Page 311 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

Walli was beginning to realize that Dave was very smart. Since he had set up the two companies, Nellie Records and Plum Publishing, the group were making a lot more money. Walli was still not the millionaire people thought he was, though he would be when the royalties started to come in from For Your Pleasure Tonight. Meanwhile, he could at last afford to buy a home of his own.

Early in 1967 he bought a bow-fronted Victorian house in San Francisco, on Haight Street near the corner of Ashbury. In this neighborhood, property values had been blighted by a years-long battle over a proposed freeway that was never built. Low rents drew students and other young people, who created a laid-back ambience that then attracted musicians and actors. Members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane lived there. It was common to see rock stars, and Walli could walk around almost like a normal person.

The Dewars, the only people Walli knew in San Francisco, expected him to gut the house and modernize it; but he thought the old-fashioned coffered ceilings and wood paneling were cool, and he kept everything, though he had it all painted white.

He installed two luxurious bathrooms and a custom kitchen with a dishwashing machine. He shopped for a television set and a state-of-the-art record player. Otherwise he bought little normal furniture. He put rugs and cushions on the polished wood floors, mattresses and coat rails in the bedrooms. He had no chairs other than six stools of the kind used by guitarists in recording studios.

Both Cameron and Beep Dewar were students at Berkeley, the San Francisco branch of the University of California. Cam was a weirdo who dressed like a middle-aged man and was more conservative than Barry Goldwater. But Beep was cool, and she introduced Walli to her friends, some of whom lived in his neighborhood.

Walli lived here when he was not touring with the group or recording in London. While here, he spent most of his time playing the guitar. To play as apparently effortlessly as he did onstage required a high order of skill, and he never let a day go by without practising for at least a couple of hours. After that he would work on songs: trying out chords, putting together fragments of melody, struggling to decide which were wonderful and which merely tuneful.

He wrote to Karolin once a week. It was difficult to think of things to say. It seemed unkind to tell her about movies and concerts and restaurants of the kind that she could never enjoy.

With Werner's help he had arranged to send monthly payments so that Karolin could support herself and Alice. A modest allowance in a foreign currency bought a lot in East Germany.

Karolin wrote back once a month. She had learned guitar and formed a duo with Lili. They did protest songs and circulated tapes of their music. Otherwise her life seemed empty in comparison with his own, and most of her news was about Alice.

Like most people in the neighborhood, Walli did not lock his doors. Friends and strangers wandered in and out. He kept his favorite guitars in a locked room at the top of the house: otherwise he owned little worth stealing. Once a week, a local store filled his refrigerator and food cupboard with groceries. Guests helped themselves, and when the food ran out Walli went to restaurants.

In the evenings he saw movies and plays, went to hear bands, or hung out with other musicians, drinking beer and smoking marijuana, in their homes or his own. There was a lot to see on the street: impromptu gigs, street theater, and performance art events that people called "happenings." In the summer of 1967 the neighborhood suddenly became famous as the world center of the hippie movement. When schools and colleges closed for the vacation, youngsters from all over America hitchhiked to San Francisco and headed for the corner of Haight and Ashbury. The police decided to turn a blind eye to the widespread use of marijuana and LSD, and to people having sex more or less publicly in Buena Vista Park. And all the girls were taking the

contraceptive pill.

The girls were Walli's only problem.

Tammy and Lisa were typical. They came from Dallas, Texas, on a Greyhound bus. Tammy was blond; Lisa was Hispanic; both were eighteen. They had planned just to ask for Walli's autograph and had been amazed to find his door open and him sitting on a giant cushion on the floor playing an acoustic guitar.

After their bus ride they needed a shower, they said, and he told them to go right ahead. They had showered together without closing the bathroom door, as Walli discovered in an absentminded moment, thinking about harmonies, when he went in there to pee. Was it coincidence that at that very moment Tammy was soaping Lisa's olive-skinned little breasts with her white hands?

Walli left and used the other bathroom, but it took all his strength.

The postman brought his mail, including letters forwarded from London by Mark Batchelor, Plum Nellie's manager. One was addressed in Karolin's handwriting and had an East German stamp. Walli set it aside to read later.

It was a normal day in Haight-Ashbury. A musician friend strolled in and they started writing a song together, but it came to nothing. Dave Williams and Beep Dewar stopped by: Dave was living at her parents' house and looking for a property to buy. A dealer called Jesus dropped off a pound of marijuana and Walli hid most of it in the cabinet of a guitar amplifier. He did not mind sharing; but, if he did not ration it, all of it would be gone by nightfall.

In the evening Walli went to a diner with a few friends, taking Tammy and Lisa. Four years after leaving the Soviet bloc he still marveled at the abundance of food in America: big steaks, juicy hamburgers, piles of French fries, mountainous crisp salads, thick milk shakes, all for next to nothing, and coffee with free refills! Not that such food was expensive in East Germany--it just did not exist there at all. Butchers were always short of the best cuts of meat, and restaurants grumpily served mean portions of unappealing food. Walli had never seen a milk shake there.

Over dinner Walli learned that Lisa's father was a doctor serving the Mexican community in Dallas, and that she hoped to study medicine and follow in his footsteps. Tammy's family ran a profitable gas station, but her brothers would take it over, and she was going to art school to study fashion design with the aim of opening a clothing store. They were ordinary girls, but this was 1967 and they were taking the pill and they wanted to get laid.

It was a warm night. After eating they all went to the park. They sat down with a group of people singing gospel songs. Walli joined in, and no one recognized him in the dark. Tammy was tired after the bus journey, and she lay down with her head in his lap. He stroked her long blond hair and she went to sleep.

A little after midnight, people began to leave. Walli strolled home, not noticing until he got there that Tammy and Lisa were still with him. "Do you to have a place to spend the night?" he said.

Tammy said in her Texas accent: "We could sleep in the park."

Walli said: "You can crash on my floor if you want."

Lisa said: "Would you like to sleep with one of us?"

Tammy said: "Or both?"

Walli smiled. "No, I have a girlfriend, Karolin, back in Berlin."

"Is that true?" said Lisa. "I read it in the paper, but . . ."

"It's true."

"And you have a baby daughter?"

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