“Uncle Bernard, what’s happened to you? Why’ve you been like this since Friday?” she sobbed.
Was it just my idea or was I beginning to look very much like someone? The young Governor’s behaviour was beginning to have an odd effect on me and sometimes the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end when I looked in the mirror. I banished that awful thought and concentrated on the decision I’d taken the day before and must put into action. I still hadn’t decided on the best way to extricate Bianca from the Palace, even for a few hours, but she must be desperate for some fresh air by now, a change of scene. She’d been confined in Regina’s room for two days and three nights, wearing the Lady’s nightdresses and gowns since the pirate forbade her even to open a window.
Despite the fact that he hadn’t laid a finger on her, he insisted on keeping her imprisoned and the poor girl was going crazy. In the beginning I’d assumed that he’d taken a fancy to her – she’s no beauty, I must agree, but young Governors can run to offbeat tastes. I could understand that, accept it quite happily. I’d know what we were dealing with. Unfortunately he hadn’t made any move in her direction, apart from kissing her hand and being solicitous on the questions of her sleep and adequate nourishment. This didn’t strike one as normal.
I started climbing towards the Palace, having decided to ask the Governor’s permission to escort my daughter to church. I was worried about her mental health; she was slowly sinking in a torpor brought on by fear, and cutting down her interactions with her surroundings. She was continually lost in her own world and wouldn’t respond when you spoke to her. She’d draw meandroses with her finger on walls, pillows and shutters. She was wasting away with each passing day and would be reduced to skin and bones.
Reaching the Palace, I saw Regina coming down the stairs, wearing that linen suit speckled with multi-hued stains, and those silk stockings with gaping seams had acquired a number of holes. She dashed out of the gate and grabbed me by the arm. “He said ‘no’,” she muttered.
“Are you talking to me?”
“Yes, to you. He said no, you can’t escort Bianca to church because Bianca needs rest.”
I was speechless. But I hadn’t suggested it yet, or had I and couldn’t remember? I looked up, at the upper-floor windows. Through the slats of the sealed shutters, I thought I could see two terrified white eyes, like those of a wild animal in a cage. I shook my head angrily. “What nonsense, ‘Bianca needs rest’! Rest from what? She’s idle all day. Sleep, eat, sleep, and she probably doesn’t eat either. I’m certain that she hasn’t attempted to get him into bed, the silly little innocent – even the basics are beyond her.”
Regina looked at me as if I was unbalanced and she started to scream.
“Bateau, Bateau, you still haven’t cottoned on! You still can’t grasp that this man cannot be seduced? Wake up, Bateau! When he’s finished with us, we’ll be transformed into something beyond our imagination!”
I cautioned her to stop gesticulating and making a spectacle of herself because people were watching. I forced her to stand up straight and to walk with me, resting on my arm like a respectable lady and to shut up so that we could walk with as much dignity as her filthy garb would allow, and make our way down to the church, whose merry bells were beckoning.
There was a record turnout for the service because three days of a shuttered, silent Palace and the brushfire of the stories of the medal bearers’ astounding escapades had set alight the colonists’ curiosity. If nothing else, they’d be seeing the Governor who’d dropped out of sight since Thursday.
I watched as Dr Fabrizio walked to the church entrance with a quick step and a bowed head. His passage elicited whispering that erupted in his wake. The uproar caused by the appearance of Secretary Siccouane, however, was in another league altogether but that, in turn, paled by comparison to the pandemonium that enveloped Regina as she made her entrance in shredded stockings, escorted by the Judge rather than her husband. Captain Drake was already seated, his teeth working nervously on his moustache. We sought refuge next to him and were joined by Fabrizio and Siccouane. We felt like talentless actors who hadn’t been allowed to read their roles, standing helplessly in centre stage with all the stage lights trained on them and an audience that was about to break out into catcalls and whistles.
