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  Adolf Albert Kluessen, a substantial old man in his mid-seventies, well dressed, accustomed to being obeyed, skin wrinkled by the sun, bushy eyebrows, looks at me as if he’d swallowed a frog, as if he’d lost his key today, along with his passport and his briefcase, and was being held up to ridicule for all of it, as if he’d been robbed and then his sports car had had its paint scratched. There are dark patches of sweat under the arms of his polo shirt, but that’s a result of the heat and doesn’t mean a thing. Adolf Albert Kluessen, son of the department store owner Adolf Ariman Kluessen, grandson of the founder of the department store Adolf Adomeit Kluessen, scion of a family whose eldest son has borne the name Adolf for so long that no one could rally themselves to give up the tradition, go figure, looks at me as if the whole world were despicable. And with all of that, he doesn’t even know he’s bankrupt.

  “Adolf, how nice to see you!”

  His hand feels as knotty as wood. I hope mine isn’t damp with nerves. Nonetheless, I have control of my voice, it isn’t trembling, and my eyes are clear. He says something about me not answering his emails, and I cry that it’s a scandal and I’ll fire my secretary. I quickly lay three printed sheets in front of him: figures that mean nothing, and include the most famous risk-free stocks: Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Google, and Mercedes-Benz, lots of pie charts, everything as lit up as can be.

  But today it’s not working. He blinks, then sets the sheets of paper aside, leans forward, and says he has something really basic he needs to get off his chest.

  “Something basic!” I get to my feet, walk around my desk, and sit on the edge. Always make sure you’re a little higher than your counterpart—an old negotiating trick.

  He’s no longer the youngest of men, he says. He doesn’t want to risk things anymore.

  “Risk?” I fold my hands. “On my father’s life!” Folding your hands is helpful, it looks sincere. By contrast, what looks totally false is laying your hand on your heart. “We’ve never taken risks!”

  Warren Buffett, says Kluessen, has advised never to invest in anything you don’t understand.

  “But I understand it. It’s my profession, Adolf.” I stand up and go to the window, so that he can’t see my face.

  A few years ago everything was still in good order. The investments were lucrative, the results satisfactory. Then there was a bottleneck in liquidity and it occurred to me that nothing was stopping me from simply asserting that I’d made gains. If you report losses, investors pull their money out. Declare profits and everything stays the same—you can continue, you balance out the loss, no one is hurt, it’s only numbers on a piece of paper. So that’s what I did, and after a few months the money was there again.

  But a year later I was in the same situation. At the worst moment my second-most-important client wanted to withdraw twenty-nine million euros. I had positions I couldn’t liquidate without losses, so I reported fake gains, which brought me new investors, and I used their money to cover the payments. I was sure that the stock exchange would quickly recover its equilibrium and everything would go back to normal.

  But the market kept dropping. More investors wanted to take their money out, and if I hadn’t made more raids on capital, the whole thing would have blown up. When the market really did recover, too much was already missing.

  But I still had hope. I was considered to be successful, investors flocked to me, and I used their money to pay previous investors their gains: ten, twelve, sometimes even fifteen percent, so much that almost nobody had the idea of withdrawing their capital. For a long time I thought a way out would suddenly present itself. Then, one night two years ago when I was forced to run the numbers in my head, and run them, and run them, I knew it wasn’t ever going to happen.

  Argentina or Venezuela. Ecuador. Liberia. Ivory Coast. New passport, new name, a new life. I should have done it. Marie might have been enchanted. Laura could have given parties someplace else. The weather is inarguably better anywhere but here.

  But then the moment was lost. I had been too slow, too undecided. It takes a lot of money to vanish in comfort. Now I am totally wiped out. All the capital is gone, all my credit is used up.

  “Do you know the Bhagavad Gita?” I ask.

  Kluessen stares at me. He hadn’t reckoned on this.

  “The god Krishna says to the commander Arjuna: You will never be able to explain why things are as they are. You will never be able to sort out the complications. But here you stand, mighty warrior. Don’t ask why, stand up and give battle.”

