Читать книгу The Anarchist - Tristan Hawkins - Страница 16

They pulled over before the slip road to the A1 (M), wrestled out of their heavy coats and slipped into the Babylon bibs.

The Babylon bib had been Jayne’s invention, and as inventions went it was unrivalled by just about anything Yantra had managed to come up with to reduce the inevitable hassles of this way of life. Originally hessian sacks, the bibs had had head-holes cut out and the façade of respectable clothing sewn to the fronts. Thus any Babylon (police) eyeballing them on the motorway would witness a gentleman in a shirt and tie with his long hair hitched neatly back, driving the Bedford, and a woman in a high-necked Laura Ashley number, with albeit unconventional hair, accompanying him.

Prior to the bibs, Yantra would have expected to be pulled over two if not three times on a long motorway journey such as this one – and depending on what type of mood he was in, have his drugs stolen, his van shamelessly criticized and even be forced to listen to crap about the Caravan Sites Act 1968 and the Criminal Law Act 1977.

Since adopting the bibs, they’d only been tugged once and then the policemen found them so funny that it completely slipped their minds to harass them. Painting over the anarchy symbol, fuck the system, and the other brightly painted messages of peace possibly helped matters. These days he didn’t even need to bother with Biddy’s fascist paperwork.

Yantra and Jayne were making their annual journey to London because, compared to virtually anywhere else in the country, its streets and subways really were paved with gold. Not that they intended making their fortunes, but nothing was worse than being at Glastonbury too indigent to get truly wankered out of their skulls. Alas, life required money, but as Yantra often pointed out one can also get greedy on poverty. Money was unquestionably a mu topic – a negative which is beyond negative and positive. And stealing or begging for modest amounts was The Middle Way, and perfectly consonant with the noble path.

And there was another matter. Perhaps it was curiosity. Perhaps it was genuinely familial, though he hoped to God not. He couldn’t know. Still, year on year, the gnawing deepened. Of course, he’d said nothing to Jayne. Nor did he intend to until the groundwork had been done. For Yantra well knew that speaking to a woman about a child and introducing her to one were entirely different matters. Entirely different.

He pulled into the slow lane and unbuttoned his trousers. Jayne smiled nervously and arched down on him. She tried to recall when he’d last had an opportunity to wash and wondered at his reaction to her refusing. To Yantra, fingernail grime, armpit stench, flatulence and just about every other foul thing the body is capable of producing, were human and natural and thus warranted a certain earthy reverence. She half wondered whether he felt sexy at all and wasn’t using her as a method of getting clean.

But Jayne had Yantra quite wrong. He was neither particularly horny nor fussed about hygiene. To him this was Maithuna, a Tantric meditation technique of submitting himself to Shakti (the feminine principle, Mother of the Universe) through impassive intercourse. Silently he intoned a secret Tantric mantra in time with the rhythmic strokes below and adjusted his speed so that the road lines passed in a complimentary rhythm. Once or twice he felt himself succumb to the worldly aspect of what was going on and dragged himself back, Zen-fashion, to the mantra. Only when he climaxed and spoke aloud that he was consecrating his semen as a sacred offering, did he receive a notion that perhaps he was being somewhat hypocritical about things and that he’d squandered a perfectly good head-job concentrating on an enigmatic slab of discourse between Siva and Durga.