Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes Read Free Book Online Page A

to the last quarter of an hour. Even if it was still a mystery what exactly these racial aliens were doing here, at least they did not appear to be playing a leading role. Which made it unlikely that businesses were being annexed by foreign types on a large scale and their names changed accordingly. As far as I was concerned – even for the purposes of economic propaganda – it was hard to comprehend why anyone should want to christen a “Blitz Cleaner’s” with the name “Yilmaz”. Since when did “Yilmaz” represent the guarantee of clean shirts? At most, “Yilmaz” represented the guarantee of a serviceable donkey cart. The only problem was that I had no alternative to this cleaner’s. And given that rapidity of action was of the essence, to allow me to exert pressure on my political opponents, I needed a Blitz cleaner’s. Plagued by doubts, I marched in.
    I was greeted by a distorted glockenspiel. The place reeked of cleaning fluid, and it was sweltering – far too hot for a cottonshirt, but the splendid Afrika Korps uniform was unavailable at present, alas! On the counter was one of those bells one often sees in hotel receptions.
    Nothing happened.
    I could make out some sort of plaintive oriental music; perhaps, in a back room of the shop, an Anatolian washer-woman was lamenting her faraway Heimat – queer behaviour indeed, especially if one had the good fortune to live in the capital of the German Reich. I perused the items of clothing which hung in rank and file behind the counter. They were wrapped in a transparent material, not dissimilar to the substance my bag was made of. In fact, everything seemed to be wrapped in this stuff. I had once seen something similar in a laboratory, but I.G. Farben must have come a long way with it in recent years. According to what I knew, the production of this material was highly dependent on a ready supply of crude oil; correspondingly it came at great expense. But the way in which synthetic materials were used here – indeed, the extent to which automobiles were driven – suggested that crude oil was no longer a problem. Had the Reich somehow kept possession of the Roumanian deposits? Unlikely. Had Göring ultimately discovered new sources on home soil? A bitter chuckle rose within my chest. Göring! That incompetent morphine addict! He would sooner find gold up his own nostrils than oil in Germany. I wonder what had become of him. It was more probable that we had fallen back on other resources, and …
    “Been waiting long?”
    A southern European man with Asiatic cheekbones peered out from a passageway at the back of the shop.
    “Absolutely!” I said impatiently.
    “Why not ring?” He pointed to the bell on his counter and tapped it gently with the palm of his hand. The bell rang.
    “I did already ring –
here
!” I insisted, opening the door to the shop. The strange glockenspiel rang out once more.
    “Must ring
here
!” the cleaner said dismissively, hitting the bell on the counter again.
    “A German only rings once,” I said, prickly.
    “Then
here
,” the half-breed of indeterminate lineage said, ringing with his palm a third time. I was seized by the urge to send round the S.A., and have them lacerate this cretin’s eardrum with his cursed bell. Or even better, both eardrums. He could then explain to his customers to wave when they entered his establishment. I sighed. Being deprived of even the most basic auxiliary staff was downright annoying. A number of things would have to be put straight in this country before I could settle this matter to my satisfaction, but I started to compile a list of traitors sabotaging the future of the German Volk, and “Yilmaz Cleaner’s” was at the very top. In the meantime all I could do was scowl and remove the bell from his grasp.
    “Tell me,” I said harshly, “do you clean things, too? Or where you come from is the cleaning industry just about bell-ringing?”
    “What you want?”
    I placed my bag on