My Little Armalite

by James Hawes

  —Hi, what I can get you? she asked impatiently. I held up a finger as a sign for her to be quiet. Suddenly I was back on home territory and filled with magisterial confidence.

  —What? she mouthed, scowling lightly. But she was so taken aback that she obeyed.

  —Say that again please?

  —What I can get you?

  —No, yes, hold on. Wait. Don’t tell me. Yes. I’ve got it. Cottbus, said I firmly.

  The barmaid blanched. She came immediately close.

  —Don’t-speak-German-to-me.

  —But you’re from Saxony.

  —I am from Poland.

  —You sound Saxon.

  —Look, if you were German would you tell the English people in a shithole like this that you were German?

  —Perhaps not.

  —So here I am Polish, yes? How many nice cold lagers, sir?

  —Um, what? Oh, yes, sorry. Three, please.

  Well, an East German girl, here! That was a bit of luck. I, that is, we, Sarah and I, could invite her round. For dinner. She could come into the university perhaps. It might be interesting for my students to hear it from her mouth rather than mine. Nice mouth too. She would be able to tell them about the aspects of life in the GDR that had been worth saving but had all been swept away by untrammelled capitalism. Sexual liberty, for example, sanctioned by Marxist theory and backed up by abortion virtually on demand or generous state childcare provision. Women’s rights, yes indeed. She was youngish and yes, pretty. It would be quite fun, knowing her secret. A bit like in the old days of those bold, semi-legal poetry clubs in Dresden and Leipzig. Sharing. Comradely.

  —Don’t worry, I said softly, as she squirted nitrogen-packed lager into the last of the three glasses, —I’ll keep your secret.

  —I hope, she bit her lip. —Three pints.

  —Call it ten pounds.

  —Is ten pounds fifty.

  —Christ. Well, um, call it twelve then.

  —Thank you.

  I winked at the girl, grabbed my pints, balanced them carefully together (Ha! Now who’s a nancified pen-pusher?) and peeled manfully away from the bar, suggesting boldly that people should watch their backs while feeling her eyes fixed on my own.

  Yes, it might be fun to pop in here, now and again over the next week. After all, the Very Important Paper was on a radical poet from Saxony. Perhaps if I talked to her it would help my paper get some new perspective, some little up-to-date snippet of information or social context that might make the bastards in the media sit up and take notice.

  —There you are, Prof John, squeeze in here, mate. Nice, isn’t she? Polish.

  —Ah, said I, hoisting my beers over my new companions’ heads and craning them down on to the table with good skills, gloating warmly in the possession of my secret information.

  —We’re looking in fucking good shape, I got to say, Prof John. Fuck off! That was no foul, you lying, diving, queer French cunt! You blind Spanish twat, who’s side you on? You can’t give Laggsy a yellow fucking card for that!

  Now was the time to swiftly regurgitate a pointless and just-collected fact that I would have completely forgotten by tomorrow. Rather like in my finals at Oxford.

  —Fuck! I cried swiftly. —That’s Laggsy out of the next game, isn’t it?

  —Tha’s Laggsy oot the next game, said a Scottish commentator, as the teenage English multi-millionaire in question spat gobfuls of obscenity at the referee, at the French team, at God.

  —Fuck, you’re right, Prof John. Course. Fucking blind Spanish cunt.

  —Diving French cunt!

  —What chance we got if the fucking ref’s foreign too?

  —Shoot the cunt!

  I nodded sadly, and noted the small but unmistakable motion of heads and eyes in my direction from around the table. Done it. Normality Established: Now Reducing Head-Butting Preparedness to Level Green. With my place at the table now assured by my evidently profound knowledge of soccer, I raised my glass happily and found that when I set it down again with a cocky thud it was already almost empty.

  —Oi, Prof John, nice to meet you. What you fancy? asked one of the men round the table.

  Soon, I was quaffing a brand-new pint, and, before I knew it, another.

