Human Pages

by John Elliott

  Human Pages

  Human Pages

  By John Elliott

  Chômu Press

  Human Pages

  John Elliott

  Published by Chômu Press, MMXII

  Human Pages copyright © John Elliott 2012

  The right of John Elliott to be identified as Author of this

  Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Published in October 2012 by Chômu Press.

  by arrangement with the author.

  All rights reserved by the author.

  First Kindle Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Design and layout by: Bigeyebrow and Chômu Press

  Cover Illustration by: Torso Vertical

  E-mail: info@chomupress.com

  Internet: chomupress.com

  To Jenny, Lindsey and Poppy for Maggie.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Appendix (list of characters)

  The Author Takes His Leave

  One

  Town of the Verdiales.

  Who could carry you

  Tight in his pocket

  Like a slip of paper?

  (Popular Verdiales)

  Slowly, wait another moment.

  Your eyes have long been accustomed to a lack of light, but given time the darkness will resolve itself into the physicality of this place. Your skin is newly refreshed by the cool, moist air that its thick walls ensure. Beneath the soles of your shoes you can feel the debris of peanut shells, cigarette butts and empty bean pods.

  Listen, the voices resume.

  You can see the way now. Edge along the narrow corridor taking care not to bump into the sitters on the bench by the wall. The bar counter is on your left. Its cracked white tiles support Paca’s chubby arms as she hears and then forgets the everyday sounds of glass clinking against glass, descending on wood and tile, the taps of sticks, paper rustling, the splutter of matches, the faltering click of lighter tops.

  Sit down. There’s a place for you at the table at the back. You untie and spread out the cloth to reveal the food you’ve brought: a piece of bread, a sliver of dried cod, a mound of broad beans.

  A nearby hand passes you a flask of red wine. Another offers a paper wrap of salt. It’s as if you had never been away, as if you weren’t a stranger unrecognised in time.

  Vincenz and Tony Pigeon are sitting with you. My Son is standing at the bar. He looks over. It’s only a matter of moments until he addresses you as ‘my son’ too.

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  Your throat remains dry in spite of the wine. You aren’t sure, after such a long silence, after your mouth had been stuffed with stones, your lungs filled with blood, that you possess the breath and saliva necessary to utter the required reciprocal question. Each syllable seems to die on your lips before it is rescued by its halting sequel.

  They smile in response and point to the rinds and crumbs in front of them. You wait for their traditional encouragement to eat. It doesn’t come so you unclasp your knife anyway and pare a fibre from the cod. They nod as they watch you eat and drink. They take pleasure in your every bite, your every swallow, as if it were one of their own, for they still remember the years of hunger that you never knew.

  You ease open a bean pod with your right thumbnail and extract five beans: four large, one small. You dip them in the salt and share the common thought that links broad beans, their shape and texture within the pod, to female genitalia.

  ‘Your sister’s,’ says Vincenz.

  Paca laughs. Tony lowers his comic book. You can see it’s a favourite from the old days: Jim, the Fastest Draw in the West. Nothing has changed. The past loiters here. You and those around you use the same phrases, the same curses. They still include you in the daily communality of their memory.

  Now Vincenz, his arm draped about your shoulder, relives in thought the day when, as boys, you, he and Tian, aware of the approaching storm, clambered panting onto the sloping shelf of a cave, high up in the hinterland above Cirit.

  None of you could remain upright for long against the wrenching buffets of wind. A curtain of driving rain obliterated the whole of the sky. The three of you, one by one, were forced to crawl back into the farthest recess of the rock. There, through the gloom suddenly illuminated by forked lightning, threading its way between the mountains down to the river gorge, he caught sight of your face. Your mouth was agape. Your eyes were ecstatic. He felt his shivers of cold begin to mingle with your fidgets of exultation, and in the shared nervous excitement he was seized by a desire, a prayer, which he sensed you completely desired and prayed for too, that the storm be everlasting, the rain and lightning inextinguishable, that you, he and Tian live in and revere this moment forever.

  Tony pushes Jim and the treacherous desperado aside. He lays his hand on yours and says, ‘We were over at the chalets Gusaro started to build before he ran out of money. It must have been around mid-morning. We were grafting at digging up and resurfacing the south road when a man came out of one of the doorways. Somebody called out. I forget who. Anyway, I looked up and watched him as he moved off. He had a slight limp, but it was the way he held his head, the set of his shoulders, the way his hands turned outwards at the end of each stride. Christ! I said. Well, I’ll shit on the host! I said. Nolo! I shouted out your name again this time louder. Manolo! That made him stop and turn. Then Orange Miguel spat and said to me, “Can’t you see? Are you blind? It’s Pablo from the forge at St Mateo. I recognise him. My cousin knows him well.” At this, the guy came over. It turned out he had a brother working in Germany who was interested in buying some land. But I truly thought it was you, Manolo. That you had come back to us and were going to go away, for some reason of your own, without even saying hello.’

  Behind the bar, Paca washes and dries glasses. My Son has gone, as, by now, have most of the others. You can rest your bones in the quiet. No need to stir. It’s safe. History has evaporated. From here the silence extends into the street and from the street into each house.

