‘Hm. Sorry about that.’ I smiled at him. ‘But luckily all this will soon be over. From tomorrow you’ll have the best razor blades you could wish for, you’ll be able to sing under the shower as loud as you like and get yourself some breakfast.’ I shrugged apologetically. ‘Afraid I don’t even have any more coffee today. I’ve already drunk the last of it.’
He stopped, his mouth opened, and for a moment I was afraid something awkward was coming. But then he just nodded, turned, and went into the living room.
I heard him tidy up the sofa, folding his bedclothes — with one hand, as he did not forget to remind me by dint of theatrical groaning and the whispered words, clearly audible in the kitchen, ‘Damn thumbs!’. The hell with him.
Ten minutes later I gave him the spare key to my flat, and said that if he really couldn’t find anywhere else to stay he could stay another night — if it was a real emergency. Looking injured, he replied that he didn’t want to accept my offer, but next moment, and with a much less injured look, he was enumerating circumstances that might force him to accept it after all. The hell with me! I picked up my jacket and left the flat.
Chapter 7
Dr Michael Ahrens was the owner of a packet-soup and instant-pudding factory. The factory consisted of a huge metal shed, a four-storey brick building, and a hoarding measuring eight by eight metres from which the doctor, showing me all his teeth, announced: My Good Name Guarantees Good Food — Ahrens Soups, Pleasure On Your Plate. He had thick grey hair, blow-dried a little too stylishly, a suntanned face and a white shirt unbuttoned to just above his chest hair. However, his eyes looked at me over the top of a plain, narrow pair of glasses as gravely as if he were delivering the Eleventh Commandment. When he had that picture taken the good doctor had obviously been unable to decide whether he’d rather sell a lot of soup or screw a lot of women.
I turned away from the hoarding and walked to the brick building through the rain, which had been falling since morning. Just behind the front door there was a reception desk and switchboard behind glass. A young woman sat in front of a console with several receivers and any number of switches and little lights, chewing gum and reading the paper. I knocked on the pane between us, which was closed, and she reluctantly looked up.
‘Yes, what is it?’ she said. The pane stayed shut.
‘Is that your style at Ahrens Soups? Shouting at your best customers through the glass?’
At first she looked even more reluctant, but then she seemed to think better of it, plastered a smile on her lips and rose to her feet. As she pushed the pane aside, she explained, ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch what you said. It’s difficult to hear through the glass…’
Interesting tactics, I thought, and replied, ‘I said don’t bother, just stay put, I don’t mind shouting.’
‘Hm.’ She said nothing, looked me challengingly in the eye, and for a moment her smile seemed genuine. ‘So how can I help you?’
‘Orhan Yaprak, import-export. I have an appointment with Dr Ahrens.’
‘You do?’ She looked at an engagements notepad beside her. ‘I don’t have that down. Did you speak to Dr Ahrens personally?’
‘My secretary did.’
‘Your secretary…’ She looked at the notepad again. ‘Well, there must have been some kind of mix-up.’
‘Why don’t you just call Dr Ahrens and ask if he has a few minutes to spare? It’s very urgent business, and if his firm isn’t in a position to deliver two million packet soups within a very short time there won’t be a deal anyway.’
Her mouth dropped open. Then she repeated, ‘Two million packet soups?’
‘That’s right. Earthquake in Kazakhstan yesterday evening. Humanitarian aid. The German government will be paying, of course.’
‘Yesterday evening…’ She narrowed her eyes slightly and examined me again as if I’d only just come through the door. ‘So just when did your secretary call?’
‘I’ll give you one guess.’
‘I’m no good at guessing, but I’ve sitting here since eight taking all calls, and there wasn’t one from any secretary with Thingummyjig Import-Export.’
‘Thingummyjig Import-Export! You certainly go to endless trouble to please your customers here. What’s the matter, sweetheart? Is this the Federal Chancellery? Or is the doctor just blow-drying his hair? I didn’t eavesdrop on my secretary while she was phoning, but it could be she didn’t get through at once and said to herself, like some others I could mention: well, then I can just go on chewing my gum in peace for a while and finish reading my horoscope.’
As I delivered this speech she had formed her lips into a pout and begun to inspect her turquoise fingernails, looking bored. Perhaps I wasn’t the first to complain of customer relations at Ahrens Soups, or perhaps she’d given in her notice to leave at the end of the month. Or then again, perhaps she was just an easy going girl.
After a pause she asked, with a sigh, ‘Finished?’ and looked up from her nails. ‘Then I can call Dr Ahrens, but you’d better tell him all that stuff about the earthquake yourself.’ With these words she turned away, picked up one of the receivers and pressed a button.
‘Dr Ahrens? There’s someone here who wants to speak to you… no idea, he wants to tell you personally… says it won’t take long… yes, I’ll tell him.’
She put the receiver down and gave me a sweet smile. ‘You can go up to see him in ten minutes’ time. While you’re waiting, why not think up some fairy tale to tell the boss? In the Federal Chancellery?’
I nodded. ‘Must have been the poster outside. I thought someone who has his own photo blown up to twenty square metres and hangs it in front of my nose must be suffering from something that prevents him from talking to anyone but the real bigwigs.’
‘Hm,’ she said evidently agreeing. ‘But…’ and she looked me appraisingly in the eye, ‘… but that doesn’t make him stupid.’
I nodded again. ‘That’s what I thought. In personnel matters, all the same, I can see he’s just fantastic.’
This time the smile came very slowly. First she moved her lower jaw sceptically to both sides, then tiny lines formed around her eyes, her lips opened and her eyes began to flicker. Either that or my own eyes were beginning to flicker.
She pointed down the corridor. ‘There’s a lift over there. Fourth floor, you’ll find his door. You can’t miss it.’
I thanked her and went on looking at her for a little longer, and her eyes flickered again.
At the end of the usual grotty neon-lit office corridor, floor covered with plastic and doors with the paint flaking off them, was something that at first sight looked like a piece of scenery for a tale from the Arabian Nights. A dark brown double door four metres wide, with a pattern of gold and silver suns, moons and stars adorning its frame. The handle was a recumbent angel, and more angels were playing ring-a-ring-a-roses as they danced around Dr Ahrens’s nameplate. Two white marble columns flanked the door, a red rug in front of it bore the design of a mermaid embroidered in silver, and lamps imitating burning torches hung on the walls to left and right.
As far as I could tell the gold, silver and marble were genuine. At my second knock there was a curt, ‘Come!’ I pressed the angel down and went in.
My initial surprise shouldn’t really have been a surprise at all. But at the back of my mind, obviously, I had been thinking up some kind of explanation for the design of that door. It was left over from a birthday party, perhaps the man’s wife had esoteric tastes and it was a present from her, or a sample of some crazy interior designer’s work. In fact the door was only the relatively modest entrance to Sheikh Soup’s domain. A fantasy desert measuring about two hundred square metres opened up before me: bright golden-yellow walls sprinkled with every imaginable shade of red, ceiling covered with undulating sky-blue velvet, sand-coloured fitted carpet with imitation zebra and tiger skins lying on it. The walls on the exterior of the building were all glazed: windows with the glass held in place at five-metre intervals by flat black metal structures cut to the shape of palms and cacti, their fronds, stems and spines apparently growing into the panes. In one corner fur-covered seats were placed around a shallow, leather-clad drum. In another was a huge cinnamon-red bed with a pile of cushions in the shapes and colours of outsize coconuts and bananas. And above it all an arrangement of lights showing all the signs of the Zodiac hovered below the sky-blue velvet, spanning the entire ceiling.