Chapter One

The explosion shook the entire block fueling fear, panic and stress on the strasse. The impact was nearby as it managed to blow Michael and Sibyll from the bed they shared, launched in a manner that would qualify them as human cannonballs in the carnival of Professor Sardonicus, if there were such a person, and if there were such a carnival .

Michael was rudely awakened from a deep slumber sleep in the second floor apartment while dreaming earlier of chasing Jehovah Witnesses with a silver crucifix and a wooden stake! Only vampires ring doorbells in dreams to preach the gospel.

Sibyll too awakened startled and confused.

“The blast came from downstairs! What the hell?”

Downstairs was the Die Berliner Galerie für industrielle Punk-Kunst or The Berlin Gallery of Industrial Punk Art. The enclave of leftist art, artisans, activists, and anarchists that not only were the West Berlin police watching carefully, also had drawn the unwanted attention of post war neo nazi thugs who embraced fascism to such a degree, they’d send Groucho Marx off to Auschwitz thinking he was Karl Marx’s brother.

This 1965….Berlin was divided into East and West...Germany was divided east and west and cut up like a geopolitical pizza by the Allied Powers. The US, France, Great Britain and those madcap fun loving vulgar vodka Volga loving Soviets.

Michael, an American, was a writer who had met the German artist Sibyll in America during a gallery showing of her artworks that she augmented and layered with a sultry performance  of poetry and music in a one woman show that raised the eyebrows of the high brows of Park Avenue. Not surprising for a group of Wall Street weirdos who engaged in hunting down trophy wives when confronted with an art performance called “Menstruation: The Breakfast of Champions”

They met, they dated, to conquered each other. Two years later Michael had traded in his NYC bagels and pizza passions for beer and bratwurst and moved to West Berlin to collaborate with Sibyll on a mutual dream. To open a gallery for artists of all stripes, one act plays, music geared to an anti-war sentiment, no nukes, drug legalization. feminism, human rights, civil rights, gay and lesbian rights, ban the bomb, burn the bra  .. all the usual fuel the would inflame the right wing to light a fuse...as they did this early 4 AM West Berlin morning.

The acrid smell of smoke permeated the apartment. Michael and Sibyll both made a mad dash to the stairwell to see what damage had been done to the gallery forgetting that both always slept in the nude and had forgotten to put on a stitch of clothing and would freak out any frauleins that had a phobia of all things public and pubic.

The art event that just opened two days ago and probably  set of a psychotic episode of skinhead emotions was the recently installed “Hot To Trotsky” event that featured the artwork of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera , and a three person one act musical play that depicted the love affair of Frida and Leon Trotsky while living in Diego’ house