George watched them until they had gone past the end of the column, then he turned round, catching a sly smile from Muller, who was still standing behind him.

  ‘Forget it, boy,’ the sergeant said. ‘That’s another one of their tricks.’

  That was the end of it. Some time during the night they were ordered back over the border. In the intervening years he had met and fucked a number of women who looked very much like the tall girl, including his wife Radka who was herself a Czech, but he had never forgotten that afternoon, or the heat of the sun, the sneer on the woman’s face, the stink of kerosene on the tank’s ticking metal.

  ‘Ottenser Hauptstrasse,’ he said now, jogging Valentin’s arm and pointing.

  Valentin grunted and swung away from the station into a broad street lined with kebab shops and stores faced with Turkish and Arabic lettering. A little further down the Hauptstrasse he turned off again into the network of narrow streets which linked the station and the waterfront. This was one quarter of Altona which had resisted the creeping tide of prosperous and respectable residency that had begun to take over on the other side of the station, renovating the huge old houses and spawning office buildings, new banks and wine bars. Instead, this district was still the haunt of Turks and Arabs, Africans, dockworkers and whores. Among them moved the newer outcasts – Russians, Uzbekis, Chechens, Serbs, Croats, and Kosovars, groups of waddling women, their heads wrapped in scarves, their eyes lost, shepherded by men in cracked dirty boots and knitted caps.

  Valentin turned another corner and pulled up in front of a red brick building. He switched the engine off, then leant forward, opened the glove compartment, took out a gun and stuffed it into the back of his belt.

  ‘What is that?’ George asked him.

  He’d recognised it immediately. It was a nine-millimetre Browning. It was years ago, but he’d seen them often enough, strapped to the waists of his American counterparts on guard duty.

  Valentin shrugged.

  ‘My gun.’

  ‘I know it’s a gun,’ George said, feeling the urge to hit him. ‘But first, I didn’t know you had it. Second, I want to know why you’re taking it with you.’

  ‘You want me to leave it in the car?’

  Valentin grinned cockily, and George took a deep breath.

  ‘All right. You can’t leave it here. But when did you get it and why?’ A thought struck him. ‘You’ve been carrying it around? Suppose the cops had pulled you?’

  Valentin shrugged again, grinning.

  ‘That would never happen.’

  George sat back, getting over his surprise but determined not to leave the matter there.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Now he knew what had darkened his mood earlier on. It was Valentin. There must have been tiny clues which told him something was wrong, but his conscious mind had ignored them. The trouble was that he had got accustomed to thinking about what they were doing as a business, just as if he’d been putting on a suit in the morning and going to the office. Negotiating with Gunther and the other dealers was like that. They were, of course, sharp and mean and intent on gouging him for every pfennig they could get, but that was only business. In much the same mood, he had got used to accompanying Valentin when he exchanged cars for the goods he would peddle as if they were undertaking a simple business transaction. In all that time the half-dozen Russians he had encountered were men who he presumed were former army buddies of his cousin. In fact they looked and behaved very much like Valentin; youngish, tough, dressed in jeans, sweaters and long coats, they greeted him without surprise, handed over their merchandise without comment and vanished.

  Being ignorant of the details suited George. From the beginning he had understood that the Russian end of the business was a dangerous matter. The men who could afford to buy Victor’s cars would also be violent characters, unimpressed by the niceties of business ethics. When Valentin and his comrades lowered their voices and engaged in conversation, George made a point of moving away and busying himself by examining the goods. After a year he had made his own calculations and he had figured that it would only be a matter of months before he was able to end his involvement in the business. In the meantime he would keep clear of trouble.

  Sitting in the Jaguar now, looking at the grin on Valentin’s face, it struck him that he must have been living in a dream, and seeing Valentin’s gun had been like the sudden screeching of an electronic alarm, waking him to the realisation that he was already in a lot of trouble.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he repeated.

  ‘Self-protection,’ Valentin said. His expression was suddenly sulky, the lines of his face pulling downwards like a small boy rebuked.

  ‘You don’t need a pooshka for that,’ George said. He used the word for cannon, translating it from the language of the American movie gangsters, but what was actually running through his head was a proverb he’d heard his mother use sometimes: ‘Strelyat ne pooshek po varabyam: a cannon to shoot a sparrow.’

