“Or enemy action?” says the head spy, who wears a trench coat and dark glasses, and also a sombrero, for he has just returned from fomenting a revolution in Latin America.
The dark glasses, by the way, are not nice dark glasses like Roy’s trademark ones but very evil-looking spy dark glasses.
“Whatever is the truth, the error must be corrected at once. Be they a shadowy cabal of enemies or hapless victims of the random malice of fate, they will rue the day they impeded our plans!”
At this dramatic juncture I allow you to pause for breath. I shall meet you in the next chapter when you have the strength to imbibe it.
Chapter 27
The three villains leave the cafe and make to the end of the street. They are in time to see the taxi containing me and Roy zoom off into the distance.
“Ach,” says the head spy, “thwarted.”
“I suppose we had better go home and accept defeat, then,” says the second.
“Is this how you display relentless zeal?” asks the chief villain in tones of icy malice. He is being sarcastic. “You must display more tenacity if you wish to be a fully fledged member of the Secret Society of the Black Skull of Dreadful Death.”
The second spy bows his head in acknowledgment of the rebuke.
The spies notice the Rolling Stone reporter loitering by the curb, looking after the taxi and tutting. They nudge each other and approach him.
“Pardon me,” says the chief spy, “I do not wish to pry, but may I ask why you are looking after that taxi, tutting and looking vexed? I have a reason for asking.”
“I do not object to answering your question,” says the Rolling Stone reporter. “You are prying somewhat, but zeal in my chosen profession requires a certain amount of prying, so I do not find it in my heart to condemn you. The fact is, I wished very much to speak to one of the occupants of that taxi but arrived too late to do so.”
“What a coincidence!” exclaims the spy. “My cohorts and I also wished to do so.”
“So?” says the Rolling Stone reporter. “That is indeed a coincidence. Perhaps we should tell Greta Sonderbar.”
“I do not think it is quite that big a coincidence,” chuckles the head spy. He decides to venture a little joke. “Now, if the taxi had been driven by the monster of Loch Ness, that might be of interest to Greta Sonderbar of ‘Spooky Occurrences’! ”
But the Rolling Stone reporter does not laugh. His eyes express no mirth. Coldly he says, “There are few strangers in the world of show business and I have to inform you that Greta Sonderbar is a platonic friend of mine. She has never stooped to sensationalism such as you describe and I do not appreciate your mockery of her show.”
The spy blushes and mumbles his apologies. But inwardly he vows that one day he will deliver a time bomb to the Rolling Stone reporter for failing to laugh at his joke—or at the least lock him in a dark cupboard for many days. “And there will be earwigs and damp umbrellas in the cupboard,” he mutters spitefully.
“I am sorry, I did not catch that?” says the Rolling Stone reporter.
“Nothing, I was continuing to mumble apologies,” the villain lies with practiced deception. “Without wishing to pry further, may I ask why you wished to speak with the occupant of the taxi?”
“The reason is simple. I am a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine, and I wish to interview that occupant, for he is none other than Mr. Roy Orbison, the well-known rock troubadour and man in black!”
“Also!” say the spies, nudging each other.
Hastily the leader says, “I mean, but of course! And this,” he lies easily, “is a coincidence that may well be worth mentioning to your close friend Greta Sonderbar, for the fact is my friends and I also wish an interview with this Orbison fellow!”
“Are you then journalists?”
“But assuredly,” says the spy in the sombrero. “I am a stringer for the Düsseldorf Zeitung.”
“And I am a correspondent for Mönchengladbach After Hours,” says the spy in black.
“And I write for Just Seventeen magazine,” says the spy in the trench coat.
“Also?” says the Rolling Stone reporter. “That is a surprise to me, for I had envisaged the staff of Just Seventeen magazine as being mainly comprised of young girls.”
“No, it is mainly written by men in trench coats and unusual beards,” lies the other quickly. “I have to use my imagination when describing kissing boys or having a crush on pop heartthrobs.”
