Keep The Giraffe Burning

by Sladek, John

  The girl ahead of Biron kept getting winks and grins from the young sergeant behind the counter.

  ‘I’m sorry, miss, but if he’s not a relative, we can’t look for Mr Sheppard, unless we have reason to suspect a crime has been committed.’

  ‘Yes, but can’t you –?’

  ‘There’s nothing stopping you from going to Secpol, of course. I understand their rates are very reasonable.’

  His face was sunburned and his straw-coloured hair damp, as though he’d just rushed in from the plough to deal out police advice. He saluted as Biron stepped up.

  ‘Yes sir?’

  ‘My name is Biron Johnson.’

  Ignoring the noise from the next room, the sergeant carefully entered this on a form.

  ‘My parents are missing. Carl and Helen Johnson. And my sister Carolinda.’ Their names were taken down.

  ‘Yes sir. Now your address?’ Next door, something thumped against the wall a few times.

  ‘Well, we don’t exactly have an address as yet. We’d only just got to London, to look for work.’

  ‘I see. This does make a problem. If we locate them, how can we-get in touch –?’

  ‘Griffiths!’ someone shouted next door.

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’ The sergeant took a length of iron pipe from under the counter and went next door. Now Biron noticed that his uniform was completed with jeans and worn carpet slippers.

  In a few minutes he came back, smoothing his hair. ‘The best thing,’ he panted, ‘the best thing would be for you to get yourself a fixed address. Until then, you’d best drop in to see us once a week. Friday mornings are reporting days. And – oh, where did you last see your family?’

  ‘In a cinema queue in the West End.’

  ‘All-night cinema was it? Dossarama? Happens all the time. I imagine they’ve just ditched you, lad.’

  Biron stared up for a moment at a yellow poster: FREE FOOD WITH THE METROPOLITAN POLICE.

  ‘Well. I’ll check back then, Friday morning.’

  ‘You’d better.’

  ‘That’s where I want to go, I want to stay,

  In Tanzy,

  Tanzy,

  In Tanzy far away.’

  –work song

  ‘I know it’s a local story,’ Elvis said. ‘But it’s news. I mean, the first mugging for real money in London, in – years and years. Ten quid!’

  ‘The sub won’t buy it,’ said Peter. ‘How can he? The last story we printed about Secpol brought a writ.’

  ‘But they were only dressed like men of the Security Police Agency. That’s not libel.’

  ‘It is now; we can’t mention their name. You want something to do? I’ll give you something to do. Write up a little story about Harry Sheppard’s disappearance.’

  ‘I am, I am. Peter, I talked to Sue Stiles. She said he left the office raving about horse shit.’

  That afternoon, Norman Coutts conceded that Britain might accept a gold graft scheme, provided the Hungarian loan could be buried. Jesus Figueras of Venezuela made a counterproposal: nail the Hungarian loan to the Rio dollar float, and buy off the exchange surplus with dirhan. Evan MacIntyre of Canada thought this might be more stable if run in tandem with a limited-access overdraft agreement between the USSR and Rhodesia, monitored by the UAR.

  The UAR economist said he had a headache, and was going for an afternoon nap.

  Father Millennium wanted them all to understand the need for a careful study of the Mysteries. Did anyone here know the Welsh were descended from space travellers? That duplicates of Stonehenge had been found on the Moon, only the authorities wouldn’t release the photos? We were, he said, being lied to by those in power.

  Shading his eyes from the sun, Biron lay back in the grass and listened to the frail voice. A bird squawked somewhere, just once. He dozed, dreaming of a dark, narrow sweet. A huge shape came rushing towards him, about to crush him against the wall.

  Was it a wagon? He couldn’t remember. It vanished like the taste of the ‘soup’.

  Sue Stiles copied all the notes from Harry Sheppard’s desk into a list:

  tooth house

  phantom riot (s)

  phone Briggs for council mins

  fertiliser grows!!!

  import statistics

  farms how deliver?

  whose???

  check D-notice applics

  cartoon: the lost chord? (crossed out)

  MI510 11 9 13 13

  MI64 2 – 6 1

  Metpol 49 58 43 48 61

  Secpol 18 21 34 56 111

  seated one day at the organ …

  The list made no sense. Every item was either banal or surreal. She spent an afternoon finding out that the numbers meant applications for D-notices over the past five years, then she tore up the list and forgot about it, or nearly.

