Chapter Twenty Three

Brasília

It was Iglesia’s habit, since the debacle of Los Cardales, to keep the newspaper that had reported the massacre on the drinks table. It had the appearance of being put there casually, discarded moments before as he rose to meet whichever guest had arrived, but in fact it was carefully positioned so that his visitor could see the disgusting photographs of the carnage; and particularly the deformed mass of flesh that had been Angel Corrales. It was common knowledge that Iglesias and his European advisor had been the only survivors of the gun battle, and that several of the combatants had perished from Cocaine poisoning. There was no explanation for the state of Corrales however, injuries hardly did justice to the gruesome process that had removed most of his bones without piercing the skin, but a myth had developed that Iglesias had powers to destroy his enemies that he had inherited from some native ancestor. The gangster did nothing to dispel the myth, and even placed the occasional voodoo artefact around his rooms in the massive suite he now occupied in the capital city. It was the cement, steel and glass representation of his utter dominance of organised crime in Brazil. He knew he owed that dominance to Frank, but he had no idea how the Norwegian had engineered the defeat of an overwhelming number of heavily armed men, and as for Corrales... Sometimes, when alone he would ponder the remains in the newspaper images and feel dread like an echo of a distant, future calamity, brush the hairs on the back of his neck.

He put aside such thoughts, stepped to the window and surveyed the grid of city streets, the arteries of traffic and million pulsing neurons of pedestrians far below, excreting carbon, noise and aspirations into the smog-hazed blue sky. He closed the vertical steel window-blinds and prepared for the meeting. He did not read Spanish or English, so he passed over the profiles of the delegation and concentrated on studying their photographs, looking for signs of weakness with the practised eye of the criminal predator. He saw little but the dark suits, white shirts and broad jaws with which Americans in the higher reaches of business and politics armour themselves. In the flesh he would be able to read them; through the flesh he would get whatever he wished from them. In the eighteen months since Los Cardales he had reined himself in, at least in his manners when conducting business. His leisure pursuits were another thing altogether. He felt Frank’s influence on his fortunes here also.

The intercom bleeped. “Los Americanos ya han llegado.” He glanced at his heavy Rolex: perfect timing even in the appalling congestion of Brasília. “Vale.” The three suits entered his vast office. Their monochrome uniformity out of place in the Latin atmosphere, the orange tequila bottles, mahogany furniture, Iglesias’s striped shirt and glinting gold jewellery. “Sit down, Gentlemen,” he said, indicating a group of formal colonial chairs rather than the large sofas and recliners which filled a third of the room. They didn’t look recliner types. “Coffee? Marcela will bring it shortly. The best, of course. Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of such an important, such a powerful group as yourselves, wishing to meet me, a mere importer of goods and services?”

The youngest man smiled. “De Graaf, Central Intelligence Agency, Señor Iglesias. Your definition of goods and services must be extremely broad. We know what you are, sir.”

“Of course. In that you have me at a disadvantage. Perhaps you would tell me a little about your interests in coming to Brazil?”

De Graaf turned to the man at his left. This is Major Heath Warrington: he is senior advisor to the president on Central and South America. I believe he is familiar with the protocols we are observing here.” Warrington looked up, his movements military. Iglesias looked at his grey eyes and felt that they had seen more men die than his own. The idea unnerved him a little: that would be an enormous number of corpses. If the Major had the same thought about Alejandro he did not show it. He spoke as if reading from an autocue positioned behind the gangster’s head and slightly to the right.

“As you know, Señor Iglesias, the United States is a country founded on enterprise and commerce. It is a country whose citizens are free to create, buy and sell to each other, and we hope to the rest of the world. We don’t think profit is a dirty word, for what enriches one, enriches the nation. It is that wealth and that enterprise that has kept our nation free in the face of the Communist threat. However we know that we need to buy from other countries, because although God has blessed our great country with many natural resources, there are some products that we must import. You are an importer/exporter are you not, Señor?”

“I feel we are not talking about coffee here,” Alejandro relaxed. He could smell the Yankee dollars already.

