‘I’m going to introduce you as my niece from Bosnia.’
‘What for?’
‘Because otherwise explaining you will be too complicated for her. She likes things clear. And try to look sad. When I mention Bosnia you could cry a little, or cover your eyes with your hands.’
‘Like rip her off?’
‘Not really. She’d feel more ripped off if we don’t rip her off…’ I saw Leila’s baffled expression, and dismissed the whole thing. ‘Forget it. Just look like a sad Bosnian girl, and you’ll catch on to the rest. And if you could put your jewellery away while we’re there…’
Soon after that I parked the car, we got out, and Leila took Susi, who was now yowling euphorically and tugging at her leash, off the back seat. Frau Beierle lived in a villa with a small park of a garden and a drive up to it. I rang the bell at the wrought iron gate, the buzzer sounded, and while Susi took off and raced ahead Leila and I marched up the pale gravel path. We were halfway between gate and villa when Frau Beierle came out of her front door and flung her arms round Susi.
As a former politician once famously said, you can run a concentration camp on virtues such as doing your duty, loyalty and obedience — and on Frau Beierle’s hairstyle too, I was thinking. It was dark blonde, smooth, cut in a line precisely between her ears and her shoulders, and so strictly parted to the left of her forehead that a straight line of white skin ran across her scalp. To the right of the line a metal clasp held some of the hair back. The rest of it fell neatly, hair beside hair, as if it had been trained. Presumably hair that didn’t grow in exactly the right way had no future on her head. Her face was square and rather flat with a turned-up nose, quick little eyes and a small mouth that she was always twisting into a slightly ironic smile, as if she were observing everything said and done in the world from an extraordinarily high vantage-point and, from up there, saw human weaknesses and crazy connections which ordinary mortals didn’t even guess at. She was wearing a grey trouser suit, a white silk scarf round her neck and flat, sexless shoes polished to a high gloss. After she had shaken hands with us, expressed her thanks at length, and told us again how happy she and of course Susi were, she asked us into the house and offered biscuits and drinks. A little later we were sitting in her conservatory drinking cherry juice and eating wholemeal vanilla pastries. The little park beyond the windows had a fountain and what I assumed was an Egyptian statue in it. Susi was frolicking around there, celebrating her reunion with the trees and bushes by lifting her leg to baptise them with short, quick jets of urine. To the right you could see the freshly mended hole in the fence through which she had got out two weeks ago. Perhaps someone had taken her away, perhaps she had simply been too stupid to find her way home.
‘So you’re Herr Kayankaya’s niece.’ Frau Beierle gave Leila a friendly nod. ‘Do you live in Frankfurt too, if I may ask?’
Leila let the corners of her mouth turn down in what I thought was rather too theatrical a way, and looked at me as if she had been beaten.
‘Er… she’s only been here two months. My brother married a Bosnian woman, so you see…’
‘Bos-nian!’ repeated Frau Beierle slowly, and sketched the movement of clasping her hands over her head in distress. ‘Oh, the poor child!’
‘Yes… well, it hits some people one way, some another. I’m trying to get her into a private boarding school while she has to stay here. State schools don’t take pupils short-term just like that, and after all, the child can’t sit at home all day alone and… well, she prays a lot, but she must go back to learning something too.’
‘Quite right. At her age learning’s what matters most. Particularly learning how to learn.’ She emphasised this last sentence word by word, while her friendly glance conveyed her doubts of whether I knew what she meant.
‘You put that so well. Just what I think myself. And the way things look, I’m afraid, she won’t be able to go back to Bosnia in a hurry…’
Leila did something in between sniffing and swallowing and passed her hand over her face, leaving a heartrending pastry crumb there.
‘I’m sorry, darling.’ I bent over to her. ‘But those are the facts. That’s why you’re going to that nice boarding school. Remember how much we liked it when we went to see it?’
‘What kind of boarding school is it?’ asked Frau Beierle.
‘Oh, well…’ I leaned back and sipped my juice. ‘Well, it’s a cross between a Koran school and a grammar school specialising in sport. Very recently founded. In the middle of the forest, very secluded, only women teachers on the staff — wonderful. Not yet recognised by the state in Germany yet, unfortunately, but as you said, learning in itself is the greatest good of all.’
I had no idea how she managed it, but Leila now had real tears running down her cheeks.
I gave Frau Beierle a look that appealed for understanding. ‘We’d better go now, I think. If we could just settle up first…’
While she went into the next room to fetch her cheque book, and Leila drank her juice in short order, perfectly unmoved, I said quietly enough for it to sound like a whisper, but just loud enough to be heard in the next room, ‘I know you’re unhappy because I can’t pay the boarding school fees at the moment, dear, and you’d like to be back at school so much. But as your father may have told you, what we say where I come from is: bring a thirsty man a glass of water and he’ll reward you with rain. And my job is to bring people back what they’re missing, the way the thirsty man misses a glass of water. Do you understand? It’s not always a sweet, clever dog like Susi. Sometimes it’s only a bicycle I find, but because it’s worth so much to the owner he pays me as if I’d found him his Mercedes. Of course that kind of thing doesn’t often happen in Germany, because the culture here is different. But now and then it does turn out like that, perhaps I’ll strike lucky in the next few weeks or months, and then…’
Suddenly Leila’s face assumed that downtrodden expression again, and I turned to the door. ‘Oh, Frau Beierle, there you are. I was just telling Leila where that beautiful statue in your garden came from…’
The slightly ironic smile became a knowing one, she shook her head, put a hand on my shoulder, and said as if to a small child who’s trying to act like a grown-up, ‘Oh, Herr Kayankaya, you don’t have to pretend to me. I know you can’t think of anything just now but your niece and your family. Even if you weren’t what I expected in some respects, I mean in the qualities arising from your origin — perhaps rightly, I don’t want to be dogmatic about that — I’m well enough acquainted with your ways of thinking and feeling to be able to work out that you weren’t giving your niece a lecture about an old statue.’
‘Well… er… I…’
‘Now, you listen to me…’ With two firm strides she went over to the table, made out a cheque, waved it energetically in the air to dry the ink, and pressed it into my hand. ‘And no argument. Of course this is mainly for your excellent work — you can’t imagine how happy I am to have my Susi back — but it’s also a little contribution to help you out in your present situation. Your niece,’ she added, nodding and smiling warmly at Leila, who now looked as if she were on a course of depressive drugs, ‘is such a delightful girl, and I’d be really glad if you can get her into that boarding school.’
For a moment I hesitated, then I moved as fast as I could. Effusive thanks, put the cheque away without looking at it, get to my feet, unobtrusive sign to Leila to hurry, step by step to the front door accompanied by a never-ending farewell monologue, final handshake: ‘If there’s ever anything else… ’ ‘… Oh, of course, I’ll certainly turn to you’, then down the gravel path, into the car, stop round the next corner to look at the cheque… five thousand marks!