What Lot's Wife Saw

by Ioanna Bourazopoulou

  The young Governor gave us an analysis of the problems of the storage of the excess quantities of salt that the saltworks had been producing and spent the rest of the time talking about the well-known problem of the inadequate capacity of the port installations as it had a limit to the number of vessels it could safely berth. We anxiously waited for him to touch on a subject that would be new to us or to examine an old problem with revolutionary insight or in some way to inspire us, overawe us or even frighten us but he only reiterated familiar figures, described stale problems and discussed worn-out solutions. It was like listening to old Bera. The lunch was reminiscent of countless others that I’d experienced, sitting in this chair, stifling my yawns. Paradoxically, I felt a strange disappointment, as if I’d been promised a beating but it’d never come about.

  All at once there was a knock at the entrance of the Palace and, because I thought that it must be Ali with my Star, I offered to go and open to get my decoration. I needed to walk, to stretch. I was nearly falling asleep in there.

  It was indeed Ali behind the door. I took the Star, pinned it on and sent him away. As I was shutting the door I saw a black object seem to sprout from the negro’s head and to grow larger. I immediately realised that it had nothing to do with Ali’s head but with the port at the far end of the avenue. It wasn’t before the manservant had departed that I could properly make out the mysterious object. When my mind finally encompassed the shape and dimensions of what I was seeing I still couldn’t believe my eyes.

  Instead of returning to the dining room I ran up a service stairway, leaping up five steps at every stride, to get to the Palace roof terrace. From there you get a panoramic view of the harbour and there was a Black Ship, jet black, with black hull and black sails that was crossing the basin diagonally, heading towards the southern quarters. It looked like an ancient frigate, quite like a pirate ship of the old-time movies, apart from the fact that it flew no skull and crossbones. It seemed to have no crew whatsoever, just hull, masts, and sails. I could see that its name was painted in faded letters on its bow but I couldn’t make it out from such a distance. The weirdest thing of all was that its keel was mostly submerged as if it was sailing in a proper sea. In the territorial waters of the Colony the density of the brine doesn’t allow that to happen, in fact vessels slide over the sea almost like sleighs on ice. Could I be dreaming?

  I returned shakily to the dining room and sank into my seat. Had I seen it or imagined it? I was reminded of Lieutenant Richmond’s story of the pirate who’d succeeded in diving into the waters without bouncing off the surface. Could this Black Ship, which defied the resistance of the dense sea, have anything to do with the man sitting at the head of the table? I studied the young Governor once more, the golden skin, the raven hair, the muscled arms rippling under his red shirt and the golden ring dangling from his ear. I didn’t know what to think.

  I subtly lowered my hand and searched for Montenegro’s knee under the table. I sent him a coded message to find some excuse and go up to the terrace. I needed someone else to see the ship to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Montenegro, a past master at sub-table communication, remained impassive and continued to drink his wine. I suddenly felt his hand tap out a reply. He was asking me to repeat my message because he’d not understood. Maybe my trembling hand had confused the meaning. I tapped it out again carefully. Go up to the roof terrace. Incredible sight.

  Montenegro awkwardly flung an elbow in my direction, which knocked over the wine bottle. It plunged off and shattered, sending a glass shard in the Priest’s eye. He shot up from his chair, yelling and covering his injured eye with his hand. He rushed from the room to find some iodine.

  He took ages to return. I was counting the seconds while guiltily looking at the youth. He seemed absorbed in his discussion with Drake about desert border patrols. I was hoping that he wouldn’t connect my extended absence with the time Montenegro was taking in the Palace pharmacy.

  Finally, the Priest returned with a wad of cotton soaked in iodine held to his eye and sat in silence. I avoided looking at him and eagerly anticipated his code message on my knee. Suddenly, I felt only one tap, which in knee parlance was equivalent to a yes. Whenever the Priest becomes laconic, it’s because something has frightened him. As he withdrew his right hand, I saw him put his left under the tablecloth, evidently to pass the news to Fabrizio.

