by Timur Vermes
Nadeche leaped up and told Echler that this was out of the question. That Lionel wasn’t the person Echler was portraying him as and that, unlike Echler, Lionel was a decent man, a man with a heart, a conscience, who would never, under any circumstances, abandon those people who had placed their trust in him. She wouldn’t either, she and her cameras were staying with these people for as long as it took to get them to Germany. He should take his cheap little attempts at bribery elsewhere, because that’s exactly what this was, a cheap little attempt at bribery. He was trying to corrupt thirty or one hundred people with a German passport, his filthy loose change and some crappy chief executive post.
Of course she saw the look in Lionel’s eyes. She’d completely ruined his moment. He’d wanted to play it cool, he’d wanted to elegantly walk away from this sleazy guy and all his stupid offers, like great politicians do. He’d probably wanted to casually bargain Echler up to one thousand colleagues, and then send him packing with a smile so that this man from Germany felt his own meanness in his bones, so that the lesson made an impression on his dull, mediocre brain. But sometimes there’s no time or scope for education. And by now they’d made their point perfectly clear. All the same, Lionel was mightily pissed off when Echler went away with his tail between his legs. For a brief second it even looked as if Lionel were weeping with anger, and he actually sent her away because he was ashamed. But those are the very tears for which she loves him.
But the strangest thing of all was that if she didn’t know him better, she could almost have believed that Lionel was furious with her.
41
Try as he might, Leubl can’t place this man’s face. Leubl has unbuttoned his suit jacket, the man is about to attach his mic, then Leubl will fasten his jacket again, concealing the wire that runs to the battery. Leubl will place the battery where it least bothers him. Like the inside pocket of his jacket.
“You can put the battery where it least bothers you,” the man says. “Like the inside pocket of your jacket.”
Leubl scrutinises the man as the tiny microphone is clipped to his lapel. It’s just good manners as far as Leubl’s concerned. It’s a fact that if you travel a lot and appear often in the media you can’t remember everybody you meet, but Leubl tries his best. He doesn’t want the microphone man merely to be a microphone man. And this doesn’t just go for microphone men; when he’s been to a hotel he’ll still have a good idea of what the chambermaid looked like a couple of days later, as well as the waitress who requested his room number at breakfast and asked whether he’d like tea or coffee. He doesn’t just know the journalists, he has a sharp memory for the different photographers too, even those who work on smaller regional newspapers. But it simply doesn’t work with television staff.
The microphone man says something Leubl’s heard a hundred times before and forgets again immediately. Today heralds the beginning of his goodbyes, of that there is no doubt. And he won’t miss the T.V. studios.
How long has he been in politics? Fifty-one years? Fifty-three? It depends on where you start counting. The only thing that’s certain is that he was motivated by sheer disgust to begin with, rather than an active interest in politics. He had an aversion to the thing that called itself the student movement, and which kept sucking up people who weren’t students at all. His friends, apprentices, artisans, members of the chess club (obviously), even some from the football club! Leubl still gets angry thinking about it. He feels as if the ’68ers stole his youth.
He remembers his disbelief at the success of this fad. Because – and this needs spelling out clearly – it was nothing but a bloody fad. But the ’68ers’ secret was to act as if they were far more than this, as if they had an entitlement that was far more important than just a desire to do things differently from their parents. Leubl takes a deep breath.
“Is something wrong?” the man without qualities says.
When Leubl makes a few practice movements the microphone cable doesn’t tauten or bother him. He glances at the man, they agree that the work is done and they part company. Leubl wouldn’t be able to give an adequate description of him later. He returns to his dressing room and waits for his cue.
A few magazines lie around on the table. Including Evangeline. There’s a small article about Uschi Glas. Uschi Glas. One of the few who didn’t lose their head back then, even though the pressure was great. People can’t imagine this today. Nowadays everyone pretends these were just harmless people who stuck tulips in soldiers’ rifles. And what could be wrong with that? Aren’t flowers the best things that can come out of the barrel of a rifle?
But these weren’t dreamers or idealists, at least most of them weren’t. They were just irritating windbags who spotted their chance. Oh, the self-righteousness with which they disparaged most people as bourgeois and extolled themselves as shining revolutionaries! And the dictatorial attitudes. They replaced the mustiness of the crusty academics in their gowns with their own mustiness: the endless discussion, the frightful hair and the dreadful rhetoric where you had to be careful to avoid mentioning certain things, and instead say “relations of production” as often as possible, or “critical” or “counter-revolutionary”. And the only reason this stale worship of Marxist texts worked was because they’d discovered the pill and the cheap revolutionaries had secured the most desirable girls. Which was why any bright lad jumped on the bandwagon sooner or later. And then the less desirable girls. And the not so bright boys. It was all so transparent, but nobody minded. Apart from him. He had no desire to spout phrases about the proletariat and the equal cooperation of all forces of production just so he could be with Elisabeth Förtsch, and join her in idolising Rudi Dutschke.
