A Void (11 page)

a young Anglo-Norman colt out of Assurbanipal; Scapin, a roan

that had won at Chantilly in March (Grand Prix Brillat-Savarin);

Scarborough, a "dilly of a filly", as word had it, with all-black

hair and a trio of gold cups at Ascot; Capharnaum, a mount that

was, though, slightly short in its forward limbs; and, finally, Divin

Marquis, an occasionally moody kind of nag that wasn't tops in

anybody's book but had a habit of starting slowly and rapidly

gaining ground.

Riding Scribouillard, Saint-Martin - Paris's Sir Gordon

Richards - gallops off to an ovation from his faithful public, only

to fall flat on his back at Longchamp's notorious Mill Brook. So

it's Capharnaum that wins, just nosing out Divin Marquis.

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"In my opinion," says Amaury, "Hassan Ibn Abbou is a bit of

a fraud. Has today taught us anything at all?"

Abandoning Longchamp to its aficionados, its huntin', shootin',

fishin' and racin' buffs, Amaury boards a Paris-bound bus along

with his two companions. And it occurs to him that Whisky 10's

withdrawal might still throw light on Vowl's abduction.

"Just 3 days ago you had 3 odds-on nominations; but, with

Whisky scratching and Scribouillard stumbling, Capharnaiim

won!"

"It sort of puts you in mind of a whodunit, don't you think,"

says Olga.

"No," says Amaury: "of an April Fool's Day hoax."

"No," says Ottaviani: "of a Dick Francis."

Our trio strolls into a bar, hoping to drown its frustration in

a round or two of cocktails. Through this bar wafts a languorous

aroma of amaryllis. Stirring a dry Martini, Olga starts painfully,

almost inaudibly, confiding in Conson and Ottaviani:

"If only I'd known - but how could anybody know? Anton

didn't look normal, but, whilst talking to him, it was hard to

grasp what was wrong with him. On occasion my darling would

pound his fists and cry out for . . . for just forty winks, that's all,

forty winks of blissful oblivion. Anton hadn't had a nap in two

months. Two months! His body was on a rack of pain, such pain,

his brain simply wouldn't function, its tribal drums wouldn't stop

pounding, pounding, pounding . . ."

Olga's soliloquy gradually sinks into a sigh as long and languid

as an autumnal chord from a violin.

"Mia carissima
," coos Amaury, fondling Olga's hand with an

ardour that's slightly at odds with his usual avuncular joviality,

"if Anton hasn't actually . . . hasn't . . . oh, you know what

I'm trying to say, you'll probably find him in an alcoholic

stupor!"

"Lo giuroV
says a martial (and cod Mozartian) Ottavio.

"Do you mind!" sniffs Olga, with a toss of auburn curls.

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It's Ottaviani's turn to sigh. "What I do mind is almost four

days of bloody hard graft with damn all to show for it."

"What about paying a call on Hassan Ibn Abbou now," is

Amaury's proposal, "and finding out what information awaits us

from him?"

Hassan Ibn Abbou owns a charming Louis XVIII villa on Paris's

ultra-chic Quai Branly. Knocking at its door, Amaury finds,

standing in front of him, a footman who fawningly asks him and

Ottaviani (Olga, still low in spirits, had thought to turn in) into

a spacious formal drawing room.

"My companion and I wish to talk to M. Ibn Abbou," says

Amaury.

"If you wouldn't mind waiting, sirs, I shall inform him of your

arrival."

A young man, slightly too good-looking for comfort, sporting

that sort of oblong gold braid that is traditionally worn by a

Parisian flunky, and sashaying towards Amaury with an insinuat-

ing swing of his slim hips, asks him:

"Cocktails for two?"

Amaury opts for a whisky-and-soda, Ottaviani a glass of

Armagnac.

Just at that point, though, from an adjoining room, a clamor-

ous din bursts forth. What confusion! What hubbub! A mirror

smashing, a fist-fight, various dull thuds.

A bloodcurdling cry is drawn from Ibn Abbou: "No! No!

Aaaaargh!"

