THE CORRUPTION OF RUDI RIESENKAMPF (part 2 of 4)

THE CORRUPTION OF RUDI RIESENKAMPF (part 2 of 4)

Antonella came to an end, and the guy said, 'ciao,' and something else they didn't catch... he placed his palms together and bowed his head. He began asking Antonella in English, in a thick German accent, something about the music. He then asked if he could join them, and took a chair.

They did the usual exchange of pleasantries, as you do: with smiley welcomes, exchange of names, and 'where do you come from?' and such. He told them his name was Rudi Riesenkampf, he was German, from Berlin... but had been living in Morocco for six months... So the conversation swung to hashes, which he explained he had given up before his journey... He went on to declare how he had gone to Morocco in search of a spiritual high..., or truth... and he had found it! He had not only given up hashes, but cigarettes, alcohol, coffee, meat, and had even refrained from sex, he added with a broad smile.

'So when are you going to give up life?' quipped Larry. This was taken well by Rudi, and he laughed with them.

He  told them he had reached a new level in his life... he was clean... he didn't need anything to make him happy... life runs into him and through him. He told them that for the six months he had been in Morocco he was a Schäfer, a Shepherd... which made them all prick up their ears and smile.

'Is that what you did in Berlin,' Roy joked.

'No,' laughed Rudi, 'I sold bread in Berlin.'

'In a bakery?'

'No... on the trains.'

'Ah,' said Larry, imagining one of those little Imbiss' you see everywhere in Germany, where you can get coffee, and such.

'On the Station?'

'Yes, but also on the trains.'

He then explained he made the bread at home then travelled around on the underground to sell it.

'So how did you get a job as a shepherd in Morocco?'

'I bought five sheeps and a goat,' he said, as if the question had been too obvious to have been put... this and his English made them all laugh again.

He told them he had milked the sheep, drank the milk, and had had it also made into cheese, then sold or bartered it for other foods. He said he hadn't needed anything else...

'What more do we want...? Too many possessions stop you being free!'

He could travel around almost following the animals, letting them graze along the way. He could put the goat on a lead and the sheep would just follow...

'How very human,' Larry quipped.

Then one night there blow up, very suddenly, a great sand storm, so quickly that he hadn't had even the time to find a place totether the goat. The desert changed to a sea: waves of sand – small stones flew – the sun disappeared behind flying clouds... he could not see, and had to cover himself. But the sand tried to bury him – he had to keep moving. The storm blew all night. The next morning his animals had gone... he searched for them for days, but found no trace of them..., he now faltered, wiping the sweat from his shaved head. To Roy, Larry, and Antonella it all had a ring of Camus’ absurdity... And they say dope prepares you for surprises...

'So, Little Bo-Peep...,' said Roy deadpan. Which of course was lost on Antonella and Rudi. They asked him what he was doing in Sardinia. He told them he had come to look for work, as a cherry picker, because it was the cherry season. If he could earn enough he would take the money back to Morocco to buy more sheep. Tomorrow he would travel inland with the bus to a place, he was told, is the
centre of the cherry region, and there will be some kind of local festival.

He asked them where they were from, and of their travels, and where they would go next. It took only a few minutes for each of them to to tell their stories... they hadn't thought about where they were going... they were without compass or    purpose... maybe just continue along the coast, sleeping on the beaches. But next week they must be in Calgiari to meet their friend, Angelo.

Then Antonella said, maybe they should also go to this cherry region, it could be interesting. Yes, Roy and Larry agreed, it could be just their kind of swing... Then Rudi suggested they travel together... he had the name of the town, and some of the villages around it. Well, up until then they hadn't thought of travelling with anyone else, so they didn't sign up to it there and then, but agreed to decide tomorrow. But they could all hang together and crash that evening on the beach.

After doing some shopping for food for the evening and  breakfast, they walked along the coast road, away from the crowded beach of the village, until they found a lonely looking cove... The sun was very hot.

The three friends took off all their clothes and went swimming... Roy and Larry had become used to getting naked with Antonella, but now they enjoyed Rudi's surprise and awkwardness – standing in his shorts – at Antonellas's casualness and sheer disregard for observers, they were amused by his inability to stop staring at her very beautiful naked figure... 'So, he hasn't given up looking yet', remarked Larry.

'Down Shep!' Chirped Roy.

The sun became so hot Larry took the fly sheet and the poles from their tent, and made a makeshift sunshade for them. But Rudi had spotted some bamboo growing beyond the sand dunes, and said he was going to build his own sunshade from this...

