Street Sleeper

Ten

Adolf Hitler says, ‘Without motorcars, sound film and wireless [there is] no victory for National Socialism.’

♦

There are only winners and losers, good guys and bad guys. Ishmael began as a convincing bad guy — the crazy in the customized Volkswagen, the raider, not appealing, not prime time. Marilyn’s father made a very acceptable good guy — a property owner, a company director, a businessman, an MP defending his territory and principles. And that was how the events were reported at first. Then Marilyn’s father tried to shoot an Independent Radio News sound crew who were recording an interview with Constable Peterson. Then he was the bad guy. Then they wanted a hero, so they wanted to talk to Ishmael. They wanted him to be lovably eccentric and an underdog with his back to the wall.

♦

The Berlin Bunker. Jung called it ‘a dark reflection of a universal symbol in the collective unconscious of our culture’, but then, he would. It conjures up images of stained, bare concrete, a tiny enclosed cube, a pill-box in the ruins; and we see the Führer, lonely, mad, isolated, perhaps finally heroic, going down with his city, pacing like a menagerie animal, wielding a revolver, spouting his political testament; the last man in a ruined world, the last sleeper in a dream that has died.

♦

Outside ‘Sorrento’ there was a group of photographers and cameramen and reporters, all jockeying for position by the front gate. In full view of these people Ishmael and Marilyn opened the front door, stood on the step and shouted that they wanted to talk to them. Marilyn stood in front of Ishmael as a shield, banking on the fact that while her father might be happy to slaughter reporters, police and hippies, he would hold back from shooting his own daughter. Ishmael was not certain that this was anything to bank on, but he was eager to face the press.

♦

The Bunker is the Berlin Chancellery air-raid shelter. It is a two storey construction, built fifty feet beneath the ground, the lower storey being Hitler’s domain — eighteen rooms set along a central corridor, six of them a suite for Hitler and Eva Braun. Eva has her own bed-sitting room, bathroom and dressing room. Hitler sleeps in a separate room. And there is a map room, a study, a telephone exchange, guard rooms, and a space containing a generator. There are also two rooms for Goebbels, and a room for Stumpfegger — Hitler’s latest surgeon.

On the upper floor Goebbels’ wife and his six children occupy four rooms, there is a kitchen, the servants’ quarters, and a dining room. There is also accommodation for Heinz Linge, Hitler’s valet; his SS adjutant; Fraulein Manzialy, his vegetarian cook. And there are the dogs — Hitler’s alsatian Blondi has given birth to a litter and Hitler has adopted one, giving it his own nickname of Wolf. There are also lots of visitors from the neighbouring shelters — Bormann, Krebs, Burgdorf, Axmann.

♦

The questions came thick and fast, shouted over the twenty-yard gap between the house and the front gate. Ishmael answered calmy but loudly and clearly.

Q: Are you a terrorist? Are you part of a terrorist organization?

A: No sir, certainly not. Not a terrorist, not organized.

Q: But you do have followers?

A: I have a few friends with whom I travel the same road.

But we’re motorists, not terrorists.

Q: Why are they dressed in paramilitary uniform?

A: You call this paramilitary? I call it fancy dress.

Q: Then why fancy dress?

A: It’s fun.

Q: Terrorists or not, is it true that you came here to attack the home of Mr Lederer?

A: Not true. We just stopped by for a bit of a chat. We came as pilgrims. He’s our local MP, after all.

Q: You came to discuss politics?

A: I’m afraid politics is a bit low on the cosmic scale by our standards. I was after something higher. I wanted to discuss truth, beauty, love. You know, the real issues.

Q: How far did you get in your discussions?

A: Not very far I’m afraid. We came openly to his front door. We knocked, we entered, we thought perhaps Mr Lederer had slipped out for a moment and would be back soon. And in fact he was back soon but sadly he was in no mood for discussions.

Q: In fact he appears to have thought you were out to destroy his property and threaten his life.

A: I understand Mr Lederer has been working too hard.

♦

The Bunker then, is a cramped crowded madhouse, but in Berlin in April 1945 it might not have seemed such a bad place to be. At street level the Russian air-raids continue daily, and soon the Bolshevik forces will be walking the streets of Berlin and perfunctorily sweeping aside what little resistance is still being offered by a few remaining German companies and some stragglers from the Hitler Youth.

♦

Q: Let’s get this straight, are you saying you came to ‘Sorrento’ to discuss spiritual matters and Mr Lederer and a group of his friends attacked you?

A: I couldn’t have put it better.

Q: Unprovoked?

A: Well something must have provoked him, but it wasn’t me.

Q: You seriously expect us to believe that a distinguished Member of Parliament would behave in this appalling way?

A: The road of expectations is a muddy track with potholes and black ice. I’d never met a politician until I met Mr Lederer but his mad behaviour seems fairly consistent with my impression of the average politician. (General laughter issued from the members of the press.)

Q: What do you know about the petrol bombing of Mr Lederer’s house a few weeks ago?

