One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (18 page)
Read One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel Online
Authors: Julian Cope
Expecting praise after all that but receiving only Exterveen’s sarcasm, the dispirited Loon stepped out into the night air momentarily to smoke, cough his guts up and catch some of
the music pumping out of Hertzog’s armoured car. Now was my chance to re-join the others in the club. But Exterveen had other ideas. She led me over to the great tan ledger that she’d been perusing when I first walked in, and proceeded to ‘walk me’ through several of its weird contents.
EX
: I’m a writer as well as a designer. I’m Barry’s biographer, and this ledger is Barry’s living biography. I collect different accounts of Barry’s activities and merge them together into library accounts so as to make him more mythical in the future. Loon has told me those stories you heard about twenty times and they’re pretty unvaried in their delivery. No one speaks quite like Loon, but I’ve interviewed shitloads of people for this project. Take a look at this.
Exterveen opened up Barry Hertzog’s Tan Ledger so that I could read her handwritten essay entitled ‘Stockpiling Matériels’. For the next half-hour, Exterveen – via her writings in the ledger – unleashed upon me a litany of awful deeds perpetrated by Loon, Walter-Under-The-Bridge, Judge Barry himself and various other Party Orange miscreants, all things I would have thought best kept secret. Was she trying to scare me with the sheer hardman qualities of her homeys? At last, I grew bored with the display and asked her outright.
ROCK
: Why are you revealing all of this to me?
EX
: (
Smiling warmly
) Because you won’t be remembering any of it.
ROCK
: What is this? Some kind of magical power display?
EX
: Oh Rock, think about it! When you get to our age, you don’t give a damn!
And with that, she clapped three times and thunder roared, a single flash of lightning bisected the mobile office, burning a line through the carpet directly between us and I smiled at this beautiful stranger. I told her that I’d come for my DJ fee.
3.30am, Monday June 12th, 2006
Still dreaming at Iloi Agriturismo, Lake Omodeo
Psychically blitzed open by Exterveen’s lost revelations, I writhed within the sheets of my lush Agriturismo double bed, thrashing around in an agony of Not Knowing and Knowing, Not Knowing and Knowing, betwixt and between I was beside myself. For now I understood that I’d been duped by the evils of Slag Van Blowdriver long before Italia ’90, and it felt really bad. But how precisely had they wronged me? Well, I couldn’t quite bring that information to the front of my mind at present. In truth, Exterveen’s suddenly evaporated reality was overwhelming to contemplate; I’d basked in her gorgeousness for some considerable time. But now I was left feeling both used and betrayed by events that had taken place sixteen long years ago. With my clamshell mind at last prised open a microcrack or more, or at least just enough for glinting residual memories to have come barging into my cranium temporarily, there presently came into my head such an irruption of Lost Contents that I discovered myself lying star-shaped across the vast double bed, the rugged circular iron chandelier now directly overhead acting as an impromptu mandala into which all of my mind tumbled. But Nirvana was not this time my destination, for my Truth was the search for Justice for my kind. So that whirling iron mandala instead eased my egression through yet another dream portal, one that led to that same lost evening at Slag Van Blowdriver – and this time fetching up just as the
shit was going down for real. Suddenly, I was simultaneously listening to an extremely Heightist conversation between Stu and M. Goodby, whilst all the time staring past them at a burgeoning flare-up in the next booth between Barry Hertzog and Full English Breakfast.
MICK
: Yeah, whether we like it or not it’s a size-ist world. People who are big get it far easier.
STU
: No mate, you’re totally. Like I loved Iggy PCP until I discovered he was five-foot-one, but then it well dwindled. I’m five-ten, what do I want with five-one?
MICK
: Only he weren’t five-foot-one, Stu. That’s just his song title. He’s five-seven.
STU
: He did
Raw Power
; I loved the cunt to death. I’m five-ten.
BREAKFAST
: You know, Judge Barry, I’ve always admired your Party Orange. Extraordinary imagery! Pop Art and saucy simultaneously. I’m an absolute shocker for the whole thing. But one issue I do have, Old Stick? The club’s name – I do have to say I find Slag Van Blowdriver to be in pretty poor taste. Even from a distance. (
Looking around
) And now I’m here … (
shaking his head
) well, Old Thing, it’s even worse.
