It turned out that former noncommissioned officer of the Wehrmacht Fritz Heiger had arrived, along with his personal sidekick and private of the same Wehrmacht, Otto Friese. “So you’ve come!” Andrei greeted them with a malevolent smile.
Fritz immediately took this greeting as an attack on the dignity of a German noncommissioned officer and put on a stony face, but Otto, a gentle man of somewhat nebulous moral profile, merely clicked his boot heels and smiled ingratiatingly.
“What kind of tone is that?” Fritz inquired coldly. “Perhaps we should leave?”
“Have you brought anything to eat?” Andrei asked.
Fritz executed a thoughtful movement of his lower jaw. “Eat?” he repeated. “Mmm, how can I put it…” And he glanced inquiringly at Otto. Smiling shyly, Otto immediately pulled a flat bottle out of the pocket of his breeches and held it out to Andrei. Like an entry pass, with the label upward.
“Well, OK then…” said Andrei, mellowing and taking hold of the bottle. “But bear in mind, guys, there’s absolutely nothing to eat. Maybe you have some money at least?”
“Maybe you’ll let us in after all?” Fritz inquired, his head turned slightly to advance one ear: he was listening to the bursts of female laughter in the dining room.
Andrei let them into the hallway and said, “Money. Cash up front!”
“Even here we are unable to avoid reparations, Otto,” said Fritz, opening his wallet. “Here!” He thrust a few bills at Andrei. “Give Otto some kind of bag and tell him what to buy—he’ll run down to the shop.”
“Wait, not so fast,” Andrei said, and led them into the dining room. While heels clicked, slicked-down hairstyles stooped over, and soldierly compliments resounded, Andrei dragged Izya off to one side and, before he could gather his wits, frisked all his pockets, which Izya didn’t even seem to notice—he just struggled feebly to break free, dying to finish the joke he had started telling. After Andrei had confiscated everything he could find, he moved away and counted the reparations. It wasn’t really all that much, but it was about enough. He glanced around. Selma was still sitting on the table and dangling her legs. Her melancholy had evaporated; she was jolly. Fritz was lighting her cigarette, while Izya, choking and wheezing, was preparing to tell another joke, and Otto, red-faced from the tension and uncertainty about his manners, was a solitary pillar at the center of the room, standing to attention and visibly wiggling his large ears.
Andrei caught hold of Otto’s sleeve and dragged him into the kitchen, intoning: “They’ll manage without you, they’ll manage…” Otto didn’t object; he even seemed pleased. Once he found himself in the kitchen, he immediately went into action. He took the vegetable basket from Andrei, shook the rubbish out of it into the trash pail (which Andrei would never have thought of doing), rapidly and neatly covered the bottom of it with old newspapers, and instantly found the bag, which Andrei had lost the month before. Declaring “Maybe we’ll find some tomato sauce…” he put an empty compote jar into the bag, after first rinsing it out, then stuck in a few folded newspapers in case of need (“What if they don’t have any packaging… ”), so that Andrei’s contribution was limited to moving the money from one pocket to the other, stepping impatiently from one foot to the other, and intoning mournfully: “That’ll do now… That’s enough… let’s go, shall we…”
“Are you going as well?” Otto asked in awed surprise when he finished getting everything together.
“Yes, why?”
“I can do it on my own,” said Otto.
“On my own, on my own. It’s quicker with two. You get in line for the counter, I get in line for the till.”
“That’s true,” said Otto. “Yes. Of course.”
They went out through the back entrance and walked down the back staircase. On the way they startled a baboon—the poor creature hurled itself straight out the window like a rocket, and they even felt afraid for its life, but everything was fine after all—the baboon was dangling from the fire escape ladder, baring its fangs in a grin.
“I could give him the scraps,” Andrei said thoughtfully. “I’ve got enough leftover scraps for an entire herd.”
“Shall I go and get them?” Otto suggested willingly.
Andrei merely looked at him, said “At ease!” and walked on. The stairway already stank a bit. In fact it had always stunk a bit here anyway, but now a distinctly new whiff had appeared, and after walking down another flight, they discovered its source—and more than just one.
“Yes, Wang will have a bit more work to do,” said Andrei. “God forbid that I should end up as a caretaker right now. Who are you working as at the moment?”
“A minister’s deputy,” Otto replied despondently. “This is the third day already.”
“Which minister?” Andrei inquired.
“What’s it called… professional training.”
“Is it hard?”
“I don’t understand a thing,” Otto said dismally. “Lots and lots of documents, instructions, reports… estimates, budgets… And no one else there understands anything either. They all run around, asking each other—Wait, where are you going?”
“To the shop.”
“No. Let’s go to Hofstadter’s. He’s cheaper, and he’s German, after all.”
They went to Hofstadter’s. Hofstadter had a kind of combined greengrocer’s and general grocery store on the corner of Main Street and Old Persian Street. Andrei had been there a couple of times, and every time he had left empty handed: Hofstadter didn’t have very many foodstuffs, and he chose his own customers.
There was no one in the shop and the shelves were filled with neat ranks of identical jars of pink horseradish. Andrei went in first and Hofstadter, raising his pale, puffy face from the cash register, immediately said, “I’m closing.” But then Otto turned up, after catching the basket on the door handle, and the pale, puffy face broke into a smile. The closing of the shop was, of course, postponed. Otto and Hofstadter withdrew into the depths of the establishment, where boxes immediately started rustling and creaking as they were moved, potatoes drummed as they were poured, a glass vessel filled with something jangled, and muted voices started talking in muted tones…
With nothing else to do, Andrei gazed around. Yes indeed. Mr. Hofstadter’s little private trading business was a pitiful spectacle. The scales, of course, had not undergone the appropriate checks, and the sanitary conditions weren’t all that great. But then, that’s no concern of mine, thought Andrei. When everything got organized properly, all these Hofstadters would simply go bust. You could say they already had. In any case, Hofstadter wasn’t capable of serving anyone and everyone. Just look at the way he camouflaged himself, standing all that horseradish everywhere. Kensi should be set on him—this was a black market he was running here, the lousy nationalist. Only for Germans…
Otto glanced out of the depths and spoke in a whisper: “The money, quick!” Andrei hastily handed him a bundle of crumpled bills. With equal haste Otto peeled off a few of them, gave the rest back to Andrei, and disappeared back into the depths. A minute later he appeared behind the counter with his arms completely stretched by a full bag and a full basket. Hofstadter’s moonlike physiognomy loomed up behind him. Otto was streaming with sweat and kept smiling all the time, and Hofstadter kept repeating amiably, “Come again, come again, young men, I’m always glad to see you, always glad to see genuine Germans… And give Herr Heiger my special greetings… Next week they’ve promised to bring me a little bit of pork. Tell Herr Heiger I’ll keep three kilograms or so for him.”