Drake leant over and asked me why Regina’s attire was so appalling, as if I was the one who had come between her and her free access to gowns and hats. Heads bobbed up in the air every so often as those at the back of the church were trying to catch a glimpse of the holes in the Lady’s stockings which those at the front were describing. Fabrizio’s unexpected and Siccouane’s unacceptable attendances were being commented on throughout the church, while the Governor’s gold-trimmed pew remained conspicuously empty, like an open mouth from which a myriad of questions arose and hovered like trails of smoke. The commotion was such that if I shut my eyes I could believe that I was in the market. This was the first time ever that I was impatient for Montenegro’s deep voice to boom from the pulpit.
I was relieved when the service began. The choir of psalmodists dampened the whispers, the Byzantine melodies drew the spotlights from us and breathing became easier. We hoped that it wouldn’t be long before the congregation was anaesthetised by the sweet, soporific, incomprehensible hymns and would forget about our presence.
It wasn’t to be. The liturgy didn’t provide the relief that we’d been hoping for because Montenegro had decided, today of all days, to be wracked by an existentialist crisis. He missed his cues to intone or chant, which threw the psalmodists into confusion. They tried a few dry coughs and a repetition or two in case he could be jogged back to form, but in vain. The Priest paced up and down, strode several times in and out of the sanctuary, waving his fists around angrily while being beset by sudden silences and seeming in total confusion. When it finally came time for the sermon, he launched himself into the pulpit with such vigour that he seemed to come within an inch of sailing over it and landing on our heads. As one, the first six rows recoiled and threw their arms up. He tried to keep his balance as if he was on a ship that was pitching in a rough sea. He looked at the congregation as if at a loss. He pulled the tattered copy of the Bible out of his pocket, opened it, found his page and read.
“Give me the people and take the goods for yourself.”
His eyes filled with flame. He waved the Bible in the air above his head.
“We read but we don’t comprehend! Genesis, chapter 14, verse 1: ‘And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel, king of Shinar; Arioch, king of Ellasar; Chedolamer, king of Elam; and Tidal, king of Goyim, that these made war with Bera, king of Sodom.’ How blind, how blind, perhaps if we’d had Bianca’s eyes we’d have seen it earlier. Verse 21: ‘And the king of Sodom said unto Abram, “Give me the people and take the goods for yourself.”’ All we are is a part-payment of an unholy deal, a debased barter!”
He raised his flashing eyes furiously to the heavens.
“This means, Yahweh, that we’re living in the year nought and Your Old Testament is to be read as a prediction. In vain, we search in the past to find traces of Sodom, for it has only now been founded. You had a Book of prophecies written and You allowed us to think, all this time, that it was historical. You’ve deceived us for forty centuries!”
He started walking up and down the pulpit like he was possessed and began muttering incoherently.
“It’s a mystery … who is he? Who can he be … The God of the Seventy-Five would never show himself … Dusan Danilovitz, you blaspheme! It’s just an inner debate, Lord … In antithesis with Jesus, who often begins phrases with the words, ‘I am …’ and who provides you with descriptions of his nature, the God of the Old Testament avoids doing the same. Ha! Who is he, then? Who … Careful, Danilovitz, you are nothing but a professor of the faculty of errors! Yahweh, my speciality is being the beneficiary of errors! My errors are committed for Your eternal glory!”
He fervently flicked the pages and stab
bed his target with a finger.
“Exodus, chapter 3, verse 13: ‘And Moses said unto God, “Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, ‘the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you’; and they shall say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say unto them?” And God said to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM.”’ Ha! Do you call that an answer, you with the condescending smile who insists on hiding behind the clouds of salt? ‘I AM THAT I AM’ … It’s probably the fault of the Overflow that our religious queries have turned in this direction. The agonising question that plagued previous generations of: ‘Is there a God or not?’ is now considered a bit naïve and passé in face of the thorny: ‘Who is He?’”
He brought his fists down with force on the pulpit railing. “I’m in the very core of the most meaningful thought! And what do I find? That this path of divine dialectic leads nowhere!”
