#GenghizInLove: Episode 28

I wandered through Berlin's darkest alleys for hours before emerging onto a long narrow street lined with bars and restaurants. I felt young and wild, a homeless wanderer, ravenous for new experiences. I pressed my nose to the plate glass window of a Turkish snack bar and stared wonderingly at a young couple laughing and joking with the waiter as they waited for their kebabs. Saliva dribbled down my unshaven chin. For the first time in a month, I realized how hungry I was. Anastasia seemed to live on an orange or a plum or a bunch of grapes. Once when we were returning particularly late from a nightclub, she suddenly braked to a screeching halt in the middle of the Kurfurstendamm during the morning rush hour and haggled over the price of a kilo of tangerines with a street vendor, oblivious to the irate honking of horns, and I cowered in my seat and put on an anxious smile when I saw a helmeted policeman ride up on a motorcycle and stride menacingly towards the Ferrari, but the policeman only saluted respectfully when he recognized Anastasia, and when he gestured imploringly at the traffic jam that had grown to incredible proportions behind us, Anastasia merely nodded testily, finished bargaining at her leisure, and peeled and ate her tangerine as she drove with one hand at high speed back to her apartment where she smeared the tangerines all over my body and licked off the viscous juices...

But man cannot live on fruit alone and so I spent the rest of the night walking down the street, stopping at each restaurant for a snack before proceeding to the next bar for a beer. At eleven in the morning, I was drowsily sipping Irish coffee in the Cafe Odeon, a soothing stack of newspapers before me, catching up on the world news of the last month, when a familiar voice caught my ear. I looked over at the next table and saw Immanuel. His hair was sticking up wildly and his bony shoulders were hunched up under a purple dressing gown tied loosely at the waist over a grey undershirt exposing his thin freckled chest. Pale blue hospital pajamas with numbers stencilled on the side were tucked into suede leprechaun boots. I had trouble believing my bleary eyes, but there he was, mad as ever, gesturing away maniacally at his handsome companion. "Man! What are you doing here?" I exclaimed in delighted recognition.

Immanuel stopped in mid-harangue and looked over. "Oh, hallo!" he said without surprise, raising a hand in benediction. "This is a world-famous cafe. Everyone meets here eventually. I was just telling Benito that if we stuck around long enough we might enter a time warp and meet Einstein or Hitler."

"Hi!" Benito said warmly. I remembered sitting in a cafe in Prague with Man and Benito. It seemed like a very long time ago. Benito's dress sense had improved: he had relinquished the Kalifornia liberal look in favor of a more conventional Euro-fag style that suited him far better. The ripped jeans patched with red plaid had been replaced by sharply creased olive drab trousers. A double-breasted blue blazer ostentatiously accentuated his broad shoulders and narrow waist, and its brass buttons had been polished to a blinding glare. All he lacked was a yellow silk cravat to wrap loosely around his tanned brown throat.

"What are you two doing in Berlin?" I asked, joining them.

"Buying big books," Immanuel said. "The bigger the better."

"For the Department of Culture library," Benito added. "I'm also working at the University of Truth and Justice now. I'm the new coordinator of the department of Culture."

"How are things at the university?" I asked nostalgically.

"Lots of peace and love since you left," Immanuel assured me.

"And since Marya Madlenova arrived," Benito added with enthusiasm. "She's a babe. Red hot!"

"Is that any way to talk about the greatest philologist of our time?" Immanuel chided, cuffing Benito on his handsome head. "Madlenova is beyond words."

I wished that I could meet this paragon of intellect and wickedness. So many attractive women in the world and so little time. Still, life is long and relationships are short: perhaps, one day I would encounter the mythical Madlenova. "I wish I were back there," I sighed.

"It's the happiest environment I have ever known," Immanuel declared. "It's driving me up the wall."

"Everyone still taking vitamins?" I inquired cautiously.

"More than ever," Benito answered enthusiastically. His brown eyes sparkled. "They're amazing, aren't they? We've been told that they will be in the drinking water soon. No more pills. So much more convenient that way."

"Who is in charge of vitamin distribution now?"

"Why, I am," Benito replied proudly, puffing out his pectorals. "I get a shipment from England every Monday and I put them out at the bars and at the reception desk. Hey, by the way, remember that cute chick at reception, Annichka? Boy, she really misses you. She's always talking about how you promised her drugs."

"Uh, right," I mumbled, embarrassed. I had been in Berlin for weeks now, taking exotic drugs every night and I hadn't given even a passing thought to pretty little Annichka. "Benito, who sends you the shipment of vitamins from England?"

Benito looked confused. "Someone at the X-O-X Foundation. Why?"

"Just curious," I replied evasively. "How's Otto Hell?"

"Seems all right," Immanuel answered. "We play chess and drink wine when he's around. H's away a lot, giving lectures at some conference or the other."

"Everyone at the department seems to be away a lot," Benito said, frowning. He obviously took his job very seriously. "They give lectures everywhere. Except to our own students."

"Well, that's what low-lifes like me are for," Immanuel responded consolingly. "The big names fly around the world and the small fry do the work. That's normal."

"Nothing you do is normal, Manny," Benito replied spiritedly. "Fyodor's been telling me about your lectures."

"I don't give lectures," Immanuel said with some pride. "I deliver sermons."

"About ethical obligation when facing up to apocalypse?" I asked.

"What else?" Immanuel grinned. "I rant. I rave. I think of it as performance art. Post-television evangelism. Like this." He pulled out a small plastic bag from his pocket and hurled it onto the table. "Speed! Coffee is not fast enough! We must accelerate!" he declaimed theatrically. His hair stood up on end and his eyes rolled alarmingly in his head. "There is not enough time if we are to save the world!"

"I thought you had given up on saving the world. Isn't it all over?"

"It is all over. But it is our ethical obligation to pretend! This is my new philosophical method. I adapted it from method acting. I call it ontological mimesis."

"What's that in plain English?" Benito inquired admiringly.

"Learning from the chameleons. Reptiles are good at adapting to their environment. They know how to survive in the wilderness. You're from LA. You should understand. Oh, speaking of Kalifornia..." Immanuel turned to me. "You got a parcel and Annichka didn't know what to do with it so I told her to give it to me. I knew I'd run into you somewhere." He dug around in his stained canvas knapsack. "Here it is."

I recognized my friend Sleaze's neat handwriting on the small parcel. The package contained a little cardboard box and a note. I opened the box. Carefully nestled in a bedding of cottonwool, sparkling like sapphires, lay a handful of iridescent blue pills. I sighed. Did I really need yet more drugs? But then I thought of Anastasia. She could use a new thrill. Besides some savage scratches, brutal bites, and other vicious wounds, I had received only excitement and exhilaration from being with her, not to mention the hundreds of marks which I had wildly squandered that night on Turkish kebabs and Irish coffee. Anastasia had been good to me, and I had to give the devil her due. Luke's note was cryptic: `Where did you get the pill you sent me? The thought police are about to raid my lab. I am on the move. Leave a message with Barbie. I will call you back.' I set a match to the paper and watched it turn into the twisted wings of a monstrous moth. I thoughtfully pounded it into a tidy pile of grey ashes and went in search of a phone.

Using the global calling card my mother had once given me in desperation, I called Barbie in Kalifornia only to got her answering machine. Amidst a disconcerting melange of sounds, the thunder of rolling surf, new age music, little bells tinkling, I managed to make out Barbie's sweet voice. "Barbara Ann is at the beach," she sang out cheerfully, "but she's not out of reach. Leave a number after the tone, and then wait anxiously by your phone." I assured Barbie of my enduring love and left the number of the Cafe Odeon. Then I bribed a waitress with enormous red arms to make sure that no one used the phone until I got my call. My mother was undergoing a heart operation, I told the matronly waitress, and I was waiting desperately for news of her condition. Tears dripped down the waitress's plump motherly cheeks and, as she furtively accepted the hundred mark bill I slipped into her huge hand, the last of the money I had stolen from Anastasia, she assured me that anyone who wanted to use the phone would have to reckon with her. A few minutes later, a well-dressed gentleman staggered past, staunching the blood flowing profusely down his bewildered face. The waitress followed him, clutching a rolling pin. She smiled at me and pointed towards the phone.

"Hi. Are you on a safe line?" Luke's voice was calm and precise as ever.

"This is a cafe. Why the secrecy?"

"I have to be careful. Every phone call is monitored in this fascist state. Where did you get that pill?"

"Somebody gave it to me in Prague. They told me it was a vitamin. What's the matter? Is it lethal?"

Luke laughed curtly. "Not exactly. I designed it."

"What?" I asked incredulously. I had a sudden sensation that the whole world was shrinking very rapidly all around me but that I remained exactly the same size. I had known this claustrophobia before but I still didn't like it.

"Look, I'll spare you the chemical details but there is an incredible isomorphism between part of the molecular structure of the pill you sent me and a new drug I designed about a year ago. The similarity cannot be a coincidence. Nobody else in the world is pursuing the specific line of psychochemical research which led me to develop this particular drug."

"What does it do?" I asked nervously.