  I once heard this on the car radio. The quote pleased me so much that I asked Elsa to look it up.

  “Yes, but where?” she asked.

  “In the Bhagavad Gita.”

  “How do I find it?”

  “When you read it.”

  “The whole thing?”

  “Only until you hit the right sentence.”

  “And if it’s right at the end?”

  She didn’t find it, so I’m quoting from memory. Kluessen isn’t going to be looking things up.

  He’s silent. Then he says: Whatever. He wants to reassign his portfolio.

  “Adolf!” I clap him so hard on the shoulder that the old man’s body shakes. For a moment I lose the thread: it’s to do with his eyebrows. With brows that bushy, it’s no wonder that someone might get confused. “Together we’ve earned a great deal of money. And it’s going to grow! Base prices are all on the uptick. Anyone who bails out now is going to regret it.”

  Whatever, is his response once again, and he massages his shoulders. His wife, his son, and he have reached an agreement to redistribute the assets. His son thinks the entire system is heading for collapse. Everyone is piled with debt. Capital is far too cheap. It’s not going to come out well.

  “Redistribute assets? You don’t even know what that means!” No, this time I’ve gone too far. “I mean, of course you do, but this doesn’t sound like you, these are not your words, this isn’t the Adolf I know.”

  He says his son has just gotten his MBA and—

  “Adolf! University is one thing, but reality …!” What is all this, what is his son doing, mixing himself up in it? I say nothing for a moment, then draw back and cut loose. It doesn’t matter what I say, Kluessen understands almost nothing and notices even less. What counts is that there is the sound of a human voice, with no interruption and no hesitation, what counts is that he hears my voice and grasps that there is something more powerful at work here than he can summon up, with an intellect that dwarfs his own.

  Soon I’ll have to talk this way in front of the court. My lawyer will advise me to make no statement, that’s what lawyers always do. They worry about contradictions, they don’t trust anyone to cope with the prosecutor, they think no one can talk with conviction about anything. It’s possible that I will even have to part company with my attorney, which in the middle of a trial will have a devastating impact. Perhaps it’s better if I conduct my own defense. But people who defend themselves are regarded as idiots, any respectable defendant must have an expensive defense attorney, a pompous, grandstanding gentleman. There’s no way around it. But I’ll keep control of my own testimony.

  “What do you mean?” asks Kluessen.

  “Excuse me?”

  “What testimony? Where?”

  He looks at me, I look at him. It can’t be that I spoke out loud, it must be a misunderstanding. So I make a dismissive gesture and keep talking: about derivatives and secondary derivatives, undervalued real estate funds, dispersed risk, and statistical arbitrage. I quote the professional magazine Econometrica, of which I possess a single copy, mention game theory and the Nash equilibrium, and don’t omit a hint that I have connections to people in key positions who give me inside information—borderline illegal, but extremely profitable.

  Finally I stop. One must always give one’s opponent the chance to collect his thoughts. He has to come to his senses and be able to grasp that he’s lost. I fold my hands, bend forward, and look him in
the eye. He pulls out a handkerchief and does a thorough job of cleaning his nose.

  “Handshake, Adolf!” I hold out my hand. “A man and his word. We’ll carry on together. Yes?”

  He says he’s confused.

  “Handshake!”

  He says he’s confused.

  With my left arm I reach for his right arm and try to take his hand in mine. He resists. I pull, he keeps on resisting, and he’s surprisingly strong.

  He needs to think, he says. He will talk to his son, and write me a letter.

  “Just think about it!” I say hoarsely. “As long as you want! Thinking is always important.”

  Now we do actually shake hands, but not to seal our professional partnership, just to say goodbye. I squeeze so hard that all the suntan fades from his wrinkled face. I know I’ve lost. He will demand his money back. And he knows that I know. What he doesn’t know is that I no longer have his money.