  Next day the tooth story broke.

  The smell of eggs frying in butter drifted out the kitchen door of the farmhouse. Carolinda and her new friend hurried towards it, carrying a pail between them.

  ‘Don’t let any flies in,’ said the farmer’s wife. ‘Hungry, girls?’

  They nodded.

  ‘Yes, the new prisoners always are. Be ready in a minute, dears. Cut yourselves some bread. I can’t fuss with toast, but I always like to give my girls a decent breakfast. You won’t find it hard work here, whatever they say about labour camps. We expect a full day’s work for a full day’s food, mind, but that’s all. Not like some camps I could mention. What’s up, girl? Sorry for your sins?’

  ‘I was just wondering about my parents,’ said Carolinda. ‘They were arrested with me. Do you think they might be on a good farm like this? And my brother Biron.’

  ‘They might even be here, my dear. It’s a big farm. Let’s see: you give me their names, and I’ll ask Rufus. He keeps the books. And don’t you be afraid of Rufus, neither of you. He almost never uses the whip, I’ll say that. He curses, but he’s a fair man.’

  Carolinda’s new friend, Clara, asked to be excused, to go to the toilet.

  By 4 a.m. there were only three men left at the conference table. Hap Schine (USA), Alonzo Tomas (Spain) and Kai Sung (China). The others had drifted off to the dormitory.

  Hap chewed a blade of cuticle off his finger and spat it out. ‘Okay, why don’t we play it this way: Peg the zloty against the escudo, float it against the dirhan, and let the rand and ruble find their own level against a modified float of all three. When –’

  Sung shook his head. ‘You’ve forgotten –’

  ‘Lemme finish, will you? When that level is ahead of the Israeli pound parity float, we get a new flow of pesetas to balance the transfer of pesos and duros. Am I right or wrong?’

  ‘Well, right in theory, but –’

  ‘Okay, listen. When that happens, we pump the brakes a little by a schilling leak. Now the afrodollar –’

  ‘Happy, Happy, you’re forgetting about three things. We have to balance the peseta flow by a quick transfer of ticals to Hungary and by –’

  ‘Hold it.’ Hap spoke to the servant who had just entered. ‘Charles, can you get us some sandwiches and coffee – no, make it tea.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. We have orders. The conference credit was suspended at midnight.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, did you hear that? Welcome to Britain. They can’t even afford to feed us. Look Charles, take my goddamned watch.’

  ‘Don’t be a child,’ said Alonzo. ‘That’s a gold watch, Happy.’

  ‘Yeah, but it doesn’t taste too good. You got a better idea?’

  ‘Yes I have. We each brought things to use for spending money outside, did we not? I brought cigars, Sung brought cotton clothes, and so on. You must have something like that.’

  ‘Cigarettes, but they’re in the dorm.’

  ‘Charles will take our notes, will he not?’

  Charles would. For twenty long cigarettes, two cigars, and two cotton shirts, he would
bring six ham sandwiches and one and a half litres of tea.

  ‘Now where were we? Look, Sung, I know all about the forty per cent discount on drachmas in Paraguay. But if we get India and Uruguay to …’

  The card in the newsagent’s window said: ‘Young men and women wanted for interesting work, exchangeable vouchers. Short evening hours. Must be in perfect physical condition.’

  The youth in the surgical collar next to Biron watched him reading it. ‘Stay clear of that one. Bus conducting. Has to be.’

  ‘Clipping tickets or something?’

  ‘Clipping tickets? You must be from the Moon. Man, bus conductors pull the buses. You know how heavy a bus is?’

  Biron had a hard time believing stories like that. Londoners were always joking. Surely they had horses for pulling? Anyway, he hadn’t seen a bus since he’d arrived.

  ‘I think I’ll risk it.’