  It’s better not to think. They carry on pretending that no choice has been made, but the names they say and those they don’t, like the erstwhile name of this wine shop, which you knew and now cannot be said, betrays the reality. After all, a sobriquet which inflames hatred in some and instils comradeship in others is better dropped. The official name was hardly used anyway. Here in Llomera, as you know only too well, people, places and even objects are designated by other names, little names which imply a kind of ownership, some tenderness. They vary according to who speaks. In this case, Pacetta’s or The Widow’s are the most common, but not alone. No doubt, My Son would say, ‘My daughter’s.’

  Take another drink. Vincenz and Tony have returned to work. There are more chemicals in the wine than before, but don’t worry. Take a long good slug. You won’t have to pay. Christ knows you paid enough in the past.

  You wonder what Paca’s thinking as she twists and turns the cloth and stares so intently into the bottom of each glass. Well, imagine it for yourself. Maybe she sees the night you and the others left, repeating itself again and again, over and over, as she lifts one and then another up to the meagre light before, satisfied with their cleanliness, depositing them on the shelf behind her head. It was dangerous to go then and just as dangerous to stay.

  ‘Life,’ she mutters.

  It’s time to go. Only you, Paca and Uncle Jaume, sitting there on the bench, his head permanently bent over his
stick, blind these many years and forgetful of which voice belongs to which body, are left.

  ‘Watch out for intruders,’ Paca says. ‘There are strangers about nowadays.’

  Say something to her. Even if it’s only to say you’ll return, God willing.

  She chides you gently. ‘You don’t believe, Manolo. You used to boast about it in here.’

  When you go out, Jaume imagines you were Tian Marva. ‘Good riddance,’ he mumbles, ‘that boy was a menace. Although someone did say he’d turned out well.’

  *

  A telephone rang. At first he could not locate the source. The direction of its sound suggested one of the offices to the rear of the open-plan area where, for some reason, it had not been picked up by an answering machine.

  Reluctantly, he started to make his way towards it, negotiating his passage through the empty workstations, pausing at one of them to bend down and retrieve a fallen folder. My last good deed on earth, he thought, as he placed it on the desk. One less thing for the cleaners to do.

  They were already in the building. He had heard them singing and vacuuming ten minutes ago on his way up. On second thoughts, he reflected, better make it my penultimate one. After all, his final good deed awaited him at home.

  The possible location of the phone was now narrowed down to the two central cubicles on the right. Another persistent ring guided him into the second one.

  ‘Harvard Smith’s extension. Sonny Ayza speaking.’

  A woman’s voice spoke, calm and unhurried. Her inflection and the manner of her delivery gave him the impression that she was reading from a prepared text or, which seemed more unlikely, she was reciting well-memorised lines.

  ‘This is Sonny Ayza,’ he repeated. ‘Harvard isn’t here at the moment. He’ll be back on duty at, hold on,’ he paused, checking the rota details pinned to the noticeboard behind the worktop until he found the entry for Wednesday, 15. 11. 83, ‘8.30 a.m. tomorrow.’

  Her voice continued without hesitation, ignoring his intervention. Then, after a brief silence, she said, ‘In conclusion, I will recap the main points so there is no misunderstanding or ambiguity between us.

  ‘Item one: the instruction manual for electrical installations at Gallo Mart, Depot 4, Old Station Yard, Panalquin, does not include the extension built in 1971.

  ‘Item two: the Fitzhugh family’s Alsatian was called “Rusty” not “Polka Dot”.

  ‘Item three: ex-colleagues of Fernando Cheto Simon look forward to a forthcoming reunion.

  ‘Item four: the colour coding for Blatteriblax record labels 1953 to 1968 was as follows (a) magenta—Chicago South Side Rhythm and Blues, (b) oxblood—Texas Tenors, (c) emerald—Race Re-Issues, (d) gold—Kansas City After Hours, (e) fawn—New Thing.

  ‘Item five: at the height of his reign of protection terror, Ute Manoko controlled 1316 pachinko parlours in Greater Osaka alone.

  ‘Item six: Vera Sowenwell continues to think highly of her late lover, Conrad Terence, in spite of the serious allegations of his fascistic connections outlined in the 1978 biography by I A Graz.

  ‘This is Elizabeth Kerry on behalf of the executors of Amadeo Cresci. Please confirm you have received this message.’

  Sonny looked down at the jottings he had made on Harvard’s scrap pad. He had topped and tailed each item with a quick thumbnail sketch: a monkey on a tree branch, a swing bridge, a car on a road between high hedges, a cheval mirror, a cut-throat razor, a leaf, a frog on a lily pad, a valve wireless.

  ‘Let me remind you, you are calling Harvard Smith’s extension, Chance Company, Greenlea Division.’

  She had gone. The line went dead.

  Her message contained none of the standard procedures laid down by client contracts. Obviously, she was neither a prospective buyer nor a company employee. She had made no specific reference to Harvard, yet she must have already possessed his number or else requested it from the switchboard.

