‘It’s not meant for that,’ he told Andrea.
‘But the client says it worked brilliantly.’ ‘That wasn’t the intention,’ was Maravan’s answer. And with that he considered the matter closed.
He would not explain what the issue was, and she did not probe him. It was a delicate topic. She did not want to upset him. She was happy that he seemed so jolly lately.
It was only by chance that she discovered the reason for the change in his behaviour. Makeda had a booking with someone attending a UN conference in Geneva, and so Andrea had taken her to the station. After the train left she went into a sandwich bar on the station concourse. And it was there that she saw him.
Maravan was sitting at a small table with a pretty Tamil woman. They had eyes and ears only for each other.
Andrea hesitated for a moment, but then decided she would disturb their idyll after all. She went up to the table and said, ‘I hate to interrupt.’
The girl looked enquiringly, first at her then at Maravan. He had lost his tongue.
‘I’m Andrea, Maravan’s business partner.’ She offered her hand and the young woman took it with a relieved smile.
‘And I’m Sandana.’ She spoke Swiss dialect without a hint of an accent.
As Maravan did not invite her to sit down with them, Andrea left soon afterwards, saying ‘See you later’ to Maravan, and ‘Pleased to have met you’ to Sandana.
Later, in Falkengässchen, she said, ‘Why don’t you take the poor girl to a nicer restaurant?’
‘She works in the travel centre and only has a short lunch break.’
Andrea smiled. ‘Now it’s all making sense: you’re in love.’
Maravan did not look up from his work. He just shook his head and muttered, ‘I’m not.’
‘Well, she is,’ was Andrea’s reply.
The following morning another piece of Kugag-related business news caught the media’s attention. Hans Staffel, one of the Managers of the Year, had been relieved of all duties with immediate effect. ‘Due to differences of opinion regarding the firm’s strategic orientation.’ The commentators thought it was obvious: the CEO’s dismissal was connected to his opaque decision to enter a joint venture with one of the company’s largest competitors.
‘Look! We know him,’ Makeda said, showing Andrea the official portrait which Staffel had got an expensive photographer to produce for the annual report during happier times. Andrea was leafing through the newspapers she had bought while fetching the breakfast croissants. Makeda was watching her; she could not read German.
‘What’s happened to him?’
Andrea read the article. ‘Booted out.’
‘But I thought he was so brilliant.’
‘He screwed things up by getting involved with a Dutch firm.’
‘Wasn’t the guy he came to Falkengässchen with one of those?’
‘What?’
‘A Dutchman.’
Maravan was reading the paper for another reason. More than 10,000 of his compatriots had held a demonstration outside the UN building in Geneva. They were demanding an immediate end to the military offensive.
Over the last few days the news from Sri Lanka was getting ever more catastrophic. The area occupied by the LTTE had shrunk to an enclave of no more than 150 square kilometres, in the middle of which stood the town of Puthukkudiyiruppu. Kilinochchi, the Elephant Pass, and the ports of Mullaitivu and Chalai were in government hands. The Red Cross estimated that besides the roughly 10,000 LTTE soldiers, a further 250,000 people were surrounded and coming repeatedly under fire.
While demonstrations were taking place in Geneva, the government in Colombo was celebrating the sixty-first anniversary of Sri Lankan independence with a military parade. ‘I am confident the Tigers will be completely defeated within a few days,’ President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared. He called on all Sri Lankans who had left the country because of the war to return.
The Government had published not very convincing photographs of a two-storeyed, comfortable-looking bunker that had housed the Tamil commandant Prabhakaran, but from where he had made a hasty departure. A rumour was circulating that he had left the country.
It was not until he put down the paper that Maravan noticed the picture of a man he had let into the apartment in Falkengässchen the previous month, because Andrea had been out buying matches. All he read was the caption: Fired: Manager of the Year Hans Staffel.
Later that morning, when they were still in bed, Makeda said out of the blue, ‘He took photos of him.’
‘Who did?’
‘The Dutch guy. When the bloke who’s got the sack went into the next-door room with Cécile. After a while the Dutch guy stood up, took something from his jacket, opened the door quietly and stayed there until Cécile sent him out.’
‘How do you know he took pictures?’
‘Cécile shouted out, “Ça suffit! Photos cost extra!”’
39
Just for a change, Love Food cooked for a married couple again. The clients were regulars with Esther Dubois, the sex therapist – a sort of arty-crafty couple in their mid-forties who were working very seriously at their relationship. Andrea had no idea where they had got her details from. She suspected they were being passed around by word of mouth among Esther Dubois’s patients, because more and more clients were coming from this source.
They lived in a house with a vegetable garden and the wife wanted Maravan to swear that he would use only organic ingredients. Maravan agreed, although he could not provide a cast-iron guarantee for all the molecular texturizers.
While they were making their preparations, Andrea said, ‘Did you hear Staffel got the sack?’
‘The crisis is sparing nobody.’
‘Makeda said the Dutchman took photos of him while he was shagging.’
‘I don’t want to know what they do behind those doors.’
‘Don’t you see? He photographed him shagging and blackmailed him with the pictures. He’s supposed to have made some pretty strange business decisions all of a sudden, and then started working on something together with a competitor.’
Maravan reacted with a shrug.
‘And guess what nationality these competitors are?’
‘Dutch?’ Maravan guessed.
Maravan was not the only one in love. For the first time in years – how many he could not remember – Dalmann had lost his sick heart, too. It was now in the possession of someone who had little use for it: Makeda, a call girl from Ethiopia and constant companion of Andrea, CEO of Love Food.
He booked her several evenings a week. Not because his sexual appetite was insatiable or his performance in bed impressive; on this matter Dalmann was well aware of his age, his heart and the daily cocktail of medicines. No, he simply felt fantastic in her company. He loved her sense of humour and her sometimes obscure irony. But most of all, he could not get enough of her.
For a large sum of money, therefore, he led an almost conventional relationship with Makeda in his house, watching television and spending hours losing to her at backgammon.
Unlike other girlfriends in the past, she never demanded to be seen in public with him. She was in no doubt that theirs was a purely business relationship.
To begin with he had liked that, but as time went on it bothered him. He would ask whether she liked him just a little bit, and each time she would give him the same answer: ‘Like you a little bit? I absolutely worship you.’
Because she was non-committal he would give her presents. A pearl necklace, a matching pearl bracelet and a midnight-black mink stole.
He even took her to the Huwyler one evening.
Makeda ate her way through the Menu Surprise as if she dined like that every day. And she stuck to champagne all evening, which pained the chef in Huwyler, but pleased the businessman in him. Dalmann still drank wine after the aperitif, leaving the choice to the sommelier.