Gog

by Andrew Sinclair

  “You said I was in the Book of Revelations,” Gog says. “At this moment, I am . . . interested in my past.”

  “Indeed, you should be. Revelations, Chapter twenty, Verses seven and eight. They are a cornerstone of my own inspired writings, which reveal my mission here on earth, to broadcast the coming of Israel again to this holy island. Only will they give me the transmitters, which a previous emanation of mine disclosed to them? Will they B.B.C.!” The Bagman spits gloomily, then his voice takes on the quality of incantation. “As saith Revelations, And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.” The Bagman explains, “Some call Hitler Satan, but we know better, you and I. Satan is right here, and we call him – Whitehall. Whited sepulchre, more likely.” The Bagman continues with his incantation. “And Revelations saith, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations, which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, the number of whom is as the sands of the sea.” The Bagman recovers his normal tone. “So there you are.”

  “So where am I?” Gog asks. “Excuse me. I don’t remember too well these days.”

  “How could you?” the Bagman says, “when you have just been born again according to the prophecies, as I have, to do battle with your evil brother, Magog. The end of the world is at hand, and you will bring it about by your final struggle with Magog. The first coming of Gog and Magog drove the first Israel from Albion and the last battle of Gog and Magog shall bring it back again.”

  “But who am I?” Gog asks.

  “You?” the Bagman says. “As though you didn’t know.” He looks at Gog craftily. “You wouldn’t be Satan, would you? The old ’un paying me a personal visit. If so, I should wrestle with you all night.” The Bagman begins rolling up the sleeves of his coat, then, considering Gog’s vast size, he begins rolling them down again. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Though you could still be a false sign, sent to tempt me. True prophets are always receiving false signs. And Satan is abroad, as Revelations saith.”

  At this moment, Gog sits up and stretches himself, raising both his enormous arms above his head. He is surprised to see the Bagman quickly slap himself on the beard three times.

  “O, thou of little faith,” the Bagman says, cursing himself. “Trust, trust, trust, Wayland Merlin Blake Smith. Be thou guileless as a lamb, and the microphones shall be given unto thee. My dear Gog, I’m sure you’re on the up and up, though I’d hate to think you were still growing. Where are you proceeding?”

  “To London,” Gog says.

  “Ah ha,” the Bagman says happily. “And may I ask why?”

  “To see if the people rule at Westminster there.”

  The Bagman slaps his thigh with glee, although one of his knee joints cracks.

  “Perfect. I didn’t prompt you. You spoke the words. I didn’t put them in your mouth, though they couldn’t have been better if I’d been a ventriloquist. You can pretend not to know who you are, but you know all right, you know. Better not to tell, though.” He draws his hand across his beard, where it possibly covers a neck, and sags his head to one side, suddenly and horribly. “You never know who’s working for Magog, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” Gog says. “But Magog and his men . . . are they everywhere?”

  “Everywhere. But you’ve got to be smart to pick them out. And the people are a headless beast. That’s why, out of sheer self-sacrifice, I have decided to serve at their head against Magog. They must give me the transmitters, which are mine by right. Then I shall proclaim the coming of the new Israel. And the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the wolf suckle the babe. And it is written that you, Gog, shall aid me.”

  “Who wrote it?” Gog says.

  “I, naturally,” the Bagman says. “In my treatise that explains the beginning and end of all things on Albion’s Ancient Druid Rocky Shore. That line people think William Blake wrote, though in fact I wrote it, when I stopped off in his fleshy abode for a while.” The Bagman delves about in his old army pack and finds a pamphlet, wrapped in brown paper. “Here you are, here you are. This invaluable treatise is not something I normally lend. In the interests of the future Israel, I usually ask five pounds for reading it, a mere pittance to help me install my own radio station, if need be.” He hands the pamphlet to Gog across the gangway of the bus, his fingers stabbing at the title inked on the brown paper. “The True History of Albion, As Revealed to Wayland Merlin Blake Smith,” the Bagman insists, digging in the pocket of his overcoat to produce the end of a candle and a box of sulphur matches, which he also passes over to Gog. He then settles on his seat, deposits the back of his ankles on the headrest in front of him, spreads his beard delicately as an ostrich-feather fan on his chest, declares to Gog, “Read, learn and inwardly digest, while I have a kip,” and is fast asleep within the minute.

