Painted Black (22 page)

Brian beamed.

“And now it's mine. All the posh birds of London will powder their noses in it. Maybe we'll use it to snort coke off of. It's a trip, man. Dig it, I own a magic mirror.”

Gysin's voice modulated down a half-step. “Don't make light of it, my friend. You, of all people, should be receptive.”

Brian's eyes were bloodshot. They'd been smoking hash and drinking wine all day, and Bobby knew Brian had to be pretty whacked by now. Bobby became suddenly worried.
Maybe the mirror is fucked up; maybe buying it was a bad idea. Maybe it's evil. Maybe, in the light of day, they'd regret it.

“That thing gives me the creeps, man.” Bobby said. “I think it's evil. I don't want anything to do with it.”

Brian seemed genuinely amused. “Dusty, I'm surprised at you. Evil? Afraid of it, are you?”

Bobby tried to laugh but produced only a dry, coughing sound, like low water pressure through turn-of-the-century English plumbing. Brian eyed Bobby.

“You bloody wimp. You're looking at a man who just recorded a song called “Sympathy for the Devil.” Come on, man. I wrote the book on all that demonic shit. I've been to the edge and looked over the rim, and you're afraid of a fucking mirror?”

“I'm just sayin', if this was a horror movie, you buying that mirror would be act one.”

Chapter Seventeen

Master Musicians of Joujouka

The next day at dawn, Brian, Clovis, Dust Bin Bob, Brion Gysin, and Mahmoud set out for the Rif Mountains. Brian had the mirror with him. Bobby could feel it's unnatural weight when he loaded the bags into the back of the Land Rover. Although Clovis thought the mirror was nothing but a harmless antique, Bobby had begun to believe that the mirror really did harbor some kind of evil magic. He avoided touching it.

Mahmoud drove south through the sunbaked towns and Bedouin camps. Outside Tangier, the road simply vanished beneath their tires, and the desert swallowed them. Off to the south, they could see the blue ridge of foothills to the Rif Mountains. They looked ominous to Bobby. Brian suggested Bobby start taking pictures of the scenery, but every shot he took seemed the same.

“I want you to document everything,” he said.

Hours passed, the mountains drew closer, and the land changed from arid desert to rolling hills. Mahmoud proved to be an excellent driver and navigated the Land Rover through the valleys until the terrain became impassable.

“We'll have to go on foot from here. The village is not far, just a few miles.”

They climbed a mountain pass with the tape recorders on their backs and cameras swinging from their necks. Mahmoud carried two knapsacks full of blank tape and film canisters.

The mirror was in there, among Brian's toiletries. Bobby felt glad he wasn't carrying it. It occupied his thoughts as they walked. The damned thing had been owned by some very strange people over a very long period of time, and Bobby could only conjecture the peculiar things it had reflected over the centuries. Were those images trapped forever behind the warped and uneven looking glass?

They walked into the village of Joujouka at dusk. The festival was already in full swing. Bobby realized at once how far from Western civilization they had come. All the creature comforts they took for granted were absent: lights, electricity, phone service, plumbing, paved roads, restaurants, hotels. Nothing was familiar here. To Bobby, it was off-putting, and he felt even further removed from his home. Burroughs was right; it was like traveling back four thousand years.

None of it fazed Brian. He was in a state of musical euphoria.

“Oh my God, we're missing all this great music! Quick, Clovis, get the equipment set up as soon as you can.”

Gyring calmed him down. “It's okay. The festival goes on for days, and there will be lots of music to record. This is just the warm-up group. Why don't we secure lodging for the night and have some dinner first?”

“You mean that's the support act?”

“Things happen at their own pace here. Your job is to adjust to it, not fight against it. The real ceremonies get under way tonight. You absolutely don't want to miss that.”

Mahmoud had relatives in Joujouka and arranged for them to stay in the house of an uncle. The uncle killed a goat and cooked the meat on skewers over an open fire.

The people of Joujouka were quite taken with Brian's appearance. The man with the long golden hair and colorful clothes drew a crowd wherever he went. They had never seen anything like him. Brian, a mystical shaman in his own right, was one of the Master Musicians of London, a fellow seeker of truth, and he had come all this way to see them. They treated him like royalty. Bobby got the feeling they would still be talking about it years from now; the time the man with the golden hair, the great Brian Jones, came to their village.

As the sun set, Clovis placed his microphones on boom stands around a hilltop, bordered on one side by a high stone wall, which he figured would act as a big resonator. The musicians gathered for their evening performance. Gysin cautioned Bobby and Clovis not to be surprised by some of the aspects of the Pan Festival, namely the dancing, which he said could become quite frenzied.