A: Was it petrol bombed? I didn’t know that. Perhaps that was part of the reason why he was so touchy. A thing like that’s bound to be upsetting.

Q: So why do you think Mr Lederer attacked you?

A: That’s easy. He’s a maniac.

Q: What is the connection between yourself and Mr Lederer’s daughter?

A: Our connection is spiritual, mental and physical. It’s sublime. Love is the greatest thing. It’s all you need. I’d like to tell all the viewers and listeners and readers that love is still alive in the world today. It may not be easy to stumble across but I’ve found it and so can they.

Q: Do you think Mr Lederer can find it?

A: What a very good question. Why shouldn’t he? But it may take a lot of work.

Q: Would you still like to have a ‘chat’ with Mr Lederer?

A: Sure. If he’d listen.

Q: And if he listened, what would you say to him?

♦

Eva Braun — we see a high contrast sepia photograph of a thick-waisted, naked woman caught in a dance pose, on a beach, under a streaked sky. She loves him. She has stood by her man. While Hitler was rising to power she was content not to be married. She didn’t want to stand in the way of his career. Behind every successful dictator…In the Bunker that is no longer a problem. She arrived unexpectedly and announced her decision to stay with him to the end. Love and death thrive in the ruined city. It is pure opera.

♦

A: I would say to him, ‘Sir, politics is all very well in its place, but it’s not the whole answer. We must go further, drive ourselves that bit harder. Let us be rally drivers of the human soul.’

Q: Is it true that you threw down some sort of ‘challenge’ to Mr Lederer and the Crockenfield Blazers?

A: There is one challenge I throw down and it is this: I challenge you to find the light. Look into God’s fog lamps and try not to be dazzled. Pluck out the cat’s eyes of darkness. Replace the flattened battery and the dulled parking lights of evil.

♦

Hitler is fifty-six. He celebrates his birthday in the Bunker. It is a low-key affair. Karl-Otto Saul gives him a finely-detailed scale model of a 350mm mortar. Everyone admires the gesture. Hitler tells how the previous day he was having some blood drawn from his arm in the hope of relieving a venomous headache. The blood blocked the hypodermic needle, spurted, and had to be caught in a beaker. ‘All we needed to do was add some fat and some seasoning and we could have sold it as Führer blood sausage.’

♦

Q: Is it true you used to be a librarian?

A: Yes.

Q: Why did you give it up?

A: Because the repair manual of life is too large a volume to be contained in a single library.

Q: And tell us, what is the significance of the Volkswagen?

A: The Volkswagen is the Chariot of the New Gods.

♦

And now Hitler and Eva Braun are to be married in the Bunker. Depending on your sources you may like to believe that Hitler is riddled with venereal disease, or that he is incapable of sexual intercourse, or, of course, both. Not that it matters now to Eva, not that it matters much to anyone in Berlin any more. Walter Wagner, a municipal councillor wearing a party uniform and a Volkssturm armband, conducts the wedding ceremony. It takes place in the Bunker’s map room. The couple pledge that they are of pure Aryan extraction, though Hitler of course is lying. Eva wears the black silk dress that is Hitler’s favourite. Goebbels and Bormann are the witnesses. Afterwards they retire to drink champagne and talk about the past.

♦

Ishmael was beginning to be the good guy. All right, so he’d lied through his teeth, but there is more than one way to defeat the forces of night, more than one symbolic act that can be performed. And he knew that he’d handled the press with considerable panache and charm, and as he stood there addressing his public, with reporters hanging on his words, recording them and writing them down, he felt very at home.

Night fell. The siege continued. The police trained lights on the house. Marilyn’s father and the Crockenfield Blazers were quiet for most of the night, but they would let off occasional random shots to show they were still in business.

Inside ‘Sorrento’ the siege victims gathered round the television. Recordings of Ishmael’s interview were on every bulletin. He watched himself with pleasure. He was somewhat masked by Marilyn and the sound was poor, but taking all the difficulties into consideration, he thought it was great television.

The media were now telling a simple and appealing story. Ishmael and his followers, whom the television news had dubbed the Children of Enlightenment, or even C of E, were harmless but eccentric zealots who had popped in on Andrew Lederer just at the very moment that he had gone completely off his head and started wanting to shoot everything in sight. If a passing policeman hadn’t raised the alarm there might well have been an orgy of death.

Fat Les sat in a swivel chair, drinking neat gin, and reflected that the part about the orgy of death was all too true, and he knew whose death it was likely to have been.

After a clip of Ishmael speaking there was a studio discussion with a couple of MPs and a psychiatrist and they offered the opinion that with the pressure of modern politics being so extreme it was a wonder that some politician hadn’t snapped before now.

♦

Renata and Max, her current — for want of a better word — lover, sit on Max’s tubular steel settee. They have drinks, joints, and a hand inside each other’s clothing. It is late. The Abbey Road album is on the stereo and they are watching, as they often do, a sample from Max’s extensive collection of blue videos.

♦

Night passed slowly in ‘Sorrento’. Ishmael talked with Fat Les.

