by Lavie Tidhar
At least the Sphinx was too large to be moved, he thought, and laughed, and he walked up and down stairs, circling the great building until his feet ached, and saw no one following him, until he arrived at last back where he had started and went to get a coat that wasn’t his.
— litter in the desert —
It had been the site of wars for millennia. Human migration travelled back and forth across its expanse of fine yellow sand, from Africa into Asia and the rest of the world, then back in a succession of colonizers. The Ten Commandments shared, in historical order, by the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims, were given to Moses in that desert, as he fled the Egyptian Pharaoh’s army. In 1518 the Sinai was taken over by the Ottomans; in 1906, by the British. In 1942 Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps stormed their way through Egypt, on their way to taking Palestine for the German Reich; in the event they were stopped at El Alamein. In 1948 Egyptian forces travelled through the Sinai in the direction of a Palestine hastily abandoned by the British, and in 1967 Israeli forces made the same journey in the opposite direction. The desert was littered with unexploded bombs, mines, rockets, grenades, the remnants of untold wars, all waiting patiently in the desert sun for someone who had read the Ten Commandments, but had stopped at Thou Shalt Not Kill.
That October saw the usual migration of sun-seeking tourists to the beaches of the Red Sea. They stayed in small sea-side camps, in modest, airy bamboo huts. They came there to sunbathe, to snorkel, to flirt, to relax. The smell of burning hashish was not unknown there. Further down the coast, and more upmarket, stood the Hilton Taba Hotel, a multi-storey building offering the more discerning tourist a place to stay.
The first bomb hit the front of the Hilton Hotel at 21:45. It destroyed the entrance hall, blew the hotel windows inwards into the rooms, and caused the upper floors to collapse. Corpses landed by the swimming pool, and thick smoke prevented families from escaping down the hotel stairs. Others were buried in the rubble. Fifty kilometres away in Ras-al-Shitan, the Devil’s Head, two further explosions erupted, the first one taking out a restaurant and several nearby huts in the Moon Island resort. It seemed, for a while, an appropriate name.
The bombs were made with washing machine timers, phone parts and modified gas cylinders. There were packed with TNT and explosives found in the Sinai, proving once again the truth that nothing is ever wasted in a desert economy. The bombs were carried by cars. The bombers died in their respective explosions. Amongst the wounded in the three attacks were the British Consul’s wife and daughter. Amongst the dead were Egyptians, Jewish and Arab Israelis, Italians and Russians.
The next year, on Revolution Day, a second attack killed eighty-eight people, mostly Egyptians, a little up the coast in Sharm-el-Sheikh.
Mo’s last case
——
There was a little bit of fine yellow sand in the left pocket of Mo’s coat. The coat was made of wool and was too hot for this time of year. Cigar smoke had woven itself into the fabric, giving off an aroma that conjured for Joe images of private clubs and men in smoking jackets sipping sherry by a roaring fire. He’d put his hands in the pockets and was exploring them. He found a packet of cigars, one left inside, and as he stepped out of the British Museum he unwrapped the cigar and lit it. He stood outside in the sunshine, the coat itching against his body. He thought — maybe Mo just forgot it here. There might not be anything more complicated than that.
But he could feel the small, hard object inside the coat, against his chest. A sewn-in pocket, he thought. He walked down the wide steps and sat down in the courtyard, far enough that he could easily watch both the gate and the museum’s entrance. He could see nothing suspicious, and yet had the feeling of being watched. He smoked the cigar, watching people. Also in Mo’s pockets were sweet wrappers, a handful of penny coins, two pen caps with no pens, a black round stone, two creased and bent business cards, one for Madam Seng’s, the other even more interesting.
He could feel the weight of the unseen object against his chest.
He realised then that his reasoning had been wrong. He had thought the shots outside the Red Lion were fired at him. But what if they weren’t? What if, despite appearances, it was Mo who was the real target?
What had Mo been working on? He said he mainly did divorces. Perhaps, Joe thought, the man hadn’t been entirely honest with him.
