Free Snowleg by Nicholas Shakespeare Page A

Conjuring images of audience participation and Marcel Marceau.
    â€œYou wouldn’t be expected to act, you oaf.” Teo’s face had the expression it wore when he was about to pass the ball. “Why don’t you come with us? We just need an extra body, Peter. It’s hard to visit East Germany unless you have connections. You could dig out your father, extend the search.”
    â€œLet me think about this,” said Peter.
    Teo tilted back his head and regarded the poster of Johnny Rotten, his eyes skirting over the upside-down Wehrmacht insignia safety-pinned to Rotten’s waistcoat and coming to rest on the coloured print of Bedevere above Peter’s desk. “Listen, if you can’t pull it off I know someone I can ask.”
    â€œWait, when is this?”
    â€œLeave Thursday, back Monday morning. We can sort out the visa tomorrow.”
    Peter glanced at the five textbooks – one chemical, one zoological and three botanical – that he planned to have read by Monday. “Oh, shit. I couldn’t – even if I wanted to. This is the weekend of Anita’s wedding.”
    Anita, Peter’s German girlfriend of two years, was playing bridesmaid for her colleague, a teacher at the same kindergarten. All month she had attended fittings and returned with Polaroids of herself holding up yards of salmon-coloured satin. Peter pretended to be interested, but the whole business bored him to death.
    â€œOh, right,” nodded Teo, “the wedding where Anita will catch the bouquet, hell or high water?”
    â€œShe’s already caught the bouquet,” sighed Peter. “It’s in a vase beside her bed.”
    Teo chuckled and stood up. “You don’t stand a fucking chance. Listen, I refuse to get in the way of your audition. I’m going to find a free man instead.”
    â€œNo, don’t!” The invitation to bolt, to leave behind Anita and the wedding feast in Blankenese was exhilaratingly tempting. “I’ll go. I can do it.”
    They looked at each other. “Are you sure?” said Teo. “I don’t want to be held responsible for what Thomas and Michael might do . . .” Anita’s hulking elder brothers, crew-cut engineers, played in the same soccer team.
    â€œThey’re OK. I’ll just have to figure out what I’m going to tell Anita.”
    Teo opened the door and stopped. “Remind me – who’s that?”
    â€œSir Bedevere.”
    â€œKing Arthur stuff?”
    â€œThe guy with the sword.”
    â€œOh, that guy.”
    Long after Teo had left the room, Peter continued to look at the face of the medieval knight. As he brushed his teeth, he murmured to the mirror in English:
    â€œWhat saw you there? said the king.
    Sir, he said, I saw nothing but waves and winds.”
    Minutes later he switched off the light. If he could do this, obviously he didn’t love Anita. If he loved her, he wouldn’t consider abandoning her on a day when, as she had made very clear, she needed him. But German girls were stoics. She wouldn’t make a fuss. She would understand about his father. It was a while before he slept.
    Following his anatomy class next morning, he went with Teo to a studio on the corner of Bellevue, on the top floor of an old house overlooking the Alster. A large light room of blues and yellows fitted with a stainless-steel counter and with an upstairs gallery reached by a spiral staircase.
    The room had been cleared to make a stage. Two actors, sitting on stools, rehearsed before a cubicle assembled from sheets of corrugated plastic and hung with a green curtain. Peter leaned against the wall to watch, but what they were doing seemed incomprehensible to him.
    A dog’s basket lay at his feet, and tidied onto a davenport-style desk with barley-sugar legs were the traces of a woman’s presence. A bright orange bra. A straw boater like one he used to wear at St Cross. A