Out-and-Out Liars, Part 2; Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters, Chapter 2, Part 4

 

                                                                        4.

Her arm aching from adjusting the numerical digits displaying the date on the clock/calendar in the Waiting Room, Mary Mary celebrity drag chanteuse and her pet Chihuahua Mitzi found themselves, once again, out on the Arctic tundra; they were not alone. Having escaped the miserable labyrinth and Eye’s baying bloodhounds Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb, or Rolling- and Breaking News, Mary Mary had now morphed into a handsome bearded explorer her beehive hair-do having snapped off in the general freeze. Beneath a dark crop of hair, framed by a lush beard glinting with auburns and red undertones, her eyes surveyed those of her lover.

On entering the Mittel-Europa 1980s’ Waiting Room with its rows of septuagenarians, Mary Mary had received the full force of their ire when a pile of neatly stacked Ubermensch Monthly magazines began to topple. She soon found that it was not her that was being screamed at, for retrogressive time had rendered her and Mitzy invisible. It was a young Roma boy, sat in the corner swinging his bare brown legs, who was the object of their collective rage. The fact that he had done nothing seemed to be beside the point; he was young, happy and different. About ten years of age his large dark eyes seemed bewildered by the Wutschnaubendige shrieks of those not-so- locked in their own internal purgatory.

Historical lessons were either being refused to be learned here, or the atavistic fear and hatred of the Roma was a contract in which both sides tacitly colluded, the one steeled for periodic onslaughts yet not altogether impervious to hurt, the other exercising an ancient racial limb that stretched all the way back to some fretful Urwald.

Mary Mary hoped that if she just ignored it, it would just go away and anyway, not only could she not be seen but the Teutonic eruptions at the boy with the swinging brown legs and large saucer-shaped eyes were marginally better than the cacophonous racket of Swen Gnillor, and Swen Gnikaerb. She sat down to read a copy of Ubermensch Monthly which she pilfered as those in the waiting room once again rounded on the Roma lad.

The List of Contents promised an article entitled The Statistical Improbability of the Educational Advancement of the Untermensch by Mal-Combed Badwill.  Mary Mary was baffled; the photo of the features writer for Ubermensch Monthly depicted a...mullatto, or hal-caste...no, not politically correct, thought Mary Mary. What was the latest correct terminology? Mixed race? Dual heritage?.. She had heard it somewhere, recently, in 2013 that is.  Suddenly she remembered, bi-racial!. If Mr Badwill sought to cloak his own obvious Ubermenschlichlessness through statistical erudition belittling those from a background from which he himself had sprung, it was working. Here he was, page 5 offering up data, numerical evidence, hidden in a murky soup of amusing anecdotes, about the  lack of advantages, a  predisposition for laziness, and the inherent poverty of those he now clearly felt himself above. The article concluded that it would be the year 2027 before even a tiny percentage of those who were not Caucasion caught up with those who were. Mary Mary felt sick. On Page 7in The Arts and Culture section “WHEN I HEAR THE WORD CULTURE...”  a photograph depicted a famous, and angry looking art historian boarding a train with a shopping trolley full of tins of Campbell’s Soup.

It had not escaped Mary Mary’s attention that while in her possession Ubermensch Monthly magazine had been rendered invisible and this fact triggered an idea in her quick-witted mind, honed by years of dealing with smart-Alec hecklers during her stage shows. Frau Bundchen, Herr Schiffer  and a dozen other failed veterans, their rage gathering pace and fury toward the innocent Roma boy, jumped backwards as one when the object of their racial hatred suddenly vanished.

The boy seemed not to be phased, indeed he appeared to be unaware of Mary Mary’s gentle embrace or of the Cloak-of-Invisibility effect she was having on him. From his perspective, the shrivelled remnants of the master-race had jumped back so abruptly they had piled on top of one another onto a single seat like in a game of Musical Chairs, upsetting the pile of Uebermensch Monthy magazines, which in turn sent them screaming at each other in a volley of invectives and mutual blame at the newly established order of the lack of...well, Ordnung!

Holding onto the boy’s hand, Mary Mary reached up to the clock/calendar and began winding time forward. From the corner of her eye she could see the Roma boy growing into a tall handsome man, though with hardened features and a defensive disdain in his eyes. His hand grew in hers. The back-copies of Uebermensch Monthly and the Mittel-Europa septuagenarians were not long in crumbling to the floor leaving puddles of evil looking black bile mopped up in quick-motion by a new generation of African Gast-Arbeiter.

The Waiting Room emptied and filled as Mary Mary slowed time down to the present day and found herself in the company of, and holding hands with, a thirty-something year old Roma in a glass room populated by Mediterranean migrants, - economic refugees from Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Portugal- sat  alongside freshly-minted Eastern-Block Capitalists, all competing for their own little bit of Lebensraum. In a corner sat an avaricious looking red-faced man holding a train ticket to Switzerland, not completely dissimilar in looks, Mary Mary thought,  to the art historian in the Arts and Culture section of Ubermensch Monthly; a rolled up Picasso peeked out of his heavy overcoat.