Crumbs (19 page)

We shook hands again. They noticed my surprise. It bordered on enthusiasm.

‘What's the matter, don't you treat them like this here?' the middle one asked.

‘No, definitely not.'

‘It's a custom where we come from.'

‘In Germany?'

They looked at me as if I was an idiot.

‘No. Germany is something else. At home. The ticket collectors, gas and electricity metre readers, and so on…'

‘A nice custom,' I had to admit. ‘It might be worth introducing it here.'

The brothers embraced and kissed and jumped on the train, which was already moving. Ibro and I waved.

‘What brothers I have! Did you see that?' he turned to me enthusiastically. I had to admit they were admirable.

‘How's Selim?'

‘I don't know. They took him away in an ambulance. He had to lie on his stomach on the stretcher, because of his leg, you know.'

We said goodbye.

Ibro set off for the dormitory, and I went in the opposite
direction. I felt like sleeping even though it was still early.

On the way, I remembered the policeman's look. He had seen me, and he must have remembered me. He knows where to find me. It's going to be a difficult day tomorrow.

A painful day.

The lights by the rail track turned to red.

In the block of flats I was walking past, somebody turned off the radio.

 

 

 

7

I got up early, had a shower, got dressed, and sat down. I didn't have to wait at all, they came immediately. Banging on the door. I'd already unlocked it. Two of them fell in, grabbed me and shoved me down the corridor. A Black Maria was waiting outside. Maybe they thought they'd manage to get all five of us in one go. That I'd immediately give them the addresses of my friends. I didn't. And they didn't ask me for them anyway.

I sat in the part of the van with mesh on the windows, surprised at how short the journey was. It could've done with being longer. They took me to an office and pushed me onto a chair.

Opposite me sat an old policeman with glasses, scribbling on some paper. I had to give him my personal details.

He didn't ask for my rank and number.

I was passed onto somebody else. Somebody young. He took me to wait in a room with bars on the windows. In the doorway he hit me twice in the kidneys. On the left and the right side. It helped. After a long time without it, I was reminded of the feeling of physical pain. They didn't take my cigarettes away. I smoked three. One after the other.

A third policeman came to take me to a room similar to the one I was in before. An empty room. This one gave me a slightly friendlier shove towards the wall before he left. Five more cigarettes. My stomach was like a hard ball. It twitched occasionally. I needed a piss. I thought about pissing through the bars when a new face came for me. Soon I'd see the whole place. This one could speak. He didn't shove me to the next room. ‘Comrade, come with me!' he said.

And then I knew I was in deep shit. If somebody calls you ‘comrade' in this country, either he is afraid of you, or you should be afraid of him.

I'd already seen the ground floor. I was expecting the basement, but he took me to the second floor instead. I'd never been there before. I started getting worried.

He knocked on a door without a name on it and waited for somebody to answer before he opened it. He was respectful and humble. I went in. The policeman left me alone with an older man behind a desk. He wasn't busy with papers. He was sitting there looking at me. He invited me to sit down. He offered me a cigarette. We lit up. As far as I could see, he wasn't in a uniform. A pair of civilian trousers and a police shirt, or at least one with a similar cut, with epaulettes, no rank. His movements expressed power and authority, but not in a theatrical, showy sort of way. Very polite and civilized. An image of a good father. Had he been stupid, he'd have started the conversation with ‘let's be friends.' But he wasn't stupid.

Anything but. He was dangerous, I could feel that even though there was no confirmation of that feeling in his behaviour. He must have been over fifty. It was hard to judge his age because he had the dried-up and wrinkled face of a heavy smoker.

‘I'm not from this town,' he said. ‘I'm here on a business visit, let's say. Our talk isn't obligatory and it's not a questioning. I happened to hear that they'd brought you in. Another cigarette?'

I was just putting one out into an overflowing ashtray. I accepted the offer and we lit up again.

He went on.

