My Little Armalite (20 page)

I laughed. Another man drawn into the fight. The war spreads. The more the merrier. I leaned on my own horn when a Volvo blocked me, and got a vicious silent snarl for my troubles. Excellent!

Suddenly my head was filled with voices.

I pricked up my ears. What was this? Was my tiredness getting the better of my mind? As I hunted for a gap, the words grew clearer.

I seemed to have been patched in to the heads of every other man in every other car I could see. I

was
every other man on the road. I knew their hearts. And I knew they knew mine. For us all, this was no mere journey to the office. It was our primordial
breakfast before the reasonable day's work, a dawn enactment of the lunatic zero-sum psychodrama called maledom.

—Oh yes, the Mondeo's showing just why it was car of the year all those years ago.

—Ha! Who says diesels are sluggish?

—Does he really think that heap of French crap can mix it with an Audi?

—And just
slides
in there ahead of the Toyota! Oh, nice move.

—He may not have a turbo but, boy, has he got guts!

—'Fraid not, mate.

—Baby on board? No you fucking haven't

—Oh, did I cut you up? Soooo sorry, you little cunt.

—Already gained at least three places by that neat little manoeuvre!

—What you fucking doing
braking on amber
, you stupid fucking …

—You want to have a fucking go, do you, my lover? Fancy your chances, do you, you fat fucking cunt? This time tomorrow I'll be blasting away with a fucking Armalite in Vegas, so you just watch your fucking …

I lapped up the voices and smiled. For the first time this millennium, I lit a cigarette in a car. I buzzed down my window so that I could drive with my right elbow leaning out, trailing smoke signals of twentieth-century hardness. It was a tad chilly and damp, to be sure, but what did I care? I was a man again, no geeky neurotic, but the tough sports commentator of my own life-as-a-game:

—Yes! He makes it through just before red! Talk about nerve! And that was vital! The BMW thought he'd really lost him then, but think again, mateyboy! A
bit of a plodder
? I don't fucking
think
so!

Some of us soundtracked our attacks with rap, some of us went to war to Wagner, some did battle under the cheesy banner of Queen, but all of us were men with their own eagles and trumpets. I flicked my CD player on and selected disc three. Ah yes, Beethoven 5/ Kurt Masur/ Leipzig Gewandhaus/ DG, 1988, splendid, and that's D for Deutsche and G for Grammophon, not for Dolce & fucking Gabbana, arseholes! Only the best is good enough for the workers! Knuckle under? Eat sand? Better death, whether by a Trojan spear, a rival gang member‘s bullet or a BMW on a wet November morning. Give in? Not yet, not yet!

On perhaps the fifteenth lane-swap, fate intervened in dramatic fashion. An Alfa in the BMW's lane stopped dead and the driver raced frantically round to his boot, phone jammed to ear and face twisting away from the the rain, to check for something whilst simultaneously trying by desperate shouts and smiles to pacify what was clearly a screaming baby in the rear seat. What an arsehole, ha ha! The queue behind him was thus held up by at least thirty seconds, which even at our once again lower speed represented at least ten yards. They all went ape, of course. I cruised triumphantly past the BMW at last, my stream of traffic doing a good half a mile per hour better than his, all his extra horsepower completely in vain. I smiled at him and saw his feeble hatred: oh joy!

But I, Dr John Goode, PhD, being an expert in deferred gratification, also thought ahead, beyond my immediate moment of triumph. We were approaching a set of traffic lights. After them, I could see that the
road narrowed quickly back down to one lane. Who knew what would happen as the lanes merged? I might find that one of the people in front of me was too polite or too slow away from the lights. A woman, maybe, or even, God forbid, a learner. The BMW might yet be able to draw ahead before the lanes merged and muscle back in, ahead of me for ever. Imagine his face as he slid past! No way could I let that happen. No, if I could cash in my lead right now, and get in front of him but
in the same lane
, while he was not expecting it because my lane was still moving faster, he would have almost no chance to get back at me. I would have won.

