Character is what you do when you think no one is looking.
– FBI
The Book of Revelations told of it. An empire shall fall. Civilisation comes to an end. All of these things can be true and still be worthy of utter rejoicing. Like all religion, it is the skewing and interpretation that is all important. It all depends on who is destroyed and who prevails. It all depends on the identity of the Messiah, and the empire and the civilisation that fall.
The high commanders within Thelema have been warned that The Crackdown is coming. The President of the United States has spoken of limiting the power of the technology the world uses to shore up his own position of command. He has been brazen about suspending elections. The lapdog British will do the same, mimicking those African and Middle Eastern despots, against whom they used to so rail. We know this from our lads and lasses within GCHQ and the CIA. If we do not strike first, we are doomed. The human race will no longer be a free species. (‘It will soon be a race against time,’ one Thelemite tells me. ‘The best form of defence is attack. We have our mission planned for the solstice,’ says another.)
The Crackdown will be coordinated by an axis of governments in Constantinople, Moscow, Peking, Washington, Tokyo, Nairobi, Lagos, Buenos Aires, Paris and London.
These authorities have willing accomplices in charge in fifty, seventy, a hundred other capital cities. This is precisely how Orwell’s world happens. And so, their hubris has sparked this Beast. This slightly confused, but determined and curious Messiah.
A rebellion has been simmering, as our types on the inside discover more and more about The Crackdown. They will now urge on this Spartacus. It seems my name and works carry much weight. I am not too old to bristle with pride. Remember that the ONLY thing we have is friendship. So, I shall add my personal touch to it. Swagger, style, danger and a dash of symmetry are so pivotal to making a plan worthwhile in its execution and, of course, in hindsight in the afterglow of victory. Defeat is not worth pondering. I am a happy pawn, but pawns are handy bastards and might end up wearing a crown if set free behind enemy lines.
London
The fawning, yet quite adorable captain of the ship is kind enough to find an old suit and some shoes for me. A hessian robe might have attracted unwanted attention even back then in the Notting Hill, Pimlico and Chelsea of the sixties; today for sure. I am tempted to welcome the spotlight of the eccentric, but remind myself, there is perhaps a benefit to anonymity in my quest for that grail of glory.
At the gangplank, I am met by Violet, who shall soon explain more to me of what we must do. If I marry her advice to the visions from Ceylon and the directions of the Thelemites, then we might be on track. It is ten years since I have seen her. It is almost ninety years since her birth, and yet she is youthful for her age. This is possibly a genetic benefit from this godly father of hers, but equally likely are the stalled months from Shangri-La, and the lustre these mountain years also seem to allow to spill over back into the real world. Perhaps both.
I tingle when I see her, and my steps towards her seem to allow me to float. My love is here. Mischief appears to shelter in the shallow and few lines on her face. Her aura is vibrant, redolent, and ready for war. Her posture exhibits a straight back and a raised chin, arrogantly tilted as if she has all of this covered. I adore her. I have never stopped.
We do not unman each other, as Winston would have said. We are purposeful, and she remains less likely, as ever, to tend towards sentimentality than I.
‘It is good to see you, Father.’
‘It is great to see you, Vi.’
‘Come, Old Man.’
‘Yes, love. Let us walk, and I shall tell you of Ceylon and the I Ching I performed as we eased onto the Thames.’
I walk with her, her arm through mine. I carry no luggage. Violet smiles at a uniformed man who is checking passports, and we pass unhindered. I sense that the fellow stands imperceptibly to attention, as I walk past him. Does he mumble, ‘Do What Thou Wilt’? There is, without doubt, deference and reverence.
My shoe’d but sockless foot touches a paving slab of London, and I am bombarded by memories.
‘It is fucking marvellous to be back,’ I say without having had any intention to utter a word. It begins a series of minor events when my subconscious seems to be dictating my own path, as if my actions were speaking in tongues. ‘Is there a greater puppeteer than I?’ I briefly wonder. Either way, I am comforted.
‘I want to walk, Violet.’
‘I know, Papa.’
‘Where do we have to be and when? To meet them?’
