More Beer by Jakob Arjouni Page A

accepted his offer. He bought a small apartment for me, here in Doppenburg, and paid me a decent monthly income. His wife knew about the arrangement. He came to see me almost every day. We took little trips, and I began to share his interest in books. Ihadn’t become a great dancer, but I had a carefree life. I did not love my patron, and it was better that way. The locals regarded me as a slut. Everybody knew.
    “I used to have coffee with his wife, and at some point I got to know his son, a young man of nineteen. We took an instant shine to each other. For me, he was the hope of something new, and I started dreaming about America again. But one night his father caught us in bed together and kicked me out. He sent his son abroad. I followed him, and we had a wonderful time. When his father found out, he no longer sent money to the son, saying he wouldn’t until I was out of the picture. For a while, we had a romantic time in fleabag hotels. But then he went back and entered the university, as his father wanted.
    “I still had the apartment in Doppenburg, so I came back here and tried to forget the young man. I wasn’t able to; I ended up spending more time drinking in the taverns than at home, not least because I would meet one of my lover’s friends there. Fred Scheigel. I had first met him on the secret walks I took with my lover. Fred too was young and good-looking, and he had ambitions to leave and move far away from here. Just like me. We moved in together, and finally we got married. We never emigrated. Fred went to work. Then we opened a grocery store, but it didn’t work. We went bankrupt and stopped dreaming.
    “My lover returned to take over his father’s business. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Then his father suddenly died. He married another woman. And so I end up here, with an old idiot of a husband. The Polish slut. My social life consists of an old Russian in Frankfurt.He gets me this vodka. I’m fifty-eight, but I look ten years older, and I’ll die in this hovel.”
    She got up for a fresh pack. Then she said, with a cigarette between her lips, “Six months ago, my lover was killed. I wanted to go to the funeral, but they didn’t even let me see his grave.”
    Rain was drumming against the windows. It had grown dark, and I could see only her outline, and once in a while her face, in the glow of the tip of her cigarette.
    “Böllig was your lover?”
    She nodded. She lit another candle.
    “And your husband worked for him as a night watchman.”
    She produced another bottle of vodka.
    “You look like you have a good head for alcohol.”
    I held out my glass, and she filled it.
    “Yes. Fred was out of work, and I wanted to help him. So I asked Friedrich Böllig to help him out, for old time’s sake. He laughed and asked me why on earth I had shacked up with such a nonentity. It was repulsive, but he was right. He gave Fred a job as a night watchman. I cursed him for it, but I still loved him.”
    “Do you know his wife?”
    “What do you think … A young woman, after his money. She could have had the money, if she’d let me keep the man.”
    “Did he know that?”
    “I don’t know. The few times I saw him, I tried to make him understand, but he just got mad, yelled at me, called me names. He claimed that I had destroyed hisrelationship with his father, even accused me of having caused his death.”
    “What did his father die of?”
    She stared at me for a moment. Then she leaned back in her chair and laughed.
    “You think I killed him?”
    “I don’t think anything.”
    “Even if you did, who cares? Cause of death: circulatory collapse. Quite banal. He was overweight.”
    “Was his death convenient to anyone at the time?”
    “I don’t know that it was particularly inconvenient, from anyone’s point of view.”
    She got up and started pacing slowly back and forth across the room.
    “Otto Böllig wasn’t the type people grieve over. He was a tyrant, but not