2023: a trilogy (Justified Ancients of Mu Mu)

by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu

  But because I knew it would get no further than the wastepaper baskets of literary editors the length and breadth of Bloomsbury, I thought there was no harm in me helping myself to one of the main characters and imaging a career trajectory for him. And not only that but imagining the whole thing becoming a massive franchise with follow-ups and films and all the rest of it.

  And there in Dog Ledger’s fax to me he is telling me I have to either get rid of the last chapter or change the character I had robbed totally so he could never be recognised. And how would I like it if one of my major characters were robbed by some other writer?

  And then he started going on about the franchise possibilities in children’s literature being the future of publishing. And maybe I should … Maybe write a children’s book about an ice-cream van that has been retired and locked up in a garage and never gets to hear the children play, and one night it escapes to travel the world and go on adventures. Rubbish, pure rubbish.

  And then he tells me I should remove any other characters from the narrative that in some way reflect real people with real lives, or any other characters I might be thinking of ‘ripping off’. And if I didn’t, it would just make it impossible for him to get a deal for the book.

  And then he started going on about some book he represented about a football manager called Bryan-something, who used to swear a lot, and how this Bryan wanted to sue the publishers because he said he never swore. I say it serves Dog right for working with football managers. Or something.

  And then Dog was almost telling me to grow up and—

  Anyway.

  I need a deal.

  I need the money.

  And I need the love.

  Yours,

  Roberta

  2: WHAT IS RAPE?

  09:33 Monday 24 April 2023

  Arati’s husband is no longer raping her. He is leaving the family home for work in the car showroom his family runs.

  Arati hates everything about the home she now lives in. It is not her home. It is not where she has spent her entire life until three months ago. She is now the youngest married woman in her new ‘home’. She is treated like shit by all the other women in this home, even worse than the servants. She is at the bottom of the pecking order. At the top is her husband’s grandmother. All decisions made about the running of this home come down from her. She is the ‘dowager duchess’ in charge of it all. It was her that arranged the marriage between her grandson and Arati.

  Three months ago Arati was a carefree teenager who spent most of her time on the internet communing with other girls her age around the world. With Google Interpret she could chat to anyone anywhere – and she did. Her friends around the globe would chat about clothes, boys and women’s rights. She was also very smart. Smarter than her brothers. She wanted to go to university to study civil engineering. She wanted to rebuild Kolkata in the way other girls around the world had rebuilt their cities. But her father’s business was going bust – he too had a car sales business. He was bought out and part of the deal was Arati’s hand in marriage to the son of her father’s arch rival. There was nothing she could do; it was for the sake of her family.

  Before she was married, she had never had sex. She still believed in romance and stories, especially the story of Savitri, the young goddess who goes out into the world to find her man and finally finds her Satyavan.

  The reality of what happened to her was nothing like that. Every night she is made to have sex with this ugly monster, whose breath smells and whose body stinks and who has no charm or intelligence. She can say or do nothing. She has to just lie there and think of … well, not England, but wherever young women in West Bengal think of when having sex they do not want to have.

  But is this rape? Or is this just her husband’s right? She hardly dare ask herself. And now in her new life she is not even allowed to go online to ask anyone else. In fact, her laptop has been confiscated by her ‘elders and betters’ in her new family home.

  Every morning, after her husband leaves for work and dishes are washed and morning chores done, Arati goes to the local temple at the corner of her street to say her prayers. Beside the temple an internet café has opened. This morning Arati snuck in. For a few old rupees, she was soon online (in India there is still a black market in old rupees).

  The words Arati put into Google were ‘What is Rape?’ And the answer she got back immediately was:

  Rape is any form of unwanted sexual behaviour that is imposed on someone

  Rape is more about the abuse of power than about sexual attraction or the desire for sexual gratification

  After Arati read that, but in Bangla, she went on a Have I been raped? forum on FaceLife. She was soon chatting to other young women around the world. Google Translate ironed out all the ‘lost in translation’ problems.

  In the Port-au-Prince Hotel Oloffson, the transgender artist has rolled off Camille and fallen asleep. Camille is lying there staring at the slowly revolving fan on the ceiling, wondering what has just happened and what she should do next.

  Yesterday, if she had been asked, she would have thought she’d do anything to get out of Haiti to the USA, where she could make money to send home to her mum, to feed her two younger sisters and three younger brothers. All she had to do was get herself a Blan! Blan! man and fuck him well and she was almost guaranteed a passport to the USA. It had happened for other girls and boys she knew. One of them got one of these Blan! Blan! artists that stayed at the Hotel Oloffson every couple of years as part of what they called the Ghetto Biennale. She decided to try to get this one, because he looked strange and lost and not very attractive and no other girl or boy might go for him. He was from London, not the USA, but she reckoned that could be just as good.

  This man who she had fucked was not really a man as he had breasts and wore strange clothes. But he was not gay. She knew what gay was. Lots of men were gay. Especially the voodoo priests. This man was something else, and he fucked her in ways she didn’t want to be fucked. And he hurt her and laughed when he hurt her. She knew some men did these things. Maybe it was what she had to do to get a man to pay for her to go to the USA, or maybe London?

