The Hungry and the Fat

by Timur Vermes

  It’s astonishing that Mojo hasn’t called until now.

  “Not great.”

  “That’s always the way, amigo! The legs feel at their heaviest just before the summit.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “You know what? I don’t reckon we do. Hikin’ tales are the most goddamn boring tales in the world. Either it’s too steep uphill, too steep downhill or someone gets lost. The story’s only excitin’ if the hiker dies, but you’ve got a cell, you can call folk. And I’ve got all ten series of ‘Baywatch’ to get through. You know ‘Baywatch’? It’s a classic! O.K., let’s cut the crap: where’s my moolah?”

  “I haven’t got it.”

  The screeching woman looks at him expectantly. He looks past her at the dust, the sand and the wide, empty nothingness.

  “Sorry, must have been some sort of interference on the line. It sounded like you said you hadn’t got it.”

  “And I don’t.”

  Mojo laughs.

  “You’re a scream. But you’ve been to my office. You’ve seen the T.V. set. Maybe you thought Mojo is one of those guys who buys big televisions to impress dumb niggers. But you’d be thinkin’ wrong. I’m not like that.”

  “I—”

  “Sorry, but I’m not finished yet. I buy big television sets because I like watching T.V. And I don’t want no overbloated picture, I want H.D. I don’t wanna see Pamela Anderson’s nipples blur into little squares. I want those nipples so sharp that Pamela Anderson squeals if I touch the screen. I’ve got it all on Blu-Ray.”

  “But—”

  “But it doesn’t exist on Blu-Ray, is that what you’re sayin’? Wait, can we be sure?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Me neither. Shall I ask Bandele?”

  “The . . .”

  “Bandele! Is ‘Baywatch’ out on Blu-Ray?” Mojo chortles. “Boy, am I excited!”

  He laughs again.

  “You should see this nigger rackin’ his brains. You’re O.K., Bandele. You might be a fool, but you’re O.K. But this guy, our T.V. pussy magnet, he’s no fool. He’s one smart guy. Are you listenin’?”

  “What?” Lionel tries not to sound stressed, but he’s reached the point of sheer exhaustion.

  “You listenin’ to what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I’m sayin’ you’re one smart guy. You’re thinkin’ Mojo’s tryin’ to take me for a ride, I know ‘Baywatch’ only came out on D.V.D. And so I’m sayin’ to you, you’re right. And yet you’re wrong. Right here in front of me I’ve got the entire edition of ‘Baywatch’ on Blu-Ray. Custom made. I know a guy who does this sort of thing for me. And this ain’t some kind of computer freebie, he does it for me in a real American studio. You see, I’m an aficionado. Know what that means?”

  “I can imagine.”

  Mojo pauses. “Really?”

  “Well, what it means is that you don’t just enhance the resolution of the scenes with tits in them, but everything, including the credits. It’s much more expensive and you want me to feel afraid because you can afford to shell out a fortune for ‘Baywatch’. But me being afraid isn’t going to do you any good. I’m afraid all the time, see? The problem isn’t that I’m not afraid enough. The problem is that we have a problem.”

  “Ooh! Customer not satisfied. May I register your complaint? Did you have different expectations of our product?”

  He has to admit that to begin with he didn’t have a clear notion of how it would work. And he’s astonished that it’s worked out till now. He can’t say, of course, that he didn’t believe it was possible, but then again he never posed the question. He just saw his great opportunity to get to Europe, to Germany, crumble before his eyes, and then seized the only contingency plan that could be cobbled together at short notice. Even if the chances of success had been twice as poor he would still have gone for it, because anything was better than the 100 per cent certainty of spending his life on this totally messed-up continent. Of course he was anxious from the very beginning. Most of all he was anxious about being disappointed.

  On the first day his greatest fear was of turning up and finding that none of Mojo’s promises had materialised. He’d already envisioned setting off, telling himself not to be impatient, that everything was very difficult to organise, then darkness would fall and he’d realise that Mojo’s water wasn’t coming, that Mojo had left him in the lurch, or conned him, or both.

  And then the lorry appeared.

