One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (13 page)

My mind danced, my brain pirouetted and the heavens rained with confetti. Glory be. I wrote songs in my head. And I
never
wrote songs, so I didn’t write them down. These were all for me. And I sung them again and again and again – over in my head as we sped along. And I spied overhead – or I thought I spied – some Antonioni with cameras and lights. Some spectral director, some faerie Fellini was tracking us, endlessly monitoring our progress as we edged on to the rickety road southwest towards Mílis. Anna patted her sheaf of dashboard instructions, and handed the top one to me. But now although scooting along at ne’er but a trundle, we soon pulled up at a big, confident Italian Heritage sign pointing directly at the nearest hill:
Goronna
. Looking good, Sant Anna!

For the next forty minutes, we stumbled around the foothills of Goronna, attempting to find a path of least resistance to the
summit. But fieldwalls and barbed-wire fences prevailed at all points, and again and again we found ourselves funnelled back to the Heritage sign. Then, as we approached a low ancient dolmen suddenly revealed in the scrubby vegetation, I cried out to Anna and gestured heavenwards. Whence did that enormous and intimidating storm suddenly spring? But she was having none of it.

I didn’t care either way. Our failure thus far had been so epic that we were still no more than fifty paces from Albert Camus’ Ruin. Besides, my new Inner Soundtrack was burnished and fabulous, radiating sonic light in manic doses. I was singing my own songs from my own heart for the first time in my life. I’d tried so many times to write songs. But without the Muse, I had nothing but the Voice. And yet now, even as that Titanic storm closed in on us from the north, it was all I could do to refrain from harmonising with it volubly and ecstatically. Aummmmmmmmm! Testing the Gods? Contesting the Gods?

Now, cataclysmic lightning raged upon Goronna’s summit. What an ancient Seat of Power! An Armada of clouds disgorged their water bombs that did, in turn, create cascading rivulets down every side of this parchèd ancient eminence. Yet, even still did the pair of us stand fast. For we shared right there beside the dolmen some greater Cosmic Determination. And by the storm’s end, although not one drop of rain had fallen upon either of us, nevertheless was the capstone of our dolmen neighbour soaked through and even bubbling with tiny pools of rainwater. Whoa! Behind us sat the Facel Vega still dusty upon its parchèd grass verge. Before us all was awash, the storm
having annexed a great sodden frontier between Goronna and ourselves. But the downpour had revealed several dates printed upon the metal plaque affixed to ye dripping dolmen. And when Anna read those Italian words, she screamed.

Praise Blessèd Anna. For now, armed with her super synchronous information, I felt destined to bring away something of true significance from this strangest of Sardinian Missions. And as we set off once more up Goronna’s now waterlogged hillside, Anna delivered to me all kinds of bizarre World Facts about ‘her birthday’ June 10th, 1976: of how Bigfoot had been spotted running across a Canadian highway near the town of McBride; of how an American kid named Tim Kneale had won the 49th National Spelling Contest with the word ‘narcolepsy’; and of how Italian singer Fabrizio Arra from the huge band Neon
Sardinia had – after a big festival in Fonni – been kidnapped by insulted football fans from nearby F.C. Folgore Mamoiada. What a rum bunch of birthday facts she’d collected. Perhaps Brent and Dean truly
had
been born under a Bad Sign. But where then would that leave Anna?

Twenty-five minutes later, high up in the sodden and viciously thorny vegetation, we glimpsed at last the great Doorway of Goronna winking at us mysteriously from its timeless vantage point just fifty metres along the flattened summit. By directing our assault vertically this time – the pair of us now possessed by a wholly unreasonable post-storm alacrity – Anna and I had clambered to the summit with four stupendous vaults over those previously insurmountable barbed-wire fieldwalls. Like a couple of mountain goats, we were! And now, through the thick bushes and vegetation, I could tell that the outer stonewalls of Goronna’s gargantuan façade were enclosed by a great entrance forecourt – what a temple this once had been! Just as we were making our delighted approach, however, Anna suddenly stopped in her tracks.

Now walking arm-in-arm, Anna and I continued across that impressive forecourt and up to the great megalithic façade. Both of us kneeled down gingerly in the sodden sand and grit, then I ducked my head to peer into the blackness of Goronna’s hefty carved Doorway, Anna all the while keeping a careful hold on my left hand. More confidently now, I pushed my head and shoulders forwards into the body of the monument itself.

Ssssssssssssssssssschwwwumppppp! My head? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Where is my head? Aaaaaaaaaaah! Where is my body? Where are my thoughts? Aaaaaaaaah! But already my disconnected head was rolling forwards down the passageway, severed by some mighty megalithic guillotine. And my screams as I bounced – as my severed head crashed and was dashed into eggshells – did rupture forever the sleep of this still-dozing hillside. And then came the roar of a Creature so vast it could only have been Sardinia Itself – the groans of this island disgorging themselves through the geological fissures accessed by Goronna’s bold ancient architects. On and on down through the passage, still my battered bonce did bump and bounce and crash. I cried out speechless: I had no lungs. Full tilt, I smashed through Wonders, Whys and Wherefores – debated ancient questions long since answered – propelled at such a Cosmic Speed as carved new valleys through granite mountain ranges and cleaved new riverbeds clear across deserts. Backwards and backwards and always backwards I sped. Until at last in a blur, and at such a frantic rate, further and further out into the past, my velocity reached such a dreadful bate at last …

… that I span out of Consciousness into Time itself.

