My Little Armalite (32 page)

Fine.

I smiled vaguely at the little man, raised my glass to him and turned to go back to my dancer. But he held openly on to my arm. I looked down at his hand.

—Herr Colleague, you will understand why I need your help. We must stand for the truth!

—Of course. Now, I really must …

—Our opponents will stoop to any lie, just as Bush and Blair invented the lie, which we now all know to have been a lie, of their so-called weapons of mass destruction in order to justify their imperialist war.

—Certainly, I said impatiently, and tried to free my arm. But his little hand was strong.

—, Roosevelt and Stalin, iJust as their forefathers, Churchillnvented a far greater lie to justify the perverted, the impossible, the insane alliance of British imperialism, Stalinist Bolshevism and American free-market
capitalism. What possible common interest could these forces have? Only one, Herr Colleague! Then, as now, it was this: the prevention of a strong and united Europe under the natural and inevitable leadership of Germany! Then, as now, they needed a story, a grand lie, to justify to the world their criminal and genocidal actions, to ensure that Europe would stay helpless and that Russia's millions of Jews could at last, as they had planned for years, pour forth from Russia under the disguise of
discrimination
, with the sympathy of the whole world.

—Sorry?

—Exactly! The whole world was made to feel
sorry
for the poor Jews. So that they could occupy the Arab lands, as required by the plan of the Jewish oil millionaires of Jew York! The final masterstroke of that most cunning and tenacious of races! Oh yes, one cannot refuse them admiration, Herr Colleague. To have tricked the entire world! For, of course, only
one
lie was great enough to do their work, the greatest lie in world history, the only lie which could enable them to destroy Germany and hence enslave Europe whilst
at the same time
providing the excuse for the founding of the criminal state of Israel! The grand lie of the Holocaust! Herr Colleague? Where are you going? Herr Colleague?

—You must excuse me, Herr Grundmann, I've just remembered, I've got to, um, call my wife, I'll just, I'm afraid we Englishmen aren't used to such good German beer. Please tell Heiner that I am very tired from my journey and, and, that I'll of course see him next week, but that I'm, ah, yes, merciful lady, my apologies, I …

I stumbled on watery knees from the sports complex and into the grey tower blocks of outer Dresden. Out of the rain and the dark, there was a glow in the black sky that could only be the halo of floodlights from the restored glories of the city centre. I headed for this beacon of hope, but no sooner had I set out towards it than the glow seemed to darken, to grow red, and for a terrifying moment I thought I was heading not into light but into the firestorm.

There was no doubt.

I was going to have to withdraw from the Oxford conference.

No more VIP.

Which meant no more late and unexpected career break.

Which meant forget ever, repeat ever, reviewing for
The Paper
, or being on the box, or any of the other dreams that even now, at forty-five, allowed me to kid myself that this life, this salary, this house was not actually
the
life yet, my
only
life, the rest of it.

I had no choice. My brain might be steaming with beer, but on this point there was only a merciless clarity. As I staggered through the night, scarcely seeing cars, trams, pedestrians, I was already mentally composing the email that I intended to send from my hotel (assuming I could find my hotel):

To:
[email protected].

Subject: Oxford Conference Plenary Paper Withdrawal

Dear Bill,

I am extremely sorry, but I am going to have to withdraw my paper from the Oxford conference. I fully appreciate the unexpected honour of being invited to address a plenary session, but I have no choice in the matter.

I am in Dresden (having also done a little research in Prague, just for the record) visiting Heiner Panke. As you know (this being frankly the only reason you invited me to speak at all!), his DEBB party seems likely to make a considerable electoral impact in the upcoming emergency German general election. To many liberal observers, who will of course swallow almost anything provided it is laced with anti-Americanism (how impotently and uncleanly we loathe the Yanks!), Panke's party has seemed to be a radical pro-European attempt to re-enfranchise a neglected and underprivileged sector of the former East Germany, whose communities have suffered greatly from reunification and globalisation. It fact, I can now reveal that it is a bunch of neo-Stalinist, and indeed neo-Nazi, bastards.