  Gog lights the candle and reads the pamphlet, which has been hand-printed on five pages in an old type, so that the letters jiggle up and down as though pulled out of their lines by the wavering candlelight.

  THIS IS THE TRUE BOOK OF WAYLAND MERLIN BLAKE SMITH, AS REVEALED TO HIM ON THE ANCIENT ISLE OF MONA

  1. In the beginning, Jerusalem was builded in Albion, the golden pillars of Zion; by Thames sweet river, the temples of marble and cedar.

  2. In Chelsea, the roof-beams of sandalwood; in Hampstead, the oaken floors inlaid with silver.

  3. All wrought by the craftsman Wayland, the smith of the Lord; I am he in my first coming.

  4. Builded in nine days and nine nights, to be the temple of Zion in Albion, the son of God.

  5. And the Druids turned to abominations, to the flesh of human sacrifice.

  6. And they pulled down the temples to build a brazen city, a city of brass and copper and iron, London the misbegotten.

  7. And the people were set to toil there, in the service of Moloch and Mammon and Magog.

  8. And their weeping and their wailing rose to the Lord, and He vowed to destroy their accursed masters, saying:

  9. Though the Druids dig into hell, thence shall My hand take them; though the Druids climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down.

  10. And the Trojans landed from their ships in Devon, and the giant sons of Albion went forth to meet them;

  11. Magog from the accursed Druid city, and Gog from the vale of Jerusalem.

  12. And the Lord God gave the victory to the Trojans; yea, unto the enemy went the battle.

  13. And the Trojans ruled for a thousand years, and after them the Romans; a Queen burned the accursed city of London, but the Romans builded it higher, girt about with walls and towers, and set a great wall to the North, the Wall of Hadrian.

  14. And after the Romans ruled, there came the Northmen, and after the Northmen, the Normans; and the brazen city grew, yea, walked over the waters upon a stone bridge.

  15. And Albion groaned under the brass posts of New Babylon; by the waters of Thames, the maidens of Zion wept.

  16. And Jerusalem fled to stony ground, the rocks near the Dead Sea.

  17. And my second coming was as Merlin, prophesying woe; as the voice of the raven, I sang of blood and sword.

  18. And Magog ruled in London, and his machines ate men; and their wives were harlots in the city, and their sons and daughters stricken.

  19. And when Gog and the people rose up as wheat in the fields, Magog scattered them as chaff beneath the flail.

  20. And the Lord called a great plague upon London, as the plagues of Egypt; He called a great fire as the fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah.

  21. But London rose from the ashes, saying ha-ha to the heavens; and Magog still ruled from the city, with Moloch and Mammon.

  22. And I rose again in Soho, William Blake the prophet; but I preached to the vain wind and I spoke as the rain upon the sand.

  23. And Magog sent his minions to the ends of the world, yea, to the uttermost places of the earth.

  24. And the forests of I
ndia and the vales of Africa ran with blood; and the minions of Magog roused up the wrath of the Lord and the nations.

  25. And the Lord afflicted Albion with warriors from the Northland, two plagues of warriors that ate her young men as grass before locusts.

  26. And the Lord sent down fire from heaven to consume London utterly; yea, the fires of hell rose up to purge the accursed city.

  27. And I am come again in my fourth coming; Smith, the leader of the Israelites, come to build again Zion.

  28. And Magog is burned down in the accursed city, and Gog, his brother; the wrath of the Lord passeth, as the winter into the summer.

  29. And the Lord saith, how shall I give thee up, Albion? How shall I deliver thee, Israel?

  30. I am come to restore Zion and the temples of Jerusalem; this is my servant Smith, in him I place my trust.

  31. I shall be as the dew unto Israel, if she will hearken unto him;

  32. If she will deliver to him the waves of the air I have given her; if she will deliver to him the transmitters, or be cast into utter darkness.

  33. If my fourth servant be not heard, the fire shall come for the fourth time, and there shall be no more London.

  34. Her towers shall be molten beneath her, the Thames shall dry up as the desert; as wax before the fire, as stubble before the torches.

