Stamping Butterflies

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  “Not for us.” One glance at the bars and the man kept walking, his gaze on a corner turret a hundred paces beyond that. It was impressive, triple-tiered and almost a fortress in its own right. In its shadow, three fishermen in court robes were busy climbing into a flat-bottomed boat.

  The man dressed as a servitor smiled at them politely and turned the corner, passing the East Gate, where a dragon arch fit for an emperor was flanked by a phoenix gate for his empress, with lesser entrances for everyone else, beginning with squared porches for civil and military administrators and ending with a simple wooden door that let such as him go about their business.

  Nodding to a guard, the man walked on. Several hundred paces further along the walkway was the north-east corner turret.

  “Right,” said the young man, “this looks like it.” On his shoulder sat a large rat, eyes full of panic. It was bred for night work in tight spaces and the walkway and wide moat gave the animal agoraphobia. So the rat didn’t really care which turret its owner chose so long as he took them somewhere darker, preferably with a roof and walls on all sides.

  The young man assumed his pet ran some kind of simpatico system but the truth was stranger: an ancestor of the rat had been coded for basic language skills. To say that Null understood more than it said was ludicrous because—obviously enough—the rat said nothing; but Null could comprehend a vocabulary of about fifty words and construe probable meaning from the tone of many others.

  “Up here, I guess…”

  Long lengths of bamboo scaffolding fat as a child’s leg had been erected against the north-east turret and lashed together at the cross points with rope. When the young man got closer, he realized that the uprights actually grew from the dirt while the crossbars were held in place by vines which had grown up the side of the scaffolding. A barge loaded with roof tiles had been tied to a wooden pontoon.

  Climbing the rig was simplicity itself, so while the rat shut its eyes the young man made his way to the top, walked a plank between scaffold and crenellations and dropped into a different walkway, one that ran from corner turret to corner turret around the walls of the Purple City.

  Below him were the eastern pavilions, storehouses and the Qianlong Gardens. Walled areas within other walled areas within the walls of the palace. A vast and elderly eunuch waddled from beneath an arch and stopped to watch a gardener’s child roll a hoop from one side of a tiny courtyard to the other. Behind the chamberlain came two younger eunuchs, probably not much older than the man watching from the top of the wall, although both had the soft, child-like faces of those who’d been castrated at least a year prior to reaching puberty.

  And though none of these three looked up to where the servitor stood on the upper walkway, a billion or more watchers saw him reach out to soothe his rat, explaining his plan in simple words until the rat began chattering to itself.

  As far as the Library could tell, the Emperor was not aware of this rise in interest from those watching, which in itself was worrying, not because sulking was unknown to emperors but because the Librarian expected a stronger link between the watchers and one raised to the Celestial Throne.

  Yet, with Zaq, this link was no stronger than the link between those watching and the young man now walking calmly into the north-east turret, smiling to a guard and starting down the tower’s great wooden stairs.

  Since it was impossible for a servitor to manifest the same level of empathy as the Chuang Tzu, the Librarian dropped this anomaly down a level, allowing a subroutine to extrapolate all possible reasons simultaneously and arrive at no single explanation logical enough to pass back.

  “See?” said the young man. “Nothing to it.”

  The rat wisely stayed silent.

  Man and rat might as well have been invisible to the inhabitants of the Forbidden City, for all the attention they attracted as they left the turret and crunched along the wide stretch of gravel between the boundary wall of the eastern pavilions and the northern wall of the Forbidden City itself. Two minor eunuchs even stood aside to let the servitor pass.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” It was clear from the ennui in the taller eunuch’s voice that he’d barely registered the existence of the man for whom he just stepped aside.

  “Whatever…” Tucking the rat into the sleeve of his coat, the man cut through the north gate of the Imperial Garden, exited through the southern gate and passed under an arch into the Emperor’s inner court, at the centre of which stood a marble dais and the three private pavilions.

