Nico (20 page)

Such were the thoughts of Dr Demetrius before Raincoat poisoned him.

We met Raincoat in one of those dope-shop/coffee-bars that stink of hippy paranoia. Demetrius stood there in his double-breasted suit and trilby – his incongruity filling the place up. He considered drug-taking a vulgar high and any form of drug dependency the sign of a weak personality. Unfortunately, though, Demetrius had not managed to curb his addiction to cakes. Raincoat was about to bite into one when Demetrius broke a piece off, without asking, and began to devour it.

‘'Elp yerself,' said Raincoat, pushing the plate over to him.
‘
Mia casa, tua casa
.'

Demetrius chomped away. I had to intervene.

‘Is that what I think it is?' I asked Raincoat. He nodded. I told Demetrius it was a hash cake and he shouldn't eat any more, as he'd never taken a psychoactive drug in his life.

‘Tastes fine to me,' said Demetrius, gorging himself. Whether out of bravado or sheer greed he polished the cake off. ‘I'll see you all later. I'm off to – er – look at the Rembrandts.'

Demetrius viewed museums as ‘the graveyards of culture – wouldn't be seen dead in one.' I knew he was off to peruse some life studies of a more exotic nature.

Pandemonium. Raincoat and I got back to the Museumzicht, our small hotel with the eternal stairs, a couple of hours later, to find a doctor at Demetrius's bedside, administering intra- venous valium.

Demetrius grabbed hold of the doctor's arm. ‘I'm dying,' he said in a state of total panic. ‘I'm dying.'

‘No, you're not,' said the doctor, ‘you're just hysterical.' He unloaded the valium into Demetrius's arm.

The sedative began to work and the doctor left. As soon as he was out of the door Nico came in, wafting great clouds of incense over Demetrius, followed by Wadada playing Fauré's
Requiem
.

‘Oh God! Oh God!' cried Demetrius, horrified at the apparition of Nico hovering over him. ‘Get away! Get away! The Angel of Death … Get away!'

Demetrius was never really the same after that. His old anxious, misplaced self returned to claim him. The inhaler and the Bullworker became his constant companions again. They say that travel broadens the mind. Demetrius's mind had been stretched to places it didn't want to go. Out-of-body experiences, feelings of absurdity, paranoia, anxiety.

‘I genuinely thought I was going mad,' he said later. ‘Apparently ingesting hashish is five times more powerful than smoking it … I'd never even had a puff of a joint before.'

He rested up at the hotel for a few days. Occasionally he'd venture outside. I'd find him standing in the middle of the road, peering through an imaginary sextant.

‘Perceptual distortion,' he'd say. ‘Perceptual distortion.'

Then he moved to another hotel, taking the tour float with him. There, he entertained everyone with a curious charade, claiming that his room had been burgled and the money stolen. We called the police. They knew the hotel well, a perfectly straight establishment with a desk clerk and doorman. Demetrius, however, seemed anything but straight to them. According to the desk clerk he'd filled his room with a bevy of Thai callgirls, so it was easy to work out where the money had gone.

Then Demetrius left. Just disappeared.

Angel 666, Barcelona (Homage to Catatonia)

Nico, Eric Random and I had been having a disorientating time of it down the Ramblas, tripping over jugglers and bumping into mime artists. There was no room for honest scum anywhere. Eric thought he knew the way back to the hotel, so Nico and I doggedly followed him, keeping our eyes fixed firmly on his brand new, calf-length, black, Spanish
bootees
(size 7, ladies). One blind and black alleyway looks much the same as another in the Gothic Quarter and within minutes we were lost.

Having paid a kid to lead us out of the barrio, we arrived at the venue – Club 666 – to find ourselves enigmatically billed as ‘Nico and the Hasidim'. The mystery was solved, however, when who should walk on stage in the middle of the performance, but Dr Demetrius himself, dress as Hasidic rabbi, in long black overcoat the hat, brandishing a copy of the Bible
.

‘The Angel of Death. The Angel of Death,' he kept repeating. The audience was completely mystified. We carried on playing, like it was part of the show. Nico didn't notice him, until he was standing up against her, staring manically.

‘The Angel of Death.'

‘What are
yooooo
doooing here?' Nico asked.

Demetrius just stood there, impassively staring.

‘Get out! … Go!'

He didn't move.

She shoved him.

He swayed a little, but remained rooted to the spot.

We turned up the volume and blasted him off.

Then he showed up again the next day at a live TV date:
The Angel Cassas Show.
It was in a variety theatre. A traditional sloping stage, footlights, individual dressing-rooms, the works. The stall seats had been removed and tables and chairs put in their place, so it would resemble a cabaret. The audience sat eating and drinking, while the host, Angel Cassas himself, smoothly compered an eclectic show that consisted of topless dancers, James Burke (the communicator), a Rumba troupe, and Nico. Demetrius was still carrying his Bible, and now wearing a crucifix as well as the Hassidic gear.

Nico was anxious about Demetrius's craziness, whether he was going to pull another stunt like the night before. He was hanging around outside her dressing-room, pacing the corridor, reading aloud apocryphal passages from the
Book of Revelations
.

Eric Random and I sniffed about the Bluebell Girls. Though they were a permanent feature of the Angel Cassas show, half of them came from Blackburn. They had long fantails of pink ostrich feathers, worn over a sequined G-string, and up top nothing but pert, powdered, pink titties and smiles as wide and eyes as blue as an empty sky. One of them plucked a tail feather and gave it to Random. I asked him if I could borrow his Tantric talisman to see if I had any luck.

‘This'asn't left my neck since I was in Nepal,' he said in a hushed, reverential voice. ‘It was blessed by Baba Yoni'imself.'

