Greybeard

  Perdita related an amusing tale to me, with wry amusement; an instructional tale, I supposed.

  ‘I told you how I’d become a lot more sympathetic to the Red-Headed League. Well, this utter guttersnipe of a journalist called Putziger has had it in for them no end. He’s been calling for them to be labeled as terrorists, though they’re really a self-defence league, as you know. The scary thing is, he has the ear of a lot of prominent people, including high-up politicians.’

  ‘How I hate that word, prominent.’

  ‘Yeah, but the point is, he’s an A-grade shitheel, as a Yank would put it, and he’s doxed at least half a dozen league members.’

  ‘Doxed?’

  ‘Published their personal details online, including their home addresses. All from different countries, he doesn’t care where. But now he’s finally had a taste of his own medicine.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Some people tried to dox him back…didn’t find his address, but they dug up some other interesting information.’

  ‘There are people working on this? An organised effort?’

  ‘Yep. The faction I told you of last time.’

  Good…Greybeard was getting stronger.

  ‘So anyway, what d’you think they found when they hacked his _____ account?’ (I don’t remember what she said here, some kind of computer program no doubt, but I was on tenterhooks).

  ‘Well?’

  ‘A comment from a few years back where he mentioned some ‘annoying trannies’!’

  ‘And? That’s all?’

  ‘Yes! But don’t you understand?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Anything even the tiniest bit non-PC, no matter how meager, spells the end for a social justice crusader.’

  ‘I thought we were talking about the journalist.’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Then who is the social justice crusader?’

  ‘He is. In his own mind, at least.’

  ‘Ah. I had thought him merely a scoundrel, or swindler.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re not clued in on the latest terminology. It’s all right, you’re not missing out on much.’

  ‘So they found something mildly incriminating.’

  ‘He’s fucked. His career is over. He’ll probably never work in Germany again, outside of manual labour. Fruit picking, maybe.’

  ‘Best kind of work.’

  ‘Hmmm, perhaps. Don’t know.’ I couldn’t imagine her plucking the vine, but didn’t hold it against her. She was of another sort, angelic in her way…I saw that increasingly. She must soon become pregnant with the virgin birth.

  ‘This heartens me,’ I said aloud. ‘I have a new mission I’m embarking on, and can’t furnish you with details. But you’ll hear from me anon.’

  ‘So I won’t see you anytime soon?’

  ‘Maybe in a few weeks. In the meantime, you need to find yourself a proper boyfriend. Not an egomaniac like those two. I expect you to have it sorted by the time I reemerge. You are the mother of humanity.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind. Just please look after yourself, young woman.’

  ‘And you too, old man.’

  ‘The Fates will doubtless take care of that.’

  ‘No, I mean, really…no one from your age group gives a shit about what’s happening. They’re all too busy with their investment portfolios, or their cruises in the South Pacific. They don’t care at all about the mess they helped create.’

  ‘They were led astray. Just like your generation.’

  ‘I still fucking hate them, though. Boomers.’

  ‘And your own parents?’

  ‘Them? Last time I saw them I dropped hints of my current beliefs, and they were horrified. Embarrassed, more likely. Socially unacceptable. Our daughter, a Nazi! That was the word they used.’

  ‘Then the original hippies were also Nazis. Although, it would have been news to them.’

  ‘And you were one of them…’

  ‘I came in at the tail end. No, I’m referring to the Children of the Sonne…the whole thing actually started in Germany in the late 1800s. Alternative living, a counter-blast to bourgeois number-crunching.’

  ‘Those like that now are the hacksaws.’ (I think that’s what she said.) ‘The faction, let’s say. That must mean I’m a hippy of my day. Groovy, daddy-oh!’

  ‘Please don’t use that ridiculous lingo, ha ha.’ We then had a good laugh impersonating phoney Hair hippies, with a bit of wheedling journalist thrown in for good measure.

  ‘Oh please give me my job back, Mama Merkel.’

