We all look down on Tympany.
‘She looks more of a stocky German type, to me,’ says the butcher Brest. ‘There are several hectares of flesh.’
‘At least she uses her hand to cover herself,’ says Granny Gramus.
‘She’s modelled on what was called the Venus Pudica.’
‘Pudica? I’ll say.’ Laveur laughs and the others join him. ‘Obviously some kind of African joke! Who would have thought that the chocolate one kept all this in his little room. I must say his taste is not bad, if somewhat florid. I prefer my cheese a little firmer than this.’
‘The word Pudica means “modest” – in Latin,’ I tell Laveur.
‘Oh yes? Doesn’t look very modest to me,’ says Laveur.
‘It’s very interesting. What we have here is a copy of a copy of a copy,’ says Uncle Claude. ‘We see a photograph of a modern woman posing for a painting in the attitude of an idealised Greek goddess.’ He turns another picture with his delicate little toe. ‘And who’s this? She’s more modest.’
‘Dulcimer, wife number two. She’s a copy of St Ursula, a carving made by somebody called the Master of Elsloo in the early sixteenth century.’
‘A saint? In a blouse like that?’ Now it’s the turn of the elder of the De La Salle sisters, a woman so frail and thin, dressed in white lace which shakes when she speaks like the feathery, flimsy wings of flying ants.
‘I like the detail on this one,’ says the butcher Brest as Uncle Claude unearths another picture. ‘I think her wings are actually very good. They look like real feathers. Are they real feathers? I’d guess at goose though of course they may be duck. Who is she, Bella?’
‘That’s Harp, his third wife. She’s seen here as Venus, after a painting by Correggio called Mercury Instructing Cupid Before Venus.’
‘Hey, that’s him, the one in the funny hat, the jockey hat, that’s the black fellow!’ says old Laveur in astonishment. ‘And who’s the little kid also with the wings?’
‘That’s one of his sons. Playing Cupid,’ I tell him.
‘I think it’s the flesh that really catches your eye,’ says the younger of the De La Salle sisters to the butcher Brest. ‘Let’s be frank about this. We’re all grown people. These so-called classical poses that painters talk these girls into are nothing more than disguises through which the audience of males look on. Voyeurs! That’s what they’re meant for! By dressing up a whore as the goddess Venus you can gape all you like under the cloak of culture.’
The butcher Brest has gone a muddy brown colour and is breathing hard. ‘I’d like you to know, Mademoiselle De La Salle and Monsieur le Maire, that what interests me about this picture is the question of accuracy – is it goose feathers or duck? I take pleasure from the accurate identification of such things, feathers, fur, flesh. It’s my trade. I handle them daily. The very last thing to arouse me is the sight of flesh. A moment’s thought will show you why. Butchers are like mortuary attendants. I suppose like painters too. They look on things in death all the time and death is cold and naked. I have a professional interest! May I take another look at the Venus? I think now they are probably duck feathers.’
But my uncle isn’t listening, he is pulling at his lips as if he has swallowed something acid and it won’t go down, or it has gone down and threatens to come straight up again.
‘Bella, what does this mean?’
And there in the mud I lie, at the end of Uncle Claude’s pointed toe. It’s the photograph the Redeemer took of me on the hot afternoon, when, despite the heat, he’d insisted on making a fire in the grate. I recline on the little green chaise longue. To my left the window with the curtain drawn back lets in the fierce lake light. At the corner of the window stands a small brown table carrying a white basin. My right arm drops over the edge of the chair, fingers extending almost to the green carpet. I can feel it now under my fingers as I look at myself, I can feel it like a skin or a fur, it is almost as if I can touch the short woollen hair of the green carpet straining upwards the way real hair does when it’s charged with static electricity. My uncle and the others are staring at my open dress, at the bodice cut low, falling off the right shoulder. They’re staring as well at my raised left knee climbing from my skirt. How flat my shoes look, and white. The fire warms my legs. I remember feeling the heat along the insides of my thighs. The little mirror I hold in my hand shows me the clouds drifting past the open window behind me, drifting past my face which is quiet and composed. Over to my right, kneeling on one leg before the fire which he is working up into a terrific blaze, is the Redeemer. He has his back to me and he ripples inside his dark red shirt as he feeds the flames with his left hand. His right hand holds the edge of the mantelpiece for support.
