“I was kind of thinking of taking the train back to Frankfurt tonight, actually.”
“Frankfurt! What a waste! Frankfurt is a tomb. A grave! Come with me and I’ll take you to the most famous pub in the world!”
“Why should I go anywhere with some guy who’s so terribly mean to sheep?”
Ulrich touched his sheepskin coat with a look of wounded shock. “You’re making funny! I’m not mean! I killed this sheep myself in single combat. He wanted to take my life! Come with me and I’ll take you to the famous Hofbrauhaus. They’re eating meat! And drinking beer!”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“It’s not far.” Ulrich crossed his fleecy white arms. “You want to see, or don’t you?”
“Yeah. I do want to see. Okay.”
He took her to the Hofbrauhaus, just as he had promised. There were massive stone arches outside and big brass-bound doors and uniformed civil-support people. Ulrich shrugged out of his coat, and quite neatly, in a matter of seconds, stepped deftly out of his pants. He stuffed the sheepskins into his capacious backpack. Beneath the skins he was wearing brightly patterned leotards.
Inside, the Hofbrauhaus had a vaulted ceiling with murals and ironwork and lanterns. It was wonderfully warm and smelled very powerfully of burning and stewing animal meat. A veteran brass band in odd hats and thick suspenders was playing two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old polkas, the kind of folk music that was so well worn that it slipped through your ears like pebbles down a stream. Strangers were crammed together at long polished wooden benches and tables, getting full of alcoholic bonhomie. Maya was relieved to see that most of them weren’t actually drinking the alcohol. Instead, they were drinking big cold malts and inhaling the alcohol on the side through little lipid-tagged nose snifters. This much reduced the dosage and kept the poison away from the liver.
It was loud inside. “You want to eat something?” Ulrich shouted.
Maya looked at a passing platter. Chunks of animal flesh swimming in brown juices, shredded kraut, potato dumplings. “I’m not hungry!”
“You want to drink some beer?”
“Ick!”
“What do you want, then?”
“I dunno. Just to watch everybody act weird, I guess. Is there some quiet place here where we can sit down and talk?”
Ulrich’s long brows knotted, in impatience with her, she thought, and then he methodically scanned the crowd. “Do something for me, all right? You see that old tourist lady there with the notebook?”
“Yes?”
“Go ask her if she has a tourist map. Talk to her for one minute, sixty seconds, nothing more. Ask her … ask if she can tell you where is the Chinese Tower. Then come outside the Hofbrauhaus and meet with me again. In the street.”
“Why?” She looked searchingly into his face. “You want me to do something bad.”
“A little bad maybe. But very useful for us. Go and talk to her. There’s no harm in talking.”
Maya went to stand by the old woman. The old woman was methodically and neatly eating noodles with a fork and a spoon. She was drinking a bottle of something called Fruchtlimo and was very nicely dressed. “Excuse me, ma’am, do you speak English?”
“Yes, I do, young lady.”
“Do you have a map of Munchen? In English? I’m looking for a certain place.”
“Of course I do. Glad to help.” The woman opened her notebook and deftly shuffled screens. “What do they call this place you want to go?”
“The Chinese Tower.”
“Oh, yes. I know that place. Here we go.… ” She pointed. “It’s located in the English Gardens. A park designed by Count von Rumford in the 1790s. The Count von Rumford was Benjamin Thompson, an American emigré.” She looked up brightly. “Isn’t it funny to think of a town this ancient being redesigned by one of our fellow Americans!”
“Almost as funny as Indianapolis being redesigned by an Indonesian.”
“Well,” said the woman, frowning, “that all happened long before you were born. But I happen to be from Indiana, and I was there when the Indonesians bought the city, and believe me, when that happened we didn’t think it was very funny.”
“Thanks a lot for your help, ma’am.”
“Would you like me to print you a map? I have a scroller in my purse.”
“That’s okay. I have to meet someone, I have to go now.”
“But it’s quite a long way to the tower, you might get lost. Let me just …” She paused, surprised. “My purse is gone.”
“You lost your purse?”
“No, I didn’t lose it. It was right here, right below the bench.” She glanced around, then up at Maya. She lowered her voice. “I’m afraid someone’s taken my purse. Stolen it. Oh, dear. This is very sad.”
“I’m sorry,” Maya said, inadequately.
“Now I’m afraid I’ll have to talk with the authorities.” The old woman sighed. “This is very distressing. They’ll be so embarrassed, poor things.… It’s dreadful when things like this happen to guests.”
“It’s very nice of you to think of their feelings.”
“Well, of course it’s not my loss of a few possessions, it’s the violation of civility that hurts.”
“I know that,” Maya said, “and I’m truly sorry. I wish you could take my purse instead.” She put her own bag on the table. “There’s not much in here, but I wish you could have it.”
The old woman looked at her for the first time, directly, eye to eye. Something quite strange happened between them then. The woman’s eyes widened and she turned pale. “Didn’t you say that you had an appointment,” she said at last in a tentative voice, “that you had an appointment, ma’am? Please don’t let me keep you.”
“Yes, okay,” Maya said, “good-bye, wiedersehen.” She left the Hofbrauhaus.
Ulrich was waiting for her outside in the street. He had put his woolly suit back on. “You take much too long,” he chided, turning. “Come with me.” He began walking up the street, to a tubestation.
On the way down the escalator Ulrich opened his brown backpack and began rooting in its depths. “Ah-hah! Yes, I knew it.” He pulled up a little featherlight earclamp. “Here, wear this on.”
Maya put the earclamp onto her right ear. Ulrich began speaking to her in Deutsch. A stream of Deutsch gibberish emerged from his lips, and the earclamp began translating on the fly.
“[This will be much better,]” the earclamp repeated, in dulcet mid-Atlantic English. “[Now we’ll be able to converse in something like intellectual parity.]”
“What?” Maya said.
“The translator works, isn’t it?” Ulrich spoke English and patted his ear anxiously.
“Oh.” Maya touched the earclamp. “Yes, it’s working.”
Ulrich slipped happily back into Deutsch. “[Well, then! Now I can demonstrate to you that I’m rather a more clever and resourceful fellow than my limited skills in English irregular grammar might indicate.]”
“You just stole that woman’s purse.”
“[Yes, I did that. It was expedient. It was too frustrating to speak to you otherwise. I was sure that a woman of her age and class would have a tourist’s translator. And who knows, perhaps there are other interesting things in the purse.]”
“What if they catch you? Catch us?”
“[They won’t catch us. When I took the purse I was in my leotards, and there was no one in brightly colored leotards recorded entering or leaving the building. There are certain techniques by which one does these appropriations safely. The craft is difficult to explain to a neophyte.]” Ulrich brushed briskly at the woolly sleeves of his jacket. “[But back to the point. I’m rather good at understanding English, not so good at speaking it.]” Ulrich laughed. “[So you can speak to me in English, and I will speak to your earpiece in Deutsch, and we’ll get on very well.]”