What Lot's Wife Saw

by Ioanna Bourazopoulou

  Father Efsevios grumbled that an occasional allocation did little to help the overall situation since in the long run the Consortium granted money according to the percentages of pews occupied. He sighed that he had had to relinquish another row of pews in his church ever since a Catholic had become the new head of the despatch department and the Orthodox despatchers had removed their names from his pews and transferred them to their superior’s church. Papists were a conniving bunch, better organised than us, and may we not live to see the icons of Methodius and Cyril (blessed be they) ripped down to make room for a dissonant organ to serve the Pope’s vanity due to the thinning of our flock.

  “The Pontiff in Brussels lacks the glory that he enjoyed in the Vatican,” I observed in an attempt to calm him.

  Father Efsevios was not to be mollified, as he noted that the loss of the Fanari Patriarchate in Constantinople was the work of the Devil, far outweighing the loss of the Vatican, which God must have had a hand in sinking. In any case, it was the Colony, rather than Europe, that we should worry about and things here are going from bad to worse. Soon we’ll get so confused that we will be having difficulty distinguishing Christians from the circumcised. Moslems drink alcohol, Jews work on the Sabbath and the Orthodox eat meat during Lent – bedlam!

  Father Yuri regrouped with a wave of his hand. Homing in on the crux of the matter, he announced that this dawn had been greeted by a complete reversal of accepted order and that our flock would be expecting us to provide some answers for it. Salt was being transported to the Land of Beyond! It was only a matter of time before the colonists will flock to the temples to demand explanations from the clergy. The dilemma faced every clergyman but only the Orthodox had the advantage of including the Governor’s personal spiritual healer in our ranks, and surely he must know facts and details unavailable to the others.

  They stared expectantly into my eyes, considering that they had sufficiently described the context in which I should respond and that it was time for me to take the floor.

  I retained my outward calm, admiring my well-developed internal soundproofing that was muffling the groans and screams that my gut was producing. I decided to escape through the loophole that they had inadvertently opened for me. I said that my Purple Star bound me to my duty to the Governor and the policy of the Consortium that perhaps outweighed my obligations to my dogma.

  They must have expected me to employ this answer since it was my evasion of choice when facing challenging interrogation. They usually respected it since any insistence would seem disrespectful to our employers – unthinkable for all us salary-earners. They couldn’t openly challenge the evasion because it would invite their own dismissal. The Consortium was quite intolerant of those that got confused about the proper hierarchy of loyalties.

  This time, however, there seemed to be no deference to my lofty reservations and my oaths of secrecy. The recent events bordered dangerously on the metaphysical and that meant that the priests would be the first to receive the colonists’ questions. This was a brilliant opportunity for intellectual sparring between the Creeds and for the Orthodox Church to gain the upper hand and to trounce the others that lacked access to inner knowledge. The well-known fact of my proximity to the Governor would authenticate our answers.

  Under the fierce scrutiny of their intense looks, I was forced to concede that I was ignorant of the Governor’s plans. He only revealed details of his policies to me if he deemed it necessary, not unlike the benevolent Lord of our faith who passed only a portion of His plans to Abraham out of love for him. Alas, the Governor had not seen fit to impart the reason for the salt’s exodus to me.

  The “Bishop” smacked his hand down on the armrest. He glared at me.

  “Montenegro, devil take your soul, can’t you see the problem? We are in a dreadful situation for which you are largely responsible. For years you’ve been telling us to preach that the desert is impassable and that the only exit for the salt is the port. We trusted you and from the pulpit we used all the demagoguery that you suggested: the pitcher with one spout, the night with one moon, the river with a single bed; what shall we tell them next Sunday? ‘Sorry, you misunderstood, rivers flow backwards too but we must have neglected to tell you?”’

  He wasn’t wrong. Come to think of it, I was the one that had advised them on the content of their sermons. I hadn’t been improvising, however; I’d been receiving instructions from the Palace. The late Bera demanded that I kept the population away from the desert and so, I’d been forced to invent new parables, to put words in Jesus’s mouth that He had never uttered, to misquote entire sections of the Bible to whip up fear of the desert. I’d ranted that whoever had the temerity to step on the sands would be taken by Lucifer. The new Governor was breaking the taboos and was making me look irredeemably ridiculous. I bowed my head.