When he returned panting with his arms full of the canes he had cut, he told them he had decided to build a little house for them all. 'You can build anything with bamboo!' he said, then went off for more canes. He repeated his trip several times, each time returning with an enhanced enthusiasm, and one more idea for a new feature for the little house: a window, a door, a bedroom, and always declaring to the other's growing amusement – who lay naked in the shade laughing like  runken druids, sucking on a giant spliff, which Rudi declined to indulge in – 'You can build anything with bamboo!'

'Oh yes,' Roy replied, 'TV sets, telescopes, and socks...' which made the three of them laugh.

'And nails, nuts and bolts!' added Larry.

'Rubber bands, bread, and pasta,' sang Antonella.

But Rudi just looked at them with an expression of a dog being shown a card trick. He was nonplussed, and set to work building his Tarzan like home... Forming a frame with four of the thickest canes as uprights, which he buried in the sand and supported them by piling stones around their base. He then made cross sections at the bottom, middle, and top; binding them together with grasses, which he'd also found above the sand dunes...

Fittingly, to their location, and to the lazy trance like sound of the surf breaking in the background, Larry announced he would read Virginia Woolf's The Waves to them. “As if issued to children on a beach … What a lark,” Quoted Roy.

Rudi busied himself; going off, then returning with more of his all-purpose material. Larry read:

'The sun rose higher. Blue waves, green waves swept a quick fan over the beach, circling the spike of sea-holly and leaving shallow pools of light here and there on the sand. A faint black rim was left behind them. The rocks which had been misty and soft hardened and were marked with red clefts...'

Now and again they could hear Rudi making little clonking sounds with the bamboo above the sound of
the surf and Larry's smooth voice...

'The sun laid broader blades upon the house. The light touched something green in the window corner and made it a lump of emerald , a cave of pure green like stoneless fruit. It sharpened the edges of chairs and tables and stitched white table-cloths with fine gold wires. As the light...'

Slowly, Larry's voice became more breathy, and his eyes tired... and he realised Roy and Antonella were asleep beside him, then the book sank gently onto his own sleeping chest. They looked like three naked newborn mice curled in a nest.

They awoke to Rudi's excited voice declaring that he had finished and they must come out and take a look at the little house. The sun was beginning to go down over the hills behind the sand dunes.

Slowly, one by one they pulled on their kit, and came lazily from the shade, and with bleary eyes stood looking at Rudi's handy-work... 'Very nice,' said Larry, but in a tone that obviously did not match the enthusiasm of the look on Rudi's ecstatic face. He was shifting from one foot to the other. 'Mmm...,' murmured Roy. 'Yes, it's good,' said Antonella, 'but you know we are leaving tomorrow...' 
Rudi seemed downcast at the lack of reaction. 'Oh,' he  nthused, 'it's not just für uns, I'm sure many peoples will find it and use it. I will stay in it again when we come back.'

He opened the little door and invited them to go inside. They ducked in and they all stood looking vacantly at the walls...          

'Well, it feels very cool, said Larry. 'Mmm...,' said Roy.

'A lot of work...,' said Antonella.     
'Ja,' agreed Rudi. 'I will now make a table and a chair.'

'Is it strong enough for a chair, Rudi?'

'Jawohl, sehr stark. You can make everything aus bamboo...' 'Oh,' chirped Roy, 'so what's   next, Rudi, how about a bamboo toilet, or a fridge, or even a bathtub...?' 'With a mirror!' added Larry. But Rudi, simply smiled as if he was the only one who hadn't stupidly stood in dog shit.

Rudi then lifted a bamboo flap that exposed a little window. He stood for a few silent minutes waiting for their reaction... They all stood speechless staring out at the beautiful rolling sea under a cloudless blue sky...

'So is this your bamboo TV?' Larry finally asked. They all tried to stifle their giggles, with hands on their faces, while turning their
heads away, or looking down or up. After they had managed to composed themselves, and made a few more muted comments, they all ducked outside again.

'Well,' said Roy, 'the stuff will start a good fire anyway, which we'll need for cooking the food later, but we'll have to collect a lot of driftwood if we want it to last the whole evening...'

So they all went off in different directions combing the beach, or over the sand-dunes, going and returning with their arms full of wood, until they'd collected a large pile. They built a fire to cook on. Roy, Larry, and Antonella had bought fish, cheese, wine, and bread, and they had cactus fruits which they bought from some children, while Rudi, because of his abstinence, had only bought cheese, bread, the fruits, and juice to drink.

Roy placed round-flat, hand sized stones in the flames, before stoking the fire again with wood over the top of them. Then, as the fire's flames died down, he brushed away the ashes and placed the fish on, the now, very hot stones, quickly flipping them over as they cooked.