“Not coffee. Señor Iglesias, we are pragmatists. Our country may not officially import much more than coffee from Central America, but our population requires billions of dollars worth of... of raw materials and manufactured goods from you each year. At this moment that trade is unregulated and officially illegal, and up to now I can tell you that we have publicly fought this necessary trade largely because the people providing the goods on your side were unreliable, greedy, and in many cases linked to communist interests. I mean look at Colombia; it’s a goddamn mess.”

“It is an unstable and poor country, but that is always the legacy of colonialism.” Alejandro allowed himself the slight joke. He needed tequila and several women soon. This was turning into an excellent day.

“I mean we deal with one major supplier for a while and the next thing is he’s dead in a gutter and we have to re-negotiate. Re-negotiate at every level with people who don’t know the protocols and invent any price they like. There’s no stability, and it is the mission of the United States to bring stability to the world. That is why we are here Mr Iglesias. Stability.” His speech over, Major Warrington snapped his eyes from the invisible autocue and relaxed into the hard mahogany at his back.

“The United States wants to bring stability to Brazil? You can hardly invade a country this size, and look at our inflation problem!”

De Graaf stood up an walked behind the Major and put his hands down on the carved wood behind the shoulders of the third member of the delegation. He was in his late fifties, with a ruddy complexion goatee and slightly longer hair than the standard businessman. “You misunderstand us. Señor Iglesias, it is you who are the stability we seek. We have been watching your progress for some time now. Since a rather unfortunate incident in a suburb of Buenos Aires a year or so ago...”

“Los Cardales, and it was eighteen months ago,” interrupted Alejandro.

“Exactly. Since that time you have brought order to your dealings not just in Brazil and Argentina, but also in many neighbouring states. We like that, and we like something else. Your product has been improved, enhanced not chemically but in some novel organic way. We like innovation and wish to see it rewarded, but that is the area of my colleague here. I would like to introduce you to Michael Driscoll; he’s a bio-chemist.

Chapter Twenty Two

Calling Card

The woman’s body gave the occasional spasm, but otherwise there was no resistance to the steps of the process that had, of necessity, to be carried out before death. Since this was not Kay he took a phial of anaesthetic gas and injected it directly into the hollow tube protruding from the top of the spinal column. He then proceeded to perform alone the ritual that had in the past been shared equally by members of the extraordinary circle to which he had belonged, and which had led to his present total defeat.

A rapid inspection of the inelegant kitchen provided him with egg cups. These soon held the warm blood. The studio was well equipped with cutting and scraping implements and Frank felt a creative surge as he made the first incision in the back and sought out the renal veins and arteries. He removed both kidneys through an untidy tunnel carved out of the subcutaneous tissues and placed them on a plate decorated with cartoon images of robots constructed from brightly coloured vehicles. Reading the words on the plate he smiled at the transformation that his present work would bring to the life of Kay. Her terror would be inexpressible, and he licked his lips as he tasted her salty fear. His appetite thus aroused he rolled the woman over and began the rather more difficult job of removing at least some of the heart. In this he was aided by his father’s sampling tube, which he pulled out of the spine and, having removed the intervening clothing, inserted between the appropriate ribs, easily puncturing the intercostals muscle and meeting resistance in the firm wall of the heart itself. Frank took a deep breath and thumped his fist down on the tube. It penetrated the heart and a gush of bright red blood covered his hand and face. He glanced down and saw the damage done to his Italian jacket, shirt and tie. Every enterprise has its hidden costs, he reflected, and carefully extracted the cylinder of cardiac material.

He had never really shared his colleagues’ taste for human flesh, so he sprinkled a little rock salt and a few drops of balsamic vinegar on the heart and kidneys before he nibbled them. A few teeth marks were all that was required. The organs were then returned to the body cavities. He now busied himself with underlining the calling card he was leaving for Kay. He methodically took every one of the one hundred and forty four models of Douglas and placed them in a circle; all facing in towards a centre which was the bloody hole in the woman’s chest. Finally he smeared his lips with a patina of blood, salt and vinegar and planted a gentle umber kiss on the mouth of Kay’s portrait, forever unfinished in the gloom of the studio.

