Authors: Jakob Arjouni
When we arrived, Rashid had commented dryly on the special presentation of Stullberg’s novel with, ‘On account of his back trouble.’
There was a whole shelf full of copies of his own novel,
Journey to the End of Days
, with a quotation from
Le Monde
above it. ‘Seldom have relevance of content and formal expression achieved such perfect symbiosis.’
‘A great quotation,’ said Katja Lipschitz.
‘Well,
Le Monde
is always
Le Monde
,’ agreed Rashid.
And I said, ‘Makes you want to read it right away.’
Katja Lipschitz gave me an expressionless look before pointing to the corner next to the hospitality room. ‘We thought you could sit there. You’ll have a good view of the stand, and you’ll be relatively inconspicuous. Malik will be interviewed by journalists and talk to readers and booksellers at the table in front of you.’
‘Great,’ I said, putting the bag containing my ironed shirt and pin-stripe suit for the evening occasion with Dr. Breitel down on the chair intended for me. Rashid pushed his gleaming black rucksack with a little Canadian flag patch
sewn onto it and the inscription
Vancouver International Writers’ Festival
in red under the table, explained that he was going off for a moment to see people, and began walking round the stand saying hello to the publishing staff; with a hug and a kiss on both cheeks for the women, and a hearty handshake for the men. ‘Great book, Malik!’ ‘Immensely touching!’ ‘A really important text!’ ‘My favourite new book this year!’
While Katja Lipschitz turned away to use her phone, I looked around for places where Rashid and I could take cover if need be. In front of us was the aisle with the constant flow of visitors to the Book Fair, to the right the Maier Verlag tables where staff members were discussing sales figures, developments at the Book Fair, personal details, events they were going to attend and the latest Book Fair gossip – ‘Gretchen Love!’ – ‘She’s bound to be on the non fiction best-seller list next week!’ – ‘Crazy!’ – ‘Scandalous!’ To our left there was the partition between Maier Verlag and the neighbouring publisher. On that partition was Rashid’s shelf with new copies of his novel, some three hundred of them, the quote from
Le Monde
blown up large, and a photo of Rashid propping his head on three fingers and looking as amused and superior as he had when I walked into the lounge of the Harmonia Hotel.
So the only possible cover was the hospitality room. But by the time we had got the sliding door behind us open and closed again, and flung ourselves down among the trays of rolls and crates of bottled water, any assassin worth his salt would have finished off Rashid with a knife taken from the nearest pizza trolley and disappeared into the throng of visitors again.
Besides my suit for that evening, my bag also contained a baseball bat, pepper spray and a pair of handcuffs. I unzipped it and placed the handle of the baseball bat close to the side of the bag so that I could get at it as quickly as possible. I also
took my pistol out of my back holster behind me and put it in the right-hand side pocket of my corduroy jacket. No one could spot the gun there, and I could shoot through the jacket itself.
‘I hope you’ll be careful with that.’ Katja Lipschitz came up to me and pointed to my jacket pocket. ‘I’ve been observing you. I mean, there can also be exuberant fans who might want to embrace Malik.’
‘Then that’s their bad luck. I rather like firing at random, you know. Right here in the aisle with all the visitors coming to see the show you’re bound to hit someone. By the way, do you have those threatening letters with you?’
We looked at each other.
After a pause, Katja asked, ‘Do you have a wife, I wonder?’
‘You mean am I gay?’
‘No, just wondering if anyone lives with you?’
‘You’d be surprised: I’ve been in good hands for more than ten years. We share an apartment, no affairs – at least on my part – which is why I’m so good-tempered, so easy to please, a man surrounded by the warmth of a feminine nest. Sorry about that, in case you were interested in your chances.’
Katja Lipschitz uttered a brief laugh.
‘How about those threatening letters?’
‘Would the letters change anything in your approach?’
‘Yes. I’d know whether I can rely on the information of the lady who hired me.’
Another pause. I heard a cry from one of the other Maier Verlag tables. ‘Here, see this text message! Number one!’ – ‘I don’t believe it!’ – ‘Well, to be honest, I wouldn’t mind having someone like Gretchen Love on our list too – you can always sell it as art!’ – ‘
Spermaboarding
as art? I don’t know about that.’ – ‘Is that the title?