Amaury jumps out of his chair (and also practically out of his

skin). For a solitary instant, an agonisingly short instant, no

sound at all. And, in an instant following that, crying out again,

Ibn Abbou falls.

Amaury and Ottaviani quickly rush forward to assist him.

But, with a last, dying moan from Hassan Ibn Abbou, it's all

in vain.

Sticking in his back, and right up to its hilt, is a poniard with

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a tip containing a poison known to bring about instant (and

fatal) paralysis.

What nobody could work out, though, was how Abbou's

assassin got away . . .

Finding this situation alarming, to put it mildly, and without

waiting for Ottaviani's authority, Amaury starts burrowing high

and low through Ibn Abbou's villa, finally chancing across a vault

that, as Abbou hadn't told anybody its combination, was got into

with calculation, cunning and a dash of chutzpah, and finding in

it that thick manuscript that Anton had thought to mail to him

only a month ago. It ought to contain 26 folios. Amaury counts

1, 2, 3 . . . to 25; naturally, fatally, a folio is missing. That's

right, you win! No. 5 it is!

So, complication piling on complication, a major conundrum

unfolds: that famous "solicitor who is so boorish as to light up

his cigar in a zoo" (but nobody had any proof that this particular

solicitor was in fact a boor) has a poniard in his back and Anton

Vowl is still missing.

That night, at about two o'clock, Amaury Conson strolls back

to his studio flat, Quai d'Anjou - and, till dawn, till cockcrow,

till first blush of morning, avid to find out just what's going on,

dutifully ploughs through Yowl's diary . . .

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1

In which you will find a word or two about a burial

mound that brought glory to Trajan

ANTON VOWL'S DIARY

A Monday.

Call him Ishmail, and him Ahab, and it Moby Dick.

Tou, Ishmail, phthisic pawn, glutton for musty old manuscripts,

puny scribbling runt, martyr to a myriad of sulks, doldrums and

mulligrubs, you who lit out, packing just a smock, four shirts and a

cotton hanky in your bag, hurtling to salvation, to oblivion and to

mortality, you who saw, surging up in front of you by night, a Bassal-

ian mammoth, a paradigm of pallor and purity, a shining symbol of

immaculation, a giant Grampus coming up for air!

Away four springs, abroad four springs, braving whirlwind, whirl-

pool and typhoon, from Labrador to Fiji, from Jamaica to Alaska,

from Hawaii to Kamchatka.

Midnight, aboard ship, with Pip playing on his harmonica, Star-

buck, Daggoo, Flask, Stubb and Doughboy would sing:

To Ho Ho!

And a flask of rum!

A Nantuckian sailor brought immortality to a titanic combat oppos-

ing, triply, Captain Ahab and that giant Grampus, Moby Dick.

Moby Dick! Two words to chill a strong man's blood, to stir a ship's

rigging with a frisson of horror. Moby Dick! O animal of Astaroth!

Animal of Satan! Its big, blank, brilliant trunk, with its court of

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birds flying noisily about it, now gulls, now cormorants, now a solitary,

forlorn albatross, would sculpt, so to say, a gigantic, gaping pit, a

curving concavity of nothing, a brimming bowl of air, from a rippling

rut of billows and furrows, would crimp any horizon with its foamy,

whitish dip, a fascinating, paralysing abyss, a milky chasm drawing

you in, drawing you down, down, down, down, flashing at you from

afar, flashing its virginal wrath, foaming at its mouth, a corridor

sucking you in, in, in, in to oblivion, a wat'ry quarry, a plunging

void drawing you forward, drawing you downward, drawing you

dizzily down into a miasma of hallucination, into a Styx as dark as

tar, a ghastly livid whirlpool, a Malstrom! Moby Dick! Only out of

sight of Ahab would anybody talk about it; a bos'n would blanch and

draw a pious cross in front of him; and many an ordinary sailor at

his work would murmur a
dominus vobiscum.

