“Everywhere you go?”
“But naturally.”
This made him sigh too.
Once the brain doctor developed a theory and became excited. He said:
“Perhaps this American rock star represents the wild and uncontrollable life force. In seeking to confine and sanitize him, you are actually seeking to repress your own dark urges.”
By now I had had enough. I rose and made a little speech which embarrassed me at the time but which afterwards I was glad to have made. I said:
“I do not wish to cast aspersions, Doctor, but you have the soul of a textbook and are without poetry. No man can plumb the mysteries of the human heart and some things cannot be explained by your blots and your test tubes and your obsession with the unmentionable parts. I do not know why I wish to wrap Roy Orbison in clingfilm, but I know that it is what I was born for and that it would be a very beautiful thing to do.”
And I bowed coldly and left.
Jetta was the only one who understood, and I am not sure even she understood completely. Still, a terrapin will not judge you as long as you feed her worms and take her for walks occasionally and redecorate her bedroom when she seems dissatisfied with it.
But even in those dark days there was always the hope that one day I would meet Roy and that he would allow me to wrap him in clingfilm.
Now that hope has been and gone. There is nothing left for me. In the extremity of my despair I contemplate committing suicide.
Of course the problem would be the disposal of the body. It would be impolite and unhygienic to leave it for someone else to find.
I consider drowning myself in the ocean but then remember I cannot swim. I would therefore be unable to get far enough out to ensure my body would not be washed up on shore or tangled up in someone’s paddleboat or give a sudden unwelcome shock to someone floating happily on a pool mattress. I consider jumping off a cruise liner far out at sea but my absence at the dinner table would be remarked upon and I would put the stewards to much trouble searching for me. I could of course leave a note but the captain, chefs and so forth would doubtless believe my death was due to some failure on their part and so become a prey to gloom and despond.
Another plan that occurs is to kill myself after first tying myself up inside a trash bag. This would be left on the doorstep in the ordinary way for disposal by the designated authorities. At first this seems an excellent solution. I fetch trash bags and after several attempts learn how to tie them up from the inside while I am curled up within them. There is then some difficulty in releasing myself from the bag. When I do so I see Jetta has woken up and is watching me. She does not look approving. In fact she gives me a look such as the brain doctors would give me or such as my wife would sometimes give me before our divorce.
I realize I will have to tie myself up inside the trash bag outside on the street, as once I am inside the trash bag I will not be able to open the door and leave. However, it cannot be tonight, as it is not the designated night to leave the refuse outside. I may have finished with life myself, but that is no reason to disfigure the streets for others. Moreover there remains the problem of how to kill myself once I am inside the trash bag. I could secrete a knife and stab myself in the organs once I am neatly tied up. But I reflect that it would not do to dispose of a sharp object like that in a trash bag as the trash collector might cut himself upon it. The problem seems insoluble.
Then I reflect on Jetta. Am I to leave her alone in the world? Mitzi Klavierstuhl would doubtless agree to look after her, but I am afraid her fast ways would corrupt Jetta. The only one I could trust to nurture her properly would be Roy. And without wishing to cast aspersions, even he would often be too busy with his rock star duties to have time to attend to her needs. He would doubtless have to delegate her to some uncouth roadie and she would end up some neglected backstage pet, toted round carelessly from arena to arena with the plectrums and the wah-wah pedals.
And what of Roy? Would he not be wracked with guilt upon my demise? It would not be fair to him. The more I reflect the more I realize that I have been upon the verge of an impolite and regrettable action. I decide to go to bed.
Somehow I manage to sleep a little but the next morning brings no relief from my misery. It appears I must go on living but my heart is not in it. I rise five minutes late, neglect to make my bed, and only brush my teeth casually. I even leave my shoelaces untied out of contempt for the universe. By this point in my decline I am no better than some unpleasant and dangerous beast.
However, I trip over my laces and bang my head and realize I am only harming myself by these transgressions. I must pull myself together. I must find some new purpose in life even if it is an arbitrary one.