Of course, Bill, many colleagues (I name no names) seem to find no difficulty whatever in performing the most extraordinary mental gymnastics to avoid making admissions of this kind. I know it's insane for me to even hope that these people (they will know who they are) would for a moment
show me any respect for my decision. OK, then. You, for example. Yes,
you
. Christ, come on, Bill, can we have a
little
bit of honesty in an academic forum, for once? You made your career peddling Jacques le Coque's so-called
déconstructualisme
to wide-eyed British campuses in the eighties, but when it was revealed that le Coque got his first university job by collaborating with the Germans in 1943 and that
just maybe
this was why he said that ‘history is an illusion' did you confess he'd fooled you? Did you hell. You'd made it on to various panels and committees by then, and you made
bloody
sure you stayed on them, didn't you, Billyboy? And now you jump through the post-Thatcher hoops and push the New Labour buttons as neatly as any of Brezhnev's functionaries toeing the party line. So no doubt you think I'm just a plain old sucker for turning down a slot that could easily have made my career. That could maybe even have got me into
The Paper
and maybe even on the box. Meaning that unless a dozen or so of you smug bloody so-called colleagues all happen to suddenly drop dead some time soon, I am now for ever doomed to being no one and will never make Professor and …

It was all so bloody unfair.

Did I
really
have to back out?

I walked round a corner and was suddenly out in the vast, cobbled square of the Frauenkirche.

Of course, I must call Father Eamon again!

Surely he would know of some clever postmodern sidestep I could yet make. Some sprightly play on words that would get around the small detail of that hooked finger.

I phoned from the cold old darkness of the haunted Dresden night, and the mere sound of his voice spread clean, green, guiltless, Irish light.

—Hoi. Johnnyboy! How's the man? So, did I cure you of your adolescent yearning for meaning? Is your paper now lit up with merry postmodern freeplay?

—Absolutely, Eamon! I mean, like you said, it's all just play, isn't it? There's just one little glitch left, nothing really, I'm sure it'll be easy for
you
to solve.

—You need a cute little drop shot to leave them flat-footed?

—Exactly, Eamon!

—Well, fire away and make sure you cite me.

I quickly outlined the situation to him (minus the gun, of course). When I had finished, there was only an ominous silence.

—Eamon?

—Jaysus, Johnnyboy, I pride myself on my court coverage but I don't think even
I
can get to that one.

—What?

—This German actually did the ould finger-down-the-nose thing? Shite and onions!

—Oh come on, Eamon. We lived in fantasy worlds about the Russians and the IRA for years.

—We did, we did. And you jumped through seriously tricky fucking mental hoops to justify marching alongside medieval theocrats. When it comes to evasion, no better men than us. All we need is a teeny-weeny crack of equivocation and there we are, lining up a clean passing shot. Someone else to blame. If the USofA would only stop being imperialist, the poor old USSR would embrace peace and love. If the evil Britz would only piss off, the IRA would just sing romantic ballads. If the Anglo-Saxons only stopped supporting
Israel, the Arabs would stop wanting to wipe it from the face of the earth. If only …

—Exactly, Eamon! So if we found ways round all that, surely, I mean … ?

—Holocaust denial? C'mon, JG, get real, no can do. That's a one-hundred-and-forty-mile-an-hour serve straight down the line. Can't even touch it. Auschwitz is game, set and match.

—But I've hung my whole career on Panke!

—Mmm, yeah. Bad call. Johnny, listen to me good. I, who am not famed for sticking overly to principles, tell you straight: dump those Nazi fuckers, and fast. In fact, for the avoidance of doubt, don't call me again until you've done it.

—What? Eamon!

—You heard correctly. Right now, you, my old comrade, are in grave danger of stinking by association, and I don't even want your name on my phone record again till you go public on this. Byeee!

—Eamon? Eamon?

