Divided Kingdom

by Rupert Thomson

  ‘What club?’

  I started to describe the Bathysphere and what had happened there. I told him how I seemed to have crossed a kind of border in myself, and how, for the first time, I’d had a real sense of the person I used to be, the person I was first, before everything changed, and as I was talking I realised something extraordinary. I had always seen the moment when I was lifted out of bed as a birth, but actually the opposite was true. The cold hands, the bright lights – my parents grieving … I had died that night, and I’d been dead ever since. And now I was trying to do something about that. What was this whole journey in the end but an attempt to bring myself back to life?

  ‘I’ve been dead all this time,’ I said, laughing, ‘and I didn’t even know it.’

  Fernandez studied me for a few moments, then he finished his drink and set the glass down on the desk. ‘You’re tired.’

  ‘Yes. Very.’

  ‘You’d better stay here tonight. You can sleep on the sofa.’

  I was about to thank him when I heard a creak on the stairs outside the room. We watched in silence as the door-handle tilted towards the floor. A small face appeared round the edge of the door and gazed at me.

  ‘My daughter,’ Fernandez said.

  I let my breath out slowly. ‘I didn’t know you had children.’

  ‘Two.’ He walked over to the little girl and lifted her into his arms. ‘Come on, Rosie. I’ll take you back to bed.’ Her solemn dark-brown eyes still trained on me, she rested her head against her father’s shoulder.

  Before he left the room, he told me to stay where I was and not make any noise. There should be some bedding in the cupboard, he said. The toilet was outside the door. He’d come and get me in the morning.

  Later, as I lay beneath a couple of rough wool blankets, I heard a ticking and though I knew there must be a clock in the room it was the pale dog that I could see, patrolling the corridors of the asylum, blunt head lowered, jaws ajar …

  Somebody let out a cry, and I sat up quickly, blinking. The centre-light had been switched on.

  A man with a black beard and glasses stood by the door with a tray. ‘You shouted so loud,’ he said, ‘I almost dropped the whole thing.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was asleep.’ I pushed the blankets to one side and put my feet on the floor.

  He set the tray down beside me. He had brought me a cup of coffee, a plate of scrambled eggs and some toast.

  ‘Is it late?’ I asked.

  He told me it was after ten. He had waited until his wife and children had left the house, not wanting them to know that I was staying.

  ‘What about your daughter?’ I said.

  ‘Luckily she’s always making things up. When she said there was a strange man in the basement, my wife just told her to get on with her cereal.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have caused you all this trouble.’

  He glanced at me over the top of his glasses, as if he suspected me of sarcasm, but I pretended not to have noticed, and he looked away again. He had made a few calls, he told me. While I ate, he outlined what he’d been able to arrange. A boat was leaving the north docks at four o’clock that afternoon, bound for the Blue Quarter with a cargo of religious artefacts. Once it reached its destination, however, I would be on my own. Usually, customs officers were paid to turn a blind eye, but there hadn’t been enough time to set up anything like that. He couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t be arrested as soon as I stepped out of my container.

  ‘Container?’ I murmured, still dazed by what he had just told me. All I had expected from him was a temporary refuge, the chance to catch my breath. Now, suddenly, I was on my way to the Blue Quarter.

  ‘Keep eating,’ Fernandez said. ‘We have to leave soon.’

  When I had finished my breakfast, he took me up to a bathroom on the first floor, where I had a shower and a shave. He left some clean underwear and socks outside the door. Though I had questions for him, somehow I didn’t feel I could ask. He was doing so much for me. Curiosity would seem like a form of ingratitude.

  Dressed again, I went downstairs and waited in the kitchen. The air still vibrated with the presence of his wife and children, the silence so recent that it had yet to settle properly. I glanced at the remains of breakfast – a slice of toast with a bite taken out of it, small pools of milk in the bottom of bowls, the rim of a white cup smudged with lipstick. A home, a family, routine – all things that people took for granted, and yet they had never seemed more inaccessible to me, or more unlikely. I felt a stab of nostalgia as I stood there, then a loneliness. Was it because I was looking at the kind of life I had been denied, or did I wish I could simply abandon the difficult course I had taken and somehow attach myself to all this security, this warmth? Maybe both were true. But perhaps it was also true that nothing of any value could be achieved without a measure of apprehension and regret.

  Given that the authorities might already have issued a warrant for my arrest, Fernandez thought it best if I remained out of sight for the duration of the car journey, so I wedged myself behind the two front seats and let him cover me with some newspapers and an old blanket. I didn’t speak until we had been driving for several minutes, but then I couldn’t hold back any longer.

