The Stars' Tennis Balls

  ‘Bless you,’ whispered Ned. ‘You are truly a Good Samaritan.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Dieter went on, after blushing slightly at the compliment, ‘that you do not have a passport?’

  ‘No,’ replied Ned. ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘They do not always require them at the border, but even if they do not, the customs will certainly need to check my consignment papers. It is better they do not see you. We are ten miles away. I shall stop at the next filling station and you must hide amongst the cargo. They do not search.’

  ‘Let me give you some money for the diesel.’

  For a terrible moment Ned thought that he had said something wrong. Perhaps diesel was a thing of the past and lorries were now fuelled by methane, or hydrogen or God knew what else.

  ‘Money? I do not want your money,’ Dieter said. ‘I do this for my Saviour. That is my reward.’

  As they drove the ten miles to the filling station, Ned, as gently as he dared, probed Dieter about his drug habit and how much money it had cost him.

  ‘Heroin is that expensive?’ he said wonderingly.

  ‘Sure, but it is cheaper if you smoke it,’ Dieter said. ‘You must know this, surely? What was your drug?’

  ‘Cannabis.’

  ‘Your family sent you to a hospital for cannabis? My God! My mother smokes a joint every evening.’

  ‘My parents are very old-fashioned,’ Ned said, uncomfortably aware that there was much about the world he had yet to learn.

  *

  Approaching the traffic-lights at the outskirts of Hamburg, Ned felt a pang of guilt as he grabbed his oilskin bag, opened the door and jumped down onto the street.

  ‘Sorry, Dieter,’ he called back into the cabin. ‘But I really don’t think your church can help me.’

  Dieter shook his head sorrowfully and pulled away with a hiss of brakes and a big double honk from his horn. Ned skipped aside and waved and waved until the lorry disappeared around a corner. He hoped that Dieter could at least see this last gesture in his wing-mirrors and know that his help had been appreciated.

  Which indeed it had been. Ned had been crammed amongst the bales of pulp for no more than an hour either side of the border. The doors at the back had not even been opened, though the side of the lorry right next to Ned’s ear had been slapped twice as they had been waved through, causing him a ringing in the ears which was still with him. Dieter was amused and teased him about it all through Schleswig-Holstein.

  ‘It was the Lord speaking to you, Karl. Take my word for it.’

  Ned turned now and looked around him. It was getting late and there was much to do. At a small Sparkasse he changed his kroner into Deutschmarks, then crossed the street to the underground station and took a train to St Pauli. He had a strong feeling that Babe was watching him now and would disapprove violently of what he was about to do.

  From St Pauli he crossed the street into the Reeperbahn. Sitting at a window in the Bar Bemmel, opposite the Lehmitz, he sat nursing a glass of milk as the street outside warmed up into a whirl of touristic Friday night frenzy. The lights, the colour, the noise, the music were all absolutely alien to him. He saw men and women with jewellery and metal bars affixed to their noses, ears and eyebrows. He saw black men with dyed blond hair, and orientals with orange hair. He saw men passing by holding hands. Once a woman with a shaved head poked her tongue out at him as she passed. There had been what looked like a metal stud in her tongue. Ned blinked and swallowed hard.

  ‘Oh, brave new world, that has such creatures in it . . .’ he murmured to himself and shook his head, like a dog that has just taken a bath.

  At the U-Bahn station he had bought a map and three tourist information booklets which he had read twice through before a waitress approached him and told him that if he was going to stay here he would need to drink more than one single glass of milk over the course of two hours.

  ‘Of course,’ said Ned. ‘Bring me one of those,’ he commanded, pointing at a pink looking cocktail at the table next to his.

  ‘All cocktails five marks,’ said the waitress.

  Ned supposed (indeed had seen) that his Danish fisherman’s outfit of jeans, thick white pullover and donkey-jacket were not the usual habiliments favoured by the night people of Hamburg and he smiled understandingly as he produced a ten mark note.

  ‘I have been fishing all day. Keep the change and have a drink yourself.’

  The suspicious scowl was instantly replaced by a happy grin. ‘Thank you, sir!’