‘You know,’ Fat Les said, ‘I think we were all fucking insane to be conned by your glib tongue in the first place.’

‘You weren’t conned,’ Ishmael replied calmly.

‘What could we have hoped to achieve? How could we have hoped to take on this lot? They’re armed for Christ’s sake!’

‘Winning and losing aren’t the only issues. Win or lose it would still have been symbolic.’

‘Symbolic, my arse.’

‘You had your free will, Les. You didn’t have to do what I asked.’

♦

Max adjusts the contrast as the film, which has no titles, shudders into life. There is an external establishing shot of a supermarket. A young, wholesome-looking girl in a fur coat is seen to enter. We enter with her and see her wandering between the rows of merchandise, selecting items and slipping them under her coat. The camera lets us glimpse that she is naked beneath the coat — well, functionally naked, naked but for the high heels, suspender belt and stockings that this genre demands.

She selects items carefully for their phallic nature — a cucumber, bananas, a bottle of ketchup. This goes on for a while until a man (a customer? store detective? supermarket employee? — the film fails to make this clear) begins to follow her up and down the aisles.

The glimpses of nakedness which were previously just for the camera are now directed at the man, and the girl becomes increasingly teasing and explicit. She runs the cucumber up and down her thigh and pokes it around in her pubic region. The man takes the hint and before long he is penetrating her with a handily shaped bottle of olive oil.

The girl comes to a rapid, faked, orgasm.

♦

Dawn arrived on punctured tyres. Ishmael stood in the library with Davey.

Davey said, ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

‘Go on, my son.’

‘I know fuck-all about martial arts. I enrolled for the course all right, but the teacher slung me out after two lessons. The wanker said I didn’t have any aptitude for the spiritual dimension.’

‘Oh Davey, Davey.’

On the landing Ishmael met John the Hippy. He looked downcast. Ishmael asked what was the matter.

‘I wish we’d never given you that acid,’ he said.

Harold the former bank manager walked by.

‘I still say we can make a fight of it,’ he said.

‘Bollocks,’ said the Norton twins.

As soon as it was light there was another meeting with the press. It was less dramatic than the previous one. Ishmael said he’d passed a peaceful night and had scrambled egg for breakfast. He was lying. The reporters at the gate held up the morning editions of their newspapers. Marilyn and Ishmael appeared on the front pages of most of them and one headline read ‘HOSTAGES OF LOVE-.

This time the reporters wanted to talk to Marilyn. She had washed her hair and done her make-up; for the occasion. She said she still loved her father, that she thought Ishmael was a very unusual and interesting man, and that her ambition in life was to be a writer.

They appeared on both morning television channels, and there was film of the Crockenfield Blazers holed-up in various locations around the grounds of ‘Sorrento’, though there were conspicuously fewer this morning than there had been the previous afternoon.

♦

Hitler’s nights have been pretty ragged lately, and his wedding night is no different. There are conferences to be held, attempts made at establishing radio contact, plans to be discussed, fires of hope to be stoked, traitors to be denounced. He therefore sleeps little, and when he does so it is not until late the next morning. He eventually falls asleep at seven or eight in the morning to be woken a few hours later by the sound of renewed shelling. He gets up, dresses with the utmost care and correctness, then takes breakfast — coffee and a selection of cakes, chocolate, sponge — party food.

The morning after his wedding he is seated in his study, under a picture of Frederick the Great, waiting for his breakfast to be delivered. Fraulein Manzialy arrives with a tray which is covered by a pink gingham cloth. She removes the cloth with a flourish and presents Adolf Hitler with an exquisite chocolate cake in the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle.

♦

There is a jump in the film and we now see the man and the girl riding in an open car. (Renata cannot fail to notice that it is a rather special Beetle cabriolet, in red metalflake with some tasteful black pinstriping.) On the back seat there are two boxes of groceries, and in the front seats the girl drives with one hand while manipulating her passenger’s cock with the other. There is some rapid editing which offends exact continuity and before long, before very long at all, the man is ejaculating furiously and copiously, and there is sperm dancing across the dashboard, on to the windscreen, on the gear lever, everywhere.

♦

The SAS arrived at ‘Sorrento’ at about ten in the morning. There were helicopters and men hanging from rope ladders and leaping on to the roof. There were smoke bombs, stun grenades and a few rounds of automatic fire. It all took about forty-five seconds.

Very little of the action could be seen from inside the house, but when some of the smoke had cleared it was possible to see Marilyn’s father and half a dozen Crockenfield Blazers being led away, their hands up, their eyes watering, and surrounded by armed SAS men in flak suits with black bags over their heads. Marilyn’s father was put in an ambulance and the others were loaded into a black maria.

