One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (38 page)

We’d slept at most three hours but what sleep! I looked out through the rear side window of the hearse and noticed the twinkling of a farm on the hill about one mile away. It reminded me of the scene in
German Motorcycle Murderer
when the biker
couple in search of petrol blunder into a roadside swamp. In the movie, Lùviah the heroine is forced to escape from an ancient bog full of garrotted sacrifices. In the back of our hearse, Lùviah writhed her naked butt around in my lap, pressed my hands around her swivelling hips, and became my lover.

Last night we made love in a magic cloak – today I die. I felt the throng of unsatisfied mountains hereabouts chuntering a bluff:
Fair enough!
Ah me, that those ‘events of sixteen years ago’ would be terminating in such ecstasy and human revolution. Knock-kneed nearly, knocked sideways entirely and just awakened from a sexual slumber that only the truly World Doped could hope to imagine, I knew my time was come. I brimmed over with Now. Hell, I was cosmically embattled by actuality. Reality is not a Polaroid, not an instant cellphone moment. The deep consideration? All of
that
must come
before
the action. As a Post-Punk singer, live TV shows had been my abject revelation: I’d watched myself on playback once too often getting it right only at the
end
of the performance. Hmmm. I snorted. Not today. Today – cosmically rewarded, replete – I would perform World Perfectly. For Antonioni’s cameras overhead. For Brent and Dean and Breakfast: so long dead.

I stood alone outside the hearse, scouting the horizon for the farmhouse whose light I’d spied a few dark hours previously. If we were going to get back to Santa Cristina for Bugs Rabbit’s 3 o’clock kick-off, now was the safest time for us to get our act together. Not much more than fifty kilometres away. What’s that? Thirty miles at the most? Why, even D. H. Lawrence’s old 1920s motor coach through
Sea and Sardinia
could have made that journey. We were, however, in
the middle of nowhere and still in extreme need of a rented/borrowed car. Beyond the abrupt 5am radio magic of 89.9 FM, nothing more had been heard from Old Flxible these past two hours, and I could
not
risk my date with destiny today. Until I had the guarantee of wheels, thirty miles was still an age away. But now, as though to test my resolve, Blessèd Anna stepped down from the rear of the hearse. Wearing only my black jacket and skimpy pink undies, she immediately nestled into me, purring and pawing at my neck. I lost my mind. Right then did we start kissing once more. Right then did we embrace right up against the Buick’s bulging front doors. Our feet rubbed together so harshly that my ankles became sore. Kneading and moulding and shaping each other’s bodies, we slid and bumped as one entanglement down and down the Buick bodywork until – against the rugged Firestone tyres – at last we shuddered to a halt. And there we remained for a full hour, plans out of the window, our whole world encompassing two square metres at most.

And when at last we surfaced?

Now I walked in glory, now I walked in splendour – myself eternally transformed. Those who dare to tinker with the Cosmos must know – in precipitating Cosmic change – that reigns shall fall like rains, that thrones shall be o’erthrown, that those who dream of meat may yet remain unmet. But always will the battle for balance
itself
hang in the balance. I wanted to live right inside these last hours, not snuggle up to Anna pitifully, hanged dog with tongue out. Anna currently believed that I would be returning to the UK later today via Fertília Airport, so we had every reason to continue this adventure full bore to its conclusion. And the only way to precipitate such action was to find the location of that farm. Let’s properly get on the hunt.

