AN ENTIRELY TRUE STORY

This morning your man arrives in the kitchen to find a scattering of letters on the breakfast table. A visa statement, a request to read at a festival, some papers for a meeting and a letter post marked Neustadt-am-Rübenberge. Your man opens the German letter and reads:

Rainer Böhlke
Gartenstrasse 35 . 31535 Neustadt
G e r m a n y

Dear Sir,
as a man living alone one thinks not only of one's past but also beyond one's own being. In a word, I have a considerable fortune and I would like to name you as my heir in my testament.
This is a great honor for me because in this way I want to express my appriciction of your work. It would be a great pleasure if you were to accept this inheritance after my passing. I hope that with this help you would be able to attend to your important literaric work more intensively.

Please answer very soon !

Sincerely yours

PS. If you would like to give me a little present, please send me few handwritten lines from your latest novel with a dedication and your signature.

The signature on the letter resembles a small, but not too regular, heart trace in blue ink.

Your man immediately thinks it is from his mate, McWilliams, who likes to play elaborate practical jokes. But would he go to the trouble of printing Rainer Böhlke's notepaper ? How could he get it posted in Neustadt ? He holds the page up to the light. There is a German watermark - ZETA MATTPOST.

Then your man remembers that before Christmas he was in Germany and, on headed notepaper from a Leipzig hotel, had written to McWilliams in the following vein : that the hotel was offering him a free holiday if only he would sleep with certain beautiful frauleins. He need do nothing in return except give permission for the filmed encounters to be video-taped and broadcast. Stills would also be sold to magazines and it was up to him whether the black letterbox covered his eyes or his gentles. Could this be McWilliams' revenge ?

Your man shows the letter to his wife. Your woman goes daft and immediately gets out the atlas to see where Rainer lives. There turns out to be about twenty Neustadts. Some of them are in former East Germany and she discounts these because Rainer has 'a considerable fortune'. She is driven to look at the postmark. NEUSTADT AM RüBENBERGE. This is no help in finding it on the map.
'What if he's younger than you - and you die first ?' she says.
'He sounds old.'
She nods. She makes up her piece with almost stale bread, left-over cheese and tomato and goes out to work, her eyes shining with hope.

It could be a case of the Henry Root letters. Henry wrote to anyone of any importance in public life and teased a reply out of them which was polite and therefore made them appear foolish and gullible. Maybe Rainer has written to hundreds of writers (writers seem to think only of two things - writing and money) and offered to leave them his 'considerable fortune' in the hope that they will grovel and reply - indeed, arse-lick him for the rest of his short life. Then he will publish an anthology of the most subservient and greedy letters and your man's will be in pride of place. The frontispiece probably.

The words 'considerable fortune' strike him as odd. It reminds him of hearing a friend of his mammy's;
'I knew a man who drank himself out of a fortune.'
'What are you talking about,'says the mammy.'I knew somebody who drank himself out of TWO fortunes !'
His mammy's idea that you could drink two fortunes told more about her concept of a fortune than it did about the amount a man could drink.
[ A bottle of ordinary upside-down whiskey is about £12 and if a man was to be really extravagant and drink two a day that would be £8760 per annum. The occasional pint and small vodka or a gin and tonic before a meal - and some wine with the meal - and even, in extremis, being forced into buying his round, would bring his drink bill to £10,000 a year. Given that his liver would not last more than 5 years then a fortune is £50,000. This is the salary of a headmaster of a large comprehensive school. Any judge in the country will earn twice this every year. But your man's mammy never knew any judges or headteachers.]

Your man has books to leave back to the local library so he scouts through the reference section. Looks up 'am' in a German dictionary. He thought it meant near or 'in the district of' but it means 'on'. Like 'West-on-Supermare' or 'Lond-on-Thames.'
So, Neustadt is on the river Rübenberge.

He looks it up in the atlas and there it is - Neustadt - just outside Hannover. He imagines Rainer sitting, brooding in his castle above a bend in the Rübenberge. At his feet, a copy of your man's latest novel, the pages flittering in the draught . He owns everything as far as the eye can see. His factories belch smoke and manufacture things and accumulate further wealth. The sky is yellow grey with the haze of burnt lignite. In his castle Rainer has no other dependants except for some mice. He puts his hand to his leonine grey head - his forehead, steep with intellect - his eyes dark with sympathy and maybe empathy for the poor of this world. His hand moves to his chest - his breathing is irregular....

It occurs to your man that there is one possibility which he has not yet considered. That it is true. This German may have been touched by your man's writings and decided to leave him a vast fortune.