"That's the thing. The drug I designed has certain essential similarities to the vitamin you sent me." Luke hesitated. "But the pill you took is different. For one thing, it's an extremely dilute compound of the drug I designed and some inert substance. But more importantly, the drug has been altered. Half of the drug has been twisted in some way. There's a very complicated asymmetry involved... I can't say what effects these alterations may produce."

"What was the drug you designed?"

"About a year ago a private foundation approached me..."

"What was the name of the foundation?" I interrupted.

"The X-O-X Foundation." Luke said. "Why?"

"Never mind. I'll tell you later. Go on."

"Anyway, this foundation asked me to design a drug for them. They knew exactly what effects they wanted. Superficially, a state of euphoria and self-confidence. That's easy enough to produce. A million drugs can do that by stimulating the brain's production of endorphins, you know, the things that make you feel good. But these people wanted more. They wanted a drug which would make people feel good about being good. A drug which would set up an enduring association between moral behavior and physical pleasure."

"And that's what I was on?"

"Only partly. I told you, there are crucial differences in the drug I developed and the one you took. What worries me is who made the alterations."

"What do you mean?"

"None of the leading pyschopharmacologists who work in established pharmaceutical companies would touch a project like this and if they did I would have read about it in the professional literature. And I can count the really good underground drug designers on the fingers of one hand. There's me," Luke said without false modesty. "Hans van der Annersvoort in Amsterdam. Slawek Nawrocki in Cracow. Toshiki Kanemaru in Osaka. And Nina Hamidi in Berlin. I've been in touch with all of them. Kanemaru and I don't get along personally but he wouldn't lie to me about something like this. Great artists don't paint over each other's canvases. They all swear that they haven't touched the drug I developed. So who is it?"

"Isn't there some way you can find out from the X-O-X Foundation?"

"They paid me two million dollars for designing this drug and told me that they would get back in touch with me about another project. I could try to reach Miss Setton and ask her..."

"Miss What?"

"The woman from the X-O-X foundation. What's the matter?"

"Sleaze. What was her first name? Do you remember what she looked like?"

"Her first name was Lucy," Luke replied obligingly. "I don't know what she looked like. We negotiated by e-mail."

I was in shock. "I don't think you can reach her now, Luke. She's been dead for a month."

"Impossible," Luke responded crisply. "I got a message from her just a week ago asking me the number of my Swiss bank account."

"Did she tell you how this foundation had heard about you?"

"I assumed that someone in the field would have told them about me. Maybe one of my professors at Berkeley. Maybe they just looked at the underground electronic bulletin boards. Getting in touch with me by e-mail is easy enough. The police state hasn't managed to totally infiltrate the computer networks yet. It's the phone surveillance I'm worried about..."

"Okay. Two more questions and I'll let you go," I promised. "What did you do with the two million dollars? And what are the pills you sent me?"

"It takes a lot of money to stay on the run," Luke said. "And I've been trying to bribe the Peruvian police into letting Jesus escape..."

"The Peruvian police?"

"Yeah. Didn't you know?" Luke sounded surprised. "You really are out of touch! The Peruvian police caught Jesus two weeks ago along with most of the other Enlightenment leadership. Jesus is in jail in Lima right now. They want to crucify him as an example."

"Is Jesus that important?"

"Well, he has been the Enlightenment's main spokesman for a few years ago. Since their founder was arrested and executed."

"Hell." I was horrified by the image of my old schoolfriend, Jesus Guevara, dangling limply from some rude scaffold in the Andes. I remembered his disgust with the endemic corruption and cruelty of the ruling regime in his country. I had dimly been aware over the years of Jesus's growing involvement in radical politics, but I had never realized how prominent he was in the shadowy revolutionary movement called the Enlightenment.

"Life is hell and then you die, as we used to say in prep school. Maybe I can get Jesus off the cross. It's all about bribing the right people. As for the pills I sent you, try them and tell me what you think. The drug I was designing for the X-O-X foundation put me onto a very promising new line of research. Bye for now."

I hung up the phone and looked blankly into the round face of the motherly waitress. "Well, how is she?" the waitress inquired anxiously. "Your mother."

"They operated for six hours," I said, putting my hand on the wall for support. I really did feel weak. "They replaced her left ventricle and right auricle with plastic valves. They vacuumed out fat from the major arteries and veins which were all blocked." The waitress gasped and put her hands to her mouth. I shook my head in despair. "It is touch and go. She may live. She may die. But she will never again eat strudel." I brushed a tear from my eye. "No more Kaffee und Kuchen for the rest of her life. It is terrible, is it not?" The plump waitress nodded earnestly, her eyes bulging out of her head at the prospect of a lifetime of such deprivation. I smiled wanly at her. "Thank you for your help."

I joined Immanuel and Benito. As usual, they were arguing about the prospects for the survival of life on earth. "Don't give me this crap about sustainable development," Man screamed. "It doesn't matter whether a billion Chinese peasants should be allowed to buy refrigerators or not."

"But a billion more refrigerators would completely wipe out the ozone layer," Benito demurred earnestly. "And then they'll want other large consumer appliances..."

"So what?" Man laughed harshly. "Let them lounge around guzzling six packs of chilled beer while they watch soap operas on huge television sets. Let them pop cheese popcorn in their microwaves. Let them drive large inefficient automobiles with tailfins. Let them eat steak!"

"But the electricity..." Benito spluttered. "The car emissions... The methane farted by the cows..."

Immanuel thumped the table vehemently. "It doesn't matter. There just aren't enough resources to sustain the good life for everyone on this planet. Let the poor fuckers in the Third World at least dream of the consumer lifestyle while they starve and suffocate to death. It's irrelevant. Human beings have already finished off any future for themselves. And for most other species on this planet. Can't you get it through your thick skull? Apocalypse happened yesterday."

"But that's so hopeless." Benito's voice broke in a dying fall. Under his thick eyelashes, his olive eyes seemed full of tears. I felt a sudden surge of affection for him and for all the other billions of pleasant, amiable, and beautiful young animals like him out there.

"The only hope for life is that a solitary breed of cockroach in some landfill somewhere is hardy enough to survive," Immanuel said. "Although it's misleading to give examples. We don't know what will come after us. All we can hope is that something survives. As Nietzsche says..." He dug around in his tattered backpack and then looked up. "I didn't bring it with me. I'll show you when we get back to Prague."

"When are you going back?" I asked enviously.

"Tomorrow afternoon," Benito answered. "Nero says we have to return right away."

"Who's Nero?"

"Nero Insanetti. Your replacement," Man answered. "Hell's assistant. He's... strange."

"I like Nero," Benito said. "He's a wop too. We guineas gotta stick together!" He threw back his head and laughed uproariously. "He wasn't always this crazy."

"You're right," Immanuel agreed. "He was actually quite pleasant when he first arrived from Budapest."

"Dealing with the bureaucrats at the Amerikan Embassy was Nero's undoing," Benito said mournfully. "Now, every time he hears an Amerikan accent, he locks himself into his office, whimpering. He only talks to me because I'm so proud of my Italian roots."

"What did the Amerikan Embassy do to him?" I asked, baffled.

"They sent the body over in a meat truck. It was personally addressed to Nero. The problem was that they had forgotten to take all these other hunks of meat out of the truck and he had to figure out which carcass was hers. It was horrible. He'll feel better once he disposes of the body. Next week, I hope. He's taken to carrying a gun around with him lately and I don't like it. I keep trying to give him vitamins but he just refuses to take them."

"We're all just hunks of meat," Immanuel interpolated irrelevantly. "Waiting for the inevitable maggots."

"Now the body is hanging around in the deep freeze of the University kitchen."

"You mean Lucy's body is still at the University of Truth and Justice?" I asked, stunned.

"Lucy?" Benito looked confused. "Oh, yeah, that's what she claimed her name was. It turned out that her real name was Charlotte Stant. Interpol identified her last week. She was a backpacker, just a nice Amerikan college girl doing Europe on her summer holiday..." Benito shook his handsome head sorrowfully. "Then she disappeared suddenly. The friend with whom she was travelling was worried but then she just assumed that Charlotte must have hooked up with someone else."

"Do they know where Charlotte was from?"

"Yeah. Nero's sending the body to Salt Lake City. No wonder she lost her mind. She was a Mormon, can you imagine?"

I thought sadly about a pair of wide azure eyes, of an angel with an ash-blonde halo. "Yes," I replied heavily. "I knew her well."

But I had to wonder: had I in fact known Lucy at all? From the day when she picked me up at Prague airport until the night of her mysterious murder, in all the days in which we worked together and all the nights in which she had snuggled up to me, what strange spirit had lain lurking behind those wide azure eyes? Why should a nice young Amerikan college girl named Charlotte Stant have disappeared in the middle of her summer vacation, adopted the name `Lucy Setton' and come to work for the University of Truth and Justice? And how was it possible that someone named Lucy Setton should have been in touch with my friend Luke Leazy on behalf of the X-O-X Foundation both before and after Charlotte Stant's death? After my argument with Anastasia about the possibility of spirits hopping from one body to another, I had the uneasy feeling that Benito might be wrong: Charlotte Stant had not lost her mind at all. Rather, she had lost her body. I realized that I would have to ask Anastasia about all this. I shivered.

