Greybeard

  ‘Fuck the old Jews,’ he said, eyes bulging so that he looked as if he was about to beat her with her own digital recorder. ‘The old Jews,’ he announced, ‘have let me down.’

  ‘But…don’t they call themselves chosen?’

  ‘God has de-chosen them,’ he said, ‘due to their scandalous actions.’

  ‘You refer to the Gaza bombings of 2014?’

  ‘Yes. I refer to those.’

  ‘I understand there are some who think the Israelis went too far, were perhaps too brutal, but…’

  His eyes here swelled yet more, bloating apoplectically from his ebon head.

  ‘Too far!’

  ‘Well…I understand…’

  ‘NOT FAR ENOUGH!’

  She wiped the flecks of melanomic slobber from off her face, casting her eyes down meekly.

  ‘God cursed the Jews because they didn’t entirely liquidate the Gaza, crushing the Amalek, the Philistines, at one of their most notorious concentrancies. The Jew status of these chickenhearts has been revoked.’

  He pulled from one of the voluminous pockets of his blue overalls a copy of Manetho’s Aegyptiaca.

  ‘Now, seeing as how there are no more Jews…my Sad Lepers must become the New Chosen.’

  ‘But how…’

  ‘We do so,’ he snarled, ‘by emulating the conditions under which the original chosen were forged in the crucible of history. This book was recommended me by a Hotep, who urged me not to read it…I hate Hoteps, and so of course I got a copy. And it says, right here in this powerful book, that the Jews were originally a colony of lepers who were cast out of Egypt.

  ‘Now, leprosy is not as highly contagious as it was once thought to be. So I ask myself…who are the new lepers? The answer, is obvious. Those with AIDS!’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she nodded vigorously, having grapsed his lead once again. ‘I myself have written about…’

  ‘They are the ones who are destined to become a new race, and inherit a new promised land. Not in Canaan…but in Europe!’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘I have drawn my Sad Lepers mainly from Africa, but also from other continents.’

  [As an aside, I had heard that his contempt for modern Jews came originally from the fact that a certain Jewish billionaire had declined to sponsor his movement (which had originally been called the Scions of Yahweh), a sense of rejection he had now rationalised theologically. Since changing their name to the Sad Lepers, his membership had grown exponentially. There were supposed to be several thousand of them residing in Germany alone.]

  ‘And the beauty of it is…’ He left her in suspense.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘No faggots!’

  Here she blushed a deep, bright red, intaking her breath sharply. I could see she was trying to get herself under control. But for the rest of the interview she was to adopt an ever-so-slightly more hostile tone.

  ‘Yes,’ he grinned from ear to ear, looking very pleased with himself. ‘I managed to find thousands of AIDS patients, and not one faggot amongst them! Believe me, they have been vetted so very thoroughly.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ she smirked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, clearly not suspecting he had offended her sensibilities. ‘We have a white whore, who looks a bit like you. She appears naked in front of all recruits. If they attain an erection then they are accepted.’

  ‘A novel recruitment process,’ she said, a touch of ice in her voice.

  ‘After that, they are forbidden from having sexual feelings until we have conquered Europe.’

  ‘But how can you…’

  ‘We encourage them to rat each other out, of course, on any admission of indiscretion. But it rarely happens.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The accusations are rare.’

  ‘But what if the ‘accusations’ are false?’

  Now it was his turn to look offended.

  ‘We are the Chosen of God,’ he snorted. ‘Or we will be, when we have smitten the Amalek, and taken control of the New Promised Land.’

  Then she hit him with a seeming bombshell. ‘But what of the accusations that you have stolen and embezzled money…from your own followers?’

  He was unfazed.

  ‘Well, what of it?’ he shrugged. ‘I will pay the money back when my Sad Lepers conquer Europe. Remember, the debbil is in you, not in me…’

  Nearby, in a corner of the obscure café in Düsseldorf, I smiled quietly to myself.

  * * *

  Walking into the hotel room bought and paid for by the same billionaire who had refused money to the Leper’s Scions, I felt distinctly out of place. The room was decent, soft and nondescript, yet there was something faintly unpleasant about it. A stale comfort, a negative femininity. Yet I strode in like I owned it, for I wore my Dazzle.

  I locked the door behind me so she couldn’t escape.

  She emerged from the bathroom, humming tunelessly, then caught sight of the formless shape moving towards her – or was it away from her? She began to squeal, breaking her vow of silence, but I overrode her voice with such a stentorian boom as I could scarcely muster.

  ‘I, Greybeard, have something very important to tell you.’

  She whipped out a small handgun, a lady’s pistol, and pointed it right at me. I doubted such guns were legal in Germany, certainly not for non-citizens such as herself. Clearly she was well provided for. No sex assaults on the train for her.

  The gun didn’t scare me, however. I surged forward, twisting slightly to the right, and she didn’t know which way I was coming from. Before she could blink, I had disarmed her, and was pointing the gun at her head.

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ she whimpered.

  ‘Have no fear,’ I said, deep within my magic armour. ‘I’ve just come to tell you a few things.’

  She stared at where she thought my eyes must be.