And now Ahab would limp forward, supporting his body on an arti-

ficial limb sawn out of wood but as shiny as ivory, an imposing stump

that, many, many springs ago, his sailors had torn off a giant rorqual's

jaw, Ahab, a long and zigzagging furrow tracing its path through

his grizzly, stubbly hair, incising his brow and vanishing at his collar,

a drawn and haggard Ahab now looming out and booming out,

cursing that animal for having got away from him for nigh on 18

springs, cursing it and insulting it.

And now, to his ship's mainmast, Ahab would nail a gold

doubloon, promising it to any sailor who was first to sight his arch-

antagonist.

Night upon night, day upon day, at his ship's prow, numb with

cold, stiff as a rod in his captain's coat, hard as a rock, straight as a

mast, still as a post, and dumb too, not saying a word, not showing

any hint of a human soul, cold as a carcass, but boiling inwardly

with an inhuman wrath, Ahab would stand out, stark and gaunt, a

rumbling volcano, an imploding storm, a still point in a turning

world, against a dark, cloudy horizon, raptly scrutinising it for a sign,

for any sign, of Moby Dick. Sirius would glow uncannily bright in a

starry night sky; and, on top of that mainmast, and akin to nothing

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so much as a dot on an i, would glow, too, a livid halo infusing that

diabolic doubloon and its gold with a wan chiaroscuro.

Ahab's circumnavigation would last four springs. For four long

springs his valiant and foolhardy craft would roam, rolling uncon-

trollably, pitching and tossing, tacking from north to south, from

south to north, combing Triton's wavy, curling hair, labouring now

in August warmth, now in April chill.

It wasAhab who first saw Moby Dick. It was a bright, sunny morning,

without wind or cloud, with an Atlantic as flat as a rug, as limpid

as a looking-glass. Milky-whitish against a lapis-lazuli horizon, Moby

Dick was puffing and blowing, its back forming a foggy, snowy mount

for a flock of birds circling around it.

But first a lull, an almost subliminal instant of tranquil immobility.

Just six furlongs off from Ahab's ship Moby Dick lay: now drifting, a

numinous animal, a symbol of calm awaiting its own storm, fragrant

with a throat-catching aroma, an aroma of purity, of infinity; now,

rising out of that cold, mirrory Atlantic, a lustral halo imbuing all

around it with a virginal glow. Not a sound, not an angry word. Not

a man stirring, as though brought to a standstill by all this calm and

radiancy, as though swaying languidly in vapours of adoration rising

up out of that glassy main, out of that dawning day.

O harmony, total unison, absolution! For an instant, oblivion holds

back, draws back, as though waiting for this snowy Himalaya, this

giant Grampus, to grant absolution to Starbuck, to Pip, to Ishmail

and Ahab.

With burning brow and twisting, hunching, horrifying body, long

did Ahab stand, staring into a void, saying nary a word, only sobbing

- sobbing and shaking.

"Moby Dick! Moby Dick!" was his final, fulminating cry. "Now,

all of you, into a boat!"

Daggoo found his crinkly buckskin chaps handy as a strop for his

harpoon, honing its point till it was as sharp as a razor.

* * *

It was an assault that was to last four days, four long days of appalling

conditions and appalling collisions, a furious tug of war with 26 sailors

putting up a prodigious fight, attacking that Bassalian titan, attack-

ing it again and again, puncturing its invincibility, implanting in

it, again and again, a harpoon as sharp as a bistoury, thrusting that

harpoon in right up to its shaft, to its crossbar, whilst Moby Dick

would roar and flail about in pain; but also whilst (with razor-sharp

barbs slicing through its body, with hooks viciously clutching at its skin,

ripping it up into narrow, bloody strips, flaying it, raising its wrath

to a foaming pitch by scratching long furrows along its shiny back) it

unflinchingly stood up to its assailants, butting, upturning and sink-

ing boat upon boat, till it too would sink in its turn, vanishing abruptly

into a turbid, now darkly crimson Atlantic.

But, that night, confronting Ahab aboard his ship, capsizing its

prow, Moby Dick split it in two with a solitary blow. Although, in a

last spasm of fury, Ahab slung his harpoon in midair, to his horror