‘Always use your left hand to feed yourself,’ I remember him telling me. ‘That at least is the custom in my country.’
And he uses his left hand to feed the fire.
Hot to the touch!
My uncle’s voice is a wounded bellow:
‘Four wives he has – Viola, Tympany, Harp, Dulcimer – and now Bella! Wife number five!’
Disgust is a wonderful diversion. At first Uncle Claude doesn’t notice the chattering, smoke-stained firefighters heading for their engine, stowing their hoses, gathering equipment. Only a few are left in the house punching holes in the windows. But clearly the worst is over. They’re not looking for anyone. The people at the gate are moving off. Now the Angel and Father Duval are conferring anxiously with the firemen. The people in the Renault, the Citroën and the Deux-Chevaux have noticed. Look at the way they’re yelling down their radios which, for once, they don’t bother to hide. It’s really exciting. I put on my earphones and stick a tape in the cassette, one of those dreamier numbers from an outfit called Jurassic, they’ve got these lovely, sliding, sucking rhythms that make you think of, oh, Father Christmas in petticoats, or the Pope in drag. And I’m so happy! It’s at times like this when I can profess my love for you! It’s miracle time. Do you hear? I can say now that there is you and only you and never a stand-in. You alone – you do all your own stunts!
Uncle Claude’s noticed at last. He begins yelling at the firemen, ‘What do you mean he’s not here? Are you telling me he melted maybe – and slipped through the cracks and disappeared? He has to be here. He can’t be anywhere else!’
In the midst of all this the De La Salle sisters and the butcher Brest continue to argue.
‘The trouble with the women in these paintings,’ complains the older De La Salle sister, ‘is that they know they’re being looked at.’
‘You mean they want to be looked at?’ Brest rejoins.
‘I mean they’re painted by men for men. They show so much of themselves. If this weren’t art, it would be disgusting.’
‘You are among nature’s natural killers, Madame,’ says Brest.
‘By men for men,’ the De La Salle sister repeats.
This brings out the worst in Brest, or perhaps the best. He looks down at the portrait of the Redeemer and Harp as Mercury and Venus, and he licks his lips. ‘Do you know what this picture makes me feel, Madame? It makes me hungry, look at that flesh, the texture, it’s like milk – you want to taste it!’
I think I’d like to record just what I told my uncle on this score. You’ll see the particular advances I’ve been making in my study of particle physics, now that I’ve got the hang of it, now that I realise that the point about it is to make predictions which later experimental evidence will confirm. I offer the following on the subject of Schrödinger’s cat, as explained to Uncle Claude:
‘Perhaps we’ve just added something to the history of particle physics. Maybe there are not just two parallel worlds with the cat and the observer alive in one world and dead in the other. Perhaps today we’ve stepped through a hole into a third world, a new dimension. Because when you think about it there aren’t just two possibilities facing
the cat, are there? It’s not just a question of whether the radioactive element fires, the cyanide pellet drops into the acid and you get one dead cat – or if it doesn’t, you don’t. That’s to say it’s not a question of either/or, either the cat’s alive or it’s dead. There is another alternative which I’m surprised nobody’s thought of until now: when the scientists inspect the box maybe there’s no cat at all.’
‘Bella,’ says my uncle speaking through his teeth. ‘There is always a cat. The only question is – alive or dead?’
‘Or escaped?’
Axe blades smash through wood and glass with a dry coughing sound and the splinters of glass land on the pavement below. Wherever a hole appears in a window, smoke pours out while we wait and watch. Many of the tables still have drinks on them, cocktails smelling slightly of peppermint, doubtless Emile’s coupe maison, now returning to its original constituents which show up as different bands of colour in the large beakers Emile favours for his evening libations.