  ‘Er, I forgot to ask,’ he said when the cocktail arrived. ‘What’s in it exactly?’

  ‘Cranberry, grapefruit and vodka,’ came the reply. ‘It’s called a Sea Breeze.’

  ‘Good title,’ said Ned, sipping cautiously. ‘Mm . . . delicious.’

  ‘You are a tourist in Hamburg?’ The waitress pointed at the map and guides on the table in front of Ned.

  ‘That’s right. Just looking for a good time. Is this a dangerous area?’

  ‘The Reeperbahn? No!’ she laughed at the idea. ‘Once maybe, perhaps yes, but today it is all just businessmen and tourists.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ned, ‘so there are no drug dealers or anything like that?’ He put the question innocently enough, but held the waitress’s eyes steadily.

  She leaned forward to wipe down his table and whispered in his ear. ‘You looking for something perhaps? You can pay?’

  ‘I am looking for something,’ Ned replied. ‘Do you know anyone . . . er . . . respectable? I would be extremely grateful.’ He looked meaningfully into his wallet and back again at the waitress.

  ‘I’ll call my friend. He knows people. Are you interested in going uptown or downtown?’

  Ned pondered her strange use of these American English phrases before the meaning became apparent to him.

  ‘Ah, I understand,’ he said. ‘Downtown, please.’

  ‘Okay.’ She looked a little surprised. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thank you . . . er, I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Cosima.’

  ‘Thank you, Cosima. Karl Freytag at your service.’

  Ned watched as Cosima went behind the bar to make a phone call. After less than thirty seconds she put down the phone and nodded to him. He nodded back and raised his glass to her in salutation. Picking up his oilskin, he went to the gents to prepare for his meeting.

  The man who came into the Bar Bemmel half an hour later was older than Ned, perhaps as old as fifty, which surprised him. He looked more like a successful publisher or prosperous advertising executive than the tattooed leather-jacketed gangster that Ned had imagined.

  ‘Gunther. I understand that you are anxious to do business,’ said the man sitting down without a handshake. ‘How may I assist you, Herr Freytag?’

  ‘I want you to take what I am holding under the table,’ said Ned. ‘It is a syringe . . . don’t worry it’s capped.’

  ‘Hey listen,’ said Gunther, starting to rise. ‘I’m in the business of selling, not buying.’

  ‘Then find me someone who will buy,’ said Ned. ‘What I have is pharmaceutical grade liquid diamorphine, the purest heroin in the world. Enough to make you a great deal of money.’

  Gunther paused. ‘How much?’

  ‘I have half a million marks worth, which you can at least double if you cut it sensibly. I’ll take four hundred thousand in cash, a usable credit card and any contact that will allow me to buy a passport.’

  Gunther looked Ned right in the eyes for perhaps five seconds before reaching under the table and taking the syringe.

  ‘Give me some more for testing.’

  Ned was prepared for this. ‘Leave two thousand marks as a deposit,’ he said.

  Gunther nodded and Ned passed a small vial under the table.

  ‘I make a phone call,’ Gunther stood up and took a small mobile phone from his pocket, moving away out of earshot. Ned watched him light a cigarette, dial and speak into the phone. He marvelled at the technol
ogy and wondered what the range of such telephones might be. Ned was too far away from Gunther to be able to pick up any of his conversation, but when he returned to the table everything seemed set up and he smiled a brief, tight smile.

  ‘Your two thousand’s in there,’ he said dropping a cigarette packet on the table. ‘I shall return in one hour. If everything is satisfactory we will go together to a place where the rest of your goods will also be checked out. Cosima is watching you. If you leave with my two thousand marks before I return, you will be followed and dealt with. Dealt with very harshly. If all goes well a passport can be ready for you in two days, the credit card and cash you will have tonight. You understand and approve?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ Ned extended his hand and smiled. ‘A bottle of champagne will await your return.’

  ‘Bis bald,’ said Gunther, shaking Ned’s hand briefly and turning to go.

  ‘Tschüs!’ said Ned.

  Five minutes after Gunther had gone, Ned called Cosima over to him.

