I picked my way by quite an easy path, not even very slippery from the spray, up among the trees, to the temple’s first terrace. Through squat-bellied pillars, inside a cave-like hall, an eerie lamp was glowing. And I knew, as I’d known suddenly about the path, that this wasn’t as bizarre as it seemed. A great globe of translucent vitreous had been set, centuries ago – as in these most ancient jungle temples now and then it was – over a small fissure, under which flickered or flared a pocket of gaseous phosphorescence from some underlying swamp. Marshfire. An intermittent yet ultimately constant light, which needed no tending.
Yet, it looked like a huge dull opal, the lamp, shimmering, magic and supernatural. I make this point because it wasn’t. It had a prosaic if inspired explanation.
When I went into the cave-hall I could smell bats, and sure enough, beyond the lamp, they hung thickly in grape-or-orchid bunches from the carvings. Of the carvings themselves, I couldn’t see much. I couldn’t take them in. A plethora of details and also a lot time-rubbed away. Stone hands and limbs, stone smiles. Eyes lost in shadow.
Beyond the hall a shallow flight led upwards, and here two of the roofs had fallen in, and starlight shone. A tribe of starlight white monkeys sat all up the stairs, one or two creatures on each step. They looked at me, but scarcely moved. One mother groomed her baby. Another female reached out and gently plucked at the hem of my loose shirt, like a beggar requesting alms. But when I turned, she softly drew her monkey fingers back and sucked them thoughtfully.
At the top of the stairs was a sort of cloister, a gallery, with more blurred statues, which passed around a court below. But one side of the court had dropped away, and there one saw again the perfect view of the fall.
I hesitated halfway along the gallery, because a night bird was singing. It was the nightingale heard everywhere in Europe, Asia. Here? Perhaps the song was different in certain ways. Some notes stressed or distorted, bell-like, strident. But that bubbling trill, just the same.
Another of the phosphorous lamps burned down in the court. Some fluctuation of the gas made this lamp flutter, and the temple stones shifted, seemed to shift. And Laitel was there, walking towards me. He wore a white tunic and white pants, just as he had my first days at the house in the city. But he hadn’t worn such clothes in the machine.
“Come this way, Frances.”
What was the point in saying anything? I followed him on along the gallery, and partway around the cloister, and then into a roofless, narrow corridor. There were, in the starlight, many doors of carved sul-wood, burnished like dirty amber. Laitel opened one, and I saw into a small bare room lit by an oil lamp on a table that was otherwise covered by books and papers. At the table sat Lohno Tezmaine. I knew at once his ochre parrot face, of cruel aged-in-the-wood malevolence.
I wasn’t dreaming. As infallibly, sometimes, you know yourself to be clearly awake in dreams, somehow, when awake, your very unsureness proves this is the woken state.
“How are you here?” I asked. I was casual.
“Where else? Besides, where is here?”
“Aren’t you dead?” I casually asked.
“In one form,” he said.
I had the idea that of course he wasn’t dead. That Laitel had stored Lohno, perhaps sedated, in some extra hidden compartment of the machine, at the same time that he stored the food, fuel and wine. Why?
“Our interview was fairly naff,” he said, old-fashioned still, “wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t really interested in me.”
“No?”
“You only inclined to see the city and be involved in the horrors of downfall. At least somewhat. Come and look at this.”
I didn’t want to approach him, but that was foolish, because he was just an unpleasant old man sitting on an upright deck-chair, in the cell of a ruin. So I went closer and he pointed out the papers in front of him.
“What about it?” I said.
“Read it. Oh, I know you never read my books. But this is my latest work.”
“Continued after your death, too? That should be very interesting, a great potential commercial success.”
“The first book, certainly, I’ve written for over 30 years.”
The full light of the oil lamp was on the manuscript. I leant forward, and read the paragraph written there. It said:
“She didn’t want to approach him, but that was foolish. He was simply an unpleasing specimen of masculine old age, upright on an inappropriate canvas chair, the kind once set up on the decks of liners for the elderly and sick, so they might enjoy some ocean air. But Frances was that intransigent and irritating thing, a survivor. So she went straight up to him and, when he asked her to, read the paper on the table.”
