I Am Still The Greatest Says Johnny Angelo

by Nik Cohn

  And this much was true once inside the movie, he was caught for ever. At the age of 26, excess was his life, to which he was committed, and it was too late now to change. ‘I will die as I have lived,’ he decided, very solemn, and swore to turn his back on doubt and analysis.

  On the following morning, he called a meeting of all his followers and, seated on his lower lip, he swung his legs, he kicked his heels. He wore a white silk suit, white kid shoes, a pink carnation in his buttonhole. With every word that he spoke, his neon mouth moved in time and, smiling, he made a speech, as follows: ‘I am sick and tired of tedium.

  ‘For much too long, I have sat and thought and tied myself in knots, until I don’t believe in anything, but now I wish to plunge back into insanity. Even so it’s not enough simply to repeat my past, to go back on the road and shake my hips and make small girls scream. If I’m going to come back at all, I have to come back more extreme. This time, therefore, I mean to make an ending, a final explosion and, when it’s done, I shall cease.’

  Leaning back on flashing white teeth, Johnny Angelo paused to survey his supporters, who stood knee-deep in sand. Truthfully, he could not deny that they were motley but this was no time to quibble, he thought, and he let fall a rose. ‘I shall cause a revolution,’ he said. ‘As soon as possible, I shall recruit an army, a full-scale crusade, and then I shall march on Decatur, I shall overthrow tyranny and replace it with fun.’

  At Armadillo, he stood up straight, drew back his shoulders and, V for Victory, he spread his fingers wide. ‘If I win, I shall blow the world apart and, if I’m killed instead, I won’t complain,’ he concluded. ‘Either way, I will not be bored.’

  While his circus applauded politely, whistling and waving handkerchiefs, Johnny returned to his eyeball, where Catsmeat served him with tea and scones. ‘Johnny Angelo,’ said Catsmeat, loyally. ‘We shall overcome.’

  ‘I’m sick of this,’ replied Johnny.

  ‘Sick of what?’

  ‘Of everything.’

  Nevertheless, he sent out messengers into every corner of the nations, envoys who spoke behind their hands, who whispered and passed out pamphlets in underground cellars. Lurking in doorways, they hissed and, very soon, the first recruits began to arrive at Armadillo, straggling up by bicycle, in worn-out wagons and even on foot.

  Within a week, there were more than a thousand of them and, by the end of a month, there was truly a small army 10,000 strong, all eager to perish for Johnny Angelo.

  On the other hand, they were hardly what he’d had in mind. Somehow he’d imagined that he would collect an elite, commandos and ghurkas and American marines, men who had fought in five continents and, therefore, he was disconcerted to find, peering out through his navel, that the desert was full of mutants, of mongols and morons, of the blind and deaf and dumb, the sexually perverted, the criminally insane, and thousands of midget schoolgirls, hardly past puberty.

  By any standards, these were the scrapings, strictly the flotsam and jetsam of society: ‘Human garbage,’ said Johnny Angelo. ‘I might have known.’

  And his first impulse was to scrap the whole project, to disband the crusade and hide inside his mansion, where he might sit in the dark and sulk. On second thoughts, though, he saw that this was not possible. Having launched an apocalypse, he couldn’t yawn and go home to tea. Once the greatest, always the greatest: he’d said that himself. Backsliding was unthinkable. Trapped, he sighed deeply but walked out in the sand and began to train his troops. Dressed in a uniform of black barathea, he carried a swagger stick and divided his men into small platoons, each according to his gifts.

  First of all, there came the Mighty Avengers, and then the specialised performers such as jugglers and trapezists, acrobats and snake-charmers and so forth, and then the mass of schoolgirls, who might serve as cannon fodder and then the walking wounded, all those in wheelchairs or on crutches, and then the wild animals, and then the very riff-raff, the humanoids and human vegetables and, last of all, his mother and his father, his sisters.

  Every day for two months, he lined them up and drilled them and shouted obscenities in their faces, until at least they could march in formation, without tripping over their feet, bumping into each other or all falling down in a heap.

  Even so, they were a rabble, they always would be and the very sight of them made Johnny squirm, so that he soaked the desert in spitballs as big as pennies.

