A Sherpa walks on in the morning sun. He shall make time ahead of us, and this shall allow for a small plane to be at the elevated basecamp landing strip for my arrival. I am a joyous slowcoach behind him, walking with one other coolie. I feel as if I have accepted the loan of youth and juvenation from Shangri-La as a permanent and transferable gift. I have aged not a day in that pass. It is the strangest thing.
The plane is indeed waiting for us, and I am told by the captain, a slight man of barely five feet in height with a magnificent and wicked smile, that we will fly to a landing strip by the Karnaphuli River in the City of Twelve Awliya, The Queen of the East, Chittagong.
Chittagong, now far filthier and noisier than I recall, was supposedly named by Arab traders in the ninth century (literal meaning Delta of the Ganges). Islamic scholars stake claims that a Muslim type lit a chiti (lamp) at the top of a hill in the city and called out (agaan) for people to come to prayer. Hence, Chiti-agaan. But I prefer the Burmese explanation for the name that an Arkanese king of almost wholly pacific tendencies and a proclivity to make love to hundreds of men and women gave the city the name Tsit-ta-gung (to make war is improper), while having the admirable fucking nerve to invade it. I see him not as a hypocrite, for sometimes situations are forced upon us to act for the greater good against our natural inertia and to bloody the bully’s nostrils. Of course, to make war is improper, but it is also often absolutely obligatory and sage. It is therefore quite appropriate that I set sail for the island nation of Ceylon from such a spot, named for such a hypocritical but righteous reason (see, Sir Percy Blakeney).
I am warned by my contacts against air travel. It is a constricting business, I am told, quite likely to end in lots of questions and the glare of hot lights. We still control much of the seas, for not only does Winston’s pull within the Admiralty remain strong and sturdy, but we have also always had a bit of the pirate about us.
Yes, magnificent Ceylon is en route. I am, in my dotage, an increasingly nostalgic type, and so I relish travelling by boat, even if it is a larger, smoother, swifter and better-lit beast than I last saw fifty years ago. The journey across the water is across a still and teal mill pond of an ocean. This same fondness for the olden days also demands that I stop off at the ambassador’s residence there, and enquire of those amiable monks in the mountain jungles.
From there, the trek is a joy. I know what and who awaits. I find the monks with ease. It has been a while since I have been in such saucy company. All of them know of me, as it seems as if Robbie and I made quite an impression at the monastery well over a century ago, and since then when my allies and Thelemites have followed the path into the lushness to fill their pockets and satchels, we are always remembered so fondly. They bow and lower themselves in my presence. I am revered, and I recognise my youthful face in the paintings on the monastery wall. A soft murmur comforts me wherever I go there, and I am fed and given water, before being led to a comfortable single bed. This old man must rest now, for I shall need all of my vigour for the latest renewal of my acquaintance with the goo and all the grubby beauty that shall accompany it for several days.
There is nothing new in the process of the most welcome orgy, but the content of the hallucinations lays out my immediate future with an apparent precision as clear and exact as when Robbie and I were enlightened just before the turn of that damned, confounding twentieth century and then, as if I have only a short time left in my life, there is then a deep and abrupt darkness in my vision; a flat-line that appears to indicate the end of my days on earth. Perhaps Death allowed me through the mountain pass, only to then greet me, with its dark allies of my next opponent in England; the British and American governments, and their pals in the vicious and murderous regimes in Moscow, Peking and Constantinople; Rangoon, Buenos Aires and Damascus. I am not deterred.
As I sit for yoga and prepare to leave, the elder of the trippy natives approaches me. He sits by me, and says, ‘Are you ready? Did you see what you needed to see?’
I respond, but speak more for my benefit than for his. He seems comforted more by the steeliness of my words than by their content. I appreciate both.
‘I now know of what I must do in London. I will revisit a place that once defined me, and there I shall commit an act that will have global repercussions. If the Thelemites are right, the revolution will take the world for us, at last. There will be no near-miss like in Paris, because this revolt will not discriminate between stone-throwing Parisian lovers and bastards with batons, shields, helmets, tear gas, guns and tanks. If my pals are correct, no one will be immune from what we unleash. It is them or us. If we do not grab our freedoms now, they will be gone for ever. And that would be a crime.’
I turn to him.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
He says nothing and only touches my hand. I feel his comfort, friendship and strength, as they seem to bloat the molecules within with hope. And I leave.
