I just hung around watching the others until it occurred to me that if I found a few strong thigh an calf bones, an maybe a pelvis or two, I could set up a little podium. I spotted Sharky behind the ovens … testing out the box trick on location. But I gotta come clean, chiefs an bosses, I got a pretty good laugh out of it: never mind Batas, he was curled up inside a box barely big enough for the Keds of two tin soldiers!
An Micka, Micka the helmsman, said: Well, might as well! An started looking around for gold teeth. At first he was only kidding: Ho ho ho an Heh heh heh, but then he got obsessed an started poking through the gratings, an believe it or not, dear chiefs, in the old clogged unraked gratings on the ovens’ outer wall, where the heat I guess wasn’t as fierce, he found a little lump of gold! Right away him an Sharky started arguing how much it could fetch. Sharky played hard an heavy, quoting figures off commodity exchanges an fuming at the ridiculous sums, but Micka glowed, because he’d found his time, Das Kapital.
And shortly after we’d gotten acclimatized, so to speak, to that place left over from hell, a terrifying gale kicked up, whipping bones around, picking them up in bunches and flinging them in our faces, and all those protective playful structures we’d built in anticipation of death were lost.
The first one to go was my small, perhaps I could say impromptu, outdoor stage, right after I had finally gotten it stabilized and somewhat tentatively rehearsed the short but justifiedly popular monologue of a dramatic figure from olden times, the young aristocrat holding a skull. His question, put as much to the skull’s empty eye sockets as to the bulging, bloodshot eyes of homo sapiens’ arbitrary representative, was also a question for me: the right query in a suitable place.
Good old English rang in my ears with unusual urgency. And especially of course that important question mark; the reply to the dead Dane’s question, coincidentally negative, could only be made with great discomfort … and only thus do words become deeds … but the thought of running my heart through with some old bone grossed me out … and I didn’t have my dear old knife with me, but from historical writings I know of a certain widespread practice employed by the Aztec princes at that fatal turning point when Cortéz and his pack of metal-plated rednecks shattered their time: biting off your own tongue and swallowing it, resulting in strangulation … I found my tongue with my teeth, clamped it in the gate, and held it there a second, but it hurt too much … I simply lack the upbringing to be a son of the Sun … so I went on polishing my monologue while searching for reinforcements for my stage, but then another unruly thought got me started laughing again … about the skull the brilliant playwright inserted in the young man’s hand for his immortal monologue … with the kind of props I had handy, the playwright known as the Swan of Avon would most likely have given up composing his titillating pieces for the enjoyment of strapping journeyman butchers and gone out screaming wildly in the nearest local loony bin.
And then the aforementioned gale interrupted my speculations … grasping hold of us, lofting us upward, circling over the ovens, which we bid, with what we hoped was our last glance, finally farewell, and then we were flying … like a squad of celestial aquabelles, we were five, and suddenly the sun was warm, and then, O brothers and blood brothers, I sighted the Face once again, but the happiness I felt at that instant, stunning me from my capillaries right up into my medulla, suddenly turned to fright as something happened to the Face … and then I don’t know … I was flying in front, until suddenly Sharky went flying past, shoes first … And that’s the end.
And the voice left me. I dug my nails into my palm and looked around the room. Shifted my head and saw the sun. Setting. The lawn behind our buildings glittered in the last rays. Then it was dark. The grass is black now, I thought to myself. Went to the window and looked out. I was expecting the ritual of friendly muttering, but instead someone smacked me in the head, somebody else gave me a kick, I didn’t fight back. It would’ve been only normal if I’d gotten a bit of an ass-kicking. But nobody was up for it. Best bring in the Fiery, I told the shadow leaning over me. My dream had been so dark and long, it had swallowed up the whole byznys day. We didn’t get to Sharky. Or to the well and its mysteries either.
7
THE METAL FLOWED. ON THE SUBWAY WITH L. BOHLER THE GREAT. I LEAP AND HEAR SHE-DOG.
And the next day we turned up for our regular briefing in byznys suits unpunctured by any dream bones. And began spinning metal. I had the delicate task of pitting a second-division Ludvig against two fifth-division Ludvigs. Usually it was no problem, given that most superiors squelch their inferiors just to prove their manhood. Power instead of balls, drugs, and a smile. That’s the way it was, is, and always will be … we, however, were only out to squelch certain inferiors, and only at the right time.
One of the lesser Ludvigs’ wives was sleeping with the second-division Ludvig. They were fond enough of each other but too pressed chasing cash and the social limelight to plan a common path. The superior Ludvig sank a claw into the two officials, failing to realize the inferior Ludvig knew about his sweet secret. Jarmilka herself wanted her lesser husband to know that she knew that he knew. It was never spoken aloud, so as to preserve some sort of dignity. This way they all got something out of it: the greater Ludvig in bed, the lesser Ludvig in the office, and Jarmilka got both. The claw was sunk in over a few skillfully chosen sentences during lunch with the avant-garde actor Potok … following a small sample of a certain irregularity in the two officials’ files, and in one of them in particular … Potok, as if by a miracle, and it’s no longer any secret … above all through persistent nosiness, and last but not least with the luster of metal, had obtained the file from the other crushed official and, being an upstanding citizen, saw to its rectification.
These, to put it gentlemanly, irregularities could’ve meant surefire easy cash … all you had to do was bend forward, casually … with a smile … as meanwhile a breeze wafts, schoolgirls sing, the day grows sweet. It was purely by accident that the starving artist Potok happened on the 24-carat irregularities, and he has no intention of making a fuss, writing the newspapers, raking the muck … of course not! … he’s merely a poor bohemian, kind of a fool in fact … BUT. Let her leave me! I’ll walk out! confided the earnest fifth-division Ludvig over their next lunch, and the slippery Potok knew that the official tucking into the delicate strips of gleaming meat in je-ne-sais-quoi sauce à la Mouchon on the other side of the table … the shrewd Potok was treating … could just as easily walk right into the slammer. My Jarmilka’s got a thing for him … but he’s harassing me! You got a cousin, right? asked the patient Potok, that sly psychopath … Yeah, what’s that got to do with it? A lot, pal, a lot, Potok the good guy in a pinch leaned across the table … Shortly after that, the suffering fifth-division Ludvig decided to leave his Jarmilka to bang the second-division Ludvig, and went to see his cousin the MP, who in turn arrived for his appropriately high-level meeting with the troublesome superior Ludvig equipped with documentation of a scandal worthy of a first-class tabloid … the teeth-gnashing second-string ministerial official felt his glands wilt … upset, and with his high-ranking seat suddenly irretrievably slipping out from under him, he unconsciously and ever so casually and furtively dropped his left hand under the table and touched his quick-as-a-wink miniature member … no, not that, smiled the genial MP … and a few seconds shy of a heart attack the high official learned that he could keep his high seat, along with his bedmate and devoted coworker, and that the irregularities in the files … the date of a certain ruthless audit probing for those same 24-carat irregularities was conveyed with a whisper … and the old ticker kicked back in at the usual gallop … BUT.