My Little Armalite

by James Hawes

  I climbed to my feet, dusted down my pillow, winced slightly at a new pain in my back, and looked around for the exit. Yes, I was a bit drunk, but so what? I deserved it. I had learned to fire an assault rifle today and could now look global warming in the eye with less wretched, rabbit-like terror.

  After all, what would really happen, when The Day came, when the Thames Barrier finally gave, for example? Society would not disappear overnight. Emergency laws would be enacted, citizens enlisted, state-supporting elements co-opted in the fight to preserve some form of civilisation. A well-spoken and indubitably English man titled Doctor, able to swiftly show his mastery of an assault rifle, provide one himself and make it clear that he was quite prepared to use it if ordered to, against carloads of hooded looters, for example, would be sure to find a welcome for himself and special treatment for his family. Yes, in a very real way, I had today made an important investment in providing for my loved ones’ futures. Life for the family man is about more than just work. Well done, John Goode.

  Well, I mean, obviously that was all rubbish, just my little joke.

  What I had done was simply learn how to make the bloody gun safe so that I could dump it when I got home. Object achieved, well and truly. Lost my fear of guns entirely. Piece of piss, to disarm it, now. So if I wanted another drink or two, and I did, I could bloody well have one. Or, indeed, two. Nice pure German beer, mmm, yes, what harm could that do anyone? I would simply call Panke and tell him I was too tired to do anything that night. Assuming he had even got my message, that was. I could meet him tomorrow or go home without even seeing him. I could go back to Prague and do that night-shoot with George. A night-fighting capability, after all, might well be decisive for my family’s survival when shtf, whatever that was …

  —Nonsense, I laughed aloud. It was all just a jolly daydream. In the real world, my plan was watertight, caulked with hard logic. Whether I actually saw Panke or not was immaterial. I reminded myself firmly: all I had ever wanted from my trip to Dresden was a firm cover story about why I had gone to Prague. That story would be complete and cast-iron the moment I had checked into the hotel and called Panke from my room.

  Clever, you see. Not a PhD for nothing!

  I almost chuckled aloud at my own cunning and walked out of the station, past the easily missable bronze-and-stone memorial to the people who had been seriously beaten up by the police on this very spot not twenty years ago for asking to be allowed to travel outside their country.

  I knew the way of old. Straight down the Berliner Strasse, through the state socialist architecture to cobble-stones and glories restored without thought of expense. I would wander around them and have a quick nightcap, why not? Bound to be some little old magical pub, always is in Germany, maybe have a chat with someone or other, a woman maybe, just to practise my German, then back to wonderful five-star hotel linen (oh God!) and a splendid night of baby-free sleep far from the Armalite and Phil and noisy little hooded gits in cars and the sodding mortgage and …

  What mortgage rate was that poster offering?

  Was that all Germans paid? Bastards. Hmm, yes, that made you think …

  I did not mean to stop before the poster outside a closed bakery-cum-cooked-meat-takeaway and start thinking earnestly (though a little drunkenly) about the East German housing market. But my poor deformed little British subconscious locked on. It had been battered by decades of radio and TV programmes in which successful businessmen were introduced like modern-day saints and people’s frantic scrabbles up the property ladder were illuminated as though this represented their souls’ hard-fought ascent towards Nirvana. We may not be a nation of shopkeepers any more (shop-keeping hours are too much like hard work), but by God we have become a grand gang of would-be little landlords. My innermost being had been hounded every weekend of the millennium by Your Property supplements whose legions of hacks were obliged to find endless new financial terrors or opportunities to justify their employment. The very core of my mind had been mutated by incessant jabbering articles about how Bulgaria (or was it Albania? Or Latvia?) was the next no-lose property hot spot for monetaristically sophisticated British investors.

  Helplessly, my conditioned mind spiralled off into bold entrepreneurial leaps of imagination about remortgaging cunningly in London so as to extend my property portfolio Eurozone-wise and thus let other poor suckers who needed a place to bring up their families (but could not afford to buy) fund my fat little workless existence in happy years to come …

  Such heaven!