“Perhaps,” says the chief spy slyly, “we should pool our intelligence. If you tell us what you know of this Orbison fellow we may be able to work out where we can find him.”
“I agree to your proposal,” says the real reporter unsuspectingly.
“Where does he live?” asks the villain. “Where does he come from? Does he have any friends, relatives, associates or pets whom he would be grieved to see menaced or locked in a dark cupboard with earwigs? I have a reason for asking.”
“It is said he comes from North America originally but nowadays he spends much time at a pied-à-terre in an undisclosed location in Düsseldorf,” says the Rolling Stone reporter. “Occasionally he winters at Baden with his mother, but they are rumored to be temporarily estranged following an incident in which he neglected to obtain her a Christmas present. As for friends, associates and pets, Yul Brynner, Jim Morrison and Mitzi Klavierstuhl of Guten Abend Düsseldorf all speak freely of him as the undisputed Mr. Fun of the entertainment kingdom. Furthermore,” he consults a notebook which he has just filled at Yul Brynner’s house, “he is known to associate with one Ulrich Haarbürste, who is described as being a local man of commendable diligence. Little else is known of this Haarbürste save that he owns a terrapin, Jetta. While this is not Orbison’s pet, he is almost certainly fond of her as she is said to be well-groomed and most ladylike in her behavior, except perhaps when it comes to eating prime Pomeranian worms.”
“You have compiled your dossier with commendable zeal,” says the first villain.
The reporter bows.
“So,” mutters the rogue, “if we cannot contrive to meet Mr. Roy Orbison given this information, we do not deserve to be called spies!—I mean, reporters,” he adds for the benefit of the Rolling Stone man. “It will not be too long before we pay this fellow a call. . .”
If this were a film, reader, I would add dramatic music at this point. . .
Or would I? Steel yourself, for worse is yet to come. How could it possibly be worse? Read on and you will see. . .
Unsuspecting of our imminent peril, Roy and Jetta and I have driven off in the taxi.
As we pull away I cannot help glancing back guiltily toward the Rolling Stone reporter, thwarted in his attempt to ask Roy various importunate questions about plectrums and wah-wah pedals, and am in time to see the three villains reach the corner and hop up and down in frustration as they see us drive off. My breath catches as I glimpse the chief villain’s headgear and I frown thoughtfully.
“You know,” I say, “I could have sworn I just saw a man wearing the sort of sombrero favored by Mexican bandits.”
“So?” says Roy.
“I confess to having a fear of Mexican bandits,” I admit.
“Who does not?” says Roy. “If they have extended their activities to Düsseldorf none of us will be able to sleep safely in our beds at night.”
Presently we arrive at the street in which we live.
“At last,” says Roy, “home and hearth, made more sweet than ever by our sundry travails and annoyances. Who would ever leave if not for the joy of coming back?”
Courteously Jetta and I escort Roy to his gate.
However, it turns out that Roy is not to reach home and hearth so soon after all.
“Ach,” he says suddenly, “I find I have left my door key on my dressing table at the concert venue. I will not soon be able to gain admittance. How ironic, to be locked out of my own home!”
“So?” I say. “Naturally I would offer you my hospitality f
or the night, but on reflection I seem to remember that the spare room happens to be piled to the ceiling with boxes of . . . various substances . . . And Jetta’s bedroom is being redecorated and she is temporarily bunking with me.”
“I can of course walk to the phone box on the corner and order a flunkey to fetch my door key,” says Roy. “But it is starting to rain and moreover if I do not soon gain admittance I will miss the beginning of Schlaf Gut, Düsseldorf. I am keen to see if Herman Umschlag mentions my concert in his topical monologue.”
I clear my throat and say, “There is one thing we might try. If I was to hurl you headfirst through your front window you would be able to gain entrance without resort to the door.”