Then suddenly I see it, the answer to all my problems: I will join the French Foreign Legion!
Immediately this resolution bucks me up somewhat. It is the perfect answer.
I am leafing through the phone book for the number of the recruiting office and musing to myself on how Jetta will look in a French Foreign Legion hat when there is a knock upon the door.
To be continued . . .
Chapter 29
I open the door. Roy stands there upon my threshold in his trademark black garb and dark glasses. It feels as though it has been a thousand years since we parted, but in fact it has not been. He is the same as ever, and yet all is terribly changed.
“Hello, Roy,” I say trepidantly. “What brings you to my house?”
“I am seeking to borrow a cup of sugar,” says Roy.
“So?” I say. “I am happy to oblige.”
I fetch the sugar from where I keep it in the back garden shed, the kitchen cupboards being filled with a more important necessity.
“Alas, my cups are in the dishwasher, and it would be irresponsible to interrupt it in the middle of the cycle,” I say. “Perhaps I could improvise a small parcel or twist of sugar by wrapping some in clingfilm.” I pause and eye him keenly. “If you do not violently object to that,” I say wryly.
Roy makes a distracted gesture. “The need is not pressing. I am content to wait for the dishwasher to fulfill its natural course. Indeed I confess the request for sugar was a ruse. I had hoped for the opportunity to linger and indulge in polite chit-chat.”
“Very well,” I say, somewhat frigidly. “Although I am not sure what there is to say to each other.”
“I had envisaged making urbane small talk on topical matters of the day.”
“Also? I will endeavor to oblige. Of course I am a rather stupid person who has ideas about wrapping people in things they do not wish to be wrapped in, so my talk may not be very urbane,” I say somewhat bitterly.
“I will make allowances,” says Roy abstractedly.
I raise an eyebrow and nod.
“Then if you will please to sit.”
“I will do so.”
Roy Orbison sits down on my couch. I sit opposite and drum my fingers on Jetta agitatedly.
“Hroswitha Bienenstock on Raus Schnell Düsseldorf predicted a fine day,” says Roy as an opening gambit. “She is not so reliable as Mitzi but is generally to be depended upon.”
“I hope she is squashed by a falling meteorite,” I say.
“Also?” says Roy, his trademark glasses not quite masking his surprise. Jetta, meanwhile, seems to stiffen with shock beneath my touch, although it is hard to tell because of her terrapin carapace. “That is an unusual desire. Perhaps an inaccurate prediction of hers led to a ruined picnic or dampened shopping expedition once?”
“I have no personal animus against her but she is a pointless person, not even aware of her own pointlessness, just like everyone else in this wretched municipality,” I explain. “The whole of Düsseldorf should be smothered in volcanic lava or devoured by a giant sea monster that has wandered too far inland.”
“Also?” says Roy. “That is an unorthodox point of view.”
“It is, but I cling to it tenaciously. Furthermore if you say ‘Also?’ once m
ore I will rip my own ears off and stuff them up your nostrils.”
There is silence for a time. Roy sits impassively like an unfeeling, uncaring, insensitive brute of a black-clad stone statue.
“I believe the dishwasher has finished,” he says at last.
“I hope it is trampled and violated by Mongol horsemen,” I say spitefully.
The room seems to spin around me. I am appalled at my lapse from urbanity but I do not seem able to help myself. I appear to have turned into some unreasoning beast of the hinterlands. With an effort I pull myself together.
“Forgive me, Roy, I am not myself today. The fact is I have recently suffered a disappointment that has killed all my joy in life, but I should not have taken it out on you. I am at a loss how to atone for this lapse unless I join the French Foreign Legion and work out my penance fighting hand-to-hand against endless waves of unkempt dervishes.”
“And I may come with you,” says Roy quietly.
“You?”
“The fact is the request for polite chit-chat was also a ruse. I sought out human company since my own was unbearable. I am consumed with remorse for my lapse from manners last night.”
