Faith. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ army in Germany – squeezed tighter and tighter by a German prosperity that shrank the pound sterling – had learned a great deal about saving money. The driver knew all about picking up a lift from one of the endless streams of heavy trucks that head south from Holland through Switzerland to deliver their freight to the Euro-Community warehouses in Italy. ‘Good luck,’ said the corporal. ‘And persevere. It won’t be easy. They’ll think you are a soldier, and these fat civvies all despise squaddies until there’s a bomb needs defusing or their plane gets hijacked. Keep asking; you’ll get a lift eventually.’

      It was a frosty night with a wind that cut through the moth-eaten lining of my old trenchcoat. I regretted for a moment leaving all my personal baggage – shaving kit, linen and change of clothes – behind in the kid’s apartment, but it was a necessary part of giving the Berlin office the slip. My airline seat reservation would keep them content until morning: they were endearingly simple souls in the Berlin office.

      The night was cold and dark. The sky moonless, starless and unremittingly black. ‘It’s good weather,’ the corporal added. ‘You’ll be in Italy in no time. But get yourself cleaned up; you’ll never get a lift if you’re scruffy.’ I suppose it was good weather from a driver’s point of view. A dry road, without the prospect of ice or snow, and visibility as far as the headlight’s beam stretched.

      The corporal had dropped me off at what he said was his favourite interchange: two great cross-Europe highways meeting and intertwining in a desolate reach of rural Germany. The complex was lit like a football stadium, the ferocious glare illuminating a white haze of diesel pollution that wound in and out of the gas pumps and buildings like skeins of silk. From a distance the interchange looked like some huge and malevolent interplanetary vehicle forced-landed upon the empty black German countryside. But upon arrival it proved no more than a plastic oasis, a limbo land occupied by drowsy downcast Gastarbeiter. No one lived here, no one slept here, no pedestrian would be mad enough even to attempt to get here. It was simply a ‘stop’; a place where cramped and weary travellers paid extortionate prices for the basic essentials of the travelling life – fuel, hot food, cigarettes and aspirin – before resuming their trip.

      After buying soap, a disposable plastic razor, toothbrush, clean underclothes and a tee-shirt in the silent fluorescent-lit shop, I purchased a shiny plastic shoulder bag emblazoned, for reasons known only to the tortuous minds of the merchandising experts, with a crudely drawn skyscraper and the words New York New York. I went and shaved and changed. Then, following the corporal’s advice, I walked into the special canteen reserved for long-distance truck drivers. It was a cheerless place, with long plastic-topped tables for men in dirty coveralls who wanted to keep an eye on the floodlit truck park to be sure their cargoes were safe.

      Here at the self-service counter, East met West. An identical array of spicy flour-thickened stews was saved from anonymity only by the exotic labels promising Madras curry, Hungarian goulash, Irish stew and Mexican chilli. With no wish for journeys into the culinary unknown, I took a bowl of noodle soup and a cheese sandwich before moving from table to table soliciting a ride. Eventually I was lucky. After half a dozen negative responses a wavy-haired Dutchman signalled to me from across the room with a barely perceptible beckoning finger.

      ‘Where are you headed, stranger?’ His use of American vernacular was awkward and unconvincing. He was a muscular man with a puffy face and fair skin reddened at the cheeks and nose by the wind and weather. His neat moustache and eyebrows, like the wavy hair on his head, were blond, so that from a distance he looked like a plump angel who’d fluttered down from the loft of some baroque church. Under his battered brown leather jacket he was wearing what I recognized as a very expensive rainbow-striped silk shirt. On the table in front of him, aligned as if for inspection, there were a bunch of keys, a leather bag, a flashlight and a red plastic folder containing a batch of manifests, registrations and customs documents needed for him to take his truck and cargo across ‘frontierless’ Europe.

      ‘South. Switzerland. Anywhere in Switzerland,’ I replied.

      ‘After that you’ll pay your way?’ he asked mockingly.

      ‘I’ll pay you,’ I offered, ‘if it’s not too much.’

      ‘Keep your dough in your pocket. Take the weight off your feet. My name is Wim. I’m transporting cars to Milan. I can do with the company; rapping keeps me awake.’

      I sat down opposite him and drank my soup and ate my sandwich while he finished his steak. ‘I’m not permitted to take hitchhikers,’ he said with a furtive glance over his shoulders. ‘Plenty of big-mouths in here tonight. Better you wait by the exit from the truck park.’ He tore a bread roll in half, wiped the plate using the crust, and then stood up to drink the final mouthful of his coffee. On his hand there was a heavy gold signet ring and a tattoo that artfully incorporated his fingers into its continuous design, and gave emphasis to his gold wrist-watch. Driving long-distance heavy trucks was a well-paid job. It was not unusual to find such nomads spending their wages on personal luxuries rather than equipping the homes they seldom saw.

      He stood up, flicked crumbs from the front of his shirt and picked up his flashlight after putting the rest of his belongings into his leather bag. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Let’s get the show on the road.’ It was the smooth American-style accent that those brought up speaking Dutch and German often assume. I was to find that his whole education and experience was derived from Hollywood films. From them he could quote episodes and dialogue with the effortless assurance of a preacher summoning Bible texts. I guessed he was going to use me as an English-conversation lesson, but that seemed a fair exchange. ‘You leave now. You’ll spot me all right. I’m driving that rig with the brand-new Saabs on it.’ He was toying with the flashlight and he switched it on to be sure it worked. He did it automatically, more a neurotic habit than a test of its batteries.

      The vast car transporter swayed and groaned as it came across the car park to where I was standing at the exit. It stopped with a squeak of brakes and I got in, slammed the door and looked around. This was Wim’s world, and it came complete with air-conditioning, embroidered silk cushions and pin-ups. He ran through the gears and spun the steering wheel with one finger, grinning at me as we sped along the ramp and slid into the stream of traffic heading south. I need not have worried that he would interrogate me or want to be entertained with the story of my life. This fellow Wim wasn’t like that: his idea of entertainment was having an audience for the story of his life.

      It was the sort of yarn to be heard in the bars of almost every big town in the modern world. With difficulties in reading, a self-confessed truant and thief, he was well able to manage his spoken English, and German and Italian too according to what he told me. He handled his huge transporter truck with the same casual ease. Sentenced to three years in prison for large-scale car thefts and an armed assault upon a policeman, he had served seven months before being released on a technicality and his police and prison records erased. Thirty-one years old, he had five children by two different mothers: ‘a ready and willing piece of ass in Stockholm and another in Turin’ was how the unrepentant Wim described his present situation. One of them he’d married, but Wim gave no money to either family, for he thought it was the government’s duty to provide for all. Didn’t he pay his income tax? he asked rhetorically. ‘She can give a heart-wrenching plea about money to feed the kids. I said: “Give ’em canned dog-food, at least they’ll have good teeth and hair.”’ He laughed as he remembered this response. ‘Never get married,’ he advised. ‘Once you’re married they demand everything; never a word of gratitude whatever you do. Girlfriends expect little or nothing. And it’s love and kisses when you bring them a box of chocolates.’

      I listened, head lolling against the seat and dozing off during his long asides about the failings of society to look after its victims, among which Wim numbered himself. His droning voice was soporific but his caustic jokes jolted me awake from time СКАЧАТЬ