‘If you want my opinion, they are the only people ever likely to drive them.’
‘I’m not sure that I do want your opinion. It depresses me. I prefer to think that the German economic recovery will continue, that it will accelerate, bringing greater prosperity for all, and then I may have my Volkswagen in much less than four years.’
♦
Next morning Ishmael drove the couple of miles to the address he had been given for the Volkswagen garage. It was down a dry mud track that ran between a row of blackened railway arches and a set of allotments. At first there was just a mass of tall weeds and a few derelict bits of motorcar that were recognizably from Beetles. Then, poking above the weeds were four complete cars parked in a neat line, and a little way off a pale blue Beetle in front of a door that opened into one of the arches. Above the door was a hand-painted sign that read ‘Fat Les — the Vee-Dub King’. There was nobody visible but the music of Wagner, played at awesome volume, came from inside the arch. The door was open a couple of feet. Ishmael stuck his head inside. The music grew louder but he couldn’t see anyone. It was dark. He entered and trod on half a hamburger. Then he detected a movement in a dark corner and saw a rather fat, sweaty, unshaven forty-year-old man. Les he supposed, sitting up in a tartan sleeping-bag.
‘Good morning,’ Ishmael shouted politely above the music.
Fat Les seemed half asleep or still half drunk, or both. He waved a weary hand at Ishmael.
‘Sorry, Wagner old mate,’ he said, and reached out a hand to turn off the music. ‘That’s my get up and go music. Doesn’t always work. I suppose you’ve got a Volkswagen.’
‘I certainly have,’ Ishmael said proudly.
Fat Les got out of his sleeping-bag. He was naked but for a pair of nylon, paisley briefs.
‘I suppose it needs something doing to it.’
‘Yes. I need some new headlights.’
That didn’t seem to make Fat Les very happy. He shambled around the garage for a while, pulled on a shirt, picked up a few cold chips from a paper plate, searched half-heartedly for trousers, looked at Ishmael accusingly.
♦
‘And if your Herr Hitler plunges Europe into war?’
‘Then, Herr Richard, I suppose it will not much matter if we have our own motorcars or not.’
‘Then I suppose, Nina, your fine motor factory, dedicated to producing cars for the people, might very easily be switched to military production, and who knows, your people’s car itself could perhaps quite easily be converted into a vehicle of war.’
♦
‘Did you see my sign outside?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Ishmael.
‘Remember what it said?’
‘Fat Les — the Vee-Dub King.’
‘Right. The King. Not Fat Les the Vee-Dub bodger, not Fat Les the Vee-Dub wanker. The King.’
‘It’s a very nice sign. Did you do it yourself?’
Fat Les stared at him, as sullen as a hippy from Fox’s Farm.
‘Let me tell you something.’
‘Please,’ said Ishmael.
‘Let me tell you what I do with Volkswagens.’
‘This is really great.’
‘Let’s say you need a new engine. You could have it rebored, turboed, hot-rodded, supercharged. I could bolt in a Porsche, or we could get really flash and put a Rover V8 up the front end. Then we’d get new carbs, heavy-duty fan and oil cooler, racing cam, performance exhaust, probably with a zoom tube. If we’re doing that lot you’re going to have to up-rate your suspension and your brakes, and put in an anti-roll bar, and you’d be daft not to do something with your wheels — slot mags, dish mags, alloys, low profiles, 135 fronts, 165 rears. I can chop it for you, channel it for you, section it, french it, louvre it, raise it or lower it, front or back. I can nose and deck it. I can give you spoilers, fins, whale tails, portholes. No problem. If you want to get really technical I can put in a cocktail cabinet in the back seat that plays ‘Born to Run’ every time you open it.’
‘Great,’ said Ishmael.
‘But you just want a new set of headlights.’
‘Yes please,’ said Ishmael.
He was very impressed by Fat Les. Of course, he hadn’t understood more than a few words that his speech had contained but it was so refreshing to meet someone so clearly involved and in love with his work.
Fat Les was sullen again. There was a long silence.
‘Just a pair of headlights,’ Ishmael said again brightly. ‘That’s all today, thank you.’
He laughed nervously. The silence continued.
‘I suppose I’d better have a look at this motor of yours then,’ Fat Les said at last.
He never did find his trousers. He walked out in his shirt and briefs and looked at Enlightenment. He gave a deep, a cosmic sigh and circled the Beetle. He looked at it from all angles, sometimes getting down on the ground and poking the chassis with his fingers, causing little showers of rust. As he continued the inspection his spirits plummeted, and by the time he’d finished it was as though he had been plunged into a well of weariness and despair. He looked at Ishmael, who was too frightened to say anything.
‘Yes, you do need new headlights.’
Ishmael nodded eagerly. He thought of telling Fat Les the whole story of how they had come to be smashed but Fat Les was not looking receptive.
‘You also need new tyres, new brake pipes and cylinders, new sills, about three hundred pounds of welding…’
He went on like this for a while. Ishmael tried to pretend that he knew what Fat Les was talking about.
‘Let’s face it, old son, you need a new car.’
‘No,’ Ishmael said very firmly. ‘This car is my vehicle. This car and I go to the end of the road together. You know, sometimes as I drive along with the wind in my hair, because of the hole in the roof, an empty road, the English countryside, the car struggling to get to sixty miles an hour, everything rattling and sounding as though it’s about to fall apart, well you might find this silly, but at times like that, this car and I feel like one.’
Fat Les was silent for a very long time. He looked at Ishmael, looked at Enlightenment, at his own car, at the ground, at the sky. He scratched his gut and said, ‘I don’t think that’s silly at all. In fact that’s about the most intelligent remark I’ve heard from a punter in years. Most of the people I have to deal with — they’re turds, tossers — they don’t care what anybody does to their cars so long as it’s cheap and fast. Philistines. No sense. No soul. You, though, I reckon you’re all right.’
Fat Les had a pair of headlights in stock and he fitted them on Enlightenment.
‘At least your headlights are legal,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘I wish I could say the same for the rest of it. I just hope the bogies don’t stop you.’
‘Bogies?’
‘Police.’
‘Yes, it’s so hard to live a life untrammelled by petty restrictions.’
‘I’ll say. And your car does make you a bit of a target. The fuzz want everybody driving around in neat little boxes, safe little family saloons with as much character as a parking ticket.’
♦
‘Ah, Richard,’ says Nina wistfully, ‘you are too intellectual, too political for me. Allow me my dreams of freedom, of speed and escape.’
‘I will allow you anything, my dear, but there are others…’
‘Then order me another bottle of vintage champagne.’ On the dance floor boys in blazers and girls with cropped hair dance, perform a dumb-show of pleasure. It is no more authentic than the bottle of ‘vintage’ champagne that is brought to the Englishman’s table, no more real than Nina’s dream of owning her own car. But in Berlin on that autumn night as goose-steps echo back and forth between the ornate, peeling stucco of tall, terraced houses, as triangles are daubed on front doors, and as shops’ windows and faces get smashed, it is all any of them have got.