A Psychiatrist, Screams

by Simon Parke

  Barnabus loved his Brazilian despite her denials.

  ‘I’m not Brazilian!’ she’d say.

  ‘Don’t tell me, tell your skin,’ he’d answer, running his finger across her sweet cheek. ‘Your skin is definitely from Rio.’

  Thirty Seven

  And an hour or so later, it was time for work. Pat was leaving, a goodbye kiss on the stairs, a long kiss, the changing of the guard at Henry House as Bella arrived on Halloween morning, the morning of the Feast of Fools.

  Pat and Bella exchanged some words in the entrance, Bella irritated, Pat unconcerned and then she cycled away, singing but clothed, back towards Stormhaven. She’d be returning later for cleaning duties before the evening’s festivities, to which she was invited and how could it be otherwise?

  ‘The Feast of Fools is all about the least,’ she’d said. ‘And the cleaner is the least of the least in Henry House - Frances makes sure of that!’

  ‘She does like her hierarchies,’ Barnabus had said.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘So perhaps the cleaner will be the Lord of Misrule? That would be most appropriate, would it not?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  But with Pat gone, it was now Bella demanding his attention.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, as she finished a brief call on her mobile.

  ‘You look a little harassed.’

  ‘It may have escaped your notice, Barnabus, but I have a busy day ahead of me,’ she said, placing some files on her desk in the recess.

  ‘And it just got more complicated.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’

  ‘I know you’re carrying this thing almost single-handed.’

  ‘Oh, that’s the least of my worries - as long as you don’t do a disappearing act.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’m aware, Barnabus, that you’ve been dragged screaming into this by Frances; wouldn’t want you running away again.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘You don’t always face up to things, Barnabus, as you well know.’ He was in a good mood today and received the observation with grace. How untouchable one becomes in love! He’d be back in his small room tonight, but somehow the four-poster no longer felt like forbidden territory.

  ‘I’ll be at the Feast, Bella, Scout’s honour.’ Perhaps they could be friends?

  ‘To be honest,’ he added, ‘it’s the sessions after the Feast, when we’re out of disguise and back to ourselves - it’s those meetings that are more of a concern to me now. I haven’t had an easy time of it so far.’

  ‘Then you must just live for today,’ said Bella, as she began to open the post.

  ‘My guiding thought this Friday,’ he replied, as he turned towards the office.

  ‘Tomorrow may never happen!’ called out Bella cheerily.

  ‘No, I want tomorrow to happen,’ said Barnabus, surprising himself. ‘I want plenty of tomorrows!’

  When did he last say that?

  Thirty Eight

  The fire burns bright in the brazier but the market square is subdued; for once, the street traders are unhappy at a crowd.

  Mubariz, fat lawyer and master of ceremonies, stands on a raised plinth:

  ‘Bring the blasphemer forward!’

  From the crowd emerge four soldiers escorting an old man whom many know, pulled forward by his rope-tied wrists. They pass the fiery brazier and come to a halt by the large block of stone.

  ‘The prisoner Shams-Ud-Din, disgraced son of the coal merchant Baha-Ud-Din, has been tried and found guilty of blasphemy. Does the blasphemer acknowledge his guilt and beg forgiveness?’

  Hafiz lifts his eyes from the common ground. He gazes across the square to where Muhammed Attar had once stood, slicing melons and sniffing perfume. He remembers his words on a particularly dark day, when, overcome with despair, Hafiz had spoken of giving up on his poetry:

  ‘What’s the point?’ he’d wailed.

  Attar had pinned him against the wall with surprising force:

  ‘Some day, my sweet Hafiz, all the nonsense in your brain will dry up like a stagnant pool of water in the sun - and your belly become pregnant with the seed of the universe! And then you will give birth to wonderful words, enlightened words!’

  Had Hafiz stayed with nonsense, rather than the enlightened, he might today be keeping his hands. As it was, the sun would set this Friday - the day for all amputations and beheadings - on a poet with two stumps with which to wield his quill. Dr Saad, the court doctor, would perform the amputations. He had visited Hafiz the night before, to reassure him of his competence:

  ‘I use a special knife, curved, sharp - not a sword.’

  ‘And I am to be encouraged by the quality of the weapon?’

  ‘When I cut off a hand, I cut it from the joint, clean.’

  Clean - but not without messy consequence; the dark stone in the market square was made so by the blood of thieves and blasphemers. Hafiz had seen it all before: the amputated limbs held high for all to see, then thrown to the ground and left for the ravens.

  ‘Does the blasphemer acknowledge guilt and beg forgiveness?’ bellows Mubariz again.

  ‘I confess to being God, yes,’ calls out Hafiz. Gasps from those around.

  ‘We have heard it from his own lips!’ squeals Mubariz in the dry air. But the hysteria is quashed by the cry of another.

  ‘Because try as I might,’ continues Hafiz, discovering a voice he didn’t know he had, ‘I cannot separate myself from his love.’