  ‘You said last night that you thought I’d seen through you,’ I said. ‘What did you think I’d seen?’

  A snort of disbelief came from the driving seat. ‘You really expect me to tell you that?’

  ‘Why not? You’ve got nothing to lose.’

  He stayed quiet for a while. I assumed he had decided not to answer.

  ‘What was so clever about the way they divided us,’ he said at last, ‘was that it more or less guaranteed that we would hate each other. I can’t help feeling a kind of contempt for you, for instance. It might be because of what you’re doing, and the effect it has on others, but it might simply be because of who you are. I’m from the Yellow Quarter, and you’re from somewhere else. That’s probably enough. And yet, to answer your question, I’m one of the few people who believe in that great pipe dream, that we should be able to live in the same country. All of us. You, me – even Rinaldi.’ He allowed himself a brief wry laugh. ‘Then I see myself succumb to prejudice, and I realise how insidious it is, how easy …’

  It was silent except for the ticking of the indicator. I chose not to say anything. The honesty and bluntness of what I’d heard had caught me unawares. I hadn’t expected Fernandez to be so open, but perhaps, with me hidden, he felt alone in the car. In a sense, then, he was talking to himself.

  ‘It’s like racism, really, if you think about it,’ he went on. ‘I don’t mean the old racism. That’s dead and gone. I’m not interested in the colour of someone’s skin. It’s their thoughts that bother me. The new racism is psychological. What’s strange is, we seem to need it – to thrive on it. If we don’t have someone to despise, we feel uncomfortable, we feel we haven’t properly defined ourselves. Hate gives us hard edges. And the authorities knew that, of course. In fact, they were banking on it. They force-fed us our own weakness – our intolerance, our bigotry. They rammed it down our throats.’ He paused. ‘They took the worst part of us and built a system out of it. And it worked –’ He blasted his horn, then swore at another driver, but it was the authorities that he was angry with, and clearly he was also angry with himself.

  ‘You asked me what I thought you saw,’ Fernandez said. ‘I’ll tell you. I thought you realised I was bluffing, or even double-bluffing – my talk on terrorism, and so on. I thought you knew I was against the system. I even suspected you might pity me because I was so obviously fighting a losing battle, and I hated you for that. And I thought you could feel me hating you.’

  ‘I felt something,’ I said. ‘Not that, though.’

  ‘I was classified as choleric,’ Fernandez said, ‘which is something I dispute, of course, something I resent as well, and yet I seem to be getting more and more choleric with every year that passes. It’s ironic, don’t you think?’r />
  I didn’t answer.

  ‘What about you?’ he said. ‘Where do you stand?’

  ‘I’m not sure. What I’m doing, it’s not really political. It’s more –’

  ‘Everything’s political.’ The car lurched as Fernandez braked. ‘Keep quiet for a moment.’

  I heard him wind his window down and speak to somebody outside, then he shifted into gear and drove on.

  ‘I’m not sure you made the right decision,’ he said eventually.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Maybe, when the bomb went off, you should have gone home like the rest of us. Maybe you should have thought things through.’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ I paused. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  As a result of what had happened in the club, something entirely unexpected had risen up inside me. On returning to my hotel room after leaving Rinaldi on the stairs, there had been a moment when I wanted to fling my head back and give vent to a strange wild laughter. I hadn’t known what lay behind that sudden exhilaration, only that it felt like the dismissal of everything that didn’t matter and the embracing of all that was vital and true. I had been sure of myself in a way that was both abstract and unprecedented and, in spite of all the difficulties I had run into since then, that sense of certainty had grown stronger.

  ‘No,’ I said again, more firmly. ‘I had no choice.’

  ‘Well, anyway,’ Fernandez said, ‘it’s too late now.’

  When I got out of the car, I saw that we were parked in the corner of a large warehouse. I paced up and down to try and work some feeling back into my legs. After a while, a man in blue overalls came over, wiping his grease-stained hands on a rag. ‘That’s the one, Mr Fernandez,’ he said, pointing to a pale-orange container. Then he slid his eyes across to me. ‘They lift that container, you’d better be holding on to something. They’re not exactly gentle.’ He flicked his lank, thinning hair back from his forehead. ‘Maybe try and wedge yourself among the statues.’

  ‘What statues?’ I said.

  The man just sniggered. I watched as Fernandez went round to the back of his car and opened the boot, then I looked at the container again, its exterior scarred and battered. ‘Are you going to lock me in?’ I asked.

