Greybeard

by Paul Christensen

  While on the internet, I did some research into home-made weapons, but ruled out the use of boiling sugar (a kind of homemade napalm) as pointlessly cruel – I didn’t want to be like them, the Strangers.

  But in all my researches, I came across nothing so elegant and symbolic as the Millwall Brick.

  * * *

  Today’s phones, smaller than a birthday card, are more powerful than a room-sized computer had been back in the time of my East German imprisonment, but I didn’t dwell on this. The internet’s strange, glowing falseness was of no interest to me, either, except inasmuch as I could glean practical information from it.

  Using a translator program that made the results almost as difficult to decipher as the original, I laboriously pieced together information about the invaders and the areas of Paderborn in which they had been settled. In the process, I found something of great interest to me. It concerned a latter-day commune, of the kind I had been highly familiar with in the years ’69-’72 (when I had lived in several of them). Memories of the Welsh one in particular came flooding back, but I will spare you those memories – all you need to know is that I have some familiarity with communes. This latter-day commune, in the northern suburbs of bourgeois Paderborn, was in the news for the wrong reasons – namely that the state government of Nordrhein-Westfalen had taken it upon themselves to forcibly settle around 250 invaders within its grounds. It looked like a manor house gone to seed, with numerous outbuildings in its extensive acreage.

  At first, my heart went out to them, but then I came across more information. For all their protesting about the invasion being foisted on them, they nonetheless aggressively supported open borders! They had deliberately based their commune in Paderborn because it was one of the more ‘conservative’ towns in Germany, a CDU stronghold for decades (yet the CDU was Merkel’s party); and Paderborn is a microcosm of Germany in almost perfect proportions: Catholic, yet on the boundary of the Protestant zone; science- and technology-oriented, yet with a well-defined and historically significant Altstadt.

  So, these communards were fine with the invaders being dumped on the ‘bourgeoisie’, and content to live in their own little bubble while people like my grandson were murdered, and while others are assaulted daily – for not one word of protest passed their lips when any of these things happened.

  But now their ‘safe space’ was threatened they moaned to high heaven (while still supporting open borders for others).

  Davey’s blood was on their hands as much as anyone’s, I surmised. But I would decide what to do about it later. In some ways I am a pacifist. Opposed to large-scale wars, I even generally prefer to ignore personal insults. But in the case of Davey, I think vengeance the only morally correct path, indeed the only constructive path, let reality put what hindrances it would in front of me.

  * * *

  Next day, on something of a whim, I visited the dusty antiquarian bookshop where my grandson had bought Das Unbewachte Moment. In the English-language section a book on Norse mythology caught my eye, and leafing idly through it, I came upon a passage that fascinated me:

  On his way to Baugi’s farm, Odin encountered nine thralls mowing hay. He offered to sharpen their scythes, and they readily agreed to this. They were delighted with how well their scythes now mowed, and urged him to sell them the marvelous whetstone he had used to sharpen them. Odin, smiling grimly, cast it into the air, and the thralls, in their mad dash to catch it, beheaded one another with their newly-sharpened scythes.

  Having accomplished this, Odin went on to win the Mead of Poetry.

  An elderly gentleman interrupted my reveries, emerging from the back and introduced himself in English (no doubt because he saw me in the English section) as the shop’s owner, Herr Bauer. He was born in 1940, and had grown up in the British occupation zone after WW2, making him only eight years older than me, but he seemed more ancient still, as if belonging to a more courtly and chivalrous era.

  We conversed for some time about Paderborn and its surrounds, and he was visibly upset when he learned that I was the grandfather of ‘the murdered boy’. I was tempted to open my heart to him, and might have if someone hadn’t flounced in at the door (and I say ‘flounced’ advisedly, because the manner in which he entered reminded me in no uncertain way of Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh.)

  He projected an overweening arrogance that was so comical as to be disconcerting. His hair was in braids; he wore a leather jacket and sunglasses, which he kept on inside, even on this grey and gloomy winter afternoon. Perhaps he was worried about snowblindness, I thought idly, as there had been a slight fall an hour earlier; or the glare from the pages of the books.

  In a Scouser accent, he rudely accosted the owner, demanding if he had books about Wewelsburg. Herr Bauer said no, he didn’t think he had, but he would have a look in the small local history section to be sure. I said quietly that I knew a little of Wewelsburg, as I was currently staying in the hostel there. The man turned round and seemed to stare at me through his sunglasses, although I couldn’t be sure whether he was looking directly at me or not.

  ‘Yeah, old man? What can you tell me about the Wewelsburg?’

  ‘Well, the castle was built around…’

  ‘No, I mean, specifically, have you witnessed any occult rituals there? I’m compiling a book about Nazi Occultism, mate, and I’m here to get me research right. Have you ever seen any occult types hanging around there?’

  ‘No,’ I said, somewhat bemused. ‘I haven’t witnessed anything like that.’ He then lost interest in me and turned back to the owner.

