by Clark, Mark
‘So she has the entire book now, does she?’ he muttered to himself. Then back to Stefan he asked, ‘Anything else?’ He was still facing the window so as not to show his growing anger.
‘Just one more thing,’ Stefan replied. ‘Last night I came back late to pick up some things and I heard an argument in the president’s office.
FLASHBACK
INT.OUTSIDE THE PRESIDENT’S OFFICE.LATE
Stefan is gathering some papers from his desk when he hears raised voices coming from the president’s office.
He moves towards the door.
ELIZABETH (OFF)
And I want you to stop! Please stop! Oh, I don’t know what to think any more. Why isn’t it helping?
SEBASTIAN(OFF)
Give it time. Give it time. Don’t you see? They will come to us.
ELIZABETH (OFF)
That’s not what I mean. It’s not as clear . . . Oh, I don’t know what I mean.
SEBASTIAN(OFF)
It will all make sense in the end, Elizabeth. Trust me.
Stefan grits his teeth, knocks loudly and pushes through the door.
INT.THE PRESIDENT’S OFFICE.NIGHT
Elizabeth composes herself. She turns to face Stefan as he forces his way through the door.
In the background, Sebastian has his face away from Stefan, towards the window.
ELIZABETH
Stefan? What can I do for you?
STEFAN
I heard voices, Miss Dawson, and I was making sure that you were alright.
Stefan casts a glance towards Sebastian’s back.
ELIZABETH
Yes. I’m fine, Stefan. Mind you take your brolly now. It’s still raining.
SEBASTIAN
Yes, President Dawson.
Stefan bows politely and withdraws from the room.
On its far side he looks concerned, before leaving the darkened room.
DISSOLVE
‘Which brings us to tonight,’ Stefan concluded with a large sigh. He looked up to Leslie for advice.
‘Gentlemen,’ Leslie said, after a long silence. ‘There is an old Chinese curse which says, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ Well, I’m afraid we’re about to.’
Chapter 9
It was as Leslie had feared. Elizabeth refused to take any of his calls or requests for a meeting. She also refused to remove the guards posted outside both the library and his radio room, or to give him a pass to enter either. He was unable to resume experiments on the transference machine, or contact with the far away cities with which he, he kept reminding himself, had made contact possible in the first place. She had cut him completely out of the picture. It seemed that his sole contribution to the advancement of Corporate City was to be the motorised scooter.
‘And I’m telling you,’ Damien replied to Leslie’s suggestion that they break into his radio room, ‘if you do that, you’re on your own, mate. I may be your friend but I also value my life.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means, old chum, that at the moment you and me are on the right side of the law. And we’re doing alright. Pretty soon those scooters will roll on out and we’ll be famous. Okay, so the president’s cut you out. So what? She’s the president, for God’s sake. The president always has the final word. But let me remind you of those rioters from a couple of months ago. They were all executed as criminals of the state. So keep your head down, or you might get it chopped off.’
‘Elizabeth wouldn’t do that to me.’ Leslie was staggered at the thought.
‘Maybe, maybe not, but she didn’t hesitate to use your services and then piss you off, did she?’
‘I’m certain that she wouldn’t have me killed. If I’m any judge of character . . .’
‘Well obviously you’re not,’ Damien interrupted, ‘because until a couple of days ago you thought that the sun shone out of her arse and that she was in love with you.’
‘I’m sure there was something there. I’m sure there was.’
‘Les, I love ya, mate, but I’ve gotta be honest, you’re like the bloke who goes to a strip joint and thinks the stripper’s coming on to ‘im. Once you’ve paid your money, she’s on to the next guy.’
‘That’s an ugly analogy.’
‘True,’ admitted Damien, ‘but it fits, doesn’t it? Look, she flirted with you, she flirted with me, now she’s flirting with what’s ‘is face, the librarian. I’ve known her family for a long time, mate, and I’m telling you – this may be a democracy in name, but the executive power is usually in the hands of about six families in this city. They’re a law unto themselves. Elizabeth’ll play one off against the other until she gets what she wants. She’s a politician, mate, and a successful one at that. Don’t cross her, or you’ll regret it.’