  For a moment I fantasize about killing him quickly. I could strangle him or break his skull with something hard. But then what? How do I get rid of the body? Besides which it’s likely that there’s a camera in here. Wearily I collapse into my chair and prop my head in my hands.

  When I look up, Kluessen has left. In his place there is a tall man standing in the room. He’s leaning against the wall and watching me. I close my eyes, then open them again. He’s still there. He has a hideous gap in his front teeth.

  Not good, I think.

  “No,” says the man. “Not good at all.”

  I close my eyes.

  “Won’t help,” says the man.

  And yes, I can still see him.

  “Don’t get mixed up in it,” says the man. “Just walk right past. When you see them, don’t get mixed up in it. Leave it be. Don’t speak to the three of them, keep on going.”

  I feel dizzy. Mixed up in it? Keep on going? I can’t ask him what he’s talking about, right now I have to deal with Kluessen. I can drag things out for a week or two, tangle him up in some complicated exchange of letters, be unreachable, and generally bring things to a standstill with a series of excuses and questions. But at some point he’ll press charges, then the prosecutors will weigh in with their interrogations, but the time will tick by and until then I can stay living in my house and drive to work every morning. Autumn will come, the leaves will fall, and with any luck I won’t be arrested before the first snowstorm.

  The man is no longer there. I hold up my hand in front of my eyes. The sunlight in the window is so harsh that it seems to destroy the tint of the glass. I pick up the receiver and ask Elsa for a glass of water. It’s already here and I drink it. As I set it down, I see a priest I know. He’s even fatter than he was the last time. When did my brother come in? And the glass in my hand, who brought it so quickly?

  “Can I do something for you?” I ask cautiously. Perfectly possible I’m just imagining him. I mustn’t give myself away.

  He hems and haws, murmurs something, obviously doesn’t want to say anything specific.

  I take a sheet of paper and pretend to read. My hands are shaking. The thing with Kluessen really got to me.

  He asks something.

  So—it’s not a fantasy. Ghosts never ask questions. But his black outfit unsettles me, it makes me think of exorcisms. Then he says something about a cube and at first I think he’s talking about some dice game, but then it becomes clear that he means his hobby, and in order to avoid having to listen to the whole nonsense, I ask if he’s already eaten, get up, and leave the office. Outside I stop by Elsa’s desk, bend over, smell her perfume, force myself not to lay hands on her, and ask what in the world my brother’s doing here.

  That was her task, she says. To call my brother! And ask him to come at once. That’s what I told her.

  “Oh,” I say. “Right. Got it. I know.” I have no idea what she’s talking about. Why should I have set this up?

  I walk quickly to the elevator. The phone vibrates in my pocket. I extract it. So now what, do you want to come or not?

  Now? I write back. I wait. My brother is nowhere to be seen. Why is everyone always so ponderous? Wretched, life-sapping inertia! And why isn’t she answering?

  Here he comes. The elevator doors open, we step in, and once again I’m thinking of The Exorcist. You mustn’t underestimate priests. I ask about horoscopes. I’ve always wanted to know: it has to be possible to test them statistically. All you need is a hundred people who’ve died on the same day, either there will be significant similarities in their horoscopes or there won’t! Why doesn’t somebody do it?

  He gapes at me like an idiot. Evidently I’ve offended him. Turning wine into blood is perfectly fine, but horoscopes are beneath his dignity. I pull out my phone. No answer. We’ve already reached the main floor.

  We go through the lobby, the glass doors open. Dear God, it’s hot. My phone vibrates. Can you do it at five?

  Why not now??? I text. A car horn blasts next to me, I realize I’m in the middle of the street—the restaurant is right over there, I go there every day. The décor is horrible, the waiters are arrogant, and I don’t like the food. But so what—I’m rarely hungry anyway, because of the medication I’m on.

  The waiter pushes the table aside so that my fat brother can force his way onto the banquette. I order for the two of us, what I always order, spaghetti with shellfish. I don’t like mussels, but it’s an appropriate dish, not too much, not too heavy, not too few calories, not too cheap. My phone vibrates. Good, that’s fine. Now.

