Brutal

The band reach Berlin

 
Chapter 7 Berlin
Dawn broke over Zurich. It was cold misty and grey. The city of low lying buildings lay crouched and sullen. The band stumbled around the van shivering and strung out. Slowly by diffusion gear and belongings moved from an area of high concentration (Rote Fabrik) to one of low concentration (The van). Little Legs started up and a cloud of exhaust fumes condensed in the air creating fog within fog from which emerged, into the road, a crap van with one working headlight heading slowly and unsurely towards Berlin 540 miles away.
Little legs, used to freezing early mornings in cars, was the cheeriest. He usually faced emotional difficulties in his life by not facing them and found putting distance (literal) from them an additional help. As each mile passed, his pain, over Liliane, if not lessened, numbed. It was a novel feeling being the used rather than the user and if he had the predisposition to learn from his experience, be changed for the better, he might have been affected. As it was he continued on, the little kink in his existence slowly straightening back on to its inexorable autobahn like track.
Mo desultorily navigated whilst the band snored, farted and mumbled in the back. A terrible fug of damp, nicotine, socks and stale sweat hung over everything but no one noticed because they all smelled the same. Everyone except Brooksie who, somehow , mysteriously , always managed to shower wherever they went. Sometimes he even ironed. This confounding behaviour was understood only by Mo who confronting Brooksie one day with a syringe he found next to his bag, was now the custodian of the sad knowledge that due to a tight foreskin Brooksie had to shower daily in a routine that also required the uncomfortable use of said syringe.
Mo looked decidedly male today. A 3 day stubble, black jeans, donkey jacket and black beanie outfit. It was a thin wasted Marlon Brando kind of look. Other days he expressed more his feminine side, eyeliner, nail varnish, sometimes a leather skirt, most days it was an androgynous mix. He directed Little legs onto the autobahn towards Berlin and then pulled his beanie down over his eyes and slumped in his seat. He immediately felt guilty leaving Little Legs the only person awake in the van so, sighed , woke himself up, poured two coffees from a thermos, lit two cigarettes and passed one to Little Legs.
 “Romantic eh?”
“Strangers on a train, no hang on that’s not right..Brief Encounter” he clarified
Little legs nodded. He hadn’t heard of either so the correction was meaningless and the allusion lost on him.
Little legs felt uncomfortable. Not in a prejudical way but just awkward. His lack of knowledge or experience of other ways of being, of identity or sexuality made him unsure of how to be with Mo.
He looked to the rest of the band for clues as to how to react to Mo’s daily changes of identity and seemingly random sexuality.
“I feel sexual towards women and romantic towards men” he had overheard Mo telling Steve one day.
That was fine, he didn’t mind but he didn’t get it. He couldn’t empathise but that fact didn’t make him angry or offended just a bit non-plussed. Identity and sexuality issues within the taxi world were few and far between , not really discussed, tolerated or evident. The Sun and What car was the chosen reading rather than Germaine Greer.
All this reflection came to an end as a disaster with the wipers required more practical puzzle solving. During a shower they simply stopped working and no checking of fuses, fiddling or shouting would help. Eventually Mo went to his box of props and an ingenious if very labour intensive device involving string and bits of gaffer tape enabled the person in the navigating seat to manually operate the wipers by pulling on a handle attached to the end of the bit of string. This dreadful job made the prize position of navigator no longer as attractive as before and consequently Brooksie ended up in front whereupon of course they became lost.
The main reason this happened , apart of course from Brooksies general vagueness and uselessness, was the telling of a long and rambling reminiscence from his childhood. Apparently when about 8 he and two other friends had gone to a field just outside the town boundary where there were some mysterious holes that you could sit in and by dragging a few branches overhead make a kind of secret camp. Bored, they decided to take their clothes off and make daring naked runs out of the hole into the field and back again. Eventually his two friends simulated, he now realised, a kind of sex act. Then they went home. Two weeks later one friend had hit the other in his face with half a brick causing an explosion of blood which Brooksie described with great detail, it clearly having remained a vivid memory
“It was the casualness of it all” he commented
Little legs was unsure why Brooksie had shared this seemingly random anecdote and with Brooksie generally he had not decided whether all his gnomic ramblings were indeed random or had a point. He suspected the latter and decided that it was in some way an attempt to help him in his perceived awkwardness with Mo. The relationships between this tight knit group of men were complicated. It was a network, a kind of homeostatic balance that kept the body of the band alive and able to function. What was Little Legs to this? A virus? Some kind of invader? No he was welcome. More like an artificial limb then, a new appendage slowly being accepted and incorporated into the whole.
“Thank you, I think I understand” he lied
Brooksie gave him a sideways look and a wink.
Eventually they entered the Berlinbeltway a ring road around the centre of Berlin It had stopped raining so the makeshift wiper system was not required which was just as well as on entering the city centre the brakes failed leaving Little Legs the unenviable task of driving a van around a city centre using a handbrake. The welcoming committee at  Kopi in Berlin remembered the arrival of The Y for a long time afterward.
“We thought it was the arrival of the dead, everyone was white!”