Jesus - he may never have to write another word.

The other picture your man has is of Rainer Böhlke, mad as a dagger and flat broke, slipping out past his distraught wife and children. He is going to post a letter to someone whose name he has seen on the spine of a book. In the hallway he stands licking a stamp with such thoroughness that the gum is all but gone, then he waves auf wiedersehen with the little white envelope which now lies on your man's desk, its stamp slightly askew.

That night your man and his wife go to the pictures - Remains of the Day. Jokes are whispered about how little remains for poor Rainer. After the movie they meet friends and all six of them go off for a drink. The only place they can get in on a Saturday night is the lounge of a prohibitively expensive hotel - the kind of place Rainer would stay for months without a second thought. Your man, being in the position he is, feels obliged to buy the first round. After a respectful pause - he certainly does not want to appear greedy - he explains the reason for his largesse. He tells them about Rainer Böhlke. They are aghast. Mouths open at the words 'considerable fortune'. Eyelids are batted. One woman - Fiona from down the street - believes it absolutely. Your man buys the second round as well. The company agree he can afford it.

In bed he casts his mind back. It wouldn't be the first time your man has had a communication from a daftie. Some years ago he had a letter, passed to him through his publishers, from Copenhagen. Not only did it have the date on it but also the time.
18.40 - 19.00. It took the guy twenty minutes to write, although it wasn't obvious why he took so long.

Informationscyclist
JÝrgen Andersen
KÝbenhavn

ACCORDING THE AUTHOR AND HIS CONNECTION TO DENMARK.
I can offer the author a wealthy payd job in Denmark if he will come and visit my country. He will get around £3695 = Kr (crowns) 42,500 for a week in Denmark + free hotel and free travel in a Volvo 760 Turbo. The job will include:
6 Lectures [4 universities + 2 Gymnasiums]
1 TV programme - about 45 minutes
1 Radio Programme - about 1 Hour
2 Chronicles in 4 newspapers
And I will get a professional chauffeur - who is also a professional photographer. His name is Bent Neumann - aged 66. Please take this letter seriously and please let your man answer on behalf of his own will. With love and hope for a better future,

Yours sincerely
JÝrgen Andersen

NB! Notice that a big exhibition called,
'Karl Marx uses the library - do you ?'
is under preparation in these months and will be set up in USA and Great Britain in 1988. The start will be Middlemarch 1988 - and the rest of 1988 _ 1990 - 300 years anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690-91.
Please answer quickly . That will be a help for my preparations of the exhibition which will save thousands of mens, womens and childrens in Ireland & throughout the world.

Your man thought it better not to reply to this gentleman. Indeed he felt more than a little sorry for his mental plight. But that was not the last of him. One night at 4a.m. when your man is lying in a alcohol induced slumber the phone rings. Your woman kicks your man awake to the point of bruising.
'The phone's ringing.'
'Wh-why ?'
'Because somebody dialled our number.'
Your man tries to exit the room through the wardrobe door, then the bedroom door and still the phone rings. Someone dear to him must be dead, surely. In the dark of the office he lifts a stapler. Probably the mammy. Murdered in Belfast. He puts down the stapler and lifts the phone.
'Hello ?'
'JÝrgen Andersen here. I am trying to arrange a tour of Denmark for you. You will be able to do readings and speeches...'
'Do you know what time it is ?'
'I'm sorry - am I too early for you ?'
'Or late - I dunno which - Now fuck off and don't EVER phone me again.'
But he did - a couple of weeks later this Informationcyclist phoned at 4am again. The mammy was kidnapped by the Loyalists and she wouldn't stop talking and they were phoning your man to get her to shut up. On his blunder to the phone he stubs his toe on the metal filing cabinet and has to hop the last few steps.
'Hello ?'
'JÝrgen Andersen here. I am trying to arrange a tour of the United States of America for you. There will be no problems with the accomodations...'

When your man wakes, his first thought is of his new-found inheritance. When he sees the mail he considers his luck is in - he has won a prize, two books of short stories and a bottle of malt from Scotland on Sunday for identifying the opening paragraph of Hemingway's 'A Clean Well-lighted Place'. He rips the parcel open. Fuck the stories, where's the bottle of Macallan's best malt ? It will follow under separate cover, it seems. Your man was so bustin to win this whiskey he sent in the answer six times on six postcards with six stamps and - of course, whose card is drawn as the winner ? Your woman's. Her that has never let whiskey across her portals except she's dying with the flu. And the glass is filled with sugar and cloves and lemon and God knows what other shite to take the taste off it.

