Aby Walter Agnew Moore II, Roving Typhoid-Mary Reporter
7 February 2002, Dover and points north, England

THE STORM

The crumpled ferry-ticket in my pocket says that I am crossing from France to England in some sort of conventional surface-vessel, but that is not my experience. I am living out Captain Nemo images of being slammed into the rolling walls of the infernal ocean-machine, while the Spanish passengers roll their eyes backwards and mutter prayers to forgotten Phoenecian sea-gods.

Sea-sickness? No time to worry about it. A concussion is what I'm afraid of. You take 2 short steps, and nothing happens. You venture a third, and the sea heaves and you fly, thrown into the laminated posters of This Voyage's Movies. I have taken off my pack to lower my center of gravity, which makes it better, or, not as bad. The heavy grey-green canvas-and-leather 1940 Swiss pack, trusted veteran of travels in seven countries, stays where I drop it whenever I go flying, and gives me a solid reference point to go crawling back to. A newer, lightweight, high-tech pack would be skidding down the corrider, but my phlegmatic Swiss friend holds its ground.

The Spanish mutter. Valkyries scream in the frozen air outside. They have found the boat, and it is time to die.

Last night in France I was alone when the beast attacked me in a muddy field. It was big and black and ran straight at me. I grabbed it and wrestled it down, but it had six knees and ten elbows, all of them heavy and hard with spikes, and the beast trampled me with them before the others got it off of me. Both my shins were stabbed with its spikes, and it almost caved the left side of my chest in.

I sat up, heaving for air, and crawled backwards dragging my numb legs before me. The rugby practice continued.

Now I feel my chest everytime I cough. I cough every 30 seconds or so. It feels like each lung is half-full of blood. I have a full-blown case of the flu. My neck is hot enough to fry a whole necklace of eggs. I may be hallucinating. It is hard work just to stand or sit, without God deciding every now and then that I need to be flipped as well.

Land at last. I crawl up out of the surf, a prehistoric lung-fish gasping, staring at a blurred white cliff. No question of going farther inland tonight. I shoulder the pack, nod to the ghost of a drowned Roman sitting guard on the front stoop of the Beaumont Hotel, and for 20 quid I get 14 hours sleep with someone watching my back.

THE ASYLUM

The sun is bright. All I have to do is get to London, and the Girls will take care of me. I find a bus.

About 2 days later Catherine is fixing me tea and telling me she was afraid I was going to die for 2 days there. " You didn't do anything. You just slept on that futon upstairs straight through."

But the Girls didn't let me down. Catherine and Mary, and Catriona and Nia, they made me eat and gave me hot drinks and generally kept a pulse in me. Lest any get the wrong idea, the Girls are not interested in Walters romantically, but "just friends" doesn't apply to somebody who keeps you from choking half to death in a spasm of coughing. "Damn-good-friends" is more like it.

She gives me hot tea laced with non-alcoholic fruit wine. I cough, then I drink it. For a few minutes, I don't cough.

WALKING AROUND

Catriona and Nia want to explore Central London. We leave our base in Lewisham, an unpretentious section of small neighborhoods in the south-east part of town, and ride buses and trains into Charing Cross.

Whenever people approach Nia in the street asking for something, she hunches forward and starts mumbling in Welsh. They back off.

We stroll along the Mall beside St. James Park, where they keep ducks and squirrels and pelicans, down toward the palaces where they keep the Queen and Prince Charles. We see lots of pelicans but the Royals are more timid. Just as well. The average Prince may look cute and appealing, but like a squirrel, it is never truly tame and you risk a nasty bite if it is threatened or startled.

Now, the Mall, the actual street part of it that leads to Buckingham Palace, is red. Fully expecting this to be the blood of people crushed to create the Empire, I lean close for an inspection. But it is only red paint.

London is the most beautiful city I have ever seen. It contains hundreds of acres of industrial wastelands and thousands of truly filthy, depressing, uninspired buildings that wouldn't even be allowed within 100 kilometers of Paris. That doesn't matter. I walk around the corner and against a black bank of clouds is Big Ben shining gold in the low sun. Every line is bright and clear as a drawing. And right then I know why London is beautiful. Sixty years ago both London and Paris were tested. Hitler waved a gun at Paris, who said "Not the face! Not the face!". Then he waved it at London. London looked back at him and said: "I'll see you in hell first, you little bastard."

