by John Elliott
‘We’ve never met. He was an established sideshow for a while, sounding off about his grasp of the criminal mind on TV shows and in newspaper articles. Then he retired and all sorts of crazy rumours followed. Give this place a name, even a name from the past like Alakhin’s, and it spews out a hundred fantasists, networks of interpreters, droves of witnesses, all of whom claim chance encounters and first-hand knowledge of someone they’ve never met. Alakhin had gone blind. He was a recluse, a prisoner in his own house, drinking his own recycled piss. He frequented fortune-tellers. He was deranged and confined in a mental institution. He secretly owned a chain of massage parlours. Somebody saw him working in a petrol station mini-mart; another was served by him at the bar in the ferry terminus. You listen. They’ll peddle it.’
The cabin glided alongside a narrow platform. Emmet stopped speaking, got up and moved to the door. Agnes followed him out a stride behind. On the other side of the exit, she caught up with him, and they walked along together down the curved slope of a deserted street lined by white two-storey houses, their scallop-shaped overhanging eaves lowering over doorways reached by three identical steps. Alternating green and brown shutters protected their ground-floor windows. Some were open, others still closed. Behind the panes of one of the open ones, Agnes noted a slumbering tortoiseshell cat, its body stretched between a bowl of hyacinths and a pair of orange rubber gloves. Farther on, a front door was ajar, but there was neither sight nor sound of the inhabitants. The only sound to be heard was that of their own footsteps. Emmet, for the moment, appeared lost in thought as though he felt he had said too much and was regretting it. ‘A place to come and die,’ he had said to her, and looking round she could sense it was true. There was, in spite of the obvious newness of the surroundings, a curious tinge of incipient decay.
They rounded the curve. The street changed its name, but the houses remained similar. The angry gnat’s whine of a moped from somewhere unseen began to torture the silence.
‘Nothing’s straight here,’ Emmet said. ‘One loop leads into another, crescent after crescent. All uniform buildings in four designs. A separate design for each four geographical divisions. Polygon’s a white thing, man. It thinks it’s Switzerland.’
Agnes was amused. Back home, how often had she been told such and such was a black thing? ‘You’ve been there, I take it.’
‘Nah. It’s all mountains and skis and chocolate shit. You do it for me. I pass.’
‘Just give a little yodel.’
‘Yeah, sound it for me.’
The whine of the moped climbed into a strangulated throttle as it finally emerged into view and hurtled towards them. Emmet moved to his right, Agnes to her left. The driver, a youth in a metallic-blue helmet, yanked up the front wheel then lowered it, hunching down behind the fork of the handlebars.
Why had she said it? The two of them were hardly Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket setting out on the road of life. Besides, she had always hated the movie. Emmet had done bad things and no doubt would do more, but after all he had said he would look out for her, and there were places she might have to go, places to which he might have the key as well as the knowledge of their unspoken rules.
‘Westgate’s somewhere round here. It’s the only gate they have. No East, North or South, only West. I’d ask a citizen if one was about.’
‘Where is everybody apart from the kid on the bike?’
‘Commuted or immured. They don’t even twitch the curtains. Time to try that yodel.’
Agnes laughed. ‘Eedeel-yel-eee-tee!’ She broke off in a giggle. ‘It’s not my speciality.’
Unlike the Alps of Switzerland, the houses of Polygon did not provide an echo. Their walls snuffed out her brief and shrill cry. The street and its similar predecessor might as well have been elaborate trompe l’oeils, false perspectives of a model village designed for a redundant exhibition rather than the homes of living people.
‘Here it is,’ Emmet said, after they had rounded another curve. He pointed to an archway through which Agnes made out a cobbled court flanked by pollarded lime trees with iron railings ringing their trunks. ‘Westgate.’
A second archway at the far end ceded into a mirror image of the court they had already crossed. Seventy was the tenth building on their right. They ascended the three steps to the front door.
‘Strange place to have a business,’ Emmet said.
‘The Cresci Foundation.’ Agnes pressed the intercom button. ‘I’m not sure they are a business.’ She pressed again. The designation below read ‘Ronnie Khan, Ceramics’. She was about to try it when she heard a crackle followed by a woman’s voice, ‘Amadeo Cresci Foundation. I regret we do not deal with the public directly. If you are interested in our work please give your name and address. We will mail you information. Thank you for your introductory contact.’
