A field the size of two soccer fields, covered with gravel, stretched out beside the road. At the far end, its boundary was marked by the buildings of a sawmill. Spaced out at regular intervals on the field stood metal containers, twelve feet wide, forty feet long, and a little less than ten feet tall-three rows of twenty. In the walkways between them tall streetlights rose out of the gravel. Each container had one door, one window, an outside faucet, and a washing line. On top of some containers lay piles of what looked like broken bicycle parts. On closer examination, these turned out to be homemade television antennas. Between the containers, children were playing games, men were sitting on folding chairs. The area was surrounded by a three-foot-high wire mesh fence, and the air was filled with the incessant screeching of sawmill machinery: auditory smog.
I walked along the fence to the entrance and its red and white barrier. Right next to it stood the administration building, a two-story prefab with faux half-timbering and a flower bed of pansies complete with garden gnome-as if it wanted to show the refugees, when they came to get their daily mail, the cozy German idyll to be defended against their “flood”. I walked along a newly laid path of “natural” paving stones to the building and into the front office. The office was empty except for two goldfish in a bowl on the counter. Next to the counter was a bell-rope with the sign PLEASE RING, amplified by a drawing of a stick figure pulling a rope and causing musical notes to fly through the air to summon another, smiling, stick figure.
I pulled the rope and lit a cigarette, watching three adolescents amble toward the entrance. One of them was carrying a boom box.
“Can’t you (she said du) read? There’s no smoking here!” I turned around and almost fell through the window. Instead of the customary gatekeeper in shapeless uniform and television-induced daze, I confronted Miss Hospital. Her face was narrow and cleverly made up, she had huge brown eyes, and her blonde hair had been pinned up carelessly, as if she had just gotten ready to take a shower. Her luxuriant measurements were covered by a starched and ironed nylon uniform with a Red Cross emblem. On her, even clogs would have looked sexy.
I removed the cigarette from my mouth and took care not to stare at her breasts.
“Normally I’m a little sensitive about that, but if you insist …,” I grinned, “I don’t mind your using the familiar form of address.”
For a moment, she looked surprised. Then she said coolly:
“I’m sorry, I mistook you for one of the residents.”
“Are you the director?”
“I’m the nurse on duty. Mr. Schafer is not here.”
“My goodness. Compared to the nurses where I had my appendectomy-”
“No one has asked you to compare. Your cigarette-”
“Oh, yes.” I went to the door and flicked the butt into the pansy plantation. A mistake. I heard a sharp intake of breath. I wasn’t doing too well in my endeavor to find out something from her. I took care to close the door without breaking the glass or the doorknob.
“Two days ago, three men disappeared from here. I would like to know if, before that, they received any unusual visitors or phone calls.”
“Are you a police officer?”
“Kemal Kayankaya, private investigator.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Private investigator?”
“Oh, you know, one of those really tall guys with broad shoulders and a chin like a gun butt.”
Her expression remained impassive. Then she took another look at me, and I saw that I had managed to make her smile.
“Oh, yeah.”
I nodded. “So, what can you tell me about those men?”
“You have to talk to Mr. Schafer about that. I’m not allowed to give out that kind of information.”
“And when will Mr. Schafer be back?”
“Next week.”
“Next week …?” It was Tuesday. I looked out the window. Two women with scarves round their heads were dragging a tub full of laundry across the square. “Well, then I’ll just have to ask the folks here in the camp.”
“The
“Well, then I’ll visit someone in particular.”
Unruffled, she stepped behind the counter and picked up a pad and a pen. A blonde strand of hair fell across her face. She pushed it back behind one ear with a gesture that seemed to threaten that strand with the scissors next time.
“Name and dwelling number?”
I looked at the goldfish. I was beginning to feel that I should have just enjoyed them and gone away.
“Listen, nurse, I’m sure you’re doing everything by the book, but this happens to be a criminal case, and I can’t wait a week or play games with you. So, if you don’t want me to walk around your center, then please let me have some answers. No one will know about it, and I’ll forget that I ever saw you.”
A pause. She put the pen down and looked up. Then she raised her eyebrows. She said “Oh, really?” And smiled, the second time.
A little later, certain that I was on the trail of a gang of forgers, I squeezed past the red and white barrier back onto the road. Last Friday, the three men had been notified of the rejection of their appeals for asylum, and of deportation orders effective immediately. On Saturday, Miss Hospital had received and transferred a call from a Mr. Larsson, and on Sunday they had found the center’s safe ransacked and the trio gone. We had not managed to exchange phone numbers-or only unilaterally and rather unsuccessfully. She had tossed my card into a tray marked “Orders for Electrical Appliances: Television Sets, Washers, etc.”
Clapping my hands over my ears against the screeching of the saws, I ran back to the Opel. Two silent children pressed their faces against the wire mesh and watched me get in and drive away.
5
For the second time that afternoon, I entered the brown immigration service building. Ready for trouble, I approached the uniformed guy checking I.D.s at the entrance. Apparently there had been a change of guard; this was not the same fellow who had pursued me into the street. After giving me the usual suspicious up down up-left side right side-deep into eyes-well all right then look, he let me pass without further ado. I ascended past the floors crowded with applicants to the superintendent’s offices. An empty corridor. My footsteps were loud. “Department of Residence Violations-Superintendent Hottges, Inspector Klaase” read the sign next to a door. I knocked.
“Come in.”
Two men surrounded by more of the typical fiberboard furniture. One of them in his mid-thirties: mustache and turtleneck, the other twenty years older: gray hair and necktie. They were sitting behind their desks, facing each other, and my first impression was that they had been sitting there since they were born, waiting for the other to finally stick his fingers into the outlet below the light switch. A pile of daily papers lay on the desk to the right, and the one to the left was graced by a framed photograph of a family at a shooting range.
The younger one nodded to me and said “Hello.”
“Hello. Superintendent Hottges?”
He pointed to his opposite number who, after closing a file folder in a decisive manner, turned his face toward me. It was a bony, thin-lipped face with angular cheeks and a firm jaw.
For a moment he seemed to vacillate between just telling me to get out and listening to my nonsense first.
“What’s up?”
“My name’s Kayankaya. I’m a private investigator. I would like to enquire if you know anything about a gang of passport forgers who target rejected asylum applicants and illegal aliens to offer them their services.”
“They
“Well, for instance, by finding out about current cases from various refugee organizations.”
