As murderous schemes go, Rudolf’s was rather feeble. Frankly, I’ve heard better. But when a customer wants me to listen, I listen. That’s what I do. I listen and withhold judgment. If I didn’t have this policy, the patrons would complain to Karl and I’d be out of a job. Bartending isn’t steady income but it does not break your back like construction or break your mind like factory work. And once you’ve been in prison, it goes without saying that just about anything you do beats the hell out of that.
To be honest, I never thought Rudolf would go through with it. I’m shocked he even bothered to think it. He usually has only two reliable conversation topics. One is his deteriorating health. He regularly updates us about his most recent ailment: arthritis, gallstones, acid reflux. With grinding candor, he shares what it is like to live with an inflamed prostate gland, an abscessed tooth, and urinary incontinence.
“It will happen to you, too,” warns our self-appointed Gezundheitminister. “You should know what you have to look forward to.”
His medical condition is light banter, however, compared to the subject of his two sons, whom he yammers about even more frequently than his ailments. The sons live off the dole and redirect their welfare payments into precision re-enactments of the US Civil War. On weekends they go out to the forests south of Dresden and pretend to be Confederate soldiers in the Kavalleriekorps of the Army of Northern Virginia, wearing stinking, scratchy uniforms made of...
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