ADVENTURES IN A DIFFICULT WORLD (Chapter Three) Part Two

Chapter Three (Part two)
Berlin
When The Soluble Fish finish the rounds and collecting the money they come to our table again, and barge their way on to the sofa forcing the red haired girl and the Trommel boys to be crushed together. But these guys are so funny everyone just laughs! Everyone congratulates them on the show.
We watch quietly as they tip the contents from their hats on the table and start sorting it out. Black holds up a small plastic bag of grass, he touches it to his forehead and mutters,
'Bhoomshanka!
Red looking at a wedge of black hash in his fingers says,
'More bewitching than grace!'
'Are you two twins?' asks Astrid?
Without looking they say nothing, but pose with their faces together, and smile a Cheshire grin. There's a gleam of mischief in their identical eyes.
'One egg twins?' Danny bleats.
'An egg hardly boiled!' they chime together, merrily children beaming like cherubs. Everybody's shakes their heads and laughs.
They turn their attention back to their drinks and the counting of money. Red pulls his hat off again and takes a hand full of coins from their stash, and tells his brother he'll get the beers in. The girl with the red hair passes him the joint before he leaves. He eyes her as if seeing her for the first time and says, 'You look like a snappy bit of kipper lass!'
The girl just looks confused then says something to him in Russian. But he's already on his way.
Dirk has got his arm around Susanne talking to her quietly. Detlef goes off to the bar with Danny. So Piper slides up next to Astrid. He tells us he's seen these boys before in Kreutzberg. He asks me what I think of the existential do-da. I tell him I'm much impressed. We chat about their ribaldry and their aggressive urban edge. We agree that in Britain they couldn't get up to a lot of the capers they were cutting here. 'They'd probably get lynched....'
He asks me where I hang out now. And I describe the charms of the Trommel and a place called the Forum where I go a lot. He says he's never been to either. So I say I'll give him a ring one night and I'll show him the places. I give him the wisdom weed to make a pure one, and watch his amazed face when I tell him I don't smoke tobacco any more. He says, like giving up my painting, it's hard to believe of me...
Astrid is asking Susanne about her tattoos... but then suddenly turns and looks at me for a moment, then kisses me on the mouth again. Her lips are wet and warm and slide around my mouth. She feels so alive in my arms. I'm on an absinthe gondola drifting up a warm milky canal that hugs me. She whispers that she wants me. I tell her she's driving me crazy.
Red and Danny come back from the bar with drinks. I take the tray Danny is passing me with two more absinthes on it. He tells us Detlef bought them. My brain is already liquidating from the first one.
Black shows Red how much money they've made, then stuffs it in his pocket and they chink their glasses. Everybody now chinks their glasses.
'Are you boys all right?' I ask them.
'Can't stop laughing!' says Black in his deadpan Scouse.
'Ay we're all right, it's the others!' adds Red just as ironically.
'Where'd you get that funny accent?' Black asks me.
'Hull in Yorkshire' I tell him.
'Hull!' says Red, 'we were there once, but it was closed!' They both burst into a large identical lugging laugh.
'Do you miss Britain?' Danny asks them.
'Only the weather and the cuisine!' says Black.
You couldn't get a straight word out of them so we gave up.
A few minutes later they finish their beers in one long swig, and stand to leave.
'So our kid', say Red 'lets put the strait jackets on and go to work...'
Piper asks if they have another gig tonight.
'Ay,' says Black, 'there's no rest for the weird!'
They put their coats on and say ciao! and dissolve into the crowd.
They were now the buzz-word on the table! Piper explains some of the Latin. And we laugh over again. Astrid says she really felt sorry for them; that they look like very unhappy children....
'Yeah, like a double dose of the infant-terrible!' says Piper.
Strum und Drang, says Dirk.
'Who the hell was the Kasper character then? asks Astrid, 'he looked like a sick ghost.'
Danny says, Red had told him and Detlef at the bar, that the guy was some heroin dealer who sold shit stuff at their gigs. He had started following them around, and they had told him not to come any more.
The Trommel boys and Susanne, who's English isn't so good, hadn't got a lot of the act, so we were try explaining some of the jokes to them, not really making a good job of it.
I now realise Detlef isn't there.
'What happened to Detef?' I ask Astrid.
'He had to go', she said, 'to meet someone'.
'Was he pissed off' with us? I ask.
'No', she assures me, 'he told me earlier he would leave.' She smiles, then desire washes it away, and her mouth was on mine. Great waves rose inside me, flooding my sense; the closeness of her body, the feel of her wild tumbling hair on my face, and the smell and taste of her. Her mouth so warm and wet -- I can't help thinking about her pussy -- and the urgency and hunger I feel surging through both our bodies is overwhelming.
'Take me home with you Rig,' she whispers.
There is nothing more to discuss. We put on our coats and say goodbye to everyone -- who can't help understanding everything... The incandescence in their eyes says it all. Dirk says he'll call me tomorrow, and I tell Piper I'll give him a ring. Then we are swaying arm in arm into the shadows, and then out into the electric night. Wending our way home, floating. We can't walk more than thirty yards without stopping to get more of each other. Her hand always finding my lad through the material of my jeans. I caressing her full pushing breasts. A five minute walk turns into a hot entangled twenty minutes of Astrid under the voyeur moon.
When we enter my place we separate for a few moments -- she to the bathroom, while I sort the music: Mozart, which sounds like a great turning prayer wheel. I chill the light to a candle in a glass. A large sphere of white light looms up -- an absinthe sea of milky white radiance flows over the boarder of the physical and into mind. White, a sea of white, a white aria: symphony in white...
As she returns we fall into magic together. We stand by the bed, I running my hands down over her long white slender neck. We begin slowly pulling each others clothes off. Gradually I'm exposing more and more of the whiteness of her succulent body: the ivory arms and luxuriant breasts, the secrete clefts and hidden crevices now so luminous. Our breaths collide on the edge of our lips. Her sighs and surds of pleasure as soothing as the language of seashells. We burn with tension, yet, linger over every supercharged second. The Mozart swells, and my nerves tinkle as sensitive as a wind charm. Her hands soft little fluttering wings over my skin. The fever of our flesh welds and we devolve together into a sonorous soup. Slow flowing caressing lips kissing, searching, tasting. While a phosphorescent angel-white fog of light swims slowly around us. She lays back against the black sheet of the bed, open, like a white star shimmering in the waxen candlelight. The cat-black acute triangle between her legs is a stark and absorbing contrast. The candle suddenly splutters, and the seemingly touching light runs across her body pursued by butterfly shadows. We tumble off the earth and fall into the milky sea. Falling wildly against each other like mad living skittles.