Immanuel looked at me sympathetically. "You look beat," he said. "What are you doing tonight?"

"I have to talk to a witch about body-snatching." I yawned. "Nothing special. Why?"

"We're going to a concert. Want to come?"

"Who's playing?"

"Old Nick and the Fallen Angels. I saw them in Boston a few years ago." Man sighed heavily. "It was during the Gulf War and my girlfriend had just been arrested for necrophilia. She worked as a night guard at a morgue and she couldn't resist screwing the stiffs..."

"Where are they playing?"

"At Holle. Know where that is?"

I winced at the memory of what Nasty had done to the two young boys we had met there one night. "Yeah. I know where that is. I'll be in disguise."

I overcame my fears and went back to Anastasia's apartment. She was not there. I lay down and tried to sleep for a while but my head was as much a mess as the apartment. In an effort to bring some order to the jumble of confused and incoherent thoughts whirling around in my brain, I set about cleaning up the indescribable clutter in the apartment. I washed out coffee cups, dusted shelves, vacuumed the floors, arranged magazines neatly on coffee tables, and even washed and ironed Anastasia's clothes. After a while, the dust in my tired brain settled and only one nagging thought remained. Who the devil was Lucy Setton? I sighed and closed my eyes tight. It was none of my business whether there was life after death: I would find out soon enough. The living have drugs to take and rock concerts to attend: let the dead bury the dead.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 27

Drugs, drink, dancing, debauchery, degeneracy, decadence, decline, disillusionment... My days in Berlin with Anastasia passed by in a haze, or rather the nights, since I spent most of the day sleeping, recovering from the previous night. And while I dozed uneasily, Anastasia would prowl naked around her vast apartment, reciting lines to herself from her previous movies, singing odd snatches of old cabaret songs, turning cartwheels one after another flawlessly down long dark corridors. Some days I would wake up and stumble to the bathroom and find her in the jacuzzi washing her beautiful red curls. And then, as I stood at the sink brushing my teeth, I would feel her teeth sunk in my shoulder and I would peer up blearily and see the glitter of her eyes, a green glimmer which even the grime on the mirror could not dull. And then the creamy feel of her skin rubbing insistently against mine would arouse a familiar fiend and I would turn and crush her fragile body into mine in a fierce embrace... A demon of perversity drove us on towards ever madder excesses into which she coldly threw herself, as though she were seeking to discover a delirium in which she could drown, an ecstacy into which she could let herself escape, a fresh fever which she had not already found...

One night we went slumming. We found a shabby little bar in a dark alley in Kreuzberg. Torn out cobblestones lay piled in untidy mounds and the cold night wind carried the foul rancid odors of a rotting world. Anastasia sat slumped in sullen silence, drinking shot after shot of a yellowish oily liquor which the surly barman spilled out of an unlabelled bottle into smudged glasses and onto the filthy counter which he sloppily wiped with a slovenly swipe of a soiled rag. Nothing could be worse than my flat beer, I decided, and I asked the barman to give me a taste of what the lady was drinking. "Is good," the barman said, smiling twistedly. "Very good. Is called palinka. Very special Hungarian drink."

"Are you Hungarian?" I asked.

"From Transylvania," the barman replied proudly. "Land of Dracula."

"That's part of Romania now, right?" The question seemed innocuous enough to me but the barman grimaced angrily and refused to answer. "Have a drink yourself," I offered, throwing some change onto the bar.

Still scowling suspiciously at me, the barman took a swig from the bottle. He wiped his mouth and hissed with satisfaction. "Like fire." He licked his thick cracked lips. "We make in our village in Transylvania. Like brandy, from plums. We make every year." He took another swig and chortled. "One year the police try to take palinka away from our village. Like tax, they say. You know what I say?" A shifty look came into the barman's eyes. "My brother," he corrected himself. "No me, my brother, he say, we kill you, then we don't have to pay tax."

"So what happened?" I threw some more money on the counter.

The barman shrugged. "So we kill police. Whole village take pitchforks and axes and spades and we kill them and then everyone drink and dance all night and sing songs and then we all go to sleep like little babies." He smiled at the memory. "Good to kill policemen," he said amiably.

"I know what you mean," I agreed. "I had some bad experiences with some Czech policemen recently…"

A look of disgust came over his face. "Pah. Czech police is… pussies. Romanian police, pthoo..." He hawked noisily and spat on the floor. "Palinka puts fire in the blood," he repeated.

"Fire in the blood," Anastasia also repeated, in a husky monotone. "That's what I need. But I have ice instead."

"Have another drink," I replied in cold blood.

"It would freeze in my veins." Anastasia put her arms around her slim shoulders and began rocking back and forth. "Nothing helps."

"Try sleeping." I threw the drink down my throat. It had no taste on my tongue but then a slow burn spread through my body and the smell of plums slowly rose into my nostrils.

"The devil bit me and now I cannot sleep." Anastasia stared into my eyes. I forced myself to meet her burning gaze. After a while she looked away and shook her head. "And you too."

"What are you talking about?" I demanded impatiently. The barman poured us more palinka. "I've never had any trouble sleeping and the only person who has bitten me recently is you. You think you're the devil?"

"You will find out soon."

Despite myself, a chill ran through me. "Anastasia," I said gently, putting my hand on her clenched fist. "Try to rest a little." A sharp fingernail struck out and drew blood. She smiled scornfully at me. "I don't mean you should lead a healthy life," I added hastily, licking the scratch on my hand. "But a little sleep every once in a while would do you good."

"Who are you when you sleep?" Anastasia demanded. I blinked. "Your body lies there snoring, a mass of flesh, like a deserted house. Your spirit is wandering. Most spirits don't go too far. But what happens to people like us?"

"What do you mean, people like us?" I asked defensively. I have been known to get lost even in my own apartment, and the thought that my spirit was wandering around all over the place was quite disturbing. I wondered if spirits were allowed to carry maps.

"You wander," Anastasia replied flatly. "I can tell."

"I like being a tourist, if that's what you mean."

"What happens after every dream?"

"I usually wake up and tell myself I've been dreaming."

"You lie. You know you have a choice."

"What choice? To get up or to sleep a little longer?"

"The choice not to return to your body."

"I thought you liked my body," I said, hurt.

"Stop fooling and listen to me carefully," Anastasia spat angrily. "What will you do when you find me gone?"

"Find someone else to sleep with, obviously." Anastasia nodded somberly. I sighed, reached over, and squeezed her icy hand. "Just joking. Where are you planning to go?"

"Another body, obviously," Anastasia replied impatiently. "Something is pulling me out of this body."

"What is pulling you?"

Anastasia looked away and sighed. "I can't say. But I know that Axel will never leave this body alone."

"Axel von Schadenfreude? Your husband?"

Anastasia nodded mutely. She bit her lip. "He owns this body. And he will never be satisfied until he gets it back."

"Does Axel have any proof of purchase?"

"Yes," Anastasia snapped. "A child, thirteen years old, named Ulrich."

"Why does Axel want you back so much?"

"He is a good Catholic," Anastasia snarled. "And a capitalist. He believes in the Pope and in private property."

"Sounds like a nightmare. No wonder you can't sleep."

"I'm not afraid of him," Anastasia replied pugnaciously. "I can defeat him in astral combat. But I need your help."

"What do you want me to do?" I asked warily. Did this pretty psychopath want me to marry her or something?

"I don't know yet." Anastasia smiled coldly. "We'll find out soon, won't we? The day of reckoning is close at hand."

"How do you know?" I challenged.

"I am a witch." My eyeballs rolled around in my head. "Oh, please," she said impatiently. "I don't throw babies and lizards into boiling cauldrons. But I can tell the future. I can pass into other bodies. That's why I don't sleep. I need my own body right now and I don't want anyone else to take it just yet."

"You're right. Lots of women would love to have your body." I laughed. "Come on, Nasty. Drink your drink and then let's go back to your apartment. I'll kiss you all over and warm you up and hold you in my arms and sing lullabies to you and I promise I won't let anyone take your body away from you while you sleep. Okay?"

Without warning Anastasia threw the contents of her glass into my face. The liquid burnt my delicate skin like acid. She stormed out of the bar without a word. I heard the banshee roar of her Ferrari as she gunned the engine and skidded away.

Through the tears in my eyes I dimly saw the barman lean over towards me. "Palinka do this!" He smiled proudly. "Make woman hot!"

As I stumbled out of the bar, I bumped into a drab shadow. Sure enough, it was my shadow, the nondescript man in the beige trench coat. His left leg was encased in a plaster cast. "Oh, excuse me," I apologized, tripping him. I reached over to steady him and my elbow sent his crutch flying into the darkness. "How clumsy of me!" I stepped on his unshod toes. "But you really should be more careful, sir," I exclaimed solicitously as my boot slammed into the side of his head. "This is such a bad neighborhood. There are so many crazy people around. It's all the drugs and drink and devil worship..."

#GenghizInLove: Episode 26

"I'm going to fall!" I wailed, swinging on the rope ladder, my eyes screwed shut to avoid looking down into the abyss. "I have vertigo!"

