Читать книгу Sorry - Shaun Whiteside - Страница 21

HIS ROOM IS AT the end of the corridor. His name is in brightly colored wooden letters on the door. Frank. He lives in his mother’s flat. On the walls there are pictures of guardian angels. Pink little fatties, lowering their heads in prayer; stormy angels, bathed in light. Soft filters and kitsch. The whole flat smells of air freshener, all the curtains are drawn, and a budgerigar sings from a tiny cage.

The mother adjusts her skirt, she can’t look Wolf in the eye. Her son is single, thirty-six years old, and a failure. She doesn’t know what she did wrong. Her hand trembles slightly as she pours out the coffee. Cups with floral patterns and gold rims. One of the cups has a crack at the top, and a dark lipstick stain can be seen in the crack. Wolf is glad it isn’t his cup. A glass of powdered milk is pushed in front of him. Wolf pushes it back. At last the mother starts talking. Her son is working at Lidl now, stacking shelves. He hopes to make it to cashier this year. Wolf isn’t learning anything new here. There isn’t a photograph of the son anywhere in the living room.

“It was all different in the old days,” says the mother and touches the coffeepot with the back of her hand to check that it’s really hot enough.

Wolf knows how different it was. Her son’s decline occurred incredibly quickly. There are still idiots who think they can surf the internet and download sex clips without anyone finding out. And then there are idiots who go in search of child pornography during their lunch break. The company sacked Frank Löffler without hesitation. Until September his monthly income was 3,377 euros before tax, a week later he was clearing the shelves at the discount supermarket for 9 euros an hour.

“He works till eight,” his mother says, “but he should soon have a break.”

By the door she clutches Wolf’s arm for a second.

“Luckily there wasn’t a scandal. I wouldn’t have survived a scandal under any circumstances.”

Frank Löffler looks exactly as you would imagine. Widow’s peak, belly hanging over his belt, greasy hair. His eyes are never still, his handshake is slack. After Wolf introduces himself, Löffler says he hasn’t got a break for twenty minutes and could they meet outside.

“The management doesn’t like us talking to the customers.”

“I’ll be over there,” Wolf says, crossing the street to a laundromat. He’s always liked laundromats. They’re like waiting rooms for people who never travel. Wolf gets a hot chocolate from the machine. Around him the washing swirls in the drums. A woman is sleeping on two chairs, she looks uncomfortable. Wolf wishes he’d brought something to read. He wonders when he was last in a place like this. Once he and a friend tried to break into a vending machine in the laundromat on the Kaiserdamm. Screwdriver and jimmy. They gave up after a quarter of an hour, when the screwdriver got stuck in the metal and wouldn’t come out again. They shared a hot chocolate and then cleared off. Sixteen years later Wolf is sitting in a laundromat on an uncomfortable plastic chair, checking his e-mails on his cell phone. Life is plainly treating him well.

Frank Löffler arrives on the dot. He steps outside the supermarket and looks up and down the street as if he doesn’t know what to do next. Wolf can understand why the company fired him. Frank Löffler is a born victim.

They walk around the block and past a playground. The children are screeching and throwing sand at a dog. Löffler tries not to look. He says he’s received threatening letters. One night a stone came through his car windshield. The neighbors saw nothing; they say it’s what you get.

“This is a respectable area,” Löffler explains, as if he understands people’s reaction. It makes things even worse because he’s innocent.

“I’m here because with that conversation your file will have vanished,” Wolf says. “You’re clean, or cleansed, or whatever you want to call it.”

Löffler doesn’t react; he probably didn’t understand. Wolf wants to shake him.

“The world’s your oyster again,” he says instead, as if Löffler had spent the last year in jail.

Löffler’s face flickers for a second, his hands move in his trouser pockets as if they wanted to come out. Wolf waits to be asked what happened. It takes a whole minute, then Löffler clears his throat:

“What happened?”

Four months after his dismissal the same download was discovered on another PC. The perpetrator wasn’t revealed, because he was a clever co-worker who sat down at his colleagues’ desks at lunchtime and scoured the internet as he saw fit. The company didn’t know what to do and installed blockers. No one mentioned Frank Löffler. It was as if he had never existed. For six months the head of the company lived with the fact that he had fired the wrong man and reported him to the police. Then his conscience got the better of him. He dropped the accusation and turned to the agency.

