36. Demotivated in Berlin

The next few days were unpleasant. I tried to phone Isobel to speak to her, but Ingrid told me — very apologetically — that Isobel didn’t want to talk to me. I didn’t hear anything else from the Professor. I could kiss goodbye to my editor’s credit now.

And it was depressing to be in the flat all by myself. Now that Isobel was no longer helping me, I really was going to struggle to get the book finished in time. There was no way I would have time if I went back to work, so I got myself signed off for another week. I would have to go back to work on the day before the deadline, but I figured I would just about have the manuscript finished by then.

I did as best as I could to get by without Isobel’s help. I copied her texts and instructions from earlier chapters to use in later ones, changing a word here and there. The pressing deadline concentrated my mind wonderfully and I progressed with the work at a satisfactory pace. But any pleasure I had taken in the work was now entirely gone. Without Isobel’s input, the material was boring, but I no longer cared about producing shoddy work. I knew Henk would not be satisfied with it, and I could forget about getting my internship extended. But I didn’t care. I was sick of the book, sick of Henk and sick of the Verlag.

At the same time, the pleasure I had taken in being in Berlin had also disappeared. I no longer thought of it as “Berlin,” but just as a tedious and inconvenient city. I had to limit my trips outside to the absolute minimum, in case anybody saw me. I was on bad terms with three of the five people I considered friends in Berlin. As far as the other two were concerned, with Markus I had to maintain the fiction that I was ill, and I imagined Wolfgang would take his sister’s side, for the sake of a quiet life if nothing else.

I took some consolation in the fact that I was only going to be in Berlin for a few more weeks. I changed my ticket so that I would fly home a few days before Christmas. I wouldn’t be returning to Berlin. I would speak to my advisor in Edinburgh when I got back and see if I could sort something out. Perhaps I could do another internship elsewhere in Germany in the new year. I didn’t really care.

“So you’re feeling better, then?” Ana asked when I went into the office on the Thursday, the day before the deadline.

“Oh, yes,” I said, suddenly remembering my back pain and making sure to wince a little as I walked. “I’m still not completely better, but I’m well enough to be back at work.”

“Well, don’t overdo it,” said Ana, sternly, who clearly thought I should be signed off. “You shouldn’t come back to work until you’re completely fit. You don’t want to end up like the Professor, do you?”

I was seized by a sudden feeling of alarm. “Did something happen to him?”

“He’s off work sick, too. At least, I think he is. He phoned in sick on Monday — just for that day — and nobody has heard anything from him since then. He’s not answering his phone. We’re all worried about him. I feel like going round to his flat myself to make sure he’s okay.”

When I went in to see Markus later — I wanted to ask him to check some of the German in my manuscript for me — he agreed the Professor’s absence was worrying.

“What do you think we should do?” I asked.

“Let’s leave it another couple of days and see if we hear from him. If we haven’t heard anything by Monday, we can go to his flat and check on him. It could just be that he’s pretending to be off sick so that he can get some work done in peace. He’s done that before.” I gave an embarrassed cough and didn’t say anything.

I went through to my office. I was relieved to see that Krebs wasn’t there — although a half-empty empty coffee cup on his desk suggested he wasn’t far away — so I would be able to get some work done.

I sat down at my desk and took out my manuscript and my copy of “Let’s Speak English.” Markus had pointed out some spelling mistakes in words I had copied from the book, and I wanted to make sure I got the spelling right this time.

After I had done that, I started work on the final chapter, which I still hadn’t done. I was feeling stressed by this point. I was going to need all my time to get it finished by the next day.

But before I could get into the work, the telephone rang. It was Ana. “Henk wants to see you in his office. Now.”

That didn’t sound good. “Did he say what it was about?”

“No. But he’s in a bad mood, so I wouldn’t keep him waiting.”

“Mr. Wilson,” Henk said as I hurried, out of breath, into his office a couple of minutes later. “I was wondering when you were going to put in an appearance.”

“Er, and why was that, Herr Henk?” I asked, as politely as I could.

“Why,” he said, breaking into a false grin, “isn’t it obvious? Today’s the big day.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not quite following you.”

“Take a seat, Wilson.” He indicated the chair in front of him. “Now, today is the deadline for your book ‘English in a Flash.’ You haven’t forgotten about that, have you?”

“But, er, tomorrow’s the deadline,” I said, totally confused.