  Fabrizio, who was on his fourth loaf of bread to make up for the lack of real food on the table, suddenly stopped chewing. His lips froze into a slight smile and he turned an inquisitive look towards the young Governor. His jaws resumed working, albeit at a more contemplative pace as if it would help his concentration. He was evidently processing the message he’d received on his knee. He knitted his eyebrows, wiped his lips and offered to go down to fetch another bottle of wine since the Priest had seen fit to smash the previous one.

  It took him all of twenty minutes to reappear, by which time cold sweat was breaking out all over my head. I was sure that the young Governor would realise that something was amiss and in his inimitable fashion put us firmly in our place. Thankfully, however, he seemed excessively busy correcting something Drake had said and chastising Bianca for only picking at her food. He suggested that she shouldn’t drink since it’d be bad for her in her emaciated state and to concentrate on eating what was on her plate. Bianca was the only one with a full plate and the only one that didn’t want to eat. At one point, he got up and personally fed her forkful by forkful. She responded with great reluctance, as if she lacked the energy to chew. She gave the impression that Bianca’s mind had already left the table to seek the refuge of her room and the goings-on in the dining room were no longer part of her reality. With her fingers, she traced meandroses on the tablecloth, like the ones of her favourite puzzles, and she stared at the imaginary white squares.

  Perhaps the three consecutive forays had escaped the notice of the Governor but not of the other three, accustomed as they were to such boredom-relieving exercises in past meetings. Regina, who’d patented the smashed bottle routine to disappear for a quickie with Montenegro, was absolutely certain that something was going on. She volunteered to go to the kitchens and fetch Bianca’s sweet so that her wholesome meal could be rounded off. She returned after a quarter of an hour, without the sweet, in an obvious state of agitation. Then it was Siccouane’s turn, who asked permission to go and get a pill out of his bag in the corridor, and when he returned, Captain Drake requested leave to use the bathroom. I shut my eyes with despair – the Governor was bound to smell a rat at any moment. It was impossible that he wouldn’t notice and I was waiting for a thunderbolt to be unleashed.

  The door had been opening and shutting with regularity. Everyone who’d left returned ashen and taciturn. There were those that just had to leave a second time to see the unbelievable again, hoping, probably, that the mirage would have dissipated and the port would only contain the Consortium fleet with no ghosts of pirate ships. To their dismay, all they managed was to watch the Black Ship sail its slow, stately course. The information was instantly shared under the table and thus we all became conversant with the details of its progress. Starting from where I’d seen it, from the western side of the bay it had proceeded on an absolutely diagonal course, without deviating at all and had reached the southern quarters where, we all knew, there were no docks to berth in, since there the sand began where the sea ended.

  We were finding it difficult to keep abreast of the discussion about the problematic capacity of the port which seemed so important to the young Governor. We repeated ourselves, asked the same questions and failed to hear the answers. Meanwhile the under-table telegraph was bursting into flames from overuse. Messages that did the rounds had degenerated into cryptic headlines: “Illusion”, “Must check with harbourmaster”, “Mass delusion”, “Natural phenomenon”, “Avenging Angel”. We never even realised when the meeting ended. The Governor had to repeat that we could go three times before it impinged on us.


  “I repeat, ladies and gentlemen, that tomorrow, Sunday, you’ll all attend Mass at the Hesperides Metropolis. At two o’clock, I’ll expect you all here for the meal. You may go.”

  We crowded out of the exit and went out into the street looking for some tall building with a good view of the harbour. The nearest one was the Guardhouse. We ran all the way there and climbed up three floors, then scrambled up the spiral staircase of the tower until we reached the observation platform. We strained our eyes in all directions but couldn’t see any sign of a Black Ship. The extraordinary vessel could no longer be seen. The guard on duty, I think his name was Batourim, was startled by the commotion on the platform and thought it best to give Drake a smart salute, but Drake grabbed him by his uniform as his hand sailed upwards.

