The Combinations, page 56
candles & stood on either side of the novice, heads bowed, hands clasped in a
show of prayer. The orchestra became more intense in its butchering of
Schubert’s score. Then something moving above the stage caught Němec’s eye.
From the blackness, a winged Devil slowly descended on invisible wires. It
had wide grotesque eyes. A red tongue snaked in & out of its mouth. Němec
gaped at it. The creature beat its wings. Hot wind seemed to blow. Němec
gripped his walkingstick. The orchestra abandoned Schubert for pure
cacophony. The spotlight faded green to red. Out of the cacophony a pounding
rhythm grew. The creature’s tongue wormed obscenely in its hole. The nuns,
stripping off their habits, began a lewd dance. Horned bustiers & vulcanised
rubber corsets. Stockings & stiletto boots. Loins hung with black grapes.
Having abandoned their attitude of prayer, these Sisters-of-Mercy now
converged upon the novice, arms writhing to the drumbeat. At a given signal
they hoisted the novice’s skirts. The stageprop Devil, bearded & clovenhoofed,
squatted astride her. There was a puff of smoke & like a jack-in-the-box a
monstrous dildo shot out of his codpiece. The novice screamed — her face,
illuminated from above, disfigured by transports of comic ecstasy.
Němec, in a shock of recognition, rose unsteadily from his chair,
walkingstick aloft, to strike down the winged beast. Fog swirled up from the
floor. All of a sudden, he felt very cold & very hot. An emptiness yawned around
him. He lurched forward. A look of dismay transformed the novice’s face as she
turned towards him, eyes all-too familiar now. Němec thrashed with his stick,
the fog swirled thickly, the Devil flapped its wings. Drums beat the air into a
frenzy. With a piercing shriek Němec charged headlong into the abyss.
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At first, the voices sounded far off, then they came closer, like fairies
rustling through undergrowth, whispering into his ear. What they were saying
was completely meaningless. Then, in a pudgy little voice, one of them said —
‘Looks like he’s coming around.’
‘Mein Gott! You muss take zis lunatic out from here!’
‘He’s no lunatic, just drunk is all.’
‘The Doctor won’t be long.’
‘He don’t need a doctor, he just needs a bucket of cold water.’
‘Boss said to call the Doc.’
‘But who eez dees Mann?’
‘I seen him once before at the club, a nobody. But the dame says she
recognised him from the clinic. One of the Doc’s experiments, maybe.’
‘Looks like he’s seen a ghost.’
‘Been poppin’ too many of these, more like.’
When Němec opened his eyes he was lying in the green anteroom,
clutching his stick to his chest with both hands. The dwarf was peering
attentively down at him, he was holding a phial of bright pink pills in his fist.
‘Better lay off the sauce, bo,’ the dwarf said, ‘you know what’s good for ya.’
Behind the dwarf loomed the faces of the Toad, the doorman, Heydrich-
the-waiter, the transvestite coatcheck, the novice. Neither Faktor nor the Devil
where anywhere in sight. The transvestite sneered —
‘Look at the bum, doesn’t have the decency to lose the lid even when he
lies down.’
The doorman grunted. The Toad wrung her fat bejewelled hands. The
waiter crossed his arms. The novice did nothing but stand there holding a
blonde wig in one hand, the front of a black kimono bunched in the other.
Without the wig, she almost looked familiar, like a face in a film, only Němec
couldn’t put a name to it. He was listening to the sound of a tinpot orchestra
drifting through the green velvet curtains. He felt like this was all nothing but a
dream & pretty soon he’d wake up. The dwarf chuckled. Němec grinned sickly
back at him before the curtains came down on their little act once more.
354
28
___________
THE BUGMAN
‘My mother’s brother,’ began the Bugman, ‘had a story about a blind gypsy who
lived by himself in a lean-to at the bottom of a field by the freight yards at Na
Knížecí. Once upon a time, it went, there was this miserable old tzigane, camped
off the side of the railroad tracks. Nothing but his mutt for company. The odd
wayfarer, the odd bullshit merchant. He was blind, you see. Blind as any blind
bastard you can imagine, hehe. The thing is, he’d never shut up. Had chapter &
verse on anything you’d ever heard of. Talked like it was no-one’s business, night
& day. Kept going in his sleep, too. Hardly drew breath. For a while the usual
bums & layabouts came to watch the show, trying to figure out the blind gypsy’s
gimmick. Then the cripples started trickling in, looking for a cure. Later a
couple of scam artists set up a stall in front of the old bugger’s lean-to: for a
pfennig they’d let the tourists watch him talk the leg off a table. It was an even
bet who’d last longer, the punter or the table-leg. There was no end to the feats
the old jawbone was credited with. Only he talked so much eventually no-one’d
risk coming near him. One-by-one the hangers-on drifted away. So there he was,
alone again, just the way he started out. But still he kept talking. Didn’t care if
no-one listened. That jawbone must’ve had a life of it’s own. Seemed the only
sustenance the old gobshite could take was the sound of his own voice. Nothing
else mattered. Acted like he’d forgot the outside world existed. Even forgot his
faithful idiot of a mutt. Stands to reason he’d have talked himself into the grave
& probably back out again. Then one day, a miracle. There he was, gob flapping
in its own wind & not a word. Nothing but a hollow moan. Took them days to
figure out what happened. Mutt was starved half crazy by now, see? Must’ve got
its eye on the old bastard’s tongue lolling around while he was asleep. God
knows what the beast took it for. Tore it clean out by the roots. Even then the
idiot’s gob didn’t miss a beat. Fancy that, eh? Man’s best friend.’