Had I missed something? It certainly looked urgent. All eyes were upon me, so I was not quick to concur. A dozen sages sat around my carved stalagmite altar, warming their feet on the glowing arc of stone hearths. What did these ageing fools expect? Permitting into Ashop those who yearned only to grow food was tantamount to treason against Old Tüpp himself. Then, out of the darkness through my cavern shone the blue light of Luno))), as he tracked across the night sky. A sign! I rose from my bed of feathers and ephedra heads so as to make my declaration more clear.

I fell back into the great stone bed and quaffed down a most excellent honeyed ephedra brew that sent Sing to visit my toes and Song to visit my fingertips. The dwarf who served me I called back with great gusto.

The horrified dwarf rushed off down the hillside. But I was seized by the warming liquor of the honeyed ephedra brew and strode over to my sunken bath. There, I tore at the lavish caked ephedra ring that clung like a tidemark around its steep sides, and I crammed ephedra patties into my cheeks until I resembled a beaver. Look at me, I’m Old Dam! Then around the sages I danced and caroused, pointing my index finger at Old Tüpp’s Lieutenant-Librarian, the Oberst.

Pah! I knew how the Oberst resented my Sacred Piss and everyone’s dedication to it. And I due’d why he clung to The Book’s great importance. This hoity-toity manner thus allowed him to secure his place here: just. Whereas I – being the single repository of ephedra in all of Ashop – was
more
even than Old Tüpp’s heir: I was the pitchoeur from which all drunk. Mine was the
dream into which All sunk. I was the living conduit, the King Bee from whom everyone drew their own draught of heady ephedra brew. Not for free Ashopians the reindeer’s piss so belovèd of the Lapps. No, only the heady urine wine of Royalty was good enough for the blessèd people of Navio, the star-shaped people of Mam Tor, the radiant people from the Land of Ashop. And I alone of all Ashopians had direct knowledge of ephedra, and a free access to its wonders. And those blessèd souls and sages to whom I would bequeath a drop? Why, that would become – and for the rest of their lives – their single chitter-chat. But now I tired of talk with fools, even of monologues such as these.

Then, as the Oberst directed the other sages out of my cavern, the dwarf known as Dràwf arrived carrying two large pitchoeurs of the honeyed ephedra brew, behind him several more retainers carried each two pitchoeurs a-piece. I distributed a brew to each of the sages and raised my pitchoeur aloft.

Without kerfuffle at sunrise I woke, warmed by the hot healing hands of Sunno))), who toxicated brightly through my cavern. In here, She did toe the daylight. Dressed up already in night furs, I added my daylight coat-of-hide then quaffed two warmed pitchoeurs of the Righteous until I was about well fed. The dwarf known as Dràwf was already at my toilet, removing yesterday’s turds so as to accommodate today’s, which lay in my back passage fresh for delivery. A royal turd is not a sacred thing, though there remain even today locals nearby who would steal those putrid remnants, searching for signs divine, Grand Vestiges of the arse-royal who laid them. Never malevolent are these thieves, merely ignorant misunderstanders of the Workings of Things.

Assembling nointeen of my great Select – the tallest, the broadest I favoured, and each of them armed – we set off downhill along Odin’s Sitch, the underfoot laying a grand pace for travel. At the throne of Old Tüpp, we saluted Sunno))) and my father declaimed from atop his contraption. The greatness of Ashop, its future he rested upon my broad shoulders. Then through Navio we strode, we waved each one of us at ladies and at children who did dance. Some young men made play – each disguisèd as Old Tüpp himself – alongside us askance did they stare with a meta-quizzical eye.

Then, at the banks of placid River Noe, we stepped with trust into rugged boats of balsa that delivered us downstream at astonishing pace. Is there control in river rafting along River Noe? I asked this question of our captain, but he – fearful of providing an answer inferior to the Holy One – edged his bets with shoulder shrugs and beard tugs. At last, he discovered
sufficient boldness to speak. Soeur, our river is controlled by Lucky, he declared. Wherever we may travel, first his permission we require. Sometimes the price of the River Noe journey adds up to less than a man. Often there is waste, though, and many must suffer sacrifice as the price of our ride. But the boats of balsa hollow and strong delivered us hurriedly southwards along till we reached where the Ashop Fleet lay moored at the great quay to the doorway of Derwent – such a river. No less than twenty extraordinary balsa rafts were there beached high above the terrifying confluence of Ashop’s greatest oaken river of all, whereupon each of my Select that watched the Derwent fearfully, soon in praise of human sacrifice began to speak, and loudly. But although I felt somewhat dizzy and sick, as though in ephedra I had steeped too long, too invigorated was I – by the canny construction and impressive size of those River Derwent watercraft – to yield easily to the notion of human sacrifice. No, there could be no token payments. For I was Bjond of Ashop, and of Ephedra, too. And so, although bumpty would be the Derwent’s riverboat ride, unto my queasy stomach I could not yield. And thus did we exchange the backwaters of sleepy River Noe for that feisty bucking bronco that ravages River Derwent. And thus,
without
human sacrifice did I step grandly upon this next new curious water vehicle. Then, as we surged swiftly past the Law Seat of Bar’s Low, I raised my arms aloft and urged our fleet of watercraft onwards, signalling that here was the Hedge of Our World. Beyond this point Old Tüpp’s laws did not obtain. Beyond this point perhaps even a tall man could hold great office. And to my Select I issued this salutary warning: beyond Ashop, be always aware of these treacherous shifts of meaning. From here, the term Far Reigners would be applied to us.