  A dented ZiL from Russia, dating back to the fifties or sixties, but still roadworthy. And not just one; Mojo had got hold of them all. The next lorry was parked one kilometre further on. And one kilometre beyond that, a third.

  “Aren’t the trucks there?”

  “They’re here.”

  “Don’t you like my trucks?” Mojo says sarcastically. “Would you rather Scania? Or M.A.N.?”

  It’s true, Mojo works with Russian, Indian and Chinese wrecks. But nobody expected anything different. Mojo has to take anything with wheels, even juggernauts or flatbed trucks if they’re big enough. Those lorries that aren’t tankers are loaded with plastic barrels, and you can tell how difficult it is to get hold of these by the fact that the water sometimes tastes of paint or diesel. But supplying the water is nowhere near as complicated as organising food.

  How do you feed one hundred and fifty thousand people? Who have nothing but the odd earthenware pot? The usual camp provision of flour, sugar and oil is pointless because these people have neither the time nor equipment to bake or mix their porridge. Some of the white exercise junkies have got concentrates, which are very practical, but Mojo had to kick-start deliveries of these, and if he didn’t steal them they would be unaffordable. What remained, to begin with at least, were carbohydrates and fats that are easy to portion up, such as bread, flatbread, nuts and dried fruits. In the first few days Mojo had to plunder a number of large bakeries. Well, not quite plunder, because he was reliant on them. So he gave them the money, but made it perfectly clear that virtually every other customer had to take a back seat. All the same it was hard to build up a continual supply. That’s not the main problem, however.

  “I don’t care which lorries you use. The problem is you.”

  Silence on the other end of the line.

  “Mojo?”

  Not a sound.

  “Mojo? Hello?”

  “Say that again.”

  “I don’t have the money. And you’re the reason why not.”

  “What’s goin’ on here? Do I look like some kinda service hotline?”

  “You’re preventing us from being able to pay you. We can’t give you anything from our coffers if you nail them shut! We need electricity.”

  “You’ve got electricity.”

  “Not enough. What use is it if only my smartphone works? Everyone has to pay their share, which means everyone needs a mobile!”

  “There are one hundred and fifty thousand of you. Do you think everyone can have their own plug socket in the middle of the desert?”

  “I don’t know what else to say, but if you want your money you’re going to have to sort that out. Not every phone needs to be charged every day, but every second day for sure. Maybe families can get by with one phone between them, maybe others can share sometimes, but the bottom line is that we need to be able to charge thirty thousand mobiles, at least. And we need generators that don’t cut out. And a mobile network.”

  Silence.

  “Hello? Do you get what I’m saying? If you don’t secure the electricity supply, you won’t get any money for ‘Baywatch’. Because it won’t work, no matter how afraid I am.”

  More silence.

  “I not trying to get your back up. I know I’m empty-handed. I know you could say any time you’re stopping deliveries because you’re not getting any money. Then we’d die and that would be that. But you’re in the best position to know what your daily cut of this can look like: ten thousand dollars, fifty thousand dollars.
I’m not getting a cent of this money, but it’s precisely the sum that’s going to slip through your fingers every day if you don’t sort out the electricity. Every single day.”

  Silence, but from the rustling he can hear that Mojo is still on the line.

  “The same is true of food and water. If someone’s got nothing to drink today, they can’t pay tomorrow. The more that make it, the more money ends up in your lap.”

  “If you make it,” Mojo says defiantly.

  “If we don’t, no-one will embark on this journey after us. And for every convoy that doesn’t set off you’ll lose the same amount. Every day. Man, you can bathe in money, but we need electricity.”

  “Hey, watch that tone of yours, amigo!”

  “I don’t think I’m your amigo,” Lionel says, speaking as calmly and firmly as he can. “I’m your partner. I’m the guy who’s going to make you rich. If you give us electricity!”

  A short silence on the other end of the line, and the connection is cut.

  Lionel slips his mobile into his pocket. At that very moment he realises he’s made an unforgivable error. The woman plants herself in front of him. And while she squeals at him with every last breath of the air she’s been inhaling for twenty minutes, Lionel hopes, like a lovestruck young man, that Mojo is going to call back.