Chapter Twenty One

Pre-Molar

Images from the previous thirty-six hours fluttered through his consciousness. These images were as baroque as the fabric adorning the chaise-longue upon which some of the most startling, and to his mind elegant, acts had been committed. He felt exhaustion it was true, but it was the exhaustion of the artist-facilitator. He could hardly imagine the physical state of some of those who had been most vigorous in satisfying their lusts for the full day and a half; and then of course there were the young casualties. It still remained to contact his friend in the teaching hospital and arrange for the collection of the two or three boys and the single girl who had served so well. An hour or so under the knife would remove any evidence of the appalling debaucheries which had been inflicted upon their bodies.

It was seven in the morning and Frank surveyed the colourful selection of Parisian society which thronged the cafe. One or two members of the decayed aristocracy present at the orgy were having a petit-dejeuner of brawn pie and beer before retiring for a day or two. Street walkers and students drank cognac and clerks fortified themselves with croissants and bowls of coffee. Frank lifted a small glass of iced absinthe and winced as the liquid touched the stump of a tooth on the lower left side of his mouth. He had been putting treatment off for weeks because of the work necessary in making sure the orgy went to perfection, but now it was time to act. Keeping his tongue firmly pressed against the tooth he drained the glass, left an extravagant tip, and swept into the narrow, cobbled street in the shadow of Gare Austerlitz.

He knew exactly who he needed to see, and he quickly arrived at the crumbling facade. The brass name-plate was worn away by the passage of the thousands of visitors to the warren of offices which made their homes in the ancient building. Frank looked at the attenuated relief of the letters and was reminded of the eroded epitaphs to pre-enlightenment society in the nearby cemetery. The ache in his jaw spiked and he felt the drag of mortality; the resonance of the pain.

Jean-Louis Meaursault, Dentist.

Frank had gained entry to Parisian society by providing narcotics to the enclosed order of international rakes who fed on the cadaver of decadence it continued to represent. He had quickly expanded his commercial enterprise to servicing the elite creators of fashionable Eau de Toilette and finally to undercutting the official manufacturers of ether for the surgical professions. He had many dentists as clients, but Meaursault was something of an outsider, because unique amongst the dental surgeons Frank supplied, he was not also a user of some of the more diverting narcotics he provided. This meant that Frank would have to pay for the services he needed, and that made him feel a confidence; even something of a camaraderie with the eccentric dentist.

“M. Kørner, What brings you to my surgery so early in the day?” The dentist was standing behind him, the key to the office held loosely in the right hand while the left adjusted his monocle to bring his visitor into focus. Frank managed a taut grin and tapped his cheek.

“Of course. I am flattered that of your many professional clients you choose me for this. Come in, let me see what needs to be done.” The dentist stood back, allowing Frank to enter the surgery before him. The Wilkerson chair dominated the space, with the Morrison foot-treadle resembling a mechanical dwarf about to go fishing alongside. Frank inspected the crude mechanics and immediately saw several modifications that would increase efficiency and bring down costs. These thoughts were filed away for possible later use as he was settled back into the chair and opened his mouth for inspection. He smelled the dentist’s breakfast of toast and camomile tea and reflected what the latter must be making of the heavy fumes of absinthe which rose to greet him. Of course a dentist in this city must be inured to the most disgusting smells and sights in his patients. He noted an idea for a sterilizing water with which people could wash the mouth before and during treatment.