It seemed fair enough to be knocking on the farmhouse door so early. Don’t farmers get up at the crack of dawn? Now it was close to 10 o’clock and we’d been wandering around in the early morning haze for what seemed like hours before we’d located this obscure domicile. At last a puffy-eyed lady came to the door and invited us in. She threw down three tin mugs and drizzled in three weedy dribbles of Fernet Branca. Blessèd Anna passed on this sweet offering, but I gobbled mine down and rubbed my index finger around the rim. Seeing this, the farmer’s wife offered Anna’s drink to me. When I gratefully accepted, she got
started on the coffee. What a dear woman. The farmer was in bed; they’d had a hard night, too much drink, family arguments, she felt perhaps they might still not be talking when he eventually deigned to rise. Wednesday, she said, was his day off. No farming. No mobile vet round. A good day for a hangover. Indeed, such a pall of inactivity hung over this gaffe that it was clear we needed to instil in her the real gravity of our problems. Thus, we guided her still semi-somnambulant form outside to the front of the house, where Anna directed the lady’s gaze southeast across the plain below, pointing out the tiny dot of the hearse raised up on the far edge of the vast, lush green field about two miles hence. The dazed woman, deep in sleep until five minutes previously, stared out at the horizons confused and unable to comment. She wanted to go back into the house but Anna pointed to the fine-looking Peugeot 504 Estate and requested that she rent it to us. The lady looked horrified, but Anna was unyielding. She said we had to get to Alghero Airport by mid-afternoon, that I was an international traveller from the UK. Otherwise, argued Anna, it would be imperative that the lady drive us to Nuoro so that we could rent our own vehicle. Cornered thus, the farmer’s wife – probably looking for a way to stall our bullying tactics until her husband awoke – now invited us in for breakfast and sat us down nice as pie in front of the fire with bread, tomatoes and some tough-smelling pecorino. The time was moving on, however, and I began to cluck. Now, like a stupid idiot, I briefly considered making Blessèd Anna my accomplice in today’s retribution adventure. Letting her in on my real schedule. Perhaps some of the Separatistas would even wish to get involved. And I was already fantasising about rallying the masses to my cause when, er, ye dream did dissolveth. Ptoof! Whoa, whoa! Mercy! Wake up! Back off! Yesterday’s fluky Loon result was no reason
to become Bonnie & Clyde! Holy kack, Anna would hit the roof if she only knew for one moment that I was planning to be more than an observer at Opposite’s grand kick-off – she’d go stratospheric! Judge Barry Hertzog would be there? Her recurring nightmare? How I hated even to imagine that one-sided screaming match:
Rock Section, already I know you too well enough!

But whilst my own paranoia these past few minutes had merely succeeded in dragging me down several planning cul-de-sacs, Blessèd Anna and the farmer’s wife had by now come to an agreement. Having viewed photos of Giampaolo’s hearse on Anna’s mobile phone, the farmer’s wife had chilled out instantly and accepted that, yes, such an American classic would be perfectly fine collateral in exchange for the car that she had in mind for our rental vehicle. Leading us both out to the farm buildings beyond the yard, the farmer’s wife took a car key from the row of hooks on the once-whitewashed wall of the open farm office and showed us into a storeroom. She pointed into the hay. That was our vehicle. That was our car. It was filthy – a field car. A farm hack. Worse, it was decorated on its rear with great sunflower motifs advertising the farmer’s mobile veterinary service. Worse, much worse than that? It was a Fiat Panda 4×4, a legendary rustic evil. A sit-up-and-beg suicide trap, especially on the raging 131. Anna could not drive it. She said she
could
but she would not. The farmer’s wife harrumphed and told us it was the best car that Fiat had ever made. Then she told us to make up our minds on our own and went indoors. Personally, I thought Anna was being rather harsh in our beggars-can’t-be-choosers circumstances, so I climbed inside this Farmer Giles’ jam car and fired it up. No way! First time, brrrrrrrrrr. Still queasy at the very idea, Blessèd Anna jigged about outside, scratching her nose. Then she got in and looked at me.

Thus, without a single worldly possession but the clothes on my back, I-Who-Have-Nothing reversed that farm hack gingerly out of its hay-fast locker, slid that mechanical mule into first gear and set off at nobbut a trundle up the undulating kilometre-long farm track. Far across the hillside two miles hence, vast fingers of Blakean sunrays played over the Madau Valley, before us the day bright and getting brighter, bumping along beside me womankind’s finest union of grand intellectual, fearless investigator and metaphysical lover. Could somebody, some nobody perhaps, some World Nerd show me how
not
to be cool in this car?