‘The Gay Hussar, of course. Two days from now, at noon.’
It is June the eighteenth. Three days from the solstice.
And so, over the next forty-eight hours, I renew my flâneuseries of this city. Much of London has prevailed, I have heard – the old iron bridges, the Tube, the pubs, the Victorian parks and some remnants of guts and balls for a fight – but it is still unnerving to see how people behave. I feel like an intruder. I have heard of how the telephone has creeped into pockets, purses and hands, but I am not prepared for the extent of it. It seems like a Technicolor version of one of those old science-fiction flicks Winston and I may have seen at the Rialto. Oh! how Orson would have marvelled at this, and how Hitch would have shuddered and seen the ramifications for good old-fashioned murder.
I have a map in my head of the places that I must visit to build up the courage to do what I must do. I know I have to go to a place where I may well be known, recognised, exposed and murdered. If this happens, my battle is lost, and the freedoms of the world might perish. For ever.
We are in Deptford and so it is logical, we should first visit my Dulwich mansion before the meandering tour begins.
Violet and I shall then stand on the spot where my father once fell silent at the burlesque madness of the summer circus on the northern gradients of the lush park hillocks below Alexandra Palace when the Maximus de Paris Rouge came to town. Violet holds my hand, precisely as it has been held regularly of late by those I love. I feel a conspiracy of beauty, nudging me to my destiny.
It was here on February the fifteenth, 1881, where Father was struck down on a soapbox in the middle of Deuteronomy 7:15.
And the Lord will take away from you all sickness,
and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you
knew, will he inflict on you,
but he will lay them on all who hate you.
Later in the rear gardens of a Camden guest house, we are applauded and cheered by a similarly conspiratorial gang of chimpanzees. As I make eye contact with them, a calm serene wisdom apparently owns them briefly before their frenzied bouts of self-pleasure and turd-chucking begin once more.
The next day, on the steps of that Marylebone Station hotel where we overnight, where concrete meets marbled tiles, I stare at a yellowy-lit window, where the boys of The Legion once sat, injected, laughed and plotted. I sit on the step where my father once spoke to me. I think of him, and those dutiful boyhood days in the countryside, golden midges, nettles and all. These treasured spots have barely changed and if I squint my eyes, I can almost see the eighteen eighties.
Not only is Redhill far away, there is no point in a pilgrimage to misery. We do not go there.
By lunchtime, Violet and I stand on a Waterloo side street, where a fleapit cinema used to be, and where I was regularly viewed as a pre-eminent pervert. It is all now apartments and a kindergarten. A young mother, who passes with her two toddlers, seems to eye me thus, despite the presence of Violet. She pushes the young ones past me so as to avoid my sphere, while still being unable to avoid casting a curious glance back in my direction. Women do have the keenest of sensors.
We then sit in an otherwise empty stand at The Oval and watch an afternoon of cricket. Christ, but for the creaking pavilion, the old gasholder, Archbishop Tenison’s school and of course, the velvety green baize, I would not have recognised it.
We then stroll over the river where we stay at another old favourite, the Savoy on The Strand. The following morning, Violet and I bellow with laughter, and then she sheds a tear for Margaret. I think how the regrettable but necessary meanness exacted towards Margaret as a girl saved England and allowed us to prevail. This is the precise strength I need to draw on for the evening ahead.
We stroll up and down the length of Greek Street several times, before we enter at noon and marvel at the unaltered odours of the Gay Hussar. I am nodded at, called ‘sir’, and appear to be known by one or two sage types. I still sense the brackishness and the unrivalled beauty of Hitch, Orson and Marlene in the air.
Then Violet nudges me as the three of them come in in fine synchronicity, one from the front door, one from the lounge and one from the WC. There is an old soldier in the garb of The Legion, as if plucked from the Leamington train, one spotty and cross-eyed lad, who reminds me of the poor bastard I terrorised that night when I first met Hitch in The Crown in WC2, and a middle-aged lady carrying a shopping bag, wearing a knitted cardigan, a beret tilted rebelliously on her head and a half-snooker-ball of a wart on her cheek that would have demanded all of my respectful attention had it not been for the seriousness of our chat to grab back our planet. I still struggle not to ogle it.