‘It’s Emily Brown here. I’m sure you’ll want to see me.’
There was a pause while the intercom sighed with the invisible answerer’s breath then the voice spoke again, ‘Come up, Emily. I’m on the first floor. Are you alone?’
‘No, I’ve someone with me.’
‘I would prefer to see just you. Tell them to wait outside.’
‘That’s not acceptable. Take it or leave it.’
The door catch was released. The intercom went dead.
‘Want me to go with you?’ Emmet said.
Agnes nodded. They entered a spacious hallway. A bicycle rested against the far wall. Three closed doors presumably contained the premises of Ronnie Khan, Ceramics. An uncarpeted staircase rose to the floor above. On the left of the landing, a light shone through the frosted glass pane of a door. Agnes turned the handle. Emmet followed behind.
An oblong room devoid of usual office furniture confronted them. A dark-haired woman, whom Agnes guessed was in her early to mid-twenties, stood facing them with her back to the window. Apart from her, the only contents were a canvas-backed film director’s chair, a water cooler on a stand and a telephone lying on the biscuit-brown linoleum.
‘I’ve been expecting you, Emily,’ the woman said, staying where she was, ‘though originally I had hoped we would not have had to meet. I’m Elizabeth Kerry. And your friend is?’ She looked enquiringly at Emmet.
‘Emmet Briggs.’
‘I have seen you before, Mr Briggs, yesterday lunchtime at Da Giovanni. In fact, I may well have chatted to your wife. She was sitting beside you at your table. Our paths crossed in the ladies, and in a roundabout way we discussed you, Emily.’
‘Why did you send me the supposed life of Fernando Cheto Simon?’ Agnes’s blunt question cut through the stilted politeness Elizabeth Kerry was showing to Emmet. ‘How do you know who I am and where I’m staying?’
‘Supposed life, is that what you think? I can assure you all the material has been scrupulously researched and verified. Surely you must have recognised the authentic,’ she paused, choosing her words carefully, ‘aroma of your father’s origins and childhood. As to your second question, Chance Company’s approach to you and the fact of you settling here in Greenlea are largely because of my instigations. I have an ally in their camp. Someone who, out of regard for me, is committed to our cause.’
Agnes felt her bearings shift and tilt. The existing unreality of being Emily Brown was now sliding away in an unexpected direction. Either the woman in front of her, in this strangely bare room, was suffering from delusions or else she was merely stating what had actually taken place. The truth was difficult to judge. She glanced at Emmet for possible clarification, but he simply shrugged and said, ‘I’m not in on this. I was hired by Chance Company to accompany you. That’s all I know.’
‘All I want to do is to find the man we are both searching for,’ Elizabeth Kerry continued. ‘The rest of my campaign, this Cresci Foundation, is only an irritant, an occasional mosquito bite that sometimes punctures the closed memory of those who destroyed and then forgot Amadeo Cresci and Fernando Cheto Simon. I am not naïve enough to think it does
them lasting harm, but why do you look at me so guardedly, Emily? Do you not see? Do you not feel we are more than allies? We share more than a common cause.’
Emmet strolled to the cooler, detached a plastic cup and filled it with water. ‘I’ll be outside,’ he said. ‘Call if you need me.’
‘Yours in sisterhood,’ Agnes muttered as much to herself as to the woman facing her.
Elizabeth Kerry smiled. ‘If you like. We are, we can be sisters, Agnes. You see I know your name. We share a father. You know him as René Darshel. I know him as Joe May.’
‘While all the time he was really Fernando Cheto Simon.’
‘A name he left behind when he came to America. Remember, our grandfather, Batiste, was a Mirandan CP member. His way in was to become M. Darshel’s deceased son who died shortly after birth.’
‘But how and why Joe May?’
‘That is where my story begins, Agnes. Firstly, let me confess that Elizabeth Kerry is only a pseudonym, my mirror image of your Emily Brown and the rest of Chance Company’s identities for hire. My given name is Evangeline Simpson. I bear, for my sins, exactly the same name as my mother. Imagine what a bequest that is to give a child. Is it any wonder I prefer to call myself something else? Why not sit down? The chair is comfortable enough. I will explain. Your Mr Briggs will wait, that is what he is paid to do.’
‘No thanks. I’d sooner stand.’