The evening, like the day, was warm and tranquil. They ate their food, and the three friends drank wine and smoked their spliffs under a blooded sky behind the purple-black hills. Antonella later played her violin that seemed to make the shadows and the flames dance. They were soon joined by small groups of people strolling along the beach.
One guy, from France had a guitar and joined in with  ntonella. Rudi and some of the others danced. Everyone talked, laughed, and sung.
Some of the new comers also smoked hash and drank wine, and later they all swam in the warm sea.

Finally, in the early hours the party came to its own conclusion: people began drifting away, until there were just the four of them again. Then just as they were rolling out their sleeping bags, they heard a faint rumble of thunder.

'Oh!' said Antonella, 'we should put up the tent...'

'Nein,' said Rudi, 'it's very far away!'

But the others sprang into action. With the help of their flash lights they soon had the tent up in the sand-dunes, using large stones to weigh the guard-ropes. They told Rudd there was room for him in the tent, too. But he insisted he would be fine in his little house; he had put a double layer of bamboo on the roof...

They hoped the storm would miss them, but it didn't: a wind got up, and the clashes and flashes of thunder and lightening kept them awake as it came ever nearer. Suddenly its full rage was upon them: explosions like bombs, the wind frighteningly swaying the tent, the rain rattling on the flysheet like machine guns, the tent lighting up with white blinding flashes making their bodies into long goon shadows...

They heard a faint muted voice...! It was Rudi outside, they let him in, bedraggled as a mangy-dog. He was shocked, shaking, clutching his soaked thin sugar bag and blanket.

'And a shadow passed over the land,' said Roy. Larry gave him his towel to dry himself, Roy gave him his thick pullover and some jeans, and Antonella gave him her rain jacket to keep out the damp. They all lay there hoping the tent would survive the storm's onslaught of charging wind, and that they wouldn't be struck by the forked lightening that wove patterns through the canvas of the tent.

The night passed like a slow razor on a long tongue. But, finally and fortunately, the main force of the storm passed and died away, and they all eventually fell asleep to the sound of drumming rain.

 

The next morning rain was still falling quite heavily from a dark ashen sky, on a sea of torn grey paper. The wind still charging by their tent. One at a time they left the tent briefly to go to toilet. Each observing the devastated remnants of Rudi's, now, non-existent handiwork.

'In absentia,' reported Antonella being the first out and back. 'Little pig's house number two,' said Larry on his return. 'Should have built an ark, my son.' said Roy, sympathetically patting Rudi on the shoulder. Rudi, on his return said nothing, but his dark face full of mournful despair said everything... he had entered his crumple-zone.

They decided to stay put until the rain passed. Maybe later someone could go back to the town to buy more food, but for now they had enough to be going on with: bread, crackers, cheese, jam, peanut butter, and milk.

So, they ate, and then got their books out. Rudi didn't have a book; he said we wasn't much of a reader.

So Larry said he would read to them from one of their English books for a while; one which they could all understand, and then they should all tell a story of their own, and that would help to pass the time until the rain stopped. Roy asked Rudi if it was all right if they smoked a spliff in the tent... they could open the door flaps so the tent wouldn't fog up too much... Rudi said it was OK, in Morocco he had often drank tea in smoky places.

So that's what they did. Roy made a spliff – long and thick enough to have held the tent up – and passed it around. Larry went through his and Roy's books and began reading from Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Grey. After the spliff had been around a couple of times the atmosphere in the tent took on a more cloudy but relaxed state... heads lightened, so much so that, until then, the dispirited looking Rudi, now actually took the spliff from Roy before it could pass him a second time. And it wasn't long before the herba sacra was doing its thing, and Rudi had a face on him like the mule's Birthday.

The Afternoon went by like this, with the occasional

spliff doing the rounds, while the rain  performed an

abstract pit-a-pata on canvas. They all told stories:

Roy and Larry  relating some personal hilarious

antidotes, which split everyone's sides, while

Antonella told them the story

of Garibaldi – no more than a biscuit to Roy and Larry

– whose revolutionary life fascinated them all. Rudi –

at first reluctant, but after being egged on by the

others – narrated one of the rarer Grimm's märchen,

Old Man Made Young Again, which none of the

friends had ever heard before. Then in the late

afternoon Larry and Antonella decided to sally forth

in their raincoats to town to buy more food, while Roy

and Rudi shared another Spliff, and then dozed off.

The rain continued... that evening was spent in a

similar way – crowded in the tent getting stoned and

trying to entertain themselves.

LINK TO PART 3
http://www.abctales.com/story/chris-whitley/corruption-rudi-riesenkampf-...