We suffer and our works look on; these drinks, the menus at the front gate, the very appearance of the tables beneath the trees all insist on business as usual. We make our engines and set them going. But when disaster strikes and removes the makers our works continue as if nothing has happened, go on inviting us to pleasure, or advertising happiness, mocking our expectations, our sheer bloody nerve. You started this, they say. Don’t you still want to play? And this will happen on a much bigger scale one day, when our sun runs out of fuel and expands and roasts us all. Our engines will go on running, powered by varieties of energy as yet unthought of; they will play our tunes and show our pictures and talk to each other along their super-cooled ceramic synapses, telling the time, checking our credit ratings, measuring the weather which, by then, will have proved terminal. Even our cheapest music will survive us because it will doubtless have been taught to compose itself and will go on doing so; there will be singing robots, and brighter versions of groups like Oedema and Giuseppe and the Lambs will go on belting out their stuff to the stars as the noisy planet, lights blinking, floats through space like some deserted ship, a Marie Celeste of the solar system, music blasting out, television on and the trains still running for years, decades, after we have departed.
Zanj
Close the gates
With lacari thorns,
For the Prince,
The heir to the Stool is lost!
Okot p’Bitek
Zanj
Atkins International Airport stands in a vast saucer-shaped plain surrounded by a circle of low hills behind which the sun is just dipping and applying delicate colour, like a touch of oyster-pink lipstick, to the saucer’s rocky rim. Mine is the only footfall to echo around the big arrival hall. Behind the desk an official in black jacket wearing a peaked cap offers a small careful smile. It is cool in the hall and quiet and empty.
‘Good morning, dear young person.’
He takes my passport between thumb and forefinger and by his touch makes it slim, wafery and strangely edible. He has a cricket’s mandible for a mouth and papery fingers and he holds up the book as if uncertain whether to read it or eat it. He seems to wish to savour it first, to linger for some time over the job in hand. He sniffs the passport, riffles through the pages as someone in a bookstore might before deciding whether to buy.
‘Dresseur – Dresseur … A French name. You speak English? I have to speak English to you. It’s now our official language.’
‘I don’t mind. Speak either.’
‘Thank you. You are most civil. Welcome to Zanj. Would you like to buy a copy of our official history?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Then I must read it to you.’ He picks up a printed card and clears his throat. ‘Our country was the victim of twin colonialisms, French and English. As if it were not enough we were divided among three tribes, the Kanga, the Ite and the Wouff, and we were beset by the mongrels of Europe and obliged to master the tongues of our invaders. Happily, tribal distinctions have been abolished under the beneficent administration of Comrade Atkins. In the interests of modernity it has been decided that English should be our national tongue. So be it.’ He peers hard at my photograph and hands the passport back. ‘Your picture doesn’t do you justice. Please step forward into the customs.’
Customs turns out to be a large wooden table with a drawer facing outwards; the handle is made of well-rubbed brass. Waiting for me behind the table is the same man except that now he has taken off his black jacket and is in a white shirt and I suppose he looks something like a customs officer.
‘Anything to declare?’
‘No.’
‘I think we’ll just have a look in your case.’
He hoists the case onto the wooden table. I like the way he blows on his hands and rubs them together before springing the locks as if he doesn’t want to touch them with cold hands. He’s less sensitive with my things, holding up my clothes and reading the labels. Sometimes he whistles, sometimes he clicks his tongue, though whether because he approves of the fabric or dislikes the maker I cannot say. He looks inside the fingers of my pink leather gloves.
‘Is this your first visit to Zanj, Miss Dresseur?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you on vacation – or have you come on business?’ He’s busy now with my make-up. The black hands dip into the bag like feeding birds. He touches a finger to one of my hairpins and whistles at its sharp point. He unscrews the cap of my ‘Contouring Creme-jel’ – a non-greasy jel which moisturises, shines and controls my fly-away hair; he tastes my ‘Kiss And Tell’ lipstick, a strawberry stripe on his tongue. He runs a finger along my tortoiseshell comb and makes a little tune in which I think I hear echoes of ‘Lead Kindly Light’.
‘I’ve come to see a friend.’
‘How long are you staying?’
‘For as long as necessary.’
He holds up a box of eye-shadow. ‘What is this, please?’
‘I put it on my eyes. I mix the blue with the deep purple and I use ‘Fort Knox Gold’ on my brows to get a subtle, stylish effect.’
