The mention of name-badges reminded me of Ming, and when the laughter had died down I asked if anybody knew him. Fernandez looked blank. So did Rinaldi.
‘He wears strange-coloured suits,’ I said.
‘I saw someone like that,’ de Mattos said. ‘What’s his name again?’
‘Walter Ming.’ I had begun to see Ming’s enigmatic behaviour as a kind of indecisiveness, and that, together with his persistent cough, led me to believe that he might come from the host nation, that he might, after all, be phlegmatic. ‘I think he’s from here.’ I turned to Bland. ‘But if that was true you’d know him, wouldn’t you?’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Bland said. ‘Our civil service, it accounts for something like three per cent of the population. There are thousands of us.’ He threw down a card. ‘What about him, anyway?’
‘I don’t know. He seems devious, somehow – and he keeps following me around –’
‘Sounds like Rinaldi,’ Fernandez said.
Rinaldi grinned uneasily, then put a hand over his mouth. Standing up, he lurched towards the bathroom.
‘He’s going to vomit.’ Boorman hadn’t taken his eyes off his cards.
‘He always vomits,’ Bland said.
A terrible noise came from behind the bathroom door, somewhere between a roar and a groan, as though Rinaldi was being tortured.
Bland looked across at me. ‘Don’t worry. It always sounds like that.’
‘Rinaldi,’ someone said.
There was a general shaking of heads.
A few minutes later I asked if anybody had been to a club called the Bathysphere. None of them had even heard of it. De Mattos wanted to know whether it had live girls. He knew a couple of places, if I was interested.
‘It’s not like that,’ I said.
It was true, I suppose, that there had been an erotic edge to my first night at the club, but something else was happening now, something quite miraculous. I had gained access to a part of me that I had assumed was gone for ever. The club’s name conveyed exactly what was being offered: a journey into the depths, a probing of the latent, the forbidden, the impenetrable … As for Ming, the suspicions I’d been harbouring now seemed ludicrously exaggerated and melodramatic. He was like the Blue Quarter, I decided, only in microcosm. He was fluid, elusive, a source of disorientation, but he didn’t necessarily pose a threat. I was glad I had come to watch five drunk men playing cards. In an oddly paradoxical way, it had put everything in perspective.
At half-past two I thanked Boorman for the brandy, and though the others tried to talk me into staying I said goodnight and walked back down the corridor.
Sometime later, already curled up in bed, I thought I heard a person crash to the floor outside my room. There was a snort of laughter, then someone said, Quiet! I didn’t really wake up, though, and the next thing I knew, the sun was slanting through the window – I must have forgotten to draw the curtains – and a maid was standing at the foot of my bed. She was sorry if she had startled me, she said, but she had knocked on the door – she had knocked twice, in fact – and there had been no reply.
That morning I decided to go and listen to Frank Bland, since his event immediately preceded mine on the programme. He arrived ten minutes late, his face drained of colour, his hands shaking as he fumbled among his papers. He had called his lecture ‘Power and Energy: A Study of the Nature of our Borders’, and though he lost his thread several times during the next half-hour he held my attention throughout since he was elaborating on what Vishram had talked about during our recent lunch together. The path taken by our borders had sometimes been determined by roads or rivers, Bland said, and sometimes by the boundaries of a country, a borough or a parish, but ancient ley lines had also played a part. To its immense excitement, the committee responsible for drawing up the borders had discovered that certain ley lines could have an adverse effect on the health of the people who lived within their sphere of influence. For centuries mankind had attempted to dissipate the hostile energy of these black streams, as they were known – there were a number of methods: the driving of iron stakes into the ground, the encircling of one’s property with copper wire, the judicious placement of chips of jasper, amethyst, quartz or flint – but the architects of the Rearrangement had decided to harness it instead, to make it work in their favour. They had drawn directly and quite deliberately on the land’s innate psychic strength, using spiritual power to reinforce political will. Maybe that helped to explain why so many phlegmatics believed that it could be fatal to cross a border, that certain borders could maim or even kill – unless, of course, one wore a copper suit or filled one’s pockets with the appropriate crystals. Bland ended his talk by wishing those of us who had come from elsewhere a safe and pleasant journey home, and the ripple of amusement provoked by this remark shaded into warm applause as he thanked us for listening and began to gather up his notes.
