The Hungry and the Fat

by Timur Vermes

“But from a purely technical point of view,” Klobinger says, coughing and thumping his chest, “from a purely technical point of view, this prosperity can also be salvaged by comfortably sailing around in a half-empty boat, can it not?”

  Leubl shakes his head.

  “Because sitting in the half-empty boat you’ve got people who’ve killed other people just to ensure they’re nice and comfy. They’re murderers and their killings will catch up with them. First they’ll try to play down the murders. Then they’ll try to excuse them. But that won’t work because everyone can see that the boat is half-empty. And so they’ll try to silence their critics. Do you understand?”

  “Is this inevitable?”

  “Absolutely. When bodies were floating in the Mediterranean in 2013, already then we were guilty of failing to help. But who would admit to that? People who’d never set eyes on a refugee in their lives began to paint themselves as victims. This initial lurch to the right was our reaction to corpses that were still two thousand kilometres away. What kind of lurch to the right would you expect if mass murder takes place outside our front door?”

  Klobinger ponders this. “Is this a warning about the end of democracy?”

  “No: the end of prosperity. Many believe you don’t need democracy in order to have prosperity. But the truth is: smartphones, Coca-Cola, the Internet, Porsche – whether or not you can develop these products decides whether you’re a Champions League country or a Division Two nation. Ideas like these don’t originate in Russia, Turkey or China, which is why refugees come to us rather than them.”

  “The Nazis came up with some very advanced inventions,” Klobinger needles him, “like the V2, for example.”

  “War is the father of all things, not the Nazis.” Leubl retorts. “But you’re right: a society of murderers needs enemies to keep the pace going. And this is why I won’t let the refugees be shot at.”

  Klobinger pauses, then says, “So what will you do?”

  “We’ll do what we ought to have done years ago. We’ll prepare ourselves and the German people for their arrival.”

  “For their arrival? Or for their staying here?”

  “Especially for their staying.”

  “And how do you intend to prepare the German people?”

  “We’ll tell them what’s coming: several hundred thousand people. The majority of these people will stay. More will come, and—”

  “But—”

  “—more will come and because we know and accept this we’ll be able to anticipate and process it in an orderly way. In the future we’ll have to train these people in their home countries. Those that apply themselves the most will be brought to Germany sooner. We’ll construct training centres, both in Africa and in eastern Germany, so that Helmut Kohl’s ‘blooming landscapes’ become a reality. We’ll spend billions, and by that I mean more like fifty than five. Every year. This will ensure that the people who come to our country are fit for purpose. And those critics in Germany who voice the loudest complaints – we’ll grab them by the scruff of the neck and see just how willing they are to pull their finger out for their country—”

  “Excuse me—”

  “—and I’ll enjoy watching those whingers refuse a decently paid job just so they can keep on being Nazis.”

  Leubl slaps his palm on the table and sinks back into his chair. Not in exhaustion, but more like a boxer waiting for his opponent to respond after landing some heavy blows.

  “Excuse me,” Klobinger says. “Herr Leubl, has any of this been agreed with the government?”

  “No,” Leubl says soberly.

  “But then . . . then all I see here is a minister venting his spleen. What you’re saying may be understandable and humane, but on a practical level it’s not going to change anything.”

  “You’re mistaken,” Leubl says slowly. “Some things in life are not about justice, the law or authority, but about reality. Look, there’s nobody jumping at the task. Nobody wants to shoot defenceless people. I’m the one shouldering the responsibility here. You won’t hear anyone in the chancellery saying, ‘Leubl’s wrong, we’ll open fire instead of him.’ If anyone has a different solution to the problem, I’ll be out of office an hour after this programme’s finished. But tomorrow morning you’ll see I’ll still be in my job. There is, however, some good news too.”

  “Which is?” Klobinger sounds floored.

  “First, there’s an excellent chance that we’ll be able to maintain our level of prosperity in the future. Second, we’ll have better-trained immigrants than any other country in the world. For we’ll be able to train them according to our needs. The deal is: we offer them protection and an income, and they help us out in return. Third, with a little luck, other affluent nations will be able to copy our model.”

