by Aidan Truhen
All the same it would not be good for Jack to walk into Agent Hannah at any time in the future especially given as how she seems to be not entirely persuaded of my deadness.
“Smart lady.”
Doc says: “Huh.”
“What huh?”
“That is her?”
“The agent yes that is her.”
“Attractive.”
“No?”
“Yes. Diametrically contrasting with me in physical structure and psychosocial sexual cues.”
“Had not noticed that at all gosh is she really?”
“Price, for there is no need to be coy about it, she is eminently bedable. I have said to you before I do not require you to have no sexual contact with other women it is simply that there is a high percentage chance I will murder them if you do. It would appear you engaged in some close combat at least.”
“Yes but that was in the line of escaping. Come on Doc—”
“It’s not as if I won’t murder this one anyway.”
“Why are you so keen on this idea it is freaking me out?”
“Vicarious desire perhaps or maybe an instinct that it might be advantageous to the group. Sadly now that you have made her look like an Aryan coati I suspect your chances are greatly diminished.”
“Aw come on that will totally fade in a few days—”
“Nonetheless a stumbling block on the road to coitus.”
“Yes well I’m sure that’s a sad thing for all of us.”
“I’m somewhat relieved actually I had wondered why you did not simply kill her when you had the chance. You are perfectly capable.”
“Because—”
“Yes?”
“…”
“…”
“…Huh.”
“Exactly.”
“Enough of your sexual adventurism, science barbarian! My art is calling!”
“I am sure that it is.”
FIVE
“HALLO MR. TELEMARK HALLO HALLO I am Inge Désirée MY GOD what a pleasure I had NO IDEA you had accepted! HOW splendid I believe this is your first conventional fair, huh? We are quite honored actually to have you here. No, you must not be modest, that is entirely inappropriate! When the fair is over you may be self-effacing, huh, but not now, no. Not at all. You must make genius quite loudly. Let us be the platform for what you want to say!”
In fact Frau Désirée spent the last two days trying really hard to uninvite Banjo Telemark whom she has never heard of but somehow the press release went out and he has an invitation which is unquestionably signed by her and somehow Banjo is here and that would be a terrible fuckup except it turns out he is this important secret brand artist whose work is all about the fluidity of understanding and context in a blah blah blah I do not know Charlie made me say it.
We are in the big office on the outskirts of Bern, a warehouse by the river converted into a business space for Eiger’s in-town business. The reception is here because Kircheisen does not open its doors until the actual festival and we are still in the art foreplay.
I do not really know the art world but Charlie does. Charlie before she murdered a woman and opted in to the Demons was a kind of a rising star of making pictures with a pencil, although in fact it is a stylus, and as well as being an internationally wanted criminal Charlie also still writes and draws an independent comic book called Giant Egg, which is all the time winning awards. In Giant Egg all the usual superhero and supervillain crap happens except that at the given point in the action at which generally a guy in black and a woman with hip dysplasia would kapow all the bad guys instead a huge midbrown egg the size of a compact car smashes through the ceiling and does nothing at all. No one knows what Giant Egg’s power set is because as soon as this happens the dynamic of the situation changes and the bad guys just stare at the egg and reconsider their life choices. Giant Egg’s silent and motionless inexplicability stretches out over them. I have asked Charlie about Giant Egg and what it means and Charlie says it is a reflection of our interiority.
Charlie’s interiority has recently secured a merchandising deal and now you can buy shirts and mugs and your own plushie Giant Egg full of crushing uncertainty to hug while you sleep.
Charlie speaks art and now so do I. It is not hard to speak art mostly it is body language and occasionally you have to say something is fraught or unachieved or if you are feeling really nasty you can say it is ludic. No one knows what ludic means so they will either panic and agree or use another word such as composed and then you can discuss whether composed is really the right word until they go away.
Do not say postmodern because although no one knows what that means either almost everyone thinks they do.
Frau Désirée is thin like a garden rake and ageless. A lot of Swiss people are ageless. They hit fifty and that’s all the aging they’re prepared to take and if age wants to do more than that it can fucking come in person and it better come loaded for bear.
Banjo Telemark meanwhile is a piratey arthouse motherfucker with three actual gold teeth and he carries a cane with a skull on it. Doc has put gloop into—like IN TO—my face to make my forehead more prominent and my lips fatter. She swears this stuff will dissolve in a couple of months and I will be the same but you know: Doc is Doc and plus also she has always wanted to rework my face into aspect ratios conforming to her personal triggers for sexy evilness so I may just never be the same and that is fine I was not so attached to the old me that I want to make a thing about it.
Frau Désirée is right now talking art and I say something about fashions in self-actualization, which is apparently a sort of low jibe one can throw in and she laughs and tells me I am yoshing. I do not know what I have said and nor does she and I guess that is probably what art conversations are like. She palms Banjo off on a geezer called Herr Doktor Doktor Paul. In high Swiss formal you give everyone all their titles in a line because missing one out is rude. Herr Doktor Doktor is old like fucking horse-drawn carriages. He must be a hundred.
