What Lot's Wife Saw

by Ioanna Bourazopoulou

  Montenegro whispered in my ear that my hopes were futile and that I’d never forget. The memory of sawing Bera’s trunk would accompany me to my grave, just as he’d never extirpate severing the head from the neck. That fateful night has formed a lasting bond between us six. Relatives by blood, so to speak, in the literal sense. Bera, who’d set us at each other’s throats in life, had united us in death.

  It was annoyingly obvious that these two wanted something from me but I couldn’t yet guess what. I decided to give them more time to come out with it and, meanwhile, grudgingly cultivated my acquaintance with beer’s disgusting taste. The Priest, employing all his eloquence, claimed that Bera’s blood had banded us together but he needn’t have bothered, as I was impervious to his arguments. These blood bonds are very fragile, as anyone who has done time knows. Endless stories have been exchanged behind bars that relationships aren’t forged above corpses. Not a bad plot for a novel, but not applicable to real life. Horror is unbearable, secrecy is oppressive, memory is merciless. Corpses breed more corpses rather than gestating a single friendship. So the Priest has either never been inside or it hasn’t taught him anything.

  When their touching attempt at bonding ground to a halt both of them started opening up to me. It was plain that they wanted to extract some information and they were trying to make me forthcoming. With an impressive accompaniment of expressions and gestures, as if they were sharing a terrible secret with me, they told me that Drake’s caravan had returned and wasn’t it amazing that the Suez Mamelukes had been nowhere to be seen. The whole Colony was buzzing with this very conversation, so its trade value as secret inside information was minimal. I could give in exchange an equally insignificant snippet of information.

  “Tomorrow, they will place the bags in an ‘L’ shape,” I offered.

  “What bags?”

  “At the end of the seven kilometres, the caravan reaches a plateau of sand on which they stack the bags of salt in a predetermined shape. Today it was a ‘B’, tomorrow it will be an ‘L’ instead.”

  They looked at me, impressed. “How do you know, Siccouane?”

  I flicked a mote of dust off my cap. “Suffice to say that my information is exact and crosschecked.”

  Earlier the pirate had given me a sealed envelope to hand to Drake at the Infirmary, containing orders about the next day’s expedition. Naturally, I’d opened it and read it before delivering it, just as I’ve read everything that’s passed through the Governor’s office no matter how well sealed. Green Box aside, there was no drawer, folder or file that I hadn’t opened and resealed without leaving a trace. These were the perks that brightened up a Personal Secretary’s life and permitted him to wear the redingote with pride. No reason to let them in on where I’d obtained the information, so I just assured them that it was accurate.

  The Priest triumphantly produced that Bible from his pocket and called the waitress to please bring him a pencil. Judge Bateau slammed his hand down on the table, announcing that we were finally getting somewhere – once letters had appeared, then soon words, phrases and enlightenment would follow!

  They really had no clue what they were talking about, but I suppose it wasn’t their fault if they got excited. A Personal Secretary knows, alas, that since the information about the Bs and the Ls was gleaned from a document, then it could have no value. The Seventy-Five didn’t put their trust in documents because they might get lost, fall into the wrong hands or get altered. Important directives, secret instructions and essential orders are only passed on verbally, preferably in whispers. The whole administrative system floated on thin air, relying on delicate unwritten psychological balances, invisible, like a Masonic lodge, where only those initiated could properly decipher the directives. So what was written on paper was, by definition, unimportant, although it sometimes served a different purpose from the one suggested by reading it. I couldn’t imagine any other major company treating the written word so contemptuously, as if they considered it the most primitive and insecure method of communication. If the documents originating from the Palace had any real value, I rather think that they wouldn’t have risked employing an accomplished master forger like me as Personal Secretary, but they obviously couldn’t care less. In all likelihood when the Governor gave me the envelope for Drake, he had intended the contents (which he knew I’d read and wanted me to leak) to be misleading as well as unimportant.

  The young Governor has only demanded that we kept his presence secret – he has placed no other restrictions. He never told us what to say or what not to say. Indeed, the leaking of information has increased as no one can stand keeping their mouths shut, and the Colony has become a hotbed of fact and conjecture that flows freely throughout the quarters, certainly with less restraint than during the previous Bera’s tenure. Colonists are continuously caught off-balance by the odd directives emanating from the shuttered Palace, where they imagine the Bera they knew was still lurking with wild and worrisome intentions. If the laws of the universe continue to be flouted, many will believe that the end of the world must be approaching. It astounded me that the Seventy-Five might have adopted such a risky and revolutionary policy.

  The Priest was manically scribbling Bs and Ls in his Bible and I was almost jealous of him. He clung to his diagrams and his arcane equations like a castaway would a plank of wood or, perhaps like Bateau would a bottle. I, naked in my logic, had no such props to comfort and protect me from the lash of the thought of the Black Ship which shattered my bones. It amazed me that the Priest and the Judge had got swamped by other considerations and ignored the most blatant threat to normality: the mysterious vessel. I was just about to subject myself to another sip of the horrible brew when either Lucifer took pity on me or my mind finally derailed from its one-track train of thought and a monumental revelation struck me: the ship had been sailing diagonally!

