Enough time had passed that our ways of interacting were suitably altered. Distance, avoidance over the years, had cooled our nervy tetchiness. Like a glancing moment of clarity, we were happy to leave the logomachies to the past. We talked to each other like civilized people, or the most we could approximate it.
I passed across the table the codex Malbar had left me all those years ago and which I had concealed from my father until today. The mute boy seemed to look at it covetously, while Serge eyed it without breaking his concentration from the remainder of his meal. Before telling me he had no use for it, he said he was surprised I could cling so dramatically to the past. I told him that I kept it on behalf of him and Malbar, to remember where I came from, even if I wanted nothing to do with it. He advised me to perish it from my memory if I ever hoped to live down the opprobrious influence of the Sous. Cherelle meanwhile performed admirably the behaviour we had come to expect of her, looking around, unsure if she was wanted at all.
“What the hell is this place?” Serge asked me.
“St. Albans. Where dreams go to die,” I said. “Then cheat death.”
Sergent laughed, and I swear an entire floret of broccoli came sailing out his nostrils. Then he told me that he was tired, so I directed him to one of the empty cots, pointing my finger to the space behind a half wall.
“Is this temporary or will I be staying in this dungeon the entire time?”
“Temporary, but no expense spared.”
“I need a favour, by the way. A few favours, actually.”
“What?”
“I need you to hold on to my luggage for a few days.”
“Langet tor ma,” I cried in disbelief. “What the hell did you smuggle inside?”
“Malbar.”
“What, you mean metaphorically?”
“No, not in the least.”
The tattered trunk was wrapped in a dulled fustian cloth in which I imagined what assemblage of mouldering flesh and bones could rest within its confines. I was transported to the last time my eyes met with those pallid greens whose sockets threatened now to stare back blindly at me. The last of the day’s light crept through the mullioned windows and limned my father in a salvific string of light, as if God was consecrating my father’s actions with approbation. Serge went on to describe how year in and year out, when he went to pay his respects on the anniversary of Malbar’s death, he’d find voleur-caveaus at the poorly tended tomb. The robbers were unearthing the casket to sift through Malbar’s pockets and teeth for gold and silver, though they’d happily settle for any metal that could be melted down and sold for drink money. All they could find though were souvenirs of the Sous group my father had thought it expedient to bury with his comrade, only to later find the secrets of his childhood laid on display at the Port Louis bazaar for any French excursionist to see. These grave-robbing tatterdemalions would sell mourners flowers, only to remove them from the gravestones minutes later to be sold again to the next unlucky batch of soft-headed divs come their way. Impressed by their coordination and efficiency, my father offered them membership in the Sous. Serge now pointed to the boy he was travelling with, introducing us finally.
“We call him Piom.”
“On approval?” I asked.
“He’s a bright boy. Maybe a future ahead of him. He helped me get the body out without arousing too much attention. Then we ground Malbar to dust.”
If this did not enkindle my heart to a sympathy with my father’s intentions, then his dejected face tilting skywards, sucking back on his pottage using kangaroo care, certainly did me in.
“What’s the other favour?” I asked impatiently.
“We need to hold another Sous meeting for the Ontario chapter. Big numbers, so bread and circuses, make a nice big show. This space should accommodate nicely.”
“I’ll not be here then. You can use the space between midnight and six in the morning and I’ll only be on hand to let you in and out.”
“It’s a good thing you agreed, otherwise I’d have you with eminent domain.”
“You will not be seen, am I understood?”
“Not seen, but understood.”
The following night, the shuffling, huddled Mauritian masses came grumbling through the back doors, out of the sopping wet of the rain no less. I read through portions of Malbar’s codex for the first time as I manned the doors. I skipped to the end, dated the fall of 1970, four or five years after Malbar’s death – my last night in Brixton, hence its confessional nature, but by whose hand? The notes told me that Serge would spend years roving from one place to the next at the behest of the Sous leaders, smuggling goods out of Mauritius to every corner of the globe that housed a Sous member, minister, whatever, wherever. He had been on the other side of this arrangement for the better part of twenty years, getting fat on smoked sausages, peanuts, guavas, biscuits manioc from the Rault Biscuiterie. No remedy but patience. This gruelling posting rotated on a yearly basis, usually the result of a hasty nomination and balloting process, but in typical fashion, my father had evaded this civic obligation longer than any other Sous member by wangling his way through the clutches of his overseers, pegging it on Malbar’s shoulders for years. Until of course, he was slammed with a stiff penalty amounting to holding the post for the years he spent absent from my life. It didn’t take a lot of thinking to guess which manzerfes petitioned for the penalty in the first place. Owing to my present friendship with Cherelle, and the fact that the perpetrator could no longer walk, I figured Sergent had let bygones be bygones. Pede poena claudo.
I quietly folded the codex closed and placed it inside one of my pockets, when who should make an appearance? I held the door wide and placed a plank of wood over the three steps leading from the back lane so the Derwish could wheel himself through. He took my hand, pressed it hard without saying anything. The softened look in his eyes registered appreciation.