  ‘Thank you, Cosima,’ he said handing her a hundred mark note. ‘You have been very kind.’

  Cosima smiled and tucked the note into her apron. ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘So Gunther is your boyfriend?’

  She laughed at this. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘He’s my father.’

  Ned tried not to look surprised. ‘I see. Oh, tell me something, Cosima,’ he said, a thought occurring to him. ‘Which, in your opinion, is the best hotel in Hamburg?’

  She looked at Ned through half closed eyes, like an artist sizing up a model. ‘For you, I should say the Vier Jahreszeiten on Neuer Jungfernstieg. Very classy. Very old-fashioned. Just like you.’

  ‘You flatter me. One more thing, before you bring me a cup of coffee and a glass of milk.’ The effect of the Sea Breeze was making him dizzy and light-headed. ‘Will I find a decent clothes shop in the area still open in an hour or so? I need some luggage too.’

  ‘This is Hamburg!’ said Cosima. ‘Nothing closes.’

  ‘Good. Perhaps we can go shopping together. After I have concluded business with your father, naturally.’

  Cosima smiled happily. ‘My favourite occupation. Hugo Boss, I think. Something dark and elegant.’

  *

  The platinum American Express card that Gunther had found for Ned was in the name of Paul Kretschmer, and the blonde woman in black at the desk scarcely glanced at it as she slid it through the side of a machine she kept under the desk and passed it back to him with his room key. Ned supposed it was some kind of cash register, but it was unlike any he had seen before.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ he said. ‘I need to fly to Geneva on Monday morning.’ He gave her a folded hundred mark note and his best smile. ‘Be good enough to arrange it for me would you?’

  ‘Certainly, Herr Kretschmer,’ she beamed at him. ‘With pleasure. Do you prefer Swiss Air or Lufthansa?’

  ‘I tell you what,’ said Ned, ‘you choose. First Class.’

  ‘First Class?’ she frowned slightly. ‘I am not sure they have First Class on such a short flight.’

  ‘Whatever . . .’ Ned waved a hand airily. ‘I’m sure you’ll find me the best seat.’

  ‘Of course, Herr Kretschmer. And may I help you with anything else this evening?’

  ‘It’s been a long day,’ Ned replied. ‘Nothing but a shower and bed. No calls please.’

  He crossed over to the lifts, trying not to look impressed by the profusion of late nineteenth-century marble, mahogany and oak panelling all around him. No calls! He smiled at his own impudence.

  The receptionist watched his firm athletic stride as he walked to the lifts and turned to the manager.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I think I’m in love.’

  ‘Me too,’ said the manager.

  Ned spent Saturday morning playing with the television remote control and reading the magazines in his suite. Gunther called him up at lunchtime and invited him to dinner at his flat, just around the corner from the hotel.

  ‘I should be honoured and delighted,’ Ned replied. ‘I’m going to do some shopping this afternoon, I don’t suppose your charming daughter would be kind enough to escort me around the town? I assure you my intentions are strictly honourable.’

  Gunther chuckled down the telephone. ‘That would disappoint her terribly,’ he said. ‘She was hoping they were anything but!’

  With Cosima’s help Ned bought a laptop, a printer and a large number of books on computing and the internet. The magazines in his room had seemed to be full of articles on this and he wanted to understand everything he could about a world that appeared to be so important. He had asked Cosima shyly what the internet was and she had given an explanation that had left him more confused than before.

  The shop that sold the computer had seemed to be nothing more nor less than an Aladdin’s cave of incomprehensible magic. Ned had tried not to look astonished at the pictures on the screens, at the colour photographs printed out, at the scanners, video cameras, global positioning devices and handheld electronic diaries that were shown to him. Compact discs reminded him of an episode of Star Trek he had seen as a boy and the mobile phone he bought, which flipped out when he wanted to speak, put him even more firmly in mind of the Starship Enterprise. When he discovered that these telephones were more than walkie-talkies, but could actually be used to talk to any phone, mobile or otherwise in any country, he frankly gaped and Cosima and the shop assistant found it hard to suppress their giggles. He was Rip Van Winkle, awaking from a hundred-year sleep.