  23

  It’s completely unreasonable.

  Astrid von Roëll has to admit it looks sensational. But still, it’s completely unreasonable.

  Video now too!

  As if she were some kind of news manufacturer. Astrid is already writing this stupid blog until her fingers bleed. At least they feel like they’re bleeding, and that’s pretty much the same thing. One hundred lines a day, they said, and even that was madness. Ten weeks ago she had a week to produce one hundred lines, and what lines they were, bloody hell, it was verging on high literature. Her old head of copy would say, “Astrid, darling, I never have to make changes to your copy anymore. If everyone was like you I’d be able retire right now.”

  Now she’s churning it out like the women in the factories in the Second World War. It’s no surprise they fought to get the vote and Mothers’ Day. And one hundred lines – what a joke! Of course it didn’t stop at one hundred either: there had to be captions for the photos too, a line or two each. So that’s about a hundred and twenty. Sometimes Astrid feels she’s close to burnout. She needs to pace herself, so she doesn’t even bother reading through the dross she regurgitates for the Internet. She bangs it out, then she’s done with the shit. These people on their mobiles on the underground or the train or on the motorway don’t read it properly anyway, so why should she bother writing it properly? She only makes a real effort for the print edition. It still has to be literary grade, and even though all this stress makes it hard for her, Astrid does have her pride. But she’s beginning to wonder how on earth she’s going to get on top of all the work. And for the last fortnight they’ve been demanding videos too.

  “What more do you want from me?”

  “This is just an experiment,” the deputy blockhead said.

  “What do you mean, ‘experiment’?”

  “We’ve got an advantage here, a priceless advantage, largely thanks to you. Gala magazine, Bunte, they’re doing all they can to play catch-up—”

  “Just let them try! Who they are going to get to do it? Seelow?”

  “Yes, I know, they lack the quality, but they’ll try to make up for that with volume. More photos, more copy—”

  “And you’re asking me to compete with that on my own?”

  “Come on, a short video clip, it’s not so much—”

  “But I haven’t a clue how to do it!”

  This just slipped out. It’s something women should never do – claim to be a dummy when it comes to technology. After all, there’s nothing women can’t do just as well as men. But it was the truth. And so immediately they sent Kay to help her out.

  And Kay really is quite good. At what she does, in her own way. It’s not journalism, of course, but still. Kay has had herself strapped to the roof of the S.U.V. – now that’s pretty courageous. She’s sitting on the roof in cargo pants and a sand-coloured military blouse, over that a sleeveless jacket like those ones men usually wear, with plenty of little pockets for tools and accessories. She holds the camera even when they’re moving at top speed and zooms in on the pink zebra pick-up hurtling through the dusty desert beside them. Astrid can follow the footage on a monitor – that, at least, was a concession she wrested from the deputy blockhead.

  Kay has Nadeche Hackenbusch in full focus. Nadeche is standing in the cargo area at the back of the pick-up, holding on tight to the driver’s cab. Her long hair is fluttering in the wind and she’s wearing a checked shirt tied in a knot at the waist. Nadeche flies past the endless stream of refugees, some of whom wave at her, and she waves back with a broad smile.

  “Go!” she shouts, clenching her astonishingly strong-looking fist. “Go, go!”

  Her eyes are hidden behind an unbelievably cool pair of desert sunglasses, while her face, neck and bare arms are a deep brown. Nadeche looks so confident, so infectiously full of enthusiasm, as if the German border were already in sight. To glimpse her, you couldn’t imagine that this march might end badly. Astrid hears Kay knock once on the roof; the S.U.V. accelerates and overtakes the pick-up. Now Kay is filming Nadeche from the front. The screen shows Nadeche in the wind, behind her a cloud of dust rises, a picture of freedom and courage. Joan of Arc can’t have looked any more captivating. Priceless, Astrid thinks, simply priceless. What a shame millions of people will only see this on their smartphones. This kind of thing’s made for the big screen.

