Peter Stephan Jungk: The Inheritance

A squadron of jet fighters thunders over the hotel. The supersonic bangof the engines leaves the windows shaking. There is nothingextraordinary about air force exercises in this country. He draws thecurtains. Is careful not to leave a chink open, otherwise the lightwill come flooding in after sunrise. In the bathroom he takes out thebox of Quies from his sponge bag, plucks a couple of wax balls out ofthe cotton wool they are embedded in, and shoves them deep into hisears.

He sleeps through until eight o’clock. Takes the pink wax balls outof his ears. With the remote control, switches on the television, notfor any particular reason. On the top of the hour, the speaker of aworld-wide station announces that in Caracas, Venezuela, a militarycoup had failed only hours previously. The government was once more incontrol of the situation.

He jumps out of bed, crosses the darkened room. Pulls back the curtain, looks down on the sun-drenched city beneath.

Three of the four domestic television stations are off air. Theremaining program screens a weather-chart, with the predicted highs andlows for the day ahead.

The traveler shakes at the window lock, even though in the fortyhours since his arrival here, he has been forced to see several timesalready that the window will not be opened.

He gets dressed. Not far from the hotel yesterday, he found anespresso bar. In the company of a gang of earth-encrusted buildingworkers, who were digging the tunnel for a new subway line, he drankone of the best coffees in his life.

As he gives in the key, he remarks to the concierge: “Well, it’s all over now, I suppose?”

“No, Senor, by no means…”

He thinks: The concierge is mistaken. And pushes through therevolving door on to the palm-lined street. Thick damp settles on hisbody. He directs his steps to the workmen’s café. The steel shuttersare down. The building site is quiet. Some explosions can be heard,coming from not far away. The doors of a small car are wide open. Agroup of passersby surround the parked car. From the car radio comesthe sound of two wildly excited radio-speakers.

In the bright neon of a restaurant, excitable men in shortsleeveshirts are hurling phrases back and forth. There’s a smell of oldcooking oil and fried fish. The manager has a transistor pressed to histemple. The stranger, his shirt soaked with sweat, orders a pequeno.The manager doesn’t move the radio from his head.

After downing the last of the painfully bitter coffee, and gulpingdown a piece of stale sponge cake, he heads out onto the street again.

He goes to the subway. The station on the Plaza Venezuela is barredwith metal barriers. He asks a man who is carrying two suitcases wherethe nearest bus stop is, he has to get to Avenida Urdaneta. Every tensteps or so, the strongly built man has to stop and rest. “… hoy?! Nobus!”

In the middle of the Plaza the stranger waits for developments. Acouple of helicopters circle overhead. A taxi stops, the cigarillosmoking driver leans out of the window, asks him where he would like toget to. He tells him, it’s five stops by subway. The driver names theprice: “Hundredandtwentydollars.” He doesn’t see why he should pay morethan ten for that short distance, whatever the particular circumstancesof the day.

The night before, he had set up an appointment for this morning withthe executor of the estate of his uncle, who had died at the age ofninety. He considers going on foot to the offices of the import-exportcompany Kiba-Nova, where Julio Kirshman is waiting for him. Explosionsfill the air. He decides first to call from his hotel-room, and ask theexecutor to put off their conversation, scheduled for nine-thirty, tosome time when the situation would have been clarified.

It had been imprudent of him to leave his passport in the safe ofthe Kiba-Nova company, but Kirshman, the junior manager andco-proprietor of the import-export business, had warned him that U.S.and European passports were highly sought after items for the criminalclass of the city, and his passport would be worth a fortune. The hotelsafe offered absolutely no security for such a precious item. It wasonly in the company safe that he could leave it with an easy mind.

Back in his room again, the telephone rings. “Herr Low? Dr. Johanneshere.” The lawyer recommended to him by the Austrian Consulate, to whomhe had initially turned twenty-four hours before. “You must on noaccount leave the hotel,” Friedrich Johannes warns him. “Did Kirshmannot call you? A detachment of rebels is bombing the Presidential Palaceeven as we speak. There are almost a hundred dead. I hope you’recarrying your passport with you at all times? Even in the hotel! I’llcall you later.”

A look out the window. Everything seems quiet. It’s ten in themorning. He waits to see whether Kirshman will call. How would theexecutor, a close friend of his uncle’s, behave towards him?

Daniel Low sits cross-legged on the soft wide bed, with his notebookopen in front of him. He wants to find words to describe the atmosphereand the colors of this day, the situation on the street, and the almostpalpable sense of fear in the city. He manages nothing.

Kirshman doesn’t call.

Two hours later, Dr. Johannes warns him again on no account to leavethe hotel. Daniel says he still hasn’t heard from the executor.

“That doesn’t surprise me. Remember what I told you last night?”replies the lawyer. “Have you thought some more about whether you’dlike me to take on the case of Low v. Kirshman?”

“I’d just like you to be… a little patient.”

At one o’clock, Low calls the Kiba-Nova office. A recorded messagewith a woman’s voice gives the business hours of the company: Monday toFriday, eight-thirty to six-thirty p.m., no break for lunch. He goesthrough his papers, looking for Kirshman’s home number. Julio picks up:“Well, so what do you say?! All this drama in our country, did you hearabout it?”

“Yes, I heard.”

They speak German together: the mother tongue of Kirshman and Low. Julio was born in 1948 in Caracas, Low in 1954, in Vienna.

“You still there?” asks Kirshman.

Daniel doesn’t answer.

“Well, I suppose the two of us will just have to sort it outtomorrow,” says Julio. “I mean, I take it the shooting will havestopped by then…”

translated by Michael Hofmann