"Go ahead and fall," Lulu urged. I looked up in amazement, trying to understand why my friend should be encouraging me to break every bone in my body, but the enormous skirt of Lulu's wedding dress ballooned around my face and I had to content myself with a spectacular view of her long and beautiful legs. "The whole floor is a trampoline, darling," Lulu explained. "Look!" She threw herself into space. I screamed and averted my eyes but a moment later I was staring in disbelief as Lulu sailed up again like a helium balloon, grabbed my ankle, and pulled me off to join her in double suicide and, oh no, the floor is jumping up fast to meet my skull and I'm about to hear a sickening crunch, but, wait, I'm hitting something that's soft and spongy and wheee... off we go again and this is definitely fun...

A few bounces later, I confidently climbed up to the little eyrie where Stash and Anastasia were lounging, drinks in their hands and drugs in their veins. Lulu swung over on a trapeze, demurely tucking the train of her dress under her as she joined us on the cushioned platform. Vines grew luxuriantly up the padded walls of the hollowed out seven floors of what had once been an apartment building in the center of Berlin, now the exclusive club Liana. Blaring rock music was almost drowned out by the incessant screeching of thousands of exotic birds flying around freely, nibbling peanuts and diamond-studded earlobes. Young hermaphrodites in skin-tight purple leather trousers and canary yellow tanktops sailed across the atrium at different altitudes, cavorting mischievously in mid-air, joyously jabbing one another with hypodermic syringes, flirting outrageously, spilling their drinks, squealing ecstatically, in a playful pandemonium of sex and drugs. Like decadent gods, we reclined above, watching their antics in benevolent boredom, shooting up now and again.

"Stasi!" a young blonde exquisite shrilled as she rode by on the hairy back of her simian companion, catching sight of Anastasia. A few moments later the blonde cutie joined us without the gorilla. I was glad: the ape's jaw had reminded me disagreeably of Rasputin, who, I uneasily remembered, might also be in Berlin.

"Don't call me `Stasi'," Anastasia said crossly, letting herself be pecked thrice on the cheek. "You know I hate it. What are you doing in Berlin, Pipi?"

"Oh, Ludi doesn't want me hanging around in Himmelsberg while he lies dying. He says it's too ghoulish." Pipi looked around at Stash and Nasty curiously.

"Olympia von G and T." Anastasia kept the introductions brief. "My latest stepmother."

"The last." Pipi smiled contentedly, licking her lips. "The doctors think Ludi should be dead by Christmas."

"Quite the canary that ate the cat, aren't you? Will the lawyers let us sell Himmelsberg?"

"No, Nasty." Pipi pouted. "They say the castle has to stay in the family. It will go to Ulo. Should I send him around to see you one of these days?"

"It's too much bother," Anastasia replied indifferently.

"But he wants to see you so much!" Pipi protested. "He boasts about his mother to all his little friends. He even has a poster on his wall from that beautiful scene in Gomorrah where you're making love to Albertine. He wants to be a lesbian when he grows up."

Anastasia frowned. "How old is Ulo now?"

"Isn't she terrible?" Pipi appealed in delighted horror. "How can you not know how old your own son is? He will be thirteen in December. Axel wants to have a big party."

"He has so much to celebrate," Nasty said nastily. "My father's death and our son's coming of age. Too bad I won't be there."

"Who's Axel?" Lulu asked.

"Axel von Schadenfreude. The father of my son Ulrich," Anastasia explained. "Axel should have been jailed for life for raping me but the judge was too frightened and my father in his charming old-fashioned way decided that I should marry Axel instead. And so I was a wife at fifteen and a mother at sixteen and I would have been dead at seventeen if Werner Lichtfinder hadn't offered me a small part in Ship of Fools."

"Ludi was so disappointed the other day when he heard about Lichtfinder's overdose," Pipi piped up. "Can you imagine, after all these years, Ludi still wanted to kill Lichtfinder for making you an actress."

"I can imagine anything about my father. Whom will you marry when he dies?"

"I can't decide." Pipi wriggled her bare shoulders. "Max von Hohenstaufen keeps coming around, to sit with his cousin at his deathbed, he says, but then he pats me all over with his clammy hands and makes big eyes and heaves these heavy sighs and he looks exactly like a walrus."

"My poor child," Nasty said, caressing Pipi's neck. "Far better to be a widow than to marry that oaf. My father may be a child molester and a snob and I hope they have arranged a special hell in which he burns forever, but at least he has style. Isn't there anyone else?"

Pipi bit her lower lip and looked down bashfully. "I met this gorgeous Sicilian at Prince Niou's wedding in Tokyo last week..."

"You knew Prince Niou at Oxford, didn't you?" Lulu asked me.

"Only by sight," I answered. "Hard to miss with all those bodyguards around. He dresses like a gangster. I used to see him sometimes at Murasaki's little bridge parties."

"Murasaki? You know Murasaki no Shikibu?" Pipi seemed to notice my existence for the first time. I sighed. The name game was in full swing now. I knew the ropes.

"We had the same tutor at Oxford," I replied tersely.

"Murasaki was at Prince Niou's wedding as well," Pipi said, nodding meaningfully. "Is she going to marry his older brother?"

"I hope not." I yawned. Nasty indolently offered me a little gold spoon heaped high with a crystalline white powder. A quiet tingle of pleasure rolled through me as I wiped my nose. "Murasaki has resisted marrying the crown prince for so many years now. It would be such a waste if she finally gives in."

"They're both terribly intelligent, aren't they?" Pipi sniffled, her greedy little nostrils trying to hold in a hill of koke.

"Murasaki is charming. That's all that really matters." I shrugged my shoulders and stared at the silvery sheen of the needle Nasty had planted high in the shadow of a long shapely thigh. "I don't know Prince Suzaku at all but how can one take him seriously? He's interested in baby toads."

"What does he do to them?" Nasty asked, her eyes glittering. She licked a droplet of blood from the tip of the syringe.

"He splashes about in their breeding slime. And then he writes monographs about it." I shook my head wonderingly and lit up a rock of krak. "Some people will do anything for thrills."

"This Sicilian I met at the wedding, Luciano..."

"Luciano Shinola?" I interrupted delightedly. "He used to hang out with all those Japanese royals. What is he doing now?"

"Do you know him? He told me that he worked for some Japanese company that made robots."

"What's the name of the company?"

Pipi screwed up her eyes and pretended to think. "Tamato? My husband owns lots of shares. Luciano said that everything in the factory was painted bright orange. Personally, I prefer hot pink. Anyway, Luciano said that it was a big scandal in Japan that Prince Niou was getting married before his older brother," Pipi breathed confidentially through her goldfish mouth. "Is it true that Prince Suzaku proposed to Murasaki on a tennis court when they were first introduced?" Pipi heaved a gusty sigh. "A handsome young prince sweating all over you, oh, it's so romantic..."

"He proposes to all his tennis partners. And they all refuse to marry him. Quite right, too," I replied firmly. "No decent Japanese girl wants to marry a Korean."

Pipi turned to Anastasia. "Nasty, what are you on? Can I have some?"

Anastasia shook her head. "No, Pipi. This drug is not for little girls. Shoot some heroine instead."

"I'm almost twenty-one," Pipi pouted. "And I'm bored with heroine. I need a new drug."

"How long have you been married, Pipi?" Lulu asked.

"My father married her three years ago," Anastasia answered for Pipi. "His seventh virgin." Nasty chucked Pipi under the chin. Her hand slithered down Pipi's throat and idly fondled a little breast. "But you think you've outlasted old Bluebeard, don't you, liebchen?"

"Nasty, be nice," Pipi moaned complaisantly. Nasty pulled her hand away and brought out a banana from her handbag. I snorted out a cloud of koke. It was the largest banana I had ever seen in my life. And it was red.

"Where did you get that?"

"From Stash," Nasty replied, peeling the banana. "We were having trouble shooting a scene today. King David's dance in the temple wasn't obscene enough and we had to do three takes. So Stash coldly reminded us that we were all monkeys. And he gave everyone a banana. So that we could get in touch with our basic instincts." Nasty looked at me with smoldering eyes. She put the tip of the banana between her full lips and slowly stuffed its enormous length into her mouth. Her sharp white teeth severed the pulpy flesh in one clean bite. I gulped, watching the banana slide down her lovely throat. I felt like a rabbit being shown its fate by a pedagogically inclined boa constrictor.

"Imported from Madagascar for the apes at the zoo," Stash said gently. "Was it good?"

"Delicious." Anastasia daintily wiped her mouth with a stained scrap of lace. She threw the banana skin into space and rose, beckoning to me with an imperious finger. "Come, little baboon. Time to return to the menagerie. Very well, Pipi, you may come along with us if you really want, but then don't go crying to Daddy. Lulu, happy honeymoon. Stash, return soon. I want to finish this damn movie."

"I'll write you a postcard from Venice, darlings," Lulu murmured dreamily. She blew me a kiss. "Have fun, angel! Is that man who was following you still there?"