  ‘He claims to be God!’

  ‘And you are God too, my friend, don’t forget yourself - his love is remarkably un-choosy.’

  Karim slaps Hafiz across the face. There is a hush in the square.

  ‘You’ll enjoy this,’ he says to Hafiz.

  Hafiz looks him in the eye, but no words come.

  ‘Has the poet run out of material?’ taunts Karim.

  ‘I’ve always tried to weave light into my words, but maybe silence is the brighter path now.’

  ‘Then you will enjoy the fire.’

  The flames in the brazier are busy with their destruction.

  ‘I was concerned we’d run out of wood, Shams, but suddenly we discover a whole forest! It’s amazing what kindling you can find if you look hard enough.’

  A stooped servant appears, dragging a sack across the market square and Hafiz understands. The labourer stops by the flames and then guided by Karim, empties the sack on the ground, bundles of paper, small logs of tightly-bound parchment, scrolls he knows well, pitifully falling to earth. No one moves.

  ‘Let the blasphemer step forward!’

  Thirty Nine

  ‘It is you who will stoke our fire,’ says Karim, eyeing the brazier.

  ‘I burn my own poems?’

  ‘It seems only right that your sinful hands perform one last task before separation.’

  Hafiz looks at his fingers, perhaps for the first time in his life. He’d never looked at them quite like this before... he should have noticed them more often.

  Karim again, the quiet voice in his ear: ‘I like the symmetry; your own hand destroys the evil your own hand created! See, I am the poet again!’

  ‘It is best not to get carried away with yourself, Karim. You may quickly arrive in the dark alley of delusion.’

  ‘Poetic justice for the poet, Shams-Ud-Din - and who knows? Perhaps the first step on the long road of recompense. Allah is compassionate.’

  ‘Allah is not my problem.’

  Hafiz is jerked forward by the ropes, and now stands by his poems, his passion, his endlessly demanding life’s work, spilt carelessly at his feet. Could he really place his children in the flames? He’d heard nothing from Behrouz sin
ce he left, and that was a year ago now. In the current climate, it was hard to imagine a safe place for his poems; and even harder to imagine Behrouz finding it. A fine copyist - but an adventurer?

  And once again, Hafiz is in the past, sitting in Attar’s upper room in the circle of disciples.

  ‘We must not mistake desire for love,’ said Attar. Confused, he’d asked a question:

  ‘And what is the difference between love and desire?’

  ‘Love could let go tomorrow,’ Attar had replied. ‘Desire will cling for eternity.’

  ‘We’re waiting,’ says Karim.

  Love could let go tomorrow, so why not let go today?

  ‘How rude of me,’ says Hafiz with a smile, and bending down picks up the first batch of poems. With captive hands, he begins to cast them into the fire, more gasps from the onlookers, a scream from one, sobbing behind her veil. Hafiz looks into the crying eyes. He remembers words of Muhammed Attar, when insults and mockery became more commonplace towards him, more casual, more careless:

  ‘It is a naïve man who imagines we are not engaged in a fierce battle, Hafiz, for people fall around our feet in excruciating pain, and the mad are the ones most heard. But don’t harden your heart against the cruel arrows, my friend. Rather, soften your heart that the arrows might pass through.’

  And now in the market place, Hafiz feels and speaks from those words again:

  ‘We shall relinquish sadness, my friends!’ he cries, tears spilling down his cheeks. ‘And let my poor work feed the flames of hope! Just think: with my poems gone, there’s more room in the world for love!’

  With such words, he continues in his task, one batch after another tossed on the eager fire, dancing through the parchment in hysterical delight. Hafiz is ashes within, everything lost, everything crucified, as around him a quiet wailing holds these mad, sad moments.

  Again the voice of Mubariz is heard, reading verses from the Koran:

  ‘The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land, is execution or crucifixion or the cutting off of hands and feet...’

  Hafiz sees Dr Saad standing by the dark stone and feels the tug of the ropes pulling on his wrists. Time to go, time to make his way to the stone, where the knife is curved as the good doctor had said. He could see that now, could see the turquoise handle. And it would be clean. I cut it clean from the joint, he’d said, and you can trust a doctor. Maybe all executioners should be doctors, men with a keen eye for health, as they disfigure you, kill you.

  With luck, he would be allowed a little wine, a kind anaesthetic and the cauterizing blessing of hot tar ...

  Forty

  Monday 3 November

  Done!

  Tamsin and Abbot Peter had now spoken with all those who attended the Feast of Fools at Henry House on Friday night, the night of Halloween. Peter had chosen the smallest of the counselling rooms for these conversations: dark wooden panelling, thick door and small window.

  On entering, Tamsin had not been impressed: ‘I see the cupboard - but where are the brooms?’

  ‘It focuses the mind,’ said Peter. ‘Nothing too ornate to distract.’

  ‘Nor air to keep alive.’

  ‘Life is full of hard choices.’

  ‘I prefer to have everything.’

