36 EXCURSIONS & EXCAVATIONS in the HERMETIC GARAGE

19: The Major’s bag   

Events had become so unpredictable and beyond his control that he couldn’t think about them... 

(Moorcock, The Final Programme p.93)

In the fourth book of Inside Moebius (part 2, p.189), Grubert, investigating Mœbius’s bunker in search of the author, begins a litany of self-critical complaint. It’s 2003, and he realizes he’s

BEEN IN THIS COMIC FOR ALMOST THIRTY TERRESTRIAL YEARS! AND IN ALL THAT TIME, ALL I’VE DONE IS WALK UP AND DOWN CORRIDOR AFTER CORRIDOR IN SEARCH OF I KNOW NOT WHAT... 

In the Garage, in 1976, he set off in search of Jerry Cornelius. Then he was looking for Graad. Then he was heading for Room 6. In The Man from the Ciguri, he spent his time looking for the artist who wrote and drew the book, RÉSUMÉ. While it’s possible to imagine the Major is someone who knows what he wants, his confession here makes it clear that his role as a character has been to pursue the surprises waiting for him. He’s a figure with only the appearance of an intention.

     But surely his next complaint goes too far:

NO MATTER WHERE I GO, I’VE GOT THIS FUCKING BAG STUCK TO THE FINGERS OF MY RIGHT HAND... AND THAT’S NOT ALL! ... I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT’S INSIDE THE BAG! ...

     The bag, which first made an appearance in episode 10 of the Garage, was transferred from his left hand to his right on that occasion, and was transferred back again in the next episode. In 12, he used it as a pillow. He held it briefly in both hands in 13, then set it down in the Cafe Viennax in 14. Okania picked it up in 19, and the Major carried it in both his right and left hands in 21. In the twenty-third installment (which became episode 24 when the serial was published as a book), he held it, briefly, two-handed, behind his back—before letting Mikey the bellhop carry it to Room 6. Did he carry it left- or right-handed into Room 6? You decide. In any case, he didn’t take it with him when he left the world of the Garage.

     What Grubert is really complaining about is the image, imprinted by a recollection of the Garage—a kind of mnemonic illusion—that he always carried it.

     That he didn’t know what was in it is a complaint more to the point; while one can hardly avoid reading the story with the presumption that he must have known, the manner of the story’s construction was such that we might as well acknowledge he certainly didn’t. Indeed, his conclusion, in Inside Mœbius is that

ANY ATTEMPT TO DISCOVER THE BAG’S CONTENTS, WHATEVER THEY MAY BE, WOULD BE ENORMOUSLY DECEPTIVE. AND IT’S BETTER TO MAINTAIN THE MYSTERY, IN THE INTERESTS OF BOTH THE CHARACTER AND THE SERIES.

     It may be argued that, as a matter of historical fact, he is mistaken. Readers of the Garage may recall that what’s in the bag is revealed in episode 29. (It’s not, perhaps, a very important detail.) Furthermore, the Major—one version of the Major, at least—may be seen opening his bag toward the end of The Man from the Ciguri. “I BROUGHT YOU A COUPLE OF THINGS YOU MIGHT FIND USEFUL WHERE WE’RE GOING! ” he says.

     Speaking in Inside Mœbius, however, as a typical representation of his character, the Major may have a point. It doesn’t make any more sense to wonder about the contents of his bag than to wonder about the interior of Snoopy’s kennel. One may suppose the bag probably contains a change of clothing, or other useful articles; but, at another level, the bag has become a convention, a sign identifying the character, like his helmet. And, at a fundamental level, he is strictly correct: to insist upon the contents of the suitcase at any point when those contents are not exposed to view is to misunderstand the successive order of revelation in the story, which proceeds from representation to invention. Grubert’s bag, like Jeannot’s bag in the third book of Inside Mœbius, “IS AN EMPTY FRAME... AN ONEIRIC EMBRYO...”

     A Moebius strip has no interior waiting to be revealed, only a succession of events that constitute its ongoing effort to become what it is.