Already after 11am, it was. And still were we tootling along the fast 389 towards Nuoro at a maximum of 52 m.p.h. Mostly it was much slower progress. Mostly we were stuck in the low gears. Moreover, we were making big enemies of the other farm traffic that jammed up our dusty passing lane –
and
it was all my fault. For despite my unimpressive driving career behind the steering wheels of various rented hatchbacks and borrowed hacks, I’d never been able to shake off the feeling that whatever car was in front of me, surely it could always be overtaken with the right attitude? Thus did I now fail again and again in my attempts to thrust us past that ancient Autocarro bubblecar pick-up, past that grey-rinsed biddy in her slab-sided rust bucket Lawil C2, burn off that melon-laden donkey cart. But as no amount of perspiration and hand gestures could make any difference to our
top speed, so I chilled out somewhat, almost content to trundle along in that compassionately placed semi-gutter. So what? We were currently on schedule for a 12.30pm arrival at Santa Cristina: still plenty of time for my planning and checking the lay of the land ahead of Bugs’ big kick-off.

And then, at last, rearing up in front of us no more than half-a-mile ahead, we recognised the tall metal stanchions of Nuoro’s fast 129 trunk road, the signs for Cágliari, for Sássari City, for Ólbia. Sweet relief! And even as our agricultural golf cart ascended the great arcing slip road, I heard Blessèd Anna’s mobile phone surge into life immediately. It was her father Giampaolo. He informed the gorgeous one that The Reaper had this morning left its Zinnigas depot at the same time as on previous weekdays and was now right on schedule for a 3pm return delivery to Opposite from Ciancimino’s Highway. Oh, how I wished to trump Blessèd Anna’s news by adding that Judge Barry would be arriving hidden in the trailer – The Reaper’s celebrity stowaway! The same night I’d been scaring Porcu quins out of Jim Feather’s camp at Bidil ’e Pira, Blessèd Anna and Giampaolo had concluded their day of Reaper research by hooking up with Separatista leader Angela Solarussa and hatching a plan: they would follow The Reaper vigilantly over the next few weeks, then present to the authorities all their gathered evidence of Bugs Rabbit’s kickbacks, fake civil engineering projects and wholesale purloining of building materials. I was delighted at the very idea that such activism had been stirred up by my own rumblings and stumblings around this island. But my own conclusive plan of action today would surely sideline such worthy endeavours. For, unless those that do battle with evil cleave their enemies with the same thoroughness of mission as the evildoers themselves,
always then will the battle for balance
itself
hang in the balance. Those motherfuckers were going down!

Now buzzing along with all the aplomb of an asthmatic bee, the Fiat Panda 4×4 actually made a decent enough steed for one so out of driving practice as myself. Moreover, my battles at the steering wheel were providing me with a much-needed distraction from thoughts of my impending doom. I was delighted to see from the farm hack’s speedo that the simple act of driving on a decent surface had upped our occasional top speed to 75 m.p.h.! Well, 73 m.p.h. downhill with the wind behind us! Come on, now! That said, with all the dips and valleys that remained to be conquered between here and Santa Cristina, I still had plenty of time to chunter every time we struggled on the gradients. And, boy, did we struggle. Oh brother! On the incline across the ’e Binzas Valley, where 35 m.p.h. even dwindled to 25 m.p.h., a rage of trucks and farm vehicles slugged it out for the right to overtake us, whilst – from within our tin can – Anna’s urging and my knotted back muscles and grim expression seemed to be the only forces that were actively engaged in hauling us along. But now back on the uplands I clocked Anna’s mobile phone once again registering full reception – I had to act. I couldn’t leave this world without at least attempting to have said farewell to ye Bard. I hadn’t yet dared mention my worldly losses to Blessèd Anna in case she had become suspicious at my apparent lack of concern. Back in Fonni, my successful recovery of Jim Feather’s magic cloak had allowed me to convince her that my possessions were just hidden underneath it somewhere in the back of the hearse. I knew a lost phone would not faze her unduly, so now I simply asked the gorgeous one to text ye Bard so that he could call me on her mobile. I reeled off Mick’s number from memory and waited perhaps three minutes at most.