I was just rising to my feet, preparing to move towards the podium, when Josephine Cox appeared at the microphone, Bland’s last slide – a glowing chunk of amethyst – still showing on the screen behind her.
‘I’ve got an important announcement to make,’ she said.
I slowly sank back down into my seat.
‘Mr Bland has been speaking of the possible dangers involved in crossing a border,’ she said. ‘What he doesn’t know is that he’s about to experience those dangers for himself – as we all are, in fact.’
She paused, seeming to relish our bewilderment.
‘As you know,’ she continued, ‘today is Rearrangement Day. To mark the occasion, we have planned a special trip for you.’ She consulted her watch. ‘In just under three hours you will be flying to the city of Congreve, in the Yellow Quarter.’
She was now speaking into an intense silence.
Once in Congreve, we would be attending a grand firework display, she told us, and since fireworks were something the cholerics understood better than anybody else, it ought to be an unforgettable experience. Afterwards, a banquet would be hosted by the Mayor.
‘Visas have been procured,’ she said, ‘and transport has been arranged. We’ve chartered a small plane, which will be leaving Aquaville at three o’clock. All you have to do is pack an overnight bag. Be back in the lobby no later than one-thirty.’
As she stepped away from the microphone, everyone in the lecture hall began to talk at once. It seemed I would not be delivering my paper after all. I slid my notes back into my briefcase, then I glanced at Charlie Boorman, who happened to be next to me. He raised both his eyebrows. I expressed surprise that the phlegmatics had been able to put together something so dramatic, so ambitious. He nodded in agreement, then leaned forwards and spoke to Rinaldi, who was sitting in the row in front of us. What I was actually thinking was that I had more or less adapted to life in the Blue Quarter, and that I didn’t relish the notion of being plunged into yet another unfamiliar environment. Certainly it was the last thing I’d expected. Rinaldi turned to face me, as if he had just read my mind. There was an aspect of the phlegmatic disposition, he said, which we had either forgotten or overlooked. It was the most flexible, the most whimsical, of the humours – the most feminine, one might almost say. He didn’t think an idea like this was particularly uncharacteristic, though he would be astonished, he added, if everything went smoothly.
‘I think I’d better go and pack,’ Boorman said.
I went to have a word with Josephine, who had been surrounded by the more anxious and excitable of the delegates. Her eyes glittered, and her frizzy hair appeared to have filled with static. She had pulled off a kind of public-relations coup. This was likely to be the most talked-about conference in years.
‘Will we be safe?’ one of the delegates was asking.
Josephine turned to him. ‘Well, there has been some rioting –’
‘Rioting?’ The delegate’s eyes widened.
‘During the last few days,’ Josephine went on, ‘but it’s mostly in the north, apparently. In
any case, they often riot at this time of year. It’s practically seasonal.’ She permitted herself a small, vague smile, as though contemplating the behaviour of a wayward but cherished son.
When I was finally able to talk to her, she apologised for the seemingly impromptu and high-handed cancelling of my lecture. She had been determined to retain the element of surprise, she said. She hoped I didn’t hold it against her. I would now be speaking on Thursday morning. It would be the last event on the programme, and everyone was very much looking forward to my contribution.
I took the lift to the seventh floor. They had already made up my room, a new chocolate mouth smiling at me slyly from the pillow. I opened my suitcase and started packing. After a while, though, I found my eyes returning to the mural. As usual, I scanned the blue-black water for the man who had fallen overboard. As usual, it yielded nothing. Then my gaze lifted an inch or two, and I noticed a stretch of barren coast beyond the rowing-boats. A small figure stood on the shoreline, looking out to sea. Was that him? Had he actually managed to reach dry land? Or had that figure been on the beach the whole time? I rose to my feet and moved towards the wall. Up close, the figure turned back into a smudge of darkish paint. It might have been driftwood, or a rock, or a heap of kelp abandoned by the tide. A lone siren spiralled up into the air outside my window. Still staring at the mural, I had an abrupt and pronounced sense of opportunity, as if there was something I ought to be doing, as if I ought to be exploiting the situation to my advantage. What, though? How?