We rise to meet them, and they silently usher to sit, palms down, as they approach, either as if this were no longer required these days, but, I suspect, more in polite deference to us. I feel as if I should be paying the respect to them. They might pull off a victory without me, but I am unlikely to achieve it the other way around.
The old shuffling soldier, perhaps sixty years younger than me, explains with a pleasant authority a third rationale. ‘No fuss, no fuss.’ I think he might even have the gall to call me ‘lad’ or ‘son’.
Five shots of Pálinka appear quickly, and are placed in front of us.
‘Köszönöm!’136 we all say together.
The lady takes charge.
‘The swifter we can do this, the better. If you are hungry, stay after we have gone. We cannot tarry, and we will leave separately. This is for you.’
She pushes an envelope across the table, and we are all aware of the cliché.
‘It is a phone. It is fully charged, and set to the page you need. When you get to where you are going, Violet has been instructed how to do the rest. This machine will listen only to her voice.’
‘And where are we going?’
‘36 Blythe Road. After that, you might receive a message on here,’ and she nods back at the phone.
This confirms the accuracy of my jungle vision.
The spotty lad wants to chime in, he seems excited.
‘What do we do with it afterwards?’ Violet asks.
‘Either way, it won’t matter,’ the boy gets his chance to chime in. I can see that he wishes to note this moment to retell to his children and grandchildren long after he loses his virginity. He might even use this moment as leverage to do just that.
He gets up to leave, before he can make a mess of his big moment. He smiles at Violet and me. The blessed boy. He is shaking, and turns for the door. The lady and the soldier do the same, but far more measured and steady. The old boy whispers to himself. It could be either a vicarious pep talk or early dementia. The lady is determined, and is off as if she has left a shepherd’s pie in the stove.
Violet and I stare at the package and she slips it into her purse. No one appears to look at us in an untoward manner, and there are no shifty eyeballs behind broadsheet newspapers, as there would have been in my day.
We drink more Pálinka, eat goulash and enjoy each other for the afternoon. Often we don’t speak, but just look. Finally, our telepathy stretches to rising at the same moment to leave. Violet tries to pay, but the Hungarian maître d’ waves us to the door.
Do I hear him say, ‘Sok szerencsét, öregember’?137
I look back at him, and he then says more audibly, ‘Tedd amit tenned kell. A szeretet a törvény. Messiás.’138
There is one more place to go before we shall rest. Blythe Road. I know the time for conflict is here. We walk in the early evening, and it is not a long walk. The city is puking up its office workers and bankers and shop staff and ad reps and traders. We stroll towards the dropping sun of the summer solstice.
There is gravel under foot as we approach a broad Georgian town house mansion, set back behind wrought-iron gates in its own grounds. There are grotesques and gargoyles above the imposing second floor, majestic arched windows of stained glass and towers and turrets from far safer fairy tales. There is a soft butter-yellow light in the arched windows, and the large cars beneath a weeping willow in the driveway appear to hint at a family house, or the possible presence of a gathered enemy.
On a park bench opposite, I see a silhouette of an elderly couple sitting on a bench with two larking kids at their knee. He looks down and his incongruous top hat covers his features. Her maroon bonnet too.
Violet and I pause before we glance at each other, and I walk up the steps to the formidable front door.
I knock slowly and loudly. My mouth is dry.
The door is soon opened by a middle-aged lady, who tilts her head at the strangers on the third and top step.
‘I am sorry to disturb you, madam. I truly am.’
‘How may I help you?’
‘I used to live on this street here many years ago. I was remembering with an old friend here. Fond memories, you know. And I became so very thirsty. Might I please ask for a glass of water? And the briefest139 use of the WC, please?’
‘Of course, you may,’ the kind lady says. She asks me in over the threshold, an invitation in the style that Count Dracula might have required. And so it begins, as we slip off our shoes.
