The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag (24 page)

Along the lowland shores.

When questioned of his diggings,

He said, though people jeered,

That he was searching ceaselessly

For Agamemnon’s beard.

‘A worthy prize,’ said brother Mike,

He hoping for a share,

‘I’ll lend you my new mountain bike,

‘With saddle bags to spare.’

So Derek rode to Canterbury,

Parked his bike and spade,

And asked the bishop his advice.

‘I dunno, son,’ he said.

But if you keep searching hard enough for something,

There’s a good chance you’ll eventually find it.

17

Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.

PHYLLIS
DILLER

I didn’t get too angry
with Arthur Thickett. After all, it really wasn’t his fault that he was in 1965
and I was in 1997. So I didn’t get too angry. Violent, yes. I
did
get
violent.

But he
took it like the English gent he was. And after the natives returned and
patched up his bruises, he introduced me to them as his brother Derek. We got
along very well, Arthur and I. He was an interesting fellow, and I think he
quite enjoyed having me for company. I told him all about the Hippy Trail and
Woodstock, and he said he’d probably give them a go. And he told me all about
the mysterious drug from the Amazon and lucid dreaming.

It did
come as quite a revelation to learn that the world of so-called cyberspace, which
I now inhabited, was the same world that we visit in our dreams, or when we do
hallucinogenic drugs or have a mystical experience. Arthur referred to it as
the
weird space,
the
mundus magicus.
Not a physical place, but
real none the less.

Little
did I know that ten years from now I would be shouting these truths at a doctor
in the Conspiracy Theorists’ Correctional Facility. And that this doctor would
not believe a word.

What do
you know about voodoo?’ I asked Arthur, as we sat upon a rock diddling our toes
in the ocean.

‘I
spent three years in Haiti,’ said Mr Thickett, ‘back in the late Forties. I
learned what I could, but a white face isn’t welcome at the ceremonies.’

What do
you know about Maîtresse Ezilée?’

‘Enough
to avoid rummaging in her handbag.’

‘Go on.’

Well,
firstly voodoo is not a cult like John Frum. John Frum is based on a
misconception. Voodoo is a full-blown religion with a pantheon of gods. What is
fascinating about voodoo is that it did not stem from Africa. It was not
imported, it sprang into being in a complete form on Haiti. But each voodoo god
echoes a previous god in another religion. Maîtresse Ezilée is a good example.
She echoes the Virgin Mary. But the Virgin Mary of course is an echo of
previous female divinities.’

‘You
think all religions share a common origin?’

‘That’s
a popularly held belief, but I don’t subscribe to it. What if Maîtresse Ezilée
is the Virgin Mary in her latest incarnation? What if all the voodoo gods were
previously other gods known by other names?’

What would
be the point? Why would gods do that?’

‘Ah,’
said Arthur, ‘the point is this. The voodoo gods are living gods. They’re right
here and now on earth. The voodoo priests and priestesses commune with them
daily. You don’t do that in other religions. Christians may talk about being “filled
with the spirit”, but Jesus doesn’t come into their living rooms for a cup of
tea and a chat. Christians know where Jesus is, he’s in heaven.’

‘But
not with his mum, if she’s in Haiti.’

‘Perhaps
they take it in turns,’ said Arthur. What is also interesting is to trace the
roots of each religion. Some, as we all know, are spread on the “conquer and
convert” principle. But each religion has an exact point of origin where it
sprang into being. You can mark them on a map of the world. And I don’t think
there’s anything random about it. It’s as if the gods choose a particular place
for a particular reason. But, before you ask, I have no idea what this reason
might be.’

‘You’ve
clearly given it a lot of thought,’ I said. ‘Tell me some more about Maîtresse
Ezilée.’

‘She’s
an odd one. On the one hand she’s your standard mother goddess, her followers
are her children, she rewards the righteous and punishes the unrighteous. But
then you have all this business about her bag.’

‘The voodoo
handbag.’

‘She is
supposed to carry this bag made from skulls. In the centre of it is a human
skull, but all around are other skulls which are not human.’

‘Animal
skulls.’

‘Not
animal. Beings from the spirit world. The bag has a cult following of its own.
It is venerated as something apart.’

‘Isn’t
it supposed to be able to transport you into the spirit world?’

‘On a
one-way trip, I’d have thought. It’s rumoured that human sacrifices are made to
the bag.’

‘I’ve
heard such rumours. But the handbag is a real thing, it’s physical, you could
walk up and touch it?’

‘I
wouldn’t recommend that. But it is real. It’s not some legend. It’s an actual
artefact. I’ve never seen it myself, but I have a friend who told me that a
friend of his once saw it.’

Well,
you don’t argue with evidence like that.’

‘So
what is your interest in Maîtresse Ezilée and her voodoo handbag?’

‘It’s
all part of the Billy Barnes business. Billy’s mother claims that the handbag
has been held in protection by her family for several generations. Billy went
missing, and then the handbag, shortly afterwards.’

‘And
you think that this Billy Barnes might have it?’

‘He’d
apparently been feeding it with bits of his granny. And he took her when he
went. For all I know he’s got some other poor bugger boxed up under his bed
being fed to the handbag a finger at a time.’

‘Horrible,’
said Arthur. ‘But listen, I have to go now, the drug’s beginning to wear off.
Is there anything you’d like me to do for you back in nineteen sixty-five?’