  Klobinger says nothing; Leubl smiles at him. “Have some water.” Klobinger obeys, flabbergasted. Then he says, “And this from a C.S.U. man . . .” Leubl shrugs. He picks up the carafe of water and refills Klobinger’s glass.

  “You know, in the C.S.U. you sometimes have to adopt ruthless standpoints so people don’t go running off to Nazi parties. Because it’s the C.S.U.’s job to dilute Nazi thinking with conservative positions in a way that’s compatible with democracy. But at some point I realised that the opposite was happening: our Christian core was being swamped by Nazi sauce.”

  “Well, er . . . that’s a nice note to finish on,” Klobinger says to the camera in dismay. “Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Next time we have . . . er . . . er.”

  Leubl picks up the cards and helpfully hands them to Klobinger, who hurriedly scans the last one until he finds what he’s looking for: “. . . yes, er . . .”

  Klobinger falters, then says with a croaky laugh, “No, I’m sorry, I really don’t think that’s going to happen now.”

  42

  That shitgibbon!

  Sensenbrink is sitting in his chair, one fist clenched. He doesn’t know what to do with this fist. He could slam it down on the armrest, but that wouldn’t be enough. The table won’t do it either. So he keeps it raised and clenches it even tighter, like a hedgehog when it’s been prodded.

  “Now he thinks of it. Now!”

  Beate Karstleiter assumes a contrite expression. It is deathly quiet around the table. Sensenbrink is shaking his head, pale with rage. His other hand shoves a large pile of papers in disgust, then grabs them and sends them sailing across the room with a scream of anger.

  “It’s totally fucked!”

  “Hold on a sec,” Karstleiter says cautiously. “Maybe we won’t have to bin everything quite yet—”

  “Oh, really?” Sensenbrink sneers. “The minister of the interior has just given the entire nation spoilers about how our show’s going to end. On primetime telly.”

  “Probably going to end.” Karstleiter makes a flappy gesture with her hands, something between appeasement and deference. “Probably. Maybe.”

  “Maybe? Right, here’s a simple question. Do you think A.R.D. is going to shove another edition of ‘Focus’ before ‘Tatort’ on Sunday night? Tell you what, let’s do a little poll here so we can include the others too. Hands up those who think that in a fortnight’s time, we’ll get to watch ‘Tatort’ at the normal time on Sunday!”

  Sensenbrink doesn’t wait for the result. He doesn’t say it, but everyone knows what he means. The broadcaster has pretty much freed up the whole schedule for him that day. The Grand Prix has been booted off and they’ve given him the evening slot, 8.15 p.m., when they usually put on a Hollywood blockbuster. To transmit the showdown. Hundreds of thousands of migrants marching live to the Turkish border, with nobody knowing how the guards are going to react. The most appealing refugees at the front, women and children, with no certainty they’ll survive the evening. It’ll be the most exciting news broadcast since the fall of the Berlin Wall, with one of Germany’s most beautiful women as its star. A dozen teams of drones, pictures from every angle, a hundred refugees wired up to cameras an
d transmitters, images from right next to the fence, even if shots are fired.

  “Just picture it,” Sensenbrink said to the small gathering of top executives. “The Turks shoot, we check the images in the production control room and you get it all: the flinching, the fear, the panic. These brave people can’t go away and don’t want to, we see it, we hear the original sound, then camera 52 wobbles, the director notices and immediately switches, but camera 52 goes down, two more shots and there’s slight movement to begin with. And then” – Sensenbrink paused briefly – “then . . . nada. And we see an unchanging picture from ground level. A little crooked, a final movement . . . then . . . it remains static.”

  Nobody stirred. Fifteen or twenty seconds of silence before Kärrner said, half in jest, “Maybe it just fell over.”

  To which Sensenbrink calmly replied, “Yes, maybe.”

  At that moment he had Sunday in the bag. Five hours of live broadcasting. And open-ended, too.