He could feel the object against his chest. He smoked the cigar down to a stub, a pile of grey-black ash collecting at his feet. He threw down what was left of the cigar and crushed it with his foot. He was waiting for something, he realised. The sense of being watched increased. He felt suddenly angry. He was tired of waiting. He stood up. ‘Come on, then!’ he shouted. People turned their heads to look. A couple of Japanese girls hurried away from him, towards the steps. ‘Come on! You want to take a pop at me? What are you waiting for!’
There was a silence all around him. The courtyard seemed frozen, the sunlight caught in glass, dust motes and little tiny particles of sand that had travelled all the way across Europe from the Sahara desert hovering motionless in the air. He felt he was the only person alive, and all around him the living-dead were halted like statues in the frozen movements that went nowhere. ‘Come on,’ he said, with less force. His voice was brittle in the open air. There was no reply.
‘Fuck it,’ Joe said. Then he walked away.
lost again
——
He walked aimlessly through the London streets. He had the sense of being followed but could see no one. The early morning’s energy had left him and he felt heavy and dull. At an alleyway off Oxford Street he went through Mo’s coat. He found a small notebook in the sewn-in pocket, hard-bound, with neat, blue-inked notes handwritten inside. He put the notebook in his own pocket and dumped the coat. Somewhere in the maze of streets he found a tiny pub and sat away from the window and drank beer. The pub specialised in sausages. The menu listed around twenty different kinds. The English, he thought, had once conquered most of the known world, but their cooking hadn’t improved as a result. It was quiet inside The Dog & Duck. It seemed to him he was spending his entire life in bars and pubs, and wondered if it had ever been different. He couldn’t remember. He knew that what he should do is dump Mo’s journal, forget Chinatown, leave behind him the unwanted mysteries that were unravelling like the ball of twine in the Minotaur’s maze. He had a simple task to perform, only it was becoming a lot less simple. The ball of twine was entangled, knotted, but it was still a single twine, he knew that, in a deeper part of him where his night’s absolute darkness was. He didn’t know how long he sat in the pub but it was getting darker outside. It wasn’t yet night-time darkness, just a grey shapeless absence of light, a London summer day. It began to rain. He lit a cigarette and his mouth tasted bitter. He finished his pint and ordered another. After the second one he felt better, like streaks of light appearing against a grimy window-frame. He thought about the smell of opium, which was sweet, but hard to describe in words. He thought about the girl who hired him and his mind conjured up her image, the serious face and the pinned-back, delicate ears, and the soft brown hair, her hand on his, her voice as she said, ‘I want you to find him.’
He couldn’t find anyone and least of all himself. He thought about her and it was strangely comforting. He was feeling dissociated from the world around him, as if he were a man in a silent film walking through empty, pre-War streets in a dream, an invisible man: but thoughts of the girl eased his isolation. Or perhaps it was the beer.
Fuzzy-wuzzies, he thought. Was it the world that had become fuzzy while I remain in focus still? Or was it the other way around, the world still there, but I go in and out of focus, like that girl in Paris whose name I never learned but who knew my own, like Mo who was both there and not there, a shadow moving in a world of shadows, doing—
Doing what? Upsetting the shadows, Joe decided. That was what Mo had been doing. He pulled out Mo’s journal and squinted at it, but the blue letters ran blurred. Joe took
a sip from the beer and ran the liquid around his mouth, rinsing.
He swallowed and opened the journal again.
If we are here, so must they be.
There were no dates, no detailed drawings. Just a series of scribbled notes, scattered haphazardly. He leafed through the notebook and realised only the first seven pages had been used. The rest were blank. On the first page, in bold letters, as if Mo had traced the lines of the letters again and again, almost cutting through the page; surrounded in a jagged frame, the blue inked so deep it was almost black; one question.
But where?
On page three, towards the bottom. Followed but lost them at Heathrow.
Page four, half-way down. Saw them again today. Tracked them down to Holborn. Lost again.