“You have a gift for cutting through the Gordian knots of everyday existence,” says Roy. “The plan is irregular on many different levels and yet admirably dynamic. The way is plain. You will hurl me headfirst through the front window at once.”
“But hold,” I say, “it strikes me that if I do so you risk being injured by shards of glass.”
“Ach,” says Roy, “that is a drawback.”
“And yet,” I say, “I am confident we can overcome it. If there was some way we could first provide a sort of cushion or protective covering for you, that you may be hurled through the window with impunity. . .If there was something, perhaps, we could wrap you in. . .”
“If only,” says Roy.
“One thing occurs,” I say, reaching to my inner pocket. “I believe I have the glimmerings of an idea.”
“If it involves clingfilm, I do not wish to hear that idea,” says Roy.
“It strikes me,” I say, “that we have close at hand a substance that . . . I am sorry, what did you say?”
“I said,” repeats Roy, “that I will not be party to any idea that involves wrapping me in clingfilm.”
I pause for quite a long time. My palms sweat. I do not wish to believe my ears.
Presently I say, “As it happens, I believe I was groping toward a suggestion along those lines. But what can your objection be?”
“I have had enough of clingfilm tonight to last me a lifetime,” says Roy. “Although I cannot deny it has been of service to me several times this evening, after our ordeal in the back alleys I am positively averse to the substance. Not only will I not be wrapped in it, I never wish to see the stuff or ever hear it mentioned again!”
There is a long and terrible silence.
After that, things happen, but I barely notice them. Roy walks to the corner phone and summons his roadie. A while later the man appears with the key. Roy opens his door and bids me good night. I respond automatically, or at least I hope I do.
I stand there numbly for some time. Rain falls on my face, random, inconsequential, as meaningless as the rest of this joyless universe. After a time I walk home, mechanically, one foot in front of the other, dimly aware that the next day and every day after I will be required to walk to other places there is no point in reaching.
If this were a film, reader, at this point I would insert the “Funeral March.”
Chapter 28
Anyone who has ever wanted very much to wrap someone in clingfilm and then found out that they will never again be able to wrap that person in clingfilm will readily be able to understand my feelings at this point.
Life has lost its savor. There is nothing more to hope for. Everything is flat, stale and profitless. My house seems more like a mortuary than a dwelling place and my very clingfilm cupboards have become unexciting and ordinary items of furniture rather than tabernacles of unending bliss.
Of course I have brought this on myself. I am being punished by the ineluctable gods for wrapping Roy too many times in the alley and making him dizzy. I wring my hands, seized with remorse. I am a cad and a brute. But this—this is too cruel a sentence.
“Is it my fault?” I whisper brokenly, falling on my knees and gazing toward the pitiless heavens, or my neatly painted living room ceiling which is in the way. “Is it my fault he is so damn wrappable? Why did you make him like that,” I apostrophize the eternal gods, “if not for me to adorn him in clingfilm?”
I collapse on the couch, a broken and pitiful man. I cradle Jetta for support and she seeks to console me as best she can, looking phlegmatic and stoical as if to suggest that after all not much has changed and life must go on. After a while she gets tired and goes to sleep.
My eyes lose focus and I indulge in reverie. I remember how it was in the old days, the dark days before Roy walked into my life. . .
In those times life was not so pleasant because I did not have the chance of wrapping Roy and all I had were my dreams. And sometimes I told people my dreams and they would become alarmed.
I was lonely at times. People suggested that I take a wife and this seemed to be a thing to do. I made experiments in that line but it did not work out because the woman was not interested in playing certain little games I was interested in playing, dressing-up games and so forth.
One day when I had confessed my dreams to someone it was suggested I should visit a group for those with uncommon desires. At this club people who wish to do statistically unusual things meet to chat about it and reassure each other they are not so strange. To speak frankly, and without wishing to cast aspersions, I find them a bunch of weirdos and hug Jetta to me for protection.
