One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (34 page)

Temporarily satisfied with the outcome of the joust, the two village genii thrust down their stone tablets and implements and walked upright to the bar, where Marike was now cleaning the tiled floor with kerosene. Theology being hot stuff, Loon now wielded an icy Ichnusa or three, whilst Walter the Beardo picked at his lips and gingerly quaffed a glass of white wine. Outside, meanwhile, I unwatered sweated cobs at the real idea of freedom for the Judge. What would happen to this part of the world?

And with that, the surly Cowtown Unslutter led his Bible Class out of the meeting room, leaving Loon to request some black coffee from Marike and me to stalk the fucker. I peeped through the door, only opened a crack, and stared into the main room. Was this my chance? Then this tall, ugly long-haired Jesus Freak of our Nightmares jumped up and immediately started searching about for any remaining Caballero ciggies still hanging about the coffee table. But Loon was out of luck. So, picking up my bag, he thoughtlessly emptied all of its dubious contents right across the most stinky and most recently cleaned part of the floor, scattering my socks, my shirt, my kecks, even my sheaf of graffiti stencils a fair old distance. Shit, Kerosene City, you cunt. Then this lanky knobshine got down on his hands and knees and properly started eyeballing all of my stuff. As he unpacked all of the crappy, ancient paint-caked stencils, Loon began to cough, probably on account of being so near those stinky flagstones. Now looking for ways to grab my stuff back, I stared around the room. But although this was the ground floor, so steep is Fonni that the land dropped away beyond the French windows, which opened out on to a full-sized balcony – quite an extravagant affair overlooked by
low trees and south-facing enough to be catching the sun even at this late hour.

Then, through the window came a blast of sunlight and I saw it. I finally clocked it: the magic cloak. Shit, slung right across the balcony was a washing line pegged up with endless men’s socks. What? Twenty at least. But there was a big gap in the middle where nothing hung. So what. When the sun’s rays blasted the room momentarily, however, my eyes were instantly drawn to the opposite wall, where the shadow of the washing line revealed it to be carrying not just socks but one very magic and very invisible cloak hanging low at the centre. Still utterly oblivious to my presence, Loon stood up and wandered over to the tin bar, where he rummaged and poked about for any last remaining pack of Caballero ciggies. But they were all long gone. So now he took out a plastic yellow wallet of rolling tobacco, put a single skinner together and poured out a can of Ichnusa into a long-stemmed glass. Then he lit the cigarette. It might have been ten seconds, it was probably twenty, but it was true and it hit me like a bolt from the blue! Veritably, the pong from that roll-up cigarette was the self-same pong of Besty the Buggerer, our kidnapper from Macomér! Loon! Suddenly I knew that cough! Loon was our man! Suddenly I knew that yellow tobacco pouch – Van Nelle Zware Shag! I’d not smelled this stink since summer 1990 in the Fascist Cheese Factory. In all that time, I’d just presumed it was some cheap Sardinian stuff. Then I remembered Exterveen. Exterveen! How I remembered Exterveen! And thus, now I remembered Loon
again
… this time from Slag Van Blowdriver! Holy Moly, the fucking cook and bottle-washer!

Loon having now returned to my requisitioned stuff, the twat crouched down on his hands and knees rifling once again
through everything I still owned. Fearful that Marike would return with the coffee, however, I danced about outside the door desperate to seize Jim Feather’s cloak from the washing line. But then I had a sudden and very terrible idea. I can’t believe it even entered my mind, but this was after all Loon the Gimp, Loon the Rapist. This was the man who had punished me with fisticuffs and pummellings. This was the man who had beaten and raped Mick and the twins. And now he was kneeling oblivious just fifteen feet away from me, the cloak hanging on the balcony just two feet beyond that. I seized my chance, I took my time, I did my deed. Suddenly, I stepped briskly into the room and walked right up behind Loon, who, presuming that it must be Marike with the coffee, didn’t even bother looking up. Then, I breezily removed the magic cloak from its line, stepped up on to the old leather sofa between Loon and the balcony and pulled out from my kecks pocket Giampaolo’s box of Coughlan’s Waterproof Matches. What they’d been through! Still Loon remained far too engrossed in my stuff, my kerosene-soaked stuff, to have even half a mind on his surroundings. And so with ne’er more ado I lit that match on first strike and …

