Chez Max (11 page)

‘Easy,
mein Führer!
What does it mean? Oh, me stupid primitive slitty-eyes!'

‘I didn't mean it like that. Sorry. But the question remains…'

I was still naïve enough at the time to think that if I could only summon up enough patience and sweet reason, I could get Chen to have a grown-up relationship with mutual respect for each other.

‘
Achtung!
The Führer is apologizing!'

‘Please, Chen, if I took the wrong tone…'

‘Oh, come off it – the wrong tone! So you think my apartment and what I have to say about human beings contradict each other?'

‘No, I just think it's rather striking.'

‘Rather striking, well, well!' He gave an affected little cough.

‘If you don't like the way I put it, that's no reason to – '

‘Then again,' he interrupted me, ‘of course it does work the other way around: someone living in a hovel with nothing to eat can't be expected to spare the time to lean back at his ease, thinking about the state the world's in and how to improve it. That would be like saying heart surgery ought to be performed by stroke patients.'

‘I don't know what that's got to do with – '

‘With my apartment? Simple: a man who lives in an apartment like mine has the chance – and thus the duty – to think about morality more. People like
you
are the contradiction: you earn a pot of money with your restaurant but you still pay only the usual Ashcroft rent for an apartment which isn't exactly tiny itself, you have a holiday home on the Adriatic, you regularly overrun your leave, so I've heard, and with all that relaxed, luxury living, and when you look at the rest of the world you never stop to wonder if everything is really fair and right and proper.'

It was the first time since we'd been put in a team together that Chen had gone beyond the usual grumbling and said something that sounded like propaganda. I was shocked.

As if in a trance, I repeated, ‘The rest of the world?' and my heart began to thud at the thought that by
the rest
Chen might mean the part of it that even we were recommended to mention only in certain circumstances. I was already beginning to fear that I'd have to report my new partner to Commander Youssef after only a few weeks of working with him. That wouldn't make a very good impression on our colleagues, however grave my reasons. Team spirit in large quantities was expected in the Ashcroft agency, and rightly so.

Chen smiled as if he were planning to test me with some kind of cunning trap. ‘Well, take the Paris suburbs. Ever been there to see how the other half lives, or rather how the vast majority live? Probably not, because what could you talk to them about? They're not all that interested in recipes for ceps.'

Now I knew that Chen had indeed meant the rest of the world on the other side of the Fence. Presumably my sudden uneasiness hadn't escaped him, so he had mentioned the suburbs just to tease me. Or else, he was being a bit more cautious on such subjects at the time.

Later I did visit the suburbs, and if the quality of life couldn't be compared with living in the city centre, there was no real poverty. Far from it: in spite of crowded quarters, food from cheap supermarkets and chains of snack bars, what to me seemed an unusual amount of rubbish in the streets – but that was their own fault, after all – and the ever-present aircraft noise because of the proximity of Subaru Airport, I saw more people publicly laughing, drinking and in lively conversation with each other in that one day than in a whole year in the eleventh arrondissement. That might be because of the hotter, somehow livelier Oriental blood that still unmistakably flowed through the veins of the majority of the people living there, even fifty years or more after the construction of the Fence, which meant without any refreshing of the gene pool. But for me, as I walked around, the noisy, colourful, cheap sparkle of all that hustle and bustle proved one thing above all: however great your outward wretchedness, what counted most in life was your inner attitude. And in purely practical terms, homes in the old quarters of Paris just weren't possible for everyone, even in a society where the government, as our President had once put it, ‘guarantees everyone the maximum possible amount of health, comfort and culture.'