MICK
: (
Clueless
) Too cryptic?
BREAKFAST
: This brazen festooning of Zulu shields is redneck beyond the limit.
HERTZOG
: The club’s name pertains to a very great moment in history.
BREAKFAST
: The Battle of Blood River was a very
grating
moment in history. Why rub it in, Old Bean?
HERTZOG
: You can’t understand my problems and I can’t understand yours.
BREAKFAST
: I think it more likely that you wish me not to
understand your problems, Old Chap. But I think that perhaps I do understand, more than you could imagine.
HERTZOG
: (
Shark-eyed
) How?
BREAKFAST
: Old Son, I … am your
neigh
bour.
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: (
Leaning in, uninvited
) Ker-buum! Be Quick nil, Quickborn one.
HERTZOG
: Quickborn? You’re a fucking Deutsche! I knew something I swear!
BREAKFAST
: Hardly Germany, Old Boy. At least not those exclusively Anglish parts that I traverse. My mother Birgitta tells me they remind her more of the low parts of England around The Wash.
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: (
Diamond geezer
) He ain’t German, Judge. Not Full English Breakfast. (
Suddenly serious
) Honest, Judge, he’s shown us the maps and his habitat is one-hundred-percent. Breakfast comes from the place of mysterious bog burials. Human sacrifices!
HERTZOG
: (
Brian Clough
) I’ve no time for paganism. That’s precisely what I’m fighting against.
BREAKFAST
: Really, Mr Hertzog, your touchiness is not believable.
HERTZOG
: (
Hooded eyelids
) At my invitation, you’re here. So why am I being so hassled, harassed and harangued?
BREAKFAST
: I’m hardly haranguing you, Mr Hertzog. Believe me, your combative stance is disconcerting. Is clenching one’s fists unconsciously at every reply one receives not guaranteed to set the other chap on edge somewhat? As your guests, we’re all here quite ready to accept what you perceive as your personal
Weltanschauung
.
HERTZOG
: (
Black expression
) I even feel your use of the Hitlerian term
Weltanschauung
is meant to rub me wrong, Mr Breakfast.
In these touchy circumstances, wouldn’t the term ‘worldview’ be more appropriate?
BREAKFAST
: Old Love, the German
Weltanshauung
considerably antedates our own ‘worldview’, which is itself merely a translation of their 19th-century concept. It’s a common enough international term in the psychiatry world.
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: Be Quick nil, Quickborn two. First one to five is the winner.
HERTZOG
: (
Staring close in Breakfast’s face
) Your one-upmanship, call it what you like – that will be the death of you.
And with that, the Judge turned his back on our assembled group and began to collect the empties from the surrounding picnic tables. What a surly man. I wandered over to the DJ booth and requested anything by Six Bad Niggas In A Car, but Hertzog barged in front and slapped on the most ambient piece this side of our fridge hum back home. Then he re-joined our party as combative as before.
HERTZOG
: Martin Luther was more anti-pagan than was the Pope. And even Islam only caught the attention of Malcolm X in the late ’50s, when X had grown fearful that too many blacks on the jazz scene were returning to Yoruba. That’s the original African paganism that the Christian slave trade helped to stamp out. (
Triumphant
) So we played our part.
BREAKFAST
: Who played what part?
HERTZOG
: We Christians played our part in the Islamic Prophecy as told by Brother X. His
Autobiography
reads: (
Closes eyes
) ‘It was written that some of the
original
[that’s X’s term for Black People] should be brought as slaves to America – to learn to better understand, at first hand, the white devil’s true
nature, in modern times.’ (
Again triumphant
) Predestination.
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: (
Smelled a fart
) That’s too fucking
Que Sera
for me. Can we change the subject, please?
HERTZOG
: This is the
only
subject. There’s nothing else on offer for you here.
BREAKFAST
: Then do let us all hear your monologue, Judge Barry. But please keep it interesting. Or in the name of democracy we’ll every one of us be hotfooting it down to your delightful Hot Food counter.
HERTZOG
: (
Seamless
) Belial or Christ. The Good must have no truck with the Wicked.