I looked down. Amidst the fluorescent throngs of happy puppets a patch of drab beige stood out. I heard a thin unhappy scream. As we clambered down the rope ladder, I saw the middle-aged man in the beige trench coat writhing in anguish on the spongy floor, clutching his leg helplessly, weeping. A group of young degenerates danced around him, opening their mouths in mock surprise, grabbing at the air, slipping and falling, bouncing off the floor, imitating his wails, nudging and winking at one another before erupting in a fresh spasm of hysterical giggles. A twisted red object lay under the man's foot. It looked like a banana skin.

Anastasia turned to me and smiled widely. I restrained a shudder and smiled back. I was beginning to enjoy the libertine lifestyle: I was learning how to fall.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 25

A naked witch with smoky red hair, a witch with green eyes that glow in the dark, a witch with creamy white skin, this witch is sitting on my chest and I am buried in her body, and her hot hands are around my neck and her small thumbs are pressing hard into my throat and she throws back her head and she is laughing, a silvery chiming laugh, an inhuman pealing, a crazy clamor... I sat up, gasping for breath, and fought wildly with a mass of slippery stuff that was all around me, choking me. The distant din of church bells persisted. I tried to open my eyes. I was sitting naked on a bare four poster bed, stupidly holding the edges of the red satin sheets that had wound themselves around my head and which I had thrown onto the floor. I hurt all over. I wondered where I was. I wished the bells would stop their insistent toll.

I got up gingerly and went in search of water. I wandered around a maze of rooms until I found a kitchen. Dust lay thick on the counters. I pulled out an antique crystal tumbler from a cupboardand drank down seven glasses of water in quick succession. Tidal waves of nausea threatened to drown me but I gritted my teeth and held on. The bathroom was the size of a ballroom. I paid no attention to the rings of grime in the Jacuzzi. I was desperate. I fumbled with the complicated controls until I had jets of hot and cold water blasting me clean from every direction. I lay back in the tub and closed my eyes. I don't know how long I lay in the Jacuzzi but when I stepped out dripping I felt a little better. I felt even better after I had brushed my teeth with a black toothbrush which I picked out randomly from a pile strewn around the dirt-encrusted pink marble basin. I rubbed myself dry with a huge towel that might once have been white but which was now the color of smoker's teeth. When the towel reached my back I screamed in pain. I turned and looked at my back in the mirror. Ten trails of blood ran in neat parallel grooves from my shoulders all the way down to my legs. I fainted.

When I recovered consciousness, I may have sat on the edge of the bathtub and cried. I can't remember. The entire morning (or afternoon, I couldn't tell since my watch had disappeared) is in retrospect a complete haze. Pain refreshes in small measured doses, but these gaping wounds were simply too much to face, only days after my brutal beating from the Prague skinheads. I couldn't find my clothes anywhere so I wandered naked for hours, waiting for my wounds to heal or at least form scabs, walking from dining room to breakfast room to drawing room to billiard room to conservatory to library to guest room after guest room... The enormous apartment seemed completely uninhabited although I seem to remember seeing a middle-aged brown woman in a maid's uniform sitting placidly in the kitchen drinking a cup of tea. When she saw me walking around naked, the woman nodded and smiled, showing an expanse of broken teeth, but when I next walked into the kitchen she had disappeared. Eventually, I found my way back to the bedroom where I had woken up. I noticed a scrap of paper buried in the crumpled mound of satin sheets. `Liana. Kantstrasse. 9 pm,' the message read, hastily scrawled in an unfamiliar bold hand. I wondered if the message was meant for me. Who was Liana?

Even more arresting: who was Axel? The library was an immense room, each wall lined from floor to ceiling with rosewood bookshelves filled with first editions bound in calf leather. Each book bore the printed name plate: Ex libris Axel von Schadenfreude, with an elaborate coat of arms above the grandiloquent name. Axel von Schadenfreude was obviously something of a bibliophile; in fact, as I gradually realised after pawing through the books, most of which were in Latin and depressingly religious, he was one of Germany's largest Catholic publishers. What was his connection with Anastasia?

In another room with overstuffed sofas and coffee tables all shrouded with white draping, I found a gigantic canvas leaning against the wall. A naked woman stared out of the life-size picture. Curly auburn hair fell loose down to her slim waist. Her full lips were curled in an implacable sneer and her green eyes glittered with malice. One firm round breast mourned its twin which had been savagely hacked out with a kitchen knife, perhaps the same knife which lay next to the telephone... I picked up the phone receiver but there was no tone. The cord had been severed in a clean cut. I knew I had to get out of there. I went back to the bedroom and tried to find something to wear. The closet overflowed with piles of expensive crumpled clothing: lace lingerie and silk cocktail dresses and linen jerseys and brushed cotton polo neck sweaters and suede blousons as soft as butter. I managed to salvage some tights and an oversize grubby white silk blouse which I sincerely hoped would look enough like a shirt for me to walk to the nearest shop that sold men's clothes without incurring the ridicule of street urchins or the unwelcome attentions of other Berlin transvestites. I found my own overcoat miraculously hanging in the hallway amidst a crowd of other coats and even my shoes but my wallet was missing. However, I found a few thousand marks strewn around the foyer which I quickly pocketed.

I heaved a sigh of relief when I closed the door of the apartment behind me and walked down eight flights of stairs to the street. The church bells began to rung once again, as though I had set off some sort of trip wire: intent on fleeing Anastasia's lair, I ignored their warning. You see, at that time, I still believed in the possibility of escape. It is easy to be wise after the event.

Clothes make the man: clearly the first item on my agenda after escaping from Anastasia's apartment was to buy some clothes. I was in luck. The most fashionable shopping street in Berlin was just around the corner. I walked into an outlet of my favorite designers, Pour Jeunes Gentilhommes, picked out a few little necessaries (a sharp black six-button silk-cashmere suit, some simple silk shirts, a pair of pointy alligator boots), and asked the imperturbable sales clerk to burn the peculiar garments I was wearing. He raised his eyebrows slightly but then nodded with an air of blase comprehension when I gave him a generous tip and explained that burning those clothes was imperative for the maintenance of public hygiene.

I bought a plastic disposable watch on the street since I hadn't pilfered enough money to be able to replace my beloved platinum Bouvard et Pecuchet which my grandfather had bought in Zurich in 1925 and which he had sent to me on my eighteenth birthday through a French Embassy courier who could be sometimes be bribed to carry a few small presents from Mongolia. It was almost five in the afternoon. I wondered if Lulu was at her apartment. I found a phone box and called her.

"Darling!" Lulu sounded even more ecstatic than usual. "I had the most marvelous night of my life! How about you?"

"I can't remember," I replied. "What happened?"

"Nasty likes you. She called me from the movie studio and said she would never let you go." I shuddered. "Where are you, angel?"

"Near the Kudamm, I think, Lu."

"Baby, find the Pilsudski Hotel. I'll meet you in the coffee shop. I've got to talk to you before I go to Venice." And with that she hung up, leaving me staring enviously at the phone. Venice?

I wandered around the busy heart of Berlin until I found the ornate concrete wedding cake where I was to meet Lulu. She was already there, glowing. "Lulu, your aura is unbelievable!" I exclaimed, shielding my eyes from the glare.

"We're going to Venice tomorrow to get married. I've been waiting for Stash all my life! He's the man of my dreams!" A sour-faced waitress wandered over to our table, attracted by Lulu's radiance. She even smiled when she took our order.

"Why Venice?" I asked, ravenously devouring moist rich black chocolate cake. The perfect breakfast when washed down with cointreau café au lait.

"Because it's still there," Lulu replied, reasonably. "Who knows how much longer before it sinks?"

"Is Stash a romantic?" I asked curiously.

"Darling! He's even better. He's a cynic!"

"How long will your marriage last?"

"Oh, don't be so bourgeois, honey," Lulu chided. "We've already signed a post-nuptial agreement."

"What about Nectarino Nectarini? How is he going to handle all this love in Venice?"

"Who cares?" Lulu replied, heartless as ever. "Ex-fiances have rights to feelings?"

"And what happens now to the persona of Professor Louisa Frazer?" I asked curiously.

"Professor Frazer-Malinowski sounds even better," Lulu answered smugly. "I've always wanted a double barreled name."

"Will you send me a postcard from Venice?"

"Darling, of course," Lulu replied tenderly. "After all, I wouldn't have seduced him without your support. I told Stash all about it and we agreed that you're the godfather of our marriage. You have to give us presents on every anniversary."

I was happy for her. I said so. We kissed, fondly smearing whipped cream all over each other's faces.

But then she broke away and looked me in the eye. "I have to tell you about Midas," she said soberly.

"Who's Midas?"

"What is Midas," Lulu corrected me. "Now, honey, I want you to listen to me very carefully. Rasputin told me that he was investigating the mysterious death of Max Bulge."

"He told me that in Prague," I interrupted bitterly. "Before he killed poor Lucy and tried to frame me for her murder."

"Well, what he didn't tell you is that Bulge was a member of a mysterious club called MIDAS. Along with Eduard Kafir, the billionaire banker who just became toast in that mysterious fire in San Marino."

"So is this a club for dead billionaires?" I asked skeptically. "What's it got to do with me?"

"Xox is another of the members. And so is Sir Johnny Silver. As was Slo Lerner."

"Didn't he just die in a plane crash?"

"That's right. Now what do all these men have in common?"