  ‘The door’s got a bolt on it,’ the man said, ‘so it can be opened from inside as well as out. I’d stay inside if I was you. Stuff shifts about. You start walking around the hold, you could get crushed. Also, the guys that run the boat don’t know you’re there. They’re not going to like the idea of a stowaway.’

  So I was a stowaway now. I was becoming more illegal by the minute.

  ‘How long’s the voyage?’ I asked.

  ‘Eighteen hours. Maybe more. Old tramp steamers, it’s hard to say.’

  Fernandez returned with two blankets and a plastic carrier bag. ‘Some food for the journey,’ he said. ‘And you’ll need the blankets. It’ll probably get cold in there.’

  The man in the overalls stood some distance from us and began to gnaw at his fingers. Every so often he would lift them away from his mouth, nails curling in towards the palm, as if to admire his handiwork.

  I looked at Fernandez. ‘I don’t know how to thank you for all this.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to get rid of you,’ he said. ‘You people who don’t know what you’re doing, you’re dangerous. You destabilise things.’

  ‘I thought that’s what you wanted.’

  ‘You people.’ Fernandez shook his head. ‘You always have to have the last word, don’t you?’

  There were smells first of all – salt water, rust and then, surprisingly, fried food. I waited for the darkness to ease a little, to reveal something of the interior, but nothing changed. I heard Fernandez drive away – at least, I assumed it was him. My ears still rang with the dull clang of the door slamming. Minutes went by. The darkness was no less dense. I didn’t panic, though. Instead, a certain unanticipated relief came over me. It’s strange how our reactions can startle us. But perhaps relief made sense. I had been living a life sustained almost entirely by adrenalin, and obviously there was a part of me that viewed the next eighteen hours as a respite, a kind of breathing space. Also, I was bound for the Blue Quarter – and far sooner than I could ever have hoped or imagined. I still couldn’t quite believe what Fernandez had done for me.

  The man in the overalls had shut the door on me so quickly that I had had no chance to inspect my surroundings. To allay any fears or uncertainties that might beset me later on, I decided to do some exploring. I took one step at a time, fumbling at the air with hands I couldn’t see. Having located the wall of the container to my left, I began to follow it, but I hadn’t gone far when I came up against an obstacle. Taller than I was, wider too, this would be one of the statues the man in the overalls had mentioned, but since it had been wrapped in protective sheeting I wasn’t able to guess who it was. To its right stood another statue, equally well protected and equally anonymous. I stepped to the right once more and found a statue whose arms stretched out in what I took to be a gesture of supplication. A saint, presumably. Which one, though, I couldn’t possibly have said. To the right of this third statue there was only air, and I walked forwards again. In nine steps I had reached the far wall of the container. I turned to my right. As I groped my way towards the next corner, my foot caught on something and, bending down, I found a coil of slightly oily rope and several small cylinders or tubes, all roughly the same length. When I realised what they were, I laughed softly to myself. I’d had a lighter on me the whole time – the one that belonged to Annette. Feeling stupid, I brought it out of my coat pocket, then flipped the lid open and thumbed the flint. The flame only lit the area immediately around me, but I could see the rope now and the cigarette butts. There were some white cartons on the floor as well. A couple of dockers must have eaten a takeaway in here, then had a smoke. Holding the lighter at head-height, I saw how the rope had been used to lash the statues together. Solid and yet ghostly, oddly menacing, the wrapped shapes occupied at least two-thirds of the container, which left me a narrow right-angled space, a sort of corridor, in which to move about..

  After a while I heard a man shouting instructions close by, his voice accompanied by a high-pitched electric whine, then a loud grinding sound came from below me and the entire container shifted to the left. I pocketed the lighter and sat down, wedging my back against the wall and bracing my heels against one of the ridges in the floor. The container instantly lifted off the ground. I assumed it was being transported from the warehouse to the quay. We stopped again, and I heard more shouting. There were various knocks and bangs on the roof, then the container was hoisted into the air where it swung from side to side, tilting a little. I gripped the legs of the statue nearest to me and kept my feet braced against the metal ridge.

  Though I did my best to prepare myself for the container’s arrival in the hold, the sudden impact jarred my spine. I was aware too of the disparate pieces of bone that made up my skull; somehow I could feel all the joins. And the loading hadn’t finished yet. Shortly afterwards, another container was lowered on to the roof above me with a brutal resounding clang. Now I knew that the containers were being stacked on top of each other, and that mine could well be on the bottom, I felt a flicker of claustrophobia. Once the ship was moving, it might be wise, I thought, to unbolt the door, if only to have an idea of how the cargo had been arranged.

