These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

He stops. “Of course he isn’t a Nazi. ‘Too’?” Jasmine doesn’t say anything. “I’m not a Nazi,” he says quietly. “Would it matter if I blamed it on the drugs?”

“No.”

“No,” he shakes his head, “quite correct. You’re absolutely right. I made the choice to take the drugs, didn’t I, so whatever bloody stupid things I do or say when I’m on them, well, then it’s on me, isn’t it.”

“That’s actually very sensible,” she says.

“I’m. . I’m. . sabotaged by my impulse to be flamboyant about everything. But that whole sodding business about that so-called Nazi salute at Victoria Station,” he argues fiercely, “was bollocks! On the life of my four-year-old son, I was waving to the crowd. Look at the fucking photo! Look at my bloody hand — it’s no Nazi salute. A wave. Whatever other awful thing about me that you believe and that I no doubt deserve, you must believe at least that.”

Impressed by the ferocity of his defense, she says, “I do.”

“The whole Nazi business. . ” he says, trying to shoo it away like a fly, “I was just fascinated by. . by. . by the. . romanticism of it—”

“Romanticism?”

“Of course. Nazism is extraordinarily romantic. It’s King Arthur and all that. . and what was King Arthur anyway but Jesus in armor, with his twelve knights? I understand how grotesque and destructive it finally all became. . ” Defeated, he sees the look on her face. “I know it’s evil. I know what happened. Bloody hell,” he continues quietly, “look, Jasmine. Can I call you Jasmine?”

“You know you can.”

“I need to get out of this steaming shit pile of a city,” he says with new intensity, “away from the coke, away from the pills. Away from the sirens, the fucking limos cruising the Strip. . get to Berlin where I can clean up—”

“Think they don’t have any drugs in Berlin, do you?”

“Yes, yes, I know — they have drugs bloody everywhere, don’t they? But Berlin is. . ” He ties his robe around him more tightly and for the first time doesn’t start over the record on the turntable. “. . attached to the rest of the western world by a thread of track and highway, like the balloon on the end of a string, isolated, besieged. Haunted, insolent, bold. Divided down the middle — like me. Listen, Jasmine. I need you to fly. . do you fly?. . to Frankfurt and take the train to Berlin and find a place for us to live. For you and me and Jim, I mean. Somewhere not too far from the Hansa studios. . do you know Hansa?”

“A German label, isn’t it?” she says.

“They have their own studio at the south end of the Wall so we need something accessible. Of course I’ll pick up your expenses and you’ll have a month to track down something simple, in an interesting part of town but functional, anonymous, where one can go to a market and buy tea. Nothing extravagant, nothing rock-star. I mean that. I’ve never meant anything more seriously.”

“Wait.”

“Jim and I will be in France a bit, another studio north of Paris where we’ll be laying some basic tracks. . but we’ll be coming—”

“Wait!”

“—by train and boat. What?”

She realizes she doesn’t know what. “Nothing.”

“Right, then. A new chapter! a new town, new career. . ”

“On one condition. . ”

“Oh yes, yes, I know,” he says impatiently, waving it away, “listen,” and in the brown light through the blinds he looks at her, “I can only guarantee that’s not my intention and I shall never, never, never. . ” he waves again. “Just. . I’ll never, that’s all. I’ll never. Whatever. Who knows, right, luv? And Jim’s a perfect gentleman, I might add, for a bloke who has the biggest cock in the history of rock and roll, and that includes Jimi.”

“Should I even ask how you know this?”

“Luv, everyone knows this.”

Within a single breathtaking hour she has in her possession a cashier’s check for $15,000. Bundling up the books and records she can’t bear to part with and sending them onto Berlin, Jasmine has the idea to give the rest to Kelly; but sitting in her car watching the house where she lived for three years, trying to summon up her courage, she hits the gas at first sight of the other woman. She listens for the tune of “Tezeta” coming from her womb, but hears nothing

She leaves like someone who’s set fire to the building. Spends the night in the car before dropping it off with the Korean couple to whom she’s sold it, then the last fifteen hours in the Lufthansa terminal waiting for her flight. When the plane stops over in London, she’s mildly startled that her old city fails to beckon; from Frankfurt she takes the train through the long hundred-mile outdoor tunnel that runs from West Germany to Berlin. She takes a room at a small hotel off the Kurfürstendamm and retrieves her books and records.