“I am afraid we will need some of your excellent gas, M. Kørner. There is a large abscess in the pre-molar and I expect the root system is quite decayed. The standard treatment is extraction and draining of the infected liquids; but I have a method of removing the roots and the purulence and then capping with a ceramic top which is quite revolutionary, although rather pricey.” Meaursault let the sentence hang discretely in the air, but there was no question about expense in Frank’s mind. His fee for the orgy and his complicity was staggering; the blackmail potential gargantuan. In addition the thought of carrying a blemish albeit hidden from all but his most intimate contacts was abhorrent. He nodded assent and the dentist, like a priest opening the tabernacle, prepared the ether.

chapter twenty

Buchenwald

 

Boys not much older than fifteen marched along the Ringstrasse in the cool March evening. Their legs and arms bare, stiffly mechanical in the brown shorts and shirts, their faces, pale from the long winter, blotched now with a flush of exertion. Their commander, hardly a year senior, carried the only gun, bearing it like a sceptre as the pedestrians gave way, mostly silent but occasionally moved to clap, salute or even offer a “Heil Hitler!” Frank waited a discrete few seconds and then sank into a chair outside one of the few cafés to have survived the fierce economic depression of the preceding years. He ordered a tiny coffee in the popular Italian style and a slice of apfelstrudel. Such a snack would have cost him a penny or so in Ireland, could he have obtained it there, but here he found himself handing over a large sheet of paper with more zeroes printed on it than even he could count at a glance.

 

Of course he had a good job in a protected industry and a strong connection to the local National Socialist leadership. He had impressed them last week; given them enough to suggest that he could help them engineer the qualities of The Race in exactly the way they wanted; that he had skills in biological chemistry that would impress even the chancellor himself. He brushed a few crumbs of pastry from his charcoal pleated trousers and looked for a newspaper, the patina of coffee drying on his teeth. As he reached to the table beside his for a tissue a leather gloved hand impeded his action, plucked the tissue from the dispenser and failed to muffle its owner’s almost flatulent nasal eruption.

 

“Herr Kørner, you will come with me.” It was not a request. Frank knew enough about survival to take in his surroundings without letting his eyes move from the face of his abductor. There were two others in addition to the speaker and the black Mercedes, one the driver and the other a senior member of the SS. His holster was empty, so Frank knew he had the Luger primed in one of the two hands held behind his back. Thanks to the cerebral contribution of Professor O’Connell, an early expert on the dominance of brain functions by hemispheres, he also knew by observation that he would shoot with the left hand. Frank assessed the odds; not just of escape but of how his greater plan might need to be modified in the context of his becoming an enemy of the state and decided to be polite, elegant, but not exactly docile.

 

“I am delighted to accompany you,” he replied in perfect formal German, “but to whom do I owe the honour?”

 

“Herr Von Schröder is awaiting you. It is a fairly long journey, so we must not delay, yes?”

 

Frank noticed that the troop of Hitler Youth had paused at the turn of the Ringstrasse and were showing an interest in this quiet drama. He knew where that could lead, so he nodded gracefully and slid into the spacious backseat of the saloon. Herr Luger sat to his left and Herr Handkerchief to his right. An oppressive silence filled the cabin, separated from the driver by a glass and mahogany partition. The man with the gun said nothing, glancing from time to time at the bare spring trees or fields full of sheep and their young. The kilometres were otherwise punctuated by the ritual of the snuff tin and the disgusting explosive sneezes from the right. Should he get the opportunity, and he sincerely hoped he would; Frank resolved to liquidise the brain of this offensive oaf: not because he needed the cerebral foam, but because it would be a way of fatally fucking him up the nose. He smiled involuntarily at his vulgarly phrased thought and immediately froze his facial muscles.

 

He swallowed the saliva of his mounting anxiety as the car turned East: Göttingen, Buchenwald. He had heard rumours about what went on there. How could they know? He had been meticulous about his behaviour ever since O’Connell had tried to blackmail him by threatening to unmask his homosexuality. He now possessed O’Connell’s talents in understanding behaviour. Not even Freud could spot the slightest homosexual tendency from his behaviour. Did they think he was a Communist? Jewish? The paranoia of the times was getting to him, he knew it; but sitting in a car heading for Buchenwald with the SS and no choice tended to maximise the paranoia. He decided to gently test the waters.

 

“I need to find a bathroom… the coffee you know.”

 

Luger looked at Handkerchief. Handkerchief tapped the lid of his snuff tin twice. “We do not stop, Herr Kørner.” Frank felt the urine crystallise within his bladder. He had seen the freight trains pulling their human cargo to the camps, seen the piss run under the slats as the trains took the bend near his apartment. He could imagine the prisoners, stained with excrement, stripped of their clothes and sent to a shower block from which they would never return. He knew people in the party, knew about the gas and the ovens and the trenches full of toothless pale carcasses.

