‘I really would be very reluctant to hurt you, but I wouldn’t tell you fairy tales on that account.’
‘How do you explain Marieke’s behaviour over the last few days?’
‘Well, my bet would be she feels crossed in love. I didn’t say the photos were all of it. And Abakay certainly knows how to impress a sixteen-year-old. Anyway, if I were you I’d make sure Marieke doesn’t go prison visiting in the immediate future.’
‘For God’s sake!’
‘You should be glad she’s spending all day in her room. Maybe you should buy her a different CD.’
For a moment there was silence on the line. Obviously her breathing had calmed down, or she was holding the receiver to one side. Then she sighed, sounding surprisingly amused, and asked, ‘How old are you?’
‘Fifty-three. Why?’
‘Because no one buys CDs these days. They download music to their MP3 players.’
‘I even still have some cassettes.’
‘Simply Red or something like that, I expect.’
‘No, Whitney Houston. But I can’t listen to the cassettes anymore, my recorder’s broken.’
‘Whitney Houston,’ she repeated, and was about to say something making fun of me — it wasn’t difficult to make fun of people who still listened to Whitney Houston — but then something seemed to occur to her and she suddenly fell silent.
So did I. Probably we had both carried on like that because we were glad to get away from the subject of Abakay for a moment. But in no time at all we had landed in front of an open door. For instance, she went on: Whitney Houston — right, now I do believe you’re fifty-three. What else do you like? Foreigner? Münchner Freiheit? And I: You’ve never listened to Whitney Houston properly. At three in the morning, with a few beers or something else inside you, windows of the bar open, mild air, and then ‘The Greatest Love of All’ on the jukebox — you could fall on your knees with happiness. And she again: Well, okay. I have a recorder that still works … Or something like that. Anyway, we both knew that from here to a Whitney Houston evening together with wine and candlelight it was three more sentences at the most.
Finally I said, ‘Apart from which my Whitney Houston days are over.’
She cleared her throat, and her tone became friendly but objective. ‘Well, I hope so, at the age of fifty-three.’
‘You mean fifty-three is too old for Whitney Houston?’
‘Too old for Whitney Houston period, I’d say. A song now and then, why not?’
I noticed that I was baring my teeth. ‘I bet you’ve listened to a Whitney Houston song now and then on your MP3 player.’
She hesitated. ‘Could be. I don’t know. It’s a long time since I listened to any music at all.’
It was on the tip of my tongue to say: Surely a ballad or so with Abakay now and then?
Instead, I said, ‘It’ll come back. These are just phases.’ And then, more briskly, ‘Did you get my bill?’
‘Yes.’ A short pause, then back to the cool tone. ‘Do I destroy that as well?’
‘Don’t transfer the money direct to me anyway. I’ll collect it in cash sometime.’
She didn’t reply.
‘Or maybe I’ll send a friend to collect it.’
‘Yes, let’s do it that way,’ she said.
It annoyed me. I didn’t want her letting me go so quickly. And it annoyed me that it annoyed me.
‘Okay, we’ll do it that way. And please let me know at once if anyone asks you about me.’
‘Can’t I tell your friend? Wouldn’t that be simpler?’
I looked at my big station clock, behind which my pistols, handcuffs, knock-out drops and pepper spray were hidden. ‘No, it wouldn’t be simpler, because my friend has no idea what this is about.’
‘Fine, then, I’ll call you. Anything else we ought to discuss?’
I said no, we said goodbye and hung up. I was furious. With her, with myself. And briefly I wondered how, after Whitney Houston, I had gotten to Foreigner and Münchner Freiheit. Brothel music, all of it.
I was still sitting thoughtfully at my desk when Katja Lipschitz called ten minutes later.
‘Hello, Herr Kayankaya.’
‘Hello, Frau Lipschitz.’
‘I’ve spoken to our publisher. If you’re still prepared to do the job I’d like to hire you as bodyguard for Malik Rashid for three days at the Book Fair.’
‘Yes, I’m ready to do it. Did you tell your publisher my fee? We don’t want problems about it later.’
