The Hungry and the Fat

by Timur Vermes

  This woman looked at him sympathetically as he talked to the dark-haired woman about his homeland. Before his turn he’d seen a huge black man play the protector type, which hadn’t gone down well with the ladies. The dark-haired woman looked intimidated and tried to be done with him as quickly as possible, while the elderly lady just stared at her mobile. So he went for the opposite approach. If everyone else shouts loudly, speak softly. And then the dark-haired woman asked him about his homeland. He looked her in the eye, but only briefly, to avoid coming across as intimidating, as the large black guy had. Then he lowered his voice and said, “My homeland is far away from here. But always very close too.”

  Although he wasn’t looking directly at her he could see that the elderly lady had put down her mobile. She’d taken a pen and jotted something on the sheet of paper with his instant picture clipped to it. And instead of going back to her mobile she kept looking at him. She must have heard something she liked. He pretended not to have noticed. He spoke his name into the camera, said how old he was, what he could do. He claimed to know everybody inside the camp, said that he could speak French too (which the Germans would hardly be able to verify), that he was fluent in thirteen African dialects (they wouldn’t be able to check this either), and unlike most of the others he didn’t profess to know German. He’d watched Lamine the nitwit offer up a fluent “Angemerkel” by way of proof, then seen Lamine’s instant picture disappear straight into the wastepaper basket. It had come as a surprise that an idiot like him had been photographed in the first place, but the Germans couldn’t have known that Lamine was the only person inside the camp that the children liked hurling stones at more than the dogs. He was easier to hit and didn’t bite.

  He didn’t say much as he didn’t want to come across as a windbag, rather a man in whom an angel could trust. He plumped for the Boateng type, not Kevin-Prince Boateng, but his brother, who was calmer and more controlled, someone the Germans wouldn’t worry about despite the fact that he’s black, someone who could even become world champion alongside them. They obviously had problems with young men too, so he made himself older. By seven years, no more, which meant that for television he was now thirty-one. First he got onto their shortlist. Then each one of them was taken in turn into a room with a camera. He didn’t know whether the angel really was sitting on the other side of the camera; they just told him he should imagine she was. He said his name. And then, almost on a whim, he went up to the camera, cool, calm and Boateng-composed, and said softly, “A man’s name means nothing to the lion.”

  Then he turned and left the room.

  7

  “ ‘A man’s name means nothing to the lion’ – what the actual hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Sensenbrink looks around the room. Some of his colleagues rapidly tap the phrase into their phones. Sensenbrink sighs.

  “Can’t he just keep his trap shut? Finally we get someone who looks like he might be the real goods and then he starts talking bollocks.”

  “. . . the ideal first name for those born under the sign of Leo . . .” one assistant says quietly.

  “. . . for more than ninety years the name LOEWE has stood for quality in consumer electronics . . .” a man’s voice reads out.

  “It’s got to be some African proverb. There must be a www.africanproverbs.com.,” Sensenbrink says.

  “Already tried that.”

  “Doesn’t matter. The question is: what does he mean by it?” Beate Karstleiter remarks. Sensenbrink gives her a friendly nod. Karstleiter may be a bootlicker, but at least she can guess what he’s thinking. There are enough people in this company who rush to show their obedience, but then their obedience rushes off in directions that aren’t helpful to anyone.

  “He’s saying that our questions aren’t important.”

  “Or that we’re not lions.”

  “Of course we’re not lions. But is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “Bad. Surely everyone wants to be a lion. Lions are proud and strong.”

  “Maybe not in Africa. There, lions could just as easily be dangerous and wicked.”

  “Which would make us harmless and good. Because we’re not lions.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake . . .” Sensenbrink looks around. Discussions like this ought to be shut down at once; they produce nothing but crap.

  “Well, the lion doesn’t actually do anything. It’s the lioness who does all the work. She hunts.”

  Exactly. All this gender crap. But what can you do? People want to talk, talk, talk so they can put themselves in the picture. You can’t forbid them from speaking. If you did, they’d stop working altogether.