  Now Nadeche has spotted something. She hammers on the driver’s cab with a small clenched fist. Crazy. And not at all ladylike. Nadeche bends forwards, steadying herself on the wing mirror. Kay is filming all this. Nadeche yells something to the driver and it looks fantastic, like a captain in a storm with the water slapping his face, wind roaring, but it doesn’t bother him and he shouts to his helmsman . . . well, whatever they’d shout to each other in storms, because they’re real men. And this is exactly how Nadeche Hackenbusch looks just now. Then she straightens up, the pick-up slows down, veers off towards the convoy of refugees, and Kay captures the entire manoeuvre on film: Nadeche Hackenbusch to the rescue. The pick-up races at top speed towards the shoal of refugees like a helpful shark.

  She stops beside a family, a couple with three children. Their large plastic bottle has a leak. Nadeche leaps from the cargo area, a construction worker, firefighter and top model all in one. She casually pushes her sunglasses onto her forehead, her warm-hearted eyes shine from her dust-covered face. She grabs two plastic water bottles from the cargo area and hands them to the family. This is where you notice the difference: a guy would have tossed the bottles at them while driving past.

  “That reaches for today,” she says in her English. “Go, go!” She is about to climb back onto the pick-up when her mobile rings. She glances at the screen and gestures to Kay to press pause. Turning slightly to the side, she says, “Yes? . . . I can hear you fine . . . But I’m quite close to the T.V. car, so that may change if we drive off. How far away are you?”

  When Astrid gets out the heat hits her like a hammer, but anything’s better than sitting inside. She circles the car to find some shade.

  “Yes,” Nadeche says, “Yes. Aha. Yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes, you’re doing that already. But the question is: what’s the thing called!”

  Kay clambers down from the roof and comes round to where Astrid is standing. She sits on the ground, but leaps up because the sand is so hot. She fetches a small mat from the car and sits on that instead. She taps Astrid’s leg, but Astrid wants to stay on her feet.

  “Listen, don’t get angry with me, but like, what kind of a shit name is that?”

  Astrid peers over the roof at Nadeche, Nadeche looks at her and rolls her eyes. Astrid makes a “what to do?” gesture. She doesn
’t know what it’s about, but it’s clear Nadeche needs her support.

  “You might be able to use it for a cancer story, but just listen: The Hackenbusch Foundation. It sounds like it’s for ill people.”

  Nadeche grasps her head and looks at Astrid.

  “I know it’s all about suffering and that, but it shouldn’t sound ill and miserable. The people here might be poor, but they’re not sick. Or at least not so sick that it’s contagious. You can absolutely touch them, it’s not like cancer at all.”

  Now Nadeche makes an “I’m right, aren’t I?” face, and Astrid’s expression suggests she is right, but she makes a mental note to google it later.

  “No, it can sound serious without sounding shit. End of discussion. What else have you got? Children for the Future. Hmm. Hang on. Children for the Future?”

  Astrid is unsure. Should she say something or not? Children for the Future doesn’t sound wrong, but who knows if she . . .

  “Oh, right. Interesting. But now you see the mistake straightaway. You always have to say who’s behind it. I wouldn’t have known that about Steffi Graf either if you hadn’t told me . . . You see?”

  It’s crazy, all the things you have to take into consideration, Astrid thinks. She probably allowed herself to be fobbed off far too quickly when it came to the video thing. Yes, it’s great that her name will be in the credits. But she could have got more out of it.

  “Yes, yes, I know, Menschen für Menschen, but that’s logical. That Böhm guy, if I were in his shoes I wouldn’t give a toss. Nobody knows who he is these days. I mean, when did he last make a film, anyway?”

  Astrid rapidly waves her fingers back and forth across her throat – she knows the Sissi films very well – but Nadeche puts her hand over the phone and hisses. “Are you mad, Assi? This is like, important. It’s gonna take time.”

  Astrid tries other hand gestures to calm her down, but Nadeche has turned away in disgust. It’s hard to tell who’s pissing her off most at the moment.

  Kay takes two bottles of water and hands one to Astrid. She guzzles half of hers and pours the rest over her head. Astrid is just about to take a sip when she hears the frantic snapping of fingers.