My Little Armalite

by James Hawes

  I leaped to my feet, poleaxing myself once again on the woodwork.

  Prague, of course!

  Still unable to stand and blinded with the pain, I nevertheless rejoiced.

  Prague was perfect. Prague was once an Austrian owned, German-speaking city. I could later make up a million reasons for why a German lecturer would go there, without having to invent (and then back up!) wild tales of prostitutes or gambling. Though that would, in its way, have been quite fun. Prague was so much easier. There is Kafka, obviously. History of the World Wars, easily. Fall of Communism, naturally. And Panke!

  Prague is only two hours from Dresden, and Dresden, after all, was where Panke lived and worked. It would be so easy to claim that I had gone to try to see the man who was the centre of my life’s work. —Having decided to go to Dresden, officer, I realised that I should perhaps visit the … museum in Prague. Yes, that would be utterly watertight!

  I crawled, groaning but triumphant, back on to my beloved chair and summoned up the Prague website.

  Shoot in Prague! Short, cheap flights! Better beer and cheaper clubs than Vegas! Advance booking not always needed! Ideal for stag nights! Try out the world’s most awesome weapons! Rambo’s Kalashnikov, Clint’s Magnum, Arnie’s Terminator 2 pump-action shotgun, US Army’s Armalite, we got the lot!!! Sandwich and beer free with every booking! Free places for group leaders!

  Christ, Kafka’s bloody city, where I had stood almost alone in the famous square at night, back in 1987, now a mere haven for stag nights, pole-dancers and gun freaks! The unacceptable face of freedom!

  However, what had to be done had to be done. I found the sites for the Prague City Museum and Kafka’s Library. I made minimalist enquiries about opening times to both info@ addresses. I then booked a single flight to Prague, returning from Dresden, and a train ticket from Prague to Dresden. Finally, I prepared a cunning email to Panke. What fun to actually employ one’s cleverness for once! My note stated clearly that I wanted to just discuss some points face-to-face before finalising my Very Important Paper on his life and work; that I would be flying to Prague this very morning because I wanted to check a reference for a possible future article on Kafka, and that I would be catching the 17.56 from Prague, arriving Dresden at 20.15, and staying in the hotel opposite the restored Frauenkirche. I hoped he would be able to meet at such short notice, I concluded.

  I blipped the email off and cc-ed it both to my university address and to our departmental secretary. Who cared what the reply (if any) was? I now had an utterly believable itinerary for a lecturer in German who was going to see Heiner Panke but who had just wanted to check something in Prague while he was over.

  By tomorrow evening I would be home, confident in my ability to safely handle, defuse, disassemble and dump an Armalite.

  Genius.

  But there was something else.

  What if Panke actually did agree to meet me?

  Suddenly, I knew: that was what had been missing from the Very Important Paper. The tone of Panke’s voice again, that rumbling fighter‘s voice that always said we. Never me, always we, always enfolding you in a wonderful joint adventure. —The West needs to listen to us, little doctor. To our voice, Panke had said, when we were arranging the details of grants and fees for Panke’s trip to England in 1989. How grand it had been to be the trusted friend and publicly acknowledged intimate of a man who could say we like that. The tour of England, May 1989. Just before I finally dared to ask Sarah out. Just before I got my first job. From university to university, in Panke’s company, introducing Panke, driving Panke, drinking with Panke. Virtually booking my first job in advance while visiting the University of Birmingham German Department with Panke! Sleeping with the second-prettiest girls (at last!) in every department we went to because I was sat at the right-hand side of the wild, laughing Panke and they could all see that Panke treated me virtually as a near-equal! That great summer of 1989, crowned by my wooing and amazing conquest of Sarah, all thanks to the brimming confidence radiated into me by life with Panke!

  —Gatwick, I ordered the cab. —No no, I don’t need a quote, I know roughly how much it is. What? How much? Well, for … yes, yes, fine, whatever. Yes, as soon as you can.

  46: Legroom

  I don’t know when psychologists say that our formative years are supposed to be.