‘Is your friend meeting you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I should point out that you will find the forecourt innocent of vehicular traffic.’
Whatever that means it sounds vaguely disappointing. I say, ‘OK.’
‘As a woman very much in the fashionable swim,’ – his eyes rest briefly on my turtle-neck top – ‘you’ll be fascinated to know that our leader, Comrade Atkins, has commanded that an end be put to the prettifyings and face-paintings among our women. He says, “Woman of Zanj, return to the modesty of your mothers and grandmothers!” ’
He is particularly fascinated by my diamond pendant and keeps staring at it with quick, hard eyes.
‘Your jewel is going to get a lot of attention. It is very unusual. You put it inside your dress. OK?’
I do as he says.
‘Some of our people are crazy – for jewels. Stone crazy.’
I watch him repacking my case, taking special care to square off a patterned red shawl. He has a passion for neatness, this man. The way he kneads the toes of a pair of my best black tights gets me seriously mad.
‘Listen, have you found something you don’t like?’
He closes my case and snaps the locks. ‘You’re absolutely fine.’
‘Can I go?’
‘Just one small thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re overweight.’
‘Overweight? But that’s something they check before you fly. I’ve already landed. I’m here. How can I be overweight?’
‘Don’t worry. You’re only a few kilos over the limit. Shall we say a charge of one hundred Zanjian dollars?’
‘I don’t have any of your currency. They wouldn’t give me any, they said the banks here were closed.’
‘US dollars will be acceptable. Twenty. OK? Open the drawer in front of you and place them inside.’
I count out twenty dollars from my purse. The drawer slides open with a delicate, subdued hiss.
‘Now close the drawer. And open it again.’
I do as I’m told. The drawer is empty.
He grins delightedly. ‘Magic. And you’re my witness, I didn’t touch it.’
‘Can I go now?’
‘What’s the name of the friend you’re going to meet?’
Now it’s my turn to look at him hard. All sorts of options are open, I think – well? – shall I tell you the name of the friend whom I’m here to find? Your dear departed ruler, the lively, lickable fellow, the king thing, the edible dictator?
‘Brown.’
His face is hard, beaky, without expression.
‘Some people in Zanj called him the Redeemer.’
A tray of cups smashes. He opens his mouth. He’s laughing – I see that now.
He laughs long and hard and in the darkness of his mouth his teeth twinkle like landing lights. ‘Miss Dresseur, someone’s been fooling you. Maybe you’ve been reading lies in the Western press. There is no one answering to that name here. The only leader we possess, our Head of State and beloved helmsman, is Comrade Atkins.’
Oh yeah, I think, and Mohammed is his prophet. ‘How long has Comrade Atkins been in charge?’
‘For as long as anyone can remember.’ He pushes my case across to me and indicates that I am free to go. ‘I wish you a very happy stay in the People’s Republic of Zanj.’
At times like this I wish I had my music back and had not plunged it into the lake along with poor Clovis. On the day I left La Frisette I hired a boat from old Leclerc and paddled out to the spot where I estimated Clovis had disappeared. The hawks watched me as I took off my walkman. I would have liked to put up a plaque on the rocks above the deep water where he drowned. Instead I gave him my walkman and all my tapes. Heavy metal sinks fast. What I think I’d like to be listening to now is something good from the soft lips of Divina and his latest chartbuster, called ‘Suck It And See’, which, as the entire universe knows, is the big one from his first film of the same name. OK, so they say he keeps this collection of frozen dwarves in a special cryptogenic chamber, that he’s got these mummified corpses of these famous dwarves in there and talks to them like his friends, calls them his ancestors and kneels and prays to them. At least, that’s the story you get in the music sheets that specialise in peddling in this dirt. The sorts of papers that print the stories about his latest leading lady in Suck It And See before she got fired in favour of Wanda Tremoy for refusing to go nude in the big bed scene and they say that Divina ran shrieking from the set, because the boy may be the most tender lover in the world but he’s also a blushing violet. Just because I drowned my walkman along with poor drowned Clovis doesn’t mean the music won’t go on. The spool between my ears keeps turning.
My Chocolate Redeemer Page 25