‘Do what you like.’ A peremptory tone crept into the newly revealed Evangeline Simpson’s voice. She stooped and picked up the telephone, seemingly on the point of prodding numbers with her outstretched index finger when she abruptly returned it to its rest. ‘My mother, Joe May and a man called Selly Rycart founded Chance Company,’ she declared, looking beyond Agnes to the outline of Emmet’s shadow caught in the glass pane of the door. ‘It got going in the early sixties. Joe was the ideas guy. Mother and Selly had contacts. Mother knew influential people and Selly was established in the business loop. He and Joe met by accident in New York City. Selly introduced him to my mother and that was that. They became lovers after a little time. For both of them it was their grand amour. Then I was born.’ A wince of pain distorted her mouth. She paced slowly along the window to the corner of the room and back again.
‘Tell me whatever it is that’s troubling you. You say you think of me as a sister.’
‘My mother had other lovers.’ Evangeline stopped her patrol and looked at her visitor with a sardonic half smile. ‘Oh, not only the casual sex of the times, but other persistent relationships. One of them was off and on with Selly Rycart, and in that lies another version concerning me.’ She paused, took a steadying breath then continued, ‘Rycart always maintained Joe May was nothing but a fiction, that in effect he was the first Chance Company prototype, File Zero, in a manner of speaking, a mythical founder invented by himself and my mother. They picked an obscure musician Rycart had come across at an East Village gig to flesh out their scenario in a series of staged tableaux photographs. When their myth-making had served its purpose and Chance Company had progressed to an expansion strategy, they closed the file. Joe May died a convenient death. Worse than this denial of Joe May’s genius was what followed. I was eleven years old. I was home from school in our duplex on Third Avenue. Mother was out somewhere. Selly Rycart came. He confessed to me.’ Evangeline stopped. She raised her hands up to her chin as if she wanted to wave away an image which tormented her. ‘He confessed to me he was my father.’
Overcoming the tangle of her own emotions, Agnes said softly, ‘I’m listening. Please go on.’
Evangeline sat down in the director’s chair, drawing her knees together. ‘Mother would never tell me who my father was, though I pleaded and pleaded with her. “You’ve got me, darling,” she insisted. “You don’t need a father. You’ll learn one day men are better kept out of the house.” Then she laughed. Selly, of course, said he would always provide for me and cherish me in his heart. Frankly, I was appalled. I tried to run away. I hung out with other disturbed kids and fell in with the crazies I saw on the street, but there were always Mafia guys about and they kept bringing me home. “We’s watching out,” they told me. “No trouble in the neighbourhood.” I kept acting up until mother finally split from Selly for good. After a time, she pulled out of Chance Company as well. Selly for his part went his own way. After that he seemed to forget about our existence. He never called or brought up the father thing again.’
‘He’s?’
‘Dead.’ Evangeline smiled. ‘Unlike Joe May, he truly died. They cremated his mortal remains in upstate New York in September ’78. My life’s work was clear. I had to attack the Company and vindicate my father.’
‘Suppose,’ Agnes tried to put it as diplomatically as she could, ‘Suppose . . . ’
‘Rycart was right.’ The sentence was finished for her.
‘I’ve found out Joe May, as you call him, was involved in some highly dubious business dealings here with known mobsters and criminals. It looks like he was trying to sell something which fell through in the end.’
Evangeline shrugged. ‘It is the Cresci story, too. Joe sold him a Florida franchise of Chance Company’s operation. They busted Cresci. The Company’s lawyers wore him down in court and drove him to suicide. They played the Joe May death card. No, it is simple, Agnes. Leaving my feelings aside, I made a choice, a very conscious choice. Joe May is my father, not Selly Rycart. I am totally on his side, Agnes, as I trust you are. The day is near when we can be reunited. Alakhin knows he is here in Greenlea. Wilson Loumans is an old friend of his. Add your presence, and I am convinced he will show himself out in the open. My planning is coming to fruition. Wait and see.’
‘But aren’t you afraid?’
‘Why on earth should I be? Meeting him, being together with him is what I dream about.’
Agnes lowered her voice. ‘He could turn out,’ she paused. ‘He could tell you he wasn’t your father.’
Evangeline got to her feet. Her voice rose, ‘I told you my decision. Now you must choose to accept me as your sister or not.’