  ‘Have you got any necronomicons?’ he asked intently. ‘You know, specifically, German ones?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said the owner, a trifle testily. ‘Unfortunately, I cannot find anything on Wewelsburg. Only Paderborn, Lippstadt, Bielefeld…I grew up in Bielefeld, you know. In those days it was part of the British Occupation Zone…’ He began to tell us an anecdote from his youth, but was rudely cut off by sunglasses man.

  ‘I’m from Bootle meself, mate, and it’s full of walking sheep. But every once in a while, a wolf like me ges born there, see.’ He grinned, taking his sunglasses off as he said it, possibly for emphasis. His eyes were evasive, not lighting on either of our faces but searching restlessly around the room, probably for necronomicons.

  ‘I’m an autodidact,’ he continued, in a far-off voice. ‘All rituals to gain power, I taught meself, from books. But I still ain’t satisfied. Not til I taste the voice of emptiness.’ He began to walk around the shop, pawing through piles of books, putting them back in disgust, searching for some elusive occult treasure.

  Then I saw his eyes light up. He tried shouldering past me, and I guessed that he was attempting to reach a large non-fiction book about World War II just behind me.

  But I didn’t feel like budging, as in all honesty I didn’t like his manners. He tried edging past me in every possible way that it could be done, other than actually pushing me over, until it became a real battle of wills. I was worried my joints would give out, then thought of a different way – turning round I simply grabbed the book and began to leaf through it. It was indeed the book he wanted, for he gnashed his teeth and stalked disgustedly away to another part of the shop.

  I had been mistaken, however, for the book was actually about World War I. My eye was immediately caught by a section on something called Dazzle, which I had never heard of before. It was a very interesting method of painting warships, not in traditional camoflague, but with complex patterns of weird shapes and zig-zags, so the enemy found it hard to gauge the ship’s speed, direction, and even distance. The British vorticist Wadsworth had been involved in painting the ships, and Picasso during his cubist period had claimed (probably falsely) that he invented it. The anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd had also used it in recent years.

  In the meantime, Occultnik had whipped out a phone and was busy taking pictures of the shop. When the proprietor noticed he asked him not to, o
n which the latter became incredibly uptight, upset even, and left noisily, slamming the door. Probably he was still rankled that I had picked up the book he wanted.

  I purchased it, not out of malice, but for my new interest in Dazzle. Then, after chatting with the owner a bit more, left the shop.

  The snow had once more begun to flutter down from the heavens, adding to the slush abiding in the street. Old bikes slid slowly past on the uneven winter cobbles, brakes whistling like frostbitten crickets.

  My lungs felt scarred, as winter cast its disabling cocoon over everything.

  * * *

  It is too late for my body – like inhabiting a snare trap that I have walked into blindly. But my mind can still be hardened. I have done so firstly by summoning the ghosts of my past. My memories before 1974 are in Technicolor, those since in monochrome. It is to the coloured era that I return. I purge my mind of pity for the invaders by contrasting their mindlessly predatory forms with those of the living, swirling spirits of real times.

  There is one figure since her death who appears in colour, of course, but his is a delicate golden hue, an energy precious and difficult, providing the pale flame on which my plans are cooked and hardened; just as I hardened a Lügenpresse rag to make my beloved Millwall Brick.

  In my room at Wewelsburg I swing the ‘brick’…fan it, make it a blur…perfect the lightning quick attack, the Blitzkrieg, the only thing that will give me an advantage over limber-jointed enemies.

  In my head is ‘Gimme Shelter’ by the Rolling Stones, a song I never cared for when it was released, but which has now taken on a life of its own. It may have been intended as an anti-war song…but its violent relentlessness flares me up for battle, just a shot away.

  * * *

  And so it was that, one crisp winter evening, I returned to Sennelager. The air felt electric around me with voices of the dead singing, but the dead were also disengaged, so I turned on the little mp3 stereo I had bought and played a tune by the Incredible String Band. It was the song called ‘Swift as the Wind’, about blood on the sword of an avatar, flashing brightly as it drips onto a pile of skulls. I didn’t have it turned up very loudly – just enough to get some odd and slightly amused looks from Germans walking past. Then, I put on Tangerine Dream’s Zeit, and let them revel in the mystery of it. But nothing happened. People, even a few invaders walked past, in ones and twos, and ignored me completely.

  My resolution wavered.

  Then, on a sudden whim, I played Tim Buckley’s ‘Song to the Siren’, and that was when the trouble started.

  An invader with a face like a caved in bowling ball, a cemented melon or a glass-maker’s experiment gone wrong, started yelping at me in a sort of broken German, interspersed with words from his own tongue.

  He kept calling me ‘alte Vater’ (old father) but not out of respect for my age…instead, he said it contemptuously, as if my tottering frame were proof that my entire existence had been a worthless cipher.

  My apparent crime was playing de’ Teufel Musik, but my real crime, I believe, was being European, the music a mere excuse. He looked as if he was building up to violence, so I decided to test him further before he became too agitated to communicate.

