Geoff Nicholson - Street Sleeper

Ishmael was against meaningless chatter as much as the next man, but he had to start somewhere. He tried to make conversation.

‘Nice lifestyle you have here,’ he said, though his heart was not in the remark and perhaps they were aware of it since they completely ignored it.

Perhaps they were inhibited because he was a stranger, so what better way of overcoming this than by avoiding social niceties completely and getting right down to brass tacks.

‘Look, what’s your ideology here?’ he asked.

The intense silence around the table became, if possible, even more profound, but he did seem to have provoked some reaction. The woman with the nose-stud looked up from her meal and stared out of the window, her eyes fixed on some distant object invisible to the naked eye.

‘We talk about ideology,’ she said. ‘We talk as though we know who we are and where we’re going; but we’re lost. Most of us are very, very lost.’

‘I once was lost, but now I’m found,’ Ishmael said.

This did produce a vague mutter from one or two of the people around the table, but Ishmael couldn’t tell if this indicated approval.

♦

‘But that will take four years,’ Richard says, aghast.

‘Yes. It’s a long-term plan. You’re always telling me that I should not live so much in the present. I thought about it for a long time. Besides, there will be hundreds of thousands of us all saving together through this marvellous scheme.’

‘Hundreds of thousands of you, each paying five Marks a week for a car that you will not see for at the very least four years? It sounds as though some of you Germans have more money than sense.’

‘You think the German people are unwise?’

‘Let’s just say I don’t see the English workman falling for this inverted form of usury.’

♦

Lightening the mood Ishmael asked, ‘Does anybody know where there’s a good cheap Volkswagen garage around here?’

A man in a tie said that he did, and he gave the impression that given time he might even tell where it was.

Then the meal was over. Everybody stood up and went into the living-room to watch television and take some drugs. Ishmael felt unwanted and unwelcome. He went to look again at the damage done to Enlightenment. He stood drinking in the night air and picking flakes of paint off the driver’s door.

A few minutes later the man who knew where the Volkswagen garage was came out. He handed Ishmael a slip of paper with an address and a map on it. Ishmael got the feeling that this was to be considered a grand gesture and thanked him accordingly. The tie-wearer nodded and left. ’

Then John the Hippy came out.

‘That was beautiful,’ he said. ‘Just beautiful.’

‘Huh?’

‘The way you talked at supper. It was so precise, so intense. We don’t believe in pointless talk. We believe in clearing the mind of babble, and it’s obvious you feel the same way. You’re only concerned with fundamentals — lifestyle, ideology, how to get your Volkswagen repaired, the nitty-gritty.’

Ishmael hadn’t even been trying.

‘We think you’re a very wise man. We think you’re something special. We wondered if you might stay here for a while, be a kind of spiritual guide.’

This seemed a bit extreme, even to Ishmael.

‘I’m flattered of course, but there are other places I have to be.’

‘Shit, it’s always the same with gurus. Where do you have to be?’

‘Wherever Marilyn is. I thought I’d talk to her father. It won’t be easy, but I think the direct approach is usually best. I thought I’d ask for his daughter’s hand, something like that.’

‘Wow.’

‘All right, so he and his wife beat me up, but at least we were communicating. It was very brief but I did detect a glimmer of genuine contact, and that makes me believe that I can reach out to him as one human being to another.’

‘You certainly cut through the bullshit,’ John the Hippy said. ‘You’re a lesson to us all. You get beaten up, your car gets vandalized, you lose your girl yet you keep your wisdom.’

‘What else have I got? What else has anybody got, John?’

John the Hippy was speechless.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Here,’ said Ishmael, ‘I’d like you to have this.’

He reached into his pocket and produced the Gold American Express card that had belonged to Marilyn’s father.

‘Take it,’ Ishmael continued. ‘I think the owner may be too preoccupied for the time being to get round to reporting it missing. You can probably get a couple of days’ use out of it.’

John the Hippy beamed.

Then one of the girls came from the bungalow. She was in her early teens, had silky hair, shorts and a personal stereo.

‘And we’d like you to have this, ‘ she said.

She handed Ishmael a grubby envelope. Inside were two squares of blotting paper, each with a small, dark stain at its centre.

‘Acid,’ she said. ‘The American Express card of the mind.’

♦

‘We all know about your English workman,’ Nina says. ‘Besides, he has never been fortunate enough to have the opportunity of buying such a special vehicle. Cheap to run, cheap to service, whatever that means, designed by Dr Porsche, you know. Herr Hitler has already laid the foundation stone of a huge factory for the car. He has begun building autobahnen. In four years you will envy me.’

‘If, in four years, you have seen so much as one rubber tyre, I shall indeed be very surprised.’

‘But already the cars are being driven, admittedly only by leading members of the Nazi Party at this stage, but…’

‘If you want my opinion, they are the only people ever likely to drive them.’

‘I’m not sure that I do want your opinion. It depresses me. I prefer to think that the German economic recovery will continue, that it will accelerate, bringing greater prosperity for all, and then I may have my Volkswagen in much less than four years.’

♦

Next morning Ishmael drove the couple of miles to the address he had been given for the Volkswagen garage. It was down a dry mud track that ran between a row of blackened railway arches and a set of allotments. At first there was just a mass of tall weeds and a few derelict bits of motorcar that were recognizably from Beetles. Then, poking above the weeds were four complete cars parked in a neat line, and a little way off a pale blue Beetle in front of a door that opened into one of the arches. Above the door was a hand-painted sign that read ‘Fat Les — the Vee-Dub King’. There was nobody visible but the music of Wagner, played at awesome volume, came from inside the arch. The door was open a couple of feet. Ishmael stuck his head inside. The music grew louder but he couldn’t see anyone. It was dark. He entered and trod on half a hamburger. Then he detected a movement in a dark corner and saw a rather fat, sweaty, unshaven forty-year-old man. Les he supposed, sitting up in a tartan sleeping-bag.

‘Good morning,’ Ishmael shouted politely above the music.

Fat Les seemed half asleep or still half drunk, or both. He waved a weary hand at Ishmael.

‘Sorry, Wagner old mate,’ he said, and reached out a hand to turn off the music. ‘That’s my get up and go music. Doesn’t always work. I suppose you’ve got a Volkswagen.’

‘I certainly have,’ Ishmael said proudly.

Fat Les got out of his sleeping-bag. He was naked but for a pair of nylon, paisley briefs.

‘I suppose it needs something doing to it.’

‘Yes. I need some new headlights.’

That didn’t seem to make Fat Les very happy. He shambled around the garage for a while, pulled on a shirt, picked up a few cold chips from a paper plate, searched half-heartedly for trousers, looked at Ishmael accusingly.