Greybeard

  * * *

  There was talk of the federal government sending the army in, but this had not yet eventuated; only another trainload of special police from Berlin had been dispatched. But these latter weren’t there to save the opera-goers from an impending cannibal apocalypse. No, they were there to contain the Redheaded League (who had now declared their own autonomous zone), and to protect the journalists in the journalists’ compound in the Rathausplatz, among whose number, I noted, stood Bartholomew Cleves, proud and erect with furrowed lines across his wide forehead. His shirtsleeves were rolled, and he looked the business. It didn’t protect him when crisis struck, however.

  For as I looked on, he was arrested by special forces, dragged bellowing out of the journalists’ compound by tall uniformed men and hauled away to a waiting van.

  (That must surely have put paid to the rumours Perdita/Funda had once doubtfully related to me, that Cleves was a double agent, paid to steer ‘alternative media’ in foreseen directions, eyes away from the conjuror’s hand. Unless it was all a spectacular staged deception; but such wild speculation held little interest for me.)

  The other journalists, who hated Cleves by all accounts, parted to make way for the arresting officers. It was a pitiful sight, this dying croak of the once mighty Fourth Estate. Despite Cleves’ pomposity and arrogance, my heart went out to him in the face of his colleagues’ treachery.

  My compassion was not reciprocated, however. As he was dragged some fifteen feet from where I stood, he suddenly caught sight of me, and began shrieking that I was a demon who had taken his footage away, an apparition thrown up by the ‘occult vortex’ of the Externsteine (sad that he saw that special place so negatively…there was clearly something lacking in his soul), a tone so urgent in his voice that the cops actually turned to look at me.

  And I fled, escaping through the hissing, boiling crowd, until, heading north, I once more passed the Paderhalle, just in time to witness a sight which made the fate of Cleves seem positively benign. For Nicky Hooden was banging on the doors of the Halle. Perhaps it was his distress at Funda’s rejection of him; perhaps some darker, deeper reason. Whatever the case he now publicly sought, nay demanded to join the Lepers, ignoring the fact, patently obvious to old Greybeard, that his DNA didn’t sync so well with theirs.

  The doors opened and they let him in. There were heated sounds within.

  When they had stripped the meat from his carcass they threw the bones out the door, not even deigning to make a tasty, nourishing soup from his marrow.

  * * *

  The next day, as if energized by their unexpected feast, the Sad Lepers poured out of the Paderhalle en masse, like an avalanche of resentment.

  It happened as I was heading to the periphery of the Altstadt once more on a scouting mission, and witnessed the outpouring. The wave of stink was hellish, Lovecraftian; it seemed to come from a dimension beyond Earth. I had to hold my arm across my face to keep from retching. Through the vaporous haze I saw them heading in the general direction of the Rathaus and Cathedral, and followed cautiously. Could this be the final battle?

  They were whooping and hollering like mad, finally released from all restrictions by their leadership, and I saw the police flee before them (having their orders, no doubt), not bothering to stop them from butchering hapless civilians along the way. It was left to me, an old man, to do that. I saved a woman, a solid German matron of fifty-something, from certain death at the hands of a straggling interloper, though I received scant thanks for it, as she fled in horror from my act of butchery, looking for all the world as if I were more dangerous than the one I’d saved her from. But she had been taught to think that way.

  I stepped aside from the corpse and followed the stink wave south, where I soon saw that the irresistible force of shrieking-goblin chaos had run up against an immovable object: the solid wall of Redheaded legions. The police had fled, and both sides knew this was to be a fight to the death. The trouble was, I was separated from my comrades.

  This did not prove to be an issue, however, for my other was around the opposite side of the melee, indeed, had assumed leadership of the Redheads. All I had to do was sabotage the ranks. When I fought my way through to him, we would be invincible, I knew, there and not there. The supreme state, beyond both Being and Non-Being. Mine to attain.

  But we never reached each other that day. We both did our duty, left and right with the Millwall Brick, but somehow managed never to meet in the middle. Something to do with the pile of Leper bodies there, no doubt.

  Still, I could say that from that point on, that we were back on track.

  * * *

  The police and army had been neutralized, the traitors rounded up, and the city was declared an autonomous zone under the leadership of a Redhead executive body.

  But our nemesis, the Stasi witch, was still at large, and we knew we would have to go to Berlin to hunt her down.

  9

  Peace Frog

  August

  Trans-Germanic Express.

  I changed trains at Hannover, and again at Wolfsburg, home of the people’s car, Volkswagen. I boarded the inter-city express that would take me streaming to the Hauptstadt. I had never been to Berlin before, but had purchased maps of it and the country around, and of one region in particular.

  I drifted fitfully in and out of sleep along the way, and twice when nodding awake fancied I could see a dim figure somewhere out the window. He appeared in the suburbs of Hannover, and again in the summer haze of green Saxon flatlands. But each time I looked directly at him he would flimmer away. Would he be joining me in Berlin, I wondered nervously.