BREAKFAST
: (
Puzzled
) Then what about your pseudo-Anfield hit ‘Das Boot’? One of my all-time favourites, I might add. But why did two lowland Protestants choose to lend such a dynamic voice to the inchoate Catholic hordes? What were you thinking, Judge Barry? Did Pit-Yacker MC know what he was taking on when he chose to impersonate the Voice of the Anfield Kop? Could they not speak out for themselves?
HERTZOG
: (
Up for it
) I think right there is precisely where the evidence is lacking, Mr Breakfast. It’s not all lush papists on the Anfield Kop. The club’s too international for that. Liverpool fans know not why they hate, they just hate. So I wanted to lend a focus to what they hate and ‘Das Boot’ did just that – especially after the shameful Friendly Fire of the ‘I Hate Nerys Hughes’ affair. Thereafter, I decided I had to teach them
how
to love Liverpool – force it down their throats if necessary – force-feed them with Liverpool. I couldn’t be subtle, either. I was Moses and Liverpudlians were my Jews.
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: I love that fucking B-side, Judge. ‘Wirralwork’ was a classic. Sheer poetry.
HERTZOG
: (
Early Dexy’s
) I meant it all. Cordon off the Wirral
and make a Unilateral Declaration of Independence. I’ve been burning at the structures of Liverpool. Dig a Pale around it, a massive protective ditch like the Dubliners did to keep the Irish out. (
Stares of universal disapproval
) Just a thought!
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: Hey Judge, the old boys round Norris Green fucking hated us when ‘Das Boot’ was massive because we’d put the B-side on the pub jukebox five times consecutively, then fuck off. Sometimes we’d come back from a sesh and ‘Wirralwork’ would still be pedal-to-the-metal. (
To the gathered throng
) Imagine K.O. and Lager, any of those old-timer cunts having to deal with the Judge on All Night Repeat. Doesn’t bear thinking about, looking back.
HERTZOG
: As a Drentheman, I still covet the entire Liverpool landmass. What they all take for granted! If it were my land, I’d put miles of birthday candles right round the edges!
BREAKFAST
: (
Conciliatory
) Perhaps living on all that reclaimed land has given you Netherlanders too mobile a worldview, Old Mate. Perhaps it means you’re always on the verge of upping sticks. I have relatives on the east coast of Jutland at Romo, an island if you can call it that. Everything’s reclaimed. Awful place. Always spongy, not unlike walking in semolina pudding.
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: Be Quick nil, Quickborn three.
HERTZOG
: (
Screaming at Gary Have-a-laugh
) What are you saying? He shouldn’t score any goals for those comments.
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: (
Shocked
) I never thought you were listening, Judge. Pay no attention to me, mate, I’m unswervingly out of my mind – drunk as a cunt. Who put the party in Partisan, that’s me! So your top B-side or not, I’m still well plumping for Mr Baring-Gould.
HERTZOG
: Baring-Gould? (
Turns a full 90 degrees
) That’s
your name? So your great-grandfather or some such wrote ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’.
BREAKFAST
: He did indeed.
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: (
Appeasing
) Be Quick one, Quickborn three. (
Rallying
) But victory’s now definitely in sight for Full English Breakfast. First team to five goals, come
on
now!
BREAKFAST
: (
Suddenly combative, addressing the throng
) Okay, now I’m taking a penalty. (
To Hertzog
) You admitted earlier, Judge Barry, even pressed home the point that some North Netherlanders are surrounded on three sides by former Nazis. Surely, if they choose to play house in that undefendable Israel-like territory, what right have they to act like victims to the wider world? A free democracy gives us the option to move should we choose, Old Boy. My Anglish family left Quickborn quick-sharp during the Hitler times. And just ask my Romo lot about undefendable territory.
HERTZOG
: But we have
every
right to be here.
BREAKFAST
: That’s precisely what Yankee capitalists cried when Pancho Villa started burning the American-owned haciendas to the ground during the Mexican Revolution. But as the old tombstone reads: ‘Here lies the body of Michael Shay, who died maintaining his right of way. His case was clear and his will was strong, but he’s as dead as if he’d been wrong!’
