My Little Armalite (31 page)

Well, I tried to. But God had other plans. He had made the doors open the other way.

—Agh! God …

I came to my senses on the floor, my specless eyes struggling to focus, and found myself looking up at many unknown, worried faces and one well-known one. I watched the decision form in his eyes.

—Doktor, come to my arms, cried Panke. In a second I was indeed in them, and, for the first time ever, as an equal. —What a team we make, is it not true, my friends? How shall I follow him? he laughed. —I think I shall come to help you give your paper in Oxford after all, my little Doktor. It will be fun, no?

—God, yes, Heiner, I mean …

Panke suddenly leaned back slighty from his hug and his nostrils twitched.

—What is that perfume you are wearing, little Doktor?

For a second I was about to tell him, but I held the floodgates shut. Perhaps later, when we were alone, we would drink and I would talk.

—Oh, it's just, it's called Gunsmoke, I think. Um, Hugo Boss Gunsmoke.

—Not bad, he nodded, then clapped me powerfully and publicly on the back before proceeding into the wall of cheers beyond the door to the big hall.

The fat man beamed at me and bowed his head slightly. The tall young man was obviously having great difficulty not springing to attention at my every glance. The women smiled their lip-glossed smiles. And in my head, that noise of applause simply continued as I was passed now from smile to smile, handed from womanly clasp to manly shake to comradely clap on the shoulder, as if on a production line of respect and admiration.

Beer appeared on demand. After so many years spent steadfastly but hopelessly defending the encircled trenches of my self-regard against the ceaseless attacks of age, failure and social decline, it felt wonderful. Better than wonderful. It felt like life itself.

It felt like love.

Christ, I was living in the wrong country! Being a university lecturer still meant something here! And in Germany you were judged by what you did and stood for, not by the accent you said it all in and whether or not you had sash bloody windows.

I mean, why not just up sticks and come here and make Sarah and the boys come too? For the price of our foul little terrace in SE11 we could come here to Dresden, where I would see Heiner all the time and have this amazing status and all these smiling friends, and buy a vast flat with …

My God, Panke was coming to Oxford in person! I swung on my heel fairly successfully and, freshly glowing as I was with the hieratic nimbus of my bodyhug from Panke, addressed the tall young man with a certain curtness.

—Heiner is coming to my meeting at Oxford. I need to announce this great event to the English media. Your
BlackBerry please? He obeyed with the speed of a man who had a simple, innocent love for orders, whether giving or taking them. I had so often emailed the European editor of
The Paper
in vain that the hallowed address was by now imprinted on my mind. It was one of the few possible conduits of my salvation and I would know it by heart even on my deathbed. Within two minutes, no more, I had blipped off my tidings in appropriate fashion:

Heiner Panke, founder and leader of Germany's anti-capitalist pro-European DEBB (17 per cent last time in Dresden + tipped to beat 25 per cent regionally in upcoming emergency elections) has just confirmed that he will be in person @ my plenary address on his work @ the major Oxford peergroup conference (8–9 Dec, St John's Coll). You are heartily invited to interview him (and indeed me). (Dr) John Goode.

I then copied the body of the message (no cc-ing for such vital stuff!) and inserted it into a fresh email to
Newsnight.
Well, one hardly forgets the address of a national news programme to which one did, after all, contribute substantially not that long ago! To this version I simply added, after my name, the words
Major Contributor, ‘Checkpoint Charlie Checks Out', broadcast
5
May
1990, just in case the editorial team had changed over the past few years and were no longer quite sure who I was.

—A most useful device, I nodded, as I handed back the BlackBerry to the grateful young man and plunged into another beer. My mind was spinning with a new world of real possibilities. My name might get into
The Paper
at last. Maybe on to
Newsnight
again. Would having been twice on
Newsnight
allow me to describe myself as
a
regular contributor
to it on my CV? My God, if I played my cards right, according to Eamon's instructions …

—Herr Doktor, you were magnificent!