Depleted of inspiration and exhausted of strength, his hands cupped the railing and he cast his eyes down onto his stunned flock, like a ship’s passenger studying the crests of waves marching towards him. “A sea with no buoyancy,” he murmured. He swung himself onto the railing and then stood up precariously on the narrow wood. “Am I doing this right, Bateau?” he shouted, and ceremoniously spread out his hands like a martyr on a cross and bent his knees in preparation for the dive.
“The deranged fool!” shouted Captain Drake next to me. “I wouldn’t put it past him …”
Thankfully, the Captain wasted no time in processing his thoughts since the rest of us had turned into immobile effigies of ourselves. He rushed forward to the pulpit and grabbing the Priest by the collar, plucked him out of the air since he’d already launched himself. He didn’t let Montenegro’s feet touch the ground and bundled him straight out of a side entrance.
The moment they disappeared, the congregation exploded like the roar of an avalanche. In an instant, the shocked, silent temple was flooded with words, expletives and gestures, as if the crowd’s plug had been connected to a socket. Suddenly, there was a surge of humanity heading out through the doors, hot on the trail of the demented Priest, but the Captain and his prisoner had vanished. The deacons hurriedly laid the tables in the courtyard, bringing out half-squeezed lemonade and dumping the sweets any old how as they had been taken by surprise by the abrupt conclusion of the service.
The normally casual, pleasant strolling of the medal bearers in the churchyard seemed instead to be a horrifying prospect today. Our Purple Stars felt like they were burning holes into our chests. We avoided anyone who tried to get too close, pretending that we couldn’t hear their questions, couldn’t see their harshly critical eyes and failed to notice the accusing fingers pointed in our direction. We could hear our names pronounced behind our backs – the names we use in the Colony, I mean – and never had the “Bateau” that I’d adopted in a moment of desperation seemed so alien, so ridiculous and so far-fetched. This angry crowd couldn’t possibly be addressing me. I didn’t have anything to say to them.
We scattered. The others preferred to return to the haven of their bedrooms, but I hesitated since I didn’t have the stomach to face Eliza, whose ears had probably already received various accounts of our exploits in the Metropolis. News moves at frightening speed in the Colony. I glanced at my watch. I had another three hours to wait before the Governor’s lunch and I couldn’t afford to be seen in Hesperides. I chose to head towards the port where I could rely on the daily commotion to provide me with a desperately needed smokescreen.
I burrowed among some coils of rope at the end of the shadiest pier and sat with my elbows on my knees. I pondered the depths of wretchedness that I’d so easily reached. It seemed hardly possible that I could be afraid of going home and had to hide out in the maze of the port. The sound of the door of the Returnees’ Stores being unlocked jolted me out of my introspection. Someone was leaving the Colony and so his old clothes were being returned to him.
Old Alessandro’s green cabin nestled against the warehouse with the sign reading “Returnees’ Stores”, which is simultaneously our hope and our nightmare. Somewhere stashed in the depths of that dark storehouse were the flannel trousers and the striped shirt that I’d worn when I first arrived in the Colony, unless time has reduced them to a pile of dust.
My mind followed that well-worn path it always took when thinking about a return to the outside world, but for the first time the prospect of facing up to the list of transgressions I’d committed in my previous existence no longer seemed so frightening. Perhaps there’d been a relaxing of the laws in the intervening twenty years and that I’d now get away with a sentence of a few months at most. Twenty years is a very long time, and some of my crimes will have exceeded their statutes of limitations. And hell, what was I guilty of anyway? I’d posed as a lawyer without the proper qualifications since I’d had to make a living. Had any of those that sued me ever stopped to wonder what it was like to suddenly find themselves without a past, nationless? To be able to become anything because you are nothing! Why should I be rotting away down here, what could be worse for me if I returned to civilisation, what could be worse than what I was going through now?