  35. But if ye hearken to my servant Smith and deliver to him the waves of the air; ye shall build again Jerusalem, in Israel by Thames side.

  ALL THOSE WHO BELIEVE THAT THE ABOVE IS THE REVEALED TRUTH WHICH IT SURELY IS ARE REQUESTED TO SEND DONATIONS TO WAYLAND MERLIN BLAKE SMITH, c/o CENTRAL POST OFFICE, LEEDS, ALBION (ENGLAND). OFFERINGS HOWEVER SMALL GRATEFULLY RECEIVED; CASH OR STAMPS OR POSTAL ORDERS, NO CHEQUES PLEASE. GIVE AND IT SHALL BE GIVEN UNTO YOU. DON’T YOU WANT TO SEE JERUSALEM BUILT IN ALBION’S SACRED LAND? DON’T WAIT – SEND YOUR MITE OR MINT NOW!

  When Gog has finished reading the pamphlet, he looks across to the sleeping Bagman, who is slumbering the deep drowse of the righteous and the right, of the just and the justified, the iron cross on his chest weighing down his repose. Gog puts out the candle and himself falls asleep. A face nags at his mind, the full face of a thin woman, with black hair cropped close to the skull. She plays with a hoop, passing it over and over her long naked body, until she suddenly breaks the hoop apart in a rage, and Gog starts awake in the first faint grey of morning to find the other back seat empty.

  The Bagman is gone, as though he had never been there. No trace remains of him, nor of The True History Of Albion, As Revealed To Wayland Merlin Blake Smith. Gog presses his knuckles into his eyes, then pulls them away to see if the pain will make him see differently. But the Bagman is still gone, as if he were a vision in the night. A parable floats into Gog’s mind, Is he a Gog dreaming of a Bagman or a Bagman dreaming of a Gog? He searches again for a clue that the Bagman has been bodily in the bus, not only in his own unfurnished mind, hunting desperately for scraps of past fantasy to fill its untenanted places. But all he can find, under the opposite seat, is a twist of newspaper, containing the bones and skin of a kipper.

  III

  As Gog passes the pylons beyond Burdiehouse, a sharp smell of wet green grain-stalks scrapes his nostrils; the rankness of the moist luxuriance of the weeds and grasses growing on the banks of the road is almost offensive in its reek. In the first light, Gog already sees a tractor driving into a field, to harrow the crops on the boundaries of the city and furrow the limits of the furthest houses. A white sow munches, chinless and inexorable, in a muddy yard outside a farm; its hanging dugs promise litters of piglets innumerable. The fields are rolling and opulent, pushing up sprouts of clover or corn or cabbage with the recklessness of the spendthrift. In all the fertile land, Gog can see no restraint and little control. This riot of plenty seems incapable of being reduced to the coloured squares of ration books.

  Sitting on a wall in front of a moulting monkey-puzzle tree in the garden of a sad stone house, Gog sees the knapsack of a soldier. He looks about himself warily; but there are no humans near, only a spying magpie on the tree, cocking its head from its sharp black and white finery. Gog lifts the pack with one hand and is away; out of the corner of his eye, he sees the boots of the sleeping owner stretched out the other side of the wall. The magpie gives a whistle of approval on two notes, “Smart work, smart work,” then ceases as though unwilling to sound the alarm. Once round the bend of the road, Gog ducks into a lane to examine his treasure trove; mess tins, a ground sheet, two packs of rations – mainly biscuits and chocolate – a knife and fork and spoon set, a water-bottle, ordnance survey maps of the Borders and the North Country as far as York, a compass, and a printed sheet of instructions headed ENTERPRISE TEST: LIVING OFF THE LAND – THE MARK OF THE TRUE SOLDIER.

  With biscuits and chocolate inside him, and the maps and the compass to guide him, Gog branches off down the valley of the North Esk River past foxgloves poking up their ruddy snouts. He sees an old horse in a field actually eating the foxgloves, doctoring himself with digitalis for a cardiac condition. On the hills by the road, the large stone houses squat near the brown bouncing burns that skitter downwards to join the river, which is dammed every few hundred yards in a mill pool that once drove the looms and now carries away the waste. The river is converted from power to sewer, the tall brick chimneys line its banks, the pylons leapfrog across it. The current itself hardly flows, just creeps along carrying the white detergent bubbles from the mills that have stained it mahogany with sweat and grease. The workers’ cottages are so streaked with brown damp that they too seem to be dissolving into the brown water. Even on this Sunday morning, the banked fires burn in the mills and the chimneys lay a slow black trail of smoke on a bed of air to make a second crawling dark river above the bed of the North Esk.