  ‘You’ll see. Buses. Or else foodfactory. That’s nasty, foodfactory. You think at least you’ll get a meal, but they never feed you what they make. I worked six months in a pork pie factory, and the only pork you ever see is on the assembly line. Fibre, that’s what they gave us.’

  The address on the card was the top floor of a tall office block in Soholborn. Biron sat in a pleasant, beige waiting room with a few dozen other men and one woman. A secretary came in and ordered them to take off their shoes and walk up and down. A man missing a thumb was dismissed. The secretary told the others they’d be given a bath and enough clothes to make them presentable. ‘Can you all dance? Anyone who can’t?’

  Biron put up his hand.

  ‘Well, never mind, you can stumble about. They don’t expect much.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The clients. Good grief, didn’t you all see Mr Bowder? No? Oh. Well, you’re all dates for our computer party. The clients are to think you’re randomly selected dates, just like them. So don’t tell them you work here, or you’re out.

  ‘Now. We provide food and one drink. Anything extra comes out of your vouchers. Understood?’

  Biron managed it well enough. When a girl in a wheelchair (all the clients seemed to be handicapped) asked him to dance, he didn’t know exactly what she meant. She explained finally that he was just to sort of wheel her back and forth in time to the music.

  At Euston Station, Biron sat in the little chair attached to the television set and dropped in his token. The screen instantly showed men with briefcases getting out of their pedal cars and entering a building.

  ‘… arrived here two days ago seeking a solution to the afrodollar currency crisis. An interim report issued today said that a tentative solution is in the offing. Nevertheless, it added, the world currency situation will remain shaky for some time to come. No doubt the escudo will eventually be revalued, despite the hardship this may mean to importers of synthetic port.’

  Without pictures, the news reader said, ‘The Home Office tonight denied rumours of a large riot yesterday in a London suburb. There had been a small disturbance outside the “Hay Wain” public house, nothing more. Earlier reports of fifty policemen injured were exaggerated. The private Security Police Agency confirmed the Home Office statement.

  ‘In the Commons, the Prime Minister issued a denial today of the rumoured bomb at Number Ten this morning. A fire marshall had already confirmed the official explanation of a gas leak in the central heating system. The entire system is to be checked for further flaws, and the Prime Minister said he now considered the matter closed.

  ‘A Parliamentary enquiry has been called for by the shadow Housing Minister, to look into alleged breaches of Public Health regulations in council dwellings.’

  Another speaker came on the screen. ‘The row grew up over the use of building materials from graveyards, a practice allowed in certain cases, but not generally known to the public. Last week, two children playing about the tip of rubble being prepared for concrete mixing on a North London ranch estate, found these objects, now known to be human bones.’

  The screen showed teeth and jagged lumps. ‘Regulations permit the use of bones only from graves more than fifty years old. But some experts say these bones are perhaps as recent as a year old. How did they get into the mix? I asked the estate building materials manager, Gerard Hollis.’

  A man in a chrome helmet said he had no comment at this stage.

  ‘But surely, Mr Hollis, you have some idea where these came from?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Some people are shocked by the idea of using graveyard materials at all. Have you anything to say to them?’

  ‘Aye, they don’t ask, do they? Where their houses come from. They just ask for more and more houses.’

  ‘Do you know which graveyards have been quarried?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I never heard of any being dug into, not for ten years. But the bones keep turnin’ up. All the men know it, like. What can we do? We don’t use naught that’s useful to nobody.’

  ‘Doesn’t grave-robbing bother –’

  ‘I’ve as much respect as any man for the dead. But I think of the living first. That’s how I see it.’

  Another face came on the screen. ‘We’ll be back after a short break with more news of the King’s visit to a labour camp, cricket test results, and why this vintage pop-up toaster fetched seventy thousand pounds at Sotheby’s.’

  Two women appeared in a supermarket. Aloud, one thought, ‘How does she make her scrip vouchers go so far? I can never afford to give my Ernie meat more than twice a week. And he won’t touch these meat substitutes.’ The camera closed in on a box the other woman was taking from a shelf. ‘Drew’s Ready Lamb? Well I’ll be – dried substitute that’s been stewed in real lamb juices. Hmm. I wonder if Ernie would like it?’