But before I could even enact my murderous plan, so did the Gods take control. For, no more than a microsecond after I had set the match aflame, so did that village idiot thoughtlessly flick not just the ash but the whole tip of his Van Nelle roll-up directly on to Marike’s polished floor, which lit up across the room, instantly engulfing all of my worldly possessions
plus
that coughing kneeling asshole who crouched amidst it all. On fire and on his hands-and-knees, Loon – now shrieking in agony – flailed about then flipped over on to his back. But that just made the flaming worse: it basted the fucker. Where’s the paraffin, Nero? I leaped upon the balcony from the leather sofa,
stuffed the magic cloak into my shirt, then turned around and stood watching that cunt burn. Watched that fireman flame out. Watched that flaming burn-out until the coffee arrived. Indeed, only Marike’s horrified return signalled my exit. Whereupon I shinned down the drainpipe, donned the magic cloak myself, then picked my euphoric way through the woods back towards our parked-up hearse, all-the-while enchanted by the synthesizers and wild vocal acrobatics of Neon Sardinia still doing stereophonic battle across the valleys. Score, score, a thousand times score!

The arsonist murderer let off the hook by the stupidity of his victim? I howled for the deaths of Brent and Dean, for the psychic destruction of Mick – and I read Loon’s cleansing fire as cosmic justice. I would have done it, your honour, but some great facilitator took the blame instead. Dance by the light of the bridges you burn. That was me. Now was my theme song ‘I Who Have Nothing’. Now was my time running out, and tomorrow? My last tomorrow. Looking through things rather than at them, I sat in the front passenger seat with my long legs stretched straight out into the footwells of the hearse – and
still
there was room enough left for the wearing of five-inch Gene Simmons platforms! Everything here was gargantuan, no less. And now I was gargantuan. But what, with the death of Loon, had I become? What stage of humanity had I just entered? This past day had brought together some kind of psychic team: Anna, Giampaolo, Jim and the Reverend … When I’d collided with Sardinia two days previously, well, who then could have foreseen my encounters with people ready to rally to my cause! And who could have imagined upon our arrival in Fonni that Loon’s nose would have still been so cosmically attuned to me? Ha! I’d plucked that sucker right out of the ether, suckered that clucker and made him Duck. Oh, sweet scent of victory, heaven-sent opportunity invoked through persistence only. Well, that and sheer cosmic luck.

Still in plenty of time to deliver the hearse to Lanusei, Anna and I reached the great tombs of Madau just as the early evening light was scorching and toasting the distant surrounding hilltops that ringed the proud agricultural plateau on to which we now climbed. A snaking serpentine portion of the old 389 had been retained as a link road up to the sites: three great southeast-facing tombs overlooking the Madau Valley. These tombs were of the southern stone archway variety, but I didn’t care; it was convenient to our journey and a place to celebrate. Once we’d pulled off the road, however, Blessèd Anna decided that the presence of the hearse would attract casual viewers, even ne’er-do-wells. So next she steered the car right up the steep trackway to the summit of the field’s edge, whilst I stood on the main road making sure the beast would be entirely out of sight to passing motorists. Then, I raced up the rise and watched Anna open-mouthed from behind the drystone wall, watched as this picture of Sardu beauty stood inhaling the enormous horizons. Wow. Now I hauled open the Buick’s colossal rear barn door on its three external barn hinges and climbed up into the beast’s dead centre. I pulled out Giampaolo’s sofa bed and pine coffee table, and set them up on the ground outside as though for a tailgate picnic. Thus was the vast empty rear of the hearse transformed into a miniature living room with the best view in the world. Herein did I now loll and recline in great spirits. Through the high, rounded, heavily-tinted windows on either side, the deepest purple skies showcased at most three tiny white dollops of cloud each, whilst through the wide open metal barn door ahead I was dazzled by a northwesterly flash of azure skies and pale green pastures uninterrupted all the way to
the knobbly black horizons of Mts Arbu, Terralba and Spada. Colossal scenes, mentalising views. Bootless now and stretched right out: recumbent here in the hearse I was – free from the fuckers, at least temporarily. Here I could kickback in anger.