I said, “You’re writing about me. That’s actionable, Mr Tezmaine. You’ve even used my given name.”
“Lohno.”
“Mr Tezmaine, I find it impossible to believe that all this is an elaborate hoax, arranged simply to make a fool of me and the people I work for –”
“Lohno. You don’t understand. You probably will not, will never understand.”
He drew another paper out from the untidy stacks on the table. He held it up to me. When I didn’t look or take it, he read, “ ‘She had always wanted to see the city; that had been, really, her only reason for agreeing to interview the old man. In the first days, in the mornings before he got up, she would walk about, or take a hutsha. Being of fairly light build, a team of only six children was needed to pull her along. She always tipped them well, but not so extravagantly that they clamoured or brought others to clamour. She had learned long ago, in the cities of Asia, to be careful of such things.” ’
He let the paper fall and pulled out another. He read, flatly, “ ‘Sex with Laitel was always strangely satisfactory. There was never any frantic struggle towards orgasm. It was a politeness between them, a social massage. But Frances suspected Laitel reserved climax, and the expulsion of seed, for women of his own race, in the interests of procreation.’ ”
“All right,” I said. “Am I supposed to be affronted? Disgusted? Upset? What? You tell me.”
“Yes, I would have to, wouldn’t I?”
“Because I’m an amateur at life?”
Laitel was in the room. He was pouring pequa into two glasses, and then he brought them to us, handing Lohno Tezmaine his drink first.
I took my glass then put it down. I put my hand on the papers and pulled out, at random, another sheet, lifted it and read, from the filled, scribbled page, “ ‘As a child, she had been left with an unreliable aunt, real or titular, who, going to buy cigarettes, forgot Frances in a park. Under those pruned cedars of Hurlingham, Frances experienced the first of her massive disillusionments. But life would never encourage her to learn its true ways, instead slapping her down at every opportunity. And yet, still, she unwisely wished that life would change its mind and woo her back. There was still time, she was only 40, 41, for life to give her fame and glory, the crown of laurel, the undying name.’ ”
“How do you know?” I said. I felt blank and stern, almost righteous, not at all unnerved. As if I was playing a part.
“How do you think I know? The same way that I know that Laitel was born in the jush, an unwanted child though a boy. And how I know that, at seven years old, he saw a white tiger, in a cage, and thought it was a demon, and that he still dreams of this tiger; which species isn’t, of course, normally found here.”
“You know that then because Laitel must have told you. But I –”
“Laitel told me. You have told me.”
“No.”
“It’s self-evident. How else can I know, Frances? And your mother’s middle name, say. Or the story about the three little mice that made you afraid when you were nine. Or how many men you’ve slept with.”
“I don’t know that myself,” I said archly.
“You do. If you think about it, you do. Otherwise I couldn’t know.”
�
�Telepathy, you’re saying then.”
“In a way, I suppose. A sort of telepathy.”
Laitel spoke quietly. “He does know, Frances.”
“He’s dead. I tried his pulse. He’s dead so how can he know anything?”
“You never read my books,” said Lohno again, and again without the usual authorial arrogance or contempt. “You had them read to you instead by a mechanism. You’ve forgotten, or didn’t notice, that sometimes I include myself in my books, as a character. I write first-person, and am addressed by various other characters as Tezmaine, or Lohno. Preferably the latter. I am, after all, so familiar with my characters. Any writer is. Indecently so, though inevitably. The least I can do, Frances, is generally to insist they call me in the familiar way, by my first name.”
I stared at him. Then I glanced at Laitel. Laitel took no notice. He must, I thought, have heard this speech, or a similar speech, before. How had he responded? He hadn’t. Of course he hadn’t. The concept of an all-seeing, motivating, pitiless God was bad enough. But this effrontery – there could be no reply.
I picked up and drank the pequa, then held out my glass, and Laitel came back and filled it up.
Lohno Tezmaine sat smiling, smiling, like the smiles left, Cheshire-cat-like, behind on the stone temple faces below.
