Free Fame by Daniel Kehlmann Page B

on it as if for the first time, and put it back.
    He looked up. On the other side of the street, the garden gate had opened. Ludwig and Malzacher came out, and between them, tall and well built, Ralf Tanner.
    He couldn’t remember ever looking that good himself. Whoever had chased him out of his own life, he was perfect at it, he was the right person for it, and if anyone had earned the right to Tanner’s existence, it was him. What dignity, what charisma! A car drew up, Ralf Tanner opened the door, nodded to the chauffeur, and disappeared into the back. Malzacher got in after him, and Ludwig closed the gate.
    As the car went by, Matthias Wagner leapt up and bowed,but the windows were tinted and all he could see was his own reflection. The car had already passed him, turned the corner, and was gone.
    He pushed his hands into his pockets and walked slowly down the street. He’d actually found the way out. He was free.
    He paused at a bus stop but then changed his mind and continued on his way, he had no desire at this moment to use public transport, it was always a strange experience when you looked like a star. People stared, children asked stupid questions, and used their cell phones to take photographs of you. It could even be fun sometimes. It made you think you were someone else.

The East
    H ow could she have known it was hot here? She’d imagined snow-covered steppes, swept by icy winds, whirling snows, nomads in front of tents, yaks, and campfires at night under huge skies canopied with stars. Actually, it smelled like one gigantic building site, cars blasted their horns, and the sun was scorching. A fly buzzed around her head. No cash machine anywhere. Yesterday at her bank, the teller had laughed at her: they didn’t carry currencies like that, she’d have to change her money once she got there.
    And here she was, enveloped in gas fumes, after an endless flight through the night. A hugely fat man in the next seat had snored all the way. Every time his hand fell into her lap, she’d asked herself why in the world she’d ever agreed to step in and make this trip. But she’d been curious to see this distant corner of the planet, and so she’d quickly decided to accept.
    Not long afterward an air ticket arrived in the mail. The accompanying letter, in broken English, had a gold seal on it representing a flying bird or a sunrise or maybe a man wearing a hat. Then she had to go to the embassy—three rooms in a rental building on the outskirts—where a man in uniform wordlessly stamped a visa into her passport.
    Her hair was already soaked with perspiration. She looked at her reflection in the dirty glass front of the terminal: a small plump woman in her mid-forties, looking absolutely exhausted. She had always been a person with a developed sense of curiosity, but tiredness undid her. Her favorite thing was to be at home, sitting in her cool study with the garden visible from the window and a cup of tea beside her. That’s when she got her ideas, that’s when she could concentrate, that’s when she was in the right frame of mind to work out the tangled secrets that her melancholy detective, Commissioner Regler, had to solve. Her detective books sold well, she got fan mail from her readers. She loved her husband and her husband loved her. Her life was in order. Did she really have to burden herself with such trips?
    A hand came down on her shoulder, and she spun around, startled. There was a man standing next to her in a stained suit. He was holding a piece of cardboard with her name written on it in clumsy letters.
    “Yes, it’s me!”
    He indicated that she should follow him. She wanted to give him her suitcase, but he’d already set off and she had to run after him. They crossed the street, people yelled, carshonked, and when she got to the other side her skirt was splattered with mud. The car was parked across two spaces in the parking lot, the hood was dented, and it was filled with boxes. The trunk