Joe Speedboat (32 page)

I withstood his attack; my defence had improved in the course of time. The muscles in his neck were tight as snares, from his shoulder had grown a low hill that I'd never seen in another wrestler. Was that P.J. who screamed? With my eyes I traced the course of a vein on Mansur's forearm. All my life I had longed and sought for something without flaws, without contamination, and in my dreamlike state I remembered a story about perfection – about Chinese artisans, masters of the
art of lacquer painting, who would board a ship and only start work on the high seas; on land, minuscule dust particles might contaminate and spoil the lacquer.

The triangular construction Mansur and I formed belonged in that category: perfect, superhuman – we were far beyond time and space now, the roar of the crowd I heard only as though it were coming from a valley far below. A great deal clearer was the sudden sound of a dry twig breaking close to my ear – I felt us losing balance, being slung back into the world, heading for the end.

Only then did I become aware of a raging, maddening pain in my forearm, the flames were shooting out of it, and I saw Mansur let go of my hand and look at me in amazement. Halfway down my arm the pain was bundled like a glowing knot. I knew the bone was broken. The muscles had stood up to Mansur's inhuman strength, but the radius or the ulna had not. Snapped like a twig; I bellowed in rage and pain. Joe was at my side.

‘Frankie, what is it?'

I shook my head, this was the end of everything, it was the bone that turned out to be my Achilles' heel, I would have to start again from scratch. Mansur came over to us.

‘I think he broke his arm,' Joe said.

Mansur nodded.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘It was a good fight.'

He looked at me, thought about it for a moment, then corrected himself.

‘It was a spiritual fight. You are a strong man.'

He raised his right hand to his heart, the same way Papa Africa had always done, and disappeared with the woman into the crowd of inquisitive onlookers.

‘We have to get to a hospital right away, Joe!' P.J. said. ‘He's turning all white.'

I suddenly went limp with pain and felt that I would throw up at any moment. The arm lay useless in my lap. My sole weapon: broken. Two taxis were waiting outside, the drivers leaned smoking against the grille.

‘Hospital!' Joe barked. ‘
Krankenhaus!
'

The rest was exactly what you might expect: the shot of painkiller, the setting of the ulna, the splint, the sling, the whole shit thing. The only startling detail was that we had to pay the equivalent of almost 500 smackers, to which end P.J. loaned us her credit card. For that price we got to take the X-rays home with us. Now I couldn't do anything anymore, at most scratch out a few block letters with the fingers sticking out of my plaster sleeve. In the taxi on the way to the hotel, Joe turned to me.

‘Two minutes and thirty-nine seconds, then you broke.'

Two minutes and thirty-nine seconds: I was amazed, it had felt like an eternity to me.

‘You didn't give an inch, the others all went down within the first minute. Well, that's the importance of calcium. Just imagine if that bone hadn't broken? You had a chance, you really did. But OK, a couple of months, Frankie, then we're back on the road.'

P.J. groaned in disapproval.

‘You guys are nuts.'

The nurse had given us a box of painkillers, the first of which was administered to me at five o'clock and washed down with beer.

‘Sleep in our room tonight,' Joe said, ‘for if you need to pee and things.'

I hadn't even arrived at that complication yet; Joe would be assuming Engel's old role . . . I decided to get sloshed.

All things considered, my arm left me less depressed that I would have thought. I took comfort in the fact that it had
happened while doing battle with the Arm Saint: it was my Fracture of Honour.

P.J. showed her solidarity, drinking at the same pace I did. Our waitress's face bore an expression of boundless long-suffering. Out in front of the hotel entrance, Joe was bent over the engine of the Olds, repairing the leaky radiator with duct tape. The waitress brought more beer, P.J. stuck a straw in my bottle and set it in front of me where I could get to it easily. I drank with a vengeance, to calm the spasms; the arm was immobilized, but the contractions caused me hellish pain. She pulled the X-rays out of the envelope and held them up to the light one by one. When you looked at them like that, the bones were flimsy little things. A wonder that they had held up for even two minutes and thirty-nine seconds.