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: Be Quick one, Quickborn four. Gentlemen, this must be the dénouement.
HERTZOG
: (
Grim
) I’m not playing this game any longer. I never was playing this game. You corn-fed English so take for granted what your land guarantees that it gives you a sickening attitude. It even taints Liverpudlians.
BREAKFAST
: It is not our attitude that is so sickening, Mr Hertzog. It is your own. Like the Swedes, you Netherlanders
were ambivalent accomplices of your hated Nazis. Your government, its MPs and commercial warplane manufacturers profited handsomely from the money made from sales to your eventual enslavers. But you never let your own air force get off the ground. All but a handful were decimated by the Nazis in the opening moments of their invasion. Your government knew war was coming. But they hid their heads in Neutrality, made Neutrality their mantra. So even though your World Famous Anthony Fokker stole the 1936 Paris Air Show with his futuristic Grim Reaper warplane, your government did not dare even sell them to the Spanish Republican Government for fear of upsetting Friend Adolf and his Condor Legion. Paid for and everything, they were. Remember Guernica, Judge Barry? The whole market town was practice-bombed into obliteration by missionaries of Nazism. Perhaps those impounded Fokkers could have saved Republican lives.
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: (
Mouth open, too fascinated to declare victory
)?
HERTZOG
: (
Grim, motionless, defensive
) The Swedes were not even occupied by the Nazis. Yet they built German Junkers bombers in their own factories. A bizarre kind of neutrality they displayed.
BREAKFAST
: Neutrality? What neutrality is not of the bizarre and endlessly self-justifying variety? Let’s look for Dutch indicators of Non-Neutrality, shall we? Why did you neutrals install a German engine in your greatest ground attack aircraft – the De Schelde D21? What side were you anticipating joining? The Daimler-Benz engine in your Dutch warplane so flummoxed the Allies that we named it by mistake the Focke-Wulf 198, a German name! So do come off your high horse, Judge Barry. Apparently, your undefendable backyard extended all the way to the Zuider Sea. Even those
Fokkers that the Spanish Republicans had paid up front for were left for dead out in the wind and rain, Fokker’s Pride Of Paris Airshow left rusting out in full view at world-famous Schiphol international airport. (
Dramatically to the now enthralled throng
) Every one of those experimental warplanes – years ahead of their time – was left on the tarmac to rust, and thereafter to be decimated by the Nazis.
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: (
Amidst claps and hoots
) East Fife 4, Forfar 5. Game set and match to Leander, Quickest of Borns!
HERTZOG
: (
Utterly uncowed
) Leander?
MICK
: (
Clueless
) Not you, too? I fucking love Leigh Hunt.
HERTZOG
: (
To Breakfast
) Your first name is Leander? (
Hooded eyes
) Why? Do I need to do some proper investigating?
BREAKFAST
: If you are here to right the wrongs of all Netherlanders, Judge Barry, perhaps you already celebrate the extraordinary events of June 14th 1667.
HERTZOG
: (
Clueless, uninterested
) Too long ago to count, Old Uncle. It matters not to me what happened in far off times.
BREAKFAST
: Why, Judge Barry, that’s the very day the Dutch Fleet invaded Kent! You don’t bake a cake? They sailed up to Chatham and stole Charles II’s finest flagships. No candles for that? I should have thought a nationalist such as you would have such a victory tattooed across his heart!
HAVE-A-LAUGH
: Martin Peters, top corner of the net! Rubbing it in, or what?
MICK
: (
Taking Breakfast aside, whispering
) Tour de force, Lord Youth!
ROCK
: (
Conspiratorial
) Where d’you pull that performance out of?
BREAKFAST
: I just felt that you’d all expect it of me, Old Sod. Besides, I’ve dreamed since early childhood of my
twenty-eighth birthday. June 14th. That’s when I collect a rather vast inheritance. And as that date is fast approaching, I have even more reason to remember all of these facts! Besides, my many school detractors at Charterhouse were always quick and eager to remind me that it had been my great-great-great-great-uncle who had, on my own birthday no less, lost us the English Fleet … and to the Dutch! So I know at least a hundred more unnecessary facts about that day; I became obsessed with it.