  Now they’re going to have his balls for breakfast. What are we going to broadcast on Sunday now, Herr Sensenbrink? The same people as ever, but this time with cameras in their buttonholes? May we remind you that “refugeecam” was introduced after the first three months? People even cracked jokes about it, remember? You can go now, Herr Sensenbrink. Thanks for nothing.

  “Maybe they won’t do it . . .” Reliable Anke offers.

  “What??”

  “Well, perhaps they’ll have a rethink . . .”

  “Without telling us?” Sensenbrink waves his hand in resignation. “No, one thing’s for certain: if the Turks were going to be kind enough to act as a buffer for us, someone would have given us the heads-up already.”

  “But the others don’t want to ruin their story either,” Karstleiter says. “If the Turks helped us, the A.f.D. and all those who feed off panic would try to play it down. I mean, the social networks absolutely thrive on panic.”

  “But then the government would say so. And the Turks would hold a press conference on the inviolability of their borders, national sovereignty, state monopoly on violence, blah blah blah . . .”

  “All the same, you never know what the Turks will come up with. It may be that negotiations are going on,” Olav says serenely.

  “It’s politics, and in politics everything is still a question of price,” Karstleiter agrees.

  “O.K., smart-arses. It’s cost Germany three billion just to get them to keep an occasional eye on their coastline. How much do you think we’d have shell out to have them open fire on defenceless people on live, primetime television? Calculators out – if it’s south of fifty million then I’ll pay it out of the advertising revenue.”

  “Fifty billion?” someone suggests.

  “Don’t bother trying to figure it out,” Sensenbrink barks. “They wouldn’t do it for all the money in the world.”

  “Come on, let’s all try to be level-headed about this,” Karstleiter says, playing matron. “What has changed? The Turks won’t open fire. Fine. But listening to all of this, it doesn’t sound like they would ever have opened fire anyway. So in the end nothing has changed.”

  “Our pain point isn’t that the film would have changed,” Sensenbrink sighs. “Our pain point is that the old fool has told everyone how it’s going to end.”

  “And it’s true the other channels have the better story,” Reliable Anke says. “The grassroots of the C.S.U. are in uproar, everyone’s debating whether Leubl’s right, the far right are gaining supporters by the million—”

  “That spontaneous demo in Berlin straight after the programme – the police counted one hundred thousand people. In the middle of the night!”

  “If the police say it was a hundred thousand, you can be sure it was double that.”

  “And again this evening!”

  “A.R.D. and Z.D.F. are covering all of this. And what are we doing? Scratching our arses. We might as well forget the ‘refugees prepare for the border’ routine. Two weeks of preliminary reporting down the pan.”

  “How about we opt for the wedding?” Karstleiter says.

  This is Karstleiter’s one drawback, Sensenbrink thinks. She’s not a writer. At least he can rely on Olav to put her right here. Or Reliable Anke, because Olav is glancing at his mobile and is about to leave the room with an “I’ve got to take this” gesture.

  “Didn’t we say we were going to be off-grid?” Sensenbrink says poisonously.

  “Yes,” Olav says, almost out of the door, “but only if it’s not important.” Sensenbrink throws a pen across the room in resignation.

  “Well, what about the wedding?” Karstleiter persists. “That would be a great story, wouldn’t it?”

  “We could do the wedding, but only if Herr Sensenbrink expressly wishes it,” Reliable Anke says. “To be honest we wouldn’t recommend it. On the contrary.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Well, the writers.”

  “Why not? A wedding would be fantastic!”

  “But only if the rest of the story is right,” Reliable Anke says. She sighs because she’s having to explain something that everyone in the room already knows, with the exception of Karstleiter and perhaps the Hayat girl: “‘Nadeche and Lionel marry after their happy arrival’ – what a lovely story. ‘Nadeche and Lionel marry because they don’t know if they’ll still be alive tomorrow’ – an even lovelier story.”

  “Like Hitler and Eva Braun,” Sensenbrink adds generously.

  “But ‘Nadeche and Lionel marry because there’s nothing else going on’,” Reliable Anke says, her hands mimicking a small explosion, “that’ll go phut. It’ll be like those people who feel they have to renew their vows to save their marriage.”