  My ticket was requested on two of the three stages, and both times I handed it over laconically, keeping my head facing the window. I was contemplating the landscape, in any case…contemplating Germany, this amazing land whose inner history is richer than its outer. Surely only India could boast of a similar thing. There were many links between Germany and India, of course, notably in the works of Schopenhauer and Hermann Hesse. But has the inner, contemplative side of Germany been utterly destroyed? And if so, did it occur in the World Wars, or had it survived until more recent times? Had it been there in the 70s? I honestly couldn’t say, I had spent so little time here other than the prison months. Whichever was the case, it certainly couldn’t survive the physical extinction of the German people, a people whom the German government now oddly insisted did not actually exist. But I believe other Western governments were making similar claims about their own respective proles.

  I was in lands that had once been DDR. A preponderance of abandoned, graffiti-smeared buildings, forests of flat-blocks in the towns, after countryside similar to the West. The middling backworld and decidedly non-human views that a railway has to offer; ‘Tattoo’ and ‘Thai Box Gym’; endless bollards and abandoned construction sites.

  The train rocketed through former West Berlin like it couldn’t be rid of it fast enough, then emerged in a shiny, sterile new Hauptbahnhof, from which I got a bus through Potsdamer Platz, an overdeveloped and Americanised district that had once been part of the Niemandsland between East and West, then into Berlin-Mitte, the city’s historic centre and heart of the old East Berlin. Everywhere were pointless diggings, like the offerings of ants. Everything they could be digging for was dead. The sun a strange yellow, and a feeling of unease in the air; a feverish feeling close to panic. And yet the marching rows of buildings seemed happy enough, like cows munching in the sun.

  Outside of Mitte these partly gave way to the ‘Stalin-Gothic’ style. A number of old buildings had been converted into art galleries or nightclubs, whereby Berlin experienced an eternal summer of self-proclaimed ‘cuteness’. This was not a city that would yield to me readily, not at all like Paderborn. And yet, the superficiality only permeated so far. There were other layers. Ghosts, gloomy underpasses, car parks. Old apartments with elegant fittings and nothing but the dark outside.

  And there were goths.

  B
ut they looked nothing like Funda. They had a nervous, rather empty look, like small marsupials, I thought. They looked like they would be swallowed up by this enormous city that smelt like concrete dust.

  My thoughts returned to Funda, and of the letter I meant to write her when all this was over, although I had no idea what her address was (she had moved out of the flat she shared with Gleb after being doxed). A letter explaining why she was the mother of humanity. I feared she wouldn’t understand, and so wished to make my thoughts green and red in the letter, like a knife of bloodstone. Because I have gone beyond red towards green, which is the true gold. I am a time bomb. Our generation, my generation, thought it would the first to live forever, but was mistaken. While Greybeard, as a star, is immortal, I realize that is not ‘me’. Our experiences, many stupid and sordid, are being shorn of their dross, and entering into the inter-generational memory, the human-akasha if you will, but ‘we’ will be no longer.

  Those few of us, so very few I fear, who did hold a torch must now pass it. My torch I pass to Funda, then Greybeard will disappear into ether, into everlasting fog, thanking her for the interstadial which, along with pure blood-thought of revenge, helped him carry aloft his sense of mission.

  * * *

  I boarded another bus, this time for a place called Spreepark, taking heed of bird flocks over the city. Abandoned buildings, abandoned fair grounds, and a walk that took me past an old, decrepit building.

  And there I saw it – a faded oil can.

  It was two-stroke oil, for a filthy Trabant.

  A chill hit me in the pit of my stomach.

  I picked it up and sniffed at it. Any residue was long gone, the bottom half-rusted away, but I could imagine the smell, recalling it so vividly that the very act of imagining made certain things come flooding back…and time’s curtain suddenly parted for me, as it had for the Two Ladies of Versailles.

  But, as in their case, something felt WRONG.

  Though the curtain had parted, I couldn’t walk through it. There was a heavy oppressive feeling I had never known before, nor even suspected. Not sorrow, but a depression that turned my bones to lead. I looked across what had once been a fairground, and saw people in DDR drab, walking with eyes to the ground. Many had a rich inner life because the outer had been stifled; the exact opposite of the West. But others were completely degraded.

  I shut my own eyes, focusing on an imaginary spiral at the back of my lids. And when I opened them, was back in the present. The feeling of oppression had gone, replaced by a sense of complete calm.

  And there ‘she’ was, as the papers had said she would be – Rosenzweig – across the other side of the Spreepark, attending the ribbon-cutting for a projected reopening of the fairground, slated to take place next year. I had been concerned she wouldn’t show, but there she was in all her disgusting glory.

  I still had no crystal idea of what to do. I had hoped to improvise something on the spot, allowing for circumstance, but the latter was more favourable than I had thought. In short, her official car, with government plates, was someway from where she was, hidden from view of the gathering behind a matted grove of trees. I tapped on the door, and the driver opened it. The Millwall cudgel cracked him around the head. With great exertion, I dragged the unconscious man to the grove, taking off his uniform and tying his arms with my shirt, before stuffing one of his own socks into his mouth. His breathing was regular, but he didn’t seem like he would wake anytime soon. In any case, I had little sympathy for someone who would take employment from this Hexe. Far better to be honourably unemployed.