I shook
my head. ‘Nineteen sixty-five was a pretty unmemorable year, really. It’s a bit
early to go warning Elvis that he should diet or trying to persuade John Lennon
not to move to America. But listen, the summer after next, make sure you’re in
San Francisco. That will be
the
place to be. The Summer of Love, it will
be called. Be there or be square.’

‘Thanks
very much,’ said Arthur.

‘And
Arthur—’

‘What’s
that?’

‘If you
bump into a chap called Charlie Manson in San Francisco, turn around quietly
and walk the other way.’

‘Charlie
Manson. All right, I’ll remember that.’

‘I’ll
see you some time, then.’

‘Don’t
be a stranger,’ said Arthur, and he vanished.

I sat awhile on the rock
and skipped pebbles over the ocean. It was tempting just to stay here, enjoy
the dusky maidens, the coconut wine and all the other benefits of godhood. Or
maybe I should dream up a neighbouring island and establish my own personal
cult there. One of those Free Love jobbies with me as Lord High Muckamuck and a
bevy of nubile porno actresses for acolytes. All right, I know it’s your bog
standard male fantasy fodder, but come on, imagine if you could really do it.

And I
could
really do it.

And one
part of me wanted to.

One
part in particular.

But I
knew it was a bad idea. After all I
was
a fugitive. And the point was
that I
was
here. And here wasn’t
real.
Not here in the Necronet.
It seemed real and it was tempting, but it wasn’t real and all the pleasures
here were synthetic. I wanted out and I wanted back into the real world. And so
I really couldn’t lounge about here wasting time.

The sun
shone down on the beach and I got to thinking how nice it might be to enjoy a
good old pint of English beer to refresh the senses and aid cogitation.

And so,
with a kind of theatrical puff (which is not to be confused with a theatrical
poof), I vanished too.

POOF!

Just
like that.

Poof indeed! As a matter
of interest, have you ever wondered about the kind of noise the Big Bang made?
And whether, in fact, it was
the first
noise? If it
was
the first
noise, then it was undoubtedly the biggest and the loudest, and all later
noises are a terrible let down in comparison. But
was
it the first
noise?

I
remember being taught at school that sound cannot travel through a vacuum. And
if that’s the case, then the Big Bang couldn’t make any sound at all in the
infinite vacuum of space. Which would mean that it wasn’t really a Big Bang at
all, was it?

It was
more of a Big Poof!

It
always tickles me when a scientist comes up with a new theory about how the
universe began. And especially how he always has a string of equations to
support this theory. What on earth (or off it) do mathematical equations have
to do with the creation of the universe? Mankind invented mathematics, the
universe invented itself.

It
seems to me that the string of equations says a great deal more about the
scientist’s inflated opinion of his own intelligence than anything else. To
actually believe that he can reduce anything as irreducible as universal
creation to a string of equations! What a bloody cheek!

Who do
these people think they’re kidding?

However,
that said, there is one man who figured it all out. But you won’t find him in
the bestseller’s list alongside Stephen Hawking. Because this man doesn’t own a
pocket calculator, and this man’s attitude is that ‘If it can’t be worked out
on the back of a cigarette packet, then it can’t be worked out at all’.

This
man’s name is Hugo Rune, and Rune’s Universal Creation Solution,
[2]
of which Rune’s Law of
Obviosity is an offshoot, stands alone for its simplicity and elegance.

Rune’s
Universal Creation Solution states:

The birth of the
universe was the most impossible thing that could ever happen: and that’s why
it happened.

It
might take you a little time to get your head around that one. But it’s worth
it in the end, because it has to be the solution. Emphasis must be put upon
certain words. The word
most
for instance. The birth of the universe was
the
most
impossible thing that could ever happen. Think about that. In
an eternity of timelessness many other impossible things
could
happen.
But the birth of the universe was the
most
impossible. And that’s why it
happened.

Naturally
the grey beards of the scientific community, outraged that Rune should have
solved it all with such ease and no equations, demanded that he explain his
solution more fully. It wasn’t enough that he had given an explanation that
actually explained things, they wanted to know
how
it explained things.
And by what route he had arrived at this explanation.

Rune
gave a lecture, where he patiently explained to the grey beards how it all
worked.

In
essence it was this:

Order
out of chaos. Before order you had randomness. Randomness down to a molecular
level. Universal randomness — endless, endless, randomness. And then you had a
coincidence. The first ever coincidence. A seemingly impossible thing to
happen. Two bits of randomness doing the same thing at the same moment. The
first coincidence, a new event in the history of the universe. Something
altogether new. This new thing couldn’t have happened had not the coincidence
occurred. This new thing was in itself a new piece of randomness, utterly
unique. Until it bumped into another thing, identical to itself, that had
occurred due to similar coincidence elsewhere. When the two met, something new
again happened, because this coincidence was another new event. And so on and
so forth, but all this simultaneously in an infinitesimal moment. Bang!

Big
Bang!

Rune
did explain that we had the wrong idea about the universe. The physical
universe, which is composed of matter, is not incredibly large. It is
infinitesimally small. Space is endless, but there isn’t that much matter in
it. The Big Bang was really a very small bang. No big deal at all in fact. Something
that happened on a microscopic level. A tiny event.

The
grey beards stroked their grey beards. It did appear to explain everything. But
they asked Rune whether it could be simplified. Reduced in fact to a few
letters. If Randomness was called
R,
and coincidence was
C,
and
creation of the universe was
B
(for Big Bang), how did it work?