‘Well then, what do we know? Or rather, what do the police here know? Three unidentified men yesterday beat up a cadet and threw him in a skip. He described you, but he didn't recognise any of the others. He'll be in the hospital for at least three weeks and off work for at least three more. On top of that there's an old age pensioner who's in the hospital, too, from shock brought on by finding him when getting rid of her trash. She's got heart disease, and excitement of that kind could be very harmful to her.'

I was biting my lips to stop myself from laughing. Somehow I succeeded.

‘We know – that is, they know – that you weren't directly involved in the fight. But you definitely saw the attackers, and maybe you even know them. Or maybe the friend who was with you knows them.'

I didn't know why he was stressing the difference between the knowledge of the local police and his own. Maybe he knows more, maybe less. Or was he just trying to emphasize that he didn't really belong there? But why was he questioning me then? Even babies don't fall for friendly talk anymore.

I put out my cigarette and got another one straight away.

I didn't want to decline the cigarette even though I was beginning to feel sick at the taste of tobacco by now.
Probably a new torture technique. Like smoking meat.

He was silent. I felt it was time for my little story. They wouldn't believe it, but at least they wouldn't be able to accuse me of not being sociable.

‘It was like this…'

I started slowly in case he wanted to interrupt me.

He was listening to me and his thoughts didn't seem to wander.

‘I was walking home. It's faster going by the tracks. A train stood on my left. Somebody I don't know, who looked like a worker from the south, was walking in front of me. I was walking a metre behind him. why didn't I overtake him? I don't know, I just didn't. Three men came off the train and started pissing. Twenty metres ahead a policeman passed me in the opposite direction. Past the man and in front and me. Towards those other three men. I looked back and saw him shouting at them. By this time I'd come to the dried-up larch. A path turns off there and you get onto the road through a hole in the fence. From there I could no longer see what was going on at the flyover. And that's all.'

He didn't say anything. A poor story.

The truth is a matter of taste. And I, as its author, didn't like that story. How bad must it have seemed to him?

We lit another cigarette. I was about to throw up.

‘I've read your file,' he added in a casual way.

Oh my old sins, go and stand proudly in line. Somewhere up there, there's always an angel who writes everything down, not missing one little thing.

He didn't start listing them. He took a few puffs and then added, more to himself than me, ‘As if I was reading the files of two different people.'

He paused a little, and when he spoke again there was
just a faint smile around his lips.

‘A young man still searching for himself.'

Was he cynical? It passed too quickly for me to decide.

A new pair of cigarettes was on its way. I understood less and less. What did he want from me? The only plausible explanation was a war of nerves. But I couldn't get rid of the feeling that it wasn't that. There was something else.

He leaned forward with a lighter. It was only then that I noticed a stitch on his epaulette. I couldn't stop my right arm from quickly moving to the epaulette on my jacket. He'd already sat back by now.

The seams were the same. There was no doubt. They'd been sewn by the same hand. I stroked the seam and moved my hand away. I couldn't see even a twitch on his face.

We smoked in silence.

‘I wanted to see you,' he said and looked at his watch.

I got up. Hesitantly. I didn't know if the clichéd gesture, saying it's time to go, meant the same in this situation. In this room. It did.

We shook hands and said goodbye.

I stepped out of the office. The policeman was waiting outside. He took me back behind the iron bars. I looked out at the foundry but didn't have a cigarette. My stomach couldn't bear even the thought of one.

So this was the fine gentleman in his prime who was currently visiting Karla.

The two policemen who'd brought me in with the Black Maria came for me. They were considerably friendlier. There was no shoving. I walked between them along the corridor. Through the door onto the pavement. We stopped.

They said nothing, turned on their heels, and went
back in.

It took some time before I understood. I made the first steps at snail's pace, expecting at any moment to hear shouting from behind me. There was none.

I walked faster and faster towards the bar.

I still didn't know why they'd released me. Did I have Karla to thank for my freedom, or did they let me go just because they couldn't prove anything?