‘A clean break,' she said, ‘not jagged or anything. Does it hurt?'

Yes, dear Florence, it hurts. Will you ease my pain?

‘We'll have to take care of you for a little while now, you can't do anything. My finals are in August, but I can study at my parents' place.'

P.J. slid the photos back into the envelope and said, ‘Come on, let's see what's happening in town. I've pretty much had it with this place.'

She rolled me out of the dining room and across the lobby to the desk, a dimly lit niche at the end of the hallway. The clerk was reading a book.

‘
Bitte
,' P.J. asked, ‘do you have a map of the city? We're looking for a
gutes Restaurant
, or maybe a bar.'

The man looked up angrily.

‘
Hier keine Bar!
' he snapped. ‘
Keine Bar in Poznan!
'

His Slavic accent sharply emphasized each syllable, his eyes glowed with a kind of anger.

‘Here we have only
Arbeitslosen und Banditen
! Going into town is suicide.'

He demonstrated to us how deadbeats and bandits would knock us over the head and steal all our money. P.J. looked on in amusement. Then she tried a different tack.

‘Would you mind my asking what book you're reading?' she asked sweetly.

‘Ah, reading. Yes, of course.'

He handed it to P.J. and we saw that it was a comic book, with Vampirella in an SM suit on the cover. In the background, SS officers were torturing a blonde virgin.

‘
Sehr gut!
' the desk clerk said.

P.J. flipped through it and showed me a page on which SS men with massive dicks sticking out of the trousers of their uniforms were raping a group of women, who looked rather like gypsies with their thick, dark locks and the hoops in their ears.

‘They don't make them like this where we come from,' P.J. said.

The desk clerk's smile revealed a ruined set of teeth. He opened a drawer, pulled out another book and handed it to P.J.: a Polish edition of
Mein Kampf
. The idiot was reading
Mein Kampf
. . . P.J.'s eyes sparkled.

‘What else do you think he has in that little cabinet of horrors?'

She gave him back
Vampirella
and
Mein Kampf
and leaned across the counter, trying to see what else he had. The man, rising to the occasion, pulled out a grimy little book of photos in which he appeared in heavily wooded surroundings, posing with one foot on the back of a dead bear. In his hand he held a huge hunting rifle.

‘
Schiessen
,' he gasped, ‘
gut!
'

But the prize piece in his collection was yet to come: a
pistol
. Or a revolver, I can never tell the difference. He rested the bulky thing on the palm of one hand, and only gave it to P.J. after a good deal of cooing and wooing on her part. He was proud that we were so interested in his collection.

‘This is getting better all the time, Frankie, look!'

She pointed the pistol down the hallway behind us and sighted along it with one eye closed. The cackling laughter from behind the counter gave me goose flesh.

‘
Arbeitslosen und Banditen!
Bang bang!'

The last thing he handed us was the little bundle containing the passports we'd left at the desk the night before. P.J. traded the pistols for the passports. She opened the one on top, saw that it was mine and stuck it in the pouch on the side of my cart. Her own passport she put in her back pocket. The only one left now was Joe's. She glanced over at the door of the hotel, then back at the passport. Then she opened it; I sniffed in protest, I knew exactly what she was up to: she wanted to see Joe's real name. So even
she
didn't know! But that was forbidden, no one was allowed to do that! She looked surprised at the way I shook my head so adamantly.

‘You mean you're not curious?'

Of course I was curious, but that wasn't the point. Fucking bitch, put it away! But her eyes were already scanning the front page. She raised her eyebrows and smiled. Then she turned the open passport to face me, I saw Joe's photo in a flash before I closed my eyes. I wasn't allowed to see this. Everything crowed alarm in the darkness, she had no right, it was blasphemy,
no one
was allowed to finagle him out of his real name, it was his only secret. As soon as I thought she'd understood, I opened my eyes, but there, twenty centimetres in front of my nose the front page of Joe's passport was still dangling. She was looking for an
accomplice, she was luring me into her corrupt universe, the one Metz had warned me about, oh Christ, how could I refuse her? I focused on the passport in front of me. Joe's passport photo, a little tough, a little casual. Oh, Joe, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.