  He scanned the names she had mentioned. Fernando Cheto Simon—a Mirandan like himself? Possibly. Panalquin, of course, lay on the other side of the estuary, and Gallo Mart, the only other local connection he could detect, was a chain of low-grade convenience stores. The rest meant nothing except, in his time, during the interminable, neon-suffused nights in downtown Yokohama, when he had frequented several pachinko joints in the forlorn hope that he, too, might catch the adrenalin rush of their adepts and votaries. Ute Manoko. Some Yakuza or big criminal with friends in the right places? Presumably. Enough, he thought. It’s not my concern. I don’t have the time. If it’s important she will ring again.

  Adding a final outline of a large dog with a lolling tongue, he pulled the sheets of paper together, folded them neatly and then tucked them in his shirt pocket. After all, the call might well have gone unanswered. Only he and a cleaner, who by now had started work in the outer room, were present, and anyway Harvard would not see him alive again.

  Outside, large snowflakes began to materialise in the black pool of the high window. These were the moments he once used to savour, the in-between times, the doldrums, when the bulk of the indoor staff had left and the few night operators had not yet arrived. He watched as the now steady flurry of flakes spiralled out of view. They struck him as somehow apposite, as though they might help to shroud his final journey and bury his tracks for once and all. Although separated from them by the glass, he felt as if they were already pressing lightly on his eyelids, moistening his eyes until his pupils were bleary and unfocused and his very existence was dissolving into nothing other than falling snow. The feeling was so real that his body gave a sudden, involuntary shiver, and in its tiny spasm he remembered, or perhaps imagined he remembered, the experience of his flesh’s first encounter with the searing kiss of ice, the soft, deep embrace of snow.

  As he recalled it, he had fallen over and over again in his attempt to toddle precariously, screaming all the while with delight, along the slippery newness of the transformed street. Had it been in Llomera or later in Orias? He could not say for sure. In the event, Rosario had picked him up, easily curtailing his futile struggles. Laughing, she had let his face dangle closer and closer to the wonderful white surface, which was so tantalisingly near. Then, giving in to his insistent wails, she had plopped him down so that to his heart’s content he could gather and lose and gather again and lose again the precious unknown stuff. Why are there things in the world? Well, he would never know the answer now.

  Outside Harvard’s door, a black woman he had seen before was busy vacuuming the strip of carpet. On an impulse, he asked her name. Taken by surprise at the sound of a voice, she looked up and switched off the machine.

  ‘Hallie. Hallie Briggs. Is something wrong, Mr Ayza?’

  ‘No. Far from it. Should there be?’

  ‘Well, that’s alright then.’ Her thumb rested on the switch, but she did not release it.

  ‘You know who I am. I’m surprised.’

  ‘I’ve seen your desk, though they don’t call them that anymore, do they? I mean, I’ve seen you at your desk. Yours is always one of the tidiest. All of us say that. We know the desks better than we know the people.’

  Sonny smiled. I’ve tidied it all away, he thought, but where’s the difference?

  He put on his jacket and took down his overcoat from the peg.

  ‘You going now, Mr Ayza?’ Hallie called out.

  ‘Yes. I’m going.’

  He walked over to the lifts and pressed the summons button. Once inside, he momentarily saw her stoop as she picked up something in her way, then the sliding door elided all her future movement.

  By the time he got outside, the snowflakes were melting on the pavement. On this evening, of all evenings, he could have taken a taxi home, but instead, after a few unthinking minutes, because he had already passed their rank, he decided to stick to his customary routine. Indeed, the way was so familiar to him that he found he had crossed Prospect Street, had traversed the precinct between the Kyro Corporation building and the new Iss
a Tower and had climbed the four flights of shallow steps which led to Argonne Boulevard and the Inner Ring Road before he forced himself to take full account of his surroundings for one last time.

  Accordingly, his cheeks dampened by the remaining recalcitrant flakes, he descended the stairwell of the subway and looked self-consciously into each preoccupied face he met in the tunnel below, listening religiously to their footsteps echo and fade as he mounted the opposite side.

  On a large gable wall to his left the legend, ‘WE STEPHEN KRAUS’, had been, since morning, sprayed in irregular, sloping black characters. It was a further manifestation of the so-called Kraus Fraternity, who had been proclaiming their recent existence in the southern and eastern districts of the city during the preceding fortnight. Their aims, whether benign, malign, cultural or criminal, remained as yet unexplained. Some wiseacres he knew put them down as merely an old-fashioned and not very original advertising campaign, which, after the requisite period of titillation, would unveil its product.

  Continuing, he skirted the right flank of the disused tobacco factory, still awaiting a new property developer after the financial collapse of the previous consortium, and cut through Vinegar Alley to Salonika Street. Twenty-five ironmongers lined its somnolent length. Each one presented an identical window display. The only outward distinguishing marks Sonny could see were the names of the owners and the years in which their businesses were founded. As he had never had the occasion to go inside any of them to make a purchase, their interiors stayed an unsolved mystery.

  Beyond Salonika Street, the roads and pavements became increasingly congested with traffic and pedestrians; so much so that he was obliged, whether he liked it or not, to adopt the slow, cumbersome, shuffling gait that Greenlea’s inhabitants used to minimise body checks and avoid unsettling eye contact.