According to him, the design of the casings came to him after a brutal weekend of debauchery during his initiation into the cult of Dionysus. As Garv crawled out of the cave where the initiation took place, and vaguely remembered that he had promised to deliver a cask of bathtub Ouzo to a group of Albanian counterfeiters who lived on nearby Noxos. At the time he was flying a vintage 1927 radial-powered Bugatti biplane, the very same plane he learned to wing-walk on in his twenties when he was with Claxton-Guthaben's Pan-European Air Circus on the continent. The Bugatti was wonderful example of Italian style and mechanics, and they were fairly dependable fliers as long as you remember a few basic concepts. For instance, never ever trust Italian-made gauges (most of you Ducati junkies know wherefore I speak...) But Garv was still reeling from the profundities revealed to him in the cave; visions of the Minotaur and the words of the Oracle, and neglected to peek in the plane's gas tank, and of course the results were what one would expect(That Garv managed to grab his chute and get out on the wing is a testament to his cool Teutonic heritage) and as the Bugatti coughed its last, he jumped. He was lucky that he managed to yank the rip cord before his head struck the rudder.
Now Garv, whether he was flying or helping some rustic chambermaid "make the bed", always wore a WWI horse-hide helmet The story goes that the helmet was a gift from Baron Von Richthofen's widow, the Baroness Von Richthofen, for services rendered to her while on the ill-fated Anglo-Prussian mountaineering expedition up the Matterhorn. (He also claims to have received a fine pair of German riding boots and crop from Von Bismark as thanks for an emergency appendectomy, but I have yet to see them).
Well that horse-hide helmut nearly cost Garv his life and if you see him behind the stick today you'll note that he wears a very modern, crash helmet. But I digress...
The Ducati's design came to him as he regained consciousness. As he was licked awake by a flock of goats, he saw something shiny a few feet away. It turned out to be all that was left of the Biplanes motor - two cylinders to be exact - and he hurriedly sketched what he saw. Upon arriving back on Mykynos, he set the local smith to building a blast furnace and a week later the prototype Ducati motor was born.
I spoke with Garv yesterday, and he chided me for referring to the goats as a "flock", reminding me that when goats gather together they are referred to as a "Brace" of goats, or a gathering if they number more than twelve.
ReplyDeleteSo Garv's back in Mykynos doing the nudist hotel thing with Gretel and her second child whose name I can never recall. (I think she's the one that teaches Yoga, or Pilates but don't quote me on that...) Anyway, Garv said he was tired of the view from his stinking garret on Rue Flaubert, and of his paintings of "that fucking river", as he likes to call the Seine, and damn glad to be back in "the Motherland of my fathers" as he likes to refer to Greece. So it's back to the Cyclades, and paintings of Minotaurs, temples and of course "those fucking Greek boats" as he so affectionately refers to his bread and butter.
But he tells me he's been having the dream again - the one where he's hauled up by his hose while he's walking the sea bottom in his deep sea diver suit plundering various Greek antiquities while pretending to be getting sponges. A dozen very strong Greek fishermen drag him onto the deck of their boat and beat the crap out of him, and as near as Garv can tell their rage has something to do with his bubbles scaring the fish. "Where is the Tuna!? Where is the Sardine and the Alewife!?!" They are all wearing "those silly fucking Greek fisherman hats". Anyway, Garv is now pretty spooked and hasn't been able to plunder wrecks or paint a Greek fishing boat for weeks. I don't know what he does for money because the residuals from Ducati ran out last October and Gretel's tarot business seems to be the latest victim of this new age of reason we all find ourselves in. Garv's answer to his financial predicament is to spend a good deal of his time on what he calls his "message in a bottle project". From what I can gather it's pretty much nothing more than Garv taking nude pictures of himself with a fifty year old Polaroid, sticking the results in a bottle and tossing them off a pier. He says that they will someday reach every corner of the earth, then he will reassemble them for an exhibition at the Louvre (admittedly a long term solution for a short term problem). Unfortunately, so far most of the bottles have washed up on the tourist beach that the cruise ships use.
I asked Garv what the message was suppose to be. What was he trying to say with all this?
"Message?... "Zee fucking message is zatt it's Art! It's me as naked as I vas born stoock inside a bottle! Zat's the message!" When I suggested it might be a good idea if he put in a note of explanation along with the Polaroids, he hung up.
I called back yesterday and Gretel's daughter answered. She said that Garv and her mother were in jail for refusing to pick up the bottles and making "the pornography". She said when the police demanded that Garv wear his clothings, so they could take him to jail on the back of the scooter, he "put on only his leather helmet and Von Bismark's boots". I was dumbfounded. I couldn't believe he really had those boots.
Garv and Gretel are out of jail. I got this from the daughter who said it had to do with Gretel and a dramatic Tarot reading done on the Police chief's behalf. Apparently Gretel hit a nerve when she divined that the chief sometimes paid visits to a local farmboy. When I asked if Garv had given up his project with the bottles she said he had not.
ReplyDeleteShe told me that now, instead of throwing the bottles in the sea, he has set up a booth on the tourist beach and is offering them for sale. "Yah, he now acts with impunity" is how she put it. "He wants to take the photo of me but I will not", she said. I put down the receiver, shaking my head, bewildered. I decided it was time to pay my old friend a visit
I still don't understand why he was dissenting against the Germans.
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