  ‘No! You’re too male, pale and stale. I will give your job to the invaders.’

  ‘But I’m a good, groovy boy. I’m progressive! Peace…’ Churchillian V.

  ‘Don’t want peace! Must bomb Syria, with German-made bomb. To atone for World War Two, hurr hurr.’ Her Merkel evil-witch cackle was distinctly amusing.

  But after she had gone and I found myself alone near the silent effigy of the German warrior, a strange feeling of weakness crept over me. This is it, I thought. I am going, before my mission is complete. My heart felt fine. It was as if the life had suddenly gone out of my muscles…it didn’t feel like a stroke, either. In fact, I suddenly had the feeling that everything was okay. That all I had to do was to wait and see what would happen. I was glad there were no tourists around, however, and that the evening was rapidly descending into twilight.

  But what would happen?

  I felt like a chrysalis about to emerge from its cocoon, into who knew what state. All around me, I couldn’t help noticing, was the smell of wood smoke. Was there fire in the forest? The day had only been moderately warm, and rain was perhaps on the way. I didn’t think I had to worry too much about forest fires, which seldom happen in this part of Europe. A campfire? Or was it something completely different?

  ‘Varus, give me back my legions…’

  I wrenched ‘forward’, if it was forward, to the ‘present’, if time wasn’t altogether spherical, or in any case to a time where Sad Lepers would soon be admitted to the Bundeswehr and the forces of NATO, and felt more homesick than I had done amongst the fires and legions.

  But it appeared I had left a part of myself behind. I felt distinctly that I was missing something. Had I left my soul there, I wondered in alarm? Now, when it came down to it, I realized that I didn’t even properly know what a ‘soul’ was. How could I look for it when I didn’t know what it was?

  But no…I saw it coming towards me, from the dark forest, resembling me in every particular. But was it my soul? Was it not rather my brother, my Doppelgänger? Or merely a kind of tulpa? And then I realised, perfectly calmly, I HAD SPLIT IN TWO, as an amoeba is popularly supposed to do, not as a chrysalid, and just as the Incredible String Band had predicted…

  We were ready for war.

  We were ready for Aquarius.

  We were ready for Kingdom Come.

  For this was Zarathustra’s downgoing…the May Queen called us forward to battle, there was a bustle in your hedgerow, and Greybeard was Legion…

  * * *

  The lightning cracked open the world.

  But couldn’t separate me from my double.

  I kept him at all times in the corner of my vision, but could never approach him too closely. If I did, I knew that something terrible would happen. He would disappear, making everything fruitless. Or, almost as bad: we would both be annihilated.

  I marched my way into the foyer of the Westfälische Zeitung office, to hustle my way to an appointment. It was easier than I had expected. The employee who answered my knock, and who amazingly didn’t appear to recognize me from police reports, seemed in earnest when he wanted to ascertain my reasons for seeing the chief editor. He wasn’t the abject villain I had geared myself up to encounter. (That was actually a fear of mine – the banality of evil. They should have forked teeth, let alone tongues, as identifiers, but Greybeard had no say over that.)

  I don’t know if he would hav
e let me in off his own bat, but he kept peering out the door into the darkened street. ‘Who is that?’ he whispered more than once, perplexed, worried beyond doubt. There was a figure who kept flitting in and out of the periphery of his vision. I think it was for that reason that he ushered me in…so he could shut the door on night (it was late, and print time would surely be soon).

  But while he went to get the editor, leaving me alone in the foyer, I managed to prop open the security door, ever so slightly. Then I followed him into the hall and hid myself in a dark alcove until I saw the editor emerge and head for the foyer. My double would surely keep him talking. He would serve as magnificent decoy while I entered the shadowed inner sanctum.

  In English (for I didn’t trust my German, and certainly not the spelling) I began to pen, freely and cheerfully, a truthful editorial. This was what I had planned all along, but it felt completely spontaneous. The words fell into place. I plumbed the inner depths of the enemy’s mind.

