The “I Do” Joker: Or Why You Should Never Marry a Washing Machine
Part 4: The Penguin of Trust
“A registrar,” I said, staring at the list in Lukas’s hand, “is usually an official person with a certificate, a seal, and a very boring tie. What we have is a crate of lukewarm beer and the hope that no one asks for ID.”
“Details, Finn! Pure details!” Lukas waved it off. He steered his rusty Corsa with confidence into the car park of a discount supermarket. “We don’t need a real registrar. We need a performer. Someone you believe has the power to bind people together, while actually just trying to pay the rent for a shared flat room that’s smaller than Mia’s wardrobe.”
“And who exactly do you have in mind?” Mia asked suspiciously. “Please don’t say your cousin Kevin. He tried to hypnotise the dog at the family party last year.”
“Better,” Lukas grinned, pointing at the supermarket entrance. “We need Basti.”
Standing outside was a man in an enormous, slightly grimy penguin costume, handing out flyers for frozen fish fingers. He moved with a melancholy usually reserved for Russian literary classics.
“Basti?” I cried in horror. “He dropped out of drama school after two semesters because he said his aura was ‘too big for the stage’!”
“Exactly him!” said Lukas. “He’s unemployed, desperate, and he loves costumes. He’s perfect.”
We got out and approached the penguin. When Basti spotted us through the slit in the beak, he let out a deep sigh that echoed eerily inside the plastic head.
“If you’re here to make jokes about the flippers: I’ve heard them all,” Basti’s muffled voice boomed. “Yes, I can’t fly. No, I don’t know what the weather’s like at the South Pole.”
“Basti, my friend!” Lukas called, slinging an arm around the padded shoulder. “We have an offer for you. The role of your life. A man of the church… or the state… or possibly both. A performance in front of an audience, including catering and – brace yourself – a crate of premium lager.”
Ten minutes later, we were sitting behind the supermarket next to the rubbish containers. Basti had taken off the penguin head. He looked like a man who had spent far too much time in dark rooms. His hair clung to his forehead.
“So what you want,” Basti summed up, greedily sucking on a bottle of water, “is for me to pretend to marry you. In an old warehouse. In front of your entire extended family?”
“It’s an avant-garde theatre piece,” Lukas lied without blinking. “A study on trust in social institutions. We’re filming the whole thing… for a documentary.”
“Will there be a certificate?” Basti asked with professional seriousness. “I need props. Without props, I can’t get into character. I need a stole. And maybe a bell.”
“A bell?” I asked. “This isn’t *The Hunchback of Notre-Dame*.”
“Symbolism, Finn!” Basti exclaimed, his eyes suddenly lighting up. “The bell rings in the new life! I could also speak a bit of Latin. *In vino veritas* and all that. It gives the whole thing gravitas.”
“No Latin,” Mia intervened immediately. “My Aunt Erna used to be a Latin teacher. If you conjugate something wrong, she’ll shut the wedding down before we even exchange rings.”
“Rings!” I shouted. “We don’t have rings!”
“I’ve got some brass curtain rings back at the flat,” Lukas threw in. “If you polish them properly, no one will notice by candlelight.”
Basti stood up, brushed the dust off his penguin belly, and looked at us seriously. “I’ll do it. But I want two crates of beer. And I want to be announced as ‘Dr h.c. Sebastian von Vogelstein’. It gives my role more gravitas.”
“Deal, Dr von Vogelstein,” said Lukas, shaking the penguin flipper.
As we walked back to the car, Mia’s phone vibrated. She looked at the display and went pale. “Guys… we have a problem. A real problem.”
“What is it?” I asked. “Has the bank frozen the account?”
“Worse,” said Mia. “My grandma just posted in the WhatsApp group. She’s so happy she’s decided to provide the wedding cake. She’s arriving two days early. With the cake. And she wants to see the ‘happy couple’ to discuss the filling.”
Silence spread across the car park. “Your grandma,” I said slowly, “is the woman who used to work for customs, right? The woman who can smell a liar from three kilometres away?”
“That’s the one,” Mia whispered. “And she wants to know whether we prefer marzipan or buttercream. But what she actually wants is to find out whether I’m pregnant, because she doesn’t believe I’d marry you otherwise.”
Lukas clapped his hands. “Perfect! We’ll go with marzipan. And Finn, you need to start acting like you’ve got a protective instinct. From tomorrow on, you’re moving into Mia’s room.”
“WHAT?!” Mia and I shouted in unison.
“Authenticity, my friends!” Lukas yelled as he revved the Corsa’s engine. “Grandma is coming. And she’s either going to bankroll us – or personally send us all to prison.”