  “He did say ‘lion’, in English. Not ‘lioness’.”

  “I thought it was lionelle . . .”

  “Like Mrs Messi?”

  Now it’s getting too silly. Sensenbrink applies the brakes. “Let’s have the next one!”

  The assistant says something into a mobile. The lion man goes out and another man comes into the room, wearing shorts, sliders and mirrored sunglasses. There is something visibly uncertain about him; he walks into the room as if fearing an ambush. A voice from the still-open door seems to tell him that a camera is transmitting his picture. He immediately stands up straight. The voice says something else, and he pushes his sunglasses up onto his head.

  “Christ alive! Where did they drag this pimp up from?”

  “Look at the trousers!”

  “What the . . .?”

  “Are they taking the piss?” Karstleiter says. “Ask them what the hell’s going on.”

  The assistant mutters something into her headset, then says, “Apparently he was quite different in their preliminary chat.”

  “Quite different . . . quite different. Are they blind? What’s that on his wrist?”

  “That can’t be real, can it?”

  “Is that a Rolex?”

  “Yeah, but it’s a fake.”

  Sensenbrink bends over to his microphone. “Tell me, are you doing any kind of checks before you shove them in front of the camera? It’s bad enough that he shows up at your end looking like that, but imagine what we’re thinking when we see him preened like a pimp? Why did no-one tell him to take that fucking alarm clock off his wrist before we got a glimpse of him? Do you know how much this whole session is costing? Dedicated line, equipment, half of management sitting around here. Yes, sorry. I’m sorry too. Sorry, my arse! Just do your job. Next!”

  They see the pimp turn towards the door and hurriedly take off his watch.

  “What’s going on? What’s he doing? Fuck his stupid watch! He ought to have thought about that earlier . . .”

  Now an elderly lady appears on the screen, angling the microphone on her headset closer to her mouth. “He says it’s not his watch,” she says, trying to appease Sensenbrink. “He says he just borrowed it to—”

  “Yeah, yeah, too bad! Tough shit! We’re a private T.V. company, not the Salvation fucking Army. No brain, no gain!”

  All of a sudden the pimp drops to his knees and starts to cry. He blubs a few words into the camera: “angel” and “I can aider” – it becomes less and less intelligible. Inside that small room a bear, a mountain, a brick shithouse of a man collapses into a heap. He rips off his shirt to reveal a disconcertingly scarred chest.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Now he’s a victim too.”

  “But we can’t take him just because he’s a victim.”

  “Fuck-a-doodle-do.”

  “Woah, that’s pretty major.”

  “I can’t see.”

  The pimp clasps his hands in front of the camera, he says “famille”, and looks imploringly at the elderly woman and into what, on him, looks like a little camera bag.

  “Oh no!”

  “We weren’t looking for a cry-baby.”

  Sensenbrink can see the mood shifting. Now it’s time to make a decision.

  “Guys, nobody wants to punch the puppy, but we’re still
in the business of making entertainment. I specifically asked for a tough guy. Not someone from an aid organisation, but a real refugee. A sensitive type who’s witnessed a whole heap of suffering, but it hasn’t broken him.”

  “Nor robbed him of his humanity,” Karstleiter adds.

  “Precisely. Hard, but with a heart. And I’m afraid me no see no ‘hard’ here.”

  “And no English either.”

  “Huh?”

  “We asked for English,” Beate Karstleiter reminds him. “But I thought I heard French there.”

  “Oh, right. Yes, exactly! Why’s the cry-baby blubbing in French?”

  The elderly lady tries to help the sobbing giant to his feet. She asks him something, to which he yells “English” several times, but unfortunately more often “anglais”.

  “Fuck me, get rid of him! Get him out! Out! Out! We haven’t got all fucking day. Jesus, Hackenbusch’s English is bad enough. She can only speak French when she . . .” Sensenbrink struggles to find a way to finish his sentence.