  It was OK. My mother would call any minute and then I would go. I was just making contact with the neighbours, for the benefit of the whole family. God, I had forgotten the fine, fizzing feel of beer in your head. And the even finer rush of oneness around a pub table, pals that give you back-up for once. In the gang, of the people, among …

  18: A Shit-Hole Run by the Red Army

  Hoorah! A goal! For England! Cheers, why not? More drinks? Of course!

  This was pretty damn good fun, actually, and what the hell was wrong with it? After all, the England team was almost as satisfyingly multiracial as the French and it was true: we had won the war against Nazism. And soccer was such a European, indeed non-aligned, thing to be good at. Thoroughly un-American! Yes, when you thought about it, England’s passion for soccer showed that we did, after all, have cultural links which might yet resist the McCorporations and Hollywood!

  The whole evening was clearing my head wonderfully, to be honest. Forget about the gun, it could just stay there for now, so what? A good decision, to come to the pub. Got me out of the bubble, blown away the cobwebs, set me up perfectly for my week of work.

  More beer.

  Why not? Who knows? Who cares?

  What was I worrying about, anyway? The Very Important Paper was all but finished. So nearly finished that they had given it a plenary session. Exactly. More or less there. God, if only bloody Panke had agreed to come over in person, the selfish sod. That would get the media along. Maybe if I told him about the barmaid? Panke being like he is. Anyway, so what? Christ, I was going to show them all just who exactly had shot his bolt. Not John Goode, that was certain!

  —Hey, Prof John, how long your missus away?

  —Whole week, I grinned.

  —Here, Prof John, after the match you fancy my place to see the new Abiyak DVD? Fucking funny! Fucking balls on that little fucker, eh?

  —Aha! I grinned, to cover the fact that I was still trying to work out who the hell Abiyak was. After several seconds, during which I was forced to take refuge in my pint, I realised that I did not recognise the name of Abiyak because the last time I had heard him referred to had been in a pub in Sheffield, where they had called him Oobyook. In normal English, his name was Hubby Huck. He was a comedian whose work I had only ever seen once, at a meeting in a tough miners’ club during the Strike. His act, called Hubby Gets His Oats, had consisted of him walking about with a child’s hobby horse and wearing a guardsman’s busby, props which he used as the excuse for endless crassly mimed double entendres about helmets, beavers and riding. He had begun his act by asking if there were any Pakis in the audience, and upon hearing silence, had yelled, —Thank fuck for that! to huge applause. I would absolutely have pointed out his blatant misogeny and racism to the stout striking Yorkshire miners around me in the club if they had not all been laughing so loudly.

  —You coming along after then, Prof John?

  —Well, look, that’s really kind of you, but I’ve got this piece of work to finish, a job, it’s pretty important really, might be a promotion in it, you never know. So I’d better not. But, thanks, lads!

  —No worries. If you can’t you can’t. Your round, innit, Prof John?

  —What? Sorry? Oh yeah, of course. Lagers, all?

  I strode tall to the bar, a man taking his turn buying a large round for many tough men. My phone went off in my pocket. I decided not to answer my mother. Obviously, I had to buy this round in any case. I had accepted drinks, so I was obliged, socially obligated indeed, to buy them back. It was simply a matter of English working-class cultural etiquette. Which surely deserves as much respect as any other cultural etiquette? Absolutely. I could hardly start my new life, my life and my whole family’s life, here, with my new n
eighbours, by failing to respect the dominant local cultural norms, could I? Certainly not. Yes, of course, I might have my own personal reservations about certain behavioural phenomena within this culture, such as sexism and racism and mindless violence, but, then again, I had reservations about many things. I personally would of course never pressurise a woman to wear a veil, nor accept The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a guide to foreign policy, but did that mean that I went about trying to impose my ‘First World’ (!) version of what civilisation meant on to members of the Muslim ummah? Certainly not! Liberalism cannot be imposed. Unlike certain so-called world statesmen, I don’t pretend to see myself as the world’s policeman. Everyone has a valid point of view, after all.

  So that was all right.

  Anyway, I fancied another drink and the barmaid was right in front of me already, pouring my lagers unasked, as if I were quite one of her regulars. I smiled, warm in my possession of her secret.