  Valentin grinned.

  ‘You should speak Russian more often.’ This was a sarcasm, because Valentin knew very well that apart from his mother’s familiar sayings George was uncomfortable venturing a sentence in the language. The smile vanished. ‘But there’s no sparrows in there.’

  ‘Okay.’ George was openly impatient now. ‘Did you fall out with your friends? Are you expecting trouble?’

  Valentin shook his head.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Valentin turned to face him.

  ‘There was a problem. One of Victor’s couriers decided to go into business for himself. He took one of the pictures and tried to sell it to some people. Georgians. Someone recognised it. By some stupid coincidence it was a picture from Tbilisi. These people spoke to Victor. They said they wanted to meet his contact in Germany. They said they wanted to talk.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some deal, maybe.’

  George shook his head.

  ‘You didn’t think this was important enough to tell me?’

  ‘What would you have done?’

  ‘Okay. I don’t know. What did you say?’

  ‘I said they could kiss my arse.’ He used the Russian word with a growl of relish – zadnicha.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  Valentin took a deep breath.

  ‘I don’t think Victor gave them that message.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s a difficult situation for him. He has the pictures hidden, but if they try to find them it’s only a matter of time. Too many people know about it now. He said talk to these guys. Make a deal.’

  ‘And they’re here today?’

  Valentin shrugged.

  ‘Maybe. They said sometime soon.’

  ‘That’s why you have the gun. So you’re expecting trouble.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. I spoke with Victor last week. We arranged this exchange today. Since then nothing. No answer on the telephone.’

  ‘Is that bad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  George thought it over.

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘No deal.’

  ‘What happens if we tell them that?’

  Valentin gestured.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe they make trouble for my friends. Maybe they go away. These people, they’re mad.’ He searched for the word. ‘Unpredictable.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  Valentin gave him an irritable look.

  ‘Who? I don’t know. Businessmen. Bandits. They don’t advertise.’

  ‘I don’t want to be mixed up with stuff like that,’ George said quickly. ‘If there’s going to be trouble, let’s bri
ng it to an end. Give it up. Right now.’

  Valentin sighed.

  ‘Easier said than done.’ He paused. ‘There’s no harm in talking to them. If they’re there. If you’re worried, wait here for me.’

  George didn’t even consider the offer. He had to know what was going to happen.

  ‘I’m coming in.’

  The giant entrance to the building was guarded by closed steel shutters. Next to it was a small metal door. Valentin rang the bell and the door opened almost immediately, as if someone had been watching them drive up. The man who stood on the other side was tall and dark. Unlike the casual style of the Russians George had met previously on these expeditions he was formally dressed in a dark grey suit with a white shirt open at the collar, and shiny black leather shoes. Somehow the sharp, elegant look of his clothes seemed strange, out of place.

  Standing aside without a word he waved them through. Inside, the front of the building proved to be little more than a façade. Ahead of them was a long cabin with a concrete floor and an arching roof. The other end opened on to a courtyard beyond which was another building with a short stairway running up to a door on the first floor. The entire space was littered with cars. As his eyes adjusted to the sight, George realised that some of them were rusting bodies. Others looked almost new, resprayed and polished, as if ready to drive away.

  ‘Where’s Victor?’ Valentin asked in Russian. When the man didn’t answer he repeated the question in German. In reply the gatekeeper pointed towards the courtyard, making a little pushing gesture as if urging them on. Valentin shrugged and moved on, threading his way through the cars. George followed, automatically listening for any sudden moves from the man behind. Every instinct he possessed was warning him of danger, and if he’d been carrying a gun he would have had his hand on it. As it was he walked carefully, almost on tiptoe, his hands hanging loose by his sides, ready for anything.

  When they got to the top of the stairs the door opened as if by a signal and a clone of the first man looked out. This one was older, his black hair streaked with grey, but he was wearing the same suit and shoes and he waved them in with exactly the same gesture. They found themselves in a big rectangular room, a bit less than fifteen metres long, George estimated. The rear wall was lined with windows through which he caught a glimpse of branches swaying, but although there were also windows at the front next to the staircase all of them were so encrusted with dirt and grime that only a dim reflection of the light outside filtered into the room.