  As with all areas within the Forbidden City, the inner pavilions were circled by their own walls. Only these walls were formed by a continuous line of offices, bedrooms for concubines, a kitchen and endless store-houses for gifts from the various ambassadors, mostly unopened and some going back ten or fifteen centuries.

  A chef was waddling towards him so the man stepped hastily back, out of the chef’s line of sight. Then he counted to a hundred, which he managed by counting slowly to ten and then counting to ten again and again, starting with the little finger of his left hand and finishing with its mirror image on his right.

  “Where’s the Master Chef?”

  The servitor fired off his question the moment he stepped out of the steam, materialising beside a bubbling cauldron of crab broth, into which a tall sous chef with a hollow face dropped intricately wrapped dim sum.

  “It’s just,” continued the servitor, “that His Celestial Excellency requires something to eat…”

  Chang San, whose unfortunate nickname was Old Rat, blinked and disdain gave way to shock, followed quickly by envy and finally careful consideration.

  “I’ll arrange something,” he said, as over his shoulder another half a billion watchers understood instantly that this was exactly the chance for which the sous chef had been waiting. “You can go,” he told the younger man, “leave this to me.”

  “I’m afraid not.” The young man shook his head, appearing almost contrite. “I’m to take it to His Celestial Excellency myself.” He glanced into the copper pot boiling on a range beside Chang San. “Shrimp?”

  “Pork,” said the sous chef.

  “They look perfect,” said the servitor. “Guaranteed to touch any emperor’s heart.”

  Shrewd eyes watched the younger man. “You will tell His Celestial Excellency that Chang San prepared the dim sum, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” said the servitor. “You have my word.” He looked beyond the boiling cauldron to busier cooking ranges. Chilli and ginger sharpened the air, while dancing flames flash-flared like furious ghosts above red-hot woks and oily smoke caught in his throat.

  All possible meals were being prepared at all possible times. Unfortunately it was weeks since the Emperor had eaten any of them.

  “I’ll need a tray,” the servitor said.

  For a second it looked as if Chang San might simply yell across the kitchen to one of the boys, but though the chef opened his mouth to shout he thought better of the idea. Nodding to himself, Chang San told the servitor to stay where he was.

  When he returned it was with a tray edged in red-lacquered ebony and inset across the base with a thin, almost completely translucent slab of mutton-fat jade.

  “Treat this carefully,” said Chang San, handing his prize possession to the waiting servitor. “It belonged to the previous Chuang Tzu.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Marrakech, Summer 1971

  Major Abbas waited for a cart to get out of his way and then stepped over the legs of a beggar as if she didn’t exist. The boy beside him stopped for a second, but only because the Berber woman was feeding her child, pendulous breast sucked hollow by the infant’s appetite.

  On the western edge of Djemaa el Fna, where orange-juice stalls lined the sticky blacktop, Moz risked a glance at a fruit seller and then flicked his eyes sideways, his gaze drawn by a passing handcart piled high with dates, dragut noir from the look of them.

  “Hungry?” Major Abbas asked.<
br />
  “Thirsty,” Moz said.

  The police officer pushed his way through the crowds to the nearest stall. “One juice,” he said, then indicated a French tumbler blown from greenish glass, bubbles suspended in the sides. “Make it large.”

  And together Moz and the police officer waited in the gathering dusk as the stallholder pulped half a dozen oranges and strained the juice through a plastic sieve. Smoke from a recently erected rotisserie stall competed with red grit to fill the air. As ever, tables and chairs were being set out in the busy centre of the square, arranged around kitchen carts, their hand-scrawled menus taped to metal posts that kept overhead canopies in place.

  Drugged cobras, outlandishly dressed water sellers and Berber medicine men occupied a patch of dusty ground to one side of the stalls, while round the edge of the square, like wagons protecting an encampment, stood the inevitable juice stalls. Always the first thing anyone saw, whether they were local, hippies or just tourists.

  “How much?” Major Abbas asked.

  “To you, Excellency, nothing.” The small man waved the policeman’s coins away with a broad smile.

  Major Abbas nodded. “Bismillah,” he said, handing the glass to Moz.