But that afternoon four years ago, I hadn't been thinking much about such matters, and I hardly noticed Chen's insulting remark about the ceps recipes. First and foremost, I was relieved that in mentioning the Paris suburbs he'd brought up a subject that could be tackled critically. Hardly a week went by when the media didn't discuss the social ills in the suburbs and their effects: drug crimes, child labour, secret workshops where both legal and illegal immigrants made clothes, where proprietary branded goods were forged, or texts glorifying violence and supporting terrorism were printed. There was prostitution (because of course very few could afford a sexomat), there were gangs of young people, and naturally there were the regular unauthorized demonstrations. In fact the term ‘unauthorized demonstrations' was only a synonym for public anti-Israel rallies. It was an open secret in Eurosecurity that, during the Wars of Liberation, the Euro-Asian leadership, by arrangement with the interim US American
government, had deliberately left the Israel/Palestine conflict unresolved to provide a safety-valve for their own population if, at a later date, the need to be politically engaged became overwhelming. So it was that at the end of the Wars not only Israel but also the Palestinian territories became part of the Euro-Asian and North American world. To this day, the European government provided both sides with financial and diplomatic support, as well as armaments and secret service information, helping now one and now the other, so that the country – or countries, depending on your political standpoint – was or were never at peace.

So when discontent looked as if it was spreading among the population for some reason or other, for instance a rise in the cost of heating or the taxes on alcohol – and of course that hit the suburbs almost exclusively, because hardly anyone who lived in the city centre would even notice another few cents on a bottle of spirits – when the bars and the places where young people gathered began to seethe with unrest and the Ashcroft agents there gave warning of possible protests against the government, the subject of Israel automatically came up in the news. Ever since the Wars of Liberation a lot of thought had gone into ensuring that nothing in the public mind changed the familiar picture of the mighty Jewish oppressors on one side and the Arab Palestinian freedom fighters on the other. First, anything more complex was of course no use for rousing popular anger and second, in our modern society it was a humiliating but unfortunately undeniable fact that large parts of the population were still not free of prejudice towards our fellow citizens of Jewish descent. Or as an internally-circulated Eurosecurity memo said: ‘If we cannot entirely root out the evil of anti-Semitism, we will at least exploit it to protect European democracy and thus, necessarily, our Jewish minority.'

The usual method employed by the Mental Health Department, responsible for the protection of democracy and minorities, was to publish the photograph of some ‘father', ‘brother' or ‘son' shot by Israeli soldiers. Or there were films of Israeli soldiers destroying a suicide bomber's family home with diggers in retaliation for their son's action, or cordoning off the borders between Palestinian areas. There was generally a call for demonstrations the next day. That way, people could vent their aggression and anger and forget about price rises or other state demands for the time being. Basically it was a good, sensible arrangement, calling for a very small sacrifice if you thought of the social satisfaction that it provided.

Naturally the media also mentioned attacks by Palestinians and showed pictures of the victims, but who would dare side with the one oppressor we still had in our Western world? Sometimes Jewish student associations organized petitions at the Bastille, or distributed leaflets about the history and mainly peaceful everyday life of Israel. And of course the pamphlets always reminded readers of the Holocaust. But even someone like me, a German who still, after many generations, took on the inherited burden of guilt and was even glad to take it on – after all, it helped me to gain a better understanding of myself and my cultural origins – even those like me had to admit that the subject didn't interest anyone any more, except for jokes about Nazis made in Chen's inimitable style and the annual Never Again Fascism Day. Condemnation of Israel was the stance to take, as the politically engaged segment of the population had unanimously agreed. Well, no other option was open to them.

 

They're not all that interested in recipes for ceps…

What an arrogant idiot! If I'd known then what was clear to me now, I could have replied, ‘What, not even your comrades eating their last meal in this world? Or do they have some other term for it before strapping on explosives, going into a department store, preferably picking the children's department, and blowing themselves to bits?' Because apart from such exceptions as the Rue de la Roquette, most of the potential suicide bombers who had got past the Fence naturally disappeared in the teeming masses of the suburbs. Or I could have been even wittier, even more cutting; I could have said, ‘Oh no? What about recipes for mushroom clouds?'

