A Void (24 page)

holding this book in your hands don't know by now, all I can

say is you ought to), this man was, I say, our old chum Othon

Lippmann!

Augustus got it all instandy: that Olga's papa - Olga, whom

his son Haig was hoping and actually planning to marry - was

a crony of his own old antagonist, a crony who, in addition, had

an animosity, a rancorous loathing, towards anything British!

"But if so," Anton Vowl had to know, "who was Olga's

mama?"

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Which will furnish a probationary boost to a not always

almighty dollar ($)

Ah (said Augustus, continuing his narration), it took fully 12

months for us to find that out.

It would so turn out that, whilst amassing a tidy sum from a

traffic in opium that was now running without any major hic-

coughs, and whilst living it up in his fjord as sumptuously as

d'Annunzio in his
palazzo,
information was brought him that a

famous Hollywood star, Anastasia, was shooting a film in his

vicinity. Albin, thus, who was still looking for an opportunity of

attacking his British rival, and who had an almost irrational loath-

ing of
all
Anglo-Saxons, including Yanks, laid plans for a punitory

raid on a barbican in which Paramount, Anastasia's studio, had

thought to pitch its main camp.

In a blind fury Albin took a shotgun, a bazooka, napalm,

TNT and as many rounds of ammunition as it was practical

to carry; and with a salivating bulldog as his own guard, and

six of his companions in tow, of a sort that you'd want with

you in a tight spot, grimly struck out to satisfy his thirst for

Anglo-Saxon blood.

On his arrival night was falling, a blazing spring night, with a

hot day slowly fading into dusk.

What Albin saw first was that Paramount had built a trio of

small studios, facing north, on a mountain (in fact, on its foot-

hills), that its production staff was bivouacking not far from a

local tarn and that its cast was living in six gigantic caravans -

four to a caravan, saving Anastasia, who wasn't sharing with any

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supporting actor. Noticing a flurry of activity in a studio - with

nobody too minor to muck in, from a stuntman to a storyboard

artist, from a continuity girl to a grip, all proposing fanciful

solutions to a tricky shot that just wouldn't work, consisting as

it did of a group of four walk-on actors who, for want of room,

had to stand so far back that only two at most would stay continu-

ally in focus - Albin told his gang to put a torch to it, to ravish

and kill anybody found in it, man, woman and child, and to bring

it all crashing down, whilst, on his own, approaching a caravan,

a particularly luxurious caravan with a star on its door, obviously

that in which Anastasia was dozing.

Slinking into a snug and inviting boudoir, with a romantic

aura about it making it a fitting spot for an amorous tryst, Albin

saw, in profusion and confusion, low divans, soft, furry rugs and

mirrors all of a dull opacity, as a sign not of sanctimony but of

sophistication. Its air was rich with a lascivious aroma and a lamp

was giving off a faint, soporific glow.

Albin took a turn around this intoxicating room, and, noticing

a thick canopy of rich, grainy damask, hid within it. An instant

was to pass, with Albin imbibing, and almost swooning from, a

fragrant odour that was wafting all about him.

And at last - Anastasia. What an apparition! Slipping off a

kimono of whitish organdy with black polka dots, slowly, tanta-

lisingly, unfurling, from waist to foot, a pair of clinging, cavity-

hugging black tarlatan tights, Hollywood's First Lady, now with

nothing on at all but a chunky gold ring with a ruby stud, lan-

guidly slunk down across an ottoman (a sofa, not a Turk), giving

out, whilst doing so, a profound sigh of physical satisfaction -

not so much a sigh, in fact, as a purr.

For a long instant Albin stood stock still, this ravishing panor-

ama totally transfixing him, its sinuous undulation inspiring part

of his own torso, at first against his will, to start curving outward

and upward.

As for Anastasia's drowsy body, now clad only in its birthday

suit, with skin of a milky purity, glossy and glowing, it was all

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unwittingly displaying its charms to him, a chiaroscuro tattooing

its voluptuous forms with a shadowy striation.