The same façade of a family home masked the ceremonies and rituals in the hallowed and roomy temples underneath in the cavernous basement. The Golden Dawn may still be active below – the expensive cars on the loose gravel suggest it – and any one of them would recognise my face from the literature. I doubt any of them would hesitate in attempting to hold me until more fearsome allies are summoned.
I consider hypnosis on the lady of the house, but I believe we have adequately convinced our hostess of our genuine need for water and a bathroom. And in any case, I shall save the hypnosis for later, when it will be a nationwide and then an international and global affair before this sisterly planet takes one more revolution in the heavens.
I tell the old lass that I need the help of my daughter with my ablutions, and we are ushered towards a broad staircase. The lady turns her back on us as one of our Thelemites, with perfect and planned timing, shouts, bawls, and generally creates a disturbance outside. An old-style Chinese firecracker goes off too, then four, five, six more, and we shuffle quietly down the wooden steps instead of up to the WC. I hear our hostess, ‘Those bloody yobs again. I am calling the police this time.’
The surroundings all now seem so familiar to me, for it is the route that Winston and I took in the second battle. I push open the large arched door that leads to the hall. It is empty, but for that old altar. Violet and I stride over to it.
She removes from her purse the envelope and then the small black device handed to her by our pals in the Hussar. She holds it close to my face, pushes on the small tablet’s face, it lights up and she nods at me to speak. I cast a spell of Thelema.
Man, unable to solve the Riddle of Existence, takes counsel of Saturn, extreme old age. Such answers as he can get is the one word ‘Despair’.
Is there more hope in the dignity and wisdom of Jupiter? No; for the noble senior lacks the vigour of Mars the warrior. Counsel is in vain without determination to carry it out.
Mars, thus invoked, is indeed capable of victory: but he has already lost the controlled wisdom of age; in a moment of conquest he wastes the fruits of it, in the arms of luxury.
It is through this weakness that the perfected man, the Sun, is of dual nature, and his evil twin slays him in his glory, and who shall mourn him but his Mother Nature, Venus, the lady of love and sorrow.
But even Venus owes all her charm to the swift messenger of the gods, Mercury, the joyous and ambiguous boy, whose tricks first scandalise, and then delight, Olympus.
But Mercury, too, is found wanting. Now in him alone is the secret cure for all the woe of the human race. Swift as ever, he passes, and gives place to the youngest of the gods, to the Virginal Moon.
Then she smiles, nods and from a folded piece of paper, she speaks to the machine to activate the rest of the plan.
‘Double U, double U, double U, dot …’
While she does this, I replicate some of the mischief I executed on Yeats’s tomb as I unbutton my flies, drop my trouser and crouch. I manage to micturate liberally on the step before their altar. I was hoping I might need to defecate too, but I do not feel the peril I was anticipating. I try, but it won’t happen. I shrug, as if it may remain a small regret. Such is life. I stand and fix myself, as Violet continues to speak.
‘S … I … X … F … I … N … G … E … R … S … dot … V … I … R … dot … U … S … Send.’
She pulls the phone back from her face and then after it chimes like the Empress Dowager’s gong, she whispers, ‘Password,’ then goes on.
‘R … O … B … B … I … E. Send.’
Gong.
I then sit and, for a brief minute, allow myself to drop into a trance and astral plane to a time when I forced an ankle-deep fecal and orgiastic fuckfest here in the majesty of 36 Blythe Road. I relish that second battle before I return to the present.
It is done. We return to the staircase and move back to the ground floor.
And, with our shoes back on, we walk to take our leave as the lady appears from what seems to be a kitchen producing delicious smells.
‘Thank you, madam. You have made an old man very happy.’
Her smile has been replaced by a more inquisitive countenance. I turn towards the door, but my way is now blocked by a large man. He puts his arm out in front of me. He stares at me, and brings his face close to mine.
‘Do I know you, sir?’ he asks me.
I am silent. Sturdy and confident, I stare at him.
‘Are you on the television?’ he says.
‘I think not. Perhaps one day,’ I say, hoping to prompt a smile.
He pauses, as I see the oaf attempting to place my identity. He is not the sharpest fellow, but one would want his help in a dark alley brawl.