No reply fitting. So what to say? All my adult life, and perhaps earlier, searching doggedly for the punchline, the summing-up, quick, quirky and clean. Award-winning phrases that had never earned a mention. Too glib, or too good. Whatever. Whatever is it with me? Forever shut out, or left behind. Too late or early. Or merely redundant.
“So I’m your invention, Mr Tezmaine – oh, excuse me, Lohno. And Laitel, too?”
“All of it, Frances, actually. Here, there. City, jungle, home. Everything.”
“Then you’re God.”
“Naturally not. Or, that is to say, only on paper.”
I drank down the pequa. It tasted foul.
“Prove it,” I said. “Go on.”
“That would be too easy, Frances.”
“Ah yes. Obviously. Oh then, you mustn’t, must you.”
He turned and squinted up at me. He had had, or still had, excellent eyesight, assisted by all the right contemporary medication. But now his eyes, though glittering and malign as knife-points, were slightly unfocused. He swung back over the table, took up a pen, and wrote swiftly. He handed me the paper.
I read, “ ‘Frances looked back, and saw, there in the doorway of the cell, Laitel’s white tiger.’ ”
My hair stood on end. That hadn’t happened in a long while. I dropped the paper on the table.
“Turn round,” he said to me, Lohno Tezmaine.
“There’s nothing there,” I said. I looked at Laitel. “There isn’t, Laitel. Or if there is, it’s some illusion – hypnotism, some drug – mhash in the oil lamp, maybe. We’re suggestible. Everyone is, given the proper scenario.”
Laitel nodded. He smiled.
So I turned. Nothing was there. The doorway was empty. Then –
Something pale, that flicked, once, twice, tail-like, lashing, where the lamplight hit the stone of the corridor. A trick of the eyes.
“I didn’t see it.”
“That’s true.” Tezmaine leant forward and crossed out the last line he had written. “Sometimes the author makes a mistake. He pushes a subject to do something that doesn’t fit, a thing either not in character, or too intransigently in character. Characters seldom act in character. This is the measure of a human thing, whether real or invented. A true writer will generally realize his balls-up in time. Not always. One shouldn’t ever contrive. The flow of the narrative, the being of the characters themselves, they must be allowed to live their lives, and from that the plot springs, all its events and scenes. Also the landscapes, figurative and mental, in a correct book. You see, the writer need do nothing, or very little, merely observe and listen, and then factually report.”
“A journalist? But that’s my job, Mr Tezmaine.”
“Lohno. Yes, you’re right.”
He raised the amended paper and read out to me, “ ‘But when Frances turned to face the animal in the doorway, she was only in time to glimpse the last inconclusive flick, flick of its slowly lashing tail.’ ” He laid the paper down. “More pequa, Laitel, please. Have some yourself. It’s liberating to be out of the book now. I was getting weary, so I killed myself off, and moved into the third person, only writing about you, Frances, and about Laitel. The rest of your two lives, which I shall contrast and compare, piquantly, I hope, as we go along. No, I can’t predict your lives – or very little. You’ll live them, and then I shall find out. The time-scales are different, evidently, but you won’t be aware of it.”
“But we’re amateurs,” I said. My voice was full of rage and bitterness. It surprised me. As if I believed him and resented him as, naturally I’d have to, if it were a fact. But then, I was playing a part, playing a game. Acting.
“Yes,” he said, “but amateur means ‘lover’, doesn’t it. You have a love of life, you amateurs, that we professionals have to give up, when once we begin to do it, not for love, but money.”
I felt a wave of tiredness sweep through me. “I’m tired,” I said. “And I still need to get to the coast. Is Laitel going to drive me there?”
“I don’t think so. I think he means to go back into the forests. Do you, Laitel?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Frances.”
“Wonderful. So what now?”
“There’s an old road that goes straight to the coast,” said Lohno, off-hand. “You’ll find it and take it in the morning. That much is arranged. It’s what you’re good at.”
“Planning to kill me off? What’s it to be, maestro, a gurricula? Snake-bite? Heat exhaustion?”