  Still panting from the exercise I donned the man’s jacket, trousers and hat. He had close-cropped hair, and I doubted she would know the difference from the back unless she looked closely. And I was right.

  Five minutes later she got in.

  She made some peremptory and patronizing remark, to the effect that I was to drive her back to her office. Time had not dimmed her arrogance…though neither had it magnified it, because that would be impossible. I had checked the fuel gauge, which fortunately enough was three quarters full. Everything was falling wonderfully into place. My only worry was that she might be carrying a gun, but I would just have to risk that, having faith in the will of Aquarius.

  My concern was unfounded, in any case. The minute it became clear to her that I was heading out of Berlin, she began to screech at me.

  ‘Where are you going, idiot?’

  ‘I thought we could spend some time in the countryside,’ I offered, affably enough, in English. When she realized I was not her regular driver, and that I had central-locked the doors, she began to panic, pulling out her phone. I had anticipated this, and pulled swiftly to the side of the road (the brakes were fantastic on this late model Mercedes). I turned around and confiscated the phone, pocketing it, though without looking her in the eye, for I was worried that if I did so I would begin to act prematurely.

  Then I pulled out, accelerating smoothly back into traffic, my eyes flicking constantly from road to mirror, watching carefully to make sure she did nothing foolish. I looked closely at her face for the first time. It was wrinkled with age, and to my surprise she seemed weary and resigned, or was she merely biding her time? How I wished she would tremble, or at least show a sign. I was sweating, almost as if I were the prisoner again. Never, I vowed through gritted teeth. Never would I show weakness or humility before this vile cunt.

  ‘What is your game, then, and where exactly are you taking me?’ she said in perfectly good English.

  ‘To the ruins of the Stasi prison where my love was executed so long ago.’

  Rosenzweig’s eyes widened. She looked almost amused, in a cankered, washed-up way.

  ‘You are…who?’

  ‘Greybeard.’ The name obviously meant nothing to her…but then something clicked in her eyes, perhaps due to the fact that I was English.

  ‘You are the criminal who is wanted for questioning in regard to right-wing extremism?’ Her lower lip stood out, cold and reptilian, as she spoke.

  ‘You mean hippy normalcy. Actually, I think you will find it is you who are wanted for questioning…in regard to the murder of my grandson, and of other Europeans.’

  She snorted violently.

  ‘You’re insane,’ she scoffed, completely sure of herself.

  ‘I am sane.’

  ‘No. In the old days you would have been locked in an institution.’

  ‘In the DDR?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was locked in an institution in those days, though not for anything I actually did.’

  ‘Too bad for you. So you take your angst out on Germany. By committing more crimes, no less.’

  ‘What I have ‘committed’ is justice.’

  ‘No. It’s crime. It is the people you are harming.’

  ‘I have sought to protect the German people.’

  ‘The German people,’ she sneered. ‘I was talking of the people.’

  ‘Oh yes, I forgot you’re a cosmopolitan now.’

  ‘One of the few mistakes we made in the old Republic was the insularity of our outlook, almost bordering on nationalism in some cases. This wasn’t my fault, needless to say. But not all comrades were improving enough. Anyway, we’ve left that behind now, for better or worse. Undoubtedly for better.’

  ‘You’re saying Merkel’s Germany is an improved version of communism? What about the advertising billboards, the private corporations?’

  ‘They’re not so bad, taken for all in all. They aren’t what is important.’

  ‘What is important?’

  ‘That we erase all false consciousness in the general populace. That we…’

  I had heard enough. I instructed her to be silent for the rest of the trip. She glowered. I was on heightened guard lest she tried anything, but she didn’t. Why not? I half suspected her arrogance was so vast that she literally didn’t believe I was capable of killing her.

  And, in a sense she was right…for I didn’t
plan to do so.

  * * *

  We reached the building.

  It was derelict now. The prison where I had been held must look similar. It was here that my love…

  So grey, so very grey. Soon to be splashed vivid red.

  ‘Please, wait here,’ I said.

  ‘What are we waiting for?’

  Then my double stepped out from behind the ruined building, and plunged a sword into the bitch’s entrails.

  And thus perish all enemies of Greybeard.

  The glint of the sun on its steel blade as she writhed round, clawing at her guts, ushered holy memories of my girl dancing in a sunlit field, now forever part of me.

  And my double and I merged again, neither here, nor not here. And the girl came out of me and took my hand.

  I pierced the curtain, and the gold of autumn came rolling in like thunder.

  September 2017

  By the same author

  THE HUNGRY WOLVES OF VAN DIEMEN'S LAND

  The first in the Wolves of Joy trilogy.

  A group of Tasmanian millennials launch a war against the globalist establishment.

  "The Hungry Wolves of Van Diemen's Land is the first book I would lend to someone who wanted to understand those who eschew the hypocritical Zeitgeist of the baby boom generation. Anyone who is questioning the system’s narratives relating to history, to current events and to the “inevitable” future that the system would like to put in place. Anyone on the brink of awakening..."

  - Juleigh Howard-Hobson, author of “I do not belong to the Baader-Meinhof Group” and Other Poems