Of course, the actual moment of vacating my lane was fraught with danger, but my plan was based on absolute surprise. As we neared the lights, I took a calculated risk and simply bullied my way, without indicating, in front of the car which lay ahead of the BMW. This car was a Toyota driven by a woman and so obviously it did not count: she was a mere collateral sufferer of our manly engagement. She braked an inch from my passenger door. I apologised profusely with gestures to her, but my eyes were all on the BMW.

He reacted, as I knew he would have to, but ha! He was too slow, as I had guessed he would be, the boring fat bastard! Too scared of a shunt, he thought twice about moving out and actually looked round backwards to check before he made his move. Pathetic. By the time he jumped, he was too late. Stuck halfway, he made a complete and undeniable arse of himself. As we stood at the lights I gloated and laughed.

I could not resist it. I turned Beethoven up to the limit, clicked off my seat belt and got halfway out of the car, continuing to make Mediterranean signals of guilt and remorse to the woman in the Toyota until she waved me away with a faked and weary smile. But of course,
I had not really opened my door and got the right half of my body wet just to say sorry to a
woman driver
. No, this was man stuff.

I was armed.

Yes, I had in my hand the bonnet badge of my Mercedes. When my defeated enemy could bear it no longer and caught my eye at last, as he had to, I kissed the chrome star and held it mockingly up to him, making big
wanker
signs with my free hand amidst the crushing blasts of Beethoven.

Ha!

Interviewer: So, what is the cure for stress, Herr Nietzsche?

Nietzsche (cackling insanely): Ze cure for stress? Victory!

My unloved home loomed up before me, and I parked very, very carefully. With my finger and thumb, as if shrouding an unspeakable corpse, I shrinkingly tweaked the black bin bag back over the snout of the Armalite so that nothing could be seen from the street. I locked the car and went inside.

The house ticked with silence, impossible mosquitoes hummed at the edges of my hearing. I shook my head, ducked it to avoid hitting the stairs, and settled myself before my laptop, to book the inescapable trip to Las Vegas.

I took a savage delight in my unsafe surfing. I needed no precautions because the laptop was already doomed. Bill Gates could do his worst, I was a free man now and could look at whatever I fancied.

I advance-googled
Armalite shooting Vegas
and immediately hit the jackpot. There, to the right of the results (the
Leaving Las Vegas Bar Experience
, the
Erotic Las Vegas Experience
and suchlike), was a paid ad for
RimShot Tours to Las Vegas and Prague from the UK
.

I leaped to my feet, poleaxing myself once again on the woodwork.

Prague, of course!

Still unable to stand and blinded with the pain, I nevertheless rejoiced.

Prague was perfect. Prague was once an Austrian owned, German-speaking city. I could later make up a million reasons for why a German lecturer would go there, without having to invent (and then back up!)
wild tales of prostitutes or gambling. Though that would, in its way, have been quite fun. Prague was so much easier. There is Kafka, obviously. History of the World Wars, easily. Fall of Communism, naturally. And Panke!

Prague is only two hours from Dresden, and Dresden, after all, was where Panke lived and worked. It would be so easy to claim that I had gone to try to see the man who was the centre of my life's work. —
Having decided to go to Dresden, officer, I realised that I should perhaps visit the … museum in Prague
. Yes, that would be utterly watertight!

I crawled, groaning but triumphant, back on to my beloved chair and summoned up the Prague website.

Shoot in Prague! Short, cheap flights! Better beer and cheaper clubs than Vegas! Advance booking not always needed! Ideal for stag nights! Try out the world's most awesome weapons! Rambo's Kalashnikov, Clint's Magnum, Arnie's
Terminator 2
pump-action shotgun, US Army's Armalite, we got the lot!!! Sandwich and beer free with every booking! Free places for group leaders!

Christ, Kafka's bloody city, where I had stood almost alone in the famous square at night, back in 1987, now a mere haven for stag nights, pole-dancers and gun freaks! The unacceptable face of freedom!

However, what had to be done had to be done. I found the sites for the Prague City Museum and Kafka's Library. I made minimalist enquiries about opening times to both
info@
addresses. I then booked a single flight to Prague, returning from Dresden, and a train ticket from Prague to Dresden. Finally, I prepared a cunning email to Panke. What fun to actually employ
one's cleverness for once! My note stated clearly that I wanted to just discuss some points face-to-face before finalising my Very Important Paper on his life and work; that I would be flying to Prague this very morning because I wanted to check a reference for a possible future article on Kafka, and that I would be catching the 17.56 from Prague, arriving Dresden at 20.15, and staying in the hotel opposite the restored Frauenkirche. I hoped he would be able to meet at such short notice, I concluded.