I recall how Robbie and I once scrubbed each other’s backs there in those blessed waterfalls and I consider these moments. My bravest darling.
I walk and then am taken on a cart pulled by a donkey to the sea. Time is a factor, but I know that I only need to be in London for the summer solstice, so precise are some of the goo-inspired instructions I am able to continually recall. Even the most conservative Phileas Fogg-types would have my feet outside the Reform Club by June the fifteenth, about a week early. So, I board a ship from Batticaloa on the eastern coast, and follow the advice of my vision to sail not through Suez but instead around the Cape, just as I deferred to Winston and went to Paris. Gods must listen too, for we can be fallible creatures.
Winston was so nearly right about Paris too. I gladly consent to the longer journey around the bulbousness of the continent of Africa and, of course, the violent seas of the Cape. I once again have myself tied to a lofty vantage point only minutes after a gourmand dose of jungle resin that might maim an amateur and leave him in a wheelchair. The storm is a beauty. Nature seems to have missed me, and she thrills and surges to see of my return, the frisky mare.
Our route hugs the western coast of Africa, and we are yet again joined by a hefty mob of aroused sea mammals in the caress and fondle of our slipstream, just as we were when we escaped with all that chunky Boer gold all those years ago. I wave to them in friendship as they eye their pal and contemporary, The Beast, on the ship.
I acknowledge, with a meditative posture, the fine lands on the yellowy coast, and I astral plane through the ports, bazaars and brothels as we make fine time towards Europe. On the latitude of Tunis, I relive a special sacrament, and honour lost and distant friends, winking and smiling to our right. In this life, there is only friendship.
Within days, we slow at my request to breathe in the Portuguese air approaching Boca do Inferno at Cascais, where I once faked my death.135 We drop anchor for an hour, for the superstitious skipper is captivated by the caves, and appears to be at my mercy, since he believes I, personally, vanquished the storm as we rounded the Cape, offering myself as a sacrifice on high. I am happy to take his reverence, if it allows me to slip back in time to Portugal maybe a hundred years ago.
The progress north is then steady and firm as we leave France over our right shoulders, and slip into the ploughed furrow of the armada that faced the most ignominious of defeats when she moved on England. Adolf did not even make his move on Her, thanks to me. I now resolve to elevate myself above them all. Spain, Germany and now this new, putrid and mean England, for I made that promise to Winston.
Land is seen, and the bowels ought to be set on edge, but are not. I sit lotus on deck, breathing with marvelled malintent, and eye Her, the errant bitch of a sceptr’d isle, who needs to be tamed. England.
As I meditate, I consider the vital questions for my own clarity, and dismiss all other clutter.
One.
Who are the combatants? Whitehall and GCHQ, Washington DC, Russia, China, Turkey, the Saudis, for no one is innocent if they fuck with their own people. Government or people. Bullies or the bullied.
Two.
What might defeat look like?
Three.
What might victory look like?
Despair or ecstasy, we will all know by the looks on several billion faces that will reflect either Stalin’s Moscow and Adolf’s camps or London shall resemble the dappled and fragrant ragweed slopes of that Sicilian Abbey on a June morning in ’22. It shall be clear who controls the future.
I then stir myself with the question of the consequences.
Four.
What will it all mean for the world?
There will be no cries of ‘Best of three, you cheating fuckers.’
This is Glory or Bust. For eternity. There shall be no coming back from this one.
Five.
How shall I do this?
I still do not know fully, though my unreasonably generous Ceylon jungle visions seem to lead me by the hand, and appear to squeeze it softly as the elder monk’s mitt had. I am assured each step will be made clear by the previous one. I shall do the rest, and relish each second until the darkness of that flat-line.
And there she is. London. In the late afternoon, I wish for her face to be in the same old frame. But crikey, she seems to have changed. The air seems filthier than fifty or sixty years ago, but still far cleaner than when I was a boy. There are hints of old Manhattan to the skyline, but these structures shimmer and shine like cheap shoes. I sense my London weeping at the dagger-blows and thrusts each of these edifices have struck, not so much into Her air, though that feels a travesty, but more into Her flesh at ground level and beneath. This is where the hurt must be felt. These monstrosities, however, are not so shiny so as to be seen to reflect in the Thames, for it looks browner and shittier than ever. It seems like the worst of both worlds.
We meet again. ‘Oh, London, my love. Come back to me. I implore you.’
135 For the first time.