On page two, at the very bottom, in small letter still neat, right towards the corner: Met R. At BN. Disagree re: inv. Tld him to F hmslf.
Joe approved of the sentiment. He looked at the note again. Met R. at BN… He pulled out again the second card he had found in Mo’s coat. It was almost identical to the one Joe himself carried, the one his client gave him in the pub of the Regent’s Palace. Almost. He turned the card over. Rick, handwritten on the back. It matched — and assume BN for the Blue Note. Threads of twine all knotted together… Who was Mo following? Not Longshott, Mike, paperback writer, address unknown. Them. Lost them at Heathrow. Where did they go?
He thought of black shoes and a chequered shirt. Thought — Vientiane nice this time of year…
Final note, page seven, near the top. Found them. Boxed neatly underneath: British Museum Underground Station.
Joe got up. The bartender was washing glasses. Joe asked for a map of the London underground. Took it back to his seat. Studied it.
Wasn’t entirely surprised to discover there was no such station.
another better world
——
Half an hour later he was sitting at the Edwin Drood looking across the street at the unmarked door of Madam Seng’s. He had to overcome a physical sensation of revulsion as he pushed open the grimy doors of the pub. The Edwin Drood was badly-lit with oil lamps that spluttered and fumed in low dark alcoves. Where the Dog & Duck had been all Victorian splendour in mirrors and gilt, The Edwin Drood was Victorian in the sense of open sewers and resurrection men. The bartender was old, bald, with age spots the size and colour of two-pence coins on his head and small, narrow eyes and white bushy eyebrows, and the same stringy hair grew out of his ears like magic beanstalks. He glared at Joe, but served him a drink in silence, and as Joe carried the pint of warm beer to a table by the dirty windows he felt the bartender’s gaze fall on him, unwavering. The smell of opium was strong in The Edwin Drood, but it was an after-smell, a clinging, lingering odour that rose from the silent drinkers. Joe half-watched them as they sat there, rigidly holding on to their drinks, not looking at each other, not looking outside either: looking down, into the drinks or into themselves, into that dark secret place the mind goes when paradise is withdrawn from it.
They were wretched creatures. The smell of opium clung to their clothes but it was not in them. They were in turn in shivers and in sweat. Their eyes were haunted.
Opium, Joe thought. Just as it could take away all pain, its absence could hurt worse. Here were the unfortunates who could not cross into the promised land. It lay just beyond the windows, a wonderland of the mind, but they could not cross the desert that was Newport Place. Was it the momentary absence of money? An attempt to rebel against the pull of the drug? Or were they merely waiting, in mute agony, anticipating the rolled balls of sticky resin, the long graceful pipes, the hiss of a flame and the murmur of a girl as she heated the pipe, as the vapours began to roll towards their mouths and send them at last to another, better world?
He watched out the window and saw the shades of Madam Seng’s customers as they approached the unmarked doors. He watched them knock, the door half-open — watched the moment of judgement. Those who were chosen disappeared inside. Those rejected carried their rejection with them. Some came into The Edwin Drood and joined the brotherhood of the silent. At least, Joe thought, that explained the clientele.
He watched a solitary figure approach the door and decided to make his move then. He got up and went outside and the cool air was an awakening. He hurried his steps and reached the man in the long black coat just as he was knocking on the door. The man was carrying a round metal canister under his arm.
‘Let me help you with that,’ Joe said, just as the door opened. The man turned to him, blinked, said, ‘You’re the bloke was in the shop the other day—’
‘You bring movie?’ the man in the doorway, same one as the last time; speaking a moment before he registered Joe, then — ‘I told you not to—’
The round metal canister — the man in the coat saying ‘Hey, careful with that!’ — taking it from his arms and lifting, in one smooth motion — ‘come here!’ from the man in the doorway as the metal lifted, connected with his chin, the sound of the jawbone jarring, perhaps breaking, and Joe kneed him, hard — the man in the coat saying, ‘What the hell are you—’ the man in the doorway collapsing—
Joe pushed the door open and went inside.