But Blessèd Anna was eager to investigate the three monuments, and quickly disappeared through the stile at the field’s edge, skipping down the thirty or so metres to the site entrance. Far far to the north: a change in the sky. Perhaps a storm was brewing. Giampaolo had anticipated as much. But nothing could spoil the loveliness of this day. Sweet relief that I was not on the run for murder. Now I would go to my grave in that same state. Or would I? My current plans for retribution spoke otherwise. Moreoever, the success of today’s ‘Grand Loonacy’ was already fuelling my mind as regards Opposite’s Grand Opening tomorrow. Kick-off? 3pm. Those utter fucking bastards. But as I could hardly allow Blessèd Anna to be a party to any of my inner murderous musings, I decided to hang fire regarding any of tomorrow’s plans. I decided that my bloodlust must – for the time being at least – remain satisfied with Loon’s spectacular exit alone.

Thus, I remained aloof and indisposed in the back of the hearse, not daydreaming of retribution, not bemoaning my loss of all my worldly goods, but instead glorying in all of my current situations: psychic, geographical, even visual. Whoa. For now I clocked Anna’s return from her reconnaissance mission at the tombs and how I sighed. Yes, radiating gorgeousness had become something fairly effortless for Ms Sardinia, but now? Now she straddled the wooden stile into our field in a manner so becoming to a woman that I coughed, choked, gagged at her approach. Sweet beautiful life. And in this spectacular fashion, Anna’s exhilarating return roused my dormant carcass from the
rear of the hearse, goaded me out of my simple delighted serenity at having witnessed Loon’s Extinction, and sent me off to explore these three great monuments of Madau which presided like sphinxes over that river valley’s spectacular views.

The two largest tombs sat side-by-side, located at the highest point of a delightful walled enclosure, the third far smaller monument pushed off to one side. But now I had a Madau Vision, a vast repeat experience of that occurrence near the Altar of Punishment whilst returning on foot to Su Talleri. Again I saw myself as Old Tüpp being carried high atop some grand contraption, carried by four tall men up the Madau Valley towards these three tombs. I stared down into the valley. What meant these things? But then I became distracted again by the returning loveliness of Blessèd Anna who – not wishing to distract my solitary musings – sat down quietly, almost primly, knees together on the raised stone façade of the westernmost tomb. Distracting? Anna? Why, her face was as radiant as the sun, her lustrous black hair as smooth as obsidian, her lithe body as curved as a classical guitar, her legs as long as a LaMonte Young song. Sweet beautiful life, be my guide, by my side.

Now in meditational mindset, I droned a life-affirming drone. Auuuummmmmm. Now, without the wherewithal to photograph Blessèd Anna, I-Who-Have-Nothing stood up from my squat and walked over to stand precisely where I would have stood had I still owned a camera phone, which I didn’t. Nevertheless, as I jumped atop the main façade stones in order to grab a better perspective of the beautiful lady, I was struck by the sheer size of this so-called later tomb: its twenty-metre chamber and its great pavement of surrounding precinct stones. Now I stood upon those entrance stones, aiming dramatically with both hands directly downwards at the loveliest lady: Primed
and loaded and pointing at you! Zoom! Again a Vision! Now, opening out before me, I saw Sardinia: the Sardinian order of things declaring themselves right below me! See Blessèd Anna, see! Right below her splendid seated posterior did I witness a lost carved Doorway lying recumbent below this present tomb. Why, the ancients had merely constructed it upon one far far earlier! But even as I informed Anna, attempted to inform Anna of the burnished, carved Doorway upon which she rested, even as she traced her fingers around those long-lost carvings, so did the radiance of that shining Doorway engulf me, engulf me, engulf me. Before me enthralling light. Before me this Doorway shining. And then behind me in fearsome contrast a weather cloud of fog did gather. Hunched up round my shoulders, bunched up round my head: woolly and numbing. Blinded to everything was I, save for this lava gateway ahead. Now, into its spiralling tunnel was I drawn, seered then branded my eyeballs with its Sun Radiance. This then was the blinding light symphony into which – like some titanic pylon atop some World Cliff – I was now felled, toppled, tumbled …