  The small matter of whether I could actually even afford my own mortgage at the moment anyway could soon be fixed, surely, with some sophisticated modern financial uptooling? And where better to uptool than London? I mean, shit, what if I geared myself to the limit and bought a place in the most run-down shit-heap rustbelt brown-coal part of the old East Germany? After all, I had some unusual local knowledge. Berlin was obviously chucking euros at the region.

  For the love of God, why oh why hadn’t I bought a high-ceilinged old flat here back in 198bloody7? I could have got it for nothing, almost.

  Then I remembered that there was actually a very good reason why I had not bought a place back here in nineteen eighty-seven. There had been, back in nineteen eighty-seven, a certain tricky little speed hump here for would-be real-estate speculators. They called it Communism and its principal backer was the Red Army.

  I arrived in the floodlit square around Our Lady’s church and smugly located my splendid hotel. A band of musicians was playing squeezeboxes and balalaikas to dinner-jacketed, long-gowned punters spilling out from the launch party of a Russian jewellery shop next to the hotel. So much for the Red Army. But perhaps I would pop in once I had fixed up my room. If I strolled in, blithely twirling my hotel key, surely I could blag a glass or two of free champagne? Just a merry nightcap before sliding into my doubtless gorgeous bed for sleep, sleep at last.

  Then I noticed the two men in the hotel’s big doorway, looking at me.

  They did not seem to fit together in any way of normal social logic, yet were clearly here as a team. One was a tall young man with a long, pale face and somewhat glittering glasses, wearing a shirt and tie under a dark blue suit of slightly too sharp a cut to be daily wear. The neat turn-ups on his trouser legs lay just high enough to show that he was wearing boots, not shoes. His companion was far shorter, considerably older, with long, greying hair that hung down well over the shoulders of a leather waistcoat that was never going to button again over a large beer gut that stretched the black T-shirt underneath. His trousers were also of leather, brown, not black. Had it not been for the fact that his locks were floatingly clean and that he too wore slim-rimmed gold glasses, he would have looked like a refugee from an American bikers’ convention.

  The young, suited man caught my gaze and looked me swiftly over once more. He turned to elbow his companion.

  The police, of course!

  I stopped dead in the empty square, and looked down at my feet. I could see my own multiple shadows on the floodlit cobblestones. The cornered Harry Lime in The Third Man. Even now, I could perhaps still run. But for how long? Where? For what? Even in my somewhat tiddly and careworn state, I could see that my only hope now lay in giving myself up with a good grace, insisting on extradition and relying on British justice to deploy its well-known prejudice in favour of the educated classes.

  And God, I was tired of being on the run. Once more, I felt the deep rush of relief as I thought of telling all. Surely, they would have beds in German police stations? Yes, somehow it would be easier to confess everything in German. Absolutely everything. About how I had publicly sung bold songs in Lottie’s bar (with, as it turned out, the happy agreement of the local Stasi), accusing the evil West German state (that mere American satrap) of being viciously fascistic in its treatment of essentially good-hearted and Che-like Baader-Meinhof murderers …

  Me?

  Oh yes, me. Guilty, my Lord, both as charged and not.

&n
bsp; Knowing that the German police are all armed, and not wanting my internal organs destroyed, I stuffed my pillow under my arm ( I simply could not bear to let it go) and set my course towards the two men with my hands well away from my sides, my fingers spread and pointing upwards, my palms out towards them like some plaster Jesus showing his holes for doubters. As I neared them, I smiled and spoke firmly in German, relishing the strange freedom that comes with speaking fluently in a foreign language. It seemed fitting that my reckoning should come in another tongue. Fitting, and for some reason far less fearful. As if, like a holiday romance, it didn’t really count.

  —I’m Dr John Goode, I said. —And I surrender.

  63: Leader, Lead: We Demand to Obey!

  —You are Herr Doktor Goode? asked the tall, creepy one.

  —Yes. And I surrender. Of my own free will. Please note that and take it down in evidence against me. Or rather, for me. For me the war is over, ha ha. Sorry, just a stupid English joke. God, I don’t know why I said that. Now, about the gun …

  They looked at me and laughed. The short fat man clapped me on the shoulder.