  “I am in awe and just as you, I wonder and worry,” I said, humbled.

  “Montenegro, we are not your congregation and we don’t have to swallow your fairytales.”

  “Alas, I’m telling the truth and nothing but the truth, perhaps for the first time in my life.”

  “No Governor changes policy so drastically without agonising over it in his head, without the advice of his courtiers, without sounding out his spiritual mentor!” exclaimed Father Efsevios.

  “The Lord didn’t consult with the angels when He was creating the world.”

  “Lady Regina must have whispered something in your ear,” they insisted.

  “The Lady knows no more than I, nothing at all.”

  “How can you expect us to believe you?” shouted Father Vassili, pointing an accusing finger at me. “You foretold catastrophe in your Sunday sermon – admit it, Montenegro. At the time we thought it was one of your usual performances but when we heard that the salt was escaping through the desert … what did you expect us to think?”

  “I am ignorant of the will of my master,” I confessed, and buried my face in my hands.

  Father Vassili punched his fist against the wall. I knew exactly how he felt; we all did. We were no nearer knowing what was going on and why than those who’d drowned in the cataclysmic flood of Noah had known the reason for their fate. Events were unfolding before our eyes yet we were unaware of the factors that had precipitated them and of the logic behind them. The three priests had arrived at my door in a state of fear, not realising that I was far more terrified than they and not without reason.

  All night I’d been desperately studying the Bible, reading and rereading Genesis chapters 18 and 19, on which the Seventy-Five based their policies and got their symbols. I was hoping that I might find some illuminating parallels, but neither the names nor the numbers fitted. The Bible described two angels that had been sent to destroy the cities, whereas we had only one, and a pirate at that. To be fair, the Bible didn’t mention their attire nor whether they wore earrings, so there was an element of doubt. Perhaps the Black Ship could be construed as a second angel, but we had concluded that it had been a figment of our imagination when it had failed to reappear. And why should the Seventy-Five destroy their own Colony, their goose with the golden eggs? I admit that there were also a few similarities that were obvious even to a blind man. Like the passage that mentioned that the angels found refuge in the house of Lot when they needed to hide from the inhabitants’ passions, just as the pirate has chosen to hide in the Palace. The long-buried Bera, in the guise of Lot, offered his daughters to the fury of the crowd in exchange for the safety of the angels, and we, like sacrificial daughters, are exposed to the angry colonists, who must intuitively feel that some evil will come of the newcomer’s arrival even though, in antithesis with Sodom, he has slipped in unseen.

  The problem was that the Seventy-Five had given the Governor the name “Bera”, which according to Scripture was the name of the King of Sodom, rather than “Lot”, which threw the parallel into confusion, not to mention that our present “heaven-sent” angel sports the name “Bera”, and I couldn’t imagine our Lo
rd employing the services of an angel of that name. It was easier to believe that he was the authentic Biblical King’s reincarnation, who, now that the earth had been split open by the Overflow, had arisen from the bottom of the crater dragging the stench of his city with him, to reclaim his throne.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t penetrate the veil that concealed the logic and the symbols of the Seventy-Five. What on earth were they trying to tell us? I could only see darkness, feel darkness, taste darkness. Those were not thoughts that I could share with my colleagues. They who wore the Star were condemned to screaming internally and being muzzled externally.

  Feeling crushed, like a man under the weight of an unimaginably heavy cross, I struggled to my feet before Father Yuri had drawn the interrogation to a close and brought an end to the conversation. I informed them quietly that Ali would see them to the door. The trio was struck speechless at my rudeness. I lacked the strength to bid them farewell and crawled upstairs, feeling their stares on my back turn from indignation to trepidation. Something must have reduced me from the joyous bon vivant of Regina’s perfumed bed to this condition. They concluded that matters were indeed quite dark in the Colony and probably darker still in the Palace. They crossed themselves, spat apprehensively, gathered up their robes around them and vanished at top speed.