♦

Another cut. The car draws to a halt on the edge of a desert. There is sand and scrub. The girl lies on the ground beside the car. This time she is actually naked — shoes, stockings and suspenders are nowhere to be seen. The man seems, curiously, to be fiddling with the groceries, and his reason now becomes apparent. He stands over the girl with an egg in his hand. He breaks the egg so that the yolk falls through the air and lands very precisely on the girl’s left breast — a direct hit. More eggs follow until there is a film of albumen and broken yolks over most of her torso. Events now progress rapidly. Via a series of jump cuts we see ketchup splashed around her neck and shoulders, chicken livers splattered across her thighs, honey coating her chin and cheeks. Baked beans, instant coffee, cling peaches, vegetable oil all follow until she is all but entirely clothed in this (more or less) edible silt.

♦

The front door of ‘Sorrento’ was thrown open and a sea of people flooded into the house. Photographers, cameramen and reporters were at the front of the mob, closely followed by police. Behind them were the ambulance men, the firemen and the sightseers from the village, and finally there was a number of men in very sharp suits with very sharp haircuts, and guns spoiling the neat lines of their jackets.

Everything got filmed and photographed — Marilyn and Ishmael, alone and together, with Fat Les and Davey, with other members of the commune. The house got photographed — every room, including Marilyn’s mother’s exotic bedroom — the garden, the drive, the wagon wheel gates and of course the five Beetles.

Ishmael and Marilyn posed in front of Enlightenment and answered a few last questions. Marilyn took care of the bright, breezy banter, Ishmael restricted himself to hammering home the spiritual message. They made a good team. The media lapped it up. So did the crowd of well-wishers who had gathered.

‘Finally, Ishmael,’ a reporter from ITN asked, ‘after all that you’ve been through, what are your feelings about Mr Lederer?’

Ishmael thought long and hard.

‘I forgive him,’ he said.

The well-wishers cheered and one or two plucked up enough courage to ask Ishmael for his autograph.

♦

The man is now naked and one would assume that he is about to lower himself on to the swamp of food within which there is the naked body of a woman. But that would be a hasty assumption. The camera focuses on his penis which is only semi-erect and slowly a stream of urine emerges. The camera follows its descent and roams over the areas of the girl’s body where urine mixes with food and where a nipple or navel occasionally shows through. The girl does a reasonable job of pretending to enjoy herself.

So far the film has been unusual yet plodding. It is different from the run of the mill blue movie but there has been nothing spectacularly inventive, and nothing, as Max and Renata have been all too aware, spectacularly erotic. Certainly there has been nothing to prepare them for the extraordinary filmic coup that the director pulls off in the dying minutes of the film, a coup which completely transforms the base materials with which he has been working.

The man and woman, she still on her back, he finishing his pee, become aware that someone is approaching. There is a long shot of a stranger walking towards them. The man and woman register mimed alarm.

And then comes the master stroke.

The film suddenly switches into fast motion reverse. Urine streams back into the man’s penis, ketchup leaps back into its bottle, eggs reform themselves. In less than a minute the groceries are whole and returned to the car. The girl is still naked but her body is perfectly clean and she now (in forward motion) slips her fur coat on just as the stranger passes by. There is a final shot of the Beetle driving away along a desert road before the film ends.

♦

The police wanted Ishmael and Marilyn to help them with their inquiries. Ishmael and Marilyn wanted to sleep.

‘We were the victims of this siege you know,’ Marilyn said. ‘You’re treating us like criminals.’

A man with a sharp suit and haircut said, ‘No we aren’t, madam. We just hope you’ll be able to clear up one or two matters for us.’

‘Any objections if we go to a motel?’

‘None at all, madam, so long as we know which one.’

Ishmael said, ‘I’ve had it with motels, this time I’m going first class.’

‘Really, sir?’

‘Really. If anybody wants us we’ll be at the Kensington Astoria.’

He’d heard the name on a radio programme. They took Davey as their chauffeur. At first Ishmael felt uneasy about letting anyone but himself drive Enlightenment, but now that he was going first class it seemed appropriate.

‘What are you going to do when you get to the hotel?’ Davey asked.

‘I’m going to wait for offers,’ Ishmael said.

♦

‘Pornography is like pastoral poetry,’ says Max. ‘It must fulfil certain inviolable conditions. The rules are set. The requirements are rigid. To be inventive within that strait-jacket of form is the mark of the true genius.’

Renata sips her drink and doesn’t say anything. She has heard Max’s opinions on other occasions, knows them well, and feels that they result from too many years spent in the seminar room.

♦

They arrived at the Kensington Astoria. Ishmael asked for a suite of rooms for himself and Marilyn, and a single room for Davey. The hotel was happy to oblige. They knew who their guests were. They were celebrities. They’d been on television. Nobody asked whether they had money. Nobody told them how much anything cost. The hotel staff just said what an honour it was to meet Ishmael.

The suite of rooms was a bit ostentatious for Ishmael’s tastes. Everything was cream coloured and had mouldings. Ishmael headed for the bedroom.

‘No, Marilyn,’ he said, ‘you can’t be with me now. I need to be alone. You stay out of the bedroom and answer the phone. Tell them all I’m in conference but I’m prepared to consider all offers.’

He closed the bedroom door behind him, stretched out on the king-size bed and fell deep asleep.