  Two production staff haul the crumpled hulk out of the room. He appears to resist briefly, but at the same time tries to look good for the camera. They can hear a faint yelling, a sad yelling, as if someone or something wonderful had died. For a moment the room on the screen is empty. An uncomfortable silence fills the office back in Germany too. Sensenbrink puts his arm over the backrest, turns around in his chair and addresses his team.

  “That was a bit harsh, but I can’t help that. This is where the rubber hits the road. We’re making a programme about refugees, not stand-up comedy. This kind of stuff is going to happen all the time. So, if anyone here thinks it’s not quite their cup of tea, they have my sympathy. But they need to stand up now and say they can’t nut up. I hear there’s a job going at that new show, “Pet Swap”, or whatever it’s called. But let me tell you, this is a blue-ocean opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime thing, there’s never been anything like it. You’ll be talking about this to your grandchildren!”

  Nobody gets up. Eyes drift around the tale. “I’m not leaving,” someone says quietly to another, “how about you?” Nobody drops out. Satisfied, Sensenbrink turns around.

  “Well, I just can’t bloody wait to see who they’ve got for us next . . .”

  A man in a skullcap steps in. He seems a little older. His shirt hangs down over his trousers – it’s not a kaftan, but it looks a bit like one. Sensenbrink leaps to his feet.

  “For fuck’s sake, what’s that?” Grabbing the microphone again, he talks to Africa directly.

  “WHAT. IS. THAT? What’s that on his face?”

  Meaningful glances around the table.

  “Exactly,” Sensenbrink bellows, incensed. “And why is there a beard? I can’t have someone with a beard. How would that look? You don’t need to be fucking Albert Einstein to work that one out. As soon as your average housewife switches on, she’ll be saying, “Hey, look at Nadeche Hackenbusch! Is she casting terrorists now?”

  An embarrassed silence hangs in the room. Further glances are exchanged, heads are shaken, but this time in disappointment, disgust and incomprehension. “Those idiots from the on-site production team,” their looks now say, or, “If you want something done properly . . .” Everyone in the room realises that they’ve sent the biggest failures in the company down there.

  “I even said that. I said no terrorists . . . This is really beginning to rub my rhubarb! The beard thing is oh-so-fucking obvious! No terrorists means no terrorists and also nobody that looks like a terrorist! No fucking caps and no fucking beards . . . What? Why another one?” Sensenbrink takes a deep breath and, straining to control his temper, says, “Yes, you’ve understood me perfectly. Lose the beardies. Right now. Including those hipsters with suicide vests. And now send me in the next one who looks half-way normal.”

  Sensenbrink yanks out his headphones and tosses them onto the table.

  “Coffee?” an assistant asks.

  “Please.” He starts massaging his temples. “How much longer is Suzanne on maternity leave?”

  “Nine months.”

  Sensenbrink wearily scratches behind his ear, even though there’s no itch.

  “I’ll pay for her babysitter and nanny and whatever else if she jumps on a plane and sorts out those cockwombles.”

  “We’ve already been there. She wants to be a good mother to her child.”

  “The kid’ll turn out shite anyway. They all do these days, what with smartphones and the Internet. The last kids who didn’t become total ignoranuses grew up in the eighties. Give her a bell and tell her she can name her salary.”

  “What, now? Really?”

  “No, of course not. Ask them what the hell’s going on down there. Are they having to give birth to the bloody candidates first?”

  A slim black man enters the room. Probably in his early twenties, he gives a friendly smile.

  “Hello?” he says with a wave at the camera. Then he says his name and starts talking about his family, his homeland, life in the camp, his friends, and Sensenbrink looks around the room to see if anyone else has stopped listening. He signals to an assistant to end this performance and bring in the next candidate. She mutters something into her mobile, upon which the man stops mid-flow, waves again at the camera and leaves the room. He’s replaced by another young black man wearing a T-shirt so tight it could have been borrowed from a child. He’s in good spirits and gives the camera a friendly wave, before starting to talk in a relaxed manner. Sensenbrink mutes the volume.

  “Something’s not right.”

  “The T-shirt’s too small,” Beate Karstleiter says. “But we can change that.”