Almost foaming at his mouth, his body brimming with lust,

Albin burst forth from out of hiding, crying, "Oh, Anastasia, I

am but a pincushion for Cupid's arrows!"

Instandy, in a flash of inspiration, adapting Solomon's Song

of Songs, Albin thought up an impromptu hymn to glorify

Anastasia's luminous and numinous physical form:

Thy body is a glorious yacht aboard which I will sail to distant

lands, a sloop, a brig rolling and pitching, tossing as I do

turn upon it,

Thy brow is a fort against which I will launch an attack,

a bastion, a rampart which my amorous transports, unruly

as a north wind, will bring tumbling down, a triumphal

arch through which it is I who will march in triumph,

Thy soft auditory conch, a spiral, a convolvulus, a morning

glory abounding in twists and turns about which I so look

forward to losing my way,

Thy lash, a vibration of a wink and twinkling of a

blink,

Thy mouth, an atoll of crimson coral into which, willingly

risking, all but asking for, suffocation, I will swim down,

down, down,

Thy throat, a pallid prison, a paragon of a caparison, a

tight collar for my strangulation,

Thy arm, a guard, a hoist, a staff of passion, a loop of a

lasso with which to corral my carnality,

Thy hand, an animal with four digits and a thumb, a

sampan and a skiff, a dory and a catamaran, floating, tack-

ing, drifting at random on my languorous body and on thy

own,

Thy back, a coast, an alluvial plain, a salt marsh, a smooth

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couch, a rolling vista, an arc curving with bliss's sting and

spur,

Thy skin, O thy skin, a chamois sofi as swan's-down without

which I cannot go on living, a downy buff upon which I will

go to my tomb writing that holy word "Anastasia",

Thy flank, a rippling rill, an inconstant link in thy carnal

chain, a bodily boundary which I will accost first of all, a

primary port of call for that cockboat sailing forth from its

harbour in my lap,

Thy tummy-button, a kaolin always out-of-joint, a tiny

jug which I will fill up with my loving libations,

Thy loins, a coat-of-arms of an unknown armorial, a dark,

humid umbilicus, a door which I will unlock with my tumid

rod,

Thy buttocks, two round and rosy apricots, a plump pod, a

fruit containing a pip worth shaking out,

Thy bush, thy Burning Bush which I must know how to

confront, as did Christ, with valour and without timidity,

thy bush, holy pubis, tufts of passion, soft pinions, soft piping,

soft quills, soft fair hairs, as of a stork or a flamingo, Shangri-

la of physical and spiritual ardour,

Thy furrow, thy lotus furrow, furrow of oblivion, along

which all but my passion will vanish, which will swallow up

all but my lust, thy furrow of Nirvana, thy moist furrow in

which I will pass along, pass out and pass away, into which

I will go, born, ailing, dying, again and again, of a human,

all too human, bliss,

Thy bud, in which all will pass away, thy bud, that final

bastion in which I will confront my own total absorption, my

own abolition, my own annihilation, in that passion that will

last for always, in that last spasm that you and I will know

all too soon, our souls singing in total unison, in bliss or

oblivion, in that night that is a void, that instant of infinity

in which you and I will turn into an animal with two backs!

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Thus sang Albin who, now baring his own body, hastily casting

off all his clothing, sprang, gluttonously, as if starving, as if dying

of thirst, on top of Anastasia.

"What!" said an indignant Anton Vowl. "It was against Anas-

tasia's will!" (But, you know, Vowl was still a callow youth, in

his first flush of manhood, who, in addition, had grown up in a

puritanical Catholic family, had had his first communion and his

confirmation and had, on occasion, thought of joining a

Franciscan community.)

"Oh no," said Augustus, smiling, "hardly that."