“And they don’t know who it was?” asks Löffler.

“One of your colleagues, that’s all we know.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway.”

Wolf agrees.

“How much?” Frank Löffler wants to know.

“Eighty thousand.”

He stops.

“As an apology?”

“As an apology.”

They’re a few yards away from the supermarket entrance. Wolf knows what Frank Löffler is thinking now. He’s wondering if he should take it to court. If he asked, Wolf would advise him against it. They aren’t in America. The company would say it was a mistake and apologize. There would be a headline in the Berliner Zeitung and Bild would just wearily wave it away. Everyone’s allowed to make mistakes. And anyway, who’s to say that Frank Löffler wasn’t one of those people?

“My mother mustn’t find out anything about this,” he begs Wolf, suddenly leans against the wall of the house and gasps for air, like someone who’s just emerged from the water.

“Not a word to my mother, you hear?”

Wolf has no idea why his mother mustn’t know about it. Perhaps he wants to punish her. He promises.

Löffler clutches his chest, takes a deep breath, and looks at Wolf properly for the first time.

“Who are you?”

“A protecting angel,” Wolf replies, and regrets it. As soon as he said it he saw kitschy pictures of guardian angels in his mind’s eye.

“No, really, who are you?” Löffler won’t let it go. “You’re not from the company, that much is certain.”

Wolf tells him about the agency and gives him a card.

“We do good,” he explains.

Frank Löffler stares at the card.

“You apologize for other people?”

His voice sounds slightly shrill when he says it. If he’s going to go all moralistic on me, I’ll have to smack him, Wolf thinks, taking the card back.

“Isn’t that unethical?” Frank Löffler asks.

“Depends on your point of view. The church does it one way, television another. We have ours.”

Löffler suddenly bursts out laughing. It’s okay. He isn’t laughing at Wolf or the agency. He’s laughing at life. Wolf knows that laugh. Drunks have it, and hysterical toddlers, enjoying themselves so much that they can’t calm down. Frank Löffler is a mess. He leaves Wolf where he is, without saying another word. He walks past the supermarket and crosses to the other side of the street. One thing is certain, Lidl won’t be seeing him again. Even though Wolf didn’t think him capable of it, for someone like Frank Löffler that’s a very good exit.

Five minutes later Wolf tells the head of the company that Frank Löffler has refused the offer and is threatening to take him to court.

“But …”

The company head falls silent. He senses that Wolf has more to say. Kris taught his brother how to stay quiet. Tell the customer what you have to tell him, then give him silence. Heighten the tension. Keep the client in suspense.

“We talked for a long time,” Wolf goes on. “Mr. Löffler would agree to a higher settlement. He would like to have the payment in installments, I’m sure you still have the bank details.”

Yes, he has them. Wolf tells the boss the amount. The boss clears his throat. Wolf smiles. He wishes all commissions were like this. It feels bloody great to be an angel.

He has just an hour before his next appointment, and goes to an Indian restaurant by the Schlesisches Tor. There are a few grains of rice on his chair, he brushes them off and sits down. He isn’t hungry, he needs people around him. Restaurants are perfect for that.

The midday tide has ebbed, only five tables are occupied, there are candles burning in the windows, the flames quiver in the warmth that rises from the heaters. Wolf orders soup, tea, and a glass of water. He turns his phone off for the next hour and rests his hands on the tabletop.

Calm.

Once it was a flock of birds that swirled in the air and made Wolf think of her eyes. Once it was the way a woman knocked her spoon against the edge of her cup. The world is full of triggers. Little tripping hazards for the memory. In his quiet moments Wolf seeks them out carefully.

The tea comes, the waiter puts a plate of poppadoms down on the table and says something about the weather. Wolf thanks him for the tea and waits until the waiter has gone. He smells, he tastes. The flavor of cardamom and the sweetness of honey make him sigh.

Erin.

Wolf knows that memories fade and undergo a transformation over the years, until in the end no one can tell whether they are memory or imagination. And because Wolf knows all that, he clings to every memory, no matter how insignificant, that leads him to Erin.

