Geoff Nicholson - Still life with Volkswagens

“But I never want to go anywhere or do anything.”

“Well, I admit I wouldn’t mind going for a drive once in a while, but Barry, where is all this leading?”

“I was just thinking that if you met another bloke, through work say, someone with money and a career, and if he could offer you more than me, and if you decided he was what you were looking for, well…I’d understand.”

“I know you would. That’s what’s so special about you Barry. You’re so wise, so sympatico.”

“Well, I try to be.”

“But wouldn’t you miss me if I went off with someone else?”

“Well of course I would,” he says hastily. “But if you really felt you had to go…”

“And wouldn’t you miss this?”

And Debby proceeds to perform various moist and intimate acts on Barry’s body that he would most certainly miss in their absence, and before long there are torrents of hot semen coursing like molten lava down Debby’s moist, yielding, eager throat. Barry would have to admit that his sex life with Debby is fine, in fact it’s really rather spectacularly good, but he sometimes wonders if there is more to life than that. From time to time Debby tries hard to assure him there is not.

♦

Next morning Charles Lederer is called into the office of Dr D.K. Hendricks, the director and presiding genius of the Milton Maynard Mercy Seat. The doctor is surprisingly cordial. He smiles a lot. He wants Charles Lederer to know that he isn’t angry. He’s a little disappointed perhaps, but certainly not angry. He wants Charles Lederer to know he’s a friend. Charles Lederer remains unconvinced.

“Why did you do it Charles?” the doctor asks.

No reply is forthcoming.

“Was it a way of getting at me? If so that’s perfectly understandable. I appreciate that you will harbour certain unresolved hostile feelings towards your doctor. And who’s to say you shouldn’t express that hostility?”

Charles Lederer continues his silence.

“Some of the other patients may have suffered severe setbacks as a result of your actions, Charles. You may have destroyed months of diligent, painstaking care and treatment. But that’s all right, so long as we all understand why.”

At this point he notices that Charles Lederer is carrying a scrapbook, and he’s holding it as though it is the crown jewels. Hendricks chooses to ignore it.

“Could it be that you hate me, Charles?” he asks. “Could it be that you’d like to see me dead? And if so, why? Could it be that I remind you of your father? Or possibly of yourself.”

But Charles Lederer is not listening. He has become deeply engrossed in his scrapbook. He’s turning the pages carefully and precisely, his eyes devouring the patchwork of cuttings and photographs inside the book.

“What have you got there, Charles?” Hendricks asks at last.

“This? Oh, I like to think of this as my Bible.”

Dr D.K. Hendricks is always quick to spot the use of religious imagery in his patients’ conversation. He doesn’t approve of it at all. “Show me,” he says.

Charles Lederer won’t hand over the scrapbook, it’s far too precious for that, but he holds it up and opens it so that Hendricks can see one of the pages. It contains a newspaper cutting with the headline Torrential Rain Leaves Hundreds Dead In Rio’ and there’s a photograph of a street in Rio de Janeiro that has been transformed by a mud slide into a wrecked, silted-up disaster zone. Hendricks gives it only a cursory glance. He hopes Lederer isn’t developing a morbid fascination with death and disaster.

“Show me another page,” he says.

“No,” says Lederer. “Not yet. You haven’t looked closely enough at the first page. You see, right there on the edge of the picture, up to its axles in mud, there’s a Volkswagen Beetle.”

Dr D.K. Hendricks nods, but not in comprehension.

“Or here,” says Charles Lederer, and he turns a page. This headline ‘Simmering Hatred In London’s East End’. It’s a story about racial hatred and violence, about neo-Nazis, and there’s a photograph of some Indian vigilantes walking down an East End street, and right on the corner of the street there’s a Volkswagen.

“Here’s a photograph of some looters in the L.A. riots loading up their Beetle with stolen beer and videos. Here’s a picture of the Berlin Wall being erected and there’s a Volkswagen right in the middle of it. Here’s a photograph showing the aftermath of a volcanic explosion in the Philippines…”

“Yes, yes, I get the idea,” Hendricks snaps.

“You see the pattern.”

“I’m not sure I’ve seen anything that constitutes a pattern,” Hendricks replies.

“Yes, you have,” Charles Lederer insists. “Isn’t it obvious? Wherever there’s trouble there’s always a Volkswagen. The Volkswagen is therefore quite clearly the car of the devil. In which case we clearly have a duty to destroy it.”

“I see,” says Dr D.K. Hendricks.

“Good. So you’re on my side.”

“Of course I’m on your side, Charles. I always have been. The question is whether or not you’re on mine. There’s something I’d like you to have a look at for me.”

He goes to a filing cabinet and pulls out a ring binder. In it are a series of Rorschach ink blots.

“I’ve looked at your scrapbook Charles, now take a look at mine.”

He flips open the binder and shows Charles Lederer the first ink blot.

“You do understand, Doctor!!” he says joyfully.

“Tell me what you see,” Dr D.K. Hendricks says with suspicion.

“I see what’s there,” Lederer says. “I see a Volkswagen, of course. Very early, maybe a prototype, or even one of the first military versions.”

“And this one?”

Lederer smiles knowingly. If the doctor wants to have fun with his little game then he’s quite prepared to play along.

“I see a convertible with its top down, with American specification bumpers.”

“And this?”

Charles Lederer’s joy is almost unconfined. There among the ink-blot splatters he sees something strange but not entirely unfamiliar. He sees an exploding Volkswagen Beetle, just like the one he’s been seeing in his mind’s eye for so long. He tells this to Hendricks who slams the ring binder shut. Lederer is grinning at him in a conspiratorial way that is making him both nervous and angry.

“Do you know what I think, Charles?” he asks.

“Yes,” says Charles Lederer. “You think much as I do. You think the Volkswagen Beetle is a Satanic abomination that ought to be destroyed. Yes?”

“Not exactly, Charles.”

Lederer looks disappointed and confused.

“What I actually think,” Hendricks continues, “is that you’re wasting my time. I think you’re trying to wind me up. I think, to put it colloquially, you’re taking the piss. I think you’re trying to mock me and all my years of work. I think you’re trying to destroy my life, my work, my very being.”

Lederer denies it vehemently. He looks shocked and appalled and sorry that the doctor has turned against him so abruptly. But Dr D.K. Hendricks is not going to be fooled by that.

“You know what else I think?” he says.

“No, doctor.”

“I think you’re ready to go back into the community.”

♦

Again Barry is sitting on the stoop of his caravan, and again half a dozen kids are gathered round. It is all going well until one of them asks, “What’s the big deal about Volkswagens anyway?”

Barry is lost for words. “Well,” he says, “they’re you know, they’re sort of absolutely…it.”

The kids look at him expectantly and he tries, he really tries, to be more articulate, to describe the special appeal and the uniqueness of the Volkswagen Beetle. But his heart and head are too full of feelings and contradictions to allow him to get out anything coherent. He struggles on for a while but it’s useless. Fortunately, the Ferrous Kid is there and he is able to help.