The reality was somewhat different. Ishmael discovered with horror that several of the men were wearing ties. They had day-jobs where they had to dress up like ‘straights’ but even when they got back to the commune they kept the ‘straight’ clothes on. OK, so the girl who was cooking supper for everybody had a gold stud through her nose, but when the meal was served there didn’t appear to be anything very, say, macrobiotic about it. It was pie and chips. No slap in the face for the bourgeoisie there.
♦
Richard takes the saver’s card and examines it carefully. He sees the Gothic print and seemingly endless spaces for the sticking of savings stamps.
‘I am to be the owner of one of Herr Hitler’s Strength-Through-Joy cars,’ she says giggling. ‘The people’s car.’
‘Smashing,’ says Richard. ‘Congratulations. When are you taking me for a ride in it?’
‘Oh, the moment it’s delivered, I promise you.’
‘Is there much of a wait? A few weeks? A month?’
‘Richard,’ she says in mock anger, ‘don’t be so naive. Obviously the car isn’t delivered until it’s paid for.’
‘I’m not sure I follow.’
‘It’s very simple. I save five Marks each week…’
‘How much does this car cost?’
‘Nine hundred and ninety Marks.’
Richard winces.
‘I simply save five Marks every week, a stamp is put on the card, and when the card is full, and when the cars are in full production, I shall have one.’
♦
The only stereotype about communes that Fox’s Farm helped to reinforce was that everyone seemed drugged, positively sedated. He saw perhaps a dozen inmates, there was no way of telling what relationship anyone had with anyone else, no way of telling what they were, what they felt, not even what their names were. And the main reason for this was that nobody ever said anything. Nobody asked him to sit down, nobody introduced themselves. They didn’t seem to notice him. They just sat around eating, drinking and being sullen.
Ishmael was against meaningless chatter as much as the next man, but he had to start somewhere. He tried to make conversation.
‘Nice lifestyle you have here,’ he said, though his heart was not in the remark and perhaps they were aware of it since they completely ignored it.
Perhaps they were inhibited because he was a stranger, so what better way of overcoming this than by avoiding social niceties completely and getting right down to brass tacks.
‘Look, what’s your ideology here?’ he asked.
The intense silence around the table became, if possible, even more profound, but he did seem to have provoked some reaction. The woman with the nose-stud looked up from her meal and stared out of the window, her eyes fixed on some distant object invisible to the naked eye.
‘We talk about ideology,’ she said. ‘We talk as though we know who we are and where we’re going; but we’re lost. Most of us are very, very lost.’
‘I once was lost, but now I’m found,’ Ishmael said.
This did produce a vague mutter from one or two of the people around the table, but Ishmael couldn’t tell if this indicated approval.
♦
‘But that will take four years,’ Richard says, aghast.
‘Yes. It’s a long-term plan. You’re always telling me that I should not live so much in the present. I thought about it for a long time. Besides, there will be hundreds of thousands of us all saving together through this marvellous scheme.’
‘Hundreds of thousands of you, each paying five Marks a week for a car that you will not see for at the very least four years? It sounds as though some of you Germans have more money than sense.’
‘You think the German people are unwise?’
‘Let’s just say I don’t see the English workman falling for this inverted form of usury.’
♦
Lightening the mood Ishmael asked, ‘Does anybody know where there’s a good cheap Volkswagen garage around here?’
A man in a tie said that he did, and he gave the impression that given time he might even tell where it was.
Then the meal was over. Everybody stood up and went into the living-room to watch television and take some drugs. Ishmael felt unwanted and unwelcome. He went to look again at the damage done to Enlightenment. He stood drinking in the night air and picking flakes of paint off the driver’s door.
A few minutes later the man who knew where the Volkswagen garage was came out. He handed Ishmael a slip of paper with an address and a map on it. Ishmael got the feeling that this was to be considered a grand gesture and thanked him accordingly. The tie-wearer nodded and left. ’
Then John the Hippy came out.
‘That was beautiful,’ he said. ‘Just beautiful.’
‘Huh?’
‘The way you talked at supper. It was so precise, so intense. We don’t believe in pointless talk. We believe in clearing the mind of babble, and it’s obvious you feel the same way. You’re only concerned with fundamentals — lifestyle, ideology, how to get your Volkswagen repaired, the nitty-gritty.’
Ishmael hadn’t even been trying.
‘We think you’re a very wise man. We think you’re something special. We wondered if you might stay here for a while, be a kind of spiritual guide.’
This seemed a bit extreme, even to Ishmael.
‘I’m flattered of course, but there are other places I have to be.’
‘Shit, it’s always the same with gurus. Where do you have to be?’
‘Wherever Marilyn is. I thought I’d talk to her father. It won’t be easy, but I think the direct approach is usually best. I thought I’d ask for his daughter’s hand, something like that.’
‘Wow.’
‘All right, so he and his wife beat me up, but at least we were communicating. It was very brief but I did detect a glimmer of genuine contact, and that makes me believe that I can reach out to him as one human being to another.’
‘You certainly cut through the bullshit,’ John the Hippy said. ‘You’re a lesson to us all. You get beaten up, your car gets vandalized, you lose your girl yet you keep your wisdom.’
‘What else have I got? What else has anybody got, John?’
John the Hippy was speechless.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Here,’ said Ishmael, ‘I’d like you to have this.’
He reached into his pocket and produced the Gold American Express card that had belonged to Marilyn’s father.
‘Take it,’ Ishmael continued. ‘I think the owner may be too preoccupied for the time being to get round to reporting it missing. You can probably get a couple of days’ use out of it.’
John the Hippy beamed.
Then one of the girls came from the bungalow. She was in her early teens, had silky hair, shorts and a personal stereo.
‘And we’d like you to have this, ‘ she said.
She handed Ishmael a grubby envelope. Inside were two squares of blotting paper, each with a small, dark stain at its centre.
‘Acid,’ she said. ‘The American Express card of the mind.’
♦
‘We all know about your English workman,’ Nina says. ‘Besides, he has never been fortunate enough to have the opportunity of buying such a special vehicle. Cheap to run, cheap to service, whatever that means, designed by Dr Porsche, you know. Herr Hitler has already laid the foundation stone of a huge factory for the car. He has begun building autobahnen. In four years you will envy me.’
‘If, in four years, you have seen so much as one rubber tyre, I shall indeed be very surprised.’
‘But already the cars are being driven, admittedly only by leading members of the Nazi Party at this stage, but…’