‘This is fucking silly,’ he calls out as he runs. His brain seems to undulate within his skull, as though it were on gimbals. Suddenly he feels sick. ‘Why don’t we just—?’
‘Hurry up!’
The door of the van slides open. She has thrown her backpack inside and is urging him on. He runs, stumbles, trips, feels the taste of smoke in his gut and an abrupt sensation of rebellion immediately below his diaphragm. And then the flavour of vomit, sour and bilious, erupts into his mouth. He turns, bends forward and heaves the scant contents of his stomach into the ditch.
‘Come on, James! For Christ’s sake!’
For a moment he’s on his knees, eructating. And then he’s unsteadily on his feet once more, staggering towards the van like a soldier under fire running for the helicopter. He flings himself into the vehicle and lies prostrate, submitting himself to Ellie’s ministrations, which mainly consist of a few sips of water and rough sympathy: ‘It happens like that, sometimes. Just a reaction. You’ll soon get over it.’
‘What’s the trouble back there?’ the driver calls. They’re moving, the engine clattering, the van lurching from side to side as they breast curves.
‘Something he ate.’
‘Not you, I hope.’
Laughter. The voice, the laughter are American. Faces turn within the shadows of the van. Teeth and hair, lots of teeth and lots of hair; the glint of a pair of granny spectacles. There are two in the front, another two figures in the shadows of the back, where are piled loudspeakers and guitars, a keyboard, electrical gear, shapes that might be drums. And sleeping bags and cooking things, all muddled into the complex smell of food and sweat and the cloying scent of smouldering joss sticks. James feels his stomach heave once more. ‘Where you folks headed for?’ the driver calls over his shoulder.
‘Strasbourg.’
‘We’ll take you to Strasbourg. You going to Strasbourg, we’ll take you to Strasbourg. Fuck it, why not? There’s a bridge across the Rhine there, isn’t there?’
‘Yes, there is.’
‘Sounds like a fucking war film. Bridge Over the River Rhine. We’re headed for Prague. That’s where it’s at, man. Got a gig there in a few days. But we’ll take you to fucking Strasbourg if you wanna go to fucking Strasbourg.’
They are, it transpires, a rock group called the Ides of March, on what they laughingly call their European tour. ‘Name’s classical, man. It’s like March fifteen in old Roman. But it’s also where we come from – March, Idaho, founded March fifteen, eighteen thirty-six by this one guy called Isaiah March. How’s that for cool? This guy, March, creates this place March, on the Ides of March.’ There is incredulous laughter, as though this has only just occurred to them. ‘But folks just call us the Ides ’cos it’s easier to recall.’
James sits silent, propped against the side of the van, nursing his swimming head and trying to calm his rebelling stomach. There is an exchange of names: John, Phil, Archer and Elliot. John is the driver, rhythm guitarist and leader of the group. Elliot and Phil are the guys in the back lying amongst sleeping bags, one the bass player, the other, Elliot, the lead guitarist who writes the numbers that they sing when they’re not covering the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He has long hair, a rodent face and an empty grin.
‘D’you wanna hear?’ John the driver asks. ‘Give ’em “Rubicon”, Elliot. Elliot and Ellie – hey, you two should get together!’
‘Rubicon?’ Ellie says, attempting to deflect the idea.
‘Yeah, it’s like a river that Julius Caesar crossed, ain’t that right, Elliot? He knows stuff. He was majoring in classics before he dropped out.’
‘Where was that?’
‘In Italy, that right, Elliot? It’s a river in Italy that Caesar crossed. It meant he was going to become emperor or some shit.’
‘Not the river. The university that he dropped out of.’
‘Oh, man, got yah! Yeah, that’s real comic. You mean one thing, I understand another. UCLA. That’s right? UCLA.’
Elliot grunted some kind of acknowledgement. UCLA it was.
‘So give it to them, Elliot. Come on, man. “Rubicon”.’
With little enthusiasm Elliot takes up his guitar and begins to pick at it. The dead, unamplified sound is barely audible above the engine noise. His voice is rough and almost tuneless:
The others sing along, adding ‘yeah, man’ and ‘it’s gonna be a’right’ as they think fit. Archer beats out the time on the dashboard. The second verse, encountered as one might stumble into something in the dark, is not unlike the first.
Then they repeat the first verse and that seems to be it. Ellie applauds. Elliot grins at her, white teeth and white eyes gleaming from the shadows of the van. He speaks in a whisper, almost as though he has an obstruction in the back of his throat. ‘It’s pussy,’ he murmurs. ‘The Rubicon. Know what I mean? Her pussy.’
‘I think I’d sort of understood that.’
He reaches out and touches Ellie’s shoulder. ‘You wanna make out?’
‘No, thank you.’
James dozes, barely noticing what is going on, his head swirling, the line Let me cross your Rubicon going round and round in the vortex. The words seem important, as though bearing a significance as great as any biblical text. It is Ellie’s Rubicon he wishes to cross, and not really cross but dive into it and splash around. Alea iactum est, he remembers.
‘Alea iactum est,’ he says out loud, seeing the coincidental significance of it.
‘Iacta,’ Ellie says, throwing the correction over her shoulder as she argues with the guitarist.
‘What’s that, man?’ the driver asks. ‘That French?’
‘Latin,’ James mumbles, surprised at his own knowledge. ‘The die is cast. It’s what Julius Caesar said when he crossed the Rubicon.’ But he’s more interested in the quiet, suppressed argument that Ellie and Elliot are having. He hopes it is not her Rubicon they are discussing. ‘Right,’ Elliot says. ‘Sure.’ And gropes around in the bag he carries and pulls out money.
‘Hey!’ James exclaims. He intends a sharp interjection but the sound comes out more like a yelp of surprise.
‘Cool it, man,’ Elliot says. ‘Just let it be.’
The van slows abruptly and they begin to snake through the narrow streets of a town. Horns blare, in French. The gears of the van grate. ‘Son of a bitch!’ John shouts from behind the wheel. ‘Not used to a manual shift,’ he explains to his passengers. The road begins to descend into the wide flood plain of the river Rhine. Whatever has been going on between Ellie and Elliot is concluded. Elliot sags back into the sleeping bags while the rest of the Ides sing, Archer the drummer beating time on the dashboard, Elliot strumming vaguely at his empty guitar. They sing ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, ‘Yellow Submarine’, ‘Light My Fire’, anything that comes to mind. Something called ‘White Light White Heat’. And, of course, ‘Rubicon’. Perhaps the Rhine will be their Rubicon – they have been booked to play in Prague by someone they met in Paris, a Czech who told them about the music scene in his home city. ‘The Czechs are, like, crossing a Rubicon, aren’t they?’ John suggests. ‘Saying fuck you to the Soviets. Hey, maybe Elliot can write us another verse.’