  —You know my country, so? she asked, at last.

  —I used to live there. I live up the road now. I teach German, at university.

  —You are university professor? Of German? Wow.

  —Ha, I laughed, and for a dizzy second I was hit by a perfectly solid vison of a life with a woman who wanted absolutely nothing more than I could offer without effort.

  I loved Sarah, of course. But I was haunted more and more by the thought, no, by the certainty, that I had not really delivered the life which I had at least implicitly promised her. On the other hand, think: Frau Universitätsprofessor Doktor? Ha ha, yes, a little barmaid like this, from a crap place like Cottbus, would be happy for life with that title! She would never seem tired or reproachful, she would never make me feel I had not really delivered, she would think a pathetic little terraced house in SE11 was a palace, she would treat me like …

  Christ, to slip and slide inside, a simply wanted man again!

  —Yep. Society and culture in the former East Germany. My speciality. John Goode. Doctor John Goode, actually, but hey: John. Great to meet you, er …?

  —Gretchen.

  —Hi, Gretchen. I mean, the thing is, you know, people over here just know nothing. It’s important for them to not just swallow the idea that the West is always best, isn’t it? Of course, no one’s saying the East was anything like the socialist paradise it claimed to be, but the regime was tied by its own ideology, right? Unemployment simply couldn’t happen, could it? And think about it: if the East hadn’t been there, as an ideological challenge, would the West ever have had social security and things like that? I don’t think so. I really don’t. And with the East not there, well, what’s happening to the West, eh? You tell me. Bush and globalisation, right! You know what, I was thinking, maybe you could come in to the university one day, we’d pay you, of course, and talk to my students about it. We pay quite well, actually.

  —I could use some more money. But what would I say to them? They are clever young people.

  I looked into her blue eyes.

  —Exactly. You could, for example, I mean, just as an idea, it’s something I’ve been writing about recently, you could explain about culture in the GDR, anything you wanted to say, really. Women and sexual liberation, maybe? Yeah, that could be fun. We could have a chat about it sometime, one evening this week, maybe, when there’s no Big Match on.

  —Perhaps, she said.

  —Don’t worry, it would just be something to help them realise that there are alternatives and that there were things worth saving in the old East, right?

  —Worth saving? Things that was worth saving from East Germany?

  I refocused hastily on the front of her eyes rather than their blue depths.

  —Hmm? Well, I mean, you know, apart from culture, and security, and women’s rights, there was a sense of togetherness, of community, of people helping each other, of actually caring about each other, of, you know, well, of …

  —Of course people help each other out. They have to because they are stuck all in a shithole run by the Red Army and they all have nothing.

  —Sorry?

  —The most people does what they are told. Except the ones that work for the Stasi. If you inform on your neighbours you get a week by the Black Sea, very fine. If you are clever at licking arsch you get a little summer-house they rob from some poor old farmer. Maybe a plastic car with three cylinders, very fine! And if liberals in the West really like your books or songs or films, the high communists might let you have a bank account in Switzerland, like they all have one, like Mr Big Shot Brecht had one. You might even be allow go to the West and say things is not quite perfect socialism in the GDR yet. But, of course, you must left your family behind and kept on saying on all interviews that America is racist imperialist warmongering hell. If you try to leave without they allow, like they mostly do not allow, they shoot you down and you are hanging on the wire. They keep shooting people right till 1989. Then the Russians go bust. So nice Gorby tell that bunch of arsch-lickers that it is all over, they will not help them any more if they shot people down in the streets like this Tiananmen Square Solution they want to make. So goodbye, GDR. It all fall to pieces next day. Save? What hell is there to save about that?

  —Um, well, I …

  —If my great-grandfather had sense, he were gone to America when anyone could go there, the stupid arsch-hole. And what would my family missed out? The First World War, the inflation, Hitler, Auschwitz, Stalingrad, Dresden, forty-five years of the Red Army. Oh, very nice history. The GDR? You crazy? Why the hell you waste your life teaching young people about this heap of crap? Maybe you stop to drinking and think about what you do. The GDR? Just tell them it was only a shithole run by the Red Army and now it is gone, thanks be God.