I didn’t know why, probably it was just a cliché picked up from cheap TV films. But I thought there could be some difficulty in meeting financial obligations in the book trade.
‘It’s all decided. Send me your contract by email.’
‘I’ll do that at once. The advance is a minimum daily fee, a thousand euros plus taxes. As soon as that’s in my account I’ll take a look at Rashid’s hotel. What was its name again?’
‘The Harmonia in Niederrad.’
‘When does Rashid arrive?’
‘At noon on Friday, is that all right for you? Midday Friday until midday on Monday, three days?’
‘That’s okay. Shall I fetch him from the airport or the railway station?’
‘No, my assistant will do that. Rashid, you and I will meet at twelve at the hotel to discuss everything. From then on he’ll be in your care.’
‘Fine. See you at twelve on Friday, then.’
‘I have one request, Herr Kayankaya. It’s possible that journalists will approach you during the Fair. Rashid and his novel will be much discussed, so his bodyguard could be a subject of interest as well. Have you read his book, what you think of it as a Muslim, and so on …’
‘And you’d like me to keep my mouth shut.’
‘Well, what you told me about your attitude towards religion, and your manner in general … don’t misunderstand me, I thought it was very … interesting to talk to you, but … you see, journalists don’t like anything complicated. And a Turkish bodyguard who compares God to hot stones and possibly doesn’t take the man he’s guarding, an internationally famous author who is generally considered to have written a very important and sensational book, well, possibly doesn’t take him entirely seriously — anyway, it wouldn’t be simple to get that across. And then the papers might say: best-selling author mocked by own bodyguard, or something like that.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m not at all interested in getting into the papers.’
‘That’s what I thought. I just wanted to warn you — some journalists can be very pushy.’
‘Thanks.’
‘And something else …’
‘Yes?’
‘In Rashid’s daily schedule you’ll see what events he’s taking part in. One of them is a panel discussion at the House of Literature with Dr. Breitel …’
She paused, giving me time to react, and when I said nothing she went on to explain, ‘One of the editors of the Berliner Nachrichten. The title is “The Ten Plagues …” ’ Another pause for my reaction. ‘It’s out of the Bible, when God sent plagues of heat, locusts, hail and so on into the country … Oh, I don’t remember all of it. Anyway, the discussion will turn on the various threats to Western society: falling birth rates, families breaking up, isolation, excessive technology, the Internet, a few more things, and finally — with Malik Rashid as the guest, of course the real subject behind all this is whether there isn’t an increasingly well-organised Islam behind it all, preparing the threats, that’s to say the plagues, more or less intentionally. For instance, there’ll be the consequences of the falling birth rate among, er …’
‘Us,’ I said, helping her out.
‘Yes, us, and the rising birth rate among …’
‘Immigrant families.’
‘Thanks, it’ll go something like that. Sorry, not a subject I know very well, and I can’t find my notes about it at the moment.’
‘Do you remember what it said about Islam overwhelming us with excessive technology?’
‘Well, it was to do with the internet. I think Dr. Breitel is going to say that the internet is the real engine of destruction in our society because — oh, look, here are my notes and they say “it creates lonely, frustrated, dehumanised creatures who can no longer function in a society unable to defend itself.” And lower down: “Do we know how much Arab and Iranian oil money has gone into the World Wide Web? From a region where the majority of the population doesn’t own computers? Is the internet a drug with which the rulers and religious leaders of the East are swamping the Western world to make us a crowd of couch potatoes stuffed with useless knowledge and satiated with pornography? Is the internet perhaps nothing but an intelligent means of warfare? Just as the British weakened China in the nineteenth century from within with opium, then overthrew it by military means?” And so on … We’re looking forward to a controversial evening. Questions from the audience will be allowed at the end; we’re asking for them to be sent to our home page for security reasons. Driss Mararoufi, head chef at the Tunisian Medina restaurant in Sachsenhausen, will provide refreshments.’ Katja Lipschitz paused for a moment and then proclaimed, in rather too loud a voice, as if to drown out any possible doubts: ‘It will certainly be a very interesting evening.’