I refocused my eyes to make them look outwards at the world, rather than inwards at my sunlit future, and found myself in front of a particularly attractive woman of about forty who was looking at me in a particularly attracted way.

—Merciful lady. I bowed ever so slightly.

—You spoke for us all. You know what we all thought when the Wall came down? We thought it would be the same, only better. The things that were bad about this place were so simple and so obvious: the Stasi, the border guards, the Party. And they were finished! For years we had heard nice people from the West saying that there were good things about the East: education, culture, no unemployment. We thought it was so easy, so clear. We would get your freedom to travel where we wanted to go and say what we wanted to say, but we would obviously keep the good things we had. My friends in the theatre and I would be able to do all the amazing and experimental work the DDR hadn't let us do. No more dancing ballet in tutus for Party bosses!

—Ah, you are a ballet artiste? I smiled, as if culturally impressed. Visions of leg warmers and physiologically unlikely sexual positions zipped for a second behind my eyes. Well, for God's sake, what do you expect? Also, I tried not to giggle, because I found myself thinking treacherously:
I know, Frau glorified dancing girl, you thought they'd keep up all your grants and maintain five huge state-funded theatres in Berlin with a hundred full-time technicians in each of them, except that now you'd be subsidised for doing
Romeo and Juliet
naked and walking about on stilts in nappies for no apparent reason with people playing the saxophone badly
.

—I am indeed a ballet artiste, she intoned graciously.

—But now I stage shows to celebrate the launch of a new Mercedes or the opening of a new conference centre. And I think I am lucky to get the work, and everyone I used to know is desperate for me to take them on – dancers, musicians, actors, designers. And I always tell the pretty young ones to make sure they smile at the board members.

—Terrible, I nodded, looking secretly at her high-heeled shoes and fabulous ankles. I could see us now, clinging together, her legs wrapped right around me, like two survivors in the rubble of some vast war. She would understand.

—Sorry? I said, rematerialising from this happy vision to discover that I had completely failed to hear her last question. I smilingly signalled that it was simply the noise in the foyer that had made me miss her words of wisdom, and leaned a little closer still. From here, once again using my lecturer‘s skills, I could look right down the front of her dress while maintaining eye contact.

—You did not bring your wife with you? Heiner said he has seen her photograph. He says she is very pretty. Now, fluency in a foreign language can easily get you into trouble. So it really wasn't my fault. I intended to tell my ballet dancer simply:
This time (i.e. for once) I've left (i.e. not brought) the (i.e. my) wife in England
. However, perhaps through excessive long-term and short-term tiredness, or rather too much drink, or a slight natural rustiness in my German due to having not been able to get away for ages because of my beloved kids, or maybe all of the above plus the facts, for example, that I had just experienced a moment of triumph and that it was a very long time since an alpha woman looked at me like that, I somehow made a tiny
little slip of grammar and intonation so that it actually came out as: This
time (i.e. at last) I've left (i.e. dumped)
that
woman in England
.

I would have immediately corrected myself, no doubt, except that a small and intense man of my own age now plucked daringly at my sleeve. I turned and frowned, but he spoke before I could object to his intrusion, and he obviously knew that his words would do the trick.

—Grundmann. Herr Panke's press secretary. Responsible also for his tour diary.

—Of course, I said graciously. This little creep might well be the one planning Panke's trip to Oxford next week, so I had better keep in with him. —You will excuse me a moment, merciful lady?

—Naturally. Until later.

—Until later. So, Herr Grundmann?

While I let this pathetic but perhaps important functionary have his ration of face time, I grabbed yet another beer from yet another Heidi and kept a careful side-eye on the dancer, to make sure she did not escape or give up on me.

—Herr Doktor?

—Mmm? Oh, yes, sorry?

—Or rather, Herr Colleague. I may call you that, for I too am doctor of German history.

—Splendid, splendid.

—Herr Panke tells me that you are speaking on his works to the Conference of British and Irish University Teachers of German next week.

—Yes, actually. And Heiner has just told me that he'll be there too.

—I am currently finalising arrangements.

