"You were right, Janice. I feel a lot better now," he said, smiling broadly.
No work was being done in the small house in Fife Park that day. Mondo and Weird mooched around the music room, but guitar and drums didn't make for a great combo and Alex was clearly not about to join them. He lay on his bed, trying to work out his feelings about what had happened to them all. He'd always wondered why Ziggy had been so reluctant to share his secret with the other two. Deep down, Alex believed they would accept it because they knew Ziggy too well not to. But he'd underestimated the power of knee-jerk bigotry. He didn't like what their reaction said about his friends. And that called into question his own judgment. What was he doing, investing so much time and energy in people who were, at bottom, as narrow-minded as scum like Brian Duff? On their way to the ambulance, Ziggy had whispered in Alex's ear what had happened. What scared Alex was the thought that his friends shared the same prejudices.
OK, Weird and Mondo weren't about to go out and beat up gay men for want of something better to do of an evening. But not everyone in Berlin had been part of Kristallnacht. And look where that had led. By sharing the same position of intolerance, you gave tacit support to the extremists. In order for evil to triumph, Alex remembered, it is necessary only that good men do nothing.
He could almost understand Weird's position. He'd dug himself in with a bunch of fundamentalists who required that you had to swallow the entire doctrine whole. You couldn't opt out of the bits that didn't suit you.
But there was no excuse for Mondo. The way he felt right now, Alex didn't even want to sit down at the same table with him.
It was all coming apart at the seams, and he didn't know how to stop it.
He heard the sound of the front door opening, and he was out of bed and down the stairs in seconds. Ziggy leaned against the wall, a wobbly smile on his face. "Shouldn't you be in the hospital?" Alex asked.
"They wanted to keep me in for observation. But I can do my own obs. There's no need for me to be cluttering up a bed."
Alex helped him through to the kitchen and put the kettle on. "I thought you had hypothermia?"
"Only very mildly. It's not like I had frostbite or anything. They got my core temperature back up, so that's OK. I've not got any broken bones, just bruises. I'm not passing blood, so my kidneys are fine. I'd rather suffer in my own bed than have doctors and nurses poking at me, making jokes about medics who can't heal themselves."
Footsteps on the stairs, then Mondo and Weird appeared in the doorway, looking sheepish. "Good to see you, man," Weird said.
"Aye," Mondo agreed. "What the hell happened?"
"They know, Ziggy," Alex cut in.
"You told them?" The accusation came out sounding tired rather than angry.
"Maclennan told us," Mondo said sharply. "He just confirmed it."
"Fine," Ziggy said. "I don't expect Duff and his Neanderthal buddies were looking for me in particular. I think they'd just gone out for a bit of queer-bashing and they happened to come across me and this other guy down by St. Mary's Church."
"You were having sex in the church?" Weird sounded appalled.
"It's a ruin," Alex said. "It's not exactly consecrated ground." Weird looked as if he was going to say more, but the look on Alex's face stopped him in his tracks.
"You were having sex with a total stranger out in the open on a freezing winter night?" Mondo spoke with a mixture of disgust and contempt.
Ziggy gave him a long considering look. "Would you rather I'd brought him back here?" Mondo said nothing. "No, I thought not. Unlike the stream of strange women you inflict on us on a regular basis."
"That's different," Mondo said, shifting from one foot to the other.
"Why?"
"Well, it's not illegal, for a start," he said.
"Thanks for your support, Mondo." Ziggy got to his feet, slowly and precariously, like an old man. "I'm going to bed."
"You still haven't told us what happened," Weird said, sensitive to atmosphere as ever.
"When they realized it was me, Duff wanted me to confess. When I wouldn't confess, they tied me up and lowered me down the Bottle Dungeon. It was not the best night