  While he snored, she got dressed and went out to the bar. She sat down and drank a glass of water. There was another girl there but she was Blan! Blan! Using sign language, she asked if she could use Blan! Blan! girl’s laptop for a minute. The Blan! Blan! said, ‘Wi.’

  So she put into Google, ‘Ki sa ki vyòl?’

  And the answer she got back immediately was:

  Rape is when someone uses their power, manipulation or force to intimidate, humiliate, exploit, degrade or control another

  Rape has been used as a weapon in war, in racial violence and in everyday life

  After Camille read that, but in Haitian Kreyòl, she went on the Have I been raped? forum on FaceLife. She was soon chatting to other young women around the world who had also just been raped. Google Translate ironed out all the ‘lost in translation’ problems.

  Divine, the seventeen-year-old girl in an unnamed village a hundred or so kilometres upriver from Mbandaka, is still being raped by the boy she used to go to Sunday school with and had always fancied.

  His name is Patrice, after the revolutionary leader who had won independence for their country from their colonial tyrants in Brussels, before it was taken over by the brutal tyrant Mobutu, or to give him his full title, Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga.

  Patrice is five years older than Divine. He is strong and handsome and almost any girl would want to be his woman, and here Divine has struck lucky. It is what Divine has dreamt of for so long.

  Patrice had made it out of their village all the way to Kinshasa. And there he had made a business. He imported and he exported. And he made money. But he came back to their village. He told Divine the girls in Kinshasa were not good. That he always thought about Divine. And that he wanted to come back and find Divine and take Divine with him. And together they would go to Brusse
ls or maybe Paris and live together like a King and Queen.

  Divine knew that is how boys talked when they came back from Kinshasa. She had been warned. But Patrice was so lovely. Even when she was only five years old she knew she wanted one day to marry Patrice. And that day might be coming soon.

  But something about what happened last night she did not like. He became angry. He lost his erection. He blamed her. He hit her and then he hit her again. And then after he hit her he got an erection again. And he fucked her. But when he was fucking her he told her to pretend to be a little girl. A frightened little girl. A little girl that did not want to be fucked by a big man.

  Divine did not know what to do or say, so she did nothing but lie there. But then Patrice started to hit her again, and again he got an erection and again he fucked her and again he was pretending she was a little girl. The five-year-old Divine he used to know when they were in Sunday school together.

  She knew this was not right. Her mother had told her there were men like this. But not Patrice. Not lovely Patrice. Not Patrice who was going to take her out of their village hundreds of kilometres from anywhere and take her to Kinshasa and then Brussels and maybe even Paris. Patrice who can speak French so beautifully. Handsome, kind Patrice.

  Then when the village cockerels crowed and the day had begun, Divine got up and left Patrice lying on the ground. There was blood between her legs and there was blood on her lips, and her body ached like it had never ached before. And Divine knew it was over. All her dreams were over. She knew she would never leave her village. She would end up marrying one of the boys who did nothing and went nowhere, and she would have children like her mother and she would be bent double like her mother and she would work hard like her mother and her husband, like her father, would drink palm wine and get drunk and …

  But she decided she was not going to accept that. She would leave their village, Patrice or no Patrice. She would steal a pirogue* and paddle the hundreds of kilometres until she got to Kinshasa, and there she would work until she had the money to buy a ticket for an airplane that would take her far, far away from all of this.

  And she would never let a man touch her again.

  So she got up and went out of the hut she and Patrice had spent the night in, and she went down to the river, the mighty Congo River. And there she untied a pirogue, climbed into it and, using the paddle, she pushed herself away from the bank and out into the current.

  Divine had begun her journey.

  10:13 Monday 24 April 2023

  An hour or so later, after Arati had been chatting online with other women who had been raped, she decided to put the words in the yellow book with the lemon on the cover, the words in Bangla, into Google. But nothing had come up. This was very strange. Google always found everything.

  As she is walking back to her husband’s family home for another day’s drudgery, she flicks through the book one more time. It is then she notices some other writing in Bangla at the back of the book. But the script is very small and Arati’s sight is not too good. It takes her some time to read it. And if we could read Bangla, we would know it says:

  Meet at The Shepherdess, City Road, at 17:47 on 24 December 2023

  And Arati knows that is what she will do.

  Also at 10:13 Camille is walking back down the streets of Port-au-Prince from the Oloffson to the Cité Soleil, where she lives with her mother and brothers and sisters. So much of her city has never recovered from the Earthquake back in 2010. The world may have sorted out all of its problems, but still no one gives a fuck about Haiti.

  Why should they? Haiti has nothing to offer the world. It has no minerals. Agriculture is non-existent since the land has been raped for over two hundred years. There is no industry because no one would be foolish enough to invest in such a crime-ridden and corrupt society. And maybe the biggest problem for Haiti is it is not a threat to anyone. It was never going to be the birthplace of communism for the New World, like neighbouring Cuba. It was never going to be the spark of a radicalised Islamic revolution. And the people of Haiti were never going to have the money to be valuable consumers for the rest of the world to sell to.