  Are they those shadowy pre-school days of big places and looming faces, voices kindly or stressed? Or our first real experience of the world, when we are six? Or perhaps those long, dreamlike afternoons of bikes and reading, before sex rams its hormones into our unready little bodies? To be popular and courted at sixteen: perhaps this is all that matters? When is fate set fast? Twenty-four? Twenty-eight? Who knows? But as I entered the departures hall at Gatwick I knew one thing for certain: that whenever they may have been, my formative years had been spent in the now-prehistoric age before cheap bloody flying ate the world.

  I mean, look at the bastards! I had travelled Europe by thumb and by train, when crossing borders always meant showing passports, often meant booking visas and sometimes meant interviews in cold little rooms at unearthly times of the morning with armed men standing near; when changing money could be compulsory, changing it back could be illegal and carrying Kafka could stop you getting into Czechoslovakia; when going to Prague, say, meant really, really wanting to go to Prague, not just clicking a bloody mouse on the next cheap weekend break that happened to take your fancy @escapeyourcraplife.com. And now all these unthinking cretins were in the check-in queue before me!

  I had been quite certain that the flight would be almost empty and that I would be able to get a window seat, maybe even one with more legroom. I mean, who would want to go to Prague on a wet Tuesday morning in November? As an experienced traveller from the lost age of interrailing, I was equipped with the vital lightweight minimum: I had my favourite, plumpest goose-down pillow with me, crushed neatly into an oversized Marks & Spencer carrier bag. Nothing more important than a good pillow on a long journey. I was planning to check in and get my window seat with plenty of time to spare, and then, gloating in the certainty of a good kip before I got there, call the Prague shooting people from a call-box right here in Gatwick. Clever, see? No records. All worked out. No wonder I had got a first-class degree!

  But now I checked the desk number again, and stared. A grey coldness ran down my spine and into my knees as I saw the length of the queue. I mean, yes, of course, I had heard that Prague was a popular destination these days, and I could well recall the atmospheric place. I had stood in the deserted Wenceslas Square at midnight in 1987 and watched that strange procession on the famous clock, and yes, it had felt very special.

  But I was me, I had read Kafka and knew the history of this place built on fault lines. What could Prague possibly mean to all these idiots?

  Dear God, what right did these morons have to think they should be able to take days off work just because they felt like it and fly anywhere they wanted for peanuts while children slaved away in the Third World to make their foul trainers and logoed jumpers? Was the ozone layer going to die, were the ice caps doomed to melt for this? So that these slack-mouthed, uncomprehending louts could wander around like hideous modern caricatures of eighteenth-century aristocrats, off to yet another city they did not understand in the least, just to alleviate the crushing boredom of their meaningless lives? Was I, who had studied European culture for years, going to be stuck here for ever in this queue just because so many of these ridiculous little gits had decided on some whim that they fancied a couple of nights pissed in Prague this week?

  I mean, why can’t there just be, for example, well, say, an exam, a little test you have to pass before you are allowed out of the country? To prove you know at least something, anything about where you are going. Nothing too hard, just a few simple multiple-choice questions would be enough. Which great European war was started by an incident in Prague in 1618? What was the official language of government in Prague in 1890? When was the
Prague Spring? If you can’t answer those, excuse me, what the hell right do you have to think you can just jump on a plane and blast the upper atmosphere to hell with untaxed kerosene so that you can blunder unknowingly around a place that could have been thrown up last year by Disney for all you know? If people don’t even know that, why should I have to queue behind them? Why should my children have to compete with theirs for college places and jobs and houses?

  —Sorry? Row twenty-eight? But, I mean, that’s right at the back, isn’t it?

  —Yes, Dr Goode. The flight is very full today, as you’ve no doubt noticed.

  —Um, I was wondering, you see, I know that those seats are pretty cramped and my legs are quite long and …

  —Yes, sir, that’s why we only allocate those seats to our last passengers.

  —Oh God. Well, OK, can I at least have the window seat? I’m very tired.

  —The window seats have all been allocated, sir. Row two may be available for a cash upgrade on-board, at the discretion of cabin crew, sir.

  —May be?

  —That’s right, sir. On a first-come-first-served basis.

  —What, you mean, if I fight to get on early and pay extra I might get one of those front seats with room for normal human legs?

  —At the cabin crew’s on-board discretion, sir.

  —How much are they?

  —Twenty-five pounds one way, sir, on-board, if available.