Paris was untouched physically but will always be a whore of a hag to me. London burned, and London is even more beautiful now because of it.

The squirrels in the park have fat white bellies. None of the birds are afraid of us.

EL TIGRE

My body is up to almost 3/4 efficiency by the time Dan comes to town. We all are sitting in an Irish bar in the West End, a couple of steps from the toilets, and I am grinning at all the people who are getting on-the-spot Gaelic lessons as to which is which, "Fir" and "Mna", in relation to "Ladies" and "Gents". The girls are the best as they walk in, see a bank of urinals, and sort of scuttle out backwards laughing... Dan is telling stories about being a big English bloke living in Ireland and is jabbering in a staccato falsetto as he describes the day his room-mate's mother decided he needed food, more food, and there was her other son dragging an 80-kilo sack of potatoes up to the house out of his van...

John the Chinese-lookin-dude is nodding, adjusting his mod hair-cut, and then slamming on Shane MacGowen when yet another Pogues song comes on. "Oi ate im, Oi ri'y do..."

We leave and eventually descend into a Caribbean-style place called Salsa. It is down in a cellar full of duc2rk and stretches on around several corners. I wonder if we are at the original street level of London.

They were dancing salsa when we got there, but that's no option for me; I have established through trial and error that I will puke whenever my pulse gets much above 80. I seek to stay on the low, dry side of that number.

In any case, they have stopped the music, and there are several circles of dancers practicing steps in unison down on the floor. We chat and drink a little beer, Dan, John, and I, then we all notice something at the same time: not only is there no music, but no one is counting out time. Yet somehow, the dancers are all doing the same things at the same times, including a "HAH!" shout every now and then with no apparent cue.

I speculate that we have stumbled onto the remnants of a Pre-Atlantean Serpent-Man Cult, and behind the gaily-painted sheet-rock lurk obscenely old sculpted monolithic idols, candles guttering fatly in front of them, from an age undreamed of.

Bama Moore kept his outward calm, but with his eyes let Sir Daniel and Hong Kong John know to watch his back, then, pretending to study the ceiling-carvings, he drifted close enough to observe the silent rings of dancers.

Four bullets. That is what it would take to break up the ceremony and give time to swing across the room and snatch the Jade Monkey. Each one of the four rings had a disguised Serpent-Man Priest controlling the mind-dominated humans.

But who controlled the Priests? Suddenly, Bama felt the room go dark as a thunderous noise broke out and he was mobbed by a crowd who poured in from every exit—

They have started the music. The Adventure of the Snake Temple must wait, for now, this little hole in London is the hottest spot North of Havana.

Many of the Latino-looking men are sporting t-shirts that say "Cuba" and such. When addressed in Spanish, they grin and say "sorry mate" in Hindu accents. Well, a little make-believe is fun. One stocky man has decided that he must, and will, dance with every one of the Girls. We name him El Tigre, and John and I develop a whole narrative to go with him:

"Juan, mi hermano, beware! Eet ees El Tigre!"

"El Tigre? No es posible! Gwhere ees he?"

"No, Juan, joo must run, eef he keel joo like he keel Papa, Mama, che weel DIE!"

"Ees better die, than to RUN, and El Tigre, he weel die WEET' me!"

"Ai caramba, joo are a macho, but joo have no pistola, no knifes, how joo gon beat heem, mang?"

"I out-DANCE heem!", and John suddenly backed up past Catherine, snatched her from El Tigre, and shot into a salsa-frenzy that dropped our jaws.

LEAVING

I could have stayed longer.

Instead, I am on the SeaFrance ferry watching the horizontal spread of lights that are Dover behind me. There is wind cooling the back of my neck and thumping the tricolor nearby. Not much roll in the sea at all, and the smell of roast and green beans fills the restaurant. I love the ferries.

I am the only one out at this rail. There are truck-drivers inside packed into their special lounge, some people in expensive suits in their expensive section, and all the rest, many with children, going about their business inside in the places made for them. Me, the White Wolf, I have the deck to myself.

I lift my hand off the rail, there is something stuck to it, a strange greyish powder. I think of all the hazardous chemicals that must have been on this ship at different times, unreported spills...

I laugh, and lick it off my hand.

Salt.