Henk didn’t seem happy that I had contradicted him. “I think you’ll find, Mr Wilson, that today is the deadline. After all, I’m going on holiday for three weeks tomorrow. I would hardly set the deadline for the first day of my holiday, now would I?” As proof, he showed me his desk diary, pointing at that day’s entry. Sure enough, the deadline was written in under Thursday, with his holiday — he was going to Mallorca, I saw — marked down for the Friday.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I must have made a mistake.” What I didn’t bother mentioning — it would only serve to irritate him further — was that I could see that the deadline had originally been written in the box for Friday, but had been erased, presumably when he booked his holiday.

“Well, the most important thing” — he indicated the manuscript lying on his desk — “is that the book is finished. Anyone can forget a date.”

Before I could say anything, he had picked up the manuscript and was leafing through it. He started firing questions at me about the content, so that I didn’t get the chance to tell him it wasn’t actually finished.

“This is all looking very good,” he said. “There are a few things that need to be changed, of course, but the editors in Hamburg can … Hang on, what’s going on here?”

He had reached the end of chapter 11 and was looking for chapter 12, turning the manuscript over to see if he had missed anything and checking through the papers on his desk. “I’m sorry, Wilson, I don’t know what’s happened… I can’t find the last chapter.”

“I’m afraid there, er, isn’t a chapter 12,” I began. “I was meaning to tell you, but –”

“Wilson, we agreed that there would be 12 chapters. Where is chapter 12?”

“Er, I haven’t finished it yet.”

“But the deadline was today.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll get it finished by tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow will be too late. I’ll be on holiday. I was going to write in my comments this evening on the train back to Hamburg, then drop it off at the office tonight so that the editors can start work on it tomorrow. We need to get it on to the market in two week’s time if we’re going to have any chance of benefitting from the Christmas boom. And I’m away for two weeks.”

He stood up, paced over to the window, tapped on it, then came back to his desk. “I know. Why don’t you give me the first 11 chapters now, and then send the last chapter to Hamburg tomorrow? At least that way I can write my comments on most of the book.”

“Er, I actually need to make a few more changes to the other chapters as well. There are still some exercises missing, and I found some mistakes I need to correct.”

“Bloody hell!” He got up and paced around some more. “Well there’s only one thing for it. You’ll have to finish the whole thing by noon tomorrow — and when I say noon, I mean noon — and then send the manuscript to Hamburg by express post. And that cost, my friend, is going to come out of any royalties you receive for the bloody thing. The editors will just have to do their best without my input. The most important thing is that we get it onto the market quickly. It’s going to be a bit shit, but we’re just going to have to live with that.”

“Mr Henk,” I began. “I’m very sorry –”

“I don’t want to hear it,” he said. “Now get out of my office and do some bloody work for a change.”

When I got back to my office, having already planned out the final chapter, I saw that Krebs was there.

“Ah, there you are, Robert,” he said. “Someone telephoned for you earlier. Now, where did I put that paper? I had it here somewhere.”

I wanted to suggest that he could have been kind enough to leave the message on my desk so that I could find it, but I kept my mouth shut.

“Here it is,” he said finally, having gone through all the stacks of paper on his desk. He put on his reading glasses. Very slowly. “So, I didn’t catch the lady’s name, but it might have begun with a G. Or a J.”

“Was she Russian?” I asked as he handed me the paper.

“Could have been, could have been. She was certainly foreign, I could tell that.”

I looked at the telephone number on the paper. It was indeed Jasmilla’s number. Krebs had managed to transpose two of the digits, but fortunately I had it memorised.

“She seemed a bit upset about something,” added Krebs as an afterthought.

“Really? When did she call?” Now I felt concerned.

“Oh, it must have been about 11 o’clock this morning.”

Cursing him silently for not having given me the message earlier, I dialed Jasmilla’s number.

“Richard?” she said when she heard my voice. “I’m so glad you called.” She sounded like she might have been crying.

“What happened?” My first thought — as always in these situations — was that someone had died.

“I got fired,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“The Professor told me he didn’t want me to work for him any more.” She explained that she had gone over to his flat that morning to talk to him about the latest translation she was supposed to be working on. But the Professor had told her — in no uncertain terms, by the sound of it — that she wouldn’t be doing any more translations.

“Did he give a reason?”

“He said my work wasn’t good enough. He wasn’t very nice about it. It wasn’t like him at all.” I heard a strange sound at the other end of the line and realised she was crying.