  —Herr Panke told us to look out for a little man with a beard. He did not warn us about your English humour, ha ha!

  —Herr Panke?

  —Of course. Who else?

  —Oh. Ah. Well, um, wow, that’s so kind of him. Of course, we’re good friends, and … well. Great!

  Well, that was more like it. Good old Heiner. How pleasant to be greeted with respect like this. Herr Doktor Goode. Well, and why not? That was who I was. Thank God for a country where academics are still treated with a bit of awe.

  —Herr Panke is glad that you are here, said the young man, stressing the surname and title.

  —I look forward greatly to seeing Heiner again, I replied, stressing the Christian name.

  —So. This way, Herr Doktor, he yielded. —You have only your pillow?

  —The serious man travels lightly, I said.

  —Nietzsche? asked the fat man.

  —Panke, I said. —The Ballad of the Dancer’s Thighs. I used to sing it with him. A most interesting poetic structure.

  —Ah yes, nodded the young man, —You are true devotee, Herr Doktor. But the delay in your train, no doubt due to Czech incompetence, means that we must rush if you are to arrive in time for your speech.

  —Sorry? I asked, certain that my German must be getting rusty.

  —Herr Panke did not tell you? asked the young man

  —No. He didn’t say anything. Speech?

  —Ah, sighed the fat man happily, —that is Herr Panke! A man who knows that people will say yes to him has no need to ask in advance, Herr Doktor, does he? We happily serve, when the leader of the pack calls. What were we doing before, but only waiting for his call? That is man, yes? That is our place. The Herr Doktor is too wise to feel absurd notions of individual pride. He knows that the leader is merely fulfilling our own wishes: Leader, lead: we demand to obey! That is true freedom.

  —Right. So, what, Heiner wants me to give the VIP, I mean my paper, on him? Tonight? Where? The university? But it’s not really quite ready yet, and actually I’m a bit, you know, tired, and …

  —Not at the university, said the young man.

  —Not?

  —Herr Panke, he continued, and his specs lit with battle, —has, thanks to the latest opinion polls, attracted much attention, Herr Doktor.

  —Yes, I know. He’s even becoming known in

  England, and we don’t usually care about any politicians except our own and the Americans’.

  —Excellent, Herr Doktor! Tell them this. We expect many new potential supporters at tonight’s meeting.

  —A political meeting?

  —You are an Englishman, dear Doktor, said the fat man, folding his plump hands together across his belly. —A foreigner, in the strict sense, though of course the English are not truly foreigners. Not Americans, at least, not yet, ha ha! You still have some culture of your own. And yet one who has dedicated his life to spreading the word of Herr Panke.

  —Well, I wouldn’t exactly put it like that.

  —Dear Doktor, Herr Panke asks merely that before his speech you introduce yourself to the audience with a few words and tell them how highly regarded he is in England.

  —Me?

  —You know our movement’s programme, Herr Doktor? demanded the tall man.

  —Naturally. I’ve just completed, virtually completed, a rather important paper on it. I know you stand against the evils of American-led globalisation and for the rights of the European working class. For greater European unity. For the preservation of European forests and wildlife. For affordable social housing for all Europeans. For state loans to help businesses that employ local people, and …

  —Exactly, Herr Doktor! You understand us perfectly. Will you say so?

  Would I? I felt a little somersault in my heart. Heiner wanted my support. He wanted me to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. And I would. I would stand there on whatever podium they put me on, and I would proudly talk of my friend Heiner. I would stoutly pronounce that lovely word: we. My God, and I might even be able to get him to come over in person to help me give the VIP next week. What a double act we would be, and how much better is every double act than a mere solo performance! The Oxford conference would be a triumph. And that meant that all was well and would be better …

  —You see, Marcus, Herr Panke said his good little Doktor would not let us down. I heard him saying so to his women.

  —His women, grumbled the young man.

  —Herr Panke has always had his women, has he not, dear Doktor?

