“That’s not a bad question,” the bald man said. “Yeah, what have you stopped doing? Maybe we should ask, What haven’t you stopped doing? Maybe that’s a better question.” He looked at the woman beside him, but she didn’t seem to be listening: she was meditating, or thinking about another man, or a vacation on Malta when it hadn’t stopped raining for ten days. The Egyptian had been to Malta once. With a French woman. “So let’s ask you that,” the bald man went on. “What haven’t you stopped doing? You haven’t stopped dealing. You’re still living, so you haven’t stopped that, either. Let’s see, what else haven’t you stopped doing? What does a person like you not stop doing? What can a person like you not help doing?”
Nino looked at him, the bald man with the video camera around his neck. He rubbed his hands together; they felt dry. Then he stood up, but the bald man pushed him back in his chair rather forcefully, and the Egyptian couldn’t help thinking about his dogs. How he had fed them that morning, how he went into the garden with them sometimes to cry at the moon. He liked that. That made him happy; he would lie in the grass beside his dogs, even if it was cold out, even if it had just rained, and cry.
“Let’s talk,” the bald man said. “Let’s do it right now, because time is money, and before long it won’t be necessary anymore.”
The woman was toying with an elastic band she’d been wearing in her hair. Her hair was hanging loose now. It was kind of curly.
“There’s nothing to tell,” the Egyptian said, and he looked at them, these two people who looked like tourists. He kept looking at them, because he didn’t understand what they wanted from him. “I’m a busy man. You two have mistaken me for someone else. That’s why I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Maybe they would believe him. He could be very convincing at times — people used to tell him that.
“There’s nothing to tell,” he said again, “I’m the manager. This is my place. My falafels are famous.”
For a moment, he was afraid that something had gone wrong with last month’s payment, that they hadn’t split it up correctly, and that the Swiss police had decided to take action. But he knew how the Swiss police operated — they worked in a different way. Besides, they didn’t look like this. Swiss undercover agents talked differently, too. He knew them; he knew them better than his own family.
“I sell famous falafels. So what’s to tell?”
He laughed and held up his hands. It was a good joke, too, he thought, if you stopped to think about it. When people asked him what he did, he could say that: I sell falafels.
“What is it that makes time so valuable?” the bald man asked imperturbably. “Death, that’s what makes time valuable. The faster death approaches, the more valuable time becomes. A fifteen-year-old boy thinks he’ll live forever — time isn’t valuable to him. You don’t see what we see. You don’t know what we know. Our death is fast and accurate, our death never misses the target, our death leaves no trace. Our death has to be faster than that of the enemy. Our death is faster. But let me put it differently: since we’ve been sitting here, your time has become more valuable, and we want just a little piece of that time before it becomes worthless and no one wants it anymore.”
The Egyptian shook his head and looked at the door. “I don’t understand,” he said, “I’m old — maybe I’ll live twenty, maybe thirty years, probably not — I don’t have any children. What do you people want? Money? Do you think I’m rich? Rich from what? Would I be sitting here if I was rich?” He thought about Malta again, and the French woman he’d been with there. Funny to think about that now — it had been months, maybe years since he’d last thought about it.
He laughed again, and the woman across from him looked at him in a way that gave the Egyptian an uneasy feeling. A bloated feeling, like when you’ve had too much to eat.
“Hamas,” the bald man said. “Let’s talk about Hamas. First you start talking about it, because a conversation has to start somewhere, then we’ll tell you what we have to say. Come on, talk. Talk about Hamas as though it were your grandma. Your favorite grandma, who told you all her naughty secrets.”
The woman was weaving little figures with her elastic band; she was pretty good at it. Outside, a fire engine went by, its sirens blaring.
The owner of the kebab place shrugged. “Who?” he asked. “I don’t understand. My grandma? My favorite grandma? Hamas?” He laughed. “My grandma is dead. My grandfather is, too. And my grandma didn’t have any naughty secrets — she didn’t have any secrets at all. Listen, my hair smells like frying fat, my hands are tired from slicing lamb and running the deep-fryer, I never remember a name, I don’t have any regular customers, and when I do I forget them right away. My falafels are famous, but customers can’t find me because I’ve moved so often. First I had a place over there, now I’m here. I should try advertising, but I don’t have enough money to advertise.” He moved his face closer to that of the bald man. “My heart doesn’t get stolen anymore,” said the Egyptian. “Because the people who steal your heart steal your cash register, too. My heart is locked up.”
He put his hand over his heart, and the bald man looked around wearily. Then the bald man said: “Okay, so let me tell you something. Let me tell you about your dogs. Heinrich and Günther — that’s it, isn’t it?”
The Egyptian cleared his throat, and looked at the door as if he expected the cleaner to show up, though he wouldn’t be coming for half an hour. He often came late, never early.
“That’s right,” he said, after thinking for a bit. “Günther and Heinrich. That’s what they’re called. They’re Swiss dogs, so I figured I’d give them Swiss names. You have to adapt. Which means your dogs have to adapt, too. Adapting starts with the dogs. The dogs have to speak the same language as the other dogs. You have to call them. You take them for a walk, and they run away, because they’re pigheaded, or young and frisky. Then you have to call them. Then the neighbors hear your dogs’ names. Don’t give them names that would be unwise, I always say. Don’t give them names that will give your neighbors an uneasy feeling. A bloated feeling. For Swiss dogs you have to come up with Swiss names.”
He kept talking, because as long as he talked he felt no fear. His brothers were heroes — that’s why most of them were no longer alive — but he was no hero and never had been. He had dreamed of being one. He looked at his hands again.
They didn’t seem to have any more questions, so he asked: “What can I do for you? What do you people want from me? You’re mixed up, you’ve mistaken me for someone else. In some places everybody’s Hamas, in other places everybody’s Swiss. I’m nothing.”
“There’s a lot you do for us,” the bald man said. “Enough, in any case. What seems like a little to you might be a lot to me. Every little bit helps. I collect those little bits. You love your dogs, don’t you? You’re crazy about them. That’s one way of talking to you. I can tell you about how much you love your dogs, and how unpleasant you’d find it if one day they disappeared. How you’d go to bed at night and see those two lovely dogs of yours being run through a meat grinder. About how you’d see them in your dreams, every single night; you get out of bed, again and again you hear Heinrich’s and Günther’s dying yelps wherever you go. I could talk to you like that, but I prefer not to talk to you like that. Because, actually, I find that unpleasant. I want to tell you something, and I have something to tell you. I collect, I’m a collector — that’s what I do. Some people collect pinecones, other people collect stamps, I collect information. That’s why I’m here. That’s the only reason I’m here, the two of us are here.”