We were on after the girls. Angel Cassas was giving mouth, some silky-slick patter to the middle-aged punters, getting them horny. Then Nico was supposed to come on and sing her
saeta
of woe.

Cue. Camera. No Nico.

We had to start playing, so we did a long intro … then a verse … but still no Nico. A third of the way through the song, we heard the clump and jangle of her boots. She stomped on stage, furious. Strangely, her dressing-room intercom had been switched off. The audience started tittering. I looked up at the backstage balcony: there was Demetrius,
eating
his Bible. We finished the song, the clap man signalled the audience to applaud. Above the polite patter, Demetrius could be heard admonishing us all to ‘beware the Angel of Death.' This caused some offence to the management as they thought Demetrius was referring to Angel Cassas. I managed to calm them down, explaining that Nico's manager was undergoing some sort of spiritual crisis and had been this way for weeks.

In all this hysteria, Nico seemed to have become strangely steady. An atmosphere of insanity seemed conducive to her sense of well-being. It made her feel normal. She was now just another person in the bus. And that's the way she liked it. That's who she was. One of the boys.

Digital Delight/Ringfinger Surprise

Beating the borders was always a challenge. Various subterfuges were employed as we crisscrossed our way across fortress Europe. Nico would adopt the disguise of a prim librarian – specs, hair in a bun – but unfortunately it was undermined by the black leather trousers, the biker boots and the leather bracelet with silver skulls. And, as her eyesight was perfect, the alien lenses distorted her vision so much that she could barely discern a familiar face, let alone the inquisitorial stares of officialdom.

Customs officials, it has to be said, ain't the brightest of individuals. They always pull the broken-down old 2CVs with broken-down hippies inside, or the conspicuously guilty pop group with the pills and potions in their underpants. Meanwhile the professional hustler in the black BMW with a briefcase full of cocaine is waved on through. This prejudice infuriated Nico, to the po
int where she would become contemptuous of even her own fear. Once, as we were driving off the car ferry at Dover, she handed me a bunch of used syringes, a whole tour's worth. I quickly threw them off the ramp and into the oily black water below, thanking her profusely for the macabre bouquet.

Nico's preferred method of concealment was to buy a pack of condoms (a source of great embarrassment to her: ‘I'm sure they must think I'm a hooker when I buy these things') and a jar of vaseline. Then she'd fill the prophylactic with a clingfilmed ball of heroin. This she would insert into her behind, generally about five minutes from the border. This is how it would go:

‘Are we ne-ar the booorder?' We'd heard it sung so many times it had become a familiar refrain along with ‘Have you got a little bit of haa-aash?' Out would come the condom, a look of disgust on her face. Then she'd wriggle out of her leathers. Everyone would suddenly busy themselves with displacement activities: books that hadn't been opened throughout the tour would suddenly become intensely fascinating.

There's a particular customs post north of Lille, on the French/Belgian border, every time … every single time …

Demetrius was whistling inanely a nerveless, tuneless ditty of his own making.

‘We're a touring party of jazz musicians … we have a carnet … I am Miss Paffgen's personal physician …' It was never any use. They pulled the bus apart, seats upturned, instruments out of the cases, dirty laundry everywhere. Then the pockets – we lined up one by one, emptying our pathetic secrets on to the desk. The chief poked through the pile, saying nothing, nose twitching above his black moustache. You could picture him at home, a photo of Jean-Marie Le Pen on the dressing-table; humping his wife while she picked spinach from her teeth.

We knew what was in store, it was ritualistic and we were resigned. They probably knew it was a waste of time, but that's what they were there in the world to do – waste our time.

One by one we were led off to the ‘interview room'. Nico banging into things, blind as a bat (the glasses had to go).

A thin little guy with rat eyes asks me to undress. He inspects each garment, examining the lining. Then he holds my arms under a lamp to check for needle marks. On the table lies a pair of surgical gloves and a tube of lubricating jelly. If you piss these guys off you don't get the jelly. There's a knock at the door. A female officer is standing there, a small bull dyke with cropped hair and a big black gunbelt. She's excited, they've found something.

Back in the chief's office, I ask Eric Random if he got the finger.

‘Yeh,' his eyes lowered. ‘Creep asked if 'e could 'ave me phone number afterwards.'

Nico comes in with the dyke, looking suitably crushed and repentant.

The chief starts typing out a charge: possession of prohibited substances and unpaid debt. The central Paris computer has thrown up some ancient hospital bill Nico hasn't paid.

They got what they wanted. A token. Nico had stashed a shot's worth of dope in her knickers (the rest of the stuff still safely concealed in its traditional hiding place). They were happy with that. A few smiles, a few jokes. Demetrius resumed his whistling.

Fear is always a problem of scale.

Brixton

‘'Im aint naw docturr!' Mrs Chin blocked the to
p of the stairs to our flat. ‘An'
she
aint naw music teacher neither.'

‘An' 'im,' she pointed to me, ‘'im naw in the middle ages … An' 'oo be'e?' She pointed to the svelte figure of Eric Random. ‘What'as bin goin' on in this'ere 'ouse aint nawbady's bisness … like a 'erd o' buffalo, up an' down dese steers … Amma feart a knock on mi own door fer t'look inside … blood! Blood on de walls!'

Mrs Chin had got into the flat while we were away. Clarke and Echo had been in permanent residence, contributing their unique refinements to our Brixton salon. Needle orgies every night. The place looked like it had been gangbanged.

Echo and Clarke crept in later, after Mrs Chin had shaken the rest of us for the rent and given us our notice to quit. Needless to say, Bertie and Jeeves hadn't paid a penny towards the upkeep of the place. The phone was off – red bills of over £500 to Dr Mengele threatening disconnection. Demetrius's annoyance was tempered by the thought that not only did the evil doctor of Auschwitz have Mossad on his trail, but he would also have to answer to British Telecom as well.