Foreword

I moved to Kassel, Germany, in the year 2005 and it was not long before I began to meet interesting characters who had stories to tell. Walter Schmidt was one of them. He explained to me the difference between the inhabitants of Kassel like this: “It's easy. Anyone who lives in Kassel is a Kasseler. A Kasselaner is a person born in Kassel. A Kasseläner is a person born in Kassel whose parents were also born in Kassel. However, a Kasseler is also a salted and slightly smoked piece of pork, often served with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes.” So now you know. I wrote down some of his stories and I've translated some of them for you and hope you enjoy them.

 

Needless to say, these stories are fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

 

John

Nicking Hercules's Head

It was raining outside the stadium in Kassel, and the Kassel Huskies – our local ice-hockey heroes – had lost yet again.

 

“When's the Prof coming out? I could use some cash,” says Pete, a tall, blonde second-hand car dealer and vehicle specialist of our group.

 

“Bout six weeks, I reckon,” says Big Heinz the binman, “they get a big remission for good conduct these days, y'know.” Big Heinz has a vast belly, he can put away five litres of beer without even thinking about it.

 

“Na ja, soon as he comes out, he'll surely have something for us to do. Even if that last job went sour, that won't worry him. I'll be visiting him Saturday. I'll try to fix a meeting of all the five of us after he gets his freedom. That'll take our minds off them Huskies....”

 

Two months later we meet up in the Orangerie restaurant, it's fairly posh there so no-one would suspect that fancy deals are being planned. The Prof – that's what we call him, he's the one with the brains, after all – smiles around and looks resplendent in his brand new C & A suit. Clearly his rest-cure has done him good. He's the boss, we – Pete, Big Heinz, Heinrich Heine and me – Walter – make up the team. Perhaps I ought to explain about Heinrich Heine and how he got his name. There's a street named after that nineteenth century poet in the south part of Kassel, where Heinrich lives. So one day when the police barked at him: “name and address?” he gave them his address first – and the name stuck.

 

“I've got just the job for you guys,” the Prof confides, glancing round to see to see that nobody's listening. “Have you seen Hercules lately?”

 

“No, Prof.”

 

At this point I must explain that Hercules ain't no strongman, he's a statue 8 metres tall on a massive fortress with a tower where Herc stands, on the top of the highest hill that overlooks Kassel. Almost a mountain, it is.

 

“If you've looked that way lately,” – murmurs the Prof – “you've seen that his head – it stands bigger than a man and must weigh around half a tonne – has been taken down for cleaning and it's in the castle museum on exhibition there. It's made of copper – not solid, but copper plates. The statue was made here in Kassel around 1700, I looked in a book, it said the plates are around ten centimetres thick, originally they were iron but of course they went rusty so they were replaced by copper. The value of that copper must be around twenty thousand Euros, if you get my meaning.”

 

“Got your meaning, Prof,” says Heinrich Heine (you know now, it's his address, not his real name. And he ain't no poet neither.) “But how do we nick Herc's head?”

 

“Easypeasy,” replies the Prof. “Like I said, the head's been taken down for cleaning. Take off all the bird shit, polish it up a bit. But on the tenth of November it'll be put on a truck and taken back up the hill behind the castle, lifted up on a crane and screwed onto the body again. That's where we come in. Grab the truck with Herc's head on it, take it to some quiet place, melt it down into lumps or ingots and dispose of the metal. Are you on?”

 

“Course we are,” says Big Heinz. “My brother Rudolf's got a farm out at Zierenberg, there's a big barn where we can melt it down.”

 

“I don't think helping ourselves to the truck'll be any problem,” says Pete, “done them before.”

 

“I'll see what I can do about equipment for melting copper, got some friends work in the foundry at Volkswagen in Baunatal, they know all about melting metal,” says Heinrich Heine.

 

“Don't forget we've got to shift the ingots to Poland to receive the stumpy,” says the Prof. He loves using English words, even though I've told him they don't say stumpy no more. “My friends there have offered a very interesting price, but of course the police will be on the look out for the truck.”

 

“Mein Gott, come on, Prof” says Heinrich Heine, “a tarpaulin costs only forty Euros, and Polish number plates around fifty.”

 

Five weeks later me, the Prof and Pete are sitting in the Prof's Audi, discreetly parked at the far end of the Hercules visitors' car park. It's November, just getting dark. The truck with Herc's head securely lashed to the flatbed has just arrived from the castle museum, but at four o' clock it's too late to lift it today. The guys by the crane are putting on their coats, getting into their cars, thinking about home. At six-thirty a car marked Polizei takes a turn around the car park, Pete crouches down in the back of the Audi, I have to embrace the Prof as we pretend to be a courting couple, he stinks of cheap aftershave but it's all in a good cause, ain't it? The cops drive off and we're on our own.

 

Two minutes later Pete runs across to the truck, a big Volvo. A short pause and then the diesel thunders into life. Off we go. We follow the truck down the hill then up another hill to Zierenberg.

 

At Zierenberg we find Heinrich Heine and Big Heinz standing over the furnace, already switched on, the flames light up the old barn. We cut the ropes holding Herc's head and he topples off the truck. The Prof goes up to Herc's head and looks at it carefully, touches it a bit, looks at it carefully again, looks at it carefully again, then runs into the barn.

 

“Turn that verdammt furnace off, and get in the car,” he yells. “The deal's off. I've made a mistake. Those plates aren't anywhere near as thick as I thought. I've just realised, they didn't have centimetres in 1700, they were invented by the French around a hundred years later. So they had some other things, inches or ells or tenths of a foot. Them plates aren't worth two thousand. Scheisse! Sorry, guys.”

 

Two hours later we're on the motorway, just past Berlin, heading for the Polish border. “We can stay with my friends in Poland for a few days until things quieten down a bit,” explains the Prof.

 

“Do they play ice-hockey in Poznan, or wherever it is we're going?” asks Heinrich Heine.

 

“If they do, I hope they play better than them Huskies,” replies Pete, clutching the steering wheel harder.

Lucky Oak

The Prof looks particularly pleased when I see him next time at the Orangerie. Maybe it's because he has just been released from prison again. Three months for stealing Hercules’s head. He smiles at me, running his hand through his greying, thinning hair, his blue eyes shining.

 

“It’s all fixed. I’m off to Ho Chi Minh City next

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 15.03.2014
ISBN: 978-3-7309-9212-8

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