‘That’s meaningless. I loved my mother. René Darshel abandoned us. My only reason to see him is to bring him to account for that act. His other incarnations don’t concern me. You though, it strikes me, hate your mother so you created a . . . ’ Agnes searched for the word, ‘a hagiography of someone who might or might not be your father. Someone who, as far as I am concerned, does not deserve your adulation.’
The doorknob turned. Emmet re-entered the room. ‘We need to get going. We’re falling behind schedule,’ he said to Agnes.
‘Ms Brown was leaving,’ Evangeline said coldly. ‘I have work to do.’
‘Yes. There’s nothing for me here. Some things you can’t make choices about.’
Evangeline crossed to the phone and picked it up. She fingered the digits. ‘Wherever you go I will follow,’ she said. ‘This is only the beginning, Emily Brown.’
Without looking back, Agnes went through the doorway. She and Emmet had gained the top of the stairs when they heard a voice distinctly enunciate, ‘This is Elizabeth Kerry on behalf of . . . ’
*
My second day, Sonny thought, as he at last managed to extricate himself from the resistant block and jostling push of the crowd in Constitution Square. My second day of supposed new life, yet, instead of achieving a clean break and being nothing more than a reflecting consciousness of the presence and now of Greenlea, here I am caught up in my habitual tics of memory, finding fugitive traces of those I’ve known in the random faces of those about me. It is impossible to avoid seeing and being seen, but why is it so hard to wear a neutral gaze free from interpretation and introspection?
An unexpected image of Tian’s strong and supple hands insistently pulling out specimen trays of pinned down butterflies drifted from somewhere into his mind. Christ! he thought. I only have to think about memory and another one surfaces right away.
They had been together, for some reason that now escaped
him, on the top floor of the Orias Natural History Museum, killing the residue of a typically unhappy afternoon. ‘Look! Look at these!’ Tian had kept saying—a command which he had obeyed with bad grace; surly to the last, grudgingly giving each subsequent variety his half-bored, half-repelled attention. ‘Look at them! Bloody hell! Can’t you see their beauty?’ Sonny impatiently snuffed out the rest of the scene, and, without waiting for the WALK NOW signal, dodged through the traffic onto the pavement by the estuary wall.
Yesterday’s trip to Panalquin had not helped. Elizabeth Kerry’s message had turned out to be a blind alley. The reality of Old Station Yard had not fitted into what he had imagined he would discover, and on the way there his new future had slid treacherously back once more into the past. His memory of Batiste Cheto had arisen from the waters of the estuary and crept into the fug of the saloon and the hands of the card players, a forgotten and repressed name released by their gestures and the pieces of paper he carried. Cheto. Fernando Cheto Simon. Agnes Darshel, masquerading as Emily Brown, had later uttered that very name, pronouncing the maternal surname, Simon, American style with the accent on the ‘i’ and revealing, at the same time, two things unknown to him: her Chance Company identity and his mother’s erstwhile letters to Batiste’s mystery girl, the mother of his son, who lived in Llomera.
Below him, on the exposed ridge of the foreshore, he watched a hooded figure skim a metal detector over the washed-up debris left by the previous high tide, his arm advancing inch by inch as he repeated his short exploratory sweep. How absurd it had been, Sonny now realised, to suppose he could move around the city and perceive it as it really was, that he could absorb its surface with fresh eyes and from that surface somehow pierce its shielded depths. Walking down Kefoin Street last night, which at the time had seemed to be without end, or forcing his way through the Constitution Square crowds before his ferry journey, or riding on several trams, he had, amid the intermittent siren calls of snatches of overheard conversations, tried assiduously to concentrate his gaze on details: the graffito lurking underneath an apartment number, a half-finished shop front sign, a vista of an entry passage suddenly revealed by a van moving off, the floral pattern of the russet carpet in the over-heated corridor of the Berengaria Hotel. At each instant, his goal had been to turn himself into a simple pair of eyes and ears attached to a disinterested head, being propelled by an anonymous body. Instead, he had ended up merely distracted. The streets he traversed, the buildings he stared at, the nooks and crannies he selected, even the composite cityscape itself, kept reminding him, through their similarities and differences, of the places he had formerly inhabited: Orias, Lyon, Yokohama. Everything he saw projected a crooked mirror, which unerringly reflected back his own refracted and ambiguous memories.