  ‘It’s important that you understand these things, because a lot hinges on them.’

  ‘What…things?’

  ‘Firstly, my grandson was murdered by invaders, which the press has distorted and covered up, just as they have covered up so many other vile events.’

  She frowned, composing a sentence in her head.

  ‘That’s sad about your grandson. But the media aren’t…’

  ‘Secondly, Germans have a right to their own land and culture, without being molested, mocked and spat upon in their own country.’

  ‘It’s not the Germans who…’

  ‘And thirdly, and most importantly, because only you can change this – your own objectivity is being used against you.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘You think of yourself as an airy cosmopolitan, citizen of everywhere and nowhere. But you are denying your own subjectivity in the process, and thereby enabling bad things to happen. The importance of this is not so much moral as logical, however. What I mean is, by denying your subjectivity, you’re not actaully being objective.’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ I had lost her, but didn’t know how to express it any better.

  ‘Look,’ I said with frustration. ‘I’ll show you. Have you a car?’

  She nodded, timidly.

  Next thing I was sitting in the passenger seat of her Prius, pointing the gun at her as I directed her where to drive. She was sweating and swallowing a lot, no longer the fearless leader of Dumb Blondes she had been – but her arrogance would return instantly the gun disappeared, I knew it. I must change her internally before that happened, and could not do so by myself.

  I needed the sun…

  With my left hand I pulled idly from a pocket my latest Millwall Brick, folded freshly that morning from a copy of the FAZ I had found abandoned on the train platform at Horn. Beside an article announcing that 100,000 jobs were to be allocated exclusively to the invaders in order to speed ‘integration’, was a piece that caught my interest, which I proceeded to read to her (it was on the outside of the ‘brick’) as we drove thr
ough the small town of Altenbeken. A left-wing comedian arrested in Germany for making fun of the Turkish president Erdogan was facing a probable prison sentence in Germany itself. Did she not find this offensive?

  She shrugged.

  ‘He knew the law,’ was all she said. I wasted no further breath – the Sun was on His way. We drove through Horn onto the forest road, where I directed her to a deserted car park a short walk from Externsteine. No one was in the forest, as my intuition had foreseen. On apprehending the mighty stones for the first time, she caught her breath.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘It’s an ancient solar altar. Please, climb up the stairs.’ The metal gate had been recently opened after the spring thaw had cleared the frosts away. She stepped gingerly onto the first time-worn step.

  ‘Are you going to push me off at the top? Because I’d prefer it if you just shot me.’

  ‘I’m not going to kill you. As I already said, I just want to show you something.’ She looked at me suspiciously.

  ‘But what could there be up there to show me?’

  ‘A magnificent view, presumably. But that isn’t what I want you to see.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I want you to see yourself in a mirror for the first time.’

  ‘I looked in one this morning.’

  ‘In a magic mirror. You’ve never seen the like of it.’

  She looked at me strangely, then turned and started up the steep climb, gripping the handrail tight. Soon we were both panting like dogs. At the landing platform halfway up we stopped to rest.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded as her breath returned. ‘You’re like a caricature of some figure from an old legend.’

  ‘Well, who are you for that matter? And what put you on this path?’

  ‘Someone has to do it.’

  ‘White woman’s burden.’

  ‘Nonsense. Anyone could be doing what I’m doing.’

  ‘How come you’re all blonde then?’

  ‘Because we need to atone.’ Now the arrogance was definitely back in her voice. ‘Anyway, we do have associate members.’

  ‘Are there many?’

  ‘Not as yet.’

  ‘I thought as much. But when I asked what put you on this path, I suppose I meant further back. Did you have a problematic childhood?’

  ‘My childhood was wonderful. My mother let me do whatever I wanted. I suppose it’s because I had such an unfairly easy upbringing that I want to, you know, help others, and oppose fascists like the Red-Headed League.’

  ‘And what about your father?’

  ‘We left him when I was just a baby. Never met him.’

  ‘Ever tried to make contact?’

  ‘No. And is it really your business?’

  ‘I’m just trying to work out why you turned out the way you did. But I’m no psychologist.’

  ‘No, you’re not, so kindly stop trying.’

  ‘Given your crimes, I’m allowed to try.’

  ‘Excuse me? My crimes?’

  ‘As an enabler. Yet there may be hope for you – criminal medicine. I believe I know the nostrum to turn your condition around. Let’s climb to the top.’ I gestured with the gun, and she began the final ascent. When she reached the top I waved her towards the altar with its hole where the sun would shine through on the solstice, some two months from now. Today it was behind clouds, but that wasn’t important. I just needed her to look through the hole, at the sun behind the sun.

  And she did.

  She looked through, and my magic worked. She saw herself, suddenly and belatedly, with true objectivity, taking the needs and concerns of her own people into account for the first time, coming to see herself with a sense of wonder.

  For an hour we stood there, and I told her that the sun wanted her to be subjective – her objectivity, if it was indeed more than that of other races, being only part of her subjectivity in that its proportion was uniquely hers, not superceding her subjectivity, but being merely part of it.

  And she stood there in rapture, listening to the voice of the sun that spake though me.