This made Leslie reflective. ‘That’s what Nick said too.’
‘Oh yeah? How is he by the way?’ asked Damien, glad to be off such a thorny subject.
‘Still sick,’ replied Leslie. ‘I’m going to see him after this.’
‘Give him my regards.’
An hour later Leslie did so, but Nicholas was in no fit state to reply. His meal sat, untouched, on a tray in front of him. He lay back with his eyes shut.
Leslie sat at the end of Nicholas’ bed staring at him, squinting with thought. He moved beside him and closely examined his fingernails. Then he felt the skin around his jowls. A puzzled expression crossed his face. He plucked a hair from his head but the sick man was so out to it that he didn’t even flinch. Leslie found a plastic glove by the bed-side and gently placed the hair sample into it.
He stared intently at Nicholas from close up for some time but the patient did not stir. Then Leslie looked at the dinner plate. It was a seafood dish of some kind and it was prepared elegantly.
‘Edgar!’ Leslie shouted and soon Edgar’s face appeared at the door. ‘Did you make this food for your father?’
‘No,’ replied Edgar, ‘that came from Macquarie Street, courtesy of the government.’
‘Are you eating this stuff?’
‘No. Remember? I told you. I’m on my own diet.’
‘That’s right,’ replied Leslie, pensively. Then, moved by a sudden impulse, he took a chunk of crab meat from the plate and pocketed a small, sealed bottle of drinking water. ‘I don’t think your father will miss this,’ he said. And he left.
Three hours later, he returned. He appeared to be angry. He stormed past Edgar, who had opened the door for him, and he blustered his way quickly towards Nicholas’ room.
Edgar followed. ‘Is everything alright?’ he asked as he entered the room, where he was amazed to find Leslie‘s bottom in the air and his head searching under his father’s sick bed. He soon emerged with a test tube filled with urine.
‘Can you cook?’ he asked Edgar.
‘Not really,’ stammered the boy, ‘Dad usually . . .’
‘It’s time to start. Your father is not to eat any more of this prepared food. Throw it away, but, if anyone asks, tell them he’s eating it. Do you understand?’
Edgar nodded. ‘Yes, but . . .’
‘No questions. Not yet. Just do it.’ He foraged in his pockets with his free hand. ‘Here. Give these to your father whenever he’ll take them.’
‘What are they?’
‘Charcoal tablets. If you can get him to eat some burned toast that will help too.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Leslie took the young man by both shoulders. ‘Edgar you must trust me. Do you?’
Edgar nodded.
‘Good, then pack two suitcases: one for yourself and one for your father.’
‘We don’t have any suitcases,’ replied Edgar, somewhat bewildered. ‘Les, there’s nowhere to go. Is there?’
‘Son,’ said Leslie sadly, ‘just do it.’ He left hurriedly.
Edgar stood, staring at the door for some time after Leslie had passed through it. The whole encounter had been so rapid and strange that he gave his
head a quick short, sharp shake to convince himself that he hadn’t imagined the whole thing.
*
Back at home in his apartment, Leslie had assembled a small makeshift lab and was examining Nicholas’ urine sample, when he heard the same voice he had heard a thousand times before, but had never actually listened to. It was that of a wretched man with a red beard who made a nuisance of himself by standing on soap boxes all around the city. He was a well known stirrer. He must have been thrown into gaol at regular intervals because every so often he would disappear for a period of time and then reappear, bellowing out as vociferously as ever. Leslie tossed him a few coins occasionally. The man appeared to have a wife and young child. Whenever Leslie threw money into the hat the woman would quickly scramble to protect the charity. But although Leslie had always professed to be a man of the people, he had to confess he had never really felt any compassion for the man and his family and he had certainly never really listened to the message he was espousing – until now.