Spermaboarding?
’ – ‘Yes, and something else as well.’
Finally Katja Lipschitz said, ‘A few weeks ago Malik said he’d received letters like that. Unfortunately he hasn’t brought
them yet. I’ve asked him several times.’ She looked at me challengingly. ‘Happy now?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘It’s all the same to me what you people do to crank up sales. But it’s part of my job to estimate roughly the extent of the danger for the person I am protecting and for myself. I’ll assume even more now that we shall have a peaceful afternoon.’
It took her a moment to overcome herself, and then she said, ‘Glad you are so relaxed about it. I’m sorry, working with authors’ – she hesitated – ‘well; they have their oddities, surprises – if you see what I mean?’
‘Of course – because they think too much.’
She smiled wearily. ‘Then that’s all right.’ And looked at the time. ‘I must get back to the phone now. If you need anything, then as I said, please ask me. See you later.’
Soon after that Rashid sat down at the table in front of me, and Katja Lipschitz’s young assistant, wearing a chic blue trouser suit, served him a cup of stewed coffee and a slice of coconut and banana cake.
‘Thanks, darling.’ He winked at her. ‘Mmm, that smells good. Let’s hope our young colleague writes as well as he bakes.’
‘Oh, he does,’ said the assistant with a friendly smile. ‘A great book, really moving. If you need anything please ask. The man from the
Bamberger Allgemeine
will be here in five minutes.’
‘What about the
Wochenecho
interview?’
‘We’re still working on it, Herr Rashid. Katja is doing all she can. The problem is that the journalist who agreed to do the interview had to withdraw at short notice for health reasons. I’m really sorry. As soon as there’s any news I’ll let you know.’
She turned to me. ‘Would you like a piece of cake too?’
‘No thank you, just a glass of water, please.’
As the assistant went to get the glass of water from the
hospitality room behind me and a cloudy aroma of Harz cheese and banana enveloped me from the open door, Rashid turned to me, glancing at the hospitality room. ‘Sweet, isn’t she?’ Then he held his cake fork aloft like a little sword. ‘An interview in the
Wochenecho
! If that comes off then the sales …’ And he drew a line slanting up in the air with his fork.
‘Great,’ I said.
A little later Katja Lipschitz’s assistant brought the journalist from the
Bamberger Allgemeine
to Rashid’s table. He was a stout, unshaven, uncombed, comfortable-looking man in his mid-forties in trodden-down shoes and a raincoat so crumpled that he might have spent the night in it. He let his apparently heavy shoulder bag drop on the floor and greeted Rashid exuberantly. ‘… A great honour for me … Very glad to … What a brave book … thank you for giving me your time.’
Rashid tried to return the compliments as far as he could. ‘… Very glad to meet you myself … thanks for
your
time …
Bamberger Allgemeine
, a great little paper …’
Then the journalist took an old-fashioned tape recorder out of the shoulder bag – ‘Afraid we don’t run to modern technology at the
Bamberger Allgemeine
yet’ – spent five long minutes getting the recorder to work, and finally began asking questions that he had noted down on a small piece of paper covered with food stains.
It was the first interview of Rashid’s that I had heard, and there were to be another eight that afternoon: with the
Rüdesheimer Boten
, the
Storlitzer Anzeiger
, the student journal
Randale
, with Radio Norderstedt and someone or other – and little as I liked Rashid myself, by at least the third or fourth interview I was feeling sorry for him all the same.
‘My dear Malik Rashid,’ went on the man from Bamberg, after a few trivial questions about Rashid’s place of birth and biography, ‘now let me take the bull by the horns: is your
masterly, compelling novel
Journey to the End of Days
not, above all, the subtle coming-out of a man from North Africa who has lived in Europe long enough to throw off the religious and traditional chains of his native land publicly and, so to speak, on behalf of many … how shall I put it? Like-minded men?’
‘What?’ Rashid’s mouth stayed open. He really did seem taken entirely by surprise. He had certainly expected journalists to broach the subject, but he was obviously not prepared for it to be the kernel, not only of this but of all the following interviews on his first day at the Fair. However much he explained that his central character’s homosexual love for a young hustler was a mixture of sexual frustration, longing for freedom, the desire for forbidden fruit, with at most a very slight amount of natural inclination, and that he as a writer was simply devising a conflict that would help him to describe the present state of Moroccan society – the one thing that interested the mostly unprepared and cheaply dressed men and women of Bamberg and Storlitz was: DOES THE MUSLIM AUTHOR PUBLICLY ADMIT TO HIS HOMOSEXUALITY?
