“Do you hear me better now?” she asks. “It’s become impossible to have a telephone call these days.”
“The connection was fine. I hung up.”
“You didn’t.”
“Yes I did.”
“You wouldn’t just simply hang up if you were talking to your mother. You wouldn’t do it.”
“Buy the property yourself. You’re making enough money with the program.”
“But it’s a good investment.”
“How can it be a good investment? You say I’m not allowed to build anything.”
“Do you want to ruin my view? What do you want to build?”
“I don’t want to build. I don’t want to have it at all!”
“Don’t you scream at me! When your mother asks you—”
I hit the Disconnect button. A few seconds later the phone vibrates again. I ignore it. Then I think for a while, stare at the phone, rub my eyes, and call back.
“You hung up!” she said. “I know. Don’t lie!”
“I have no intention of lying.”
“I wouldn’t believe that either.”
“So.”
“Don’t ever do that again!”
“I’ll do what I want. I’m an adult.”
She gives a mocking laugh, and I hit the Disconnect button with a shaking hand.
I wait, but she doesn’t call again. To be on the safe side, I switch the gadget off. I remember that Sibylle recently said something astonishingly astute about my mother, which was all the more surprising because she knows nothing about my mother; it was so obviously accurate that I must have had to suppress it immediately, for all I remember about it is that it was so to the point.
Knut begins to tell a story about a Marine, an ancient monkey, and a gardener from Thailand, and it also features a watering can, a plane, and, if I’m getting it right, a professor of numismatics. I nod from time to time and become convinced the whole thing would make no sense whatever even if I were paying attention. When we get there, it’s ten past four. The conference has already begun.
I get out of the car, walk through the heat into the cool of the lobby, and enter the elevator. Perhaps they’ve actually been waiting for me.
The elevator is already starting its ascent. It stops at the fourth floor, no one gets in. It’s just going up again when my knees give way and my head slams against the wall.
I hear something. It’s all dark around me. What I’m hearing is sobbing. I manage to straighten up a little. Slowly the shadow dissolves. I grope my head: no blood. Now I can see the dirty green threads in the carpeting. The person sobbing in here is me. I don’t know what it is, but something terrible has happened. Something that should never have been allowed to happen. Something that will never come good again.
I stand up. I’m not the only thing swaying, the elevator cabin is swaying too: seventh floor, eighth floor, ninth floor. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I wipe away my tears and check my watch: fourteen minutes past four. Note the day, note the time: August 8, 2008, fourteen minutes past four. You’ll find out what this means soon enough. The cabin stops, the doors open. At the last moment before they close again, I leap out.
I have to stay leaning against the wall for a bit, then I walk through the office in a daze. Everything seems different from the way it was before, every desk, every face, every object. I enter the conference room and murmur my excuses, because of course they have started without me. I take off my jacket, throw it over an empty chair, sit down, and manage to look as if everything is in order. At this I am an expert.
The sight of my colleagues depresses me even more than usuaclass="underline" all that lethargy, all that mediocrity. Possibly it is also to do with the fact that I only hire mediocre people. The last thing I need is someone who sees through me. Lehmann and Schröter are here, Kelling, whose daughter is my godchild, Pöhlke, whom I’d fire in a moment if only he gave me an excuse, because I just don’t like him. Maria Gudschmid is here, and so is the guy whose name I can never remember. And Felsner. I like him, but I don’t know why. When I came in, Lehmann had just been speaking. Now they’re all still, looking at me and waiting.
I take a breath. I’m hoarse and I feel as if I might burst into tears again, but I still have to say something. So I stammer out a few phrases about pleasurable working conditions and the good things we make, and I quote the Bhagavad Gita: Here you stand, Arjuna, so do not ask, stand up and fight, for God hates the lukewarm. Not a bad address, I think. They don’t know that they will soon be unemployed; some will be suspected of having collaborated, but the truth will come out: they are not criminals, they are merely incompetent.
The bit about God and the lukewarm, says Maria Gudschmid, isn’t in the Bhagavad Gita, it’s from the Bible.
The danger, says Kelling, that Triple A bonds could lose a significant portion of their value, can be discounted in practical terms. Triple A’s are and will remain classical value investments and thus risk free.
A problem arises, says Pöhlke, that it’s a known fact that investment banks invested in the very positions they were actively offering for sale to smaller firms. They thus set the value themselves of what they were selling; in other words, they unilaterally decided how much their customers owed them.
At some point, Felsner says, there will be a class-action suit against this system. But at the moment the only thing to do is wait. There has been an announcement that Krishna’s next avatar will appear before this epoch of ours is over.
Which doesn’t mean that it’s certain that the avatar will have to be human, says Maria Gudschmid.
If for example anyone is holding significant insurance paper, says Lehmann, it would be impossible to calculate the extent of exposure in the event of a collapse of the large derivative conglomerates. There is, he says, no tool to work out a reasonable rate of risk.
“Kluessen wants to withdraw his money,” I say.
At a stroke the room falls silent.
But hopefully it’s not yet a sure thing, says Felsner. And there are certainly things we can still do.
Not a good moment to lose our most important account, in Maria’s view.
In an emergency there are tricks, says Lehmann. If for example the value of a set of assets cannot be reliably established because of a legally suspect asymmetry in the market, the trustee has the right to freeze those assets on a temporary basis. Even against the wishes of the owner.
Pure theory, says Schörter. No court would accept such an argument.
To get back to the problem with the investment banks, says Pöhlke. His proposaclass="underline" short a few of them, without great investment.
Only to him that dares, says Lehmann, will Krishna give.
Quite a few dare, is Pöhlke’s infuriated retort, and Krishna does not give. The god has freedom of action, because he is freedom itself.
Which is why bad people sometimes get the lot, says Kelling, while good people get nothing. The risk potential in the lower reaches of the mortgage pool is not good, and—
“Thank you!” I stand up. Until now I’ve kept a straight face, I’ve stayed sitting with my back straight and haven’t given anything away. Now I’ve had enough.
“Just one more question,” calls Schröter.
The door closes behind me.
On the way to the elevator I wonder about how to establish that I really did hear what I think I heard. But if I ask someone, he could lie, and even a recording can be manipulated.
“Now it’s happened,” says the man next to me in the elevator. “Now it’s all coming to an end.”
He’s wearing a hat and his teeth are hideous. I’ve seen him already today, but I can’t remember where. He doesn’t look right at me but talks to my reflection in the mirror on the back wall of the elevator, so that it is not he but his reflection that stares at me fixedly. Apart from us there are two other men standing there with briefcases, but they are looking straight ahead and paying no attention to us.