  Up from the river valley onto the plateau of the fields, and along the tarmac road between hedgerows, from which dog-roses poke out splay-fingered blossoms with pink and yellow palms. Stone walls cut off the castles along the river from the wanderers on the highway; but Gog sees marked on the map in a nearby thicket: Wallace’s Cave. A memory stirs at the back of Gog’s skull, the memory of an outlaw hiding in the greenwood, fighting for Scotland against the English enemy, a patriot of his own time with all men’s hands legally against him – except those of the Scots people and those were many. So Gog turns in off the road into a graveyard, where there are two small old ladies, eighty and after, the three Fates minus one, putting flowers in jam-jars on the gravelled grave plots.

  “I’m looking for Wallace’s cave,” Gog says.

  “I don’t heer ye,” says the first old lady. And she does not, because she is stone deaf as a tomb itself.

  The other old lady comes stumbling over between the graves, dodging in and out of monuments and memorials as if through stalled traffic.

  “I’m asking for the cave of Wallace,” Gog says.

  “Theer’s no grave o’ no Wallace roond heer. Try further East. We doon’t ha’ truck wi’ no Wallaces.”

  “Cave, I want,” Gog says. “Not grave.”

  The old lady shakes her head at his simplicity. “Ye kin see f’r yesel’. We doon’t ha’ caves heer. We ha’ graves.”

  “It says on the map,” Gog says, “the cave of Wallace, the great Scots champion of the people.”

  “O, Willy Wallace,” the old lady says. “He weer ne’er roond heer. The map’s wrong.”

  There is no appeal, and Gog goes on his way. And so folk memory dies even among the old and the great departed are greatly departed and heroes hide themselves so well that they stay hidden for ever and William Wallace, you are sleeping and your cave is filled in and Esk is brown and bordered by moiling mills.

  The road to the South ends with another road cutting across it, so Gog decides to plunge straight onwards past a lodge and along the drive of the estate in front of him, keeping to the left of the stately home or institution marked on the map. The path ahead leads into a wood of oak and ash. The sun at last st
ruggles out of the clouds like a bumble bee thrashing about in grey curds, which suddenly clambers free and breaks away alone and yellow in the bright air. The leaves of the trees change from olive to mustard under the rush of light, the meadows before the wood are a fuzz of green joy. Gog smiles at nothing in particular, and, sensing himself smile, his mouth opens in a wide grin to answer the smile. Then he hears sounds in the wood ahead, mewing and shrieking and humming, shrilling and clucking and gurgling, and round a bend in the path through the wood, monsters proceed two by two in a crazy crocodile towards him.

  They come forwards holding hands on limbs gingle-gangle, splaying their feet or dragging them, their outer arms windmill or bent or feeling at the impalpable air. Some parody boys and some parody youths, some possess pin-heads and some possess pumpkin-heads, some have skulls that rise to a peak and some have foreheads that swell outwards, some have squashed noses in moon faces and some have the starting cheekbones of emaciation, some have blubbery open mouths and some have thin lips drooling, some have heads that sit on the shoulders without interval of neck and some have long stalks of windpipe with Adam’s apples jigging, some have humps on their shoulders and others humps on their bellies, most have lumpish swollen bodies and a few scraggled trunks and bones, but all, all, all are white, fishbelly white with internment, stumbling in the universal gait of the confined. A few wear kilts, the rest wear tubular trousers with the only creases horizontal across the knees; all carry hand-knitted sweaters of grey or green. Beside them, two young nurses, dressed in field-grey with white bibs held up with bright safety-­pins, all plump and pink and professional, are driving them as expertly as a pair of collie bitches drive the sheep on the moors, circling about to head off the strays, making little barks of warning and encouragement, herding the flock in the direction of the meadow beyond the wood.