Naam/Surname/Nom

RATZINGER

Voornamen/Given names/Prénoms

ACHIEL STEPHAAN

The passport disappeared from view, P.J. handed it back to the clerk.

‘Would you please give it to him yourself?' she said. ‘He'll come by in a minute.'

He nodded in amazement, he had no idea what had just happened. P.J. rolled me back into the dining room and set me down in front of my beer. A few minutes later Joe came in, wiping his hands on a soiled rag.

Achiel Stephaan Ratzinger.

The man at the desk called him over and gave him his passport. In the doorway to the dining room he smiled at P.J. and said, ‘Do you guys have your passports? He says . . .'

‘Yes, love, we've got them.'

‘All right. And we've got wheels again.'

P.J. lit a cigarette for him. His fingers left oil spots on the paper. Achiel Stephaan. Why the hell had his parents given him such a retarded, Flemish name? Had they named him after a Flemish grandfather? A guru from Westmalle? Whatever it was, we were looking at a man without a secret. And that secret was a Belgian joke. Achiel Stephaan; handed over to the Philistines by his sweetheart, betrayed by his friend.

*

That night in their room I puked all over everything. Joe helped me into the bathroom, I screamed, I think I even begged his forgiveness.

‘You were terrible,' Joe said on the way home the next day. ‘You threw up all over me, you nut.'

That I had pissed all over his fingers remained our secret. In the back, P.J. remained as silent as the Sphinx.

It's an X-raylike experience, knowing Joe's real name. Achiel Ratzinger is the fate he tried to escape; it caught up with him at last. I seem to recall biblical characters being given a different name, after some drastic change in their lives. I scribble a note to Ma, asking to borrow her Bible.

‘It's never too late to start,' she sighs.

It doesn't take long before I hit pay dirt. In Genesis, God himself gives new names to Abram and Sarai. ‘Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.' Abraham's wife Sarai also receives a new name: Sarah.

In the New Testament, Peter receives a new name as well, as seen first in the Gospel of Mark: ‘And He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom He gave the name Peter), and James, the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James (to them He gave the name Boanerges, which means, ”Sons of Thunder”).' The same thing can be found in the Gospel of John, where Jesus says: ‘You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas (which is translated Peter).'

In the Book of Acts, Saul – that fanatical persecutor of Christians – undergoes a change of name when a heavenly light appears to him on the road to Damascus. A voice revealing itself as that of Jesus shouts: ‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
me?' Saul becomes a believer and, for the rest of his life, bears the name Paul.

It seems to me that the patriarchs and disciples were given a name to match their new, elevated status. Men of God who bore their name as a sign of distinction.

Finally, in the Book of Revelations, I read that if we lend an ear to the Spirit, we will all be given new names. ‘And I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.'

Our secret name that is known to no one – P.J. and I, however, have peeked under that stone and are disappointed at what we find: the humiliating tag stuck to Joe's back, so that when you are around him you sometimes feel the urge to giggle. His Achilles' heel had lain tucked away inside his name the whole time:
nomen est omen
. The men of God were given names that made them greater; with Achiel Stephaan, P.J. and I have made Joe smaller and divested him of his dignity. Beneath his self-appointed name he has no clothes.

In the weeks that follow P.J. does a great deal for me, she takes me out for walks (‘Do you want to wear my sunglasses? You're squinting so badly') and when evening comes she feeds me frankfurters with obvious distaste. After work Joe comes by and the three of us sit around, making Joe and P.J. seem like a couple with a pathetic child. When I have to piss, Joe helps me. Ma is the only one I let wipe my butt, I still will not tolerate anyone else behind my
anus horribilis
. That Joe sometimes takes my dick between thumb and forefinger in order to worm it back into my underpants is bad enough. He doesn't dry it off the way I always do, so Ma has to boil my underpants to get the piss flecks out of them. When Joe helps me I look the other way, as though I weren't there. I'd kill myself if I ever got a hard-on.