Magic Hoffmann by Jakob Arjouni Read Free Book Online Page A

machines in the East - that’s hysterical. I’ve palmed them off with fruit machines when they had no regular electricity, and western currency was completely inconceivable to most of them. It’s as if you’d set up games in India where people had to shove slices of bread in the slot, you get it?’
    Fred nodded, ‘Understood,’ though in reality he didn’t understand at all.
    Mecklenburg-Vorpommern sounded to him like Swaziland. He had never been in the DDR and had experienced reunification in prison as a boring TV series: complete with plastic cars, priests and drunks. On the morning after the wall came down the prison governor gave a brief speech, but apart from the usual ten percent who were interested in everything, the inmates didn’t bother to look up from their plates. Fred was all the more astonished to see on the TV how many people at the windows of BMWs broke into tears of joy at the imminent prospect of absorbing twenty million poor folk. In one programme a farmer from Vogelsberg related how he had woken his family in the middle of the night to celebrate the freedom of his brothers and sisters with schnapps and sausages. Sure, thought Fred, people can always find a reason to get pissed. But the hue and cry on TV grew ever louder, and the governor gave more and more breakfast speeches, and even in the cells they suddenly boasted of pride, nationhood and unity, and Fred realised that people were being driven by something that he didn’t understand. There was a musical celebration in the gym on the ninth of November the following year, and at the end they all hummed the national anthem while the director conducted. Fred sang along cheerfully, then yelled the word ‘freedom’ like a battlecry. The singing broke up, and while Fred was basking in the glory of his jailbird’s humour, the others turned round to look at him. In the belief that he had been elected to joker for the day he sang again on his own: unity and justice - then he bellowed - and freedom! The word echoed round the gymnasium walls and he laughed, but no-one else joined him. Slowly he grasped that he must have interrupted something.
    Beer and vodka appeared at the table. Cool Rudi yelled ‘Cheers!’ and they downed the vodkas.
    Outside, rape fields were speeding by.
    â€˜How old are you, my dear fellow?’ Rudi trumpeted.
    Without looking away from the fields, Fred answered: ‘Twenty-four.’
    â€˜Then you’re still a young pup.’ He laughed. ‘And what are you going to do with your life?’
    Fred would prefer to have answered that he only knew what he wasn’t going to do with his life: such as fruit machine representative for Mecklenburg-Thingammy. But then Grandma Ranunkel’s wish that he should make a start in the local EDEKA warehouse and work his way up to sales director suddenly occurred to him, and to give her a little joy up above, and because it was out of the question to mention Canada to someone like Rudi, he said: ‘EDEKA salesman.’
    â€˜EDEKA salesman?’ Rudi turned away. ‘At your age you must at least want...’ he paused for thought, ‘...to get rich.’
    When Fred didn’t respond, he said: ‘It can’t be true...’ then broke off and seemed genuinely disappointed.
    Fred looked out of the window. They were travelling through thick birch forests. The vodka began to kick in, and Fred stretched his legs. Had the Schöllers called Annette and told her of his visit? Did they talk to each other at all? In the two or three years before the bank robbery, Annette had turned away from her Happy Family and only ever seemed to argue with her father, and now that her mother was more or less gone...Fred pictured himself sitting with Annette of an evening under the Brandenburg Gate - in his imagination one always sat under the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin - and they were finally able to talk about everything.
    After