The Bugman’s voice chuckled softly to itself —
‘Aye, they knew how to tell a yarn in them days, hehe. Used to work in a
factory, my uncle did. In Zlín. Making shoes for Mr Baťa. When the Krauts
came in ’, they requisitioned the factory to make boots for the Wehrmacht,
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who wore them in Stalingrad. The Bolsheviks stripped the boots from the Kraut
corpses & wore them when they liberated Moravia. My uncle made boots for the
communist sonsofbitches who liked to step on our heads with them after the
War. Boots for the camp guards, the commandant, & the resident commissars.
And if you were lucky enough to own a pair on a labour detachment, my good
old uncle probably had a hand in making those too. When he died in ’, you
know what his widow buried him in? Nothing. Bare feet. Maybe you want to
know why he didn’t just get up & leave, when he had the chance? But where
would he’ve left to? He was a Moravák. Only thing he knew how to do was feed
bits of leather into a machine. And when the chance came to get out, it was too
late. Stomach ulcer. Too bad. One of life’s little jokes, hehe. Like me, too. You
know who I’ve got to thank for ever seeing the light of day? General-Secretary
Khrushchev, hehe. Summer of ’. Was Khrushchev told the world what an
unmitigated bastard Stalin’d been all those years. The gulags, the mass murders,
the cult of His own puss-filled godhead. Barely had time to grab hold of our
pants before they gave us our marching orders. Piss off back where you came from,
they said. That’s how it was, au revoir Stalin, bonjour Khrushchev. As soon as
they sent home one lot of politicals, they got to work on a fresh lot. Justice,
being seen to be served. Back in the day, though, if Stalin farted in Moscow,
Golem City trembled as atop a volcano! If Stalin said Jump! the local politburo
made a Five Year Plan out of it, every able-bodied man woman child hopping
about like idiots trying to squeeze that extra inch out of a standing start. If Stalin
said Collectivise! they turned every farm in the country into one big turnip
plantation. Increase output! & they ran rings around themselves seeing double.
Purge the Zhids! & every last Cohen from Kolín to Krásna Hôrka who’d escaped
gassing got shanghaied into a showtrial or shipped to a gulag. Like God giving
dictation to Moses. Except it was no Moses but only that putrescent misnomer,
Gottwald! Gottwald-the-Slime, who worshipped the tinea on Stalin’s feet.
Who’d’ve stuck his tongue right up that fat Georgian’s hole if he’d been allowed
anywhere near it. And when Stalin finally kicked the bucket, Ol’ Slimewald
would’ve jumped right in the grave beside him, if he hadn’t had one foot down
there already. Hardly even the decency to wait till they lowered the
hammer&sickle to half-mast. Pneumonia or something. You ask me, it was
syphilis of the brain, been sucking up to that diseased prick so long. What an
arsehole! I mean, it’s Chesko-fucking-slovnikia, for chrissakes! We’re talking
about Big Mister Nonentity here! Who was supposed to be kidding who? You
could’ve fit the whole bloody country in Lake Baikal & still have plenty left to
356
paddle about in. But no, Slimewald had to parade around like God’s own elect,
bestowing the Word, offering up grandiose prayers of thanks, the entire GDP &
then some. There might’ve been toadies in every backwater on the Bloc, erecting
their shrines, their graven images, their monuments to the Infallible One, but
you could trust Slimewald to go that extra mile & build the biggest of them all.
A god-almighty colossus of a thing, sixteen metres of granite & concrete, right
over there on the hill: Stalin & his heroic workers’ entourage — The Meat
Queue, is what everyone called it. Took ’em five years till the last stone was laid
to rest, May Day — by which time both Stalin & Slimewald were like a
couple of pickles in brine. If you needed to remind yourself of what the Devil
himself looked like, all you had to do was look out the window — could see
Him from virtually every part of town. Of course the Commies were cheapskates
& to save on granite they squeezed the entourage together a bit, cheekbyjowl up
against Stalin’s arse, kind of fucked-up the scale, or perspective, or whatever. Not
like you couldn’t recognise Him or anything, but there was some poor twenty-
foot slapper in a headscarf, two places behind, left groping the crotch of one of
those big-dicked partisan types in full view of the general populace. Idiots up at
the Presidium must’ve been right chuffed with themselves. Didn’t waste any
time turning-up a patsy — stupid bugger who did the original design, perfect for
the job, topped himself quite conveniently before he could become any more of
an embarrassment, with* comradely assistance from the local branch
representatives (just to show how we’re all in it together) — a little self-sacrifice
to help retrieve a nation’s lost gravitas.* But then to make matters worse all those
revelations came out, about the gulags & deportations, followed by the
amnesties & rehabilitations. After Khrushchev got up & denounced the old cunt
at the podium. Ye Olde Infallible One suddenly turned Enemy of the People
Numero Uno. Post-haste they reached for the dynamite to blow-up that
stupendous joke they’d only just erected. Eight-hundred kilos of the stuff, for
good measure. Byebye Joe. Bits of ferroconcrete raining down for miles around,
braining the odd bystander, smote by their posthumous God. Where the hand
that tickled the partisan’s crotch landed, who knows? You’d have to’ve seen it,
to’ve believed it.’
