I say, “All right already. We’ll drive there and pick up your fucking tiger.”
He lets go of me. Says, “That’s my boy. Good man.”
I take out a beer and hand him one too. Then I take a seat.
“Don’t expect I’ll keep living here after that stunt,” I say, with complete sobriety, opening the can and knocking back a long, deep sip.
“Only fair,” he says, and raises his can.
I don’t clink my can with his, just keep on drinking. He shrugs his shoulders, his old man chest briefly becoming visible under his oversized muscle shirt. He empties the can in two slugs. There’s a dirty blue van in front of the house. Bremen plates. Who knows where he dug that up. The half-scratched-out vestiges of some carpentry company’s logo can be seen on the side of the vehicle. Arnim bangs the hood. It sounds like he banged against a kettle.
“Off we go! Gonna get my tiger!” he shouts eagerly.
We climb inside. Slams it into reverse and turns the van around. We rumble out of the woods and over the field lane. Then we turn onto the country road toward the autobahn.
Arnim lets me take the wheel for about two hours. It’s already dark. We’re somewhere in the Brandenburg wasteland before Berlin and Potsdam. At the last rest stop, I stocked up with around twenty iced coffees and Red Bull cans. I knock back one after another, till I feel nauseous. Arnim is completely worked up and babbles away to himself nonstop.
“And where are we meeting with your tiger people?”
“They’re Lebanese or some shit. Not tiger people.” He coughs into his fist and wipes it on his seat. “In Landsberg on the River Warthe. A little town just behind the Polack border. Worked something out where we could meet. Always good to know people everywhere, I tell you. You still okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” I say, “enough.”
“Hey, Heiko. About what happened. Didn’t mean it that way.”
“Aha,” I say, and focus on the illuminated surface of the road in front of us. Otherwise everything around us is pitch-black.
“I really appreciate it, you know, my boy? That you help an old warhorse like me fulfill his dream.”
“That’s all right,” I say. “Let’s just get this thing done.”
I can’t imagine how it’ll work out, loading a fucking tiger like a load of kebab meat. But there’s no going back now.
“Sure is crazy, the way life goes, right?”
“Mmmm,” I mumble and roll down the window a crack. I think Arnim cut one.
“Back when I was doing my butcher apprenticeship. That I go to jail for murder. Man, oh man. Fucking vet,” he mumbles, “and when ya get out. Then no one’ll hire you, my boy. Be glad you’ve never done time. Well, did work out all right in the end. But that I’d end up doing something with live animals, I wouldn’t have imagined it. Back then. And that I’d get rich, to boot.”
“Rich?” I ask and look at him.
“Well, I mean for our kind, my boy. Ass-load of cash. Yep. But I’ll tell you what: There’s more than that. Than dough. Live your dreams. I read that somewhere, I think. It’s true, for sure, yep.”
“Sorry, Arnim, but could we maybe have a little bit of peace and quiet for a sec?”
He looks at me as if I’d insulted his mother. But then his face relaxes again.
“Come on, pull over. I’ll take the wheel again. Way too wound up to sleep.”
Crossing the border in the dark at Kustrin went off without a hitch. We didn’t go through a check and didn’t even see a cop car! Three cheers for open borders! Even though I’d feel better if we’d get stopped on the way there. Better than on the way back, when we may not have a tiger in the tank but one in the back.
I ask myself what category of crime and severity of penalty there could be for smuggling exotic and dangerous animals.
Arnim doesn’t know either. “Knock it off, my boy! I’m sure not going to the slammer again. There”—he points ahead vigorously—“that there is the city limits.”
“Gorzów Wielkopolski,” I read aloud.
Then we’re past the sign.
“Hogwash, that’s Landsberg on the Warthe,” Arnim corrects me, giving the old German name. “Can’t be much farther. So shut up.”
The blurred silhouette of the city emerges from the blue morning light in front of us. Abandoned factories lie beneath a delicate shroud in front of crumbling, seemingly bombed-out facades. Like the fuzziness of a young animal. The icy blast of air whistles in through the open window like knife tips. I close it. Also to lock out the oppressive burned coal stench that seems to coat the entire region. The signs you see on the buildings and roadside give the impression they were put up decades ago and never replaced. They’re usually only attached on two or three corners and flapping sluggishly in the wind. A muffled hum hangs in the air. As though the city was powered by a huge, subterranean generator. But for who? When I look at the houses, I can hardly imagine anyone living here. This is almost how I always pictured cities after bombing raids. Well, maybe that’s a little worse. But I still get the feeling a nuclear power plant blew up here or something. Arnim steers us through the dead streets on a course I’m not following. The van pounds over the potholes, but the bumps are mostly absorbed by our well-cushioned seats. When I look around, I understand how the Polish hooligans can have blossomed into some of the most notorious in all of Europe. I mean Hannover isn’t to be scoffed at, and I like its gray drabness. But this here. If you grow up in a city like this, then the rage starts embedding itself inside in your skull from day one. I decide suggesting a match against a Polish team back home. Surely, Tomek will still have some connections in his homeland and be able to set something up. Would just love to measure myself against the Poles. Maybe from Warsaw or Lodz. Or Poznan. So. Assuming everything gets right again. And also only once Kai is fit again. No point even mentioning it if I don’t know the boys have my back. At least Kai and Jojo. Or maybe just Kai. Damn.
Arnim wakes me up. “There! There’s the street. With the rental garages.”
He went to the effort to lean over and poke me with an elbow.
“Yeah, sure, I see it. What kind of rental garages?”
“Belong to an old friend of mine. From the dog-fighting scene. He lives in Frankfurt on the River Oder, but he has some sticks in the fire here too. Even a stall full of top-notch bull terriers.
We idle along a street at walking speed, and it turns into sand. Halfway down, they must have run out of tar. Then we turn to the right, through a passage between two rows of garages. The grounds spread out behind that. It looks as expansive as five football fields. The lowest foundation walls of a factory complex protrude from the weeds that have overrun the place. The first tentative beams of light emerge from behind the surrounding buildings. There are two vehicles in the middle of this. A transporter, slightly smaller than ours. And a black Mercedes sedan. Both with tinted windows. I can only recognize the shape of heads inside. We stop a couple meters away from them. Arnim grabs my arm and pulls me a little closer.
“Listen up, Heiko. Those guys there are no jokers,” needlessly pointing at the two vehicles. Sure, it’s certainly supersmart to point a finger in their direction. Couldn’t possibly be taken the wrong way. “You be sure to keep your trap shut and leave the talking to me.”
“It’s your thing anyway,” I say.