His second appointment is on Wiener Strasse opposite the Görlitzer Park. There’s no doorbell plate by the entrance to the building. The door is ajar and looks as if it’s been kicked open at least ten times a day. Next to the front door a gate leads to the rear courtyard. The gate is open too.

Wolf walks past bicycles, rubbish bins, and a sleeping cat lying on the stones. He glances at his watch. His appointment is at four; he still has a few minutes and taps a cigarette from the pack.

“Want one?” he asks the cat.

The cat’s belly rises and falls as if it feels completely safe. Wolf wishes he had the cat’s confidence. He looks up. A square of sky floats overhead. No clouds. In the distance the rustle of traffic, a slamming door, someone coughing. Right now Wolf doesn’t want to be anywhere else. It’s only in Berlin that cigarettes taste so good to him.

At the back of the building the air is stuffy. It smells of fried onions and boiled meat. The smell reminds Wolf of the jellied meat that his aunt always made. Her hands smelled like the house. Jellied meat was her speciality. Wolf tries to remember his aunt’s name. A woman in a headscarf comes toward him.

“Hi,” he says.

The woman lowers her eyes and presses herself against the wall so that he can pass. Her footsteps are barely audible on the steps. Wolf climbs further up the stairs. On the fourth floor he gasps for air, his armpits are steaming. He urgently needs a shower and he would really like to light the next cigarette.

A nameplate is missing; but as it’s the only door on this floor, Wolf has no choice. He rings. He waits. He knocks. The door swings inward.

Not good, not good at all.

There’s a light on in the hall. There’s a sound of music. Loads of bad films start exactly like this.

“Hello? Mrs. Haneff?”

Wolf pushes the apartment door a little further open.

“Hello? I’m from the agency. We e-mailed each other yesterday.”

No reaction.

If that was Mrs. Haneff coming down the stairs toward me, then …

Wolf thinks about simply leaving again.

Maybe Frauke got the dates mixed up.

“Hello?”

The hall floor is dirty. There are scratches along the wallpaper, on one wall there’s a water stain in the shape of a Christmas tree. Wolf doesn’t want to have come to Kreuzberg in vain.

“I’m coming in, okay?” he says and goes in.

It’s not just the hall that looks as if a renovation is overdue. Wolf expects to see a ladder, tools, and decorators in one of the rooms, hiding their beer bottles behind their backs and smiling awkwardly.

The first room is the kitchen. A beat-up stove stands in the middle of the room, otherwise there’s no furniture. The windows are dirty, there’s a smell of drains in the air. If anyone’s out of place here, it’s Wolf.

“Mrs. Haneff?”

He follows the music and finds the woman in the room with the radio in it. One side of the wall is entirely covered with a photomural. It must have been recently applied, because it still glistens with damp and is coming away at one corner. The photo wall shows mountains in the background, and in the foreground an autumn forest with a lake. A stag stands on the shore and drinks. Mrs. Haneff is floating above the water of the lake as if she wants to rise to heaven. Her arms are stretched upwards and placed together, her feet hang inches above the floor, her open eyes are fixed on the opposite wall. The head of a nail protrudes from her forehead, a second nail holds her hands above her head. She is barefoot, a puddle of blood has formed beneath her feet. Her shoes are placed neatly beside the radio. Wolf sees another drop of blood dripping from the tip of the woman’s foot. If the radio were off, he would be able to hear the drop landing in the puddle.

Wolf’s first thought is: Where would you get such long nails? His second: This isn’t real, it’s …He doesn’t have a third thought, because his stomach heaves, and he runs retching from the room.

Minutes later Wolf is leaning against the filthy wall of the hallway, smoking. The cigarette trembles between his fingers. Every now and again he glances at the open door of the room. The radio goes on tirelessly playing. Wolf’s thoughts are in chaos. He stares at the ceiling of the hallway and tries to concentrate. Still more water stains. His hands won’t stop trembling. Damn it, calm down, please. He feels as if he’s about to shit himself. Then he starts thinking. Finally.

Kris. I’ve got to call Kris …

No, I’ve got to call the police. I’ve got to …

Get out of here, I’ve got to get out of here as quickly as possible. And then call Kris and—

Wolf gives a start when his phone rings.