The Snowman by Jörg Fauser
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Blum is selling Danish porn mags in Malta, he eats a nice dinner once a week, but the rest of his time is spent in seedy hotels and bars. Fauser speaking through Blum has an expert eye for little disappointments, the shabbiness of reality.
“I think it is,” said Blum, spreading butter on a slice of rye bread. The butter, of course, was chilled hard, and the bread crumbled.
Blum’s porn mags get stolen but by chance he comes into possession of five pounds of cocaine. Good stuff, he starts taking it himself. In a state of constant paranoia he travels from Malta to Germany and on to Holland and Belgium in search of buyers. He bumps into suspicious, run-down characters at every turn.
“The thin man in the striped green suit going through a whole pile of model railway magazines with the gloomy expression of someone in his last semester of teacher training.”
And another one:
“He was drinking his beer, staring at a circus poster on the wall and thinking of nothing in particular, when a man wearing a hat pushed his way in between him and the odd characters at the counter. Glancing at him sideways, Blum immediately knew what he was, and why. This man too was flotsam washed up in these surroundings, with his shabby raincoat, Trevira suit, striped tie and some fifty-five years of the struggle for survival showing in his face: the bags under his eyes, the wart on his cheek, the wrinkled turkey neck. But his eyes were still in search of something, and his chin wasn’t done for yet.”
The people he bumps into invariably have some link to the drug trade and lead Blum on wild goose chases. Towards the end the author finally has enough of hotels, bars and trains and takes us to the zoo:
“The Javanese was now taking snapshots of his fiancée in front of the flamingos. In the rain and the dim haze, he looked the one truly exotic creature in this twilit place full of jungle flora and fauna, but Blum had only to glance at his sample case to know that there could be nothing more exotic than a man of around forty in a wet blazer, walking into the reptile house of Amsterdam Zoo with five pounds of cocaine inside cans of shaving foam, hoping to strike lucky at last.”
The plot meanders along and Blum’s cocaine paranoia becomes tiresome. But this is fun for the atmosphere and quirky conversations. Three stars.
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