Consider that for a second and understand what he has seen. He is old enough to have seen the actual Second World War as an adult. It happened all around him. Then he saw the moon landings and Vietnam and the end of the Cold War and now whatever the shit this new thing we’re doing is that is so utterly dick.
“I have dementia,” Herr Doktor Doktor Paul says. “Do you have dementia?”
“We’re going straight to that? We are not going to talk about how was my flight?”
“Did it crash?”
“No sir.”
“Then who has time to talk about it?”
“Hah.”
“I am ninety-eight years old frankly I barely have time to sneeze. I was at a funeral last month and the priest asked me if I really wanted to go home or just sit and wait for mine.”
“That is some hard-core priesting.”
“Catholic humor, it is edgy.”
“I’m an atheist.”
“Yes well, you try atheism when you can feel God pulling your penis.”
“I—wait what?”
“It is how God calls you home to judgment. He pulls you out of your body by the penis.”
“I was not aware of that.”
Herr Doktor Doktor shrugs: “It is not common biblical teaching.”
I like this guy. I ask how it is having dementia.
“It is fucking shit. Even if you’re rich and they cannot kick you out for saying the word penis. You know why it is shit?”
“I’m guessing because dementia?”
“HAH! Yes. You are quite right that is why. But also because fucking young people finally get to tell you everything they want you to think is true and you have no way to be sure one way or the other. From moment to moment any fucking thing could be happening. The entire universe is malleable. When I was young do y
ou know what we were afraid of in this country?”
“That the Germans would invade?”
“Sure maybe them. I was going to say the Soviets in fact but them too. Then later it was all about the Turks. The Turks were coming to miscegenate us. But it turns out the Soviets didn’t give a shit and the Turks are very good at being Swiss. So now there are Swiss people with Turkish beginnings who worry about all the Croatians coming in. I suppose that is progress of a kind.”
“I guess.”
“It is crap and you know it. But you know what my grandkids do now? They take turns making shit up. Once a month they fuck with me. They take turns. Opa Opa the Russians have come! Opa it is Sharia Day you must dress and comb your beard! Yes Opa this is how it has been since ninety-one do you not remember? Switzerland is an Islamic Soviet now. Little vermin! I went to the opera in a fucking kurta.”
“How was that?”
“Drafty around my balls but I’m guessing real Muslims do not go commando to the fucking opera. Lying little shits. They are beautiful. I love them. What do you do again? I forget.”
“I am the leader of a global criminal syndicate wanted in pretty much every country on earth. I kill people occasionally but mostly I’m just trying to get by because you know everyone has to have a thing that they do. Next week I’m going to rob a bank for three hundred million euros but mostly because I just really want to.”
“Oh you’re a fucking artist?”
“Yes sir I am.”
“Call me Paul.”
“Paul.”
“Banjo.”
“Paul.”
“Who’s Paul?”
“…You almost had me.”
“HAH. Good. You met Eiger yet?”
“…No I have not. But I know his work.”
“You should meet him Banjo he is a loathsome Arschloch.”
“Oh good I guess all the best people are here.”
“Yes Bern is not large and there’s a lot of entertainment but only one party like this. Eiger…did I say we don’t get along? I think to be honest he hates art but he is the owner of the venue so we all pretend. Even his family and they mostly don’t like him either. You understand hypocrisy of course.”
“I’m a fucking artist Paul.”
“HAH. Come on, then.”
I follow Paul and I go and meet Hans Eiger.
* * *
—
Eiger is not talking. He is in a group of people who are talking and you could think that he was joining in but he is not. He nods and laughs at all the right moments. There are noises coming from his face that sound like words but they are the noises his brain makes while it’s waiting to start again. Engine idle you can see it. Hans Eiger hates this crap.
“HALLO HANS this is Banjo he is an artist.”
“Hallo Banjo that is an interesting name I am Hans Eiger.”
“I am so delighted to be here Herr Eiger I have heard so much about your mountain.”
We shake hands. Eiger is still not present. He doesn’t even bother to squeeze my fingers to pulp or eyeball me. I am an artist. An ant. He smells of some sort of rich masculine scent like iron and leather and goat blood but there is something off about it like—
“Yaaaawuh what have you heard of Die Festung?”
“O it is my absolute—it is my nemesis Herr Eiger you know I am an Ambiguitionist I specialize in situational ambiguity in the induction of doubt and your facility—I hear it is all about certainty.”
“Yes! That is quite true in fact it is—”
He looks at my face again and there it is: his brain waking up. Eiger, like a snake half waking inside his own skull and peering out of a socket.
“Have we met before Herr Telemark?”