The lady joins him at his side, and looks at him, as if urging him to have that penny drop.
‘Okay, fair do’s. Are you sure we cannot order you a cab?’
‘That is so kind, but you have no idea how much I cherish walking the streets of this city. Especially now I have relieved myself. Thank you all the same.’
We leave as rapidly as is possible before the invisible ink on my face – a contingency plan that has just proved unnecessary – reveals two solid pentagrams identical to the ones at that same address way back when, and then also at a notorious chess game in the Waldorf Astoria in New York City a long, long time ago.
Once outside of that vast old house, Violet and I howl and bay with joy and mirth at the unnecessary theatrics, melodrama and danger we have just been through. I do not need to explain that style and panache in executing a plan to save Mankind is so very vital.
‘Wait,’ she says. ‘Watch this.’
And she holds up the device, and I see myself urinating and then hear my own invocation, measured, urgent and proud. We watch and listen again. And now as we stagger and laugh and hold each other up, an old Packard sweeps past us in what appears to be slow motion. I sense two faces I know so very well, smiling from the back, while two children seem to listen to and stare at their elders. Both males, young and old, wear gargantuan and identical spectacles, the gent a large beard, while both females, young and old, are in matching maroon and cream bonnets. I know who you are! I tingle. They know I am safe. I, they.
This part is done. The ritual of the ceremony, however brief, was still a ceremony and did not lack any sacredness. The Third Battle of Blythe Road140 ought now be fought in an unseen realm in the ether over the coming hours, as the repercussions of the third-millennium hex that Violet has set in motion might, we pray as atheists, be seen.
The plan is simple. My legion of Ceylon monks – who number 666 – are currently in several hundred cities around the world. Until noon today, they were each armed with nothing but a satchel of gooey toffee. There they met Thelemites with a) access to key water facilities and reservoirs and b) several hundred with small aircraft, helicopters and drones.
Throughout this day, their supplies were lobbed, dropped, catapulted and dissolved – with utter sanctity and righteousness – into the water source of major conurbations and metropolises to give my welcome home party a perpetual kick.
Meanwhile, the SixFingers spell should be spreading by the wonders of technology.
The virus is designed to warn against the purchase and libation of any canned or bottled drinks. Billions should be cautioned that all such products have been laced and spiked in an undiscriminating tilt at mass murder. Billions should be advised to drink only tap water until further notice. We hope that editors at news outlets will take the bait and spread our word. I can only hope that the marvellous leverage to be found in paranoia continues to win wars for me.
Now, only time will tell. Violet and I head to one final spot to witness our glory or our defeat. We shall walk to Highgate Cemetery, where I will visit an old and resting pal, who would be so thrilled at the audacity and thorough simplicity of our plan, should it work.
It is a long trek now. Violet and I are tired, but fuelled by the anticipation of our Glory. We are aware from the friends we met in the Hussar of the immediacy and swiftness of these modern-day spells. This increases our excitement to juvenile levels, as an old man and his elderly daughter trace a path across the city. We appear supremely innocuous, banal, barely worth a look, but, like the minuscule Spanish flu virus or the sparrow that hits an engine and brings down a jetliner, those evil bastards in power should ignore the seemingly bland and the apparently inoffensive at their peril.
There is no way The Crackdown could have happened, so swiftly. I think. But I know this spy game well, and if we have lads and lasses on the inside of them, those slippery fuckers might well know slivers of what we are up to. Whether they have activated their own plan of a curfew or not, Violet and I certainly get a glimpse of how it may appear on those empty streets, oddly deserted for the London I once knew. The pubs are closed, and lit windows become rarer as night closes in. When we do see a person, they do not stagger like imbeciles, staring at the lit screen in their hand, but instead they now scuttle from the Underground station to doorways, as sirens are heard across the citadel.
In an empty pub, a television screen has been left on. It shows the face of a newsreader for several minutes. There is no voice, but, instead, a wailing coming from the screen. Another bar is open, surreptitiously, in a back street, but, as Violet and I peer into the window of the snug, the lone chap in there, slouched at a table, appears to be on the point of weeping.
