Nico Read Online Free PDF Page B

Berlin was a kind of happening, dangerous, action kindovaplace.
    nico : Oh, yes, plenty of danger … The buildings falling down around you … The streets full of dust, you choked …
    d.j .: Dear oh dear, Nico, that sounds pretty awful. Anyway, you began modelling in the fifties?
    nico : We had to live in the country. At night you could see the city burning, the sky red as blood …
    d.j . ( coughs. Tries to clear a way out ): The War, a terrible time on both sides –
    nico : … The smell of burning buildings on the wind.
    d.j .: OK … This is Piccadilly Radio and I’ve just been talking to Nico of the fabulous Velvet Underground . ( Jazzy voices : ‘ Picc-adilly Ra-dio … Manchester’s Numero U-ni-o .’)
    â€˜Enough!’ Dr Demetrius slammed off the car radio.
    â€˜What does she think she’s doing?’ He pounded a heavy, leather-gloved hand on the steering wheel. ‘Makes me look like a total nebbish … Here I am, trying to stop her career going down the toilet, while she’s just flushing away …’ He yanked off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The car swerved out of lane.
    â€˜Steady Doc,’ said Toby, putting a hand on his shoulder.
    Dr Demetrius was a man under siege. The creditors were closing in. The Philistines were at the gate, dropping brown paper envelopes through the letterbox.
    â€˜I must make a phone-call … I don’t know why I’m doing it for her.’
    â€˜ I know,’ said Echo slyly.
    â€˜Oh really? What do you know?’
    â€˜I know that you’re no kosher medicine man … “Doctor”.’
    â€˜I see no reason to justify my existence to a creature whose inability to even get out of bed puts him little higher in the evolutionary chain than an invertebrate slug.’
    â€˜An’ you’d be a man of backbone, eh? Demetrius Erectus … I’ve seen the polaroids. Enough ter stiffen the resolve are they?’
    Demetrius lifted his trilby and wiped his pate with a stiff, grey handkerchief.
    â€˜Dear God, this is not the life for a searcher after Truth … for one who seeks a poetic reality. The days of the great impresarios are gone. What room is there in this squat, tawdry business for a man of substance and vision?’
    Echo slipped something into my hand – a polaroid photograph. A picture of Demetrius in a girl’s white frock, so tight on him you could see each bulge of fat. He was bending over a chair, his naked behind raised up in the air, red lipstick smudged across his lips, his head turned towards the camera. He had a dark, possessed look in his eyes and a weird, almost disembodied grin. I handed it back to Echo. He leaned over and whispered in my ear.
    â€˜I’ve got a cupboardful on’im …’
    Demetrius caught us in the rear-view mirror.
    â€˜The Whisperers, forever relegated to the back seat of life, yet always ready to butt in with their miniature version of reality … Why don’t you damn well learn to speak up, Echo?’
    He whammed on a Tammy Wynette tape.
    It was raining. Manchester was golden. At night, when the yellow streetlights reflect from the wet pavements and the cathedrals of the cotton barons glower sternly in the dark, you would not be mistaken in thinking it the most beautiful city in England.
    â€˜ There ’s a phone,’ said Demetrius.
    He double-parked beside it and got out.
    The telephone was Dr Demetrius’s umbilical link with a more stable world. Long before the mobile phone became such an essential accessory to urban dementia, Demetrius was trying to make the connection. It was territorial. Like a dog pissing on a lamp-post.
    He banged on the window. Toby leaned over and wound it down.
    â€˜Anyone got a 10p?’
    No one had a 10p. He scuttled off to the all-night chemist on the corner.
    Hair lacquer was hanging thick in the air, the smell of cheap perfume, aphrodisia to all but the