Früher war alles besser

This time he is wearing a black leather coat from the seventies. Waisted, rather shabby. And again the plastic shoulder bag. He still has to buy something to eat. He buys a piece of disgusting sausage, looks like pork sausage, but is much worse. And a bottle of vodka. Not a good area. Sleep silo of the worst kind. Kolya lives in a one bedroom apartment, the apartment of his deceased mother. His two bedroom apartment was sold by one of his students.

- What?

- Yes, that's the bandit. He sold my apartment.

- How is that possible. That can't happen.

- Yes it can. They kidnapped me, held me for twelve days, and threatened to kill my mother.

- Who?

- The bandits. Do you have a magnetophone on you?

- No. I forgot to take it.

- Too bad. You could tape the story that I tell you, and make a program out of it.

- Next time. But I'm an author, not a journalist.

- Maybe you know someone who works for television who would be interested.

- I could ask some time. How was the boy able to sell your apartment? I don't understand that at all.

- Well, he's a bandit, a criminal. He worked out something with Armenians.

I don't understand that. I probably wouldn't have understood it in German either. The father of this boy is very well known and enormously rich. But he can't tell me who it is.

- Why can't you tell me that?

- I can't tell you.

- How was it exactly? You were kidnapped?

- I don't want to talk about that.

He covers his face with both hands.

- But if you want me to write about it, you have to tell me.

- The boy was supposed to show up for a guitar lesson.

- How old is the boy?

- Twenty, back then he was sixteen. He came with a friend. They tied me up, grabbed me left and right, and said that they would kill my mother if I wouldn't come with them. Then they pushed me into a car, and took me to an apartment on the thirteenth floor. In the North, in Altufyevo. They forced me to sign a paper that I would sell the apartment. They threatened each day to kill my mother. They kept me there for twelve days. I don't even want to talk about it. The boy has disappeared. His father doesn't know either where he is.

- And the other boy?

- He also disappeared.

- Is he just as young?

- No, he was older. Mid twenties, maybe twenty-three.

• Back