‘I think it’s like mine,’ I answered.
‘Like a mine? You mean it can suddenly explode?’
‘No. I mean like my character. I see similarities between my personal character and the national character of Israel. We’re both outlaws.’
The adrenalin kicked in as the blood rushed from the interviewer’s face into my head.
‘Please explain, Mr Marks.’
‘Outlaws control as much of their destiny as they can and put up with the consequences of their actions without whingeing. That’s very much my motto: work out what you want to do, do it, don’t give a fuck what anyone else says, and take any shit on your chin. Keep a stiff upper lip, even under E.’
They liked that and took me to a club.
Tel Aviv is a unique city and provides the only point of agreement between ultra-Orthodox Jew and fundamentalist Muslim. They both hate the fucking place. That makes it cool. Accompanied by a bunch of skunk lovers, I squeezed into the appropriately named Lemon on HaNagarim Street, an industrial wasteland in south Tel Aviv. There were no bouncers. Asi Kohak was DJ. It was happy house in a happy house, despite the rather weird Boy Scout jamboree-type spectacle of guys dancing with machine guns dangling between their legs (losing one means seven years in an army nick). Draft is at eighteen, so combats and fatigues are swiftly supplemented by mobiles and Ray-Bans; Uzis are clutched like teddy bears on comedowns; and M16 rifles have become crucial fashion accessories. I asked the barman for an Irish whiskey mixed with an energy drink.
‘Energy drinks are illegal in Israel. But I know you, Mr Nice. Drink this.’
I think it was just alcohol, but it was strong. I went out for some air, smoked some strong grass with some kids, and tottered with them down the coast to Old Jaffa. In one of the old streets was a giant statue of a fish.
‘What the fuck is that?’
‘That’s where Jonah came out of the whale.’
‘Whaw, man! That’s amazing,’ I gasped. ‘That happened here. I always figured it was on some other planet. But it really did happen where I am now. I can’t believe it.’
‘Howard, that drink has got to you.’
We got back to the club by dawn. People were leaving in droves to an after-party at the massive Ha Oman club in Jerusalem. I was up for it, but I had to ride for an hour on the back of a motor scooter. We pulled up outside a car-park sign stating: ‘Drive Carefully. The Pathologist Awaits.’ Jewish belief is that we eventually see God in our physical form, and it certainly wouldn’t do to have your liver on your face and your lungs hanging out when you do. Thinking about it slows you down and makes you park and puke.
The club was first class and at sunset I headed towards the Mount of Olives, believed to be the location of the coming of the Messiah on the day of the Resurrection. Heavy shit. (There’s a hell of a waiting list to get buried here. Robert Maxwell managed it, despite failing the walk-on-water test.) I reached the top, pulled out a spliff, and walked down smoking. Within seconds I found myself audibly reciting ‘Mary had a little Lamb’, and pretending I was the Lamb of God. A large stone whistled past my ear. I ducked pointlessly and hit my head on a warlike olive branch. A shepherd jumped out and swore at me. Which side did he think I was on? What side was he on? I mustn’t look scared. I’ll be a wise man.
I woke up in a hospital on the outskirts of Jerusalem, where hundreds of otherwise normal people are admitted and treated for what is known as the Jerusalem Syndrome. These individuals are usually tourists, who when visiting the places that Jesus, Mohammed, Elijah, Moses and that lot hung out, suddenly lose their identities and adopt ones from the Bible. The most popular new identity is John the Baptist, who despite being executed, got to shag Salome. I’d been badly hit by that flying rock on the Mount of Olives and had, apparently, been dragged from the Garden of Gethsemane into this ward screaming, ‘I want to be a hippie and I want to get stoned.’ I was immediately diagnosed, without examination, as suffering from the belief that I was St Stephen, the first Christian martyr, the first guy to get stoned to death. On the bed to my left lay an Egyptian wearing a crown of thorns thinking he was Christ. On the bed to my right lay a white Jamaican, Christ-A-Fairy, also wearing a crown of thorns and also thinking he was Christ. He smoked spliffs through the holes in his hands and feet. Despite each sharing roughly the same diet (loaves and fishes), each being able to get drunk on water, and each preaching love and peace, they hated each other, disagreeing violently on matters such as dope, each other’s identity and divinity. I was getting really bored until the Egyptian Christ, Cheese-Us, offered me an intriguing-looking substance, which I assumed to be psychoactive.
‘Please try, good saint.’
‘What is it, Cheese-Us?’