  No one gives a fuck about Haiti, even in 2023. And voodoo is no threat to anyone, whatever the witch doctor says.

  Camille notices a parcel in the gutter. She looks around. No one is looking. She picks it up. She is surprised to see it has her name on it with the address of the Oloffson. She opens the parcel. There is a book inside. It has a yellow cover. She is wondering to whom could she sell the book? Maybe one of the artists staying at the Hotel Oloffson? She flicks through the pages of the book. There are many languages but she cannot read any of them. Then she gets to one page and to her surprise it is written in Haitian Kreyòl, and this is what it says:

  Ou se yon Gadò Mouton

  Mouton ou swiv sèlman ou

  Men koulye a, li se tan pou ou

  pou w jwenn

  Sè ou

  Lè sa a, tout twa nan ou

  Jwenn ak omaj a Youn nan

  Ki moun ki se yo dwe mouton an

  nan tout Fam

  Gen patiraj vèt

  Ki kote vè k’ap manje kadav la

  pa te vire Apple la

  And my guess is you can guess what this is telling her, so there is no point in translating it for you.

  Camille flicks through the rest of the book, looking to see if there is anything else written in Haitian Kreyòl. She finds one line near the back of the book. It reads:

  Rankontre nan Mouton An, City Road, London nan 17:47 sou 24 Desanm 2023

  Camille is Roman Catholic but she also practises voodoo. She believes in signs. This book in the gutter is a sign. She decides to return to the Hotel Oloffson and find the man with the breasts who is an artist and fuck him so he will never want to fuck anybody else ever again. And then he will take her back to London with him. And then she will get a job and send money back to her mother to feed her brothers and sisters and pay for their school, and on 24 December she will go to The Shepherdess Café on City Road to meet the other two shepherdesses. And they will find and pay homage to the One.

  Camille turns around and starts walking back up the hill through her still-devastated city towards the Oloffson.

  Camille has begun her journey.

  Also at 10:13 Divine is lying back in ‘her’ pirogue, gazing up at the sky, while drifting down the river. She does not know how many days it will take her to get to Kinshasa but she does know this is the best day of her life so far.

  A pure white Egret flies overhead. This is a sign she is doing the right thing.

  Jura

  30 April 1984

  Dear Diary,

  After this morning’s outburst about the future of publishing and me ripping things off, I was able to put all of my anger to one side and get on with some serious writing about serious stuff.

  What I got written today is a chapter called ‘What Is Rape?’ I have never been raped. Never discussed in any depth with anybody who has been raped the lasting effect it has had on their life. So what gives me the right to write about such things? Have I just used rape in this story to give it more grit? Should only those who have been raped write about rape?

  I do not have the answers to any of these questions.

  Today I will not drive to the bar. Instead I will sit and watch the sun sink into the sea, as the heron stands in the shallows patiently waiting to make her move on the unsuspecting passing whiting.

  Yours,

  Roberta

  * Pirogue = a dug-out canoe.

  3: A GOOD YEAR FOR THE ROSES

  I can hardly bear the sight of lipstick

  On the cigarettes there in the ashtray

  Lyin’ cold the way you left ’em

  But at least your lips caressed them while you packed

  10:48 Monday 24 April 2023

  ‘Angela, I have had enough. You know the world is not right. Things cannot carry on as they have been.’

  ‘V
ladimir, we have had our time. The world has moved on. We must let the young ones make of the world what they can.’

  ‘So I have to just potter around my dacha planting potatoes and pruning the roses? I have a responsibility not only to the people of Russia but to the world as a whole.’

  This snippet of conversation, held in Russian over the phone, is between Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel. They both retired from active political life back in 2019. Angela supports her local football team, and Vladimir tends his garden at his dacha. They speak to each other most days on the phone. Angela’s Russian is perfect. Putin’s admiration of Merkel total. As far as Putin is concerned, Angela Merkel is the only other world statesperson who has any appreciation of his values. She understands even when she does not agree.

  I am afraid that in their daily banter there is very little humour, so no witty quips to drop in here for your entertainment. Or maybe there is humour, but it gets lost in translation from the Russian.

  ‘Well, Angela, I have had enough. And this time you are not going to talk me out of it with all your rational persuasions. If I do not do something about it now, nothing will ever be done. We are the last of the generation that knew what real politics was for. We might be the only ones left who can see through the charade of all of this FaceDeath and GoogleShite, who can see it for what it really is.

  ‘For some reason I got sent a book in the post this morning. I don’t know where it came from or who sent it. There was only one page in Russian in the whole book, so I read it. And somehow it said in four lines everything I knew to be true but have never actually been able to say in public. I have got it here in front of me. I will read it out to you now.’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Vlad. I have to let the cat in first.’

  ‘What, you don’t have a cat flap?’

  ‘She refuses to use the cat flap.’

  ‘And you allow that to continue? I think you should get rid of that cat and get another one that does not refuse to use the cat flap.’