"They're all billionaires. And some of them are dead. So what?"

"How does Terence Killjoy-Yuck know all these billionaires?" Lulu leaned back in her chair and stared at me.

"I don't know." I shrugged. "Maybe he plays bridge with them at some fashionable West End club. So?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, he does play bridge with some very rich people," Lulu nodded. "Which is interesting in itself. How can an Oxford don afford to play bridge for high stakes? Two hundred pounds a match point and he doesn't even play all that well anyway. But the important question is: why are there coded files about these billionaires in Terence's little notebook computer?"

"If the files are in code, then how do you know they are about these men? And how did you get hold of his notebook computer anyway?"

Lulu smiled wisely at me. "Guess, honey," she smirked. "The codes took Jonathan two weeks to crack. Unfortunately, he didn't manage to decipher any of the contents of the files since they self-destructed when he broke through the protection. All he managed to salvage were the names."

I stared at her. "Let me get this straight," I said slowly. "You seduced Terence..."

"No!" Lulu uttered a little shriek. "I wouldn't do that even for you, angel! Sleep with that vulture... ugh!" She shuddered. "No, I seduced Jonathan."

I gaped at her, aghast at the thought of Lulu toying with the virgin heart of that shy ungainly long-haired shambling gentle computer specialist. The image was too appalling to contemplate for very long. "How could you, Lu?"

Lulu giggled. "It was fun actually," she smiled, biting her lower lip. "I've always thought he's sort of cute. When you close your eyes you don't see the pimples."

"You are perverse," I said firmly. "You evil woman."

"Oi!" Lulu pouted indignantly. "Aren't you even a little grateful?"

"It's none of my business anymore." I shrugged. "I'm not working at the University of Truth and Justice anymore. I'm free."

"Oh, really, pudding-face? With a murder rap hanging over your head?"

"I'll just never go back to Czechoslovakia," I replied weakly.

"Do you really think this is about the stupid Czech police?" Lulu demanded sternly. "What about Rasputin? And why are you being followed?" I stared at her little finger which twitched discreetly towards a nondescript middle-aged man in a beige trench coat. He was sitting a few tables away from us, reading a German newspaper. I looked at Lulu in alarm. She nodded. "Didn't you see him last night?" she asked. "When we came out of my apartment building? And what was someone in a beige trench coat doing at a decadent Berlin nightclub? Saure said he let the guy in last night to find out whom he was after."

"Lulu, what is going on?" I asked plaintively. "What have I done? Why are these spooks after me?"

Lulu smiled at me mockingly. "You'll have to find out for yourself, sweetie," she said, getting up. "I'm going to Venice. Come and help me buy a wedding dress. And then we'll go to Liana."

"Who's Liana?"

"What is Liana," Lulu corrected me again. "It's a drug club. You'll like it. Nasty likes hanging out there."

"Oh, my God!" I moaned. "Is this all you people do? Go to clubs and sit around night after night drinking and taking drugs?"

"We also work like mad, sugarplum," Lulu answered acerbically. "I wrote a whole chapter of my new book and Stash and Nasty probably shot at least ten scenes of their movie. What did you do today?"

"I stole some money and then I bought some clothes," I said dismally. "I wish I were dead."

"It's the decadent lifestyle. Don't let it get you down, darling. You'll get used to it if Anastasia lets you stay. Nothing matters since we're all dead anyway," Lulu said reassuringly. She patted my cheek. "Welcome to the post-apocalypse, angel."

#GenghizInLove: Episode 24

"Aren't you cold in that dress, Anastasia?" Lulu asked as we walked down the chill stairwell of her apartment building. I couldn't take my eyes off Anastasia's alluring ass half veiled in the fishnet dress, glowing flesh and inviting shadows, an intricate geometry of intersecting diagonals and slim curves, reeling me into unfathomable seduction.

"At least one feels something, liebchen," Anastasia drawled. "The heart pounds and so one knows that one is alive. Also, men seem to like it." She turned and looked at me insolently. "Don't you, little one?"

"I don't find gooseflesh terribly erotic," I replied, trying to stare her down and losing my footing in the process. I tumbled down a flight of concrete stairs and lay there clutching my ankle. The two girls walked past, laughing mercilessly. I hobbled after them into the cold night air. Anastasia slid gracefully into the driver's seat of a shiny black Ferrari. Lulu got in beside her after I had edged myself into the cramped back seat. We drove off in a squeal of tortured rubber.

"Why do you stay in this slum, Lulu?" Anastasia asked, turning a corner at high speeds, almost flattening an elderly couple transfixed in her headlights like outraged rabbits.

"East Berlin is so wonderfully drab," Lulu protested.

"There are some amusing places here now," Anastasia conceded, driving effortlessly through three consecutive red lights. "But I should have thought your tastes would be better served elsewhere."

"Where are we going tonight?" Lulu asked.

"We are meeting Stash at Der Mauer," Anastasia replied, whipping the Ferrari through a maze of dark alleys. "It's a new club," she explained. "Owned by my hairdresser. We thought you might enjoy it." Anastasia braked savagely at the nondescript entrance of a warehouse. A young man in khaki uniform and jackboots goose-stepped up and saluted stiffly. "Real East German border guards. Saure pays attention to detail. He is a good hairdresser." Anastasia rapped at the warehouse entrance three times. The door opened a crack. A furtive eye looked us over and then the door opened wide.

"Princess!" A little bald man in dinner clothes exclaimed ecstatically, kissing Anastasia's hand and bowing obsequiously all around. "At your service. Princess, the gentleman is already here. I have had your table arranged in the bunker. I thought you would be more comfortable there. Please tell me if you have any special desires this evening." He giggled and rubbed his pudgy little hands.

We walked into an immense space packed with young people. The room was divided in half by a high concrete wall. Tables on either side shuddered with the deafening sound of machine gun fire. Searchlights played across the room. Groups of grungy desperadoes amused themselves trying to climb across rows of barbed wire. Four sentry towers stood in each corner of the warehouse and men in uniforms stood at attention in the turrets, holding rifles. A corpse or two lay artistically asprawl on the floor. We picked our way through to the center of the room and clambered down a metal spiral staircase which led to a small cellar. Swastikas and yellowing portraits of Hitler hung on every wall.

A man sat alone at a table laid out for four. He rose slowly as we approached, kissed Anastasia on the cheek, took Lulu's hand in his and brushed the air above it with his lips, and then turned to me. "Stanislas Malinowski," he murmured as we shook hands. He was a tall man with very broad shoulders hunched together slightly. He had the most melancholy eyes I had ever seen: cold pale blue, crinkled at the edges, they seemed to have seen it all. His thin lips were twisted into an agreeable sneer and a broad scar ran diagonally across the lines on his wide forehead. He wore his thinning blond hair a little too long at the back. I guessed that he was in his late thirties, Polish, and a gentleman.

"What do you do, sir?" I asked once we had been served. I'm always more polite with a drink safely in hand.

"Please call me Stash," Stanislas replied with equal politeness. "I am a director."

"Theater or film?" I used to take part in amateur theatricals in the primary school I attended in San Salvador. I had won considerable notoriety at the age of seven for my portrayal of Jesus as an incompetent young carpenter. My father had even received death threats on my life from ultra-Catholic extremists.

"Don't you remember, angel, we saw Sodom together in Oxford," Lulu brightly reminded me from across the table.

I stared wide-eyed at Stash. It was all I could do to prevent myself from gushing about how much I had enjoyed Sodom and the even more gloomily erotic Gomorrah. Lot's Daughters, the most recent and controversial of Malinowski's black and white series of Old Testament movies, had won critical acclaim and prizes galore but it had also sparked off violent protests in New York and Jerusalem where angry demonstrators had set fire to an art theater in which the movie had just opened, inflicting third degree burns on a popcorn vendor with no sense of smell who died a few days later in hospital of his injuries, a tragedy which gave rise to the United Nations sponsored Campaign to Enhance the Status and Power Of the Olfactorily Labored (official acronym: CESSPOOL). "What are you working on now?" I asked.

"Uriah's wife," Stash said, carefully filling his glass with equal measures of gin, vodka, and ether.

"Is that the one King David was after, so he sent her husband into battle to die?"

"Yes. Lots of sex and violence. And everyone dies miserably." Stash looked a little happier. "Just what they deserve."

"Stash is a good Polish Catholic. He believes that beautiful Jewesses should be portrayed as bitches," Anastasia said evenly.

"That's why I chose you for the role, Nasty," Stash replied equally equably. "So few actresses reveal their innate viciousness. You are the exception that proves the rule. Whatever that means." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I have worked with many actors. Most are good liars. One actually believes for some time that they have feelings, even brains," he added graciously. "But all actors, by definition, want people to stare at them. Sit passively and eat popcorn and look at me and drool! And yet these monsters of vanity and narcissism also want to be liked. The contradiction is infuriating. I would gladly see all actors strangled at birth like female infants in the Third World. Or perhaps one would wait until they first revealed this vicious propensity. Then one might shut them up in a cave without food or water as the Namuna Indians do to children suspected of hysterical leanings." Stash smiled widely, his lips still pressed together tight.