‘Verily, it is known by many names, good saint: mandragora, morion, nam-tar, abul’ruh, lakshmana, mandrake.’
Although I’d never tried it, I knew the mandrake plant to be a hypnotic, aphrodisiac and hallucinogenic. I’m not sure if it’s legal, and I don’t give a fuck, but mandrake really is hardcore. The berries look like bollocks and were actually called ‘Satan’s Testicles’ by the Coptic Church, the early Christians in Egypt. Before being so demonised by both Christians and Muslims, mandrake was worshipped as the lord of the spirit and master of the breath of life. Pythagoras thought the root to be a tiny human being. The sponge held up to Christ on the cross was soaked in mandrake wine. The Germans, who call it
Hexenkraut
, believe that the plant springs up from the semen ejaculated by a man when hanged. Voodoo priests, it is said, use it to turn people into zombies.
‘Cheese-Us, I don’t mind falling asleep or seeing a few hallucinations, but what’s the point of getting randy? There’s not even any
Carry On
nurses here. They’re all nuns.’
‘No Woman No Try,’ agreed Christ-A-Fairy.
‘They’re not nuns, they’re penguins,’ yelled a Coventry DJ who thought he was St Francis, the patron saint of birds.
‘When you take mandrake, she will make love with you,’ said Cheese-Us.
‘I’ve never fucked a plant, Cheese-Us, and I’m not going to fuck one now.’
‘Even if she’s a goddess, good saint? Mandrake was the first plant god.’
‘A goddess or a god, Cheese-Us?’
‘Most British females are plants, are they not? Rose, Violet, Daisy, Lily, Hazel.’
‘So is a Pansy.’
‘But mandrake will adapt to your every need, Saint Stephen. The Germans, who call the mandrake berries “Dragon Dolls”, think she alone used to make love to dragons.’
‘Okay, Cheese-Us, let me have some.’
Give me to drink mandragora
William Shakespeare
Niall Griffiths
Sheepshagger
S
UDDENLY THEY LEAVE
the forest they have been driving through for some moments and are in a muddied clearing in the trees with cars and vans and bikes and one old painted double-decker bus like a lone pike in a shoal of minnows parked chaotically and the shapes of people drifting between the vehicles and through the trees blue-tinged by the climbing moon towards and then above and past a fire burning in an oil drum illuminating the words
THIS WAY
in dripping black letters on a car bonnet propped up against a young pine. There are many people, scores of them, scrambling over automobiles and ducking under tree branches and piggybacking each other some running some walking all towards the fire and the sign. Attenuated figures drifting through the trees like sprites or phantoms.
—This must be it, aye.
—I reckon so.
Marc squeezes the car between a Mini and a birch tree and turns the engine off and the music dies and in the relative quiet they can hear the noise of the people, the babble and the laughter, and the dull thump of distant techno coming over the mountain and through the trees.
—One for the road, ey, lads.
Griff takes a bag of powder out of his jacket pocket and dabs in it with a finger and licks it and rubs it around and over his gums, then passes the bag over the back seat to Danny.
—Good Christ, Griff, how much is in here? Fuckin’ sherbert dip, mun. Where’s the lollipop, like?
—Three ounces. Off Roger. Make a lot of dosh up yer, I can see. So if any of yew need to buy any more later, like, then I’m yer man. Yer’s plenty to keep us going. And notice I said ‘buy’.
The bag is passed from man to man and dabbed at by each one. Ianto uses two crooked fingers to scoop almost a gram of the powder into his mouth, grimacing at the vile taste then palpating his cheeks to stimulate saliva and mixing it around in his mouth then swallowing the foul and acrid paste in one huge gulp, suppressing the gag reflex with one hand clamped across his lower face and frantic swallowing.
—Pill time as well. Do em in now an we’ll be well up by-a time we get yer.
Marc passes small white pills around to each person excluding Ianto, who holds his hand out expectant. Marc stares down at the open waiting palm.
—What’s all that about then, Ianto? What the fuck are yew after?
—An E.
—Oh aye. Paid for one, av yew?
Ianto doesn’t reply.
—Iant, these cost fuckin money. I asked the other day didn’t I. I said, if anyone wants a pill for TalyBont then put up-a cash an I’ll get it sorted. Yew were there. Didn’t I say that?
Nods and murmurs.
—Yew gave no money so yew get no pill. Simple as fuckin that, mun.