I stood alone in the white-bright floodlights. Impossibly, I heard the distant sound of a vast, droning fleet of bombers nearing in the black Dresden sky. I staggered back and found myself clutching the flame-grilled stones of the Frauenkirche, holding on to those baroque rocks for dear life as vast squadrons of plastic Flying Fortresses rained vengeance.

From out of the firestorm arose the unleashed demons of a lifetime's self-delusion. And for the second time in twenty-four hours, I heaved up my guts in terror and despair, spraying the authentic German cobblestones with several quarts of authentic German beer.

If I hadn't been so horribly ill the next day, I might well never have made it back.

My shattered body demanded my complete attention, leaving no space for the suicide-spawning horrors of self-loathing. Every step of my journey had to be completed according to conscious and precise instructions from my mind to my limbs. These orders often involved the swift enlisting of whatever rail, handle or wall I could find within reach. I was just an old, ill animal creeping back to its cold and lonely lair, to lie down, curl up and breathe its last in pain and peace. My sole high-order mental activity during the day was a permanent, fearful care for exactly where, and how far away, the nearest lavatory was to be found. At any given moment I would have welcomed the Gestapo man who, finding my papers to be out of order, marched me smartly off to be shot in the back of the head without further ado.

And, since I was done for, everything was simple now.

I was going to move my family after all.

But not to north London.

No, I would take them deeper, ever deeper into south London.

I was going to find us an ordinary brick-and-Artex-and-uPVC house on a normal suburban estate somewhere no one has ever heard of, full of regular hard-working folk near a reasonably good school.

We would be normal people, like everyone else.

I had wanted to bring my kids up with some insight, some culture, some alternative from all the crap, just so they didn't buy into it all without thinking. But exactly what timeless wisdom and culture was I planning to impart to them? I had been wrong about everything and it was time to make sure that
I
paid the price, not my kids. So that was that. I would no longer try to equip my children for a life they would never have. Playing the piano to at least grade five? Discussing Kafka and Marx round the dinner table? What help would that be to them when they were twenty-one and fighting for jobs against the whole of Eastern Europe and the Indian subcontinent with huge student debts that I wouldn't remotely be able to pay off for them?

Decision made. We were moving to nowhere. If any bloody estate agent talked about a house
packed with original features
I would just say, —
So what? Features are cheap on eBay
.
Now tell me about the catchment area
. If they mentioned
conservation area
, I'd say, —
Conservation shmonzervation
,
talk to me about catchment
. If they said
period property
, I'd say, —
Why should I pay more for old crap? What's the catchment?
If they said
high ceilings
, I'd ask about
high exam scores
.

And if the local good school was run by some church, so be it. Shit, that all used to be just a handy way of selecting without saying so, but that maniac Blair positively encouraged the bastards to actually bloody
mean
it. So now, if you want your kids not to get kicked, you have to smile inanely as you listen to some old queen in a nightie spouting metaphysical lunacy. Whatever. We can't afford to go private, so tough. My stupid bloody leftie parents didn't have me baptised or confirmed, because they thought things were actually
going to change
, ha ha! But I could set that right. I was clever. Within a month I could easily be talking theology with
the vicar or the father or whoever it took. I would quote Martin bloody Luther at them if they wanted, for or against, depending – who cared? In German! Lying? Certainly not. I would merely be adjusting the modes of my discourse to correspond to the prevailing zeitgeist, and who could blame me for that?

No more Schumann, my darlings. No more little lectures on art history. No limits on watching crap TV. We'll have fine eazi-2-kleen uPVC windows and a small mortgage. Our ceilings and our overheads will both be low. You'll have Playstations and Sky coming out of your ears, boys! We'll bother your little heads no more with useless knowledge that was really only ever meant for the posh and just trickled down slightly for that brief period after the Second World War when there was a curious phenomenon called Social Mobility. Bring you up as weirdos with tastes too sophisticated for your place in life but too poor to ever indulge them? Not us.