  “Did you see the Black Ship, Batourim? Where is it? Where did it disappear to? Speak!”

  The guard’s jaw dropped. “I’ve the honour to report … er, I don’t understand the question, Captain.”

  “You were asleep again, you fool. Either that or you were spying into the Hesperides windows! Three weeks without leave! Now give me those binoculars!”

  The binoculars didn’t add anything despite Drake’s persistence. Perhaps it had crossed the basin and had been lost to our view. That possibility seemed rather unlikely if it had maintained the same speed which would preclude it passing the tip of the bay and it should still be in the environs of the southern shores. Montenegro knitted his fingers together and cupped them to give Drake a hand up. Drake placed his other foot on the railing and lifted himself up to improve his range of vision still more. The rest of us held him around the waist to steady him. He strained to see farther in the direction in which we’d last seen the ship but he leant too far and nearly toppled over. Montenegro immediately spread his hands and the arms around his middle pulled him back. He fell against the cement floor of the platform and hit his head against the railings. He cursed the Consortium architects that’d made the tower so short and unsuitable for proper observation. In truth, the platform didn’t give a clear view of the entire port so perhaps Batourim could be justified in swearing that he hadn’t seen a Black Ship, although I wished that he’d stop clicking his heels every time he spoke. He listened to our descriptions with a gaping mouth and the only moment he cracked an imperceptible smile was when Drake crashed to the floor.

  “We can’t see from here. Let’s go to the port and ask the harbourmaster!” Regina shouted.

  We ran down the stairs and into the street. Fabrizio stood in the middle of the road with his hands raised, forcing a passenger berlinga to stop. He shouted that the berlinga was requisitioned and that the passengers had to get off immediately. The Chief Treasurer of the Bank was amongst the passengers and he demanded to be shown the requisition papers. Fabrizio tried to pull him off but he clung tightly to the handholds, accusing us of being responsible for stopping him from getting to work on time, for which he’d be fined. That’s why he’d demanded to see documents signed by the Governor proving that this specific berlinga had been requisitioned and withdrawn from its scheduled route. He muttered that he’d take this further and submit a written complaint about the Doctor’s indecent behaviour. Fabrizio threw him out into the street, demanding that he lodge his complaint immediately since the Secretary was present and would register it. In fact, the Judge who would throw it out was also present and so was the Captain of the Guards who’d shoot him and the Priest that’d read him his last rites. Siccouane told him drily that he shouldn’t bother filing a complaint because he would see to it personally that it’d be buried so deep in the paperwork that his great-grandchildren wouldn’t be able to unearth it. We all clambered onto the berlinga and told the cyclists where to take us, exhorting them to peddle as fast as they could.

  The berlinga gathered speed and turned off the avenue to go via a shortcut, leaving the regular passengers, who were waiting at the next stops, gesticulating and pointing at their watches. The cyclists pedalled down to the port and stopped at the end of the road. We forced them with curses and threats to go into the dock and continue along the whole length of the quay. This was illegal as only cargo berlingas could enter and so dock workers looked at us in amazement as we rushed by them and two or three took their hats off to fan their faces. The harbourmaster, standing next to his hut, bolted when he saw the passenger berlinga heading in his direction since he thought that, being on the quay, it was out of control.

  We climbed off the berlinga, surrounded him and started to all talk at the same time, firing descriptions, explanations and questions at him while wildly waving our hands in support of the verbal barrage. The harbourmaster, when he’d sufficiently gathered his wits after such a concentrated attack, swore that he hadn’t a clue what we were talking about. He patiently explained to us, as if we were idiots, that the water here doesn’t allow keels to sink into it and that the bay is constantly patrolled by boatmen and they would’ve informed him at once if anything odd had occurred. Finally, he said that he’d had his eyes trained on the sea for the last six hours but he’d seen no Black Ship and, in fact, no sail of any colour. Then he grew more guarded and asked us whether we had a signed permit that gave us the right to use a passenger berlinga and disrupt the smooth flow of cargo in the port.