For, in fact, Anastasia, looking up at him, instandy took a fancy

to this charming rascal, willingly giving in to him and, whilst Albin

was slowly broaching
ad limina apostolorum,
murmuring:

"Ohhh -1 long had an itch for a brigand, a bandit, an outlaw!"

Was Albin still in hiding from his country's cops?

"You can say that again," said Albin.

"A substantial sum, I fancy, for bringing you into custody?"

"And how!" said Albin.

"How much?"

"A million hrivnas."

"How much is that in dollars?"

As a dollar was worth about thirty-two hrivnas, Albin briskly

ran up a rough calculation, taking inflation into account, and

said, just a bit boastfully, "Thirty-six thousand."

"That
is
a lot," said an admiring Anastasia, who, succumbing

to his approach, winking at him flirtatiously if not actually sal-

aciously, was to add, murmuring as if in a swoon: "Now go to

it, my Don Juan, my Casanova, my Valmont, my Lothario!"

It was as if Virginia Mayo was succumbing to Richard

Widmark, Rita Hayworth to Frank Sinatra, Joan Crawford to

Cary Grant, Kim Novak to Kirk Douglas, Gina Lollobrigida to

Randolph Scott, Anna Magnani to Marlon Brando, Liz Taylor

to Richard Burton, or Ingrid Thulin to Omar Sharif.

Was Anastasia, though, truthful to Albin or simply trotting

out an old Hollywood film script, word for word?

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Why ask? With such wanton tickling, cuddling, fondling, lick-

ing and kissing going on, it was hard to think of as lubricious a

mating, as
jjalant
a coupling, as libidinal a mutual loving.

But whilst a goatishly rutting Albin was ravishing Anastasia just

as (if you know your classical mythology) Apollo had had his

way with Iris, Adonis with Calypso, and Antinous with Aurora,

his gang, complying with his wish, was attacking that studio

adjoining Anastasia's caravan, blowing it sky-high with a ton of

TNT, illuminating a pitch-dark night with its conflagration and

making an almighty Doomsday din. It was a sort of Walpurgis-

nacht. Its poor occupants, working hard at adjusting a shot or

simply hanging about, as you do in film studios, ran this way

and that, shouting and howling in panic. Most got it instantly,

struck by a burning plank, by a scorching whirlwind, by a boiling

rock torn out of its soil, by a spray of stinging-hot, skin-riddling

coals, or by a smoking brand whooshing up as if from out of a

volcano.

Notwithstanding all that was going on about him, notwith-

standing his gang's act of criminal arson and its nightmarishly

grisly impact on a group of Hollywood artists on location, noth-

ing could distract Albin from a form of amatory arson that was

just as hot if, naturally, not as homicidal.

So it was that, whilst his troop of oudaws, faithfully carrying

out his instructions, was riding back to its fiord, with an inward

glow of satisfaction at a job brought off without a hitch, Albin

was still billing and cooing, still spooning and smooching, in

pursuit of his passion.

It would last four days, all in all. At which point, it would

abruptly occur to Anastasia, shying back from Albin's lips and

warding off his warm, clinging arms, that, to fulfil a contract

drawn up by Paramount (which was paying its most popular star

a cool fifty thousand dollars) and William Morris (which would

naturally want its customary 10%), it was vital to finish shooting

its forthcoming film.

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Alas, it was all an illusion! Not a survivor, in production or

cast! As for Paramount's filmic apparatus - totally kaput! Not a

Nagra, not a truck! A Paillard? Fit only for a junkyard! A pair

of sound booms? Nothing but a stack of scrap iron, twisting

innards, burnt-out casings, piping hot piping! A Dolly? It was

now, in its way, a work of art, a work of art by an avant-gardist

sculptor, a David Smith, say, drawing his inspiration from Naum

Gabo or Baldaccini!

Anastasia was thus out of a job, and was so distraught that

Albin, who was not a confrontational sort of chap and didn't

know how to go about consoling anybody in such a situation,

simply took off, abandoning, you might almost say marooning,