Other things bode well. The unemployed graduate daughter emerges from her bed and speaks. Last night at a quiz SHE won a book - a guide, Central America on a Shoestring. The fact that all six fellow contestants at her table had refused it does not put him off his notion that he, or at least his family, is on a roll.

There is one more omen which shakes your man to his foundations. Your woman has a notion that she wants to show an oul photograph of a faded filmstar to a friend in work. It is stored in your man's filing cabinet and reluctantly he gets it out for her. A poster of a previous engagement falls onto the floor and idly, he opens it. It is a big photocopy of your man as a younger your man - doing a gig at the State Library WHERE ? Your woman leaps over to see. Neustadt. AHHHHHHHHHH. NEUSTADT. Jesus, he's been there. He has done a reading at Stadtbibliothek Neustadt. Your man has been to the town where Rainer Böhlke lives. Has he slept with him ? Maybe drunk on Weizenbier and Schnapps - he would never remember a thing about it - your man, that is. Or his wife - Old Missus Böhlke - has he bedded her ? With her ear-phones of carefully plaited hair and tight lederhosen ?

The next day your man and your woman are hot footing it down to the Reference library when a guy walks past them in the Underground. He looks very distinguished - faintly greying hair, rimless spectacles, expensive loafers, navy bavarian-style coat with the belt tied continental fashion. Says your man,
'That looks like our Rainer.'
'Jesus, I hope he's older than that.'

In the library they ask for a copy of the German Whö's Whö. It appears in two fat red volumes , dated 1992. There is no entry for someone called Rainer Böhlke.
'What a gunk,' says he.

Your woman has the idea of looking up the German telephone directory. There are hundreds of volumes. They get the one for near Hannover and there is a section for Neustadt-am-whatever. Böhlke has about five or six entries . Karl-Heinz, Gerhart, Heinrich, Gunter...
'Rivals,' says your woman.'Extended family - they'll not get a penny, no matter how much they plead.'
But there is no sign of Rainer. Nor Gartenstrasse.
'A quare gunk,' says she.

'He must be ex-directory,' says your man.
'Is that good or bad ?'
'He's an eccentric billionaire who doesn't like to be phoned by the general public. Or to be disturbed reading my books.'
They look up the equivalent of German Yellow Pages. Dry Cleaners - Undertakers - Lawn mowers - Fly-Fishing. All this they can tell from the little advertising drawings. But still no Rainer Böhlke.

The whole thing is a practical joke - it's McWilliams. Your man has a vision of the joker laughing. When he laughs he tries to speak but can't . Tears flood into his eyes. His face is red and his body is shaking and he is trying to say something like - he completely fell for it - and me getting the paper printed and making those mistakes and you falling for them and me knowing a guy who was going to Germany and looking up the phone books to get a German name and getting the letter-head printed and making up the text and giving it to the guy to post. He is still laughing, he slaps his thigh as he remembers phrases he has slaved over - 'considerable fortune','as a man living alone','in a word.' It was a work of art to make it seem Rainer had good, but not excellent, English. McWilliams is the kind of man who laughs so much he slides down the wall and ends up on the floor. All but pissing himself.

Your man voices this picture to his wife.
She says,
'If WE couldn't find him in the phone book, how could McWilliams ?'
Your man considers this and nods. In a voice huskey with emotion he says,
'I love you.'

Throughout the day the name of the German philanthropist/lunatic/joker occurs frequently in their conversation - almost as if he is one of the family. In a callous and greedy development by late afternoon he becomes known as 'Rainer, God rest him.'

The next day is decision time. A letter will have to be written. The lure will have to be taken. It is the only way to tell whether it is a juicy morsel or a barbed and empty hook attached to McWilliams's line.

Your man sits down to the wordprocessor. The phone rings.
'Hello ?'
'Fiona from down the street here. I'm afraid I have bad news for you about your inheritance.'
'Don't tell me he's dead.'
'No - it's worse than that. I was telling a friend of mine about your letter - this friend is a composer - and he stopped me. He just said Rainer Böhlke. He got a letter too. Wanted to leave him a considerable fortune. And all he asked was a compact disc - signed by the composer.'

Your man puts down the phone, feeling he has been kicked in the gentles. All that need happen now is for the bottle of Macallan to arrive broken or be cancelled.
'What a terrible fuckin gunk.'

He calls out for your woman who is in the other room throwing out her cheap jewelry. She comes in polishing a marcasite brooch.

And he tells her.

After a long silence she says,
'Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Haven't some people little to do with their time.'