“Oh, no, Frances. We’ve only just had my death. Too many are bad form, since this isn’t a crime novel. You’ll find the trek not too bad. A few hours walking, in the shade. You may see some animals, they’ll ignore you. And of course, Laitel will give you a lunch-box.”
I started laughing. Tezmaine threw back his old snake’s head and laughed too. Only Laitel stood in the shadow in his white clothes, silent, demure as a bridesmaid.
In the doorway, I glanced back. “Tezmaine.”
“Lohno, please.”
“Lohno, Lohno. Am I pregnant?”
“Are you? How interesting. By Laitel, you mean? Despite non-ejaculation, some potent drip. It could be. Yes, I think you might be. Yes. What an inspiration. A child of such mixed blood, so rare. I’ll enjoy this. Yes, Frances, yes, you are. Thank you. A girl? Almost . . . almost definitely a girl.”
I walked out and went along to the end of the cloister, where the ruin had come apart. Under a leaning statue, with a smile and hands, I curled up to sleep. Presumably I wouldn’t topple over the edge. Unless he decided to write me out, after all.
The stars were so bright, so scattered and patterned, numerous, planned. I’ve never lost my amazement at things like the stars. The pequa said to me, Nothing matters. A mad old man, Laitel in his white clothes he left behind, never packed, what I’d have to do tomorrow, walking through jungle-forest, the lunga-rook. If I did have to. My race and Laitel’s, we don’t, can’t interbreed. Though the precautions I’d taken not to menstruate during this assignment would anyway make conception unlikely. Yet, something, some tremor, like the movement of the second hand on an antique watch. Crazy.
Once in the dark I woke. There was no reason. Nothing stirred. Only the rumble of the Water-Mama, constant as time, but a delusion because, in the end, the cliff would wear away, the waterfall decrease and become only the river.
Next morning, no one was there. Laitel wasn’t, nor the old man, or his ghost, no one. The monkeys had vanished back into the jungle-forest to feed or fight or slumber. The pitted statues had lost their mystery with the light. I found some food and a bottle of water lying beside me.
I knew how to find the road. That was from his books, it must
have been. It was an old processional way, used to link long-lost villages, or some ancient city of the jungle, to the temple. Curiously it wasn’t very overgrown. Perhaps more modern villages kept it clear out of respect or superstition. I met with no one. I saw lemasets, and once a boar digging at the roadside with his tusks. They paid no attention.
I admit it was cooler in the shade, and the water bottle, although I economized with it, lasted me until the forest began to break up and move away from me. Then came bridges over swamp, some of stone, some swaying horizontal ladders of rope and liana. Because this was some sort of game, or because I’d temporarily gone mad, I felt it would indeed turn out as Lohno Tezmaine had told me, and it did. Beyond the swamp and the scrub was rocky land that went up and over and finally, in the afternoon, ran down to a pocket of glistening, greasy sea.
The shore was covered by people, humans of all races, like something biblical, I thought, gathered tribes, the end of the world. I stood staring at them, realizing they were there, while the sweat and the water of the air washed down into my eyes. But the transports were there too, the VTOs, and every so often a swarm of them would lift off, or another swarm of them would come in over the bay, putting down on the plasto-steel strips laid out over the water.
Before I even started to climb down, a party of soldiers found me. They were foreigners, but biologically nearer to me than the people of the jungle or the coast. When I tried to answer them though, I found I couldn’t, the chip in my arm had malfunctioned. We communicated therefore in sign language, but they were cheerful, braced by their issue of performance-enhancing battle drugs. One of them kissed me on the cheek, another fondled my breast. Nothing worse. And so months after I knew that the child, for there was to be one – a boy, did Lohno change his plotline? – was Laitel’s, none other’s. But at that moment I might gladly have let these men do anything. They were real, they were reality. All they did was get me down to one end of the beach, then push me through the churning mass of flesh, and heave me up into a VTO, among the crying, serious, or jabbering women of their race, mine, others; among the babies and small domestic animals, and the sad or loud men, already playing cards or tuk, as if for the stake of this place, or their own best chance of existence.
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