  “O.K., O.K., it was just a suggestion.”

  “Quite apart from the fact that our lovely lady isn’t even divorced yet,” Sensenbrink says. “By the way, is that in the pipeline now? Has von Kraken agreed? Who’s seeing to this?”

  A hand in the second row goes up and an older woman says, “We’re onto it. Together with Evangeline. It’s probably just a question of money.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that Nicolai von Kraken wants money from Nadeche. He seems like a most unpleasant type, really sleazy—”

  “What do you mean ‘sleazy’?” Sensenbrink says, irritated. “Does he deserve the money or not?”

  “It’s a matter of perspective . . .”

  Sensenbrink’s jaw stiffens.

  “. . . but from a purely legal standpoint, probably.”

  “But not morally, or what?”

  “Well, there are complications there.”

  “Like what?”

  “It’s not as if Nadeche is short of money,” Karstleiter says.

  “Short of money? No. But from what I hear the problem is that there have been a lot of divorces among Frau Hackenbusch’s circle of friends. And Frau Hackenbusch clearly hasn’t yet heard of one where the wife pays money to the husband.”

  “Because usually it’s the guy who’s got the money,” one of the goatherds says. Sensenbrink gives a nod of agreement in his direction. “Exactly. But where would he get his money from? She only needs to take a look at what the so-called producer has produced in the last few years. It falls into two categories: flop and hot air.”

  “Yes, but I bet Frau Hackenbusch still thinks a case in which the woman ends up paying can only be the result of adultery. Which means she’ll insist it goes to court and we can forget a quick divorce altogether.”

  “No,” Sensenbrink says. “If push comes to shove we’ll pay off the jizztrumpet ourselves. She doesn’t give a shit about justice so long as she doesn’t have to fork out. We’ll sort it. Then they can get married the day after tomorrow. But it’s true the wedding will be crap if it goes ahead just for the sake of it. Shower me with some more ideas.”

  “We could complain to the government and urge them to do something . . .” Hayat suggests.

  “Yes, of course. ‘Dear constitutional court,
please save my television programme’,” Sensenbrink scoffs.

  “We could show the other side,” Karstleiter suggests.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, after every episode of ‘A2’ we could have a quarter of an hour on Pegida.”

  “Like that weird postscript to ‘Germany’s Next Top-model’? The programme after the programme?

  “That sort of thing.”

  “Right, and then we could have the programme after the programme after the programme, where the chief of police voices his concerns and then the caretaker’s brother-in-law . . . no, that’s too cheap. We’re doing a show about angels and heroes, not Nazis.”

  “They’re not all Nazis . . .”

  Although the spontaneous laughter that erupts in the room doesn’t get them any further, at least it relieves the tension. Karstleiter is just trying to get people to shut up again when the door opens and Olav comes in.

  “Look who’s back!” Sensenbrink says, with more than a hint of reproach. The criticism merely bounces off Olav, though not on account of his usual complacency. Olav is tense to the core. He bends to Sensenbrink and Karstleiter, after which Karstleiter says pretty quickly, “O.K., let’s take a break and reconvene at five. Until then I’d like all of you to try and come up with a contingency plan.”

  There is frowning all around and chairs are shifted. Everyone goes back to their office, and only Reliable Anke hears Olav say to Sensenbrink as she goes out:

  “If that’s really true, they won’t schedule ‘Tatort’ for later on Sunday. They’ll drop it altogether.”

  43

  She should put the joint in the deep freeze. Definitely, in fact: there’s far too much meat for just her, even if Binny has some too.

  If Joseph doesn’t come home tonight the joint will be too much. So she’ll have to freeze it.

  It’s fine.

  It’s quite simple, actually.

  She stands up.

  She sits down.

  She doesn’t know anyone who enjoys roast meat as much as he does. All kinds of meat. Even pickled pot roast, but only when she makes it. “I’ve had far too many disappointments in restaurants,” he always says. “Most places can do a fried schnitzel, but a roast, I mean a decent roast, even a really good roast . . . oh my. And the dumplings.”