When he awoke it was dark. From the sitting room of the suite he could hear a television, and Marilyn talking on the phone. He entered the room. There was mess everywhere. Marilyn was sitting on the floor amid an undergrowth of newspapers, letters, flowers, telexes, wine bottles, two video recorders and a number of telephones, two of which were ringing.

‘The phones have been jammed all day,’ Marilyn said. ‘They all want you, Ishmael. It looks like you’re a star.’

‘Who wants me? And what for?’

‘So far you’ve been offered radio spots on ‘Start the Week’ and ‘Any Questions’. They want you to read your favourite Bible passage on some Sunday religious tv programme. Radio One wants you to play your ten favourite singles of all time. You can be a guest on ‘Breakfast Time’, ‘Celebrity Squares’, ‘Call My Bluff’ and ‘Blankety Blank’.

‘The Observer wants to discuss your being guest motoring editor. You’ve been invited to address the Volkswagen Owners’ Club of Great Britain — small time, perhaps, but probably worthwhile. The Sunday Times wants to do a Life in the Day and the Sunday Express wants you for their Things I Wish I’d Known at Eighteen. Oh and the TV Times would like you to take over their problem page.

‘Then there are the people who are prepared to pay just for the pleasure of interviewing you. In the last half hour alone I’ve spoken to Woman’s Own, Penthouse, Fast Lane, the Church Times and the New Musical Express.

‘You can open supermarkets, endorse products, test-drive any car in the world, meet anyone you want to meet, have free tickets to anything, and you can have all the sponsorship anyone could possibly hope for.

‘The tabloids all want to do your story, although they all want it to be exclusive; and David Frost and Terry Wogan have both said they’ll be in touch first thing tomorrow.

‘So what shall I do? Shall I start accepting for you?’

‘No,’ said Ishmael. ‘I’m waiting for the big one.’

‘Big one?’

‘Yes, Marilyn. You and I deserve our own chat show.’

♦

‘Did you enjoy the film?’ Max asks. ‘Want to see any of it again in slow motion or freeze frame or whatever?’

‘Very weird,’ says Renata. ‘What is it about Volks-wagens?’

‘Volkswagens?’

‘The car in the film was a Volkswagen.’

‘Was it?’

‘You didn’t notice?’

‘Of course I didn’t notice. I don’t watch porn films just to look at the cars.’

‘No, I suppose most people wouldn’t,’ she says sadly.

But she would. She does. She is no longer able to walk past Beetles without noting their year and model, the variations in headlight shapes, the flat and round windscreens, the presence or absence and distribution of engine air intake slots, the design and position of rear light clusters. And these are of course only the factory variations. There is also the whole world of modification, of personalizing and customizing. Anything that can possibly be done to a car has been done to a Volkswagen — endless variety, endless transformation — somewhat like pornography and pastoral poetry.

‘Want to see another film?’ Max asks.

‘Later,’ says Renata. ‘Much later.’

♦

From being besieged in ‘Sorrento’, Ishmael and Marilyn were now besieged in the Kensington Astoria. Two days passed. Reporters camped in the lobby. There were armies of fans waiting in the street. They were still hot news.

Men belonging to arcane departments of the police force came to interview them. It was clear they didn’t for a moment believe the version of events that Ishmael had given to the media, but since Marilyn’s father was still gently raving in some private clinic, and since Ishmael was now a public figure, they seemed reluctant to bring any charges. They hadn’t worked out who had done what to whom, and they liked Ishmael’s version of events more than any other they could think up.

Marilyn had a phone call from her mother. She had been staying with ‘a friend’ when all the trouble started. She had returned to ‘Sorrento’ to find every window smashed, police still in occupation, her husband locked up and her daughter on every front page in the land. She managed to take it very well.

In the next few days Ishmael and Marilyn met producers from all the significant television companies. They arrived in a posse and lounged around the hotel suite, all brief-cases and smart but casual clothes. Ishmael had trouble telling one from another.

‘What kind of chat show are we discussing here?’ asked one of them.

‘Simple,’ said Ishmael. ‘Marilyn is in the studio with one or two newsworthy guests…’

‘But Ishmael, old mate,’ said a man with a cockney accent and a very expensive leather blouson, ‘Marilyn is very young, totally untried.’

‘That’s the deal,’ said Ishmael.

There was a grumbling acceptance of this, accompanied by the premonition that worse was to come.

‘And I am ‘our man in a Volkswagen’, ‘the man with Enlightenment’. I roam the country in a Beetle meeting eccentrics, sages, idiot savants; having insights, and sharing my inner visions with the viewers.’

‘Would you be on film?’

‘No. I’d be absolutely live. There’ll be a crew with me, hand-picked for their spiritual awareness, and they’d have to travel in Volkswagens.’

Brief-cases were snapped open, papers rattled, French cigarettes were lit.

‘And how many nights a week are we talking about?’

‘Five,’ said Ishmael.

‘And I suppose you’re talking main evening slot.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Ishmael. ‘Do you think I want to be over-exposed? No, I think late night.’