Ianto drops his hand and Danny slings an arm around his shoulder. —Ah don’t get upset Ianto, mun. Yew’ll be able to get a pill up yer, like, in-a rave. Yer’ll be hundreds floating about. An anyway, you’ve still got some whizz left, ant yer?
Ianto nods.
—Well, there yew are then.
Ianto nods again and then finds that he cannot stop nodding or indeed blinking because he has in fact ingested a large amount of amphetamine throughout the afternoon as well as various blends of alcohol and that scoop of Griff’s speed he has just eaten has brought it all up to critical mass and as they leave the car and move through the trees and other parked cars and past the fire in the barrel and the sign and up and over the hill via the muddy track towards the music, growing louder, and the mad flashing lights in the sky, growing brighter, Ianto’s heart begins to rattle and shake like a rock in a tumble-dryer and his hands and face are all twitchy and his scalp crawls and there is a lovely toothy tension in his mouth and to burn some of this wire-tight energy off he wants to run. Look for any lassitude within him and it will not be found, not now, not ever; never among the flame and light crackling through him, battling through him, although he knows it not. He just wants to run, and indeed he does run, roaring, reedy arms above his head towards the growing music and the brightening multi-coloured lights.
—G’wahn, lanto!
—Get the fuckers, boy!
—Go for it, mun!
He runs up and over the hill splashing through mud ruts and past and through walking groups of people who look at him bemused or yell encouragement and he crests the hill and there below him in a natural bowl between an encircling rim of high hills is the main body of the rave with people swarming insectile and hive-like around tents and fires, strobes shredding the scene and the music rocking the thick-trunked old trees and the moon and the stars above it all and the ramshackle mansion up on the valley rise bursting blue then red from its windows, dancing silhouettes moving behind the glass, and from each of the throbbing marquees the beats of different musics merge and mix into one single mad euphony and it is like a world separate yet within, host to another race different yet in some ways assimilated, gathered here via a wide network of recondite signals and codes comprehensible to its members alone to come and celebrate as they do their willed apartness secret and discrete. Like an alien species of nomenclature unknown among the world hiving then swarming to prove in a display of their twinned two navels that most others have only one. That their origins differ, that their conceptions oppose.
Ianto moves downslope towards the largest fire, across whose thrashing flames black shadows of humans and dogs leap and tumble. Groups stand in silhouette drinking from cans and bottles and passing around long spliffs, whose gleaming ends flit from face to face like luminous winged insects that feed on human spit. Glo-sticks dart and drift like angler fish and a member of the Eternal Om sits in the mud with his back against a tree dealing wraps from the deep pockets of his Diesel anorak. A long-bearded man in a top hat and sporting a silver-topped cane treads his foppish proud-backed way through a fallen galaxy of empty beer cans. A small skinny man hunched over in a green baseball cap and square green shades executes some sort of intent chopping dance with the blunt blades of his hands as he orbits a group of four squatting on the wet grass around an elaborate bong. Ianto waves to and grins at those who greet him, slapping backs and squeezing arms, and jerks into the large barn out of which the best music pulses and in here steam rises from the clustered dancing bodies up towards the high rafters, upon which their figures dance too, feet firmly planted on the thin beams, rhythmically swaying their arms and torsos and heads, and one girl hangs upside down with her knees hooked over the rafter pumping her arms madly, her long hair falling in a curtain groundwards, her T-shirt slipped down to reveal the pronounced and stretched muscles of her stomach and her breasts spilling out of the tight white lace of her bra. Some in here remain wallbound drinking or smoking and watching and some dance with a wide-eyed determined drive towards exhaustion and some dance atop others’ shoulders and one walks on his hands and others merely stand resting or observe. Bright clothes abound like aposematic coloration, warning potential predators of poison, peril. The DJ is a hunched dark featureless shape in an elevated grotto of yellow light at the far end of the barn, hurling out these deep and fervent sounds which throb in the earth and pulse in the walls of this old stone structure, which sway these massed people now this way now that, now slowing them down to an almost stately pace then instantly smashing them together and up again with beats born in bloodrun and breathing, in the exaggerated pumping of sexuality and the stamp of danced sacrifice or entreaty enacted on the cones of the surrounding volcanoes when they still smouldered, or on the skyscraping crests and flanks of the encircling mountains when parts of them were still soft to the attentions of wind and of rain like faces creased by the wailing and weeping of the planet, or on the bog-soft banks of the lakes and rivers beseeching harvest and bounty in the only way they knew how and which worked, sometimes.