at the very least one of Sasha's tirades against the repressive tolerance of pseudo-liberalism, or the cancer of military-industrial colonialism. "Tomatoes, stink bombs, thunder flashes--Uzi machine guns, perhaps?"
"We intend to _reveal the social genesis of human knowledge,__" Sasha replies, stuffing bread and sausage into his mouth before he hurries off to a meeting.
"What's that when it's at home?" Mundy asks, slipping into his familiar role of test audience.
"Man's preternatural state, his ur-state. Day One is already too late. We must begin on Day Zero. That is the entire point."
"You're going to have to spell this one out for me," Mundy warns, brows appropriately puckered. And the notion is indeed surprising to Mundy, since Sasha has until now insisted that they must deal with harsh political realities rather than fancy visions of Utopia.
"As a first stage, we shall wipe the human slate clean. We shall detoxify the brain, cleanse it of its prejudices, inhibitions and inherited appetites. We shall purge it of everything old and rotten"--another chunk of sausage--"Americanism, greed, class, envy, racism, bourgeois sentimentality, hatred, aggression, superstition and the craving for property and power."
"And enter _what__ exactly?"
"I fail to understand your question."
"It's simple enough. You've wiped my slate clean. I'm pure, I'm not American, racist, bourgeois or materialistic. I've got no bad thoughts left, no bad inherited instincts. What do I get in return, apart from a policeman's boot in the balls?"
Standing impatiently at the door, Sasha has ceased to take kindly to this inquisition. "You get what is needful to a harmonious society and nothing more. Brotherly love, natural sharing, mutual respect. Napoleon was right. You English are totally materialistic."
All the same, it is a theory of which Mundy hears no more.
4
"THOSE GIRLS ARE total dykes," insists the Viking, now better known to Mundy by his kennel name of Peter the Great. Peter is a pacifist from Stuttgart. He came to Berlin to escape military service. His rich parents are whispered to be _Sympis,__ members of the guilt-ridden higher bourgeoisie who secretly give succor to those bent on their destruction.
"A lost cause," Sasha, taken up with larger matters of revolutionary strategy, distractedly agrees. "Don't waste your stupid time on them, Teddy. Freaks, the pair of them."
They are speaking of Legal Judith and Legal Karen, so named because they are studying jurisprudence. The fact that they happen to be the two most desirable females in the squat only adds to their offense. Sexual choice for women, in the opinion of the two great liberators, does not include refusing to go to bed with important male activists. Take a look at the sackcloth skirts they wear, for God's sake, Peter urges. And those mannish shoes like army boots, where do they think they're marching to? And the way they put their hair up in messy buns and slop around the squat like a couple of lovesick Burghers of Calais! Peter claims they take out one law book from the library at a time so that they have something to read together in bed. Karen moves her finger along the line, he says, Judith does the words.
The only person they consort with apart from one another is Mundy's erstwhile inquisitor, the Greek Christina, who is suspected of sharing their sexual predilections. Mundy has never previously encountered the phenomenon of lesbianism, but has to concede that all known evidence supports the rumor. The two women refuse to shower communally. From the day they arrived in the squat they insisted on having their own room, and fitted a padlock to the door with a sign saying FUCK OFF. It's still there. Mundy has been to see it. Any further proof he should require, let him try his luck and see what he gets apart from a broken jaw, says Peter.
Yet for all these doom-laden prognostications, Legal Judith is imposing grave strains on Mundy's vows of Isherwood detachment. Her efforts
"We intend to _reveal the social genesis of human knowledge,__" Sasha replies, stuffing bread and sausage into his mouth before he hurries off to a meeting.
"What's that when it's at home?" Mundy asks, slipping into his familiar role of test audience.
"Man's preternatural state, his ur-state. Day One is already too late. We must begin on Day Zero. That is the entire point."
"You're going to have to spell this one out for me," Mundy warns, brows appropriately puckered. And the notion is indeed surprising to Mundy, since Sasha has until now insisted that they must deal with harsh political realities rather than fancy visions of Utopia.
"As a first stage, we shall wipe the human slate clean. We shall detoxify the brain, cleanse it of its prejudices, inhibitions and inherited appetites. We shall purge it of everything old and rotten"--another chunk of sausage--"Americanism, greed, class, envy, racism, bourgeois sentimentality, hatred, aggression, superstition and the craving for property and power."
"And enter _what__ exactly?"
"I fail to understand your question."
"It's simple enough. You've wiped my slate clean. I'm pure, I'm not American, racist, bourgeois or materialistic. I've got no bad thoughts left, no bad inherited instincts. What do I get in return, apart from a policeman's boot in the balls?"
Standing impatiently at the door, Sasha has ceased to take kindly to this inquisition. "You get what is needful to a harmonious society and nothing more. Brotherly love, natural sharing, mutual respect. Napoleon was right. You English are totally materialistic."
All the same, it is a theory of which Mundy hears no more.
4
"THOSE GIRLS ARE total dykes," insists the Viking, now better known to Mundy by his kennel name of Peter the Great. Peter is a pacifist from Stuttgart. He came to Berlin to escape military service. His rich parents are whispered to be _Sympis,__ members of the guilt-ridden higher bourgeoisie who secretly give succor to those bent on their destruction.
"A lost cause," Sasha, taken up with larger matters of revolutionary strategy, distractedly agrees. "Don't waste your stupid time on them, Teddy. Freaks, the pair of them."
They are speaking of Legal Judith and Legal Karen, so named because they are studying jurisprudence. The fact that they happen to be the two most desirable females in the squat only adds to their offense. Sexual choice for women, in the opinion of the two great liberators, does not include refusing to go to bed with important male activists. Take a look at the sackcloth skirts they wear, for God's sake, Peter urges. And those mannish shoes like army boots, where do they think they're marching to? And the way they put their hair up in messy buns and slop around the squat like a couple of lovesick Burghers of Calais! Peter claims they take out one law book from the library at a time so that they have something to read together in bed. Karen moves her finger along the line, he says, Judith does the words.
The only person they consort with apart from one another is Mundy's erstwhile inquisitor, the Greek Christina, who is suspected of sharing their sexual predilections. Mundy has never previously encountered the phenomenon of lesbianism, but has to concede that all known evidence supports the rumor. The two women refuse to shower communally. From the day they arrived in the squat they insisted on having their own room, and fitted a padlock to the door with a sign saying FUCK OFF. It's still there. Mundy has been to see it. Any further proof he should require, let him try his luck and see what he gets apart from a broken jaw, says Peter.
Yet for all these doom-laden prognostications, Legal Judith is imposing grave strains on Mundy's vows of Isherwood detachment. Her efforts
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