  They had not been long interviews, hastily arranged and fitted around commitments this Monday morning. And while the suspects were no longer dressed as clowns, there was something of the circus about it all, something of the absurd: each one of them so full in their recollections, yet so ignorant of who was who; each so confident about events, but so stupid about identities. And in a murder case, identity tends to matter.

  Tamsin and Peter knew more than they had at the start... that at least could be said. With words spilled and recollections remembered, they now had a rough picture of the evening, as well as the fingerprints of those who attended. A thick veil of mystery remained however. As Peter had said as the final suspect left the interview cupboard: ‘Well, that’s all clear as mud.’

  ‘It’s not great.’

  ‘But with the house locked and no sign of forced entry, amid all that we don’t know - .’

  ‘We’ve probably just spoken with the murderer, yes, I was thinking the same.’

  ‘So brief reflections on the evening?’

  ‘I have an idea,’ said Tamsin.

  ‘You’ve cracked it already? An investigation is traditional.’

  ‘How about we sit somewhere else?’

  ‘Is that necessary?’

  ‘I’m beginning to feel like a broom.’

  ‘The human need for beauty.’

  ‘The human need for air and light.’

  ‘How about the Long Room and some coffee?’

  The positioning of his mid-morning coffee remained an issue for Peter... even when pursuing a murderer.

  Forty One

  With coffee in hand and notes on their laps, Tamsin and Peter now contemplated their material in the larger air and more generous light of the Long Room. So just what had been revealed?

  They remembered a pathetic, if slightly unhelpful, Kate Karter.

  ‘You seem to be having trouble remembering the evening,’ Tamsin had said.

  ‘Why would I want to remember, darling?’

  ‘Because someone got murdered?’

  ‘I remember sherry, I remember wine, too much of both, I remember trying to get people singing just to lighten things up a bit, get some life in the place.’

  ‘And who was the Lord of Misrule?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t me.’

  ‘No idea who it might have been?’

  ‘None at all, could have been anyone, those costumes - they were very... clever.’

  ‘Anonymous?’

  ‘Scarily so, especially when you’re drunk.’

  ‘You didn’t hold back?’

  ‘I’m not used to it, not normally a drinker me, I can do without... but then the Feast of Fools wasn’t normal.’

  ‘You needed some Dutch courage, perhaps?’ said Peter.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘And which farmyard animal did you impersonate?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘At the meal, we hear the Lord of Misrule made everyone impersonate a farm yard animal and run round the Long Room in character. We were just wondering which animal you chose?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘Possibly. But you?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask the others, I can do a good horse, I may have done a horse.’ Kate Karter neighed. ‘It was probably that.’

  It was a good horse.

  ‘But there’s nothing else about the evening that feels important to mention, like the meal, for instance?’

  ‘I ate nothing, not hungry.’

  Tamsin left a pause. She’d learned it from Peter, the therapist’s pause she called it, deliberate space into which honesty must leap.

  ‘Oh, I remember banging on the office door, when I couldn’t get in.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘That was during the game of Sardines, locked door, very suspicious.’

  ‘The office door was locked?’

  ‘I was suddenly very angry, unaccountably so, must be the drink, not my finest hour, bang-bang-banging on the door I was!’

  ‘And inside the room, while you banged, Barnabus was being killed.’

  ‘Apparently. Terrible thought.’

  ‘You can’t help us with that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you like him?’

  ‘Barnabus? Hardly knew him, darling. Asked me a few stupid questions in our session, and that was that. Seemed a harmless fellow.’

/>   Peter noted the ‘harmless’ epithet used again about Barnabus... though not harmless enough to be allowed to live.

  Forty Two

  The interview with Ezekiel St Paul stumbled initially, but ended with Tamsin pulling a grand rabbit from the hat.

  ‘So you had no alcohol throughout the evening, Ezekiel?’

  ‘Reverend.’

  ‘Reverend,’ echoed Tamsin, with enormous self-discipline. She hated all instructions. ‘Do you not like your name?’

  Ezekiel offered a smile, but little else, closed to spontaneity like a polite but secretive crab.

  ‘So you had no alcohol - Reverend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And your memories of the evening?’

  ‘It was informative.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘To see the godless at play.’

  This felt like an evasion to Peter, something untrue.

  ‘For a similar experience of the godless at play, you could have gone to, well - you could have gone to a brothel?’

  ‘You probably do,’ thought Tamsin, eyeing the self-contained little man opposite her, in his shiny lime green suit and dog collar.

  ‘Yet you chose the Feast of Fools,’ continued Peter.

  ‘The scriptures say, ‘You are to be in the world, but not of the world.’

  ‘That isn’t really an answer.’

  But Tamsin is stirred and takes the questions down another track:

  ‘And this was you being in the world?’ she said to a nodding Ezekiel. ‘But not of the world, as you say, not drinking, not laughing, not enjoying yourself, that sort of thing? Which farm yard animal were you?’

  ‘I was a cock.’