  Back in the bedroom, I immediately noticed that the Africans had multiplied. I could see glimpses of their large eyes opening and shutting behind the curtains, legs being drawn in under the bed, the shapes of idols under the sheets, the coins of my payoff whizzing through the air. When a number of the latter hit me on the forehead, I decided that I should leave the room. I managed to pull my cassock away from the clutching hands that appeared in the wardrobe, went back downstairs and forbade Ali to follow me out.

  I went to the Metropolis and I locked and barred the doors. I then propped two rows of pews against the doors and wedged them in to prevent unwelcome entries. These surroundings normally keep ghosts at bay; they wait for me outside. I was desperate for a few moments of peace, even for a short respite.

  I made my way to the Holy of Holies, climbed onto the altar, lay down flat and shut my eyes. I begged God – who, I suspect, punishes me because I get high on altar wine in order to enhance my sermons to the faithful – to remove me from this abominable world and send me to the relative warmth of His Hell, to be boiled in the vats of Beelzebub. I’d choose Beelzebub’s cauldrons a thousand times over, since he was not African, didn’t descend from Australopithecines, nor was he eatable by sabre-toothed tigers. He was an immaterial and indestructible creature of Evil that no one could criticise, as he conscientiously carried out his responsibilities.

  I fell into a deep dreamless sleep, which lasted for hours. I was awoken by a dull roar that arose from the entire Colony, a sound one could imagine uttered by a dumb person, wordless but eloquent. I felt that the desert caravan had returned because I became aware of my body being returned to me. I could feel the battered berlingas with their melted tyres and their shattered spokes roll down my sternum. Recently we’d been receiving all such messages through our bodies rather than our brains, as if the mind had decided it couldn’t cope and had delegated the more insensitive body to absorb them. I was certain that Captain Drake had returned from the desert – but dead or alive? The signal seemed jumbled on that point. I got off my perch and unblocked the doors. The noise and commotion was coming from the Infirmary. I ran there, praying that I wouldn’t be called upon to fire up the Metropolis incinerator, for the cremation of a Star Bearer.

  The Infirmary was beset by an unprecedented tangle of people. There were mobile fish-oil lanterns, tents arrayed in the yard, as well as a vast number of camp beds. Drake’s men, sunburned, bedraggled, exhausted, parched of lip and cracked of tongue from the crater fumes, were trying to answer the medics’ patient questions. Simple, repetitive questions like what their names were, the colour of a bottle and whether they could count to thirty. I even saw some cyclists in a comatose state, as they would never voluntarily come to the Infirmary. I found myself whispering psalms and blessings but I didn’t dare lay my hands on their perspiring brows, on their bloodstained clothes or open wounds. I wondered how many of them would develop leprosy. Who would answer for this gruesome crime? My heart lurched and the Star on my chest became so heavy that I was afraid that it would rip itself off the cloth.

  The grounds had the appearance of an organised field hospital rather than something jury-rigged that had been hastily set up. I read the labels on discarded phials, bottles and boxes. Vitamins, analgesics, electrolytes, antibiotics. Dr Fabrizio was playing a horrible cynical game!

  I bulldozed my way into the building, shouting, kicking doors, punching walls. I remembered that Fabrizio had stayed behind after the meal yesterday to have a private conversation with the Governor after the latter had finished with Captain Drake and I also considered that those tents hadn’t suddenly been pitched in an afternoon. At the top of my lungs, I shouted alternately for Fabrizio and Drake, until a door opened and Judge Bateau appeared, desperately motioning me to stop shouting. I ran towards him and he pulled me inside and locked the door.

  In the room’s dim light, I could see the Captain, lying naked on a bed with the butterfly of a drip over his wrist. His face and neck were covered in wounds and the fingers of his right hand were encased in a splint. His lips were white and ravaged by deep cracks and his eyes were bloodshot. He was sluggishly rubbing them with his good hand, like a movie in slow motion, seemingly unable to accelerate his movements. Dr Fabrizio was bending over him, listening to his heart with a stethoscope.