  In the meantime my thoughts turned to John Fernandez. Despite his contempt for me, which he had done nothing to conceal, and despite his habitual gruffness, I realised I was missing him. He was the person I felt closest to in all the world. I had tried to explain myself to him, and even though he hadn’t really understood, let alone approved, he still knew more about me than anybody else I could think of. It was pathetic, perhaps – he would surely have thought so – but true nonetheless.

  A loud rumbling began, and the wall behind me started to vibrate. The ship’s engines. Soon we would be heading out to sea.
I sat on the floor with one blanket folded under me, the other draped over my shoulders. Night wouldn’t have fallen yet, but it was already cold. I opened the bag Fernandez had given me. Inside, I found a slice of pizza. I took a bite. Chorizo or pepperoni. I ate half of it and saved the rest. There was a banana too, a packet of biscuits and a Thermos flask. I unscrewed the flask and brought it to my nose. He had made me coffee. I poured myself a cup, then drank it straight down. I didn’t care if Fernandez despised me. My gratitude still stood. He had chosen not to turn me away, though it would have been well within his rights to do so. Instead, he had offered me food and shelter, and we had talked without evasion, without pretence. It was hard to believe that I would never see him again. I only hoped I hadn’t compromised him in any way, him and his family.

  The floor of the container was plunging and tilting now, and the statues were straining at their ropes. We must have sailed beyond the harbour wall. Using my lighter to locate the door, I began to work the bolt up and down to loosen it. As the door opened, the noise level rose. Clanking, hissing, drumming. In front of me was a container identical to mine. No more than eighteen inches separated the two. The man in the overalls had advised me to stay hidden, but I couldn’t have got out, not even if I’d wanted to. I put my head into the narrow gap. Though the containers had been set down in rows, the distances between them varied, making a network of irregular corridors or aisles. A naked bulb in a wire cage protruded from the side-wall of the hull, but the light in the hold was dingy, thick and yellowish. It seemed to ooze from the bulb like some sort of discharge. I looked the other way. Another corridor, but crooked, cramped. The reek of diesel oil and rust and brine. It was a grim place, brutal as a dungeon. Needing to urinate, I aimed into the space between the two containers. When I had finished, I bolted the door and lay down on the folded blanket, then I covered myself with the second blanket and tried to doze.

  The unrelenting din of the engines, the see-saw motion of the floor beneath me, the pitch-black and the cold … I would lie on my side until it froze, then I would turn over. I did this again and again. In the end I must have slept, though, or else I had one of those visions that sometimes grace the edge of sleep. I was crouching in the shade at the side of an old house, and the garden beyond was so drenched in sunlight that it looked ethereal, almost transparent. Then I was on my feet and running. Round the crumbling, rose-hung corner of the house I went, and out on to a lawn where grown-ups were sitting on the ground, legs folded under them, or standing about with glasses of wine. I ran headlong into my mother’s skirt, which had huge flowers all over it, and reaching up – she must have been kneeling now, or bending down – I put one of my hands to her face, and we looked into each other’s eyes, and she was nodding and smiling as if to say, There you are, I was just wondering, and then I heard the groan of metal being wrenched apart, and I turned quickly to see what it could be, only to lose my balance, fall, roll over … I woke in darkness, one elbow in a puddle. The container, I thought. I was in the container. But what was that awful sound I’d heard, and how had I come to be thrown across the floor? Had I been walking in my sleep? From somewhere high above came the sound of men shouting. Though I knew next to nothing about ships, the urgency and desperation in their voices didn’t exactly reassure me. The engines had stopped too, and I could hear a noise I couldn’t remember hearing earlier, a kind of rushing. I began to struggle with the rusty bolt. At last it slid sideways in its bracket, and the door banged open. Things had changed position since the last time I looked. The boat must have run aground, or hit something. Luckily, the container opposite me had shifted backwards a little, and I was able to drop down into a small, wedge-shaped gap. From there, I edged along one of the aisles, aware that if anything moved again I would be trapped or crushed. I had to walk uphill to reach the side of the hold. Glancing behind me, I saw water flooding greedily into the spaces between containers. I imagined for a moment that I heard voices pleading, but I could only think it was the sigh of machinery that had been shut down, the gasp and murmur of pistons cooling, and I turned and hurried towards the nearest flight of stairs.