  “Bismillah.” Moz took a gulp and then another and would have finished the glass if he hadn’t suddenly caught the policeman’s wry expression. “Sorry,” Moz said, holding out his tumbler. “Here.”

  The policeman shook his head. “Sip it,” he said. “Otherwise you won’t taste the orange juice properly.”

  The juice was bitter but sweet at the same time and cloudy with fragments of pulp which had evaded the sieve. Some of these ended up stuck to his lips, like fragments of sunburn.

  “How does it taste?”

  “Sweet and bitter.”

  “Like life,” said the Major. His glance at the boy was thoughtful. “Why did you come to tell someone about the body?”

  “It’s my duty.”

  Major Abbas laughed. The Interior Ministry had been running a radio campaign to remind ordinary people of their duty to the country. It was simple, even mundane. A straightforward repetition of the obvious. Obey the law and all would be well. Disobey and…

  Well, everyone knew what happened to those who disobeyed.

  “You want a cake?”

  Moz grinned.

  “It’s for the policeman,” he told a stallholder, pointing to a pile of sticky pastries and then nodding at the man who stood watching. In Moz’s hand was a pile of small change, coins given to him by Major Abbas.

  “I hope His Excellency enjoys it.” Dead eyes stared at the boy, utterly emotionless; so emotionless that no emotion was necessary. Quietly and quickly, Moz made a sign with his fingers and the man blinked, his gaze flicking to the policeman who stood oblivious.

  Moz had no idea what the signal meant, but he’d seen Hassan use it to an older boy who let Hassan pass without trouble. It only worked in the souk and around this edge of Djemaa el Fna. Moz had been using it a lot recently.

  “Take care,” said the man.

  Moz nodded.

  “Here’s your change,” Moz said, as he offered the Major a handful of tiny five-franc pieces. A hundred francs made up a dirham and everyone was meant to call them cents now but nobody did. Moz had already pocketed a third of the coins for himself, which was what he imagined the cake might cost. It was hard to tell; he’d never bought anything in Djemaa el Fna before.

  “Keep it,” said the policeman.

  When they got to the passage behind Criée Berbere the body was gone and all that remained was the ghost of old ammonia and a treacle-like stain where the man had sat.

  “He was here,” Moz protested.

  “I’m sure he was,” Major Abbas said. “So let’s find out where he’s gone.”

  Hammering on the door of a workshop, the policeman waited a few seconds for his answer and then hammered again. Whatever the weaver intended to say got swallowed when he recognized the uniform of the man standing outside his door.

  “There was a body,” Major Abbas said. It was not a question.

  The man nodded.

  “Where did it go?”

  “The dog woman took it.”

  Both men looked at each other.

  “She insisted.”

  “Where was she taking it?”

  “To hospital.”

  “She was taking a dead man to hospital?”

  The carpet maker nodded and the police officer sighed.

  “Who carried it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” the carpet maker said. “She asked me to lend her Hamid but I refused. She’s not clean.”

  Major Abbas wasn’t sure if the man meant in a spiritual, religious or physical sense. Not that it mattered. Lady Eleanor Devona slept with spaniels on her bed, rarely washed and shared her life with Elsie Strickland, a woman ten years younger but infinitely more decrepit. Any form of uncleanness would have been appropriate.

  “You know the way?” Major Abbas asked Moz. “To the dog woman’s house,” he added impatiently, when Moz looked blank.

  “Of course.”

  Her door had a huge brass dolphin as its knocker. Maltese, the woman told them when she noticed them looking. A dolphin door knocker and nothing else. No handle, no visible hinges and none of the usual broad-headed nails found on Medina doors.

  “Come in,” she insisted. “Don’t mind Molly, she doesn’t bite.” Nodding beyond a yapping spaniel to an elderly woman who leant on two canes, all hips and twisted pelvis, Lady Eleanor added, “That’s Elsie. She doesn’t bite either.”

  Major Abbas smiled. It was the smile of someone trying very hard to take shallow breaths.