“Whatever happens, just go along with it. If it gets to be too much for you, duck down and move away.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Before Gysin could answer, the first notes of the evening concert began.

Fifteen rhaita players blew a shrill fanfare on their oboelike double-reed horns and a line of drummers pounded a rumbling, complex beat. Clovis listened through the headphones, adjusting the levels to capture all the instruments. The scene was lit by several bonfires, casting eerie shadows into the night.

Just as he arrived at a workable mix, Clovis's attention was distracted by a naked old man, standing between the drummers and the horn players. At first, he just seemed like one of the throng, another pilgrim here to see the festival. As he began to move, Clovis realized he was much more than an onlooker. He had to be part of the ceremony. The naked old man started to dance, and within minutes he was jumping around like a twenty-year-old London mod on speed. His wrinkled, sunbaked skin shook and shivered as he stomped the ground, testicles bouncing like tiny burlap sacks, penis flapping comically, and a set of large dry hemorrhoids quivering like sea anemones. It was not a pretty sight. He had incredible energy for such an old man.

The music seemed to drive him insane. Something gleamed in the firelight. A large knife appeared in his hand. The band played louder and faster; the old man whirled like a dervish.

Clovis looked at Brian and Gysin who were enthralled by the music and didn't seem to notice the old man. How could they not? A naked old man with a Bowie knife is hard to miss. The knife flashed, and, for a fraction of a second, their eyes met.

Clovis had never seen eyes like that. They were completely crazed, without fear, capable of anything.
The eyes of a maniac.
He wanted to look away, to scream, but the old man held Clovis in his gaze. Then he stuck his tongue out at Clovis and spun away.

What the fuck?

Bobby shot pictures of the old man, his shutter going off at intervals. He'd seen the exchange between Clovis and the naked dancer, but he was too busy trying concentrate on his own job to say anything. Besides, you couldn't talk anyway. The music dominated everything.

Using existing light was damn near impossible, but Bobby was determined to shoot without flash, which he thought would ruin the party. The torches and bonfires provided uneven and constantly flickering light.

All the while, the amazing music pulsed. The band seemed to have doubled in size while Clovis and Bobby weren't looking, because now there were fifty or so musicians going great guns. Clovis remembered Gysin saying that once the music started, everything else stopped. He said it would be hard to concentrate; that the trancelike music sucked you in, that to fight it would make you insane.

Clovis believed him. The horns cried and ululated, like centuries of grieving Arab women, shrieking above the cacophonous wall of sound. Clovis acted as a stone age Phil Spector with the four-thousand-year-old wall of sound mix. He kept checking the levels of the microphones so they wouldn't distort. He was getting a good clean signal.

The lack of anything resembling a standard Western melody was disconcerting. Suddenly, Clovis was uneasy. The old man was on the move now, the knife between his teeth.

The sound of a camera clicking distracted Clovis enough to notice Bobby still shooting pictures. Clovis glanced at Bobby and nodded. Bobby nodded back.

Yeah, you said there would be weird shit. How weird can it get?

What happened next took them all by surprise.

Someone released a terrified goat into the crowd. The people moved back, forming a circle, as the trapped goat ran from side to side, frantic to escape. After much dancing, the old man jumped on the goat and pretended to hump it. He reached around with the knife, and with one practiced motion, slit the belly of the goat open. Blood and entrails spilled out onto the ground. The music hit another crescendo. The goat bucked one last time, then died twitching in the old man's arms.

The music was so loud it was impossible to think, louder than a rock band, louder than the Stones themselves. But it wasn't just volume of sound, it was
psychically loud
, broadcasting into their brains at fifty thousand watts on the astral plane.

The old man laid the goat on the ground and began to remove its internal organs. Bobby and Clovis gagged more than once, but the tapes kept rolling and the band kept playing. While they watched, the old man picked up the freshly skinned goat and got inside the carcass. It draped over his shoulders, the goat's head above his head, the hooves hanging uselessly, dripping blood. He began to dance again.

Gysin looked at Bobby and mouthed the words, “Master of Skins.”

The old man in the goatskin danced for hours. When, at last, he threw it off, he was covered in blood mixed with goat fat. At one point during a frenzied moment of particularly intense music, the old man danced over to Brian.

He writhed before Brian like an eel with an arrow in its head. Brian looked on, a bemused expression on his face. The old man keyed on Brian for a while, then moved on. He couldn't spook him. The Golden Stone never flinched.