  29

  Phileas Book hastily wiped his tears, pretending to rub his eyes, which supposedly had been irritated by the harsh light in the lounge. He surreptitiously glanced across the room to check if the bald man was looking at him. Thankfully, he seemed absorbed by his newspaper.

  It was almost four in the morning and his head throbbed from fatigue and stress. The headache was exacerbated by the sudden Parisian storm that was pelting the windowpanes and by the feeling that he was being watched. He pretended to leaf through some papers so that he could sneak a glance at his unwelcome visitor who was keeping tabs on him as he pretended to read the journal – Book had noticed early on that he hadn’t seen him turn a page.

  The commissioned crossword was slowly progressing but it was his meandros that most occupied his mind. It was stuck through lack of a diagonal, like a carriage mired in mud. That silent presence in the lounge oppressed him and he was still afraid to reveal his thoughts.

  It was the fourth time that they had changed their methodology and Book concluded that the rules of this interrogation were very complicated. He had no doubt that he was being interrogated. Even if he hadn’t realised it from the start, the conclusion was obvious once he had read his own name in the letters. The Seventy-Five interrogate you with gloves on. They might not have the right to arrest you but they can “hire” you. So they had given him a supposed job, trained some spotlights on him and watched him as he worked, expecting his guard to drop as he became absorbed in his task. Very clever. He irritatedly pushed the letters away.

  “Can I ask a question, sir? Where are these six people now?”

  He was expecting to hear the stock answer of “I ask the questions and you answer, Mr Book, not the other way around,” so he was surprised when he saw the newspaper folding, revealing the smiling face of the man. “Finally, Mr Book, I hear a normal question from your lips. I was beginning to believe that you lacked even basic curiosity – anyone else would have asked that from the very beginning. For a start there are seven, not six, including Bianca Bateau, and they are here, on the far side of this floor. We had them brought from the Colony last wee
k for … er, observation.”

  Interrogation, he meant. A shiver went through Book as he contemplated the thought that only a few rooms separated him from the six letter writers. Their interrogation would be much harsher than his.

  “Not that it really interests me, that is …” he turned back to his reams of papers.

  The man couldn’t hold back his laughter.

  “Mr Book, you are a very bad liar.” He unfolded his newspaper again as he added indifferently, “Since I’m here I can answer another question, if you wish.”

  Book noted that his interrogation had indeed entered a new phase. In the beginning the man had refused even to introduce himself, whereas now he was willing to answer questions. The Consortium had shifted their methods too quickly for Book to cope with since his brain was already overloaded as he tried to concoct the fake crossword as well as solve the real Epistleword in his mind.

  He decided to temporarily shelve the Epistleword solution since it was like a pampered paramour, playing hard to get as long as she was sure of his passion and would emerge only when he feigned indifference. So delve into something else and pretend to become absorbed in it. It shouldn’t be long before she dangled some bait to demand his attention. He snapped his notebook shut and leant back in his chair.

  “Were you shocked when you received these letters?”

  The man turned a page of his paper.

  “Much as you might have imagined, Mr Book. Colonists are not allowed to correspond with the Head Office, that privilege belongs solely to the Governor. It was the first time in twenty years that it’d happened. We thought it proper to study them … at least as a singular phenomenon.”

  Book prepared his next question but the man interrupted.

  “My turn, Mr Book. One for you, one for me. I answered yours, so you must answer mine. Why did I see tears in your eyes, just a while ago? That made three times in the past hour and each time when reading Priest Montenegro’s letter.”

  He was looking straight into Book’s eyes. Book felt like a child caught with his fingers in the cookie jar. He assumed his most nonchalant expression.

  “Crass stupidity upsets me,” he snorted.

  “You are too hard, Mr Book. Usually those that descend from the former South are more tolerant of human weaknesses.”

  “These six had plenty of human weaknesses before coming to the Colony. Now they have added inhuman ones after you have transformed them into … whatever they’ve become. Can you understand what you’ve made them do? And the outrageous thing is, they did it. They did it as if hypnotised! The way they admit it in the last page of their letters should make you cringe with shame! They’ve become so disoriented they can’t understand their own thoughts. They lead each other down blind alleys, they are buried beneath thousands of doubts and questions, when there’s only one question and the answer stares them plainly in the face but they’re continuously looking elsewhere. They stumble over it, they fetch up against it, but they can’t see it. Like mice without a sense of smell, starving in a barrel of cheese.”

  “‘Effective management’, I would call that, Mr Book, so I will take that as praise. It isn’t easy to govern so many people from afar, with no communication. We spent years studying our administrative model until we perfected it. Now it’s in a steady state, it regenerates itself without effort on our part. Fear, obedience and discipline come from the governed themselves and are enforced absolutely, something we could never have imposed on them. I wouldn’t be surprised if soon we won’t need a Green Box and perhaps even a Governor.”

  Phileas Book was affronted by the bald man’s arrogance and his pride in the crimes of his company, especially as he boasted so openly about them as if Book had been accepted as a member of their nefarious secret society. He thought he should immediately establish his position as an outsider.