I was looking round the room, hoping an answer would come to me, when the phone rang. I picked up the receiver. It was one-thirty, the receptionist informed me, and the delegates were about to depart for the airport.
‘Please ask them to wait,’ I said. ‘I’ll be right down.’
Chapter Four
As we prepared for landing I saw Congreve below me, the city centre glittering in the gloom of the late afternoon like a solar system that had fallen from the heavens, like a grounded constellation, and then I was inside it, moving through it, buildings lifting steeply all around me, their upper storeys lost in the smoky, neon-saturated air. Seen at close range, they were less ethereal, more powerful; they seemed to emit pure energy, a deep turbine hum or murmur that I could feel in my rib-cage.
We were driving along a wide grand avenue, the traffic heavy in both directions, the pavements crowded. In the many-tiered emporia all the lights had been switched on, and I couldn’t help but notice the variety of goods on offer, the sheer lavishness of the displays. At the same time, beggars sat hunched over on every corner, their dogs lounging sloppily beside them. Most of these beggars had hung cardboard squares around their necks on bits of string, and even from a distance I could read their sorry messages: STARVING or HELP ME or, in one case, with bitter sarcasm, SMALL CHANGE ONLY PLEASE.
Braking smoothly, the limousine turned off the main road and eased its way into a maze of narrow streets. Here, suddenly, were strip clubs, peep-shows and sex shops, all jammed together, all different flavours, like a box of candied fruits.
‘A little tour,’ our driver joked over the intercom.
We had entered Firetown, the red-light district. I had listened to relocation officers boast of their exploits on these streets – how young the girls were, what they could do – and as I stared through the window, the air seemed to pulse and glow, a livid blush of scarlet, pink and purple. Once, as we stopped at a set of traffic-lights, a fight broke out on the pavement beside us. A burly ginger-haired man fell heavily against the car’s window, and the glass retained the print of his hand, as a cheek does when it’s been slapped. One of my fellow passengers murmured in alarm.
‘No need to panic,’ came the driver’s voice. ‘It’s reinforced.’
Not long afterwards, we pulled up outside the Plaza Hotel, and it was only then, with a sickening jolt, that I realised what our arrival in this new place actually entailed. I had forfeited my last chance to visit the club. We would be spending the night in Congreve, then returning to the Blue Quarter in the morning. A few hours later, my visa would expire, and I would have to leave the country. There would be no going back to the part of me that had been buried for so many years. There would be no more glimpses of that forgotten life.
A light clicked on in the limousine, and I saw myself reflected in the window. My face looked stiff, morose, vaguely ghoulish. I was in the Yellow Quarter for the first time ever, I had just arrived in one of its great cities, and yet I felt no elation. I didn’t even feel any fear. I was trying to adjust to the sudden, arbitrary loss of all my hopes.
My mind lay soft and cold on the floor of my skull like a carpet of ash.
When I walked into my room, it recognised me. Welcome to the Plaza, Mr Parry, it said. I hope you enjoy your stay. I should have been ready for something like this, perhaps, since choleric people were known to be obsessed with technology, but such was the hectic nature of our schedule that I had no time to dwell on my surroundings. Five o’clock had already struck when I set my case down on the bed, and I was expected for drinks at five-thirty. The venue was a roof garden on the seventeenth floor. While at the party, we would be able to watch the firework display, which was due to start at six. I took a quick shower. As I got dressed, I caught a few minutes of choleric TV. They were showing a documentary about the Prime Minister, Carl Triggs, who was so fiercely patriotic, apparently, that he had taken fire-eating lessons. I watched some rare footage of a bare-chested Triggs demonstrating his prowess in the grounds of one of his palatial mansions, then I went into the bathroom to clean my teeth. When I returned, the commercials were on. At midnight there would be a programme which featured topless female mud-wrestlers competing for a huge cash prize. It was called Rolling in It. I threw on my tuxedo, gave my shoes a polish and by five-thirty-five I was stepping out of the lift and into a space that resembled a conservatory, exotic trees and shrubs massing beneath a high glass ceiling.