‘And how much money is this going to cost us?’

‘Ah money,’ said Ishmael. ‘It’s the root of all evil, you know. But if there are any of you who aren’t offering half a million up front then I’ll ask you kindly to leave my hotel suite.’

Nobody left.

‘Right, gentlemen. Talk to me.’

And talk they did. In the end Ishmael accepted an offer from the BBC, not because it was the highest (it wasn’t), but because he thought his mum would like that. He had been in touch with his parents, or rather they had been in touch with him, only briefly and only by phone. He had promised to buy them a detached bungalow. They said Debby was heart-broken. They said he was a heartless bastard and a bad son, and that he looked a daft sod in his leather suit. They hadn’t changed. A prophet is always without honour in the Osgathorpe family.

♦

Renata has long since completed her Volkswagen article, but the legacy is a pile of magazines containing articles on Volkswagens that Terry has given her. Some of it is dull stuff—‘D-I-Y servicing made simple’, ‘How to Cure That Flat-Four Flatspot’; but there are some issues of a magazine called Cal Vee-Dub. The title is newspeak, or she supposes illiterate-speak for ‘California Volkswagen’. They do things differently there. Cal Vee-Dub is like a girlie magazine but with salacious pictures of over-polished Beetles and over-endowed engines instead of girls. And just as girlie magazines address their readers in a heated private language, so the descriptions of California-style Beetles are written in some coded style, curiously dislocated from any world ‘out there’.

♦

Ronnie DeVoto’s ‘64 Vee-Dub is a real attention-grabber, super sano and clean to the max.

It took three years and four thousand dollars to convert a 1200cc clunker into the Looker you see today.

Brother Carl gets the credit for the trick paint-job — check out that sparkling Clementine orange and the wrap-around graphics.

The interior is decked out with buttoned naugahyde and brushed aluminum dash, while the sounds pound through a Uher 4-speaker system.

But this baby is for Go as well as Show. A Type 1 universal case is fitted with an 86mm Berg crank, Carillo 5.500 rods, 94mm Cirria pistons and barrels, and Super Flo II heads.

We like it. How about you?

Renata supposes she does. Very much. Is she obsessed? she asks herself. Is it healthy? She has even started work on a new article called ‘Fifty More Facts You Always Wanted to Know About the Volkswagen Beetle’. Her latest facts run like this:

TWENTY ITEMS THAT HAVE BEEN MADE IN THE SHAPE OF A VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE

Rings, key-rings, earrings, cakes, dice shakers, clocks, pens, ashtrays, soap dishes, belt buckles, radios, lamps, whisky bottles, pen-holders, staplers, telephones, bath mats, money boxes, paperweights, loo-roll holders.

FIFTEEN ITEMS THAT ALTHOUGH NOT SHAPED LIKE A BEETLE HAVE HAD PICTURES OF BEETLES ON THEM

Tee-shirts, sweat shirts, sweaters, underpants, blankets, lunch boxes, rulers, cushions, scarves, lamp shades, adhesive tape, tubes of glue, umbrellas, biscuit tins, postage stamps.

NINE ITEMS THAT SO FAR AS WE KNOW HAVE NEVER BEEN MADE IN THE SHAPE OF A BEETLE, THOUGH WE SEE NO REASON WHY NOT

Beds, wigs, electric guitars, fly papers, cameras, vacuum cleaners, umbrella stands, massage gloves, frisbees (although we admit that the Beetle shape might impair the frisbee’s aerodynamic properties).

Perhaps this new article is getting a little baroque. And it’s not as if she didn’t have other things on her mind — lots of things. She still hasn’t phoned her mother, she still needs a manicure, and she really does need to ditch Max. However, the main thing that’s on her mind, and she doesn’t know if this is the symptom or the disease, is this guy Ishmael. It all seems to tie in — the fact that she has written about Volkswagens, the fact that she gave a lift to one of Ishmael’s ‘followers’, and more especially the fact that she expected them to get locked up when they are not only at liberty, but that Ishmael has become some sort of quasi-mystical folk hero, some symbol of something or other. He has captured, or at least hijacked, the public imagination.

Every time she’s picked up a newspaper this last week or so he’s been there, with his Beetle and his leathers and his MP’s daughter girlfriend who wants to be a writer. It makes her angry. Yes, it all seems to tie in and in some way it involves her. It doesn’t seem to mean anything but it all ties in.

Terry, of course, has told her to go along to the Kensington Astoria and get an interview, but Renata has told Terry that getting Ishmael to give an interview these days is about as easy as getting the Pope to model swim-wear.

And all this time she has the feeling that she has seen him (Ishmael, not the Pope) before somewhere, and she becomes increasingly convinced of this, though she gets no nearer to recalling where or when. She recalls visits to parties, press launches, motor shows, even to car-parks and libraries, it would have to be at that sort of place that she saw him, wouldn’t it? She doesn’t know. She still doesn’t know as she phones her mother, and she still doesn’t know as she paints her nails. And as she picks up the phone again, gingerly because the varnish is still wet, to phone Max, she still doesn’t know.