  “You know very well, sir, that if the contents of these letters were publicised, the Consortium would be in serious trouble with the law.”

  The man folded his paper unconcernedly.

  “Mr Book, don’t tell me that you’re going to amuse me by trying to threaten me. It is not our fault if the modern world can’t understand the beauty of our methods, and as for you, we don’t for a moment doubt your confidentiality. If we hadn’t known whom we were dealing with, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Oh, is that right? So with whom are you dealing?” Book demanded, his voice rising.

  “With Phileas Book, of course, who needs us more than we need him, because when he leaves and goes back to his quaint office, there lying on the table waiting for him will be a letter from The Times informing him that, with regret, his employment is being terminated. Phileas Book would then have to find some way of earning a livelihood but would then look at his paltry CV (all two lines of it) with despair. Graduate of 2nd year high school with no work experience apart from a few ridiculous Epistlewords. No professional or non-professional contacts, and communicating with his previous employers via a Post Office Box. Ah! And next week he leaves forty behind and enters his forty-first. Uneducated, unqualified, unsociable and no longer young. Not bursting with prospects, one might say; there will be no elbowing in the queue to employ him. And yet not one of that impressive list of deficiencies condemns him as much as the fact that Phileas Book will always be Phileas Book and will pay for it his whole life.

  “Others, less advantaged than he, would quickly find some employment, some remunerating work, but not Phileas Book. And this is because his method of living is choosing not to live, to absolutely make sure he wouldn’t live. Phileas Book’s secret is that he ‘departed’ this life at fifteen years of age. His body has spent a quarter of a century under water and has decomposed faster than those of Adam and Genevieve Book; Françoise, Manon and Fabienne Book; Gustave Coty and Mélanie Bouatier. Death might set him free but, alas, Phileas Book feels unworthy of such release and so could never allow himself to die painlessly.

  “Who else then but us could maintain him so that he could continue to pay his onerous dues to his dead? We, Mr Book, are prepared to underwrite your survival, to make it more comfortable than your present circumstances, so through living you can continue your self-flagellating penance, since you seem to consider that twenty-five years isn’t enough and you’ll need at least as much again in catharsis. Then perhaps your soul will be allowed to depart exhausted … but not cleansed – that would be asking too much! We will see to it that you continue to bear the whole unmitigated weight of your cross because we specialise in helping guilty consciences climb their Golgotha, taking the long path with none of the shortcuts since that’s the only thing they desire and the only thing that gives them relief.”

  Book turned scarlet and pretended to sort his papers, feeling as if he was inside a small box, in which there was a smaller one where a tiny Book was sorting his papers and a yet smaller box in which a miniscule Book sat sorting papers and so on ad infinitum until the boxes and the Books became so microscopic that they vanished.

  “You don’t realise what you’re dealing with,” he said in a barely audible voice.

  “Your conscience begs for employers like ourselves. The Overflow filled three continents with prospective colonists who are desperate to go to the Dead Sea – we have so many applications that we will never satisfy them all. The crater’s eruption was tremendously violent, it will be ages before the scars heal and we help the process. You need us, Mr Book, that’s why you agreed to come here and never seriously entertained getting up and leaving.”

  Book was having difficulty breaking out of his ever-smaller series of Boxes. The microscopic Books waited for the one that could unlock his minute prison and set them all free, but there was always a smaller one still trapped. He took a deep breath to stop them multiplying further and to break out of this introspection. He mustn’t lose his focus. There was no reason to panic. Nothing the bald man had said had come as a complete surprise. It galled him, however, that the Seventy-Five considered him so weak and cowardl
y that they could parade their crimes in front of him without compunction. They took his silence for granted and thus transformed him into an accomplice, a full, guilty partner. Book tried to breach the walls of the Box encasing him. Okay, so he had few friends, well … none in fact, he might not have relatives, he might not have anything but his paltry little office, a stack of letters from strangers and his familiar ghosts, but he did have his craft. How powerful it was could be proven by his presence there.

  “If it is as bad as you say, sir, then why was I chosen from the whole world as the person you would most like to expose your achievements in the Colony to? You have chosen a very small audience indeed to applaud you. Only extremely romantic artists relish the approbation of a single person and you don’t strike me as such, so why have I been brought here to read the vileness you’ve spawned?”

  “Because we love Epistlewords, Mr Book,” the man said sweetly. “I mustn’t take up more of your time, for you will never finish your work,” and he lifted the newspaper in front of his face again.

  Book grabbed his pencil and angrily scribbled in his notebook. The grotesque crossword was even more ridiculous than Montenegro’s Bs and Ls that the Priest had jotted in his Bible. He was getting fed up with reading about seas without buoyancy, pirates with earrings, Black Ships and green men from Mars! Since he would never find what he was looking for, why delay, hoping for Divine Inspiration? His pen froze while tracing the Bs and Ls, and his eyes bulged. Time stood still. That simpering, pampered paramour, who had resisted his advances all night, suddenly lay with parted legs, lounging on the diagonal of the meandros. She deliberately winked at him. He arose at once and declared he must visit the lavatory.