  From his bedroom, he watched the moon and thought dark thoughts. Gnawing at the end of his pencil, he wrote small sad poems, which took him nowhere, and he played his old hit records, relics of his golden age.

  And then, when he was almost 27, he looked in the mirror and there, unmistakably, he saw the first fine wrinkles forming round his eyes, the first sag beneath his chin. When his stylist dressed his hair, he noticed clusters of golden hair in the comb and, swinging like Tarzan on the hairs of his neon chest, he had a blackout, he lost his fingerhold and dropped like a stone. If it hadn’t been for a budding paunch, which broke his fall, he would certainly have plunged to his doom.

  That settled it: of all catastrophes, old age was the worst and, right then, he quit wasting time. Blindfold, he stuck a pin in a calendar and chose a date for the coup d’état, just 17 days ahead.

  After that, he felt more serene. Now that the die was finally cast, he relaxed, he combed his hair and made out his will. Also, he wrote a letter to Astrid, his teenage dream, all full of passionate lovewords, and he composed his epitaph: To all who pass that they may see – Rock and roll was a part of me.

  Down in the duodenal tract, meanwhile, casting craps against the wall, Catsmeat was humming tunelessly and Johnny tousled his hair, cuffing him like a lapdog. ‘When I’m dead,’ Johnny said, ‘will you visit my grave?’

  ‘I will,’ replied Catsmeat.

  ‘And will you shed tears?’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘And will you bring me flowers?’

  ‘I will bring yellow roses and I will lie down beside your tombstone. I won’t move until I’m dead myself.’

  In all the years of their acquaintanceship, almost half of their lifetimes, this was the most conversation that they’d ever had, Catsmeat and Johnny together, and now, while Catsmeat wept, Johnny Angelo stroked his cheek, quite tender.

  Then he was calm. He was almost content.

  Into the Valley of Death

  On the 17th day, Johnny Angelo rose up early and entered his golden cadillac, which turned its nose towards Decatur, the capital of the eastern plains, and his army formed itself in ranks, following wherever he led.

  Mutants and misfits, spastics, dwarves and dope fiends, and performing seals, and half-hand bigshots, and paranoids, schizoids and drooling athetoids, and singing dogs, and peglegged, softshoe shufflers, and all the beasts of the jungle, man-eating tigers and cheetahs, jackals and serpents and lynxes, and rats blown up like balloons, haemophiliacs and bigamists, and poisonous spiders, and hennaed drag queens, and astrologers, card-sharps, assassins: these were the disciples of Johnny Angelo and, to each of them who stretched out their hand, he gave some kind of weapon, be it a gun, a knife or a hand-grenade, a brickbat or a garotte.

  Festered and pocked and gangrened, they gazed into his eyes, trusting him, and he gave them his blessing: ‘With God on our side,’ Johnny said, ‘we shall not suffer.’

  High above his head, his effigy burned and sparkled, flashed and made explosions. On every side, as far as he could see, sand lay unbroken and nothing stirred. ‘We shall overcome,’ said Johnny Angelo and, from Armadillo, he rode out to conquer the world.

  What was his plan? Quite simply, he meant to advance on Decatur, drive directly into the heart of the city, walk up the steps of the Town Hall and capture it. If nobody tried to stop him, he would then control almost half of the whole nation. On the other hand, if he met with opposition, he would not shrink from a holocaust. />
  From Armadillo to Decatur, it was 94 miles and the journey took almost a week, during which time Johnny Angelo remained in his cadillac, while his army stumbled behind him in the dust. Sadly, a very great number got lost along the way. Each time the crusade passed by a bar, a score or more would desert and there were also many deaths, caused by sunstroke, exhaustion and plain decrepitude; just the same, more than 7,000 fighters arrived at Decatur, a force sufficient for all of Johnny’s schemes and, in a golden September sunset, they camped beside a river, just outside the city limits.

  That same night, seated beside the campfire, Johnny warmed his hands in comfort, chewing on a chicken bone, and his astrologer laid out Tarot cards. The priestess for mystery, the eremite for loneliness, the moon for fear: ‘Johnny Angelo,’ said the sage, ‘you are doomed.’