On this particular evening the man had chosen below Leslie’s window to trumpet his anti-government message. Leslie stood quietly above, on his balcony, listening.
‘Class struggle is the basis of all human relations!’ the large bedraggled man was hollering. ‘We have nothing but our labour to sell! We have no means of production and we are kept from the reigns of government by the ruling class who perpetuate our poverty as a means of controlling us!’ On he rattled, to a largely empty street, for it had started to rain again and most of the city street-dwellers were seeking whatever protection they could from the harsh late July night, huddled around bins alight with whatever scraper-dweller flammable throw-a-ways they could find. Flat against the wall behind the shouting man, bravely protecting a child from the ever-increasing rain was a woman, bundled up in filthy grey rags.
Leslie bit his lip with indecision, but eventually nodded like a samurai to some invisible shogun and minutes later the filthy man, woman and child were in his lounge room shivering beside the small heater.
The man, whose hair was shoulder-length and matted beyond redemption, eyed his host with great suspicion. Leslie handed him a bowl of meat and motioned that they should eat.
‘There’s no need for sign language,’ stated the man, gruffly, as he handed the bowl to his wife. ‘I can understand English.’
‘Sorry,’ replied Leslie. ‘I feel as awkward about this as you do.’
‘I don’t feel awkward,’ said the man.
‘You don’t?’
‘No. I’m just wondering why the hell you brought us up here?’
‘That stuff you’re always shouting about. That’s Marxism, isn’t it?’
‘What of it?’ asked the large man through a mouth full of minced meat.
‘How did you come to know that?’
The man stopped chewing. He looked Leslie up and down. ‘Are you the police?’
‘No,’ replied Leslie. ‘I’m one of the two newly elected consuls and I’m interested in your thoughts.’
‘Why?’
‘I want to change the way we live in this city. I want more social equality. I want to understand the needs of the poor.’
The man erupted with laughter at this. ‘Do you now? Well, let me tell you something, my fine richly feathered friend - what the poor need are the basics of life and some sort of opportunity to raise themselves out of the gutter. If you can give us sanitation and access to doctors, that’d be a start.’ He cast his eye around the room. ‘But it’s tough, isn’t it, sir, to inveigle your economy with lesser economies? It’s hard to be munificent when your island is bountiful and those surrounding are poorly stocked. It means that you soothe your wretched moral conscience at a cost. You might have to give up some of your finery to achieve your objective.’ He scoffed some more meat before returning the bowl to his mud-besmirched woman, who would not have been out of place as a human in the original version of the ‘Planet of the Apes’.
Leslie’s eyes were drawn momentarily to the woman’s breast and to the tiny child suckling there. Pity pierced him. ‘I want to help,’ he said quietly.
The man squinted at Leslie, as if trying to gauge his mettle, then relaxed the tension in his face as if he had made some decision. ‘Alright,’ he said, after downing a glass of water, ‘I wasn’t always living in the streets. I used to live in the scrapers. I was born into wealth, but I chose to give that up when I realised that I was living a lie – as you are now.’
‘Living a lie?’ replied Leslie, incredulous. ‘I’m not living a lie. I’m trying to help. And I’m not sure that I believe your story anyway. No one would leave the comfort of the scrapers for the poverty of the streets.’
‘I did,’ replied the man simply. ‘And you are living a lie.’
Leslie was becoming annoyed. He had invited this man into his home. The dishevelled fellow was all wet and stinking and here he was ungratefully telling him that he, a consul, didn’t care about the welfare of people in Corporate City. The nerve of the man.
But the man hadn’t finished.
‘Let me tell you something, sir. We don’t know each other’s name and neither of us need to. You’re rich and I’m poor and that’s the way the world goes – unless – those in power think about those they govern, rather than themselves. Public office should be a burden freely endured, not an invitation to the riches of the pigs’ trough. My whole adult life I’ve strained to be heard over the clinking of champagne glasses. And, quite frankly, consul, I’m sick of it.’