  A Letter From the Editor.

  Dear Deutsch lads and lasses,

  I’m truly sorry I fucked up your country, but did I show you the photos of my last holiday in the Algarve? Or was it Tuscany? I actually forget where I went last week, but it was very cosmopolitan.

  We’re all Germans. We all bleed red.

  But the trash of Germany, they are something else. They will never know the glories of Siena. They aren’t cosmopolitan! They bleed, but their blood is of a different sort. At least, I don’t want to think about their blood. They were mean to me in high school, you see. And it isn’t worth my time. I am not a cultural custodian of this land, I’m a custodian of the earth. And I say, to hell with Germany. These petit bourgeois shits, if it wasn’t for them this country would be a rainbow paradise. But would that be good for me? Uh, a bit of self-searching bubbling up. Perhaps I can stop it up with this fine claret? No, no, it’s bubbling forth, I can’t seem to plug it. Something’s wrong, I seem to be taking an interest in truth, this is highly unusual, for I am usually content to live in a warm netherworld of feeling. Well, alright, go with it, then. Let’s get it off my chest, and I’ll be back to business as usual. Who cares at this stage of the game? The die is cast. So all you fucking peasants who read this paper (I know there are some of you), listen to my reasoning.

  First of all, I’m scared. Yes, I know I call you phobes, of various sorts, but you know it is really I who am scared. You should pity me, you arseholes. I hate culture, you see…I hate true culture. What I love is the simulacrum of culture, not the thing itself. Postmodern Wagner, shorn of spikes. Defanged, served with a fine wine, it’s perfect. But you Saxon oiks get in the way of that. When you find your spikes, I am nothing. I have no importance, a connoisseur of simulacra, without worth in any real sense…other than the warmth I find in my own feelings. But when you are defanged, I am all powerful. My words make reality. My feelings make reality. And my feeling is that your blood must be diluted, for blood is the source of true culture, my greatest fear.

  Your blood must be diluted, first and foremost, by silencing its voice. Its voice is ‘privilege’, I have lately tried to convince you of that. And privilege is bad for it means ease. You Germans are contemptuous of ease. So I have tried to conflate, in your mind, your blood with this decadent ease. I have not paused to consider whether they actually are the same, because I am not a philosopher, but rather a journalist. However, what matters is that my fears are assuaged, so you must conflate and confuse them. You have no choice. It is you or me. It’s no use telling me I am one of you and should act like it, for the very thought of that sends chills through my blood. How do you dare expect me to discomfort myself, Germany? You have so much blood on your hands. Rosa Luxemburg, for instance. YOU have no right to lecture me, or anyone else, ever again. You must roll over and do what you’re told, like a precious dog. Me, belong to a tribe? A nation? The notion is preposterous. I am cosmopolitan, floating free. You want to earth me with your Saxon mud? Ha! I tell you, the Sad Lepers are your future. But will you listen? Well, it makes no difference whether you do or not, as far as I’m concerned. In the medium term you will be bred out of existence. Your blood will be diluted, just as I request and require. And those with no blood, and no blood legacy, like myself, will be able to do whatever the fuck we please. Floating free, floating free.

  Do you peasants really think I have blood? Yes I know I told you ‘we all bleed red’…but that’s just the exoteric teaching for uppity serfs like you. I don’t bleed.

  And yet…I still don’t want you sticking me with those scary spikes.

  Voices in the hallway…I broke off. That would do. It would have to do. My double could only do so much. I got out of there before he reentered. Then to the phone box outside, where I phoned in a bomb threat to the newspaper office, which had the desired effect of evacuating the building. The publication would soon be going to print, so if I could just get them to hold off long enough…

  * * *

  It didn’t work, though. The paper next morning had its usual pontificating editorial about ‘diversity’ and how grand it was. They must have found my piece. The funny thing was, the editor committed suicide a few days later. But this was quickly forgotten in the wake of far greater events; namely, the Sad Leper takeover of Paderborn, and subsequent unleashing of Leper Hell.

