I couldn’t. Before my general announcement to the whole company — ‘There’s a gang of racketeers in Frankfurt at the moment calling itself the Army of Reason…’ — had died away, the door behind me opened, and several hands grabbed me at the same moment, knocked me off my feet and rammed me head first into the bar. There was a mighty crash, and everything went dark before my eyes for a few seconds. When it was light again, and I felt my arms twisted behind my back, the first thing I thought of was my pistol. It was about ten thousand kilometres away in my trouser pocket. The second thing I thought of was the way something had been moving at the back of the room. They must have gone out through another door and round outside the place. The third thing I realised, with relief, was that my nose had escaped the impact. Finally I recognised the flashy sports jackets to left and right of me.
‘Whaddya want we do with this bastard, then?’
They were addressing the landlord. Berliners, judging by their accent. Did the Berliners have a finger in every pie now? I turned my head until I could look into the sodden eyes of one of the baldies. ‘That dulcet tone of voice, that elegant phrasing, anyone can see we have visitors from the capital.’
‘Shut your gob!’ he snarled, kicking me in the back of the knees.
‘How about we see who he is?’ said the landlord, sounding as friendly and casual again as he had when I arrived. I had definitely underestimated him.
While the two shaven-headed men went through my pockets, some of the guests left the restaurant in silence. The rest watched the show with interest. Some lit cigarettes, others sipped their beer. The only one in the room who seemed unhappy with the situation but couldn’t escape it was the chef’s assistant. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him fidgeting nervously with beer mats and turning his head aside at frequent intervals.
‘The bastard’s got a gun!’ cried one of the Berliners, cracking his heel into the backs of my knees again. Obviously he was used to knowing where and how to lash out. Another couple of kicks and I might even had been wishing he’d hit me in the face for a change.
He held my pistol in front of my face. ‘Whaddya call this, then? Come on, whaddya call this?’
‘Pistol, a pistol.’
‘Got it!’ cried his friend, proudly waving my wallet. While the knee expert held me down, the man who was so triumphant over finding a wallet in the inside pocket of a jacket was looking at my papers.
‘Kemal Ka… ka… What sort of a name’s that? Kaka… Krap, I call it. Kemal Krap!’ He laughed, held my ID out to his mate, and they both laughed. ‘Kemal Krap! Hey, that’s good!’
‘Why make it so complicated, lads? Why Kemal? Why not just Krap Krap?’
‘Keep your mouth shut, I said.’
This time his kick made my legs crumple, and for a moment I was hanging in the air by my arms, which were still twisted behind my back. When I screamed they dropped me, kicked me in the side so that I landed on my back, and the knee expert put his foot on my throat. My pistol was dangling in the air above me from his hand.
‘One more crappy remark like that and I finish this off.’
I briefly closed my eyes to show that I’d got the message. Meanwhile more guests were leaving the place. Were they thinking that the show was getting stronger all the time, and what was about to happen now was too unappetising for them? I turned my eyes to the tap. The chef’s assistant had stopped playing with beer mats, and was staring straight ahead of him, gritting his teeth. If this went on he was my only hope. I unobtrusively moved my arms. As far as I could tell from the feel of it, I’d only imagined them cracking.
‘You a Turk, then?’
‘I’m a Frankfurter.’
‘I said no crappy talk!’
The pressure on my throat was increased.
‘I thought the landlord wanted to know who I was,’ I gasped, ‘not just theories.’
Knee Expert frowned. ‘Whassat in aid of?’
Before I could answer, his friend pushed into my line of vision. ‘We got Turks back home too…’ He grinned down at me. ‘Been fighting them bastards two years.’ He spread the fingers of one hand and waggled them up and down. ‘Count ’em, you! That’s how many I done in. One more won’t make no difference.’
‘Yes, I hear that kind of thing goes on in Berlin.’
‘Berlin? You daft or what? Nope, in our country! Get an education, you layabout! Whaddya think them shitty Muslims are to us? Kemal Kraps, the whole bunch.’
‘I see.’ I tried to look expressionless. ‘What a wonderful education in foreign languages you get in your native land! Amazing!’
‘You watch yer step,’ said the landlord, coming into the small circle of space above me. ‘You ain’t bin acting none so friendly here. You insult our President, you made fun of our country. Dunno why, we’re peaceful folk, we never done you no harm. Fact is, I wouldn’t mind teaching you a lesson — but forget it. You clear out now, and you hear this: show yer face in here again and you’ll be thinking of today real sad, remembering how pretty it once wuz. Get it?’
‘And how.’
The landlord was still looking into my eyes rather as if he was not too happy with the decision to let me go, but in the end he nodded to the Berliners and disappeared behind the bar. Knee Specialist looked disappointed.
‘This beggar’s a lucky beggar too,’ he said, and couldn’t refrain from letting me feel once more how quickly my larynx would be crushed if he wanted. Finally he took his foot away.
It was some time before I could get to my feet and follow him to the bar. As if the last ten minutes hadn’t happened, he was standing there casually watching the chef’s assistant draw him a beer.
‘My pistol, please.’
He slowly turned his head and looked surprised. ‘What pistol?’ And to his mate, standing next to him, ‘Imagining things, ain’t he? Potheads, all these guys.’
‘They ain’t allowed no beer, see? Knifing folk, screwing bints, all that shitty drugs stuff, they can have that. But there ain’t nothing for Allah in a beer.’
They looked at me with relish.
I leaned both arms on a bar stool to take the weight off my knees and looked down at the floor, exhausted. While that foot had been on my throat, there’d been no room left for pain. Now it was quickly taking over all the parts of me that had been abused over the last ten minutes. I sighed. ‘The gun’s registered. If I lose it I have to report the loss and say where and when it happened. A lie risks me my job, and I’m not telling any lies for you. So either you finish me off now after all, or you give me my pistol, or this place will be full of cops tomorrow.’
I looked at the floor again, fumbled for a cigarette in my pocket, lit it, and waited for whatever they decided. By now everything was hurting so much that I felt almost indifferent to it. Only I didn’t want to look at them any more. Except when I shot them.
‘Take the magazine out, give him his gun, then maybe he’ll go.’
Soon after that something fell into my jacket pocket. Without even turning round again, I staggered out of the door.
Chapter 11
I was sitting in the car on the other side of the road from the Adria Grill waiting — smoking, listening to the radio, dozing. My face throbbed, my shoulders were burning, and when I moved my knees something in them seemed on the point of breaking. I dropped off to sleep from time to time, waking with a start from fevered dreams a moment later. Mostly the dreams were about fighting. Once companies of men dressed in costume with bright plumes and golden shirts of mail like something out of a historical film were clashing, stabbing and hacking each other to pieces with spears and swords. There was blood everywhere, and severed heads lying about, and techno music boomed out from the surrounding forest. Two eyes were blazing in the middle of this bloodbath and wouldn’t stop looking at me, although the body they belonged to was dead. I was the only one who had a gun, but it wouldn’t do what I wanted. When I put the safety catch on it fired wildly all over the place, and when I took the safety catch off and pressed the trigger there was just a click. Then the techno music got louder and louder, changed to a deafening rattle, and I woke up. The rattle came from the radio. The tuning of the channel had slipped.