The music lasted until dawn. Clovis used up most of the tape he had with him. They were exhausted and their heads throbbed. The incessant music had been such a driving force during the night, now its absence was deafening. Clovis took some aspirin with a swallow of brackish water and trudged back to their host's house. Brian, Clovis, and Dust Bin Bob crashed on the floor, too tired to move. Conversation evaporated. The Pipes of Pan had drained them body and soul.

The next day, Brian was up early. “Wake up, Clovis. A new day has begun. There's much to do.”

“What the hell time is it? My watch has stopped.”

Brian shrugged. “I don't wear a watch, man. Time is a bummer.”

Time is a bummer?

“Is there any food around? I'm starving.”

“Yeah, Gysin's gone to fetch some breakfast. I suppose it would be too much to ask for some bacon butties.”

Bobby sat up. “Did somebody say bacon butties? That sounds wonderful.”

Clovis laughed. “I hear the goat's good.”

Brian lit a cigarette and squinted at Clovis and Bobby through the smoke.

“Could you believe that old man last night?”

Bobby shook his head. “That was insane.”

“Did you take pictures?”

“Hundreds.” Bobby sniffed his fingers. The aroma of goat turned his stomach. “I got everything: sight, sound … and, unfortunately, smell.”

Gysin and Mahmoud entered with bowls of rice and steaming tea.

“Breakfast is served.”

Brian said, “What was all that last night about the Master of Skins?”

Gysin settled next to Brian.

“That was the reenactment of the legend of Bou Jeloud. The Master of Skins is supposed to be the god Pan himself, half-man, half-goat. It goes way back to before the time when Saint Sidi Ahmed Sheikh introduced Islam to this region around eight hundred AD. He gave moral authority to the Master Musicians of Joujouka. Since then, they've been venerated. They are a living link to the Holy One. But in fact, they are pre-Christian and pre-Islam. They go all the way back to the time of the Pyramids. There's no one else like them in the world.”

“I'm sure the goat didn't appreciate it,” Bobby said.

Gysin raised an eyebrow. “The goat was chosen. It was a great honor.”

“Tell that to the goat.”

Brian raised his hand, as if in school. “Question? Will there be more music to record today?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Brian looked at Clovis. “How much tape is left?”

“I used almost half of it last night. My guess is we'll be able to record another four reels, if we conserve.”

“Good. That's settled, then.”

Brian clapped his hands together. He turned to Gysin. “All right, man. Let's talk about mirror gazing.”

Gysin smiled. “Yes, of course. That intrigues you, doesn't it? The mirror you bought is very powerful. You want to try it out? I can understand that. Today is the last day of music. Why don't we stay tomorrow, and I'll show you the technique.”

They spent the day recording music. The old man did not make an appearance. Clovis used every inch of tape he had, filling each with the weird, hypnotic keening of the horns and the raging cadence of the drums. If you listened to it, it drove you crazy; if you didn't listen to it, it drove you crazy. It was impossible to tune out. When the second night of music was over, Clovis felt relieved. He'd done his job. Brian seemed satisfied.

Gysin acted as tour guide through the ancient stones of Joujouka, answering Brian's questions and pointing out sacred sights. It seemed that almost everyone in the village was a musician related to the Attar family.

Brian Jones walked through the town like a holy man. People wanted to touch him, to be near him, to gaze upon him. He smiled and waved, blond hair radiating in the sunlight.

During the afternoon, Clovis began to feel sick. Something he'd eaten (possibly the goat) didn't agree with him. His stomach began to gurgle and heave. He developed terrible diarrhea. He went back to the room they had slept in and laid down on the dirt floor in his sleeping bag. He began to shiver.

Bobby, ever prepared, brought some Pepto-Bismol along with aspirin in his toiletries. He gave some to Clovis and told him to rest.

Dust Bin Bob turned to Brian and said, “Clovis is pretty sick. We have to make sure he's hydrated, but the water might be bad. I suppose we could boil it.”

“We better keep an eye on him. It would be a bummer to have a medical emergency way out here.”

Bobby looked at Brian.

“Could you postpone the mirror gazing? I don't want to do it without Clovis.”

Brian made a face. “Are you scared? Come on Bobby, it's just a mirror.”

“Don't lie to me, man. It's much more than a mirror.”

The mirror gazing began at dusk. After eating a few of Mahmoud's hash cookies, Brian was anxious to try it. In a room lit by dozens of candles, Gysin explained the technique. He sat Brian on some pillows on the floor and placed the mirror in front of him so his face filled the glass.