"If you hate actors so much, why don't you stop directing?" Lulu objected.

Stash and Nasty laughed at this piece of naivete. Lulu blushed. "I always do," Stash answered. "Every movie is my last. Then I run out of money and I have to make another movie, knowing that it will only cause me anguish." He spread out his broad calloused hands in a graceful gesture of resignation. "Life is suffering and one has to make a living. Therefore one must suffer. It is better than being bored."

"What did you do before you become a director?"

"I was an anthropologist," Stash said sadly. "And a mountain climber. One day my harness broke and I fell and broke my back in three places and then I had plenty of time to think about my life as I lay in the hospital. I decided that this sort of prostitution appealed to me. They say that I am a good director. And I enjoy these old Biblical myths. These stories of human greed and divine cruelty."

"Midas," I said, remembering something. Lulu crinkled her eyes at me. Very casually, she leaned over toward Stash. Her black dress slipped off one round white shoulder.

"I don't think that myth is in the Old Testament," Stash said mildly. "But, yes, he too was greedy and the gods took advantage. Whom the gods would punish, they grant his every wish." He looked at Lulu and smiled. Their hands grazed each other as they picked up their drinks. My eyes met Anastasia's phosphorescent glitter. Her knee brushed mine under the table.

"Where did you get those bruises?" Nasty asked curiously. "Do you like to be beaten?" Small hot fingers stroked my thigh.

"Some skinheads in Prague got a little carried away," I said, trying to control my breathing. The fingers slid deftly under the napkin on my lap. "It was really my own fault." I told them briefly about my chequered career at the University of Truth and Justice.

"Does Max von Hohenstaufen have something to do with this strange university? He is a cousin through one of my mother's marriages," Anastasia explained indifferently. "The most boring fellow. His son is nicer but he always has this guilty look in his eyes. Just because Max mistreated him as a child. Poor Willi. He is now working as a prostitute near the Zoo."

Stash laughed. "Maybe I should tell Flysenko to study male prostitutes," he murmured to himself.

"Flysenko? The Polish sociologist?" I asked. "He will also be teaching at the University of Truth and Justice soon. Cain Piknik recommended him."

"Well, yes, Piknik would. The man has an insane sense of humour. He used to give the policemen little foil medals when they came to arrest him. He can also whistle with his asshole. Very confusing when we were trying to escape arrest together. Nobody was ever sure if Piknik was a real dissident or an agent provocateur. After the revolution, he became very wealthy. He claims it is from his pornographic newspaper but nobody believes it. Most mysterious. But at least he is amusing. Flysenko, on the other hand…"

"Do you know him?"

"We taught together in Warsaw many years ago. If you were still at this university, you would have the dubious pleasure of hearing Flysenko give pompous lectures on the connection between pleasure and pain." Stash's lips curled. "As though one learns about such things by talking about them. For over two decades, he has been claiming to be working on a monumental study of prostitution. But he is still doing his field research."

Stash, Nasty, Lulu and I sat in the cellar drinking and talking for hours. When we eventually emerged from the bunker at four in the morning, the fun had only just begun upstairs. A group of giggling girls sat astride the wall, chipping at it with sledgehammers while beneath them gangs of hippies and skinheads slamdanced savagely in ankle deep water from the fire hoses and water cannons of the border guards. Tear gas and cordite hung heavy in the humid air. Sniggering happily, pudgy Saure watched it all and raked in the cash.

Stash said that he would drive Lulu home. Nasty just took one of my fingers and ran the tip of her tongue along its length lingeringly. Then she bit it. Viciously. I could feel my heart pounding. I knew I must was alive.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 23

I was more than usually giddy when I woke up. I felt light-headed when I yawned, as though I was exhaling a dark thundercloud, purging away my chequered career at the University of Truth and Justice. Lying there with my arms behind my head, smiling into the darkness, I felt exhilarated, rejuvenated with every fresh breath. I was young, penniless, and in Berlin. I was ready for new adventures. I started by exploring my friend Lulu's apartment.

I found Lulu in a large room at the other end of the corridor, sitting at a desk covered with papers, the floor around her strewn with thick books. Her hair shone like a streak of molten gold in the cone of yellow light shed by the heavy desk lamp. Hearing my footsteps, she turned and scowled at me. "Since when have you been grinding your teeth in your sleep?" Lulu asked sternly. "I hit you but you just kept sleeping."

"When did you wake up?"

"Ages ago. You slept all day. At first I thought that the noise was a death rattle but it went on too long so I finally figured out that you were just grinding your teeth."

"All the stress I've been under."

"Sugarplum, stress is no excuse. Teeth are crucial. I bet Flossie still brushes thrice a day."

"Always," I confirmed. "Even when she's drunk. But what does Floss have to do with my teeth?"

Lulu gasped and put a hand to her lovely mouth. "You haven't heard?"

"What?"

"Flossie's been missing in weeks. She's being held hostage by these Sikh separatists whom she was interviewing. They're threatening to pull out all her teeth, one by one, week after week, until Punjab is liberated."

"Floss does have a lot of teeth," I said with outward nonchalance although my head was spinning like a top.

"It was on the news every night until some Amerikan dentist got kidnapped in Burma."

"Copycats?"

"Well, it makes sense," Lulu replied reasonably. "Amerikans are so obsessed with perfect teeth. The guerrilla groups finally realized how to get attention. It had to happen some time."

"What is the Amerikan government doing about it?"

"Dental diplomacy. They're offering the guerrillas free toothpaste for every man, woman, and child. And a million dollars in ransom money."

"So there is a tooth fairy after all."

"Aren't you worried?" Lulu said reproachfully. "Flossie is your best friend in the world."

"She can always get dentures." So that was why Flossie had not responded to my last letter asking her how she had heard of the Fund for Peace and Love, which had given her money for her research on Sikh militants, and which, as I had later discovered, was one of Xox's clandestine conduits for passing on covert funds to revolutionary groups around the world. "Lulu, may I make a quick phone call to Prague?"

"Go right ahead, darling," Lulu replied cheerfully. "The next tenant will take care of it."

I picked up the telephone and called the office of my former boss, the rector of the University of Truth and Justice, Professor Otto Hell. To my relief, Hell picked up the phone himself, grumpily.

"Otto?" I asked anxiously. "I'm calling from Berlin. I need a favour."

"What is it?" Hell responded crossly. "I'm playing chess right now."

"With whom?" I asked jealously.

"Your friend Immanuel. Want a blow-by-blow description?"

"I'm sorry to bother you. Otto, but my best friend has been kidnapped by Sikh separatists in India. Would you mind speaking to Xox about it?"

There was a long silence. "Sorry," Otto said finally. "Immanuel just moved. Why do you think Xox could help?"

"He finances the Sikhs, doesn't he?"

The sound of wrapping paper crumpling. Hell was laughing. "Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. Why should he use his influence to free your friend?"

"As a favor to you?"

Hell sighed. "I'll speak to him about it tomorrow."

"I don't know how to thank you," I said, sincerely.

"I'll think of something," Hell growled. "What are you doing in Berlin?"

"Visiting a friend," I replied cheerfully. "I'll send you a postcard."

"Do that," Hell answered. "Stay in touch."

"Good luck with the game." I put down the phone and slumped to the floor in relief.

Lulu stared wide-eyed at me. "What was that all about, sweetie?"

"Hell will tell Xox to tell the Sikhs to free Flossie," I explained concisely. "Isn't that nice?"

"It's lovely," Lulu replied. "Are they going to do it just out of the goodness of their little hearts?"

"Everyone owes someone something."

"So what does Hell owe you?"

"Nothing. But now I owe him a favor."

"You are so sentimental." Lulu shook her head. "I can't wait to tell Floss about this. Go take a shower, angel. We don't have much time and I want you to tell me what to wear."

"Where are we going?"

"Nasty called me. She said that Stash wants to have a drink with me." Lulu looked pleased with herself.

"Who are Nasty and Stash?"

"Oh, just people I met," Lulu said vaguely. "You'll like them."

"Do you like them?"

"Well..." To my amazement Lulu blushed. It was very becoming. I told her so. She grinned and stuck out her tongue provocatively at me. I kissed her. "Oh, go brush your teeth, sweetie," Lulu said, freeing herself. "Your mouth tastes terrible." She examined my appearance and shook her head. "You look like a wreck. What have you been doing to yourself? No, don't tell me now, just go and get ready. And hurry!"

I squatted in a rusty bathtub that had seen better days and cut myself in three places while shaving with soap and a dribble of freezing water. Bleeding onto my shirt, I emerged from the bathroom and collided into Lulu, naked, stripped for action, carrying a heap of dresses over her arm into the bedroom.

"I'm getting horribly fat," Lulu said, throwing the dresses onto the floor. She peevishly pinched a tiny fold of flesh at her wasp waist. "And my breasts are sagging."

"They are not," I said hotly. "They're just fine. Cute and perky as ever. I've never seen you worry about your looks."

"Honey, stop bleeding all over the place," Lulu said querulously, pulling on sheer black stockings. I admired the view. "It's really hard to get bloodstains out of parquet. I don't know whether to sleep with Stash. What should I wear?"