  I rushed past the empty beds and threw him to the ground. “Murderer!” I bellowed. “Murderer! Murderer!” I wasn’t entirely sure exactly what I held against him but the fact that the tents had been erected before the caravan’s departure seemed murderous enough for me. The Doctor had known since yesterday what to expect and he hadn’t tried to change the Governor’s mind as any self-respecting physician ought. He’d allowed the convoy to struggle through the source of leprosy and now he had the gall to administer aspirins for headaches!

  I belted him with all my strength but the Doctor didn’t put up any resistance, he just sat there and took it like a rag doll. I was so astonished at his lack of any reaction that I stopped. I pointed a shaking finger at him and told him that his Catholic God would eternally punish him for this sin. Any guard or cyclist that developed leprosy would be his victim alone.

  Fabrizio opened and shut his jaw, gingerly making sure that I hadn’t dislocated it, and softly said, “There is no leprosy in the desert; there never has been.”

  Oblivious of the deep shock that his words had caused us in the apathy of sheer exhaustion, he withdrew a flask of whisky from his pocket, swilled the blood out of his mouth and spat into a bedpan. He picked up his stethoscope and returned to monitoring Drake’s heart. The Judge and I exchanged glances. I roughly pulled the stethoscope from his ears.

  “What in hell do you mean, Fabrizio? What do you mean, no leprosy in the desert? What about the hundreds of pamphlets that your Infirmary has issued all these years?”

  “I’ve said all I have to say on the matter and I’ve said too much already.”

  Twisting his lapels in my hands, I pinned him against the wall. I warned him to explain himself and to do it fast because I was feeling the violence rise inside me. Fabrizio pushed me off in exasperation.

  “Who do you think you are, demanding that I justify what my Purple Star forces me to do, my oh-so-innocent white doves? Do you want me to believe that you weren’t given any secret instructions by our dead Governor on how to run your institutions? The gate to the desert had to be sealed shut and so I did my bit and I did it conscientiously.”

  “But, Fabrizio, there have been many cases, deaths, isolation wards, special uniforms …” I felt that my mind was rebelling.

  “The desert is unsurveyable, whereas the port is supremely controllable – is it so difficult to understand?
I gathered the corpses of four Mamelukes who had died of thirst and put them in quarantine, printed the pamphlets and the rest is history.”

  The Judge stoically asked Fabrizio to pass him the flask. The Doctor pulled it out of his jacket and handed it over. Bateau greedily gulped down a couple of swigs and extended the whisky in my direction. My legs suddenly gave way and I slumped onto a bed. The Judge shrugged and drained the flask and threw it at Fabrizio.

  “Imaginary leprosy! Couldn’t you have thought of something else, something undetectable? And I made poor Eliza check me out every evening for red blotches.”

  “It wasn’t my choice, Bateau. The order specified leprosy because it was a Biblical plague, connected to sin and to ‘unclean’, so the benefits were manifold. Black Death cast one’s mind to the Middle Ages, which was pretty useless; syphilis and hepatitis were excluded because the fear might compromise sexual behaviour, and the Consortium sought indigenous productivity; cholera and tuberculosis weren’t horrifying enough. It really doesn’t matter what name was given to the nemesis, and leprosy got the job done superbly.”

  “There never had been any leprosy.” I repeated this to drive it past my mind’s refusal to assimilate it, but the fear was so deep-rooted within me that I was unable to get past it, no matter what anyone asserted. All these years I have panicked every time a red patch has appeared on my body, every time my nose bled, every time I stared at my hairs in the washbasin, when my vision blurred. We had learnt the symptoms by heart from the pamphlets. In berlingas we would glance sidelong at our fellow passengers, checking their neck and arms in fear of sitting next to a carrier. When the faithful came to kiss my hand, I would discreetly examine their scalps for scaling and their eyebrows and eyelashes for gaps. I lived and breathed in fear of leprosy and I couldn’t dismantle that any more than change my skin. The Colony’s taboos were crumbling at a faster pace than I could cope with.