—Of course. The English press will all be there.

—I did not know. That is good. Now, Herr Colleague, I ask you to use your influence, substantial as it must be, to get my own paper a hearing at the conference.

—Your paper? Well, you'd have to write to Professor Bill Adams at Midlands University to see if he can slot you in at the last minute. Slot, as in
get you in
, I mean, not as in
shoot you
, ha ha!

—Sorry, Herr Colleague?

—Nothing, nothing.

—As you wish. But you would support my application, Herr Colleague?

—In principle, of course, as a friend of Heiner‘s, I mean, not that I have much influence.

—My paper is important.

—I'm sure it is. This beer is excellent, isn't it?

—As you know, Herr Colleague, so-called historical truth is always just myth, the story written by the victors.

—Of course, of course.

I was looking at the dancer and hardly listening to him. I felt that very soon I was just going to be drawn across the floor without any intention on my part, as if on sexually magnetic roller skates, towards her. I looked down openly at her strong, tanned legs. She saw me looking, and did not mind that she had done so. I plucked another foaming beer from the tray of a passing, pigtailed cowgirl and raised it privately to her. Christ, I could almost feel my hand stroking up her stocking already. And slowly the knickers slide aside and …

—I particularly admired the way you brought up the
global locusts
of financial capital.

—Mmm? Ah yes, yes, them.

Yes. There was no doubt. She wanted me to go over to her. From inside the hall I heard a roar of outraged agreement at something Panke had said. God, this was more like it! Excitement, drink, political radicalism and knowing that at the end of the evening you were, as Heiner‘s sidekick, odds-on for a fast, uncomplicated and indeed quite romantic …

—Why do we allow our lives to be run by these faceless players of the markets, who dwell amongst us, yet with no loyalty to any country or community?

—Why indeed? Well, I'm glad you liked my speech, do please send me your paper right away, I'm looking forward very much to
taking out our enemies
, ha ha, with Heiner next week, perhaps you'll be there too? Now,
if you'd just excuse me a moment, I promised to join the lady in order to discuss the lamentable situation regarding state support for serious art and culture in our brave new free-market world, and …

—And of course we know who the
global locusts
really are, is it not so, Herr Colleague?

—Sorry?

As he said
global locusts
again, he raised his forefinger to form a hook which he stroked, as subtly and secretly and unmistakably as a mason's handshake, over the entire length of his nose.

I could not move. I could no longer see the dancer. All I could fix on were the bubbles slowly rising to the surface of my beer.

For a greasy second I was back in the working men's club, during the Strike, with Hubby Huck the Racist Bastard on the television and roars of laughter all around me, drinking up and not objecting; or in a crowded bar in working-class Madrid on the night a gang of terrorists almost killed the elected British Prime Minister, raising a glass and cheering along; or in the Irish pub on the night some twisted fantasist suggested, whilst tuning his guitar for another ballad to which I planned to harmonise, that the IRA's Remembrance Day massacre was probably the work of British Intelligence, nodding away and ordering another Guinness.

Once again, I felt the icy certainty that if I had any guts I would just walk out right now, away from my comrades and the beer and the music and warmth and the life and the ever-present chance of unthinking sex. That I must change my life and be alone.

Probably, I had been mistaken.

Surely?

Look, the man might well just have had an itchy nose.

People can have itchy noses, for God's sake.

Or it was some complex and ironic joke which I had imperfectly understood due to my German being good but not perfect.

Yes, that would be it.

Ridiculous to even think of leaving.

What? Offend Heiner? Desert my beer and my triumph and my new friend with the great legs? For what? For the cold lonely night?

And all just because I thought,
thought
mind you, that I might have detected some little unpleasantness in
one
of Heiner‘s many supporters? Absurd.

I was tired and I hadn't really been paying him my full attention, and he had an itchy nose or had been making a joke and I'd had a few drinks and perhaps I was a bit guilty about having lied to Sarah about where I was, not that anything was going to happen, and anyway, yes, I had almost certainly just imagined the whole thing.