  “I didn’t want to interrupt,” the assistant says hurriedly. “They told me they’re sorry, he would have come in with no shirt at all. They told him to get one quickly and he came straight back in that one, they’re really sorry, they’re gutted, but—”

  “No, it’s not the T-shirt,” Sensenbrink says. “The guy’s too cheerful. Just like the one before. What’s going on down there? Are they handing out drugs or what?” Sensenbrink turns back to the screen. The young man is talking to the camera without pause.

  “They say they’re all like that,” the assistant explains. “They’re happy because there’s an opportunity. Of a job, even just of something happening.”

  “Think about it! I can’t sell this to the viewers. The show’s called “Angel in Adversity”, not “Angel at the Comedy Club”. If anyone’s going to bring light into the darkness here, it’s Nadeche Hackenbusch. And that means it’s got to be dark, get it? Christ on a fucking bike. And at Nadeche’s side we’ve got to have someone who sees that it’s dark too. Not some light entertainer. What about the first guy?”

  “Lion man?”

  “Get him back. I don’t give a fuck what he meant. At least he meant something. It sounded sort of wise. What was it again?”

  “Even the lion doesn’t know what his name is.”

  “The man doesn’t know what the lion’s name is.”

  “No, it was bleaker than that. Slightly menacing. The man doesn’t have to know what the lion’s name is.”

  “Play it back!”

  On the screen the man reappears in front of the camera.

  “Is this now live? Is he back?”

  “No, this is the recording.”

  “A man’s name means nothing to the lion,” the man says again.

  “Yes, that was it!” Sensenbrink says, clenching his fist. “Now that is bleak.”

  “It’s got something.”

  “It’s like . . . like a nameless grave. It’s kind of spooky too.”

  “But not frightening. He says it very soberly.”

  The image changes. The young man must be back in the room with the camera. “At least he’s got a decent pair of trousers on,” Sensenbrink says. “We ought to get him a pair of jeans too, but they mustn’t be too new. And not top of the range either. Let Grande sort it out! Get them to tell him that we liked what h
e did. But he needs to unpack that thing with the lion.”

  They watch the man being given instructions. He moves calmly and nonchalantly; for a fleeting moment Sensenbrink fancies he knows him from somewhere.

  “I think he’s great,” Sensenbrink hears from behind him, a female voice with a hint of a Swabian accent – Engerle. “He totally reminds me of Boateng when he was still playing. Lighter skin, of course. And without the daft glasses.” Sensenbrink likes the comparison. Some positive associations, at last.

  The lighter-skinned Boateng looks at the camera and says in English, “What lion?”

  “You know, with the name of the man and that stuff!”

  For a brief moment the man looks as if he doesn’t have a clue what Sensenbrink’s going on about. Then he smiles and says, “It’s good. It’s good you want to understand Africa. Let me help you understand Africa. It’s a very great task.” He pauses, then says with a smile, “Africa is like a woman . . .”

  Sensenbrink raises his eyebrows. Africa is like a woman? That sounds suspiciously trite. Is this Boateng character taking the piss?

  “. . . and like a zebra.”

  A few people in the room are now laughing sympathetically, women included. Sensenbrink laughs too. “Well, bugger me! He knows my wife! Do you know my wife?”

  Boateng stares at the camera lens in confusion. “I don’t know your wife, Sir,” he hastily assures him.

  “Sweet!” Engerle sighs, and someone else raises this to “Übersweet”.

  “O.K., let’s park that, thank you,” Sensenbrink says. “We’ll take him. If we have just one of these wise sayings per programme, it’ll be more than enough.”

  “He could get a cult following,” Beate Karstleiter adds for all of those who haven’t yet understood. “He’ll be like that bimbo from ‘Wife Swap’ with her ‘strawberry cheese’ – but a clever version. We should get him under contract right away.”

  “Including book rights,” Sensenbrink insists. “Will you make a note of that?”

  The assistant passes on the message, chairs are pushed back, people gather up their belongings. The lighter-skinned Boateng has turned to leave the room when Sensenbrink says, “Wait! Wait! Could you angle the camera down for a moment?”