But as Max speaks, as it flits through her mind that what she really wants to say to Max is, sorry this whole thing has just been a bad idea from beginning to end, all we have in common is drink, drugs and sex, at that moment she very suddenly and absolutely certainly knows.

‘Max,’ she says, ‘I have to come over and see you right now.’

♦

It was early evening. Marilyn and Ishmael sat together in their suite, taking a final look at the BBC contract before signing.

‘It’s going to be an awesome responsibility,’ Ishmael said. ‘I’m going to be very powerful, very well-loved, comparatively rich. I’m going to be able to change the world. I only hope I can keep my humility and the common touch.’

Marilyn poured him another glass of champagne. Late sun spilled into the room. All seemed well with the world. They were thinking that dinner wouldn’t be long away, when there was a knock on the door. Naturally Ishmael was furious. He had instructed the management time and time again to make sure they had no visitors.

‘Who’s there?’ Ishmael shouted angrily.

‘It’s me. Davey.’

Ishmael grudgingly opened the door.

‘You might have telephoned first,’ he said.

‘Then you might not have seen us.’

Ishmael saw that Davey was not alone. There was a woman with him. She carried a notebook and a video cassette.

‘All right then,’ Ishmael said. ‘Come in, but not for long.’

‘This is Renata,’ Davey said.

Ishmael said hello to Renata.

‘Renata’s a journalist,’ Davey said.

‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Davey,’ Ishmael yelled. ‘I’m not seeing journalists at the moment. How many times do I have to tell people?’

‘I think you’ll see Renata,’ Davey said, and there was a threat in his voice, a hint of ‘or else’.

‘Yes,’ said Renata. ‘You’ll see me. And you’ll see this videotape.’

♦

The film, which begins without titles, is shot from one camera position. Occasionally the lens zooms in and out, although as filmic syntax the zooms fail to articulate anything. They’re just done to relieve the boredom. The colour is bad, the lighting patchy, and the soundtrack non-existent.

The film shows a room which is elegant in a masculine sort of way — a few art deco objects, a lot of mirrors which manage to avoid showing the camera, a rattan three-piece suite and a nest of glass tables.

A bulky, middle-aged man is lying on the floor under one of the tables. He is wearing nothing but a leather dog-collar and a latex posing pouch. A second, younger, man is seen. He is removing a blue leather motorcycle suit. He walks awkwardly, reluctantly across the room to where the man and the table are. He squats above the glass top, his naked buttocks visibly straining to shit.

‘Seen enough?’ Renata asks.

♦

‘I’ve seen more than enough,’ said Ishmael.

‘Ishmael!’ Marilyn shrieked. ‘How could you do it?’

‘It wasn’t easy.’

‘But how could you do this to me?’

‘I didn’t know you then.’

‘Talk about feet of clay,’ Davey sneered.

‘I didn’t know it was being filmed.’

‘Is that supposed to make a difference?’ Marilyn demanded.

‘I never had you down for a shirt-lifter, I really didn’t,’ Davey continued.

‘I never lifted my shirt,’ Ishmael protested. ‘I just took off my leathers. My heart wasn’t in it. You could see that from the film. I was only in it for the money.’

‘Some spiritual guide you turned out to be,’ said Davey. ‘Not just an ordinary shirt-lifter, but one who does it with shit for money.’

Marilyn said, ‘Ishmael, I hope you realize it’s all over between us, instantly and for ever.’

‘Hey, don’t go all middle class on me.’

‘And what’s wrong with being middle class?’

‘Oh no,’ Ishmael moaned. Had all his words been in vain?

Renata had been watching all this with barely restrained fury. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I know there are going to be a few broken hearts over this, but really I’m more concerned with the hordes of press and the ‘fans’ who are out there dying for a chance to see you.’

‘Is this blackmail?’ Ishmael asked. ‘How much money do you want for the tape?’

‘I don’t want money, and besides this obviously isn’t the only copy of the tape.’

‘And I’d make damn sure I found one,’ said Davey. ‘And I’d make damn sure everybody saw it and knew that their new chat-show host was a filthy pervert.’

‘I’m at your mercy,’ Ishmael said. ‘Go on then, crucify me.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Renata. ‘But I do have one or two ideas.’

♦

It was just as well that Ishmael and Marilyn hadn’t got round to signing the BBC contract. The BBC were understandably furious when Ishmael informed them that he wouldn’t now be signing, and suspected some dirty trickery was taking place. But an anonymous note containing a still from the incriminating video arrived on the Director-General’s desk one morning. The BBC were so relieved at their narrow escape that they promised Marilyn a job as a researcher after her graduation, and they assured Ishmael that there were no hard feelings.

Ishmael? He turned down every deal he’d been offered. He had to. That was one of Renata’s conditions. He did no television, no radio, no interviews, endorsed no products, made no after dinner speeches. He did sell his story, however. He refused to deal with any writer except Renata Caswell of Cult Car. That surprised a lot of people.

