Chapter 4
Band-aiding my hand, fury attacked. Was it the air conditioner’s rattling noises, a couple going at it in the adjacent bungalow, or, having stumbled across my double? No, this one wasn’t hard to decipher; definitely my double. Two of me, or mere resemblance—an actor’s worst nightmare—spelt compettion, even though I’d sworn off acting; still wanted to keep a foot in the door. In a generation of fetus faces I stood out, and now rivalry, even though he probably wasn’t an actor. I’d always wanted a brother (but not a clone) until I became an actor when roles became my brothers.
I was meant to become a chemical engineer like dad, but during a stay with London relatives, I applied for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and got accepted. Dad was furious. Soon, I was the best in my class, and agents were swarming, even before I graduated; playwrights and filmmakers, with roles for that healthy depraved look. I was entitled to success.
But if I was a failure as an actor, at least I had a trust fund (all spent) and daddy’s money to fall back on until his accountants disclosed that Lauenfeldt Chemichals was bankrupt after his death. And why hadn’t my mother and Bettina called me in New York when the business was in trouble after daddy got sick—wasn’t I part of the family? Could’ve helped them out; knew a lot about chemistry even though I was an actor. And it was only an 8-hour-flight to Denmark. No, I wasn’t completely stupid, though right now I felt like an utter idiot.
As always when unhinged, I went grooming.
The swelling of my left eye had shrunk. And didn’t I look younger? I threw the razor on the sink, nauseated by mirrors—all that look-fascism thanks to surface-addict mama— and sat down on the edge of the bathtub.
. The last month had been hell. Dad’s disease had started innocently enough: he got infected with the RLV virus (reptilian lipid virus). Ironically people exposed to pesticides are more prone to infection and Lauenfeldt Chemicals manufactured bug-killers.
As to its origin of the RLV virus, there were as many theories as virologists, the official being, that it’d mutated in reptiles pressed to survive oil slicks, where it’d formed alliance with a lipid enzyme; had merged, combined into (and we’re the only smart ones?) a fat catalyzing viroid, making the greasy stuff eatable fuel for this oil-addicted microbe. A yummie delicacy for it are our wonderful brains (lots of fat there), especially the ancient, the reptilian brain, responsible for: rage, xenophobia, basic survival fight-or-flight response, territoriality, social hierachy, and the desire to blindly follow some stupid-ass leader. So by the time the RLV critters were the masters of daddy’s body and the incurable PLC (pernicious lipid consumption) disease was in its final stage—and the RLV viroids had consumed every ounce of daddy’s fat—he was thrashing and shouting obscenities on the 400-year-old Dutch rosewood marquetry four-poster, looking a mix between a mummy and a bog body.
By 10, in summer-white Italian cashmere slacks, feet in a pair of $3500 crocodile loafers, and the navy blazer—with the gold dragon-buttons—casually thrown over the shoulder, I was psyched for nightlife.
“Bruno dahlink, you look younger. Don’t tell me you’ve found a plastic surgeon on this godforsaken island? And exquisite, your taste is improving,” a woman attacked me with her booming bass and Kali smile as I swaggered into Plutókratos’ wicked-drinks bar, looking out on the pool terrace, in all whites, a color utterly unsuitable for religious drinking.
Before I could reply, she fired: “Dreadful service, and the prices; the islanders resent us foreigners. You are so lucky to have your own staff,” she purred from an oversized, Santorini Club Chair and bent over to check on a relaxed cheetah (hopefully), with an emerald studded collar and leash, at her feet. “Your hand; what happened?”
“Just a small cut, but I think you got me confused with somebody else,” I said.
“Really; you look just like a friend,” she laughed, glowing like the eye of a nocturnal carnivore. “Yes, really quite extraordinary; you two could be twins.”
“So I look like your friend Bruno?”
She tilted her head, “Yes, clothed.” A Picasso woman from his cubic, deconstructed period looked more together. Her face was strained and stretched, steel and laser repaired, an old, metal-fatigued suspension bridge, its rusty wires tightened too tight. All in all, a tough-tough gristly hen, but as the Italians say, Una gallina veicchia, fa un buon’ brood, ‘an old hen, makes a good soup’.
“Join me?” she said and stretched out a hand dominated by a gigantic antique emerald ring, no doubt a Pandora’s box, perched on a gnarly middle finger, with a long pointed deep-red-lacquered nail. “I am Feralia Feuermann.”
“Feral Fefoo, Femoo,” I stuttered, sitting down.
