Saturday, July 6, 2013

Chapter Forty Six

Cuckoo

The keeper of the cloakroom was well into his eighties, and his entire demeanour radiated confidence that no matter what seismic shocks were to run through German society, some things would never change. He knew too much of the appetites of the regional aristocracy, captains of industry and even the new regime, to fear his daily salary, vastly inflated by commissions would ever be threatened. And so it was that he kept a pile of daily newspapers on a table by his desk: mostly local, but also some international; a few days old but in The Pepperpot, uncensored. The Reich, which had come to power by manipulation of information offered to the masses, allowed a free press here. It was an intellectual marker that divided the haves from the have-nots, and it also demonstrated to the club members that the Reich recognised them and expected their loyalty.

Amused by the token of complicity Frank picked up the London Times and was delighted to find the crossword hardly filled. He needed something to engage him and separate him from others as he stalked his prey. His prey was at once the writer he had been sent to engage in conversation and also those planted in the club to observe him. Frank was not so naive as to believe that he had been released from the camp without the authorities making sure that he could not flee. He sat at a table slightly away from the bar, ordered a bottle of Paulliac and addressed himself to the crossword puzzle. He quickly established three facts: his intended target was not yet in attendance, the position of the man sent to spy on himself, and the fact that there were two other bodyguards in the club. These were both female and so unlike his shadow did not look as if they were terrified of unwelcome advances from the clientele.

Watchers recognise other watchers; so he had to make himself not a watcher rapidly in order to conserve his advantage. It was time to let his non-existent hair down, and so Frank began to flirt. He listened for an accent that was not German, and was rewarded with something close to home: Finnish. He lifted the bottle and approached the source of the northern inflections. These were three men in their late forties, discussing hydro electricity.  Frank knew that using their native language would gain him access to the group, and since his mother was Sami he had no difficulty in joining them.

“Coal, coal coal; this is all they talk about! Sure they have tonnes of it in Germany and in.... the larger Germany, but what we want Herr Hitler to consider is the future. When the Reich reaches out to Russia, as it must despite all the guff spouted at Stalin, then he will need an endless source of energy. We have it! Right next to the Russian border. All we need is the Reich to build some generators and lay some cables.”

The speaker was short, with prematurely thinning hair which he combed in the style of the Fuhrer. He wore a heavy Swiss watch, and his eyes were heavy with alcohol and bright with cocaine.

“Do you mean that Germany can take Russia with electricity?” asked Frank, sipping his Paulliac to avoid the powerful vodka offered. The man put his arm around Frank’s shoulders and brought his red lips to Frank’s ear.

“They will be fucked if they don’t have it! We just need to convince one man,” and he shot a glance at the women Frank had identified as bodyguards, “one, very important man, and Finland will be a major power in the Reich.” He let his tongue rest against Frank’s earlobe, waiting for the response. Frank let his hand fall below the table and brushed the man’s stiffening penis. Frank felt his own penis rise, but not because of this flirtation: he sensed a means of escape, and intended to use it. He rubbed the cloth beneath his fingers and the man almost gasped. This was his ticket to freedom, and he was enjoying its purchase.

“I can help you, I think. Where can I meet this important person?” He let his hand rest.

“He is in one of the private rooms, with a .... with a friend. Would you like to go to the private rooms?”

Frank had his plan now. He let his fingers run the length of the man’s penis. “In the right company, I would be delighted.”

The man looked over to the bar and an agreement was made. He stood and pulled Frank up by the hand, which he then quickly pressed back to his groin. A ten million Mark note changed hands and they swept past the two female bodyguards into the private area beyond the bar. Frank looked back at his shadow; he was clearly disturbed by the proceedings, but in very unfamiliar surroundings. Frank hoped that he would have enough time before his shadow hit the panic button.

The private rooms were not just a number of cubicles devoted to sex, there was a bar area in which the normal social behaviours were abolished. Frank’s partner indicated a man sandwiched between two Asian boys. “That is the Fuhrer’s supplies advisor. We will talk to him when his mouth, and ass, are free. Let us have some champagne, since I note you prefer the French style.”