  —A what?

  —A shithole run by the Red Army. What else you need say about it? You can manage those all, or you want a tray, Herr Professor Doktor?

  19: Careers Advice

  I turned away from the bar and aimed my tray back towards the table. She was only a stupid barmaid, for Christ’s sake. What did she know? She had bought into the lie with the rest of them. She was just …

  A shithole run by the Red Army?

  Ridiculous. Uneducated tripe. Although in one very distant sense she did have a point: it was not quite so hot an academic topic as I had confidently believed back in the eighties. Or rather, had been led to believe.

  Oh, that old bastard Professor White! I could still recall every word of his fateful speech to me in his gorgeous suite of college rooms, back in 1984. God, Oxford: I had loved the place. When first I came up from my parents’ flat-fronted little house in the middle of nowhere, it had felt like being translated to a better, golden world. After three years there, I had become used to it, and wanted to stay on after my finals.

  —Well, one must play to one’s strengths if one really wants to do research, John. ‘The Great War Roots of National Socialist Discourse’? Well, yes, of course, a fascinating subject. But, John, think. If you apply for a British Academy bursary, to study Nazism, here at Oxford, you will find yourself up against some clever people. Some very clever people indeed. The topic is always immensely popular. Do you really think that you can have something new to say about National Socialism? It may be that your best bet is to do something a little more, shall we say, current? And a little less, shall we say, congested? Now, for example, you have actually met some of these bold East German protest poets during your year abroad, you said? Who? Heiner Panke? Can’t say I’ve heard of him. Then again, I’ve heard of very few people after Kafka, ha ha! But that’s the whole point, eh, John? Far less trouble with methodology and theory when you can actually be the first to present the material. Now think about that! That’s what I call a niche! You can make it your very own, do you see? Make yourself the sole expert! Thompson in London, he’d be the chap for you, for that sort of thing. Yes, something a bit different. More concrete. More jobs in that field too, John. GDR studies, oh yes, that’s very much the coming thing, what wit
h all this business about cruise missiles and evil empires and God knows what nonsense else. Very current. Very, what do they all say these days? Cutting-edge. Ridiculous Americanism. That awful woman can’t last for ever. Things will soon get back to normal and then, why, John, in three or four years’ time you’ll be able to write your own job description, as they say! Even this old place, slow to change as she is, and perhaps wisely too, will no doubt eventually make a place for that sort of thing on the syllabus. Yes, yes, you could find yourself very well placed indeed, in five or six years’ time, John. Do you know, I think we may indeed have found the door that is meant only for you, eh? Ha ha! Now, you must excuse me, we have rather an important meeting about a vineyard in Bordeaux which some of the Fellows want us to buy. Not the sort of thing one does lightly, but … Yes, anyway, excellent. Goodbye, John …

  God, if only I had stuck to my guns.

  Hitler and the Nazis! Every five minutes there’s something on the box about Hitler. The swastika sells books that would normally be stuck for ever in the library stacks. If only I had acted straight away when the Wall came down! I was still young enough, back then, to reinvent myself. Too late now …

  A shithole run by the Red Army?

  Could she be right? Had I simply wasted my life? No, no, that wasn’t possible. There had to be some way round this one, some way I could …

  Of course! Father Eamon! He would set me right!

  —Oi, come on, Prof John. What you doing? Get over here with those beers.

  —Yes, sorry, Phil. I was just …

  —Why-are-we-waiting?

  I forced my feet to yield to my shrinking willpower and made it to the table, where a grateful crowd of orc-like hands clutched for the glasses before the tray even hit the table. I raised my own pint weakly in reply to the jolly mockery about my tardiness, then sank back as quickly and deeply into my seat as I could. The noise of the television and the cries of the massed drinkers now seemed to issue from some faraway planet. The pictures on the Big Screen looked like an ancient newsreel.