  ‘Will I suffer?’

  ‘You will perish.’

  ‘Then will I be shamed?’

  ‘You will die as you have lived,’ the astrologer said, and Johnny was not dissatisfied, he felt something close to relief. In the end, it didn’t bother him, whatever might befall him, just so long as it wasn’t undignified, and he threw the scient a sovereign.

  Beside the river, he gazed at his own reflection. His army was asleep, the campfires were burning low. Across the water, Decatur was also slumbering, all unaware, and everything was still, Johnny held his breath.

  Right then, without warning, he brought up his forefinger, shooting fast and hard from the hip, and he drilled his image six times through the heart.

  Then he lay down in the long grass and slept, dreaming of the waitress in the corner caff, who steamed up the windows, put a dime in the jukebox and her breasts flopped down around his head, as soft and warm as earmuffs.

  He woke at dawn and it was one of those mornings when everything is made anew, when the air is as clear as crystals in a honeypot. Watching the first rays of sunlight on the water, feeling the dew against his cheek, Johnny didn’t understand, could not conceive that this was his ending, when everything else was newly reborn. Rubbing his eyes, he found a ladybird in his shoe and nothing made sense.

  But when he scrambled to his feet, he found his disciples already prepared. Pale sunlight glinted on their helmets and their shields. A light breeze fluttered their banners, butterflies settled on their shoulders and the Mighty Avengers rode along the ranks, keeping order, while their engines purred like pussycats.

  As soon as Johnny Angelo stood up, the throng produced three cheers, throwing their caps into the air, and then he was trapped, he could do nothing but climb inside his cadillac and cross the bridge into Decatur.

  Shuffling and shambling, the crusade passed through the sleeping suburbs, on through the slums and the business districts, Chinatown and the markets, and very soon, almost before the city had started to stir, they were already approaching Constitution Square, the very hub.

  The federals were waiting.

  Johnny was not surprised. Optimist as he was, he had hardly supposed that 10,000 men could march unnoticed for 100 miles, especially men as garbled as these. Nor had he wished it, truthfully, for the closer he came to the crunch, the less he wished to survive, the more avidly he dreamed of death.

  On this most beautiful morning, he jumped out of his cadillac, and he climbed up on the roof, he raised his hand and led his disciples on, across the square, up the steps of the Town Hall, into the valley of death.

  And the federals shot them with machine guns.

  In memory of Johnny Angelo, it would be pleasant now to turn this into an epic, to write of thrusts and ripostes, swaying fortunes, valorous deeds and of Johnny himself, leaping like a dolphin, cutting great swathes through the enemy until, at last, pinned against a wall, he expires of a dozen gaping wounds but dies with a smile, famous last words on his lips.

  The truth, unfortunately, was very different. At the first volley of gunfire, the freaks stopped dead in their tracks; at the second, they began to back away; and at the third, they turned around and ran like hell, out of the square and all the way back to the river, into which they dived without looking, and the confusion was truly horrific.

  What could you expect? Stampeding, they lost all sense of discipline and fled in one monstrous mêlée, everyone jumbled together, all tangled and collapsing, and the weak were trampled by the strong, and the strong were run down by the Mighty Avengers, and the Avengers were eaten by wild animals, who broke out of their cages. Very soon, the streets were jammed solid with new-mown corpses, a human barricade, and the stragglers couldn’t get past, they could only scrabble with their fingernails, squealing like pigs with their throats slit, while the federals took aim and shot them one by one.

  Even those who reached the river, still they did not escape. Cripples and cretins that they were, they could not swim and they drowned in their hundreds, a pitiful sight, while the water turned pink with their lifeblood.

  Of all the proud 7,000 who set out in the morning, less than half survived to see the afternoon. As for the federals, they did not suffer a casualty and, when they had mopped up the remnants, they went off to the pub for a pint.

  But what of Johnny Angelo?

  When the federals first opened fire, his heart beat very fast and he rode his cadillac straight ahead, aiming right at the heart of the enemy ranks. He was afraid of nothing, he spat on death. He drew a pair of long six-shooters from out of his breast and, exulting, he let them blast at random.

