Seven Demons Aidan Truhen (reading an ebook TXT) 📖

around him. Then he saw the moon landings and Vietnam and the end of the Cold War and now whatever the shit this new thing we’re doing is that is so utterly dick.

“I have dementia,” Herr Doktor Doktor Paul says. “Do you have dementia?”

“We’re going straight to that? We are not going to talk about how was my flight?”

“Did it crash?”

“No sir.”

“Then who has time to talk about it?”

“Hah.”

“I am ninety-eight years old frankly I barely have time to sneeze. I was at a funeral last month and the priest asked me if I really wanted to go home or just sit and wait for mine.”

“That is some hard-core priesting.”

“Catholic humor, it is edgy.”

“I’m an atheist.”

“Yes well, you try atheism when you can feel God pulling your penis.”

“I—wait what?”

“It is how God calls you home to judgment. He pulls you out of your body by the penis.”

“I was not aware of that.”

Herr Doktor Doktor shrugs: “It is not common biblical teaching.”

I like this guy. I ask how it is having dementia.

“It is fucking shit. Even if you’re rich and they cannot kick you out for saying the word penis. You know why it is shit?”

“I’m guessing because dementia?”

“HAH! Yes. You are quite right that is why. But also because fucking young people finally get to tell you everything they want you to think is true and you have no way to be sure one way or the other. From moment to moment any fucking thing could be happening. The entire universe is malleable. When I was young do you know what we were afraid of in this country?”

“That the Germans would invade?”

“Sure maybe them. I was going to say the Soviets in fact but them too. Then later it was all about the Turks. The Turks were coming to miscegenate us. But it turns out the Soviets didn’t give a shit and the Turks are very good at being Swiss. So now there are Swiss people with Turkish beginnings who worry about all the Croatians coming in. I suppose that is progress of a kind.”

“I guess.”

“It is crap and you know it. But you know what my grandkids do now? They take turns making shit up. Once a month they fuck with me. They take turns. Opa Opa the Russians have come! Opa it is Sharia Day you must dress and comb your beard! Yes Opa this is how it has been since ninety-one do you not remember? Switzerland is an Islamic Soviet now. Little vermin! I went to the opera in a fucking kurta.”

“How was that?”

“Drafty around my balls but I’m guessing real Muslims do not go commando to the fucking opera. Lying little shits. They are beautiful. I love them. What do you do again? I forget.”

“I am the leader of a global criminal syndicate wanted in pretty much every country on earth. I kill people occasionally but mostly I’m just trying to get by because you know everyone has to have a thing that they do. Next week I’m going to rob a bank for three hundred million euros but mostly because I just really want to.”

“Oh you’re a fucking artist?”

“Yes sir I am.”

“Call me Paul.”

“Paul.”

“Banjo.”

“Paul.”

“Who’s Paul?”

“…You almost had me.”

“HAH. Good. You met Eiger yet?”

“…No I have not. But I know his work.”

“You should meet him Banjo he is a loathsome Arschloch.”

“Oh good I guess all the best people are here.”

“Yes Bern is not large and there’s a lot of entertainment but only one party like this. Eiger…did I say we don’t get along? I think to be honest he hates art but he is the owner of the venue so we all pretend. Even his family and they mostly don’t like him either. You understand hypocrisy of course.”

“I’m a fucking artist Paul.”

“HAH. Come on, then.”

I follow Paul and I go and meet Hans Eiger.

—

Eiger is not talking. He is in a group of people who are talking and you could think that he was joining in but he is not. He nods and laughs at all the right moments. There are noises coming from his face that sound like words but they are the noises his brain makes while it’s waiting to start again. Engine idle you can see it. Hans Eiger hates this crap.

“HALLO HANS this is Banjo he is an artist.”

“Hallo Banjo that is an interesting name I am Hans Eiger.”

“I am so delighted to be here Herr Eiger I have heard so much about your mountain.”

We shake hands. Eiger is still not present. He doesn’t even bother to squeeze my fingers to pulp or eyeball me. I am an artist. An ant. He smells of some sort of rich masculine scent like iron and leather and goat blood but there is something off about it like—

“Yaaaawuh what have you heard of Die Festung?”

“O it is my absolute—it is my nemesis Herr Eiger you know I am an Ambiguitionist I specialize in situational ambiguity in the induction of doubt and your facility—I hear it is all about certainty.”

“Yes! That is quite true in fact it is—”

He looks at my face again and there it is: his brain waking up. Eiger, like a snake half waking inside his own skull and peering out of a socket.

“Have we met before Herr Telemark?”

“Were you at Burning Man last year I was part of the group wearing only stolen footwear reconfigured as clothing—”

“I was not—”

“Then it is more likely you have seen my photograph recently I have permitted myself to become famous although I have reservations about the commercialized Nietzscheanism implicit in celebrity but anyway as soon as I received this invitation I had to come immediately. I wanted to see the installation and of course to put a piece into the show.”

The snake has gone back inside. Art talk will do that.

“And what is your piece?”

“O I have not made it yet Herr Eiger but I think already there must be scrap metal iconic Swiss items. Infrastructure, agriculture, homogeneity must all be expressed and questioned.”

“Your work