A terrorist group from the Caucasus really had set off a small, home-made nuclear bomb four years ago in a Moscow suburb. It is true that only a few hundred people had died in the blast, but because the entire contaminated area hadn't been cleared because of the expense, an unofficial report indicated that thousands of its inhabitants died annually from the long-term effects of radiation. To be sure, most of those who had settled in that part of the city since the explosion were Caucasians, ‘and that,' said one of our Russian colleagues dryly at the Ashcroft Christmas party, ‘has at least brought the whole thing full circle.'

They're not all that interested…
what could someone who so far had seen the suburbs only on the news say in answer to that?

‘I think we'd soon find something to talk about,' I said lamely, and then went on the attack myself. ‘What were you trying to say anyway? Someone who lives in a hovel can't be expected to think up ways to improve the world, is that it?'

At the time I still assumed that, even for Chen, a
faux pas
– which if interpreted with malicious intent might be a criminal offence – was still a
faux pas
, and what I said would at least shut him up for a moment.

But instead he gave me a bleary stare, then closed his eyes, tilted his head to one side and made snoring noises.

‘Oh God!' I exclaimed angrily.

After a while Chen opened his eyes again. ‘Max,' he whispered, with a despairing expression on his face, ‘dear Max, oh, please don't inform on me for speaking out against the state!'

‘Ha, ha,' I said humourlessly.

‘Ha, ha!' he imitated. Then he sat up straight and said, in his normal tone of voice, ‘I'm the one who should be informing on you. Mention of improving the world instantly makes
you
think of revolutions or something of the kind. Like a sexually disturbed man who undoes his flies the moment he sees women eating bananas. Let me remind you that it's our task, as the Ashcroft Oath puts it, “to do our daily part towards the constant improvement of the world”.'

‘But that's not what you meant just now,' I said childishly, and a bit hysterically. As always in an argument with Chen, I was losing my footing. Yet I knew perfectly well that he'd been thinking of anything but the Ashcroft Oath.

‘Oh, Max!' Chen cursorily ended the conversation. ‘That's no way to have an argument. Sometimes you are just so thick.'

Just so thick!
And uttered in such a gentle, warm, totally hopeless tone of voice! Not just that – Chen of all people trying to tell me how to have an argument! So I suppose snoring noises were okay?

I signalled to the café owner to bring me another Calvados. There was nothing to eat except for sandwiches and greasy quiche, and the rapid way my mind was turning over would keep me from getting drunk.

I shook my head. How had I managed to stand working with Chen for so long? If I could only nail him once and for all! I could almost feel Commander Youssef's hand on my shoulder and hear his words. ‘Well done, Schwarzwald. I'm very grateful to you. What Wu might have done if you hadn't picked up his trail doesn't bear thinking of.'

Yes, and a lot of people at Central Office would be grateful. There was hardly one of our colleagues who Chen hadn't called a ‘careerist', a ‘creep', a ‘corrupt arsehole', ‘enough to make you sick' or ‘a heart amputee'. All of them favourite expressions of Chen – the man who knew how to have an argument! ‘Heart amputee' in particular always surprised me. How could a man who obviously had no heart for anyone or anything at all (except perhaps for a night with a young woman all tarted up but on closer inspection perfectly ordinary, like the one on the park bench), how could a man like that think up such an insult? It was probably what they call projection.

‘Excuse me, Monsieur, but I'm closing in a minute. If you'd like to pay, please.' The café owner put down a plastic plate with my bill on it.

‘Of course.' I reached for my wallet. In the park opposite, Chen was still on his knees in the flower bed, planting roses and talking to the woman. It was now ten-fifteen. Although I knew the Boulevard Richard Lenoir very well, and for a short stretch it even bordered my own area of operations, at this moment I couldn't think of a bar or brasserie likely to be open at this time of night near the Bastille end of the boulevard. I didn't fancy the prospect of having to lurk in the entrance of some building. In addition, I was feeling the effects of the Calvados, and my desire to unmask Chen as soon as possible was getting stronger all the time. That's the only way I can explain how I came to make such a stupid mistake.