“Also. . .” I say. I affect nonchalance and stroke Jetta’s nose idly. “That is most interesting. Pray continue.”
“Yes,” says Roy, rising and pacing. “In effect I deprived that man of his briefcase through my heedless impatience to be off. Moreover I was unconscionably rude to the Rolling Stone reporter. If I disdain the hardworking gentlemen of the press I will lose touch with my fan base. I seem doomed to become an incurable egotist, recording sprawling three-hour experimental albums and trampling infants in the street.” He stifles a moan and wrings his hands.
This was not the confession I had expected or hoped for, but I am moved by my friend’s agony and instantly set aside my own.
“Roy,” I say, “you are the most punctilious person I know. Any errors were due to tiredness and the random abrasions of a busy day. It will be easy to make amends.”
“Then you will help me?”
“But of course, Roy, that is what friends are for.” I am ashamed of my own selfishness. I am a small and reprehensible man. Roy is not just some almost criminally fascinating entity it is good to wrap in clingfilm. He is a person in his own right with hopes, fears and neuroses of his own. It comes to me that, all this time, I, ironically, have been the one that has been completely wrapped—in obsession . . . !
I stifle a moan of guilt. Perhaps only now am I coming to maturity.
“I will help you in any way I can.”
“Capital,” says Roy. “Let us be off then. The first step is to return the man’s briefcase.”
I rise and bow. “I will be ready in one moment.”
I head to the kitchen and take several fresh rolls of clingfilm from the refrigerator. After all, you never know . . .
Chapter 30
You may remember that Roy had implored my help in putting right his various social transgressions.
I may not, alas, dwell on this happy scene of reunion between Roy and myself, for the demands of my carefully crafted plot mean I must now return you to the three sordid villains.
You are, of course, cognizant that, while I as the narrator am perforce aware of their shenanigans, I in the story am not.
The three evil spies have arranged to meet the Rolling Stone reporter for breakfast at one of Düsseldorf’s many delightful open-air cafes.
These cafes and sunlit boulevards, I should reassure readers, are far more characteristic of Düsseldorf than the naked brutality of the scary part of town, which I confess owes something to my imagination. At any rate I have never been there. While my story demands a seasoning of seediness, I would not wish to basely slander my home or fall afoul of the gentlemen from the Düsseldorf Chamber of Commerce. You may visit Düsseldorf in or out of season and, provided you stick to the main thoroughfares and designated tourist attractions, you are unlikely to be molested by spies or threatened with an unlicensed sausage or encounter such harrowing scenes of degradation as I have described. If you wander off the beaten track, though, I cannot answer for what may befall—although that is true for anywhere.
“Good morning,” says the Rolling Stone reporter to the conniving villains he believes to be fellow journalists. “Did you sleep well?”
“I did, thank you,” says the spy in the trench coat and false beard, although this morning he is no longer wearing a trench coat but an ordinary tweed suit and has changed his false beard for reasons of hygiene. “I obtained a full eight hours and am fresh as a petal.”
“I slept well too, although I only managed seven hours,” says the spy who wore dark glasses and black clothing. This morning he is still wearing dark clothing, although a different suit of it, but has changed his dark glasses for a sinister monocle.
The first villain chuckles pityingly and says, “I sneer on the need for sleep. I closed my eyes for a few minutes around dawn but I never really lost consciousness.”
He is still wearing his rather soiled and crumpled trench coat and Mexican hat, as he has not even been to bed.
“Also,” says the Rolling Stone reporter, surprised. “But such behavior must take its physical and mental toll?”
“It is so,” admits the villain sadly. “I have missed out on many brutal political assassinations—I mean, exclusive newspaper scoops—due to my devil-may-care attitude toward circadian rhythms. I once fell asleep in the afternoon and so missed the climax of the council’s debate on the rezoning bill,” he adds casually, for he is a practiced liar.