“Were you at Burning Man last year I was part of the group wearing only stolen footwear reconfigured as clothing—”
“I was not—”
“Then it is more likely you have seen my photograph recently I have permitted myself to become famous although I have reservations about the commercialized Nietzscheanism implicit in celebrity but anyway as soon as I received this invitation I had to come immediately. I wanted to see the installation and of course to put a piece into the show.”
The snake has gone back inside. Art talk will do that.
“And what is your piece?”
“O I have not made it yet Herr Eiger but I think already there must be scrap metal iconic Swiss items. Infrastructure, agriculture, homogeneity must all be expressed and questioned.”
“Your work is to undermine?”
“O by no means to examine Herr Eiger. In many cases that amounts to the same thing owing to the hollowness of modern systems you appreciate—so many of them—they are simply Ponzi schemes they rest on nothing. But something with solidity is revealed as absolute by my interrogations the Rock of Gibraltar piece for example—”
(I can hear Charlie breathing heavily she is going to have to make one up and add it to my cover by tomorrow morning I am a bastard—)
“What was demonstrated there was the solidity of the stone beneath the tottering British Imperium of course the fantasy of a gunboat trader nation but as with Gibraltar so with Kircheisen the real is made more so—OH Herr Eiger I have—I would LOVE to make something that was specific to the location would you permit that?”
“I could not allow the use of our corporate branding of course—”
“NO no no I do not mean to imply your sponsorship no that would be inappropriate of course but something—I understand your facility is defined by impenetrability perhaps something to invoke that I see I see I SEE A TRAIN OBLITERATED AGAINST THE MOUNTAIN I SEE—Oh I am sorry that was loud sorry madame I trust that will come out—art you know it is percussive—”
“This does not seem—”
“Allow me to persuade you. Show me your beautiful facility I must touch it I must see it I must lick the salt from the stone I must sir—”
“You must what—”
“Yes yes I will speak to Inge. It is decided sir. I am so THRILLED to have met you. Paul, you are a genius you were quite right quite right I am SEIZED that is what I am—”
I go to embrace him and again that weird mix of manly man and something weird and like rose water chocolates as he fends me off like NO I HUG NO HIPPIES and I—feel—
I feel someone behind me and there is silence of scrutiny and I turn and I see—
Nothing.
There is an empty space where there should be a face and a torso.
Weird.
Then I look down into eyes like the sky.
* * *
—
Evil Hansel is wearing a little tiny suit today. It is double-breasted and blue, and unlike Eiger there’s no flower in his lapel. Instead there’s a little tiny pin of a Swiss flag. I actually cringe a little inside like I can feel that knife in my leg. Blood slurry in a winter gutter, slowly tipping down into the drains and sewers underneath. He smells like pool cleaner and limonene or his mother washes him in blueberry air freshener. Perhaps she does.
“Hi little dude who are you?”
“Hallo,” says Evil Hansel. “My name is Marcel.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“I’m pleased to meet you Marcel I’m Banjo.”
(Sky eyes don’t blink.)
“Do you know my grandfather?”
“No I— O wait you are Hans Eiger’s grandson?”
“Yes of course.”
“No I don’t know him we were just talking I want to do things to his mountain like—I want to make art there.”
“Oh. You are an artist.”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well I hope you have a rewarding time here at our festival and that your work is productive for you.”
&n
bsp; “Do you like art?”
“I prefer to work with Lego and so on. I also like movies.”
“Good for you.”
“Yes it is. Thank you. It was a pleasure to meet you.”
And that’s it. Of course that’s it. Evil Hansel does not care what the fuck a stranger does with tires and old cowbells on his opa’s mountain. And I am a stranger. Jack Price is dead and my face is full of Doc juice and he does not know me at all. He does not look back.
* * *
—
Charlie makes me do much art shit. I drink apple juice and pretend it is champagne. I drink a lot of it and establish a reputation for an iron stomach. I flirt with old ladies and young ones. I talk art finance with suits and art concepts with anyone in jeans. All bullshit all the time.
And everyone knows it. Evil Hansel, even Evil Hansel knows it. Over by the buffet table there is a little heap of clothes and a shock of psycho Sound of Music hair, and a couple of Lego figures have fallen out of his hand onto the floor. One of the waiters is nudging them back toward him. Yeah. Sleep well kid. Crazy little fucker.
So yeah. Art bullshit.
After a certain point you just gotta pee.
“I gotta pee.”
“Thank you boss you don’t need to keep me informed on micturative matters.”
“I do not know what that is.”
“It’s peeing.”
“I know that.”
“Boss—”
“Yeah—”
“Go pee please.”
“Yes.”
* * *
—
Some things you just don’t see coming. Things like that I take out my penis and point it at the urinal and—
WHAM.
Because there is.
A gun sight.
On the urinal.
A fucking sniper sight.
Printed.
On where you pee.
This is a hilarious joke for executives. It is good for your pelvic floor to control aim and flow and also it is a feedback trick to reduce splash and therefore janitorial costs. Seriously. This is a thing. Porcelain semiotic design is a thing now.