Old Alessandro, “Guardian of Lake Acherousia,” which lies between the living world and Hades, came out with a pencil tucked behind his ear, shouting to the colonist within to hurry up and get dressed because the ship was beginning to untie its moorings. He washed his hands under the tap – this was an important ritual since he’d have already examined every inch, crevice and opening of the colonist’s body.
Everyone who leaves the Colony is subjected to a thorough body search to make sure that they aren’t smuggling any salt out. Old Alessandro always suspects that any colonist that abandons the Colony would never leave empty-handed unless thwarted by his personal ministrations. He even listens to their digestive system with a stethoscope in case they’d swallowed a bagful. And to think that here we scrape the stuff off our bodies, scoop tons of it off the streets, while in the civilised world they weigh it grain by grain and its value rivals that of gold. You can imagine how these thoughts undermine our mental health. We live in a diamond mine, we vomit diamonds, we curse them as we sweep them off our yards but we can never sell them.
Old Alessandro is the first person that you meet when you first arrive in the Colony and the last you see on your way out because anyone that leaves becomes non-existent and no one comes to the port to see them off. From the moment your exit licence comes through, you’re a forgotten entity even though you might still be here physically. The colonist who leaves is a colonist who was never here in the first place. What I’m trying to say is that, somehow, we take the departure as an insult.
A man came out of the door of the Returnees’ Store, still struggling to button up his shirt. His right arm was missing. I recognised the cylinder operator Roman Montano, whom I’d condemned the previous day. His arm had been mangled by the jaws of the cylinder he’d been operating. Had he resigned or had he been fired? He couldn’t have been fired since the Consortium hates paying the compensation – I have secret instructions on this matter. The cripples are transferred to the warehouses, or to building maintenance and janitor duties, where they are purposefully needled and irritated so that they’ll give up in disgust and quit. Cripples cost more than the value of what they can produce. That Roman Montano had decided so quickly after the trial to abandon the Colony meant that I’d done my work very well.
Roman Montano shouted to the ship to wait for him, while desperately trying to keep his trousers up. It was evident that his dimensions had been substantially different when he’d first arrived here. He passed in front of me, our eyes met and his gaze surveyed my face. He raised his hand – to wave farewell? – but his trousers plunged groundwards and since he’d no other limb available, he preferred to tend to his garment. He clumsily gathered it up and hobbled up the gangway.
Nauseous, I bent down between my knees and threw up.
I mechanically wiped myself with my ha
ndkerchief. It was nearly two and I had to go to the Palace. I ventured back onto the streets and registered each time that heads swivelled in my direction. I heard the occasional greeting but mostly furtive whispering as I advanced. I felt nothing at all; a sweet numbness permeated my body and even if the port had blown up behind me, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.
I reached the Palace gates and hung around, waiting for two o’clock with impressive exactitude, as if the only important thing in this life was to be punctual for the Governor’s meal. When the time was ripe, I traversed the garden. Some garden! No plants, no gnomes, only headless statues. The heads had rolled in honour of an extravagant dance by Regina, back when she still danced and there were heads to roll.
The garden and the steps were covered by the sand of the previous day’s storm. Evidence of the complete lack of domestic staff was obvious. The whole Colony had been swept clean apart from the Palace, which now looked like a sandbank surrounded by the sparkling tributaries of mopped streets. This building was becoming conspicuously lifeless.
I met the Doctor and Secretary in the antechamber. Nervous blank stares, moist eyelids and silence. I sat between them. Almost at once a grim Captain showed up, still dragging Montenegro by the scruff of his neck.
“Fancy meeting you here,” joked the Priest, rolling his eyes as he hung like a puppy from the Captain’s grip. “Oh, we have to stop meeting like this.”
“Shut up or l’ll batter you. I’ve put up with too much from you today,” growled Drake as he dumped the Priest into the nearest chair.
Montenegro stayed in the slumped position he’d landed in. No one spoke, no one looked and perhaps no one had any feeling. We all waited in absolute silence for the Governor to summon us to the dining room.
What Lot's Wife Saw Page 24