From London W14, Violet and I walk through the parks to the northern slopes; through the gas-lit paths of Holland Park and the splendour and the ducks of Kensington Gardens. Hyde Park is empty, so we borrow a row boat and I paddle from south-west to north-east across the Serpentine, where I once saw a young family killed by a Zeppelin. In the middle of the lake, we both take a handful of toffee.
From Marble Arch, we move through the silent and scary back streets of Mayfair and Fitzrovia to Regent’s Park and finally the Heath. We will walk through the night. We appear to be the only ones.
*
I show Violet the way into the cemetery after dark, and then we walk unthreatened and free to the final resting place of my chum. His gravestone bears no name, but we were given precise instructions in the Hussar.
Had that old friend have been with us, I am sure he would speak of old times, how his days in London had been his happiest. He would tell of the camaraderie of the doss houses, and perhaps the loneliness of the packed taverns and trains. He would revel and exalt the beasts in the zoo, and the ecstasy of sailors stepping ashore and their thrill of leaving again, with a lonely lass’s name and photograph, away to the oceans.
The goo is now hitting me. I hear my dead friend’s voice from inside his tomb. He tells me, clearly and audibly in my mind, as Violet touches my hand again in that same manner of late, of the company of whores and bishops, spicy-gobbed fish wives of vile invective and calm spies who knew their days were numbered. He tells me of the lads and lasses he has seen there in the cemetery with needles in their arms, and those he has persuaded to turn their backs on suicide. He tells me of the young blokes with prams, who every day sit on the tombs, cry embarrassed words, and implore lost wives below in the muck for advice on how to be a good dad.
He tells me how he misses me and I hear his laugh.
My Grigori Yefimovich. My Rasputin. I stir back from my reverie, and write his name in the dirt with a stick.
Morning is almost here. Violet has closed her eyes, but I know she cannot sleep on our strong narcotic. Instead, I sense she is concentrating. The streets around the cemetery and across the city appear silent. The blue-ish tinge of first dawn touches the outline of the tombs.
Yet, this is not the shade of morning, for this is a turquoise. And an almost imperceptible lilac. And then a flicker of death-white. I have seen the Auroras when far north at Boleskine, but never here in the glare of the south, though never have I seen London looking so unblanketed and exposed to the stars as this pre-dawn was.
But this light does not come from the Aurora’s north or the dawn’s east. This comes from the south, and the west. Then, the same flickers come from within the viscerals and the groins of the city itself that I look across. The rays of those colours shoot from bedrooms and salons, bedsits and hostels from as far as my soggying eyes can see. This is how it happens. This is what it looks like.
My visions from the goo are now immediate and close by. I speak of them to Violet.
Of mobs of graffiti artists with lilac stains on their fingers, already celebrating the moment they have waited for since they bought their first vinyl long player, and, in their lonely bedroom, wept with joy to themselves as they first heard the music.
Of the same turquoise, lilac and death-white lights shooting out from army barracks and police stations. Of how we have just eliminated the one obstacle that stopped us from prevailing in Paris in 1968. The law. Those fuckers get thirsty too, it seems. I speak of how they are now mine, copulating on bunk beds, sodomising on parade grounds, fellating in squad cars and on tanks. Of how the sparks and shards and blades and sprayed bullets of the goo cannot be avoided.
Of how victory feels and sounds. And of how still I have no yearning to reveal myself as the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Twentieth Century. Of how this, what I feel and see now, is enough. Of how this was always going to be enough for me.