Throughout the man’s tirade Leslie had watched him. He was ursine; a bear of a man; almost Viking-like with his massive red beard, long straggly hair and all wrapped in Hessian rags. Leslie was struck by the man’s passion; by his conviction and also by his eloquence. He had been well educated, certainly, so it was probably true that he had once been a scraper-dweller. And hadn’t he, himself, chosen to live in the lower levels of the scrapers to achieve public office? And wasn’t what the man was espousing precisely what he himself believed? He stormed his thoughts to a climax and blurted, ‘I’m going to break the law. There’s probably corruption occurring in high places and I want to stop it. I’m going to commit treason and I want you to help me. Everyone else I know has too much to lose.’
The admission was electric. Leslie stopped. He couldn’t believe what he had just said. But there it was. He had said it. It couldn’t be unsaid. He watched carefully as the stunned man stared back at him. His wife also looked at him with clear, intelligent eyes, then they looked, one to the other, and back to him. Pinter’s counterfeit silence hung heavy on the room for some time.
‘Will you help me?’ asked Leslie, his words cutting through the haze of his admission.
The man hesitated. He looked to his wife and child again. ‘It sounds dangerous,’ he replied, no longer full of fire and vitriol but subdued like a teenager, suddenly in realisation of the ramifications of his actions.
‘Well of course it’s bloody dangerous!’ Leslie blasted back. Having related a huge state secret, albeit one he could deny if it ever came to that, he was now infuriated by this man’s sudden recalcitrance. ‘You’re not going to tell me that you’re going to back down, now that a concrete proposal’s been put to you?’
The man said nothing, but looked again to his wife and more particularly at his child.
‘Listen,’ Leslie continued, having seen the man’s glances towards his family, ‘I understand that you have a family. I don’t, okay? I have no family to consider. I can see that you do, but - here is a chance for you to help in a practical way. Here’s a chance for you to make a real contribution. Rather than yelling about it you can do something. I’m offering you a chance to act. And I promise you I’ll do everything to help you if something goes wrong. What do you say?’
The red bearded man looked like a prize fighter who had just taken a slug unlike any other he had ever taken before. He appeared momentarily groggy and disoriented. Fantasy had become reality and he was uncertain whether he
was equal to it. Eventually her stammered - ‘Okay.’
‘Good,’ replied Leslie. ‘Your wife and child are welcome to stay here for the time being, so long as they don’t touch any of my equipment. There’s food in the fridge. I’m Leslie.’ He held out his hand.
The Viking man stood straight and tall as if remembering, ‘I’m Johannes,’ he said.
*
This time it was the corpse of a small boy that sat slumped in the chair. The metal helmet was still attached to his head and his limbs were splayed this way and that in death’s contortion. His right elbow had actually snapped with the vigour of his final spasm. Sebastian held the arm by the forearm and jiggled the lower portion of the arm as if he was weighing ingredients for a meal.
‘I must clamp them down in future,’ he said to himself. He unhooked the dead boy from the headpiece and cast him away from the chair. He landed like a discarded rag doll, his limbs askew and his face, in one final indignity, came to rest at the arse end of an old woman, also in rags and also dead. She, in her turn, had been deposited upon a middle-aged man, and he, upon another. In all, the boy joined seven corpses piled up like a bonfire in the corner.
‘Clear the room!’ screamed Sebastian through his thin gauze mask. To himself he muttered, ‘I must find a quicker mode of disposal.’
Two hulking guards entered. They appeared to be witless thugs, incapable of dissent. Obediently, they grabbed two corpses apiece and dragged them from the room. Sebastian removed his mask and climbed the stairs to the transference console while the bovine attendants continued their gruesome cartage.
He cast his stormy eyes towards the black box which sat beside a mainframe in the corner of the room. He read its display and he grinned with pleasure. ‘The chocolate box is full and soon it’s time to feast again,’ he sang to himself.