  Seeing the federals duck and take cover, he laughed out loud and looked back over his shoulder, shouting encouragement to his troops. But his troops weren’t there. Already, they were halfway back across the square, begging for forgiveness, and Johnny was left on his own, just him and Catsmeat, who was driving.

  What could he do?

  He hid.

  To die like this, after all, where was the point? Gunned down in a massacre, unnoticed, unremembered, it would have been downright wasteful and he took fast refuge in his car, taking potshots through the window, while Catsmeat gunned the engine and they ran away, they escaped.

  They were not killed, although the cadillac was riddled like a sieve. They weren’t even wounded and the federals could only gnash their teeth, while Johnny Angelo burned back across the desert, free as a bird.

  What remained? Once they had thrown off all pursuit, they returned to La Collina. In reality, there was nowhere else that they could hide.

  An empty mansion, surrounded by electric gates and fences, guarded by wolfhounds, honeycombed with radars, close-circuit TVs and hidden microphones: Johnny sat all day without moving and Catsmeat baked him Jasmine Dreams.

  Nothing moved, nothing made any noise. Somewhere in the 53 rooms of his home, Johnny was stretched out on a chaise longue, was looking at his fingernails, was waiting. On his bedroom ceiling, he was walking the clouds.

  And after three days, a week or a month, the federals arrived, a whole platoon of them, forty men, and they surrounded La Collina. Beyond the electric gates, they carried sten guns and tear gas and pineapples, they hovered in helicopters and spied through periscopes, they shouted through loudspeakers: ‘Johnny Angelo,’ they cried. ‘Come on out.’

  Johnny didn’t reply.

  In his banqueting hall, a falcon sat on his shoulder, cobwebs covered the windows and he dined on artichoke, iced avocado soup, salmon en croute with ginger, roast piglet with spiced cherries and fresh wild strawberries, washed down with a bottle of Château Y’ Quem ’45. And when he was quite satisfied, only then, he rose up and dressed himself all in black leather, a reminder of Heartbreak Hotel, and high black boots, tight black gloves, a lowslung gunbelt with holsters on both sides.

  In these holsters, there were pearl-handled Colts, and Johnny Angelo watched himself in a full-length mirror, tying his neck scarf, and he combed his hair, he sprinkled cologne behind his ears, just for himself, he smiled his smile.

 
At the front door, he shook hands with Catsmeat. At the very last moment, he almost kissed him instead but then he drew back, blushing. In the whole of his lifetime, he had shown no true affection, not once, and he turned aside, he stepped out of the mansion.

  At the age of 27, he met with the federals.

  The End

  Outside La Collina, there was a very long driveway, more than 500 yards in length, which led to the electric gates, and Johnny Angelo walked down it slowly, his hands above his head. Beyond the gates, the federals did not move.

  On either side of the driveway, there were parklands that were tangled like a jungle, all full of swamps and creeper and monkey trees and, through the undergrowth, there roamed many animals, badgers and rodents and skunks, felines and doves. High above everything, the mansion hung like a shroud and, for fully five minutes, Johnny went on walking.

  About 50 foot from the gate, he stopped. The federals stared at him, he stared back at the federals and neither side made any move. Time passed.

  At last, growing bored, the federal captain stepped forward, a man in a scarlet uniform: ‘Are you coming out?’ he asked. ‘Or do we come in?’

  Then Johnny Angelo dropped his hands, whipped his Colts from out of their holsters and let fly without looking. In the space of a second, twelve shots were fired and twelve federals fell down in the dirt, where they died.

  There was a silence.

  Then the federals fired back and Johnny was hit in the shoulder, in the thigh, in the hip and in the guts but he wasn’t killed outright, he was only maimed and he crawled along the ground, crablike, until he reached the shelter of his golden cadillac, which was parked just inside the gates.

  Behind the cadillac, he wiped the blood from his lips and, both slowly and painfully, he began to reload. Everything was still and he listened to the animals moving in the jungle, he was surrounded by secret stirrings. Just for one moment, he shut his eyes and was still. Then he stood up. ‘I am still the greatest,’ said Johnny Angelo, and he started to shoot from the hip.