 

An infancy conducted below zero degrees Celsius and between his father’s intellectual zeal and mother’s pagan terror had many benefits for Frank; not least of which was an ability to suppress his anxiety and formulate a clear, if rather desperate plan of action. Unfortunately he lacked a detailed knowledge of the degree of security afforded to the concentration camps, and so was unable to prevent himself being driven within three rings of barbed wire fencing and ushered from the saloon with at least two hundred rounds of ammunition primed to cut him down should he make the slightest unexpected move.

chapter nineteen

Tiny Tim

 

It had only taken his mother a few hours of pacing to draw the compass. She had tied a ten metre length of rope to an ice-axe embedded in the ground and had then begun the long walk. Frank had rather uncharacteristically failed to take note of the exact number of revolutions she performed, but he estimated it to be between fifty and seventy five, and had therefore covered a distance of between 3141.59 and 4712.39 metres in stepping the circle into the frozen earth. She then retired to the central point and waited for the moon to rise. As it leaked the smallest arc of reflection across the black chord of ocean she laid the rope as a radius to the distant light and placed the logs where it touched the circle. This representing a lunar north she crossed the circle and placed other logs at the cardinal points.

 

The incantations had begun. Frank’s father joined him at the window; the boy not yet six years of age perched on a cushioned ledge below the sill, the man leaning across him and letting his huge forehead rest on the condensing glass. Neither of them could hear the Sámi words from within the house, but the ritual was familiar in two ways; because it was repeated at every winter solstice and because it touched some prehistoric unconscious, some unremembered memory of shared beliefs.

 

 

Oscar Kørner returned to his maps and more conventional compass points. Frank picked up his book, an illustrated edition of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Since his father’s library was eclectic in topic and language the five year old Frank could read well in French, German, Russian and Latin as well as his native Norwegian. He allowed it to fall open and of course found himself looking at his favourite page, one carrying a plate of the Cratchit family celebrating around the Christmas tree with the invalid child on a three-legged stool, content in the bosom of his family.

 

Frank’s father was an enthusiastic reader of Dickens, approving of his egalitarian views and Hard Times had been Frank’s nightly story when he was not yet able to read for himself. Oscar Kørner had even met the author in Switzerland in 1846 and claimed, not without justification that the characters of Florence Dombey and Captain Cuttle were based upon himself and his new bride Sylvia; “a wandering princess and a good monster in a story book”.

 

His absorption in the illustration was disturbed now by the same wandering princess producing a wild ululation and stamping as she lit each of the four piles of logs around her lunar circle. He felt the pagan energy, and looking up he saw that his father felt it also, but it was a cold energy; an energy born of the vacuum that was before Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus. It was of the same ethereal stuff as Tiny Tim’s empty chair. He looked again at the plate and saw the frigid heart of his own family exposed utterly by contrast. He closed the book forever and gazed with numb disinterest as his mother screamed her terror into the longest night.

 

chapter eighteen

The Isolation Hospital [2]

 

“Ta failte romhat, please have a seat.” Professor O’Connell leaned back in his maroon leather-bound chair and observed Frank through the lower halves of his reading glasses. “That’s a form of welcome in our native tongue. Do you have any Irish? You are, I understand, something of a polyglot.”

 

Frank made a gesture by opening the fingers of both hands slightly, palms upwards as if to suggest that his personal store of language was unfortunately empty of Irish. In fact his mind was taking in the academic paraphernalia that littered the room: heavy tomes in German mostly concerned with behaviour and the physiology of the nervous system, diagrams of the brain and main sensory organs in dissection and most appealingly, the instruments used for carrying out such dissections held in a large case mounted on the wall beside an ill-hung portrait of the British monarch.

 

“We have been taking a close interest in you, Mr Kørner, for some six weeks now. You are an interesting man, Mr Kørner, an educated man, even a brilliant man; therefore I propose to share my opinions with you. Mr Kørner; this is not something I am in the practice of doing with my patients, and I hope you will soon see why I have chosen to do so.”

