ADVENTURES IN A DIFFICULT WORLD (CHAPTER TWELVE)

The place is as dark as a cavern in this late afternoon, Autumn light. In the candlelight I watch the blue-brown luminescent snakes of smoke from the spliff swirl in slo-mo around us. The wine flows, and the viscous atmosphere pours like syrup, and from the boxes somewhere above us, the music like tangled wire, also pisses into the goo.
Astrid and I sit in the Forum with the Puppen Meister (Puppet master), who always seems to have the air of The Mad Hatter about him. He is with Antonella, the beautiful, tall and slender, coal-black-eyed Italian painter, who is sipping her wine like a dove. She speaks little English and less German.
Astrid and I are spaced out after smoking a spliff with our coffee. I slump lower down in my chair, while she puts her lovely curves around the sofa.
The Puppet Master invites me – once more -- to his puppet theatre to see his adult version of the ‘Three Little Pigs’ – life goes ping and my mind goes pong.
We sit at a large but low table to the left of the counter, on which stands rows of opened bottles of wine for the customers to help themselves. A bar bloke I know, Ray, an American, is strongly massaging another’s shoulders. He was limbering him up for the evening, which would be long.
I apologise to the Puppet Master for not having gone to his show – excuses, excuses. He's an all right guy, an original East Berliner, who's little puppet theatre even existed before the wall came down. But of course the adult shows have been added since then.
Astrid, who has been taking it all in, thinks it sounds great, and laughs a lot, and promises him she will come to see it, and that she'll drag me with her. It feels so warm when she includes me in her plan. I don't want to leave her later...
It is warm in the Forum, too... I'm just taking in the scene, saying little. My stoned mind slips and slides in and out of the vista. I watch a guy at the bar, whose appearance suddenly takes on a frog like quality -- not his face, which I can't see; he has his back to me. No, it was more his movements and his posture -- his thin legs in tight jeans spread as he perches on a bar stool. Then, if to confirm my thoughts, he turns his head to one side, and his tongue darts in and out as if to catch a fly. I grin to myself.
Earlier, after waking and looking out of my window on this grey Sunday morning, Astrid and I had stayed in bed continuing our body geography. It's hard to drag myself away from her. I like her cleverness and confidence, her sexually freedom; that she takes the initiative, that she talks when we make love, that she is tender. I like the way she clings to me in her sleep – using my chest or back as a pillow.
Around midday, the outside world had suddenly demanded our attention. First Dirk had rung, and then Piper. I arranged to meet them here, which is my usual on Sundays: comfortable with its seventies living room furniture: big couches and coffee tables. It has a no-set-prices-eat and drink-and pay-with-respect-principle -- a kind of alternative wine bar. And nobody hassles you about the blow. A wonderful hang out for the afternoons, but after eight in the evening it gets really full and fast, with a different crowd coming in off the street. I then rang and told Ralph I couldn't come this evening as I had a visitor from West Germany – well I wasn't lying was I? I really wanted this time with Astrid to go on. She told me she has to work like the devil all next week, but we could ring, and get together at the week end. It gave me a thrill to think it was all on wheels. I don't care now where it's going, at least it is moving.
I promised Ralph I would spend every evening next week on his green mountains, and he seemed right with it, anyway.
Four or five more people now join us – some I know, others I don’t. One of the newcomers is a big beefy black, Mr I’m so cool-Frisco-DJ-Blah-Blah-hip hop and bob tail, shallow as a shadow. He's dissing, scoring, and wishing for every passing woman – sweating, pushing and pulling, loud, and generally acting the goat’s penis. But then it is Sunday in the Forum -- a regular meeting place for odds and sods, and this evening would be a night of pigus, drunkus, stoneus maximus! Ah, Berlin...
Now comes Dirk with Susanna, both looking around -- checking the place out. He is smiling, and when he sees Astrid is also there he looks at me and give me a knowing wink. Dirk finds a couple of chairs. Astrid and Susanna are hugging and chin-wagging like old friends. Susanna looks stunning in dripping black lace over a black tight fitting catsuit. She gets a lot of hot glare.
Each time new people join our lot the coffee tables are pushed together and more chairs are brought. There is an omelet of languages being scrambled: English, German, Spanish, and even Antonella has found a couple of Italian guys to rap with. There is suddenly a lot of shouts. Mr DJ hot-rat-flip-flop-rot-rap-drip-drip-spit-shit is now in full flow with a black guy with a smashed-glass London accent.
'Don't call me Nigger,' the Londoner says.
'But that's what you are, nigger....'
'No I'm not. Where I come from nobody calls me nigger...'
'Maybe not, but that's how it is, bro. I'm a nigger and you a nigger.'
'No I'm not, so fuck you, bro!'
'You think you white, nigger? You not, you be a mother-fucking black -- you a mother-fucking-nigger, just like me!'
This toing and froing goes on for a few minutes, and begins to get everyone's attention. The London guy is looking about to explode when a guy sitting with him stands up and says, 'Hey, I'm a mother-fucking-white guy and I'm out of here!'
Everyone in hear-shot laughs, and the mother fucking white guy leaves with the very pissed off looking Londoner.
Piper arrives. And for some reason, which I can't figure out, Danny is with him! They look so mismatched -- like a comedy-team: Piper tall – large, in a smart black over coat, Danny squat bulky, and as usual, sporting his turned round hat, and his grey faded denim jacket.
Danny's pudding face winces when he sees Astrid with me. I see his neck harden and his mouth fall open. Astrid avoids his glares. Piper give us a wave and come over to say, hi, but there isn't a place for them to sit, so he has to take a seat a couple of tables away from us. Danny takes the drinks from the bar then joins him without coming over to us. I throw Piper a small bag of grass for him to make a spliff. Piper looks as if he's already had a drop in the eye. I think he probably, as ever, has his flask of the creature – as he calls it – in his pocket.
He stands and runs open the buttons down his coat as he thanks me. He is wearing a black waistcoat with a starched white shirt beneath it. This, the hat, and the way he stands in the candlelight gives him a Borroughseque air. He is very much present.
Dirk asks me how the book is going.
'Not a work in progress at the moment,' I say, 'I haven't had much time for writing.' He laughs and says:
'You old devil.'
'Eh, more of the devil, and less of the old!'
'Susana looks beautiful,' I say.'
He brushes his thick fair hair from his eyes and looks at her. His face softens and he says, 'She not only looks beautiful, she is beautiful... And she sings like an angel! last night I saw her perform at the B-Flat... I never knew she was so good... His face lights up. 'She has a great vice... I mean voice, ha ha.... I want to do mad things with her. I want to drive us both mad.'
I laugh -- I'd seen him like this before with Flying Christine.
Susanna, as if she's heard him, turns from Astrid and smiles at him.
He laughs and says, 'Let's take a taxi to my tent!' she aims a delicious grin at him, and then turns to continue her conversation.
'Hows William Tell hanging?' I ask him.
'Yeah, well, I've got a lot of it down... but some things have to be hammered into your head -- you have to live it day and night, right? It becomes like a worm in your head.' He looks dewy-eyed at Susana and says, 'Sex seems my only release... But I'll tell you 'I'm even learning the stuff on the bog.'
'Which rings a bell!' I say. 'I have to go to the little boys room.'