The commissary was chock-a-block with people I had never seen before, pustular with lowlifes and thugs. There were so many people that there weren’t enough chairs to hold them all. A good half of them were pressed up against the walls and against each other, all vying for a view of the centre table, where my father, Pourri, and the Derwish were seated. Rag-and-bone men with pots slung over their shoulders puttered around in circles, bookies cleaned their noses and groomed themselves leisurely. The nanier a foutes who were barely bothered enough to attend were mithering about the raffish accommodations. Anyone who beat out Her Majesty’s pleasure found their way into our scumhole to dish and dawdle, to drudge and dinge, and whatever else was in store for the night. Before the commencement of the proceedings, Pourri apologized for the Bowling Green’s continued absence at meetings, citing his inability to make any connecting flight on time. Pourri assured the members that the Green would resume his duties at the beginning of the new month, that receipts for their dues would be tabulated as swiftly as humanly possible.
“Thank you for consenting to leave your homes on this February filldyke morning,” Pourri intoned. “We know it has not been easy for some of you, and your commitment to order has been noted. We are up to the thwarts with members tonight, and this should be taken as the advantageous gauge of our prosperity that it is.”
I mimicked these words under my breath. An older man who was vaguely reminiscent of someone I could not place, and who stood beside me with a wry neck, took his notice away from Pourri. He elbowed me in my ribs. When he addressed me, he looked as if there was a dirty word written on his temple that he was trying vainly to read.
“That’s a mighty good impersonation,” he said. “But you should have more respect for these gentlemen. They’ve brought us up out of the dark ages! We have representation now.”
I took my screwdriver out of my back holster and stirred his coffee for him.
“You look a little green around the gills, my son. Make sure you are getting enough iron.”
I stepped away from the meeting, and clawed my way back to the cots that I had
arranged for the night. Half of them had been disturbed by attendees who needed something to do and had no better alternative than to twirl their bottoms into my turned-down beds. Over echoing outpourings, I found myself a nook where I knew I would not be noticed. I pulled out the codex from my pocket once more. I leafed through its pages again, skimming through its illiterate protocols and half-scribbled vendettas with care this time. I realized then that its defining feature was that it was annotated in red ink by Malbar’s hand. Sous Codex #M04-1965. Diable p marier en bas pied piment. My life’s intermittent phases. Chapter the first . . .
One portion of the book held my interest more so than any other. On the endpapers at the back of the book, which I had somehow missed moments earlier, Malbar had bled out the thoughts of his acceptance into the group. He rants about a police officer that won’t relent in a gutless crusade to arrest children coming of age for petty infractions of the law, who invents bogus charges on which to incriminate even the most pathetic of ne’er-do-wells . . . A devil of a liar. Nothing short of World Class Superlative. He looks like shit at a tea party though.
This officer’s mother is a proud, matronly poulterer who inherits a tannery from her father in the twilight of her life. She invests all her hopes in her son continuing either of her trades after she passes, clearing away the mystifications of chicken and leather preparation, and starting him on his way with a post as a lowly attendant in her Taylorist pantry. Instead, the son finds himself disposed to more fraternal obsessions.
The constabulary ensorcells him with the prospect of city-wide recognition – electrifying his senses. But he is able to disobey the orders of his mother only after completing a solid decade’s worth of work at the tannery, a feat of endurance that will serve him well in later years, especially in his travels as a smuggler. Sergent taking over for me because I have the sickness. Leave it to him to try to outclass a dead man. I leave as a corpse. What’s his excuse for looking the way he does?
The mention of my father gives me pause, as I recall the discussions over Serge taking Malbar’s place in the smuggling operations, worked out days, months in advance of the Blue Boar meeting.
The poulterer’s son is forced to find able replacements so as not to shame the family business. Three childhood friends, but more importantly, former employees of the poulterer herself, whose collective intellect, capability, and application can successfully masquerade as his own person before the failing eyesight of his mother, are chosen. The Derwish handles the business operations, the Bowling Green the accounting, and Pourri provides the barrel-chested services of muscling out competing merchants. The poulterer’s son leaves the family business in safe hands, while he polices infested gutters and canals of Port Louis. Stuck with Deathrot, Liferot, and Crotchrot at helm. At least Serge was top bloke, easy to get along with.
I have to check myself from thinking that Malbar has become confused in his last days and is crossing wires in the case of where history is concerned, that even a purposeful error handled with coordination is still an error. There is too much conviction in his voice to suggest something malapropos. It is the lies that I have been fed that are out of keeping with Malbar’s confession.