  Martin asks me about the economy and my forecasts. I answer something or other. Why are we sitting here, what does he want? I can’t right now, I text. How does she think I live, does she believe I can just drop everything from one minute to the next, just because she feels lonely? Late afternoon, okay?

  I wait. No answer. My brother asks things, I answer without even listening to myself. I look at the phone, put it aside, pick it up again, put it aside, pick it up. Why isn’t she answering?

  “When you send someone a message,” I ask, “and he answers, and you answer back and ask for a quick answer and none comes, would you assume he didn’t get the message or that he’s simply not answering?”

  “He or she?”

  “What?”

  He looks at me slyly. “You said ‘he’ and then you said ‘she.’ ”

  Nuts. I know what I said. A laughably obvious trick. “And?”

  “Nothing,” he says furtively.

  What is he trying to get out of me, how has he managed to get me to talk about personal things? These priests are slick. “What do you want to know?”

  “Nothing!”

  His mouth is smeared with sauce. There are plates between us, his is almost empty, mine is untouched. When were they brought? “It doesn’t matter what kind of message,” I say. “It’s irrelevant.”

  He murmurs something, trying to talk his way out of it.

  Why isn’t she answering? “Perhaps it’s all part of what you do. Perhaps you have to be that inquisitive.”

  My telephone vibrates. Okay, then later.

  When? I write, and ask myself for the thousandth time how many servers this message will pass through and how many strangers can read it. Any one of them could blackmail me. Why does she force me into such careless behavior? “Do you still do exorcisms? Demonic possession. Do you still deal with that? Do you have people who do it?”

  He gapes at me.

  “What is the classic school of thought? Do you have to let a demon in when he comes? Does he need an invitation, or can he just take possession of someone?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  Always a question to counter a question. Why can’t he just tell a person what they want to know? Because I’m afraid of ghosts, every day, all the time—is that what I should answer? “A book, just a book. I read this book. A strange book. Never mind.”

  The phone vibrates. Already booked. Flight and hotel, leaving Saturday, back Sunday night, so looking forward. :-)


  It takes me a moment to realize it’s from Laura. Since when does she book her own flights?

  Wonderful! I write back. I will really need a good excuse.

  I’ve barely hit the Send button when the phone vibrates again. How are you, call me if you have time! Martin.

  Good. Stay calm. Always calm. I look up, there he is, sitting in front of me. Martin. My brother. I look at the phone, the message is still there. I look at his face. I look at the phone. Is it my imagination after all? Am I sitting here alone? His plate is empty, mine is full, which argues against that.

  But why should it argue against it? I don’t know anymore, I’ve lost my train of thought. Anyone who can imagine a brother can also imagine an empty plate. Don’t panic. The main thing is to stay calm. Carefully, making sure not to hit any wrong button, I erase the message. Then I put away the phone and say, “This heat!” just in order to have something to say.

  He asks about Laura and Marie, I answer him. I talk about my mother’s new TV broadcast, then ask after his mother. Obviously he spends all his time with her, poor bastard, it’s tragic. For all that, I like his mother, at least more than I do my own. Just as I’m about to ask him if it’s really necessary, all this visiting business, and if something shouldn’t be done about it, someone slaps me on the shoulder. Lothar Remling. The phone vibrates but I can’t look now. I jump up. Shoulder slapping. Punch in the upper arm. Football talk. Then he takes himself off. I can’t stand the guy, he almost wrecked the Ostermann deal for me a couple of years ago. Finally I can look. Three messages.

  I can’t take it anymore.

  Come later, come now, doesn’t matter.

  Come now or don’t come at all.

  I stand up, say something about an urgent appointment, and run.

  The heat seems to have gotten even worse, it’s not far to go, she lives only ten blocks away. But I quickly register that today it would have been smarter to take the car.

  I stop, pull out the phone. The free signal: once, twice, three times, four. Has she stopped answering when I call? Are we that far along?

  Sibylle picks up. “What is it, Eric?”