Good People Read Online Free Page B

calmly stuffed smoked salmon and herring seasoned with allspice into their paper-lined suitcase. Hermann eyed the honoured guests in their smoking jackets, whose cloth changed colour in the bright light, and said to Thomas, half in admiration, half in anger, ‘Around you, people learn how to fake it, because it’s as easy as breathing for you.’
    There was gratitude for you.
    In any event, Hermann’s gang drank and chattered in the café. Finally the old waiter shuffled over with the bill. He understood exactly what kind of task the proprietor—a coward who stayed behind the counter clutching a loaded pistol—had given him.
    ‘Five million five hundred marks?’ one of them shouted. ‘Couldn’t you at least have rounded it off, you filthy dog?’
    The gang stood and cheered while two of them set fire to the bill and forced the waiter to hold the burning paper and chant the new price. The waiter shouted in pain. His veins stood out and seemed to wrap themselves around his neck like a noose. Then Hermann pushed him to the floor. ‘Not worth the candle!’ he shouted.
    Thomas knew that Hermann was taking a risk. Some of his friends would understand that the shove was intended to free the burning paper from the waiter’s hands. In short, Hermann had shown pity, and Thomas reckoned that now he would have to display his cruelty in some new way.
    Hermann stood on a chair, waved his stick. ‘Are you crazy?’ he yelled. ‘We couldn’t even pay the old amount, so now you want more? How can the price jump by forty per cent during the two hours we were sitting here? Can’t a person even drink a beer in this damn city anymore?’
    He threw his stick at the café’s display window. His friends sneered. Did he really believe they would think he had intended to break the window?
    ‘Isn’t that your friend from school?’ his father said to him.
    ‘Yes, but for years now he’s been treating me like a leper, that punk,’Thomas answered, unable to stop looking at Hermann.
    It dawned on Hermann that he had no choice. If you want to be a bully, you have to obey the rules. He stepped down heavily from the chair and looked around. The sun threw yellow light into his eyes. He blinked. His friends were standing erect, as if listening to a speech at an assembly. Their shirts were wrinkled, their peaked caps pushed forwards, their hands thrust into the buckles of their belts. Hermann turned around, picked the chair up in both hands, and looked back into the café. Thomas imagined he saw regret in his eyes. Then he bent his body and, with a mighty swing, hurled his chair at the window. The glass shattered, and the fragments showered down upon two old women who were having an evening coffee. Hermann’s friends cheered and pounded him on the shoulder, while the other customers stared. A few of them probably supported his actions or at least identified with his fury.
    To Thomas’s astonishment, his father approved too. Animated, he started to chat with people at nearby tables. ‘They paid my salary weekly. Then I asked to be paid daily. I told them that the money I got at the end of the week wasn’t worth much the following day. The foreman sent me to read my contract again. “Herr Heiselberg,” that bastard shouted at me, “do you see a clause here about a daily salary? How come workers pick on the factory? Are you a Communist or something? Does your contract say how you should compensate us when not a single customer in the world bothers to answer our letters? They laughed at us even in Mozambique when we suggested doing business together. The German people are on the mat being torn apart limb by limb. Our economy is waltzing to hell, and everybody thinks it’s party time.’’’
    ‘The cheek of it,’ somebody shouted.
    ‘I’d have belted him one,’ hissed a young man in a brown shirt, apparently a member of Hermann’s gang.
    ‘The next day they fired me,’ Thomas’s father complained with gloomy resentment