Now they have reason to lock me up every time I spit the pavement or jaywalk. At night, on my way home, I often see the police in their patrol cars. Were they going to take me with them every time now? For a pleasant ride into the hills for a session of beating? I somehow didn't feel as light as a feather. It's strange world. You don't like it when imprisoned or when free.

The bar was empty. I wasn't in the mood for being alone.

I didn't want to go to Karla's either. First, I had to make sure she really was involved.

I went to Magda's. It was time for lunch.

She opened the door, and a nice smell wafted out from the kitchen. She didn't fall into my arms.

I wanted to put my arms around her waist but she pushed me away. She was as cold as ice.

‘Come in,' she said very inhospitably.

I followed her into the kitchen. I knew what I was in for. Sometimes I am in the right mood for a kick up my arse, but this time I wasn't. I could've left straight away. I thought, though, it was only fair to listen to Magda's speech, which she had probably spent quite some time rehearsing, before we said goodbye.

She didn't ask me to sit down. We stood there with a safe distance of two metres between us.

‘It's finished,' she started. Classic. ‘I don't know what was the matter with me to have been so crazy about you. I've got a boyfriend now and I told him everything yesterday. We had a talk. Whatever it was that I was obsessed with, it's over now. Never again. Sometime I'll ask you what you felt for me. Not now but in a few years time. Goodbye, Egon.'

I nodded and went to the door. Short and sweet. Not a bad speech.

I stepped across the threshold, pushing my head down between my shoulders, expecting a loud slam of the door. It wasn't that bad though.

The key turned twice, in quick succession.

I was in the street again. I felt lonely and sad.

Too many things for one morning. Karla's lover becoming a real person, the first one ever since I'd known her. Magda throwing me out. The police throwing me out.

I felt abandoned and unwanted by everybody.

I needed a walk. I dragged my index finger along the foundry fence, letting it vibrate.

I stopped in front of the nail packaging plant. I climbed over the fence. I followed the conveyor belt to the end. Ajsha was stamping.

‘Hey!' I shouted into her ear.

She looked up without stopping her hand.

‘Hi.'

‘Egon, what are you doing here? You're too late for lunch.'

‘I'd like to ask you something. Are you coming to the dance tonight?'

‘What?'

‘THE DANCE!' I screamed.

Where did the whispered gentle invitations go? I bent closer to her ear and added, ‘It would mean a lot to me.'

I looked at her pleadingly.

She thought for a long time. A terrible coquette. Her hand kept going stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp. At last she said, ‘Maybe.'

I was overjoyed by her acceptance.

I waved to her and ran off.

I jumped over the fence, and in my ears I could still hear the noise of the nails falling.

I sat in the bar and didn't move until evening. The chairs were gradually getting taken. I bummed half a sandwich from some student. More and more acquaintances were sitting around me. The circles were becoming complete.

In the corner, Sheriff was brushing some fluff off his Stetson. The tension in the air was growing. The place was overflowing with people. They stood between the tables, shared chairs. Some sat on tables. Drink flowed in streams. Empty bottles were rolling among our feet. I was greeting people left, right and centre and had difficulty keeping up with all the bottles that were offered to me. The heat of Friday night made everyone a lot more generous than usual.

The majority were workers from the foundry, the school boys and girls were in the minority.

Suddenly I realised I knew everybody by their significant features, not their names. One of them could juggle with his cigarette, another one could eat glass. Or spit the farthest through his teeth. Or had cavities in his teeth that he could put pencils into. And felt tip pens in his wisdom teeth. One could belch the loudest. Another one could fart longest without interruption. Yet another one could drink the most slivovitz at once. Then followed a hierarchy according to strength, fighting ability, years in prison. There was one whose intellectual abilities were at
the level of an idiot, but he could list all the footballers in all the leagues, even those from remote villages, and the scorers of all the goals at any match for the past twenty years, all the four referees, and probably all the fans in the stands, even though I'd never actually asked him about those. His achievement was even more admirable because of his not being able to read or write. He learned all the details only from listening to people. But I suppose that's not so difficult as football is not exactly a rare subject of conversation in certain circles.