‘No…’
‘Every freedom has its symbols and traditions. One of the main symbols of our freedom is the national flag. You need considerable courage, Joshua, not just to know that it is a piece of fabric with strips and stars, but to defend its honour in very difficult circumstances. Our platoon sergeant, a veteran of the Korean War, often used to say: ‘Eddie, remember, it is always easier to spit, than to clean spittle up, but look around and you will see that our world is not spittle.’ Do you still want to say something?
‘N-no… s-sir,’ I really was a little confused. This Mr. Jenkins somehow easily and simply turns everything upside down – or, maybe, puts everything in place?
‘Then let’s postpone our conversation; I can see that you need to think.’
‘Yes, yes…’ I jumped out of the car and almost ran away, feeling like a hedgehog or a porcupine which has lost all its needles.
I went to the Garage because I didn’t know else to do. On the one hand, everything Mr. Jenkins told me was true. On the other hand, isn’t this just what the garagers were fighting, and didn’t all of us mock it?
I say ‘us’ but was it them? I, Joshua Kold, who am I, when it comes down to it? Which of the camps do I belong to? All my life, except for the last one and a half years, I had passed on the other side of a fence. My father was one hundred per cent American, ready to die for the sake of our country. And my sister and I grew in his civil paradigm, we were the same and didn’t even imagine otherwise – until a certain time.
And here for the first time I thought, what is America for me? No, it is clear that there is a set of ideological clichés, some ‘hallmarks’ of the country, both for external, and internal, consumption.
There is a history, there is culture and celebrated persons. There are The Golden Age and ‘the American dream’. There are, damnit, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Updike, Charlie Chaplin, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, and Tarantino. There are Frank Sinatra, Amstrong, Elvis, Janis Joplin, Bee-Bee King and hundreds more, and even thousands of people who are known by the whole world, and all of them are America!
But how one is connected with another? Pincher, wiping his bum with the American flag and the same flag on a soldier’s coffin brought by plane from Somalia or Libya. What is more important here: to have the freedom to wipe with a symbol of the country or the freedom to die for it?
I was overflowing with feelings and thoughts, My hands shivered like an old man’s. I suddenly felt like a freak, an abnormal turncoat, a troubled teenager throwing dirt on the newly washed windows of the Sunday school just because of an uncontrollable feeling of contradiction.
I will tell you frankly Mr. Jenkins had been able to prise open my soul and heart, to sew seeds of doubt about how I live, and had done it with mastery. In the language of the game that he had praised highly, Mr. Jenkins had delivered the ball precisely for the catcher’s trap and earned a strike, and the hapless batter flailed his bat in the air.
Reaching the Garage, I tapped in the code on the entrance door, went to lock it carefully (the first rule!), but came face to face with Frisbee, and the door remained half-closed.
Frisbee was sitting on the floor of the Waiting room and drawing on pieces of wet cardboard with a paint brush. She drew very well, probably better than all the garagers. I could not help staring at her quick, precise strokes, but I couldn’t understand the plot of her picture at all.
Bach came in with more pieces of cardboard, watered them and spread them out to dry.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, coming closer.
‘‘Unknown’ paintings by Andy Warhol,’ Frisbee said cheerfully without turning around. “Pincher had the cool idea of selling pictures through online auctions. You hang a lot out, set the starting price, write in comments that you found this picture in the attic in your beloved grandmother’s house. Grandma was a journalist in her youth, lived in the Big Apple and was on friendly terms with mad Andy. So, he gave her this masterpiece. And that’s it, after that you sit on your bum and wait for suckers around the world to throw you green stuff.’
‘But the painting isn’t real!’
‘And where did we write that it is real?’ Frisbee grinned. ‘This not our problem, but the young journalist’s, Lord rest her guilty soul. Let them learn the ropes.’
‘Pincher is a genius!’ Bach said with conviction.
‘And how many have you done so far?’
‘Over there, have a look in the Vernissage.
I pulled back a curtain and saw three ‘pictures’ on a long table – and on one of them there was the notorious can of Campbell’s soup, only instead of ‘Tomato soup’ Frisbee had written ‘Yamato soup’, with a circle in the center to represent the Japanese flag, and instead of vignettes at the bottom, skulls in army helmets.
The next cloth represented Marilyn Monroe sucking the dick of President Kennedy with a target on his breast.
The last was a sobbing Statue of Liberty from which the toga had been torn off. It looked at me, as she tried cover herself with her torch.
‘So, how is it?’ Frisbee was standing with a brush in her hands behind her back. ‘The real Warhol, no kidding!’
‘But…’ I tried to find the words, but I could only think of educational terms which were wrong here in the Garage. ‘It’s… mean!’
“What do you mean ‘mean’?’ Frisbee was struck dumb.
‘All of these. It’s not right.’
‘Du-ude!’ Frisbee relaxed, grinning broadly. ‘Understand: there are no rules; there is no boredom!’
‘Are you sure that boredom is the main thing you need to fight against in life?’ I asked.
‘What else? With enemies?’ Bach came in to the Vernissage and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Do you have lots of enemies?’
‘Me personally – no. But our country has enemies.’
They laughed as if they had just smoked Mexican. They just began to neigh like horses.
‘So you’re a patriot, Joshua-boy! Frisbee mocked. ‘Sing the anthem, boy, and we will salute you! Right down to the ground! How do you prefer to gain somebody’s honour – orally, anally or vaginally?’
Finally, I spat on these clowns and went to the Dispatching Office, from where I could hear music. I was hoping to find Neolani there. I made my way past pyramids of old boxes, bypassed racks of dusty old spares for plane and boat motors, faltered over old tyres… and, as I approached my target, the music – in the R’n’B style, such sad music – was overlain by a hoarse female voice – and then another voice joined that voice, a woman’s too, very familiar, and it was moaning, sighing, rhythmically, with unfeigned pleasure.
I knew very well when, and under what circumstances, Neolani groaned that way. Yet for some reason I went to see with my own eyes…
They were doing it on a sofa, in the doggy position, with Pincher thrusting his fingers into Neolani’s mouth and pulling her lips back. It seemed disgusting to me, though, probably they thought differently.
Both of them saw me and didn’t really react in any way, continuing unabashed. With us in the Garage, things were pretty free, and anyone could fuck with someone in full public view, although people tried to go behind curtains, behind boxes, to secluded corners…
‘Hi!’ Pincher winked at me, continuing to move his bum rhythmically.
‘Jo-o-osh’ Neolani moaned and hoarsely laughed in the tone of the singer. ‘Come join u-us…’
For a second I imagined, wondered how it would be – Neo, Pincher and me – and I nearly threw up.
And then I did something I did not expect of myself. I slapped a palm on the table so hard the player jumped up and became silent.