  * * *

  On our return journey, I no longer had to compel her. In trance-like state, she asked dreamily where I wanted to be dropped off, and obliged, a warm but far-off smile on her softly-radiant face. Could it be? Had I really turned her? Only time would tell.

  But she wasn’t the only who had changed.

  You can’t give someone that kind of medicine without being affected by it yourself.

  And the stones of the city were affected, too. Because the police chased me once again, that very day, and this time the stones themselves were on my side.

  I saw the officers in question go flying, having both at the very same moment tripped over uneven cobbles. It seemed they had both injured their knees and could no longer give chase. I turned and smiled, bowing gallantly towards them as they radioed for backup with glowering faces. By the time help arrived I would be far away, lost in the bosom of a city now under my particular care.

  That the city would faithfully serve its master, I now knew.

  6

  In the Palace of the Leper King

  May

  The Merkel regime was now looking to lay charges against whistle-blowing cops of Cologne; federal authorities had pressured Cologne CID to delete the term ‘rape’ from an internal police report; and a German court had officially banned the publication of a poem mocking Erdogan.

  I was becoming impatient. Nothing good was happening. So I thought I would visit the Hermannsdenkmal, the memorial to Arminius, spiritual king of the Teutoburg Forest. Instead of getting the bus from Detmold, I walked, slogging for hours through the forest to get there. When I finally saw his mighty sword held aloft over the sea of trees, I caught my breath. History seemed suddenly a disturbed pond, its ripples emanating from that very sword point. I brooded over it, over the history of Arminius and his sad fate, murdered not by his Roman enemies, but by members of his own tribe.

  Then the image came into my mind of another German hero. As a child I had seen a picture of Siegfried in an old musty book, licking the blood of the dragon Fafner from his burnt finger, which enabled him to understand the language of the birds. Then, suddenly, he understood who the real enemy was.

  And there were certainly enemies in this forest – the Sad Lepers had their encampment just a few miles from here – but I didn’t fancy drinking their blood. What I did do, however, was to listen. For the first time in ages, I listened for her voice. I heard the wind, and the leaves falling, and the birds. I could hear burrowings and scratchings under the ground.

  But not her.

  Possibly she had entered a portal that I could not attain without long struggle, in this existence and perhaps in others. That only made me the more determined to fulfill my destiny as a hippy warrior for Deutschland, and to do what had to be done. I gazed at the tangle of decaying twigs and glistening roots on the forest floor, shining languidly in the sun, and seemed to see the shape of an eagle, like a cloud figure, taking swift shape before me. Then, a cage with a man in it, which I imagined was myself. Would I be imprisoned after all, then? And did it matter any more? I resolved to do my best to sort out the interlocking puzzle that was Germany’s destiny before my time was cut short by death or confinement. That was the best I could hope for in this life.

  I thought back on my youth, so near and so far. What did hippiedom mean in the context of today? What would today’s youth know of my old dreams? For that matter, what did those of my own generation still around (so many of them now wealthy property-hoarders)? There are no true hippies anymore…

  In America, the era died not with Altamont or Manson, but with the release of L.A. Woman by The Doors, with its Chandlereque title track and ‘Crawling King Snake’ undoubtedly among the most sinister songs ever penned. In Europe things rolled on, in spite of Comus’ best efforts to consign the entire movement to the madhouse. The German chanteuse Nico could have vouched for that,
as could have Klaus Schulze.

  In Britain herself, the megaliths kept up the reservoir of energy which had been newly channelled into them, but after the anarchist existentialism of The Prisoner had been beamed prime time into people’s lounge rooms, and after rock had gone full circle back to trad folk (with the Albion Country Band, Fairport, and the like), then what was there to do for those who came after them, like me? Perhaps my Stasi-torture had even been necessary, a new chapter in the then-fomenting drama of my generation, a drama that has now run its course (except for Greybeard).

  If the average punter registered these cultural events at all, they were merely quaint colour and odd divertimenti…but to some, as myself, they were episodes in a deeply-rooted drama growing out of the rich, dark loam of Angle-land herself, as Tolkien had forseen. What would ‘normies’, a term Perdita had used with contempt, know of this drama?

  But, given that I shared her bewilderment at their shallowness, why was I taking action to preserve their future?

  Because they are the unconscious soil from which the dreams grow!!!

  * * *

  Did I want to be caught?

  I snipped a hole in the fence, crept through, found a secretive hiding place, and what did I hear/see?

  A lot of orc talk.

  Some discussing a ‘hidden king’, which I first thought meant the king of lepers himself (apparently away from camp, doing a TV interview in Cologne), but eventually came to realize referred to the virus that lurked in their own murky blood. When the ‘king’ put on his ‘crown’, it meant the disease had been implanted in an innocent party, usually through a carnal act of rape. This had been undertaken without the Leper King’s approval (I clearly remembered his injunction to chastity). The ‘fountain with healing waters’ referred to the AIDS medication they received, for free apparently, by means of a German government program. Incidentally, the crime of knowingly giving someone AIDS (by not telling a sexual partner one has it) had recently been decriminalised in Deutschland.