A Part of a Part of a Part.

“When we were your age, we wanted to change the world, make it a better place. All you lot want to do is tag the signposts.”

‘It’s art!”.

“You can’t call that art! It’s scribble! If you insist on calling it art, at least have the sense to use a capital F.”

“What did ‘your lot’ ever do to change the world? It looks like a total mess to us.”

“Well, for a start we don’t use AI.”

“Why the fuck not, it’s cool.”

“Cool!? It’s aggressive capitalism, enriches tech bosses that bankroll a fascist president and it uses up more water in an hour than a lot of people use in a day. And if you think tagging an electricity substation is art, have a look at what Keith Herring was doing in 1970.”

“For god’s sake! You ignoramus, he was scribbling on walls in Berlin!”

 

It’s cold in Berlin, snow is falling and Jack is lying in the back of his van shivering, the flame from a small gas oven just about prevents ice forming on the window. He wipes a small hole in the condensation and peers out, looking along the abandoned street to the Wall. Street lights reflecting from the snow give the wasteland where he is parked an almost enchanted look.

 

The drive here had been all but enchanting.  Miles and miles on the one land corridor, no right to turn off, monitored time allowance and checkpoints at the beginning and end. He had stopped at the one service station hoping to find soup and nourishment, only to find suspicion and hostility. He was happy once he had arrived. But now he is cold, waiting for the morning to break over the gun turret by the wall. Another hour? Maybe two. He dozes off hoping that the flame doesn’t go out and the gas asphyxiate him.

 

She is there again, sitting at a café this time. She is smoking, the red ash looks angry as she inhales, smoke hangs around her in a halo. He walks over to say hello … and wakes.

 

It’s still only half-light but Jack is so cold he needs to move. And shake off the dream, he is not sure who she is nor what she might represent but she bothers him. He steps out into the snow, it cracks and crunches under his feet. He loves the way walking on fresh–fallen snow sounds like a creaky floor and follows the sounds over to the crudely built viewing stairs up against the wall. He climbs up and looks over into no-one’s land – he can’t bring himself to say no-man’s, it divides women just as meanly. He waves at the guards in the gun tower, he is wearing a Russian issue woollen hat but do not mistake him as one of theirs. They do not return his wave. There is a desolation in the emptiness as well as their ignoring him.

 

It is still too early to call on his friend who lives two roads away, he will still be sleeping. But the local imbiss is already open and his friend will send him there for sausage and onions once he has woken, started drinking and smoking, so he could save time by going their first. But the smell makes him nauseous, he is vegetarian. Instead, he walks past his friend’s road and turn into the woods, looking for rabbits, birds, a mouse perhaps. Any sign of life to tell him that this is not the end of the world. 

 

There is nothing.

 

A Stygian Episode

Can you ever be entirely certain that the past has past?

 

After three days of thunder storms the planes were still on the ground, the cadets waiting. War was coming - everyone knew that – and yet they were not ready. The enemy clearly were, and now electric storms coming in from the western mountains were holding them back from their training. The only comfort was that they at least had time to write home.

 

“Dear Mother and Father,” Jack always used capital letters. It was the time; it was the fashion but jack figured that they deserved it. He hadn’t written for some time, hoping that news from the family would reach him and he could reply to their news. Was his sister still with them, or had she been evacuated? Had they received the gifts he had sent in an effort to break the monotony of rationing? Was the house still standing?

 

It was near the centre of the capital, alongside a railway line. The area was likely to be a target. The chances of being hit….

 

Jack didn’t want to think that way and went back to his letter. 

 

“Before the storms broke …” he continued. Taking the plane up still excited him and he described the last night flight as if he was still in the cockpit.

 

“It was a flight under a full moon. As we climbed, the inside of the plane was filled with a silvery light. Seeing the moon from its own element, as opposed to the terrestrial, is chastening. Heavenly.”

 

Jack paused, looking out the window into the night. He wanted to be there now, following the light-lines or flying over a brilliantly lit city. 

 

“As we climbed, the moon suddenly eclipsed and we were plunged into a ghostly darkness.” Jack wanted to write the word stygian to describe that darkness but it was not really his word. It was a favourite of his father. Not the father he was writing to, his mother had remarried after the unexpected death of her husband, Jack’s birth-father. Jack – he was named after him – had indeed already crossed the Styx.

 

“I hope he had the correct fare,” Jack-the-younger mused as he remembered Jack-the-elder.