 

“You said ‘we’,” Frank interjected, “To what others are you referring?” He sensed the presence of some kind of forbidden society in the room. This had been Browne’s weakness; but it was not the perverted appetites of the flesh that he felt connected the professor to some others, it was something more structured; there was intellect behind it.

 

“The police, of course,” replied O’Connell, a little too hastily. “You know that they were sure you were involved with five deaths, including that of the eccentric Browne. That number has, by the way, increased. Two of their officers were examining the cargo that Browne’s barge was carrying and suffered a similar fate to the landlord himself.” Frank tried not to smile “And are they persevering in trying to link me to these unfortunate deaths?”

 

“Let us just say that they are putting a great deal of time into persuading me to find you dangerously unbalanced. They do not want to see you leaving this institution alive.”

 

Frank felt the tension leave his body. It was now clear that the professor had it in mind to do more than share opinions with him. An offer was about to be made and since his intuition had already detected some clandestine purpose, O’Connell was about to hand Frank the keys to his soul. The professor bent forward over the desk and lowered his voice, seeking eye-contact above the lenses; man to man without any barrier save the gaseous molecules and microscopic debris that comprised the air. “Mr Kørner; I do not think you have a dangerous mental condition aside from genius and an unfortunate form of hysteria which misguides your affections. You know of what I speak?”

 

Frank cast his eyes down in a look of shame which he hoped would convince the professor of the accuracy of his diagnosis. O’Connell relaxed; he felt he had discovered a secret which Frank would strive his utmost to keep from general knowledge. “I see we understand each other,” the psychiatrist continued. “Many in the more intellectual or theological levels of society share your weakness Mr Kørner. We regard it as a developmental aberrance caused by trauma in the early years, but we are scientists. Society at large has a more brutal way of characterising your disgusting sexual practices, and punishes your type accordingly. Discretion is a noble quality, do you not think?”

 

The image of O’Connell being consumed by the bone gas vied in Frank’s mind with that of the former being subjected to a particularly violent anal assault by a memorable performer he had witnessed in Browne’s company in Paris. Again he smiled and again the professor took this as a sign of complicity.

 

“Splendid. You are aware. No doubt, that this country has been repeatedly ravished by the British,” said O’Connell, pausing whilst Frank reached for his handkerchief to disguise his humour as he visualised a team of massive British naval personnel buggering the professor serially and without mercy. “Yes, it is a tragedy; and from time to time your European confreres have attempted to come to our aid. Mr Kørner, I believe that the seven deaths I referred to before were indeed caused by you. I believe that the cargo impounded from Browne’s barge by the police constitutes some kind of deadly weapon. I believe that you know how to use this weapon and I further believe that you have the ability to reproduce this weapon, given the appropriate resources. Am I correct?”

 

The ticking of a pendulum clock filled the hiatus. Frank was impressed by two things: the accuracy of the professor’s grasp of the bone gas, and his stupidity in revealing his knowledge such a naïve manner. If it wasn’t sex that was driving O’Connell it must be politics. The psychiatrist stood and walked to the angled picture of the king. He opened the back of the frame and took out a sheet of paper. “I would like you to read this draft.”

 

THE PROCLAMATION OF

POBLACHT NA H EIREANN

---

 

THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
OF THE
IRISH REPUBLIC

TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations…

 

He held the text in sightless eyes. This was his freedom, this was his passport, this was his blank cheque. Frank’s immortality was again assured. He looked up. O’Connell’s death was now inevitable, his brain already foam.

 

 

 

chapter seventeen

No resemblance to actual post abstract expressionists intended...