  She was about to serve it to Ernie when Biron’s machine clicked off. An old man in town clothes nudged him.

  ‘You should have watched the other side. They never show food on the other side. Better not to stare at the food, eh? Give us a token, will you?’

  Biron gave him his last token. ‘Not much use to me, anyway. I have to get my train back to the inn now, and scrip’s no good tomorrow.’

  ‘There’s never a cop around when you need one.’

  –old saying

  Captain Grayson was just saying over the phone, ‘They’ve done it this time. What? Yes. Only grabbed a fucking reporter with their fucking snatch squad, that’s all. We’ll cover it, but it stinks.’

  Hap Schine had just won all of Alonzo Tomas’s cigars at Monopoly. Carolinda was writing down the names of her parents for the farmer’s wife. Peter Fry was looking for his thesaurus. Mrs Fordyce was answering the door. The Prime Minister was trying to telephone Captain Grayson of the Secpol Agency. Prouty was answering the door. Clara Bond was turning a crank to crush milky juice out of a plant. Zero Young was answering the door. The Stoddard boy, his mouth open, was answering the door.

  On the dark train, Biron stared out at more darkness. Probably Mum and Dad and Carolinda had left London altogether. Too confusing and tense here, anyway. Why stick around. There were jobs going in Tanzania …

  What was England, anyway? Grass, that’s all. A lot of cheap green grass, eventually it goes brown and it’s hay, and …

  There weren’t any women, for one thing. Where were all the women? Just a few cripples left. And no jobs and no money and no houses. They pretend it’s all a farm, but you never see anyone ploughing a field or anything. And cows. Where did they keep the cows? Just a few in the park for show. Were the women all out milking the cows or what?

  The lights came on suddenly. A man stood in the aisle, struggling with two men in green helmets and uniforms. A woman screamed.

  ‘It’s a mistake,’ the man shouted. ‘I was just giving her back her handbag.’

  ‘In the dark?’ One Secpol man hit him in the face and throat until he fell, scattering a handful of scrip notes.

  The little old man in a gray cap waited until they had dragged away the thief in handcuffs. T
hen he moved down the aisle, clipping tickets.

  ‘Where would we be without them?’ he said, over and over.

  Biron surrendered his ticket.

  ‘This is yesterday’s. No good.’

  ‘It can’t be! I just bought it at the window!’

  ‘Don’t try that, son. Show me a proper ticket. Do you have one?’

  ‘No, but I’ll pay –’

  ‘Guards!’

  One of the security policemen came running, drawing his cosh.

  ‘Here’s one for you. Fake ticket.’

  ‘I’m willing to pay –’

  The guard hit him in the shoulder, not viciously but as if testing his solidity. Biron’s arm went numb.

  The old man cackled. ‘They’re always willing to pay, once they know what’s coming.’

  The Secpol man dragged Biron to the end seat and handcuffed him to the baggage rack, so that he bad to sit with his numb arm suspended above him. The thief sat opposite, and a man in green sat next to each prisoner.

  When they lifted their face shields, the Secpol men didn’t look menacing any more. The young one beside Biron had effeminate features (for a wild moment Biron thought he knew where all the women were) and the old one had acne scars.

  ‘What happens to me now?’

  The young one smiled. ‘You’ll see. You’ll know the difference.’

  But the older one stopped licking a hand-rolled cigarette and shook his head. ‘Not to worry,’ he said. ‘You should get off light. Month in labour camp. We won’t say anything about resisting arrest, lad. If you stay easy.’

  Biron felt better at once. As the train finished its run and went into a long shed, he slipped into his daydream: row on row of cows with milkmaids pumping at their bellies, filling the blue pails. Just as one of the milkmaids turned to smile at him, the younger guard stabbed Biron through his dreaming eye.

  The fertilizer man’s great wagon was waiting by the depot door. While the younger man humped the two bodies over, the older one counted the eggs.