The men were dressed in lounge suits or formal evening wear. As for the women, they had chosen much more elaborate confections – one girl was wrapped in jagged swathes of red and orange taffeta, which made her look as if she was being burned at the stake – and their ears, necks, wrists and fingers were all heavily freighted with jewellery. I found Frank Bland in the shade of a palm tree, holding a cocktail. His dinner jacket clung to his midriff as tightly as the skin of an onion.
‘Quite a place,’ he said as I walked over.
‘Does your room talk to you, Frank?’
‘Good evening, Mr Bland.’ He had put on a voice that was both disembodied and obsequious.
I nodded. ‘That’s very good.’ Though everything was reaching me through a veil of quiet desperation, it was a comfort to see Frank Bland. In these altered circumstances, he felt like an ally. A friend.
He took a gulp from his drink. ‘Did you hear me speak this morning?’
‘Of course. I really enjoyed it.’
‘Did I ramble?’
I thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose you did a bit.’
He laughed. ‘It was one of the worst hangovers I’ve ever had.’
I wanted to thank him for shedding some light on a subject that intrigued me, but Boorman and Rinaldi wandered over and I lost my chance. Not long afterwards we were ushered out on to the terrace.
I had always loved fireworks – even the most modest sparklers delighted me – but the fireworks we saw that night, unleashed from the roof of a nearby building, were like nothing I’d ever seen before. The colours alone almost defied description. Instead of the usual sprays of red and green and gold, we were treated to the most delicate tinctures, the subtlest of hues – violet, burnt sienna, damask, eau-de-nil. And the fireworks themselves did not explode so much as unfold, like hothouse flowers opening their petals, but in fast-motion, bouquet after bouquet tossed carelessly into the dark. Later, various messages were emblazoned across the sky – 27 GREAT YEARS, THANKS CARL, and so on. The display ended in a riot of sound, the noi
se rebounding across the city, so deafening and persistent that it seemed the office blocks surrounding us might topple and the ceiling above our heads might shatter in a murderous cascade of glass. For a while I had forgotten how I felt, but then we went back indoors, and people turned to each other and began to talk, and the disappointment I’d been harbouring since the early evening rose inside me once again, swift and remorseless, like floodwater.
Josephine Cox came and stood in front of me, her face flushed. ‘You don’t seem very happy.’
So it was that obvious. Ever since I first set foot in the Bathysphere, I had been feeling scratchy, discontented. My initial experience had been the strangest mixture of the unexpected and the sublime, and it had stopped too soon, of course, and if I nursed a sense of regret about that shortfall the events of the second night had only compounded it, since I had dropped down deep into my past only to have the journey cruelly cut short. Then, a few hours later, Josephine’s surprise announcement had cheated me out of my last chance to go back. But it wasn’t just that. Those two nights had established a kind of precedent, and my life in the Red Quarter, the life I would soon be returning to, now seemed pallid, if not sterile, by comparison. Nothing that happened to me from this point on, I felt, could ever match what had happened to me in that club.
I summoned a feeble smile. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all.’
‘I hope you’re not too tired to enjoy the banquet,’ Josephine said. ‘I’ve put you on a rather special table.’
‘What’s special about it?’
She didn’t answer. Instead, she placed one finger upright against her lips and lifted her shoulders towards her ears, then she moved off into the crowd.
Eleven o’clock was striking as I stepped into my room. I shut the door behind me and leaned back against the cool smooth wood. Goodnight, Mr Parry, the room said. Sleep well. Outside, in the street below, a siren squawked once, abruptly, and then went quiet.
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