A Sunday tabloid bought the story, paid well, and turned the story into a three-part serial. Ishmael didn’t write it, of course. Renata wrote it and he put his name to it. He had to. The story must have sold quite a few newspapers since there was still lots of public interest in Ishmael, but the story was not quite the one that people wanted to hear. It contained the hot news that Ishmael was going to renounce the world. As follows:

Today I don’t wear leather. I shave every day. I eat healthfoods and I abhor violence. I suddenly found myself in a position of potentially awesome power. I could have become an idol, an international tv star, a leader of men. But I looked into my soul and something told me that this was not the way. I found I’d made a mistake. I realized that all this pop-religion I’d been spouting was so much drivel. I had been deceiving myself. I decided not to deceive anyone else.

If I have any message left to give the world, it’s this,

Don’t follow leaders

Watch for parking meters.

Great advice even if it doesn’t rhyme.

♦

By 29 April 1945 Hitler has heard that Mussolini and Clara Petacci are dead and that their bodies are hanging in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto. He will make sure that he does not end the same way. At the very end it is Erich Kempka, Hitler’s chauffeur, who is ordered to send two hundred litres of petrol to the Chancellery garden to immolate the corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun.

Russian shells burst around the Chancellery, some unidentifiable figures stand in the garden, giving a Nazi salute. A sheet of flame leaps angrily, futilely at the sky, some failed emblem of escape.

♦

At Fox’s Farm a dozen or so sullen communards are eating curried egg while watching television. Their eyes are intent but they see only patterns and shapes. They hear words but the words don’t arrange themselves into comprehensible patterns. The curry tastes of everything and nothing. They are smashed out of their heads.

In one of the farm’s outbuildings, behind locked doors, Fat Les has spent the evening lowering a tarted Cal-look Beetle. He starts the engine. The space begins to fill with carbon monoxide. It wouldn’t be so hard after all. He turns on the car radio. There is a phone-in programme on Parkinson’s disease. He changes station. No Wagner, instead there is The Who, ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. He turns off the engine. Not worth it for the sake of that little shit Ishmael.

♦

An old man’s hands on a steering wheel, the skin mottled with liver spots, the wheel bound in textured leather. Ivan Hirst parks his BMW in a lay-by on the A57. Cars go by. Pretty people. Tanks full of petrol, heads full of lager and materialism. In-car stereos pump out middle-of-the-road music. Ivan Hirst lights his pipe, unwraps a Yorkie bar. It’s a full life.

♦

Marilyn sits at her newly acquired word-processor. She is home from Oxford for the weekend. She is attempting to be a writer. Her fingers magic-up words on the screen.

To the Germans it is the Kafer, to the Dutch the Kever. Yugoslavians speak of the Buba, the French of the Coccinelle. But by any name be it Bug or Beetle, or Maggliolino, or Escarabajo, or Fusca, the Volkswagen sits at the crossroads of history, roads that lead to Auschwitz and Hiroshima, to the concentration camp and the atomic bomb site. And there at these crossroads stood I, hand in hand with Ishmael…

§

She hears her mother downstairs. A clink of glass, a rattle of ice cubes. Mummy is making Martinis. Marilyn decides to join her.

♦

Renata is the proud driver of a Porsche 911. She has handed in her notice at Cult Car. She doesn’t know what career she will fail in next but she has enough money from the sale of Ishmael’s story for this not to be a pressing concern.

♦

Renata did slip Ishmael a few hundred pounds out of her fee. He used it to rent a caravan on a small site near Filey.

It was late in the year. The weather was cold and the rent was cheap. Enlightenment was parked beside the caravan. He didn’t use it much any more. Sometimes he would sit in the driver’s seat, the engine not running, his hands on the wheel, his mind full of old dreams. He was not ‘home’ but there was nowhere else he wanted to be.

He cooked simple meals on the Calor gas stove. Sometimes he walked by the sea. Sometimes he listened to the radio. Sometimes he read a motoring magazine. Time passed, but not quickly.

Then one day he was sitting on the step of his caravan when a red Ford Capri approached. It stopped at the entrance to the site and a woman got out. Ishmael knew her. He ought to have done. It was Debby. She had never looked better. She was fashionably dressed. She had had her hair done short and stylish. She had also evidently learned to drive.

‘Debby,’ he said, when she reached the caravan.

‘Barry,’ she said.

They touched hands and soon found themselves in a passionate embrace, holding each other desperately. They went into the caravan, took their clothes off and got into the narrow bunk.

And then Debby did a most uncharacteristic thing. Before Ishmael knew where he was there were torrents of hot semen coursing like molten lava down Debby’s moist, yielding, eager throat. She kissed him thickly on the mouth, leaving his lips streaked with his own sperm.

‘Oh Debby,’ Ishmael said. ‘There was Mount Fujiyama in my own carport the whole time, but I had to travel very far before I knew where home was.’

‘Barry,’ Debby said after a moment’s consideration, ‘you do talk a lot of crap.’

That was the nicest thing anybody had said to him for a very long time.

EOF