  They had been threatening war from their camp for weeks, while Merkel and her cronies had vowed to crack down on dissidents a thousand fold. Yet the dissidents proved right, as the Lepers, unchecked, placed the Greater Paderborn area under martial law (their new more palatial facilities being right on the outskirts of the city, not in the forest as previously).

  The authorities did nothing (except against patriots), as you would have expected. And Greybeard didn't know what to do, as more and more ‘lepers’, with increasingly lenient entrance requirements, joined the leper army. Some, sad to say, were native Germans who had taken to rubbing excrement in their hair. These were known as the ‘transracial’ contingent, despised by the ‘true’ lepers, yet kept on that invisible leash reserved for useful idiots the world over.

  One thing that puzzled everyone was the question of where the Lepers got their newly-acquired AK-47s. I guess we will never know that, but even if they had not acquired them, they would doubtless have found weapons of some other kind.

  But what were the ‘authorities’ doing? Uneasily allowing the Lepers their way. Even helping them in some ways. Trying to ensure news of it didn’t get out…but this of course was impossible in the Internet Age. Nevertheless they were doing their best to brand true accounts as lies, threatening prosecution against anyone spreading ‘malicious falsehoods’ (i.e. truths), and so forth.

  I will give the Lepers some credit – they managed to take the city killing only eleven. A near incredible feat for such bloodthirsty creatures. When they had established their rule, and a ramshackle yet reasonably effective network of cordons around the city, the people were generally allowed to go about their business, for the time being. The Leper guards appeared to be under orders not to talk to ordinary citizens.

  The only actual public atrocities committed were the daily AIDS rituals in the Rathausplatz, where a citizen was selected at random to be injected with the virus via a syringe. This was evidently a compromise between the Leper King and his followers, who had wanted to administer it sexually, as already related. Although I never witnessed the ritual, I was told the citizenry quietly accepted it as part of the New Order, making no serious attempt at resistance. After all, new medications meant AIDS was no longer an automatic death sentence.

  There were admittedly a few isolated incidents, for instance a German woman screeching to the Leper King that her son had disappeared, but she was quickly clubbed to death and her body tossed in the Pader, increasing the official body count to twelve.

  Things certainly seemed quiet. But it was a feeling of calm before the storm, as if the Lepers were waiting for something, a signal; but what?

  Meanwhile, Greyb
eard lurked in the Teutoberg, no longer entering the city. A reward had been placed on his reverend head (as he learnt from an internet café in Detmold), and he brooded, plotting his next move. Could the lepers be used somehow to enact revenge, as the creatures who killed his grandson weren’t among their number, or would he have to deal with the Lepers first, as the more urgent problem?

  As for his double, it seemed to have disappeared, and Greybeard could only hope that it hadn’t been killed somehow, for mammon.

  RED

  8

  Gimme Shelter

  July

  It was burning summer. In Paderborn, nothing had changed…but the failing days of June had brought strange developments in other parts of Europe. In a shock referendum (part of the shock being that it had ever been held in the first place), my fellow Britons had voted, amazingly, by a narrow margin to leave the European Union; which given the state of Merkel’s Germany was undoubtedly a wise move.

  The second interesting event was that the German president (not Merkel, but their head of state, like the Queen) had been not only booed by a mainstream Saxon crowd, but had even been physically attacked by them, having to flee in his armored limousine. Perhaps something was brewing in the turbulent unconscious of the mass, a dark realization that all wasn’t well? Greybeard certainly hoped so, for it overlapped with his own worthy purposes.

  * * *

  One blazing day I climbed to the solar altar of Externsteine for the first time in a while (it had completely slipped my mind to climb it during the solstice, when I expect it would have been crowded anyhow), and was surprised to see Perdita standing there, looking out across the Teutoburg.