  —That’s more than the flight!

  —That’s right, sir. Funny, isn’t it?

  —So, OK, who do I see, on-board?

  —Me, sir.

  —Oh. Well, I don’t suppose I could, you know, book one now?

  —You’re welcome to contact me on-board, sir. I’m check-in staff just now, not on-board crew.

  —Right. I see. Oh well then, see you on board! I mean, on-board, ha!

  —Excuse me, sir.

  —Sorry?

  —Are you quite sure that carrier bag will fit within the on-board-baggage guide rack, sir?

  —Hmm? God, yes, don’t worry about that.

  —Have you actually checked, sir?

  —Well, no.

  —We do ask people to check, sir. That’s why the guide rack’s there, you see.

  —It’s OK, it’s only a pillow, actually. I’m an experienced traveller.

  —I’m sure you are, sir, but will it fit in the on-board guide rack?

  —Well, yes, of course. It’s only a pillow, for God’s …

  I tried to keep the anger from my voice, and to stop myself actually clutching the soft, fat pillow to my chest. For hours I had been allowing myself to look forward to the moment I nestled down into its familiar cocoon, earplugs in ears, safe from the world. And now they wanted to take even this little salvation away from me on some absurd pretext.

  —Can I see it fit please, sir?

  —Um, well, Christ, OK, OK. Um, I might have to squash it down a bit, of course.

  —Would you mind squashing it down for me, sir?

  —Yes, yes, of course. There, you see. Hold on. There. Oh, for God’s sake, I’m sure it’ll fit in. It must. This is ridiculous. Oh, come on, you stupid bloody bag of Norwegian … There. OK? In.

  —That’s fine, sir.

  —Thank you so much.

  —But will it still fit when you stop holding it down?

  —Sorry?

  —If you let go of it, sir, will it still fit?

  —Well, yes, I mean, virtually. Of course, it’s bound to, sort of, puff up a bit.

  —On-board baggage has to fit into the guide rack without being pinned down, sir.

  —Oh come on, this isn’t baggage, it’s a pillow.

  —If it’s on-board, it’s baggage, sir.

  —Look, it’s going to be squashed under my head, isn’t it?

  —Not in an emergency, sir.

  —What?

  —If there’s an emergency evacuation you won’t be asleep, sir, will you? You’ll have assumed the impact position. Where will your oversize on-board baggage be then, sir? It might be blocking an emergency exit.

  —A pillow, block an exit?

  —Someone might fall over it. That’s why we have size regulations, sir.

  —No it isn’t, it’s so you can charge people for extra baggage!

  —Passengers abusing staff will not be permitted on-board, sir. As it says there right in front of you.

  —Yes. Sorry. Sorry, look, it’s just, I mean …

  —If you’ll just stop holding your on-board baggage down, sir, we’ll see, won’t we?

  —Right. Fine. Whatever.

  —Oh dear. That has puffed up quite a bit really, hasn’t it, sir? I’m afraid that’s going to have to be checked in. Checked-in baggage is five pounds per item, sir.

  —But what good’s a pillow to me if it’s in the hold?

  —I wouldn’t know, sir. It’s your baggage, not mine.

  —Look, OK, you win, how much extra do I have to pay to take it on-board?

  —We’re not permitted to offer an additional on-board baggage allowance, sir.

  —Oh for God’s sake, I’m desperate to sleep on the plane, I’ve offered to pay, can’t you just bend the rules a little bit?

  —Sir, we are a budget airline, we don’t offer on-board sleeping facilities on a two-hour flight. Relax, why don’t you, sir? You’re only going for the cheap beer and a good time, after all.

  —No! No I am not! Not me. I’m going on important business.

  —With just a pillow, sir?

  —Look, it’s all very complicated, but the point is I need to get there in good form, so can’t you, for God’s sake, just bend the rules a tiny little bit for once? I’d write a letter of thanks to your boss. I am a doctor, as you see from my passport.

  —Now, let me ask you a few things, sir. One: what good would a letter to my boss do me if it said I had broken the rules? Two: where would the rules be if I bent them for everyone when the flight’s rammed full? Three: why do you think I’d bend them just for you? Four: if you’ve got such an important meeting, why don’t you go with a premium carrier, club class, so you can arrive nice and fresh for business? Five: I’m closing here now, Doctor, so did you want to check your pillow in or leave it behind?

