‘Wonderful. Do you think it will ever be like that again?’
Marvan thought long and hard. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘Nothing is ever what it once was.’
Andrea thought about this. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘But sometimes it’s even better.’
‘I’ve never had that experience myself.’
‘Isn’t what we’re doing now better than the Huwyler?’
Maravan shrugged his shoulders. ‘The work is, definitely. But I’ve got more worries.’ And he told her about Ulagu, his favourite nephew who had become a child soldier.
‘And there’s nothing you can do about it?’ Andrea asked when he had finished.
‘Yes, I am doing something. But whether it will help…’
‘Why don’t you have a wife?’ Andrea asked after a while.
Maravan gave her a meaningful smile and did not say anything.
She understood. ‘No, Maravan. Get it out of your head. I’m taken.’
‘By a woman who sleeps with men.’
‘For money.’
‘Even worse.’
Andrea became angry. ‘Well, you do things for money that you wouldn’t normally do either.’
Maravan made a movement with his head that was halfway between a nod and a shake.
‘I never know what that means with you lot. Yes or no?’
‘In my culture it’s impolite to say no.’
‘Not exactly easy for a girl then.’ She laughed. ‘And yet you don’t have a girlfriend.’
Maravan remained serious. ‘Back home the parents arrange the marriages.’
‘In the twenty-first century? You’re pulling my leg.’
Maravan shrugged.
‘And you let that happen?’
‘It seems to work.’
Andrea shook her head in disbelief. ‘So why has nobody arranged one for you yet?’
‘I don’t have any parents and I don’t have family here. Nobody who can testify that I’m not divorced or have illegitimate children or am not leading an immoral existence, or that I’m of the right caste.’
‘I thought they abolished the caste system.’
‘They did. But you have to be in the right abolished caste.’
‘Which abolished caste are you in?’
‘You never ask someone that.’
‘How do you find out then?’
‘You ask someone else.’
Andrea laughed and changed the subject. ‘Shall we go outside and watch the fireworks?’
Maravan shook his head. ‘I’m frightened of explosions.’
It had started snowing again. The rockets glowed, swirled and sparkled behind a veil of snowflakes, some of which were tinged green, red or yellow.
The church bells rang out the new year, a year about which the only certainty was that it would last a single second longer than the previous one.
Dalmann was celebrating in one of the Palace Hotels and was now walking beside Schelbert, an investor from northern Germany, through the noisy lobby full of décolletés, miniskirts and stilettos.
‘Ghastly fashion this season,’ Schelbert sighed. ‘How will I recognize the tarts now?’
‘They’re the ones who don’t look like tarts.’
January 2009
32
It was not long before Andrea saw Herr Schaeffer again.
They were making their final preparations for a Love Food menu for four people in Falkengässchen. She was just about to light the candles when she realized her lighter had run out of fuel and she could not find the box of matches she usually had to hand for such an eventuality.
The kitchen had no gas stove, and there were no lighters or matches in the drawers. She looked through the furniture in the other rooms, but found nothing.
‘I’m just going to pop to the bar opposite,’ she said to Maravan, slipping her coat over her sari. She went down in the lift, crossed the street and got a book of matches from the barman. When she left the bar she could see the two of them coming, more than a quarter of an hour early. She ran to the door and just got there before they did. She went up, threw her coat onto a kitchen chair, and asked Maravan to let the guests in while she lit the candles.
She had recognized one of them: Schaeffer, Dalmann’s dogsbody. She thought she knew the other man, too.
When the candles were alight and the man had greeted her in a thick Dutch accent, she remembered where she had seen him before: in the Huwyler. Schaeffer had shown him the way, but had not come up with him.
Having checked to see he was the first to arrive, the Dutchman was shown the room where dinner would be served, whistled his approval, and insisted on waiting for his guest in the sitting room.
The other man arrived before the women. Andrea had seen him at the Huwyler, too. He was a slightly portly chap in his late forties with a hedgehog haircut. He was wearing a dark blue business suit with trousers that were slightly too short, and he looked embarrassed.
‘How exciting!’ he said several times as the two of them were taken into the room. Just like Esther Dubois before the first test dinner.
It would have been easy to cancel, and now Staffel regretted not having done so. He felt the same as he had done with his first cigarette aged fifteen. His parents had said they would give him 10,000 francs by the time he was twenty if he had never smoked. He was still convinced it was this agreement that had caused his moment of weakness back then. He had got away with it; they never found out. Nor the other times. And he had wisely invested the 10,000 francs in hardware and software while studying engineering.
There was one other occasion when he had felt like this: in Denver about eight years ago. Not wanting to appear dull, he had gone with the other guys to a table-dancing club. He must have drunk far too much and had woken up in his hotel room at five o’clock the following morning next to a fake blonde whose perfume he was only able to eradicate from his suit using an express cleaning service.
He had got away with this incident as well. Béatrice had never found out.
He would make sure this evening remained under wraps, too.
Dalmann had been in touch shortly after their second meeting in the Huwyler. He said he was a friend of van Genderen, who just happened to be in the country at the moment and would like to meet him.
Of course, Staffel knew who van Genderen was. The Number Two at hoogteco, a large supplier in the renewable energies sector. There could be no harm in having an informal meeting with this major Dutch competitor.
They had agreed, therefore, to have a drink in Dalmann’s beautiful house overlooking the lake. The two men hit it off and arranged to have dinner the following evening.
They had enjoyed an excellent Japanese meal, spoken hardly a word about business, and laughed a lot. Van Genderen had a more inexhaustible repertoire of jokes than anybody he had come across since Hofer, a former comrade of his at military training school.
As the evening went on the anecdotes became more risqué, and then they started talking about risqué matters in general – which is how they arranged the dinner that, in van Genderen’s words, was ‘spicy in every way’.
Now that he was being served champagne in a luxury apartment in the old town by a pretty Indian girl – or was she not Indian? – talking Swiss German, Staffel was already feeling slightly queasy. And jittery too.
He would go along with it until it got too colourful and then stop. That way nothing could happen.
This time it was no surprise that Makeda was one of the party. She had told Andrea beforehand.
Just before the new year they had their first argument. Andrea had said, ‘Please stop it. I’m earning enough for two.’
‘Am I hearing you right?’ Makeda said. She burst out laughing, then sighed.
‘Why?’ Andrea said.
‘Hearing that coming from you of all people. It’s what men say: “Come, let me save you from this life. You can move in with me and cook for me and wash my socks.” Are you crazy?’