  ‘A boy was murdered here a short time ago,’ I said in German. ‘Do you know who killed him?’ His reply, while not revealing the names of the killers, indicated that he sympathised with them, and that the European had got what he deserved. That was enough for me. I changed the song to ‘Epitaph’ by Trees, turned the volume up and walked calmly to a nearby laneway which I knew was secluded from the view of those on the shopping street.

  As expected, he followed me, cursing and spewing insults, bug-eyed and almost delirious.

  Then, I turned the song off.

  * * *

  He came for me, whether to maim or kill me I don’t know. I only know that I beat him to death with my Millwall brick.

  Death by media…

  His insanity was no match for my sadness or sanity. They’re so used to being unopposed, these arrogant snails. But in the remaining seconds of consciousness allotted to him, this one must have received a shock in feeling the sting of an old necrotic he had believed harmless (if he hadn’t believed me harmless then he wouldn’t have attacked, I am certain of that; and even if I am wrong, I had to test my hand).

  Looking down on the corpse I felt very little. No satisfaction. Neutral, as if the universe had annulled an evil so grotesque as to throw things out of balance…but personal pleasure had I none. It certainly didn’t feel wrong. And perhaps there was a kind of faint tribal satisfaction – as if I had chalked up one for the hippies. Perhaps I had.

  Using gloved hands I pulled the body into a kind of fenced alcove, so it wouldn’t be discovered as quickly. Then I left the scene. The streets were deserted, devoid of witnesses, though plenty would have seen me there earlier.

  While the killing hadn’t achieved anything strategically important, it had tested my resolve, which hadn’t been found wanting, and for that I was glad.

  Now I truly had nothing to lose.

  * * *

  Pursuing my quarry silently over stock and stone, I kept my distance, from clump to clump of evergreens, considerably outnumbered by bare deciduous claws of the Teutoburg. The forest was my friend, I knew instinctively, and would shelter and protect, even from my prey. Now and then came the distant clatter of machine-gun fire – another army base in the vicinity, maybe British, maybe NATO; perhaps even German. My quarry gave a little start every time it rattled, and I smiled. I felt deeply at home here in the Teutoburg this gloomy winter afternoon. The light drift of snow on the ground, not enough to crunch, felt like a velvet cape the earth had given me to walk on.

  I gained on him, in the course of a kilometre, til I was breathing down his throat. I could see the vermillion poppy motif on his dark grey muffler. I could see the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he seemed finally to sense something wrong. But too late, as I was upon him…

  The ordinary middle-aged man started as I plunged out from behind him, but regained his posture and managed a feeble ‘guten Tag’…which greeting I returned.

  I neglected to tell him I had been practicing my stalking skills on him, strolling down the forest path that led to the Externsteine as if nothing had happened.

  As I walked, I pondered the headlines in that morning’s media about a murdered saint. Not merely a saint in the Western sense, either, but a true bodhisattva incarnate.

  Germany would be combed high and low…and police were seeking an ‘elderly skinhead’ to help them in their enquiries.

  This fiend, part of the aging leadership of ‘Rechtsextremists’ (soon to be consigned to the dustbin of history, of course), had been seen in the vicinity shortly before the atrocity was committed, playing ‘weird music’ on an infernal device.

  The thing is, though, I had known their saint, and he was far from saintly.

  I now wore a hat and scarf in public at all times, to be on the safe side. Premature arrest (before justice was in any way served) was the last thing on my menu.

  * * *

  I came back to the rock formation I had left that morning for my circuitous trek into the forest. There, by the banks of the fluttered pond, were the Stones of the Stars, the Externsteine. I marvelled at them, their ancient majesty, at the weathered faces in the rock.

  My problems were as nothing to them. They truly belonged to other stars. Also, to the deep earth.

  I couldn’t haul my ancient body up the steep climb to the solar altar, not because the will was lacking, but because the steps were sealed for the winter by a metal gate – the frost making them slippery and dangerous – so I sauntered down to the lake, where (someone at the hostel had told me) stood an empty stone hollow in the shape of a human body – a fount of resurrection.

  A cluster of tourists milled around the ‘tomb’ (as they called it, although in fact this is the opposite of what it was), but I made my way there regardless, an
xious to see the marvel with my own eyes.

  One of the group, presumably the tour guide, was declaiming in a loud American-accented voice about the Externsteine, and I listened with interest in case he could shed new light on its mysteries for me.

  To my surprise, however, I heard him talking about the ‘evil’ that emanated from this place. That it was a fount of ‘occult Nazism’. Much as my friend from the bookshop might have put it, only this one saw ‘occult Nazism’ as something terrible rather than sexy. I shuddered, sensing immediately that I had encountered two equal but opposite forces. I felt I was walking between two guardians of a mighty gateway, one that would burn me, and another that would freeze me on my knees.

  I then noticed that a camera was filming the guru’s every word (cameras nowadays are so small), twigging finally to the fact that a documentary was being produced.

  Then a woman muttered: ‘Oh shit, some old Kraut just wandered up.’

  ‘Cut!’ yelled the cameraman. I looked round for an old German, before realising she meant me. There was a fluttering in the swarm, and some glares aimed in my direction.