There is a retired police inspector who thinks that the sum of human happiness would be to tickle his own ears with sprigs of parsley while a Latvian cleaning woman with an enormous bosom belches in his face. Although he is filled with shame and fear for his reputation at this unnatural longing, he has hired several such women to clean his house and plies them with gaseous foodstuffs and fizzy drinks but so far has had no joy. The hard bit is to find excuses to lurk around them and always be casually scratching his ears with parsley without arousing their suspicions.
“Last week Lizina did a small burp,” he says once, “but she stifled it almost immediately and she was not facing in my direction. Still in my excitement I got parsley lodged in my eardrums.”
We commiserate politely on his near-miss.
There is a woman who once had a dream that a bishop with a long nose sidled up to her in a crowded tramcar and slyly put jelly down her dress while humming the William Tell Overture. She found this the most erotic sensation ever and now forlornly hopes that it may one day come true and spends many hours optimistically riding trams around Köln Cathedral, to no avail.
There is a man who gets his jollies by walking around town with bananas concealed down his socks and another who likes to bounce around naked on a space hopper. There is a woman who yearns to be erotically but impersonally measured by a building surveyor and there are people of both sexes who enjoy rubbing up against thrumming refrigerators. There are two people who like to pretend they are railway trains while mating—sadly they run on different gauges—and some people who like to do things with cheese.
On the third week it is my turn to confess my desire. When I do so there is a dead silence and several people leave.
I decide to enroll in a nice animal grooming class instead.
One day I become lonely and I place an ad in the personals section of the Düsseldorf Zeitung:
“Anyone who would like to be wrapped in clingfilm and is first prepared to have major surgery in order to look like a certain person contact me.
“I intend to keep you wrapped in clingfilm in my front room for a very long time indeed. I promise to make urbane small talk so as not to make the ordeal unpleasant for you and to dust you when needed.
“Must be fond of terrapins.”
There are no respondents.
At one point, for reasons I prefer not to disclose, various complicated legal proceedings arose and it was recommended that I visit a doctor of the brain.
He was a pleasant and courteous man and I did not mind our talks but often they were baffling to me. But they appear to have been more baffling to him, for he could not understand why I liked cer
tain things so much and why I had the urge to do certain things. He said he wanted to write a book about me and often he would invite his colleagues in to look at me. But in the end he became unhappy and retired from being a doctor of the brain.
I remember we played a pleasant game where he would show me cards with blots of ink and I would have to say what I thought they looked like.
“What does this blot remind you of?”
“Roy Orbison.”
“And this?”
“Roy Orbison, in clingfilm.”
“And this?”
“That is a scary and menacing blot. It is a bad man who wishes to confiscate my clingfilm.”
“And that?”
“That is obviously a hippo emerging from a mud wallow.”
“Aha! Now we may be getting somewhere. Tell me about the hippo. What does the hippo want?”
“Who can tell what a hippo wants?”
“Visualize the hippo. Where does the hippo go after leaving the mud wallow?”
“It trots a short distance into the veldt where Roy Orbison and I are on safari. It prepares to shake itself briskly to get rid of the mud. Roy will obviously be covered in mud unless it is somehow prevented. I propose to cover him in clingfilm and he assents.”
“I see.” The doctor sighs and looks disappointed. “What is this blot?”
“That is a scary and menacing blot. It is a Mexican bandit who has come to steal my terrapin.”
And so on. The doctor would often appear unhappy and confused and sigh a lot after these games. If his colleagues were there they would stare at me for a very long time.
Once he asked,
“May I ask why you brought your terrapin to this appointment?”
“It would hardly be humane to leave her in the car.”
The doctor drummed his fingers on the table.
“But why did you put her in the car in the first place?”
“Because I was getting into the car to come here.”
“Yes but . . . do you take Jetta everywhere with you?”
“Not everywhere. I do not usually go far outside Düsseldorf.”
Ulrich Haarbürste's Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm Page 11