“No, Feralia . . . Feralia Feuermann. And you?”
“Wolf,” I said meekly, still in my infant butch-it-up stage for stomaching such an old horny slut, all steel to right up to under the skin. “And your last name?”
“W . . .”
“And W stands for?”
“Wolf.”
“And your last name?”
“De Lamb.”
“Wolf de Lamb! Seriously?” she said.
“Dead serious . . .”
“Uncanny . . . I can not get over the similarities . . . You really could be Bruno’s younger brother. Oh, to be just five years younger,” she said. Yeah definitely over 65; it was the sclerotic, bluish-brown raised veins on her hands, transparent pipelines ruining the landscape. “So, where are you from?”
“New York,” I said.
“But you look European; the way you comport yourself and your attire, except for the sunglasses; of course very American. Why are you wearing them indoors?”
“Why not,” I said.
“Because Wolf, it makes people think you are hiding something. Are you?”
“Isn’t everybody,” I said and removed the shades.
“But you have beautiful eyes; extraordinary . . . one green and the other black and . . . red . . . and a little swollen. But I adore green eyes . . . like Minou’s. Say hello to Wolf dahlink girl.” The cheetah growled. “Merkwürdig, she normally loves everybody.” I was no great fan of the Felidae family and isn’t minou French slang for pussy?
“So where do you live in New York?”
“East 68th Street,” I said.
“Ah, neighbors! I’m on 71st, Bruno on 70th,” she said and finished her cocktail (looked like radiator coolant).
“And you’re from originally?” I asked.
“Zürich, yes I know; Switzerland, not very glamorous once you get off the ski slopes.”
“How’s your bungalow?”
“Bungalow? God no! I’m on the Argo, the black yacht with the helicopter; it’s not mine; a good friend’s. Not very convenient, only the captain, cabin boy and pilot; Serbians, Croatians, Bosnians, Kosovars or whatever, but gruesome looking, so I am here or on Bruno’s yacht . . . Marina’s, his wife’s rather . . . Yes, he does have one,” she said, dissecting me, probably trying to figure out how she could use me.
“Ja, something traumatic must have happened to Marina; very neurotic. Without Bruno she would be lost . . . and how shall I put it discretely? She is not very well put together psychologically.”
“Society today isn’t exactly sane,” I said.
“Ja that might very well be; a reality we all have to deal with, but not having your Kopf properly screwed on? Simply inexcusable when you stand to inherit billions.” My eyes lit up bigger than her emerald (the one green eye). “I first met the poor neurotischer dear in Vienna five years ago. I was a friend of her father, Finn Staffelt, the Danish inventor. His wife had died and now he is very ill, infected with the RLV virus, the virus that causes PLC and everybody knows that is fatal (anything with that disease and I tuned out). I am afraid he is in the final stage of the disease. The doctors think it is his research with petro chemicals that caused. Anyway, Marina was rehearsing Elktra at the Staats Oper. She’d done all of Wagner’s heroines, but it was Elektra that did her in. She froze in the middle of a performance and has never warbled since. She told me she was still Electra when she left the stage. Personally I have a suspicion her voice was not, echt dramatisch. You should not sing Wagner in your 20s. The repertoire is physically and psychologically too demanding. I think she wrecked her voice,” she said and finished her drink. “It is all so very tragic and soon she will have only Bruno left. Her mother and twin brother have already passed away, schizophrenia I think.” She reached over the table and took my hand, “But enough of me talking. You have not touched anything?”
“You’re right and maybe something to nosh on. A steak with a nice bottle of red to fill up my drinking-quota or I’ll loose my citizenship. Believe me, they check with their nifty little chip-implants squealing back to the files on me in the government’s mother-computer.”
“Very imaginative,” she said disinterested and snapped her fingers, promptly conjuring up the bartender, “A steak, lean please, and a red burgundy from the old century.”
“And how would you like your steak?” the bartender asked.
“Rare,” I said.
“And what is your profession?” she asked.
“I hunt for new energy resources . . .”
“Ah, the Arctic . . . Greenland perchance?” she said.
Leaving the bar, a handsome dark-haired young man winked at me in the corridor. A little later I heard Feralia, “Ah, late, but there you are my dahlink Yiannis.”
Poor boy Feralia would make cat food out of him. I chuckled: Women like Feralia normally drained me and was surprised that I had more energy now than when I entered the bar. I felt invincible! Time to spill some energy on Mykonos Town! I was hungry for a new life.