Saluting The Flag

New York in 1955 was a long way from how it had been when he arrived in ‘45, and that itself had been light years from the petrified structures of blood and dust that was all then left of Dresden. Making money was easy, as usual. The authorities had shipped him out of Germany because intelligence had identified him as a scientist they could use; in fact he had shared a cabin for a couple of days with Werner Von Braun; but whereas Operation Paperclip gave the latter a major role in the frantic Space Race, Frank’s biological breakthroughs were of little practical interest to America, and he had soon been allowed to find work in the private sector. Americans had money; American women had money and what they wanted to spend it on was themselves. The early days in Cologne opened doors and Frank was soon designing perfumes for the middle classes who could never aspire to the European classics. It was only a couple of months since Von Braun had got American nationality, whatever that meant, and Frank was delighted to think of him in Huntsville Alabama, working twelve hours a day, shooting at the moon, while he spent an hour or two in is penthouse office, scribbled down a few chemical recipes, and spent the rest of his hours doing whatever he pleased.

Frank was not so dull as to miss the fact that self aggrandisement was one of his two vital principles, the other being elegant cruelty. For this reason he was delighted to find himself sitting on an improbably long velvet sofa with the cream of the art and fashion world waiting to be photographed and interviewed for the New Yorker magazine. He recognised many of his so- called contemporaries, although he was in his nineties in some real sense: Warhol, Pollock, Greenberg; about a dozen more. Two of the men, one about twenty five and the other five years or so older, caught his eye, and as the assistant editor finished her introduction to the afternoon’s work and coffee arrived he decided to introduce himself.

“Kørner, Frank,” he said, shaking the hand of the older man, “I’m in perfume. I haven’t met you before”.

“Robert. No I’m from out of town, Texas, as if you couldn’t guess from the accent, and this is Jack, well Jasper really.” Jack smiled and shook Frank’s hand. Frank breathed quietly and held the second; something unfamiliar was happening.

“What are you in?” he enquired.

“God knows,” Robert spoke quickly, as if he were protecting his friend from the difficulties of social intercourse. “We’re artists, we have studios in the same brownstone. Someone told Miss New Yorker over there that we are the new hip thing.”

“I’m in the groove Jackson!” At last Jack spoke and they tried fairly unsuccessfully to stifle their laughter since Pollock was only standing a couple of yards away, manifestly failing to enjoy the coffee. Frank caught what he thought was a triple meaning and smiled with what he hoped might be taken for camaraderie. He dropped his card and scribbled down their studio address, which turned out to be their apartment also. It was agreed that he would visit later in the day to see the work which the New Yorker claimed was the Next Big Thing after abstract expressionism.

Frank had to admit to himself that he was a couple of dry martinis ahead of sober when he arrived at the studio, but Robert had left him at the starting line. He sat on a hinged wooden ladder and swung his arm around, spilling rye over the surrounding canvasses.

“Fuck the gesture, Frank. It’s all about the real images in the real world, not the psyched up shit that makes you throw Prussian Blue here or black fucking housepaint there. Goddamn it, why paint flat? You can’t deny that paintings have three dimensions, four if you count the making time. Photographs, objects, film… This is what the new art is.”

Frank surveyed the evidence of his host’s assertions. He had always been a bit of a Klimt man himself, and he really was a contemporary. This parade of modern debris was ugly, but it was also exciting. “And what is the new art about?” he asked.

“Everything, nothing. America.” Robert took a large swig of rye “Fuck it, I’m steamed Frank. Jack knows. He has beer and paint and the flag.”

Frank was surprised. He had hardly expected the symbol of a conservative nation as a subject for these radical artists. Most people, himself included, didn’t get abstract expressionism, so something even more radical was bound to be alien.

“What does he mean; the flag?” He asked Jack.

“It’s in my studio on the other floor,” Jack spoke hesitantly and checked Robert for support. Unfortunately Robert was snoring atop the ladder, a mixture of bourbon and piss staining the leg of his blue dungarees. “Would you care to look at what I have so far?”

“Of course,” replied Frank, leading the way to the door, “I would love to see what you’re working on.”

Jack’s studio was calm where Robert’s was riotous. Frank now felt a coolness of thought which reminded him of himself in Svalbard. He touched the waxy surface of the paintings and then the cheeks of their creator. They kissed, and later that night he woke to find himself fellated before the multiple flags that hovered in the studio’s gloom.