Of how tens, hundreds, of thousands, perhaps millions, stand forward on this day. Of how they are the great-grandsons and great-granddaughters of tired and scared boys, who were shovelled, by the thousand, out from trenches and shipped from the Western Front of the Great War, and out to safe beaches, jungles and small villages by a soldier called Robbie and a man their forefathers only ever referred to in whispers as The Great Beast. Of how they were all helped to safety by a bearded doctor called Dandylyon and a benevolent nurse named Prudence Venus-Coshe. Of how there were Germans, Italians, French, Belgians, English, Welsh, Irish and Scots, who sobbed with simultaneous joy and guilt. Of how there is here now a mob of remarkable-looking lads and lasses with green eyes, mahogany faces and red hair from Ceylon itself, where we once shipped those white-skinned champs from County Wicklow. Of how they are all paying homage today, on this speckled and flecked dawn. Of how some feel to me as if they are here, just miles away, such is the reverence and determination to be in this town today to say thank you. Of how the clusters of their families and communities have always been on alert and ready to pay their simple debt, merely with their presence, and their boots and sandals on the ground at a municipal-wide, then global fuckfest.
Of how the people at this party, once they have sipped that glorious potion, will never be the same again. Of how there are simply some bells that cannot be unrung. Of how there are no hangovers to shake off. Of how the chasing of this dragon becomes a cyclical and unending joy.
Of how this is neither a parochial and local bender nor a neighbourhood and provincial jag, for right now that big bully, Uncle Sam across the ocean, is on his knees, his face in a soggy groin, and wholly reminiscent of a scene I now recall as a young boy with a King James Bible under my arm and holding my father’s hand on a piping-hot Gloucestershire afternoon. It was the day I remember watching at length an over-keen bulldog licking porridge out of a bucket, as Papa chuckled at his enthusiasm. I knew it to be a boy by its broad, weighty, rhythmical and swinging scrotum. Well, this is the precise and purposeful gusto with which the United States is currently engaging in a nationwide analingus.
I speak to Vi of the America I once knew, and honour now the gloried spots that made me so happy in that land, the places that are now being submerged in the greatest revolt. I tell of that scrubby roof in Chelsea, where La Gitana and I summoned magickal hours to the pristine west coast towns now lorded over with generosity by young Dibdins. I tell of that exact spot in the park during the Great War, where Winston and I first met and started all of this astonishing nonsense, to the bubbling persistent rebellion that shall always be New Orleans. From the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria where I once wooed Manhattan society over a century before, with inked pentagrams on my face and filthy talk, to that treasured spot on Esopus Island, high above the Hudson where my Scarlet Woman and I daubed vast letters and Thelemic slogans onto the rock face, taunting and confusing tourists and inspiring sailors alike. From the polished flamenco floor and the tables pockmarked by a thousand clipping heels in the Little Madrid Café to Naples, Oakland, Detroit, Boston, Chicago, Toledo, Memphis, Nashville, St Louis, San Antonio, San Jose, Seattle, Portland and El Paso. And into every nook in the dustbowls, coastal towns, bad-lands, swamps and mountains.
Of how nowhere is immune as biblical scholars and pious grandmas turn into premium degenerates and perverts of vast scale. Freaks and deviants now stroll across the land of our shimmering apocalypse.
Of Rangoon, China, India, Brazil and those thoroughly game Africans too.
Game over.
*
The beasts in London zoo now begin to wail and howl, for the smart buggers sense a metropolis in municipal-wide coitus. It is a populace with visions – just as Robbie and I had that first time – of the rain that now falls upwards to the skies, lovers as rampant skeletons with vermillion, pumping hearts, and clear images of the future, clear images that ignite further rapture and triumphant bellowing. And so it begins. The turquoise, lilac and death-white.
‘Violet, Violet. Stir, my love. Open your eyes. It is the strangest thing.’
And my vicious and feisty daughter opens her eyes in the rain, touches my fat, damp paw again. Violet now knows of the greatest victory, as we add to the glory of walking on moons, and the sheer wonder of piano concertos, this new day.
And this is how I crown the lovers of this planet – and thus make billions of noble swines the permanent rulers of our great world. The one we shall now live in ecstatically, perpetually and for free.
And They shall write and speak of this Dawn, as Mankind finally takes Her rightful and righteous place, and She lights up the Skies. Forever.
136 Hungarian for thank you.
137 ‘Good luck, old man.’
138 ‘Do what thou wilt. Love is the law. Messiah.’
139 There is a polite way to impart one’s intentions to piss and not shit.
140 ‘Best of three, you fuckers?’