  —Good old Heiner! I laughed. —Women, eh? Well, of course, I shall be delighted to offer him whatever covering fire I can give, ha ha! So? Shall we go?

  64: Women, Indeed!

  Within minutes, I was sat in the back of a big Mercedes taxi, ignoring the passing cityscape of Dresden and my two companions, gloating quietly in a pleasant and private world.

  From within, I was lit by the small but potent furnace ignited by a double espresso and the large schnapps on which I had insisted before leaving the hotel and had flung down with rather superb abandon. Outwardly, I sniffed my tweed lapel and smelled again the memory of gunplay that lurked within that rough wool. I smiled. I felt somehow more real than I had for years.

  Suddenly, I wanted to call Sarah.

  But good sense prevailed.

  I knew that I was, if I were honest with myself, now very slightly but nonetheless undoubtedly drunk. This might be rather hard to explain to Sarah, given that she had taken the kids away to let me work. Also, because I was very slightly but nonetheless undoubtedly drunk, if she indeed realised that I was very slightly but nonetheless undoubtedly drunk, as she certainly would, and I tried to explain myself, which I would then have to, I might well, being very slightly but nonetheless undoubtedly drunk, let slip accidentally that I was not only very slightly but nonetheless undoubtedly drunk but was also very slightly but nonetheless undoubtedly drunk in Dresden, Germany.

  —Ridiculous, I snapped at myself.

  There was no need to bother Sarah. I was merely going to see Heiner Panke, in whose work and doings I, as his sole UK expert and gatekeeper, had a perfectly legitimate interest. Women, indeed!

  —So, Herr Doktor.

  —Sorry?

  —We are here, dear Doktor!

  —Ah, yes, of course. Um, excellent.

  I looked out and for the first time in some minutes registered a world beyond my own mind and body.

  We had stopped outside an eighties public sports complex, as squat and square and glassy as they are the world over. As far as I could tell from the posters on the doors, we had come to see the regional table-tennis championships. But then I saw that these were being hastily covered over by new posters showing the letters DEBB (meaning ‘German-European Citizens’ Movement’) and a symbolic fist smashing a dollar sign. The blocky shape of the fist itself seemed to be lifted
straight from a Black Power poster of the sixties, or one of those stencilled efforts so common in the days of Troops Out and such-like, but its colours (creamy skin outlined in darkish red) were very like those from Soviet-era propaganda. It was announced that the topic of the evening was Freedom from the Market, and that it would be led by the famous poet, singer and member of the regional parliament, Heiner Panke.

  The mere sight of the last two words made my breath come shorter. They were in the title of my PhD, they occurred in almost all my (quite numerous) publications, they sat at the very heart of the VIP. Those two words had formed the keystone of my life for so long, had, coupled with the letters KGB, almost brought down my career and now, in six days’ time, might save it. Heiner Panke. It seemed less the name of a person than the mysterious password to my fate.

  More busy helpers, wearing DEBB WILKOMMEN! sashes over Sunday-best leather blouson jackets and somewhat Heidi-like dresses, were waving into the darkness or conversing encouragingly with the drivers of cars and small, aged minibuses. There was a lot of frenetic, hard-smiling, low-church sort of effort going into things, and more white male socks than I had seen in many years. My younger escort surveyed this all with glittery-spectacled satisfaction. He exchanged vaguely salute-like waves with several of the helpers, who were clearly glad to have been noticed by him and redoubled their happy efforts. The fat man opened the door for me.

  —Remember, dear Doktor, say nothing that the left-wing press could misinterpret, ha ha!

  —Well, of course not, I replied. —I am a thoroughly liberal man myself.

  —The left will do anything to discredit our movement. Because they know that it is we who speak for the workers now, while the so-called left-wingers today are merely the hired thugs of worldwide capitalism. Half of George Bush’s advisors are ex-Trotskyists, of course, and they still want what Trotsky wanted: to impose their revolution, their so-called ‘freedom’, their ‘next stage of history’, upon the entire world, irrespective of any culture or nation, at gunpoint.