He nodded and put away the pistol.
Then he offered them a piece of chewing gum. They put the gum in their mouths. All three of them were chewing gum now.
It was ten-thirty-five in Basel, cloudy; rain was expected, but it would take a while to come.
JUST AS THE Egyptian had thought, she showed up early. It was only around eleven. She found the door standing ajar and opened it cautiously. She went in. Wearing jeans and a sweater, carrying a backpack, she looked more like a tourist than ever — a young tourist, like so many others. It was the perfect disguise, and perhaps it was more than a disguise. She was a young tourist, more that than anything else. Her work — well, what did her work really involve? What did it add up to, anyway? When viewed in the cold, clear light of day?
“Hello,” she called out.
There was no answer.
She had seen a few spots of blood in front of the kebab place, so she knew that perhaps no answer would ever come. That silence reigned here, and that here silence would continue to reign.
She smelled the odor of fried meat.
She walked over to the bar. And saw the Egyptian lying there.
She squatted down, wiped his lips with her bare hand.
Only then did she see the paper towels on the bar, and used them to wipe his face. She laid one hand on his hot cheek, but didn’t dare to touch his feet and ankles.
She fought down the urge to gag, to vomit, to run away.
“Mmm,” the Egyptian said. She couldn’t understand him.
She poured him a glass of water, turned off the heat under the oil, which was still boiling. The stench in the kebab place was overpowering. It was almost more than one could take. She tried to give the Egyptian a sip; he had a hard time keeping the water in his mouth. It ran out again almost right away. The corners of his mouth were torn.
Then, at last, she heard what he was mumbling: “Kill me.”
She took his hand, held it, pressed it to her breast. But the Egyptian kept murmuring: “Kill me. Please, kill me.”
Again, he saw his two dogs — no, he didn’t see them, he felt them. He felt their fur, their wet fur after they had rolled in the grass. You could give them a bath as often as you liked, they still loved dirt. Those dogs. But it wasn’t the fur of his dogs he was feeling, it was the breast of the woman who had said that he smelled of desert and of dog. She had pushed his hand up under her sweater and laid it on her bare breast.
She squatted down there beside him, without a word.
Every once in a while, the Egyptian closed his eyes. He didn’t really close them, they fell shut, the way a door suddenly slams shut in a gust of wind.
He remembered how she had sat across from him two days before. That had been a different world, another age. He couldn’t look at her again, ever again. If only he weren’t so filthy now, but he was horribly befouled. Despite the pain, which seemed to grow only more intense, he was ashamed of lying beside this woman in his own filth.
“Finish me off,” he said, and squeezed her breast. “Can’t you see the shape I’m in?”
She shook her head slowly, without really knowing why.
She kept shaking her head, and when the door of the kebab place opened and the bald man came in, she was still shaking her head, gently, to the rhythm of the music, it seemed.
She didn’t stand up; she heard him coming, the bald man, she recognized his footsteps; and quietly, very quietly, he said her name, the name she used in Basel. She remained squatting down beside the Egyptian, his hand on her bare tit. He squeezed; it hurt a little, but she paid no attention to that. She dabbed at his lips.
The bald man came and stood beside her. He looked at the Egyptian.
He looked at the bar. The piano concerto by Beethoven appealed to him. It was nice. Serene. Peaceful. Slightly melancholy, but not overdone.
The Egyptian stared at the bald man. The first time he’d been carrying a video camera, but not today.
“Kill me,” the Egyptian said to him.
His voice was the voice of a machine that doesn’t work well anymore. His voice faltered. His voice rasped. It came from another world.
The bald man gestured to the woman. She took the Egyptian’s hand, removed it from her tit, held it for a moment. It was warm, but not sweaty.
The Egyptian looked at her. She noticed that. She wanted to say something, just quickly. But she didn’t. He opened his mouth, wide open, as though he wanted to scream, as though he was expecting the barrel of the gun to be shoved into his mouth again. Then he had to close his eyes, and he saw his dogs. He wondered who would take them outside now to cry when the moon was full. He wondered whether they would miss him. And, whether it was the thought of the dogs or seeing the bald man, he no longer wanted to die. He didn’t want to be finished off anymore, no matter what shape he was in, with or without feet, with or without legs, crippled or not, it didn’t matter. He just wanted to live, no more than that, just live.
The woman took a few steps away from him, walking slowly to the door. She had seen people die before. She tried to recall the exact number; she was precise when it came to death, when it came to her work; she was fond of facts. Still, there was something about this dying, something that made this death different from the others. Not all dying looked alike.
The bald man pulled out a gun. It had a silencer on it. He looked at the Egyptian; the Egyptian looked at him. There were the dogs again, the garden, the grass, and the videotape, too. The videotape bearing the purpose of his life. When he was no longer around, that would still be there. It would survive him, and probably still be looked at in a future of which he would no longer be a part. That was his eternity, actor in an erotic film made by amateurs.
Maybe that was what all eternity looked like: eroticism by and for amateurs.
The Egyptian didn’t whimper, he didn’t say, “Please, no, not like that.” All he thought was, I want to live, it doesn’t matter how, I just want to live, I want to see my dogs, I want to take them into the garden in the middle of the night and cry with them at the full moon. But he didn’t dare say that; he didn’t dare say anything anymore; anything he might say would only make things worse. He was silent, out of shame.
The bald man shot without hesitating. Hesitating caused pain. Pain was perhaps nothing but hesitation.
He fired three times: twice in the Egyptian’s chest, once through the head.
Then he put away his gun carefully.
The bald man went over to the woman. “One less informant,” he said quietly. He put his hand on the back of her neck, caressed the little hairs on the back of her neck. Only for a moment, not too long, never for too long. There was no intimacy between them; no intimacy must be allowed to exist.
The woman saw something on the floor. She looked at it but couldn’t see what it was. Just for the hell of it, just to have something to do, or perhaps actually out of curiosity, she bent down and picked it up. It was a tooth. It had a gold filling.
She looked at it, hesitated, started to put it down on one of the tables, but stuck it in her coat pocket instead.
The bald man was ready to go.
They went outside.
The woman looked at the trees. She straightened her sweater. She turned left; the bald man went in the other direction.
Two minutes later, a woman walked into a department store and disappeared into the crowd. In the women’s department she looked at a few summer dresses, and although she was hardened and had seen many people die, she still smelled the odor of desert and of dog.
Made for Each Other
MARC PARKED in the center of Amsterdam, along a canal. There stood his Alfa, amid all the normal cars; there stood Marc with his overnight bag, Awromele with his plastic bag, and Xavier with his rolled-up canvases.