"The severe black jersey if you want to sleep with him. The flowery print if you don't," I advised. "Weren't you telling me just last night that you were giving up sex?"

Lulu pulled the black knit dress over her head. "He seems special," she said, her voice muffled by the cloth. She extricated her lovely head from the dress and smoothed its folds over her shapely body. "He's got charisma."

"How can you tell?" I asked, intrigued.

"You'll see. He's so cool. I don't even know if he wants to sleep with me. Sugar, will you please signal if you think I should seduce him?"

"Should I wink at you? Kick you under the table? Puff out my cheeks and blow?"

Lulu considered the options. "If you think I should, say `Midas', okay?"

"Why `Midas'?"

The doorbell rang loudly. "I'll tell you later," Lulu said mysteriously, lacing up her shiny black boots. "Go open the door, cherub."

I opened the door. A slim woman stood leaning languidly against the doorway. She looked up and smiled slowly at me. A mass of copper curls glowed dimly around the green flames that were her eyes. She was wearing a dress of black netting and nothing underneath. I noticed irrelevantly the small pink freckles that dotted her very pale heart-shaped face. "You're bleeding," she said huskily. I couldn't place her accent. "Do you mind?" She leaned forward, put her hands on my shoulders, and licked my cuts with quick feline flicks of her hot tongue. I shivered. "I love the taste of blood. My name is Anastasia. My friends call me Nasty. They are right."

From the frying pan right into the inferno, I sighed to myself, my face buried in the smoky red cloud of Anastasia's hair: I was a burnt child who dreaded passion's flames, yet I seemed destined to play with fire and get burnt once again.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 22

"Who is it?" A languorous purr from behind the massive wooden door. Still panting from climbing six flights of stairs in this East Berlin apartment building, I gasped out my name. The door opened wide and I fell into Lulu's bare arms. "Darling! It is you! I thought it had to be some horrible sex-maniac at this time of the morning. I felt this wonderful frisson of excitement..." Lulu murmured delightedly, her little teeth affectionately nibbling my earlobe. "Come in, sweetie. You must be freezing. Do you want coffee or hot chocolate or brandy or all three?" Chattering away vivaciously, Lulu led me by the hand into her apartment. I leaned against a wall and looked on while Lulu glid around the dark kitchen, deftly pulling out a bottle of milk dangling from a string outside her window, pouring milk into a battered saucepan, lighting an ancient stove with a match, rinsing out two chipped mugs, pouring serious slugs of brandy into them, lighting two cigarettes and handing one to me with a smile which changed instantly to a look of concern when she saw my battered face. "What happened?" Lulu shrieked. "Have you been getting into fights, you bad little boy?"

"It's a long story, Lu. Do you happen to have any chairs in this apartment?"

"Well, there used to be a lot of chairs when I moved in," Lulu said, smiling wickedly. "But Michel managed to destroy most of them, just by sitting in them. Well, all right, he also threw one or two at me. I'll probably have to replace them all when I leave."

"Michel?"

"Oh, he's this rugby player who came up to me in a bar and told me that he had this terribly important match the next day and that he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to concentrate because he would be standing around on the pitch dreaming of me and so would I please sleep with him?"

"And so you did. Strumpet." I took a sip of my brandy-laced hot chocolate, sighed with contentment, and slumped onto the floor. "I hope they won."

"Oh, don't sit on the floor, love, it's so dirty. I'm sure there are cockroaches and mice all over the place." Lulu shuddered. "I haven't cleaned the place since I came. I'm such a slut." She led me out of the kitchen. "Come in here where it's comfortable." We walked into a small room which was all bed. The yellow flicker of a candle on a low corner table dimly illuminated the edge of the tapestries that billowed all around the mattresses and cushions and blankets and rugs on the floor. Lulu plumped cushions all around me and wrapped me in a comforter. "Isn't that better, honey?" she murmured, snuggling up to me.

"It's wonderful, Lulu," I said sincerely. I sniffed her fragrant hair, sighed fervently, and closed my eyes. "Where's Michel?"

"Oh, I didn't feel like getting involved with him."

"Because he threw chairs at you?"

"Oh, that was fun. But, no..." Lulu sighed. She snuggled up closer to me. "You know, dearest, a time comes in the life of every woman when she needs to get serious. When she has to ruthlessly eliminate all distractions, all frivolities. I feel like I have to get down to business."

"You're pregnant," I said, appalled. "What are you going to do, Lulu?"

Lulu sat up indignantly. "Of course I'm not pregnant!" she exclaimed. "Do I look like an idiot? No woman with a brain in her head has babies if she can help it."

"But everyone talks about this biological urge. Like a time bomb or something."

"Male propaganda," Lulu explained succinctly. "For centuries men have been telling us how much we really want to have babies. As though any rational creature would want to go through the harrowing sufferings of childbirth," she sniffed. "Would you want to put your foot on a landmine?" She glared at me.

"Lulu, I'm on your side," I said, trying to appease her. "I have never understood why people keep having babies. Why do they do it?"

Lulu smiled at me and put her head back in my lap. I stroked her smooth forehead. "Because they're stupid," she said. "And bored. They want a new toy. It's so important to stop little girls from playing with dolls."

"So what are you planning to do with your life now, Lu?"

"I'm going to eliminate sex."

"From the entire planet?"

"I would if I could, angel, but I'm going to start with my life. Oh, sex is fun sometimes but is it really worth it?" I could feel Lulu's warm breath high on my thigh. I squirmed and drank down my hot chocolate.

"So what are you going to do instead?"

"I'm going to work hard."

"No, Lulu," I responded crossly. "Now that really is stupid. Take drugs or something if you're so bored with sex. Climb mountains. Jump off bridges. Go jogging. I'm disappointed in you. I never thought you would say something so banal and trite and Puritan as that."

"But really," Lulu insisted, turning to look up at me. "Wouldn't it be fun to be Professor Louisa Frazer, forty something, hair pulled up in a severe bun and tortoise shell glasses and an intimidating academic reputation, rather than being Lulu, the cute flirt?"

"Professor Frazer is such a predictable persona, Lu. You'll turn into her anyway. Can't you just be both academic and flirt in the meantime?"

"It confuses men," Lulu sighed. "Especially big strong brainless men. The kind I like."

"You win some, you confuse some. Aren't you too young for a midlife crisis?"

"No. I had one last month. I almost got married."

"Anyone I know?"

"No. His name is Nectarino. He's Italian. I met him at a party given by Princess Fi."

"Is he big and strong and brainless?"

"Totally." Lulu smiled beatifically. "Absolutely brain-dead. Doesn't speak a word. He just grunts. He's yummy."

"Sounds like a husband made in heaven. So what happened?"

"I panicked at the last moment and cancelled the wedding after the arrangements had all been made. His family was awfully angry. I thought they would hire a hitman to get me."

"What made you panic?"

"When we met the Pope," Lulu replied. "Nectarino insisted that we have an audience. It's an old family tradition. Apparently all the Nectarini do it before they get married."

"Does the Pope look fake?" I asked, interested. "I knew this girl in college whose name was Caroline Wojdyla. She claimed that the pope was her third cousin twice removed. One time she went to the Vatikan and met the old geezer, and she swore that he didn't look at all like in the family pictures. Caro was convinced that the real Pope, her cousin, had been a liberal who wanted to legalize abortion and birth control and women priests and the marriage of priests and that he had been secretly bumped off in an evil Vatikan conspiracy by all these reactionary Monsignors and Cardinals who had found some old Polish look-alike as a replacement. Of course, Caro was a pro-choice campaigner and a frightful liar, so I didn't know whether to believe her and I've never met the man myself. Did you think the Pope looked real?"

"Actually, he looked like a wax doll." Lulu giggled. "I wanted to pinch him but Nectarino wouldn't let me. Apparently bankers aren't allowed to pinch their clients."

"Nectarino is the Pope's banker?"

"Well, the Nectarini are. His family has been financing the Vatikan since the Middle Ages."

"So is Nectarino filthy rich?"

"Obviously, sugar." Lulu sniffed. "He wanted me to wear all this ugly jewellery. Dripping with diamonds."

"You could always sell the diamonds after your divorce," I offered. "Alimony is a feminist's best friend."

"It was dynastic stuff," Lulu replied. "Passed on down the generations. The Nectarini would definitely hire a hitman if I tried to sell their jewels. Besides, Nectarino doesn't understand the concept of divorce. Marriage is for life."

"Sounds like a prison sentence. Is that why you escaped to Berlin?"

"Yes. I had to get over this perverse feeling of wanting to imprison myself for the rest of my life with one person. It's so addictive, this craving for commitment." Lulu sighed. "Even now, I wish some big strong man would just ride up on his white horse and take me away..."

"Shame on you," I scolded. "You even wrote a book on Freud. You know what white horses stand for."

"The big strong man's mother," Lulu said dreamily. "Or is that cows? Sweetie, I'm so tired. Let's go to bed."

"Okay." I looked at my watch before I blew out the candle. Six in the morning. A hidden dawn turned the tapestries a luminous purple as Lulu and I fell fast asleep in a chaste embrace, seeking nothing more from each other's bodies than the pleasure of animal warmth. Simple sins are so often the best.