APRIL DAYS
It was a sunny day in spring and I was feeling under the weather, I needed to get out of the house after this long and cold winter.
I walked down a small country lane toward the lake which was about 2 miles away from my house. The birds were returning and singing their song, the horses were out on their field and as they saw me coming they eagerly trotted toward me.
I looked at the clear sky and shouted; "I want to find love, no more loneliness!" The sky looked back at me and I had the feeling it promised me a great summer. I sat down on a huge stone by the lake and drew a heart in the sand on the bank and thought about creating something new in my life.
A lot of thoughts were gathering in my mind, especially that I wanted to leave this country. It was time, I had been here long enough and I was getting tired of the country life.
Soon after I moved to London got a job and began my life there. A new adventure? Perhaps! My interests were easily fed in this city where art and music were a daily thing and so many museums, I've not even seen them all yet. Definitely a city of great culture.
The suburbs varied a lot from Central London which was well kept and pretty clean. Suburbia had parts that looked pretty dreadful and poor, nevertheless there was a good vibe to this city. It was vibrant, lively, full of music, art and performance, and people from all walks of life.
I loved a good story and had a passion to write. I found myself often in the midst of Soho where tourists mingled with the crazy bunch of people from the "quartier". Rent boys, gays, prostitutes, transvestites, musicians, actors, homeless, runaways, drug addicts, police, the lot. Every night was party here and the drunks were uncountable.
A girl was crouching in a doorway under a torn up bedsheet, she was withering away thought I. Too young to die, I stopped to talk to her. "People don't care.", she said to me and showed me her abused arms and hands full of scabs. I went and bought her some food. I thought how could this be in a city like London, the world must seem cruel to her, where was help? I brought her the food, wished her well and walked on.
Someone said; "Hey beautiful where are you off to?" I felt talked to but kept walking, after a few feet I stopped, turned around and walked back. "Did you just say that to me?", I asked a good looking elderly man. He nodded and invited me to a cup of coffee. I sat down on the chair next to him said: "Do you know Soho well?" "I do indeed.", he replied. "I have been here all my life". "Can we talk about that?", I asked him politely."We can, if you like.", he answered. "I'm Fauve", I stretched out my hand and shook his. "Bertram, my pleasure".
It was late, yet I had the time to tell him that I was researching for a book I was writing and that it was a bizarre kind of story which begins in London's Soho, and that a truly dangerous occurrence and later events had lead me here.
"Do you remember a documentary which was filmed here by John Willis in the early seventies called 'Johnny go home', followed by a second called 'The murder of Billy Two Tone'?", I asked Bertram. "Oh yes",he said, " I was right here when it was filmed."
Bertram outlined the story from his viewpoint as a bystander."The boys were very young, I was in my twenties. John Willis and his crew were in the area a few days. I didn't think nothing much of it those days, in Soho films were often made, but now that you should mention it again it's all coming back to me quite clearly. The boys did whatever they had to to survive, play a trick, hustle, work as rent boys, get jobs like working in the laundry's, whatever gave them their daily bread and paid their rent. They were mostly dropouts or runaways and had left their homes, parents trouble I presume."
"Of course parents trouble and troublesome boys. It's pretty late Bertram would you mind meeting up with me again another day, right here in this Cafe?" I asked. "Sure, I'd like that.", said Bertram. We exchanged our phone numbers and walked toward Leicester Square. I noticed that Bertram had a bad leg so we walked slowly and I offered him my arm."Old age.",he mumbled. I waited for his bus to arrive. āBye, till soon and thank youā. I said, and Bertram replied. "Thanks for walking me to the bus, and yes see you soon."
The Tube was not running, it was on strike, so I walked down to Trafalgar Square to get a bus. There was a lot going on as usual. People chatting, a beggar asking for some money, a woman pushing a pram with a baby screaming terribly in it. The sound of the engines of the busses and cars. A musician was playing Bob Dylan's 'Visions of Johanna' on his guitar and singing:
Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet ?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doin our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handfull of rain, tempting you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing really nothing to turn of
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.
In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the D-train
We can hear the night watcman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane
Louise she's all right she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He's sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall
Oh, how can I explain ?
It's so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna they kept me up past the dawn.
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze
I can't find my knees"
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel.
The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him
Saying, "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him"
But like Louise always says
"Ya can't look at much, can ya manā
As she, herself prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads. While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.
The applause was grand and genuine by those listening. I walked on to reach the bus stop. I saw my bus approaching the stop and was hoping to get across the street in time. Half an hours ride to Fulham.