Once the habit of lying takes hold of you it is hard to stop. In writing this book I myself have noted that the practice of fiction becomes addictive and starts to grow on you, and you find yourself surprising yourself by inventing things you had not in mind to do. It is somewhat worrying.
“For all the time that you have not been asleep, I notice that you have not found the time to shave or comb your hair, or even to tie your shoelaces,” says the Rolling Stone reporter dryly and with a note of disapproval.
The Rolling Stone reporter, incidentally, is dressed in a flared velvet lounge suit and silver boots, as befits one of his semi-bohemian calling.
“I had the time,” yawns the villain carelessly, “but I preferred to spend it flicking ink pellets out of the window at strangers and making suggestive remarks to my chambermaid. To tell the truth, I have not even changed my underpants.”
The Rolling Stone reporter is somewhat taken aback by this attitude, but the other two spies have long resigned themselves to the fact that in the first villain they are dealing with some dangerous character out of Dostoyevsky.
“Be that as it may,” sneers the head villain, “while you others were indulging your bourgeois penchant for rest, I have been tirelessly plotting and scheming and indulging the brilliant but irregular fancies which come only to those lonely souls who are brother to owl and sister to bat. And I have worked out,” he concludes triumphantly, “how we may track down this Orbison fellow.”
“And how is that, pray?” the others inquire politely.
The villain places a large tome on the table, fruit of his nocturnal cogitation.
“The phone book,” he says.
“Also . . . ,” breathe the others.
To be continued . . .
Chapter 31
“But what,” says the second villain, “if Orbison has gone ex-directory? He may have lost touch with his fan base and become some snooty recluse who records sprawling three-hour experimental albums and plays croquet with the crowned heads of Europe.”
“It is not so,” says the Rolling Stone reporter. “His last single was a taut and workmanlike exposition of a classic pop sensibility filtered through a balls-out blue-collar rock attitude. He will be listed in the phone book. I take back my aspersions on your personal lifestyle,” he says to the chief spy. “Sleepless, unshaven, boorish and unfragrant you may be, but there is no one I would rather have by
my side in the trenches of rock journalism.”
In his assumed role as journalist the chief spy nods his acknowledgment of the compliment and bashfully mumbles self-deprecating remarks. “Really, it might have occurred to any of you,” he says flicking through the phone book. “Now let us see. Orbheimat . . . Orbheissen . . . Orbison D, Orbison G, Orbison P, Orbison, R, Esq.! Now we have him . . . ”
They laugh triumphantly and make to a phone box . . .
Meanwhile Roy, Jetta and I are on our way to seek the man who gave us the briefcase. We intend to start from the last place we saw him and work from there.
But as we near Roy’s house, from within comes the sound of his phone ringing.
“Ach,” says Roy, “my phone is ringing, and as ill luck would have it I am outside the house.”
“Do you happen to have your door key with you?” I say casually, fingering an inside pocket.
“Fortunately I do.”
“Yes, that is fortunate,” I say neutrally, studiedly primping Jetta’s claws.
Roy lets himself into his house and courteously bids me enter. We go into the living room and he answers the phone.
“Here is R. Orbison,” he says.
“Good day, Mr. Orbison,” says the chief villain smoothly. I, as the novelist, cannot help knowing this, and yet I in the story hear it only as an indistinct burbling I politely try not to listen to.
“How may I help you?” inquires Roy.
“I represent a small consortium of journalists who wish to interview you,” lies the baddie. “Among our number we represent such influential organs as the Düsseldorf Zeitung and Rolling Stone magazine. Would you be interested in an informal question and answer session regarding your new tour, or have you become the sort of snooty recluse who will only talk to the crowned heads of Europe?”
“I have no contempt for the humble foot soldiers of the Fourth Estate,” says Roy. “I am happy to grant you an audience.”
“Capital,” says the spy. “Perhaps we should arrange a venue. Would you agree to meet me on a sinister patch of deserted waste ground at midnight?”
Ulrich Haarbürste's Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm Page 12