  “So,” said Lady Eleanor, slamming bolts into place behind them. “You’ve come about the body.” Being the dog woman, she said this in English and when Major Abbas spread his hands to reveal his lack of the language Lady Eleanor sighed. “Le corpse,” she said loudly. “Le cadavre.”

  “Elle a dit vous venir au sujet du cadavre.” Moz spoke quietly, tugging at the Major’s sleeve for attention…

  “Such a clever boy,” Lady Eleanor told the Major, opening the door to show them out. “Such a pity he’s only got one arm.”

  Moz didn’t bother to translate, although he touched his hand to his heart, mouth and forehead, bowing deeply when she slipped a five-dirham note into his jellaba pocket.

  “Come back sometime,” she told Moz. “You can take Molly for a walk.”

  “Can you believe it?” The Major had to be talking to himself because Moz was five paces behind him, head down. They were getting near the boy’s street. Major Abbas recognized all the signs. It wasn’t fear of his parents which made the boy so jumpy but fear of being seen by his friends in the company of a policeman.

  Some things were harder to live down in the Mellah than others.

  “Your name?” Major Abbas demanded suddenly. The notebook he took from his pocket was regulation issue, cheap paper that tore beneath the nib of his pen. “Hurry up…”

  The last was said loudly enough to be overheard by two boys watching from the entrance to a nearby alley.

  “Al-Turq, sir.”

  “Your real name.”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  Major Abbas frowned. “You must have a name.”

  “Marzaq,” said the boy.

  “That’s what your parents named you?”

  “I suppose so,” Moz said. “My mother anyway. I don’t know about my father. She doesn’t talk about him.”

  “And she calls you Marzaq?”

  “Not often. She calls me honey.” She called everyone honey; sometimes Moz suspected that anything else was just too complicated. His mother hated complications.

  The Major could hear a snigger from where he stood. So he looked up from his pad and glared at the two boys still watching. One of them stared back, but when he stepped towards the alley’s entrance both slid away. Small fish retreating in an aquarium gloom.

 
; “Where do you live?”

  “Near here,” Moz admitted. “Just behind the old mosque. The one with the broken roof. Three doors from the tabac.”

  Major Abbas wrote it down exactly as given. “Your mother’s a hippie?”

  “She’s German,” said Moz.

  “But she speaks Arabic?”

  The boy shrugged. “A little,” he agreed, “also some French, not much though.”

  “And your father?”

  “Dead,” Moz said. “At least I hope so.”

  Major Abbas flipped shut his cheap notebook and looked around him. The walls of the alley were peeling, scabs of plaster littering the ground. Even the feral cats were thinner than elsewhere and for the Mellah that made them almost dead. Ribs like cracked twigs and fur matted with dust. The place stank of shit, human and animal, and with the heavy taste of blood from a nearby slaughterhouse. Jewish maybe. Most of the usual slaughterhouses were on the edge of the Medina.

  “Your arm,” Major Abbas said to the boy. “How did you lose it?”

  Moz looked down at the empty sleeve pinned to the front of his jellaba, so that it couldn’t flap free.

  “I didn’t,” he said, “it’s still there.”

  The Major stared at the boy’s face but it was free of irony or insult; in fact, Major Abbas doubted that the small boy even knew what irony was. As for madness, how could anyone tell? But the boy’s huge brown eyes were clear and his gaze firm. The kid had the longest eyelashes of anybody he’d ever seen, Major Abbas realized, then looked away, suddenly embarrassed.

  “What do you mean it’s still there?” The words came out harder than he’d intended.

  “It’s there,” Moz said. “Wait, I’ll show you.” Without pausing, the boy unbuttoned the neck of his jellaba, dragged the garment over his head with his one good hand and discarded it in the dirt. “See?”

  He stood naked, his body thin as a kitten and every rib visible for counting, legs thin like a stork’s and genitals small as a lost acorn. Turning, Moz presented his scarred shoulders and thin buttocks to the man who hardly saw them, he was too busy looking at the arm twisted behind Moz’s back and tied in place with cheap twine.