“I love to feel it fizzing in my throat,” replied Frank, giving the man’s penis a gentle twist. The man opened his trousers at the same time as ordering the champagne, and Frank felt the tight testicles. He let his finger dip into the anus “But let us go to one of the rooms to enjoy this properly.”

Ten minutes later Frank found himself in a deserted lane, one thousand million marks in his pocket, blood on his fingers, semen in his ass and free of the concentration camp. It had been an excellent evening all round



Thursday, July 4, 2013

Chapter Forty Five

Happy Birthday
Since his discovery of the cavern Oscar had spent many months extracting rock samples. These he subjected to the conventional analyses, and then more refined examinations which he developed in response to the unique qualities inherent in the structures. He invariably brought Frank with him when he visited the site, and while the father plumbed the geological past, the son was creating the biological future. This was a very personal future, and Frank, even as he approached his ninth birthday, had no intention of sharing his discoveries with the distant world.

As Oscar ventured more deeply into the strata that the cavern contained, Frank slipped into the space that his father could never enter and there floated organic matter, secretly obtained from the larder at home. With each day that passed it seemed to Frank that home became less the sturdy hut built upon the permafrost and more this dark geological womb. The black water of the pool was like a magnet to him, and he had offered it small parts of his life. It had begun with a piece of paper upon which he had listed the geological periods in the order described to him by his father. He had watched the ink separate into sub divisions of colour and infect the entire surface of the paper. His fascination was so intense that he hardly heard his father calling for him, and was surprised to see the patina of panic upon his father’s flesh evaporating as the son revealed himself, worming out of the hole.

“What have you been doing?” Oscar demanded.

“Playing: I have a little cave and I pretend it is my laboratory,” Frank replied. His father smiled, no doubt delighted by his son’s use of the scientific term.

“That is good, Frank, but do not go too deep into your cave,”
“Of course not father; it is very small anyway, and there are no interesting rocks.”
According to the rules of the Kørner household that was enough: the father was satisfied that all was well, Sylvia would never know about the cave and Frank was free to continue his childish games.

That night Frank tried to calm himself towards sleep by envisioning the spreading ink; the names of the eons, dissolving in the black pool. Calmness eluded him however, because he already had a sense, an image in fact, of the cold geological past giving way to the eternal warmth of life. At this point he became an experimental biologist; the greatest biologist of his time, and his futures were presented to him. He knew a little of Darwin and Wallace because his father made sure that along with physical necessities, the intellectual nutrition was also delivered from Norway. His father had concentrated on the work that justified Baronet Lyell’s theories concerning the age of the earth; but now, as the still eight year old Frank tried to sleep, it was the mechanism of evolutionary change that illuminated his very particular future. During that sleepless night, he conceived of a series of experiments that were to make him, quite literally, immortal.

Over the following weeks Frank deposited carefully selected organic samples into the pool, dated them and recorded their appearance at regular intervals, both with drawings and fine measurements using his father’s micrometer. With a week to go before his ninth birthday, that is to say on February 20th 1870, he was able to dispense with the micrometer. Each of his samples had begun to grow exponentially, as the cells were doubling in number exactly as the zygote does in the natural way. Frank even detected signs of cell specialisation. It was as if the parts of a potato or a herring were growing into the original life form.

It was eventually his birthday. Sylvia was delighted by such events and Oscar, realising this, wished that Frank would spend the day with his mother, preparing a special cake and a stew of venison for the evening celebration. Frank had already decided upon his birthday present to himself, although he did not yet realise how enormous this was to be. He struggled to find a way to accompany his father to the cavern. In the end it was only by pretending that he had left his favourite plaything, an oriental globe, in his little cave that he managed to avoid the baking and return to the cold heart of his future.

Oscar drew the sled up against the wall of the stone mound and they entered the cavern. “I will collect my samples and then we will be straight back home for the party,“ he said “I won’t be long, for we must not upset your mother on his wonderful occasion.”  Frank didn’t need much time. He squeezed into the hole and carefully removed the blade from his pocket. He had expected that he would have to close his eyes as he cut himself, but in fact he watched with a detached  fascination as he removed his boot and sock and excised a small lump from his heel. He dropped this into the pool and somehow knew that this was at once his ninth and second birthday.