Just after four o’clock, Sheikh Hakim called me on my mobile. I was standing at the wash basins in the gents’ toilet for the third time that afternoon, waiting for Rashid. Maybe it was the scalding coffee that he tipped cup after cup down his throat during the interviews, maybe it was the interviews themselves, but he was suffering from diarrhoea. As I stood next to the room full mainly of men urinating and watched how they carelessly soiled the floor, I gathered from their talk that there were three main topics of conversation at the Book Fair that day. First, Gretchen Love’s future best seller
Spermaboarding, or How a Hundred Men Came On Me All at Once
, just published by a large and famous firm, a kind of account of a Berlin porn star’s self-exploration. Second, the
Wochenecho
journalist Lukas Lewandowski, well known to everyone but me, judging by the general interest and all the laughter, who claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary in the high-speed train between Hannover and Göttingen on his way to the Book Fair, and thereupon dropped everything worldly, including his work, to devote himself entirely to that experience. Third, a presumably powerful literary critic whose name wasn’t mentioned but who was referred to as Blondi a couple of times – whether after the pop band, Hitler’s German Shepherd or simply his hair colour was not clear to me – who had published a novel entitled
Oh, My Heart, My Heart, So Heavy Yet So Light
under a pseudonym. That morning his supposedly top-secret pseudonym had been aired in several newspapers, and Blondi had marched up to one of the journalists responsible at the Fair and slapped his face. ‘Or more likely spat and scratched the little queen!’ said someone in the corner. ‘Oh, my heart, my heart, so heavy!’ Everyone laughed.
At that moment my mobile rang.
‘Good afternoon, my brother.’
‘Good afternoon. As far as I know I don’t have a brother. Who’s speaking?’
‘Sheikh Hakim.’
More laughter about something near the urinals.
‘Wait a minute, it’s rather noisy here.’
I went out into the corridor near the entrance to the toilet.
‘Herr Hakim?’
‘Kemal Kayankaya,’ he stated, pleased. He emphasised the Turkish pronunciation of my name.
‘Yes, you have the right number.’
‘Not a very Christian name.’
His speech rhythm had the monotony of an electric kitchen machine, and he had a strong accent, but grammatically his German was perfect. His sentences
sounded as if he had learnt them with heart – as if speaking German was for him a job to be carried out perfectly, like a dutiful official or a high-class whore, but that hardly interested him at all.
‘To me it’s just my name.’
He laughed, coughing.
‘Why do you fight the fact that you came into the world a Muslim?’
‘I don’t fight it, but I don’t make a big thing of it either. I didn’t choose it. Is that why you’re calling – for a discussion about the religious traditions of my parents’ native land?’
That coughing laugh again.
‘My secretary tried to arrange a meeting with you.’
‘He told me that you want to see me, and I advised him to fix a time. I’m not often in my office.’
‘So I see.’
‘You see what?’
‘Well, I am sitting in your office at this moment and it really doesn’t look as if you spend much time here.’
I took a great deal of trouble to go on in a calm voice. ‘Really? Did I forget to lock up?’
That laugh again. It was as mechanical and empty of feeling as his German, and had nothing to do with any kind of amusement.
‘Do you know what’s interesting?’ he asked, without answering my question.
‘A great many things in the world, Herr Hakim. But I assume you mean something that I won’t think of at once.’
‘As far as I can see there’s nowhere for you to sleep in your office. Forgive me, but I’ve never had a chance to see a real private detective’s workplace before, and it could have been like the films: that you earn just enough for schnapps and a folding bed behind the desk. And so, at least, I take it that you have a private apartment somewhere. The curious thing is that Methat has searched your office, has looked through all
the drawers and files with meticulous care, and he found no address anywhere to confirm my supposition. Do you understand? As if you had calculated on a situation like this and were intent on leaving no traces in your office leading to your private life. Maybe because there is a woman you love in your private life, maybe even children?’