* It goes without saying. [:]
* Otakar Švec, sculptor previously of public monuments to Masaryk, Hus, Roosevelt: the first two
destroyed by the Nazis, the third by the Commies. He gassed himself in his kitchen three weeks
before The Meat Queue’s unveiling, as did his wife: the standard modus operandi. Dear reader, spare a thought for poor departed Arepo. [:]
357
The Bugman’s voice became pensive.
‘Well you know what it was like in ’, if you had a buck you got the hell
out’ve here while the going was good. If you didn’t, you did what you could.
Money back then wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. It was Deutschmarks
or nothing. After they repatriated us from the camp, we were only allowed to do
the shittiest jobs. Stoking boilers. Shovelling pig shit. Collecting trash. Only way
you could earn currency was flogging whatever you could steal on the
blackmarket. Truckies mostly, coming over the border on the E. Met a Jawa
nut once & that was my ticket out. Flogged him a couple of hot sidecar rigs &
that was me gone, thumbing my way West. When I got to London, everything
there was different from how it’d been during the War. You wouldn’t believe.
May as well’ve been a different planet. I spent four months dossing down with
hippies in an Earls Court squat, smoking grass, laying redhaired dívkas from all
points of the Commonwealth. So much for the foggy realms of spleen, eh? The
sun shone twentyfour-hours-a-day out of everyone’s arses. Flower Power &
protest songs & wankers going ohm. It was complete bullshit. Kids! You know,
there was something honest about the War — terrible, but honest. Propaganda
was propaganda, the lies you told yourself, the whole circus — but you knew
that’s what it was — the unreality was real. None of the pretend that came after.
A lot of suits made all that up. Sexual liberation my arse. Fast bucks, that’s all.
Who they reckon was cooking up all that LSD?* You can count me out of that
scam. I didn’t fight anyone’s war to be plugged into some corporate whizbang
machine. Yeah, I had my fun, but by November I was through — hitchhiked all
the way back & not a single regret, welcoming committee at the border post,
even got my old job again stoking a boiler. Model citizen, me. They could’ve put
my mug on a poster. The West? Who the fuck needs it. They sold us out, then
they sold out. If that’s what they call freedom, they’re welcome to it. Call me
nuts if you like. Thirty years later, ’ere I am, in the prime of life. What more
could an old soldier want? Bucked like mules, they did. I can still remember, like
it was yesterday. There was one, Ainslie her name was, totally bugeyed, used to
sing these Cornish folksongs in the sack. Had nipples half as long as yer finger.
Dedicated, she was, to the great task of bringing about the end of the Fascist
Corporate State. Now that was a girl who’d found her mission in life. A one-
woman revolution right there on her back. Madder than the Trots you’d meet in
the camps. No future in that for me. You think the world’s got any better? Nah?
* Putting the d molecule in acid. [:]
358
Well you’re not alone, kid. You’re not alone. See that sky? Ever wonder what’s
up there? Watching us? Let me tell you a story — you hear the one about that
tractor driver in Irkutsk? The bloke who got clobbered on the head by a piece of
that Mutnik II fell out of the sky? Went barking mad. Said he could hear aliens
talking in his skull. A lot of Politburo types went all the way from Moscow to
check him out. Military hospital, the works. Doctors asked him what the aliens
were talking about. Tractor driver said, dog food. They couldn’t figure it out.
Wanted to know wasn’t there maybe a personal message for the General-
Secretary? No, no, he stuck to his guns. Dog food. True story.’
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29
___________
DOGS IN SPACE
Whatever became of all those Deziks, Tsygans, Lisas, Ryzhiks, Smelayas,
Malyshkas, Boliks, ZIBs, Otavazhnayas, Snezhinkas, Albinas, Tsygankas,
Damkas, Krajavkas, Barses, Lisichkas, Laikas, Belkas, Strelkas, Pchyolkas,
Mushkas, Cherushkas, Zvyozdochkas, Veteroks & Ugolyoks? Something on the
horizon glinted — a streak of vapour in the sky. Who knew what dog genetics,
at that very moment, were making their slow & steady way through interstellar
redux to some far off, methane-enshrouded exoplanet, to spark, like once the
God of Genesis upon these Jurassic shores, its evolutionary catastrophe?
The sound of laughter became lost in the distance — gradually it faded
into the vagueness of sleep. Němec lay there, wherever there was, like one of
those idiot brothers, Chesk & Lesk, staring up at the big empty flat sky,