London after midnight
——
‘Is that the film reel for tonight?’ a voice said. ‘Thank you, I’ll take that.’ The metal canister was taken from his hands, and Joe stared.
She wore a Japanese kimono but her face was a Mekong Delta mix, the eyes of a wild mountain creature, hauntingly beautiful, flecked with gold, looking coolly at Joe, studying him. She was not young but it was impossible to call her old. There was Vietnamese blood in there, and French, and Hmong, and there were laughter lines at the corners of her eyes and Joe thought of the graffiti he had seen that said, Madam Seng is a Snake Head. It did not refer to her face.
‘Can I help you?’ she said. Her English was tinged with Indochina traces. The eyes looking at him, not blinking, studying him, the fallen figure of the doorman behind him. The was no sign of the man from the bookshop. He must have run off, Joe thought. Sensible, in the circumstance. He felt half-inclined to do the same.
‘I’m looking for Madam Seng,’ he said.
‘Why?’ she said. And then, ‘This place is not for you.’
‘Is it the dress code?’ Joe said. ‘That’s it, right? You don’t like my shoes?’
‘No,’ the woman said. ‘Though your shoes could do with a polish, if you want to know the truth.’
‘Imagine an opium den with a door policy,’ Joe said. He felt the urge to bend down and wipe his shoes with his sleeve, but fought it. The eyes regarded him with a trace of amusement. ‘Imagine such an establishment without one.’
The doorman groaned behind them. The woman said, ‘Get up.’ She spoke quietly but her voice carried. The doorman groaned again, rolled on his side and pushed himself up.
‘Sorry about your doorman,’ Joe said.
‘Not as sorry as he’ll be.’
The doorman scowled at Joe, then clutched his jaw. ‘Go,’ the woman said. The doorman went.
‘You are Madam Seng?’
She ignored him. ‘This place is not for you,’ she said again. This time there was no amusement and the eyes were opaque jade.
Joe shrugged. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m here now.’
‘Opium is for people who have already lost something,’ the woman said. ‘Not for people who are already lost.’
‘That’s fascinating,’ Joe said. She was trying to rattle him. He wouldn’t let her. ‘Now if you could just answer a few questions…’
The woman smiled. ‘Follow me,’ she said. She turned her back on him, the canister of film still in her hands.
Joe followed.
The entrance to Madam Seng’s was a dark, low-ceilinged corridor. At the end of the corridor was a beaded curtain. Madam Seng did not push it open, but glided through it, the beads parting before her with a light tinkling sound. Beyond…
Be
yond was a large room. Two openings, also lightly curtained, led off into other rooms. The air was thick with the smell of opium; the lights were low, paper lanterns the colour of blood glowing faintly, illuminating a scene of drugged languor. There were low sofas, cushioned with embroidered dragons and stars, on which reclined Madam Seng’s faithful customers. A three-legged metal brazier was burning charcoal in one corner. Madam Seng’s girls moved softly between the lying customers, both women and men, holding fresh pipes for those deep gone into the dream journey, heating the opium in its metal bowls, murmuring softly in languages the customers neither knew nor cared to. Joe felt light-headed, his arms heavy. The woman held his hand. He whispered, ‘Madam Seng,’ and she nodded. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she said, for the third time.
‘None of us should,’ he said, though he didn’t know what he meant by that.
In one corner of the room he saw a projector. The sound of the moving reel was a constant whisper in the room. Against the opposite wall a film was playing, without sound, in black and white. The beam of light travelled from the machine to the wall, catching motes of dust and curls of smoke in its path.
Title: Weird things have happened there in the last five years.
Scene: A maid stands at an open door, staring out in horror. She screams without sound.
Joe: ‘I am investigating a murder.’
Madam Seng smiled with her mouth. ‘Please, sit down,’ she said. There was an empty berth beside the projector, facing the far wall. Madam Seng fluffed a pillow and gestured for Joe to sit. He sat down gratefully, his limbs heavy. Madam Seng perched beside him.