I blipped the email off and cc-ed it both to my university address and to our departmental secretary. Who cared what the reply (if any) was? I now had an utterly believable itinerary for a lecturer in German who was going to see Heiner Panke but who had just wanted to check something in Prague while he was over.

By tomorrow evening I would be home, confident in my ability to safely handle, defuse, disassemble and dump an Armalite.

Genius.

But there was something else.

What if Panke actually
did
agree to meet me?

Suddenly, I knew:
that
was what had been missing from the Very Important Paper. The tone of Panke's voice again, that rumbling fighter‘s voice that always said
we
. Never
me
, always
we
, always enfolding you in a wonderful joint adventure. —
The West needs to listen to us, little doctor. To our voice
, Panke had said, when we were arranging the details of grants and fees for Panke's trip to England in 1989. How grand it had been to be the trusted friend and publicly acknowledged intimate of a man who could say
we
like that. The tour of England, May 1989. Just before I finally dared to ask Sarah out. Just before I got my first job. From university to university, in Panke's company, introducing
Panke, driving Panke, drinking with Panke. Virtually booking my first job in advance while visiting the University of Birmingham German Department with Panke! Sleeping with the second-prettiest girls (at last!) in every department we went to because I was sat at the right-hand side of the wild, laughing Panke and they could all see that Panke treated me virtually as a near-equal! That great summer of 1989, crowned by my wooing and amazing conquest of Sarah, all thanks to the brimming confidence radiated into me by life with Panke!

—Gatwick, I ordered the cab. —No no, I don't need a quote, I know roughly how much it is. What?
How
much? Well, for … yes, yes, fine, whatever. Yes, as soon as you can.

I don't know when psychologists say that our formative years are supposed to be.

Are they those shadowy pre-school days of big places and looming faces, voices kindly or stressed? Or our first real experience of the world, when we are six? Or perhaps those long, dreamlike afternoons of bikes and reading, before sex rams its hormones into our unready little bodies? To be popular and courted at sixteen: perhaps this is all that matters? When is fate set fast? Twenty-four? Twenty-eight? Who knows? But as I entered the departures hall at Gatwick I knew one thing for certain: that whenever they may have been, my formative years had been spent in the now-prehistoric age before cheap bloody flying ate the world.

I mean, look at the bastards! I had travelled Europe by thumb and by train, when crossing borders always meant showing passports, often meant booking visas and sometimes meant interviews in cold little rooms at unearthly times of the morning with armed men standing near; when changing money could be compulsory, changing it back could be illegal and carrying Kafka could stop you getting into Czechoslovakia; when going to Prague, say, meant really, really wanting to
go to Prague
, not just clicking a bloody mouse on the next cheap weekend break that happened to take your fancy @escapeyourcraplife.com. And now all these unthinking cretins were in the check-in queue before me!

I had been quite certain that the flight would be almost empty and that I would be able to get a window
seat, maybe even one with more legroom. I mean, who would want to go to Prague on a wet Tuesday morning in November? As an experienced traveller from the lost age of interrailing, I was equipped with the vital lightweight minimum: I had my favourite, plumpest goose-down pillow with me, crushed neatly into an oversized Marks & Spencer carrier bag. Nothing more important than a good pillow on a long journey. I was planning to check in and get my window seat with plenty of time to spare, and then, gloating in the certainty of a good kip before I got there, call the Prague shooting people from a call-box right here in Gatwick. Clever, see? No records. All worked out. No wonder I had got a first-class degree!

But now I checked the desk number again, and stared. A grey coldness ran down my spine and into my knees as I saw the length of the queue. I mean, yes, of course, I had heard that Prague was a popular destination these days, and I could well recall the atmospheric place. I had stood in the deserted Wenceslas Square at midnight in 1987 and watched that strange procession on the famous clock, and yes, it had felt very special.