  At the railway station overlooking the Alster, he sat in a photo-booth and had six passport photographs taken.

  As he waited for the photographs to appear he murmured under his breath, ‘Thank God not everything has changed. These machines, I remember well.’

  It took the hotel porter two journeys to transfer all Ned’s purchases from the taxi to his suite and he stood looking at the pile of shopping in the drawing-room with a look of such comical bewilderment on his face that Cosima reached up and kissed him.

  ‘Where have you come from, Karl?’

  ‘You mustn’t call me Karl,’ said Ned. ‘Here I am Paul Kretschmer.’

  ‘You have come from another planet. From heaven, perhaps?’

  ‘From heaven?’ Ned smiled. ‘No, I don’t think you could call it that.’

  ‘Where then? You have never seen a computer, a mobile phone, a CD, a Palm Pilot, a video camera . . . where have you come from?’

  She pulled him towards the bedroom, but he braced his legs like a mule.

  ‘Cosima . . .’

  ‘So. It follows that you are also probably a virgin. Don’t be frightened.’

  Frightened.

  It struck Ned, given all that he had done in the last twenty-four hours, and the strange universe he had emerged into after eighteen years that he should be frightened. He should be scared by this baffling world of infrared, satellite positioning and microwaves, scared by its gadgets and buttons and bleeps. He should be scared too by his friendless isolation in this world, scared by Gunther and, most of all, he should be terrified out of his wits by the very fearless ease with which he had been able to achieve everything he had thus far. He knew, however, that he had become someone who would never feel fear again. In the past he had been afraid because of what had happened to him. Now and in the future, he would never be a passive victim of events. Nothing would ever happen to him. He would make things happen to others and fear would have no place in him.

  ‘All right,’ he said following Cosima into the bedroom. ‘Teach me, then. I’m a fast learner.’

  The following afternoon Gunther paid a visit to the Vier Jahreszeiten and with a ta-da of triumph, produced from his jacket a gleaming German passport. Ned took it greedily, but before he had so much as turned the first page to look at his photograph, he had betrayed his ignorance once more.

  ‘Germany? But it doesn’t say which one . . .’

  Gunther turned to his d
aughter with a look of astonishment. ‘Which one?’

  ‘There is only one Germany,’ said Cosima. ‘Since eighty-nine. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that?’

  ‘Ah, yes . . . of course.’ Ned smiled. ‘I . . . er . . . I forgot for a moment.’

  ‘Forgot?’ Gunther stared at him in disbelief.

  ‘And my last explanation of you,’ sighed Cosima, ‘was that you might be a lost Berliner from the East, tortured by the Stasi and only just returned to society. Now I am completely mystified.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Gunther asked. ‘Who the hell are you? You’re a German but you know nothing of Germany.’

  ‘Let’s just say I’ve been away. Does it matter? We have done business and we have helped each other. I am grateful to you both for everything.’ Ned picked up a bottle of champagne. ‘Tomorrow morning early, I fly to Switzerland, so let us drink to each other and part friends.’

  ‘Here,’ said Cosima, taking the bottle, ‘it helps if you twist the cork, like so. When will you be back?’

  ‘My plans are uncertain. Tell me, Gunther. Do you happen to have any contacts in Geneva who might be useful to me?’

  ‘You have more to sell? If you do, believe me I would be happy to take any surplus off your hands.’

  ‘No, no. I may need another passport, that’s all.’

  ‘You should see my friend Nikki,’ said Gunther, scribbling a number on a card. ‘He’s a Russian, but nothing happens in Geneva without his permission.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Ned took the card and handed Gunther a glass. ‘Prosit.’

  ‘Prosit.’

  Cosima was inclined to be tearful as she left with her father. ‘I will never see you again,’ she sniffed, clinging to Ned’s jacket.

  ‘Nonsense. You have been a wonderful friend to me, of course we shall see each other again. I do not forget friends. I will call for you one day.’

  ‘Come, my dear,’ said Gunther from the doorway. ‘Goodbye, Karl, Paul, whatever your name is. If you do happen across another consignment –’