And so he joined the C.S.U.
So that was that as far as Elisabeth was concerned. And for what? Three years later she was pregnant like every other country girl, the difference being that her revolutionary father wouldn’t pay a penny for his child. She accepted this, even thought of it as emancipation.
Leubl picks up the magazine and leafs though it absentmindedly. A veritable journey through time. Not everyone ages as elegantly as Senta Berger. And here’s Uschi Glas again, who’s transformed herself into a mother of the nation.
There’s a knock at the door. A young assistant peers in and says, “Are you ready, Herr Leubl?” Leubl gets up and follows her.
“You know the routine?” she says.
He nods. “I’ve been on Klobinger twice already.” But he knows the explanation is going to follow.
“Sure, but just to be on the safe side and because we’ve got a new production manager. I’d like you just to sit down for me so we can get the lighting right. I’m not gonna to lie, we could use someone else for this, but like I said we’ve got a new production manager and he doesn’t believe in lighting doubles.”
“The whole world is full of questions of belief,” Leubl says patiently. He gives the assistant another glance: she’s got brown hair. He could have sworn it was black or dark-red earlier.
She takes Leubl into the studio and over to his chair. On the way he shakes hands with all the cameramen, lighting assistants and runners, partly to be friendly, but also out of habit. These people are voters too, after all. Robert Klobinger isn’t there yet. Leubl sits down, swivels in his chair, sinks into it. There was a time when he used to be nervous, but then he gave his first interviews when there were only three channels, and each television appearance got as many viewers as an international football match. Today he knows that most mistakes are forgotten, despite YouTube. Klobinger arrives on set, they shake hands and a brief announcement comes over the studio loudspeaker. Leubl gets up and goes off set, where he stands between two walls of compressed wood like a customer in a joinery. An assistant goes up to the table in front of Klobinger, puts a hand to his earphone, raises the other hand and counts down with his fingers: five, four, three, two, one. The last finger points at Klobinger and with a sleek movement the assistant vanishes like a magician in a stage show.
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Klobinger greets the audience. A short introductory film shows Nadeche Hackenbusch and that idiotic but ingenious Lionel, their march with the hundreds of thousands, at once simple and colourful, like Xenophon’s March of the Ten Thousand, Mao’s Long March, Gandhi’s Salt March, Mussolini’s March on Rome and hundreds of other marches throughout history. Nothing needs reinventing, Leubl thinks. Basically everything’s always the same.
The film shows the severity of the early days, their passage through the desert, beneath the Suez Canal. The presentation is gratifyingly sober; on R.T.L. they would have probably coated these images – powerful enough in themselves – with some bittersweet music. Then come the mass demonstrations which grow larger week by week, the election results, the survey findings. The film shows the general feeling of unease and those that feed off it.
When the film ends, Klobinger introduces today’s studio guest and Leubl strides over to his seat. He strides well; over the years he must have walked an entire Camino de Santiago for all the news features he’s done. Leubl in the corridors of parliament, Leubl on his way down the stairs. Don’t look into the lens, keep relaxed, walk past the camera. It’s always the same.
“. . . Federal Minister of the Interior, Joseph Leubl, C.S.U. Delighted to have you on the programme. You’ve seen the film and on several occasions you’ve highlighted the obstacles awaiting this procession of people. How surprised are you that the refugees have made it this far?”
Leubl shakes his head. “Not particularly. What is surprising is that nobody came up with this idea before. I mean, it was only a matter of time. The truth is, you can only lose your life once. If these people are prepared to put their lives on the line for a perilous sea crossing, then why not undertake a perilous march instead?”
Klobinger looks at him in amazement. Leubl savours the moment. He’s spent long enough reciting the usual formulas into a microphone. He knows what’s going to happen. The weakness he’s showing is too enticing, and now Klobinger’s going to have to ignore his pre-prepared list of questions. Leubl sees Klobinger absentmindedly twiddle the card in his hands. Then, as if he had written it down for him in advance, Klobinger obediently asks:
“Why isn’t Germany better prepared? Have you failed?”
“I think you know as well as I do where the responsibility for this lies. The voters didn’t want to see any more refugees, so we politicians built them a privacy screen. We closed the borders in Africa and dammed up the flow of refugees. Everyone knows what happens when you construct a dam without allowing for any outlet – the dam overflows or bursts.”
“I don’t know whether flooding is the right analogy here—”
“Take it as you wish.”
“—but to stick to your metaphor, perhaps your dams aren’t good enough.”
“You may complain, but people were perfectly aware of what we were doing. We signed agreements with Morocco, Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia – and these are the most stable of the lot. You wouldn’t buy a second-hand car in any of these countries, nor would I, and nor would the voters out there. And if you concentrate millions of people who might not have sufficient money to pay people smugglers today, but enough for the 2015 prices, then all in all there’s enough money for them to go where they like on foot if they’re clever about it.”