  47: An Anglo-Saxon Name

  Like a cheap coffin in a crematorium, my pillow was carried away from me up the squeaking belt. I only just managed not to cry with the unfairness of it all. But then I dug deep into my reserves of strength. I was a man. I had arrangements to make. I hurried to the nearest payphone and, having fished for their number in my pocket, called Prague RimShot Tours.

  —He-llo, RimShot! answered a voice with a positively Dickensian north-Kent whine.

  —Oh, hi, er, I’m coming to Prague just to, anyway, I saw on your website that you do shooting.

  —Tell you what, what did you think of the website?

  —Sorry? Oh, well, very good.

  —Nice, isn’t it? Classy? Just invested heavily in that. Shooting, yes, no problemo. Our speciality, in fact. Not to be confused with the cheap and cheerful pistol ranges. When did you want to come, sir?

  —Today, actually.

  —Ri-ght. Short notice. Might be possible. How many in your stag party?

  —One. Me. And it’s not a stag party.

  —Well, no, a stag party for one would be a bit unusual. Though tell you what, if you was going to do a solo stag, Prague would be the place! Now, thing is, our minimum is usually four shooters.

  —Then I’ll pay for four.

  —You see? Always a solution to these little problems. Was it shotguns, pistols, rifles? Rambo, Clint or Arnie, ha ha? Or all of them?

  —I want to shoot an Armalite, that’s all.

  —Oh yes, very tasty weapon. Nice. I can see you know your stuff. Yeah, we can do that. Ammo’s more expensive, though, I should warn you.

  —That’s fine. But I want to be shown the gun properly.

  —Individual tuition, eh?

  —E
xactly. This afternoon.

  —Well, it’ll be a pleasure. Make a nice change from the stag-parties. I’ll be honest with you, we’ve been trying to position ourselves more upmarket. Lot of cheapo competition on the stag-night trade these days, Riga and Tallinn, you know, so we’d be delighted to accommodate the wishes of, how shall I put it, a premium customer who is obviously a serious enthusiast. Tell you what, I’ll only charge you for three shooters, and we’ll forget the extra cost of the ammo, how’s that? And I’ll get you our best man. What time this afternoon?

  —I want you to meet me off the plane as well. I get in at one and I need to be back at the railway station to get the 17.45 to Berlin.

  —Ri-ight. I’ll have to charge for the pick-up. Tell you what, we’ll go back to the four-shooters price but I’ll pick you up at the airport and take you back to Holesovice Station my very self. How’s that for executive service?

  —Perfect.

  —Now the bad news is that’s going to have to be about, oh, well, hmm, got to be knocking on four hundred euros all in. Now, at a push I could maybe …

  —That’s fine.

  —Oh. Right then. Great.

  —So, look, what, do I just bring my passport? Do I need any special, I don’t know, shoes, gloves, glasses?

  —Passport? No, God, we don’t bother with that sort of thing. Not out here. Just turn up and bring the dosh and get ready for some fun, eh? Ha ha! All the gear‘s ready and waiting. See you at the airport. Oh, tell you what. We don’t take cards, not set up for it yet, as such. Cash only, sorry. You OK with that?

  —Oh yes. Cash is fine.

  —Perfect! Better have your name, eh?

  —My name? Yes, of course …

  Hold on. Think. No passport? Cash? Incredible. But then, shit, that meant …

  —Hello, mate?

  A name, any name! Every little extra layer of disguise might help if anything did go wrong when I came to dump the unloaded gun. Not that it would, but I might as well, given the chance. Any name, any name at all! My God, and if I shaved off my beard as soon as I got back? It would be strange to not have a beard, of course. I had had it since beginning my PhD in 1984, it had served me well throughout the Miners’ Strike and my years in the Irish pub in Kentish Town. I had courted Sarah behind it. But it had to go. If I could go and shoot not only under a false name but also bearded, no one would ever be able to link the new and beardless me to some shooting range, whatever happened, even if it all went wrong and I was caught dumping the gun, even if some clever bloody copper decided, despite my Dresden alibi, to check my every possible move in Prague and see if …