The Fist of God

“Nonsense. It’s about saying ‘Good morning, yes sir, no sir, of course sir’ to lots of people running in and out to cash a fifty-schilling check. Boring.”

He was lying on his back on her bed. She walked over and lay beside him, pulling one of his arms around her shoulders so that they could cuddle. She loved to cuddle.

“You are crazy sometimes, Karim. But I love you crazy. Winkler Bank isn’t an issuing bank—it’s a merchant bank.”

“What’s the difference?”

“We have no checking accounts, customers with checkbooks running in and out. It doesn’t work like that.”

“So you have no money, without customers.”

“Of course we have money, but in deposit accounts.”

“Never had one of those,” admitted Karim. “Just a small current account. I prefer cash anyway.”

“You can’t have cash when you are talking of millions, People would steal it. So you put it in a bank and invest it.”

“You mean old Gemütlich handles millions? Of other people’s money?”

“Yes, millions and millions.”

“Schillings or dollars?”

“Dollars, pounds, millions and millions.”

“Well, I wouldn’t trust him with my money.”

She sat up, genuinely shocked.

“Herr Gemütlich is completely honest. He would never dream of doing that.”

“Maybe not, but somebody else might. Look—say, I know a man who has an account at Winkler. His name is Schmitt. One day I go in and say: Good morning, Herr Gemütlich, my name is Schmitt, and I have an account here. He looks in his book, and he says: Yes, you do. So I say: I’d like to withdraw it all. Then when the real Schmitt turns up, there’s nothing left. That’s why cash is better for me.”

She laughed at his naïveté and pulled him down, nibbling his ear.

“It wouldn’t work. Herr Gemütlich would probably know your precious Schmitt. Anyway, he’d have to identify himself.”

“Passports can be forged. Those damned Palestinians do it all the time.”

“And he’d need a signature, of which he would have a specimen copy.”

“So, I’d practice forging Schmitt’s signature.”

“Karim, I think you might turn out to be a criminal one day. You’re bad.”

They both giggled at the idea.

“Anyway, if you were a foreigner and living abroad, you’d probably have a numbered account. They are completely impregnable.”

He looked down at her from one elbow, brow furrowed.

“What’s that?”

“A numbered account?”

“Mmmmmm.”

She explained how they worked.