“But the agreements—”
“You can stop ten refugees, fifty, one hundred, but not a quarter of a million of them, particularly not if you’ve got T.V. cameras marching alongside. And if these people can persuade you that they don’t intend to stay in your country, then what happens is exactly what we’ve seen: rather than stopping the refugees, the military guides them through. At most the army will check to see no-one gets up to anything they shouldn’t.”
Klobinger is visibly reeling. He puts his pile of cards down, because the next question is his own.
“Are you saying that these people are going to continue with their trek?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And who’s going to stop them?”
“I don’t know,” Leubl says. “Maybe I.S.I.S. could have done.”
“Are you being serious?”
“You, like anyone else, can look at the map. They’ve got to Turkey. Are the Turks going to stop them? Not with force.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve spoken to my Turkish colleagues.”
“But don’t the Turks have to—”
“Let me tell you what’s going to happen. The refugees will arrive at the Turkish border. And then they’ll keep going. Very slowly. They’ll press against the border fence or whatever it is in their path. Put yourself in the shoes of a Turkish border guard. You’ve got a choice: either you commit a mass slaughter of defenceless people before the eyes of the world on prime-time television, or you watch these people crush themselves to death against your fence.”
“Did you come up with that?”
“No, I’m just relaying what that Lionel fellow has told his Turkish contacts.”
“That they’ll march to their deaths?”
“No, that they’ll risk their lives just as they have before. But far more efficiently than in the rubber dinghy lottery.”
“What about the Turks?”
“So what do we think the Turks will do? If the refugees follow through with this, the Turks will open their gates. Why should the Turks slaughter people on our behalf?”
“Because . . . because maybe they’ll hold on to the refugees?”
“You know as well as I do that Turkey isn’t exactly a dream destination. These people want to come here. And now guess what Lionel said he’d do at the next border? He doesn’t need to come up with a new idea every time. One will do.”
“Are you telling me you think they’ll make it all the way to the external border of the European Union?”
“No.”
“But who’s going to stop them?”
“You’ve misunderstood me, Herr Klobinger,” Leubl says calmly. “They’re not coming to the external border of the European Union, they’re coming to Germany.”
“But what about the Hungarians, the Austrians . . . ?”
“We’ve had enough experience of the solidarity of our eastern partners. I’m not counting on their help. They’ll let the refugees through just like they did last time.”
“Yes, but . . . but that means you’ll have to be prepared to . . . to defend the German border by force of arms.”
Leubl takes a deep breath. He’s seldom been as relaxed as now. He leans forwards, but only slightly; he doesn’t want to overemphasise his response. “Against the refugees? No.”
Klobinger was counting on a longer answer. An evasive answer. A different answer. Leubl can tell this because first Klobinger grabs his pile of questions in confusion, then puts them down again.
“Have I understood you clearly?”
“I think so.”
“You wouldn’t give an order to that effect?”
“I won’t.”
“Has this . . . erm . . . has this been agreed with the federal government?”
“I’ve agreed it with myself.”
“Er . . . I’m, er . . . so that falls within your remit. As . . . as minister of the interior.”
“That’s correct.”
“So then – and do forgive me for putting it like this – but then that probably spells the end of your tenure as minister of the interior.”
“Possibly. The government is welcome to look for someone else who has a different take on the situation. But I doubt they’ll find anyone prepared to break their oath of office.”
“What do you mean ‘break’? The oath of office demands the protection of our borders.”
“The oath of office demands we promote the welfare of the people and protect them from harm.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Only if you consider refugees to be harmful.”
Momentarily Klobinger looks as though he’d like to call
for a commercial break.
“Do you view it differently?”
“Viewed objectively, refugees are a sure indication that the quality of life is better here than say in Russia.”
“Allow me to recap. The federal minister of the interior is saying on German television that he’s refusing to prevent hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossings? Because in his opinion such a large number of refugees is a seal of approval for Germany?”
“If you’re going to recap, please do it correctly. I’m refusing because thousands of dead refugees would constitute the greater harm,” Leubl says, before adding, “For the time being.” Klobinger is obliged to follow this up.
“For the time being?”
Leubl leans back, and there is a composure and calmness to his voice. “Take the analogy of the lifeboat. When it’s full, letting anyone else in will endanger the lives of those in the boat. And so they have to shoot to save lives. But everyone knows what the lifeboats on the Titanic looked like: they were half-empty. Anyone shooting now would be a murderer.”
“Are you now telling me that the boat is half-empty?”
“It’s getting emptier as we speak. Because this is no ordinary boat, this boat isn’t made of wood, it’s made of an economy that functions incredibly smoothly. And the more people there are working in this economic system, the more room there is inside the boat. So if you do it properly, this boat grows while you’re sitting in it.”
“Are you saying, then, that we should take in refugees so we can take in even more refugees?”
Leubl nods.
“And when will that become fewer again?” Klobinger asks smugly before taking a sip of water.
“It won’t.”
Klobinger chokes; Leubl passes him a handkerchief. “But this will allow us to salvage some of our prosperity,” he says.