  Fabrizio strode desperately towards a boatman and shouted that his boat was commandeered and he must take us to the bay’s southern end. He was about to board when Montenegro stopped him. “Something’s not at all right with this situation, Fabrizio. Isn’t it obvious that no one apart from us has seen the ghost ship?”

  Siccouane looked around him and saw the boatmen hiding grins as they sat on the sacks and the coiled ropes. His face grew red as he said that we’d made total fools of ourselves and we must have fallen foul of a hundred regulations in the process. Fabrizio was still insisting that we should jump in the boat to hunt down the pirate ship, which was either hiding near the southern shores or had sailed away from the Colony so would be visible on the horizon in either case, if we were rowed to a vantage point in the south.

  Judging from the faces of the dock workers around us, it’d become obvious that Montenegro was right. The Black Ship had escaped everyone’s notice. Drake absent-mindedly twirled his handlebar moustache and, feeling the amused curiosity around him, scuffed the tip of his left boot with his right foot. The Priest brought out his Bible and reviewed his equations. I dusted down the harbourmaster’s jacket, which I had unconsciously been gripping tightly, and advised him to return to his hut. He’d passed the readiness drill we’d conducted with flying colours. We left almost faster than we’d arrived, before he thought of asking us to see the Governor’s orders for the drill.

  We climbed up the slope towards Hesperides in silence, each of us lost in thought. Dr Fabrizio, as was his wont, quickly managed to bury his confusion and fear in a display of anger and accused the Priest and myself of having misled him with our lies. We’d hypnotised him and he’d seen something that hadn’t existed. We didn’t have the energy even to tell him where to get off.

  As we approached the Palace, Regina started to slowly unbutton her suit, she opened her jacket, and revealed her breasts. Montenegro reached out and gripped it back shut but she fought him off and proceeded to unzip her skirt and allowed it to fall. We immediately arrayed ourselves in a circle around her to protect her from the eyes of the passers-by, some of whom had been trying to follow events as they unfolded behind the human shield.

  “Even these clothes don’t belong to me. Bera bought them for me,” Regina said deliriously.

  Montenegro forced her to get her clothes back on. He shook her to snap her out of it.

  “I’m certain that there’s a logical explanation, Regina, and we’re going to find it. All this is the pirate’s fault, he’s the one behind everything that’s happening but, for the life of me, I can’t tell how! Perhaps the bastard spiked the wine with a hallucinogenic and we’re dreaming standing up. Did you notice that he didn’t have a
drop of wine, nor did he allow Bianca even a glass?”

  Siccouane immediately thought that the Priest was right. He reminded us that the pirate hadn’t commented on our incessant coming and going to the terrace and to think that he himself, lacking any experience of the medal wearers’ bush telegraph and having no knowledge of the repertoire of excuses that they’d developed, had quickly realised that something very odd was happening when, one after another, we’d left and come back as if we’d seen a ghost. The young Governor has shown himself to be too astute to allow such obvious activity to pass unnoticed.

  “The fact that he didn’t comment seems no longer strange,” the Priest said. “If he’d said something he’d have stepped off that all-important path of his. I’m on to him; his pattern dictates that he must never comment on anything that definitely diverges from normality. The question is, why did he invite us to the Palace today? Could any of you tell from what we discussed in there?”

  We all agreed that we’d never before heard such boring platitudes than those uttered by the Governor. The whole meal seemed to have been totally pointless. We had blethered on about well-known problems to which he’d added nothing nor suggested a new approach and hadn’t expected anything from us either. It was as if he’d planned to keep us gathered around him, but not to use us in any way. Had he actually wanted to keep us far away from the port, stuck in the Palace, so that we wouldn’t see the Black Ship sail across the bay? Perhaps the Black Ship was actually real but, through a combination of chance and circumstance, had escaped the colonists’ notice?