The poulter-son begins to regret this decision when news spreads that the Mauritian Police Force are not planning on renewing their existing contracts with their equipment suppliers. The M.P.F. are looking at local leather alternatives to provide holsters, slings, and belts on a mass, nationwide scale. Grievously sensing a career mistake, the poulter-officer prostrates himself before his former colleagues, begging to be allowed back into the fold of business operations. Sergent is making mess of pants right now because he’s bet on the wrong horse. This is what professionals in our trade term “selling wet blue to a wholesale upholsterer” or stupid way to give away money. Reluctant to split the already thrice divided profits into a smaller sum to accommodate the return of the young constable, the Trinity of Idiots grudgingly accepts him as a consultant, ignorant as they are of the finer points on sammying and fatliquoring. These blockheads try to curtain coat a rawhide by urinating on it at intervals. Before long, the tannery is responsible for most of the country’s leather production, which is how the Sous hit upon the idea of the sale of illegal passports, based on their already extant contracts to provide the leather used in state-issued passport books. The only trouble is that authentic passports are only good for getting out of the country for a spell – never permanently. The Sous begin to stifle under the short-sightedness of this scheme. Itching from barely below the surface is the feeling that greater opportunities can be seized if only someone is vainglorious enough to stand and take notice of them, but in Pourri’s case it actually is just crotchrot.
Leave it to Officer Sergent to “consult” his way to an equal share of the company to which he once bore sole ownership. He devises ways to exile his countryfolk on the allure and promise of the first world’s convenience – through a bellicose kind of hucksterism no less – only to later help emigrants repine for the same country they feel ejected them in the first place through her lack of concern and unnerving economic minginess. This is achieved through postcards, delicacies past their sell-by date, or a musical strain or two of their native tongue; anything to remind wearied travellers of the ties that bind them hard and fast.
The four Sous, who outgrow the prepubertal charm of petty crime, only lack a way to lend their toings and froings between countries an air of redoubtable fatality. A Réunnionais sot, or so they call me, employed at the tannery as a scudder, and whose greatest philosophical achievement is in the proposition that he can no longer kill himself with impunity – Ican’tevenbringmyselftobuytherope – because he has given birth to a daughter (noblesse oblige), provides this assurance. The Sous had known the Réunnionais for years, but were mindful of his otherness. They don’t like the sound of my fricatives . . . They returned his overtures of friendship with laughter for a time. They hate me. Until the day they discover that his unique, exploitable citizenship can give all future Sous migration an air of emigratory imperium. They love me. The Sous are reborn on that day, reborn into something more odious and worldly. My father, the discredited constable, secures this majestic future with the masterstroke of marriage. Serge takes Virma off my hands. I am a free man again. Then, he asks his friend and future father-in-law Malbar to sponsor him as a French citizen of Réunion Island.
After reading these revelations, I spat across the whirlpool of forlorn faces gesticulating in a frenzy. I felt unsettled. That was Serge’s greatest lie if there ever was one. Perhaps an ex-career in policing was particularly valuable in smuggling operations. I didn’t want to believe that Serge had been the policeman the entire time, but it made a knotty kind of sense. I was brought back to my brief interaction with Officer Holmes. There was something familiar about him, after all. How things could have worked out differently if Serge had stayed on the right side of the law when we emigrated. Why, a mere equivalency exam could have made Officer Holmes and Officer Mayacou practically bosom buddies. I spat again for good measure.
The Sous pilgrims were still hanging on intently to every word being discussed by the three grizzled drizzleds. I now noticed that the Derwish was wearing my grandmother’s mantelet around his shoulders, only now it was decked out in white polka dots the size of apples, with passport stamps in the middle of them. He was holding forth at the centre of the dining hall like a character from a mystery play. Pourri was presently treating a melamine ladle as if it was the Holyrood, thrusting it in the air over and over again screaming, “Back, you spikenards! Back, I say!”
All these sad men and women in attendance had left Mauritius with the gleam of dreams in their eyes. Malbar’s Réunnionais associates sponsored them as relatives, and then these emigrants found themselves stranded in foreign climes, penniless and unable to go back.
The Sous had deliberately picked for their candidates the most inept and dependent of undesirables, so that they could not help but congregate at th
e dead hand of Sousian gobbledygook, as they did today, and four more times each year. They paid exorbitant premiums just a few hundred dollars shy of a pair of plane tickets, so that they could have a small flavour of home, a memento from their loved ones, all the while brandishing their five-cent rupee coins on their lapels or buttonholes that have long since become their badges of identification between one another, lost in the alleys and roads they found themselves aimlessly wandering. These dejected souls abandoned all purpose and character, and perhaps even mistook being passed over in a crowd for the highest form of assimilation. Their language evolved, their grammar poked around, their phonetics bent and curved with the angularity of a drawl. Yet they survived on account of their awe of the happy land before them and their obeisance to its customs, because survival never asks for much more than an indignity or two for good measure. The fatliquor people had treated their charges as they would a side of rawhide, positioning their victims between opposing ends of desperation and hope.
And thus the heavens and the earth, the Mauritians in their wastelands and the house which my father built, since conjoined with mine own house of the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, were completed in all their vast array. So We blessed the last day and made it holy, because on it We rested from all Our work that We had done in creation.
Grand Menteur Page 13