Brother Kemal Read Online Free PDF Page A

Frankfurt branch of Magnon & Koch. Perhaps her parents wanted to tell their son-in-law, as if shouting it through a megaphone, what kind of paintings did not ‘stop selling so well’ at some point in time. Or perhaps they just wanted to inflict a little torture on their tattooed daughter who had left home at sixteen.
    So Valerie de Chavannes was living in furnished accommodation, and four hundred euros was not just chicken feed to her.
    ‘As I assume that I can do the job in a day or so without too much expense, I can offer to halve the bonus for success.’
    ‘Thank you,’ she said, and it came from the heart.
    She signed the contract, and while she went out to fetch the four hundred euros I put my jacket on and went over to an A4-sized drawing that was fixed to the wall with a drawing pin between two large paintings, a two-by-two-metres rainbow and a three-metres-long row of red and green horizontal stripes. A quick, smudged pencil sketch showing a man with an Afro hairstyle and his mouth wide open, kneeling on the floor between two huge pictures of arainbow and some horizontal stripes with a mound of vomit that reached to his chest and threatened to smother him.
    When Valerie de Chavannes came back she saw me standing in front of the picture.
    ‘This one is funny,’ I said, and I meant it.
    ‘No,’ she replied, ‘it isn’t. Here you are.’ She came towards me and gave me four hundred-euro notes. ‘I’ll be at home all day. Please call me as soon as you have any news about Marieke.’
    At her daughter’s name the strength suddenly drained out of her. She was breathing heavily, her chin began to quiver and she pressed her lips together.
    ‘Please bring me my daughter back! And forget about halving the bonus, that’s so stupid, it was only …’ She fought off her tears. ‘We really don’t have a lot of money right now, and it was only out of a horrible habit that I thought of it, of course I’ll pay anything you like, just get Marieke back for me.’
    She came a step closer to me, wringing her hands in front of her stomach and looking pleadingly at me. It was just about impossible not to put my arms round her. Her head fell on my shoulder, she gave way to tears and her trembling body pressed close to mine. She had taken off the cardigan when she went to find the money, and I was holding her bare muscular arms. The sleeves of her T-shirt slipped up, and my fingertips touched her damp armpits. When I began to feel her breasts through my lightweight corduroy jacket, it was time to leave.
    I carefully pushed her away from me. Her face was wet with tears.
    ‘Don’t worry, Frau de Chavannes. I’ll find Marieke for you. That’s a promise.’
    She looked at me despairingly. ‘If he does anything to her …’
    ‘He won’t.’ The things we say. I pointed to the glass-toppedtable with the photographs. ‘Your daughter is a strong, self-confident young woman. And girls her age do gad about. I’m sure the two of them are doing nothing but sitting in a café and talking about underground photography or our antisocial society. Maybe they’ll go into the park and smoke a bit of weed now and then. She’ll be back this evening, and you can lecture her about the extremely proper things you did at sixteen. I assume there’ll be a lot about skipping ropes, poetry albums and classical piano music …’
    She had to smile a little.
    ‘See you this evening, Frau de Chavannes. And no, don’t stay at home. Go for a walk, or shopping, or to the gym – move about, do something to take your mind off it. But don’t forget to take your mobile. I’ll call you, okay?’
    She nodded, sniffing, and then she said, ‘So that’s your picture of me, is it? Shopping and the gym, hmm?’
    I looked at her for a moment. ‘Don’t worry about how I see you. Everything is fine there.’
    We shook hands, and the next moment I was in the hall. I wiped the sweat from my brow with my sleeve.
    The gentleman’s racing bike that must