Lucia's Masks (2 page)

“Is it the all-clear signal?” someone asked.

“We should wait,” Papa said. “Let us wait five minutes.” But already he was on his feet.

The voice we heard next was a man’s, hugely amplified, with a buzz of static.

“The EYE is triumphant,” the voice proclaimed, a statement that made no sense to me whatsoever.

“We have made our country safe for our citizens,” the voice declared. “Come out of your homes and look up at the night-sky.”

All the adults were standing now, but no one moved.

“What if it is a trick?” asked Mrs. McPhilmey, who was a nurse and a particular friend of Mama’s.

“Come out, citizens, and look up at the night sky.” I heard the insistence in the command.

“I will go first,” Papa said, “and come back to you with a report.”

“No, Enzo,” Mama told him. “Not alone.”

And so we went up the stairs together as a family to meet whatever this new world had to offer. When we got outside, I was amazed to see every building intact. Through all those explosions, not a single stone was dislodged or window broken. The street was lined with people, all in their nightwear, so that a strange intimacy was forced upon us.

“Look up, citizens,” the voice commanded. The blast of sound came from behind me. I turned to see a black loudspeaker the size of my face, covered in a dense mesh and mounted on the light standard. It was right outside our apartment building. Why had I never seen it before? I spotted several more at regular intervals down the length of the street. At a distance they looked nasty, like a smear of mould you wanted to clean away if only you could reach that high.

“Look up.”

I was holding Papa’s hand close as I tilted my chin upward, following his example. I saw how he had tightened his lips, so that his mouth looked like a crease in a sheet of white paper. I was frightened, but also excited. Because some of the people on the street wore clown-like pyjamas and fluffy slippers with pompoms on the toes, they looked like participants in a silly game whose rules were yet to be revealed. But it was fear that was the sharper of my two emotions, and as I stood beside my father, head thrown back and throat exposed, I pictured the rockets they might rain down on us or the liquid fire poured from great vats.

In fact, it was fire, or the illusion of fire, that we saw pricked out against the sky. Because the night was starless, the form they cast above us had no competition. Doubtless, they had planned it so. What we saw was a massive eye, its outline composed of countless dots of scarlet light. The eye was lidless. The centre of the iris was studded with a multi-rayed star. Under the image, an invisible hand began to write in a fluid script. I caught my breath, waiting to see what would emerge, what words the unseen writer would spell out.

At last, it was all there: a full sentence composed of reddest fire to match the outlined lidless eye. “The EYE will keep you safe.”

We all stood staring up, children and adults both, caught by the crude power of the ugly, unsettling organ of vision arcing over us. It pinned us there, confused and small, and I shivered as I saw its scarlet darken.

“The EYE will keep you safe,” the loudspeaker boomed. Then twice more: “The EYE will keep you safe.”

When the amplified voice spoke again, we were instructed to return to our homes and watch the broadcast that would “explain the glorious liberation brought into effect on this historic night.” Full attention to this broadcast was mandatory for all citizens. Parents were to explain the essence of the new regime change to their children based on the guide the EYE would supply.

“What is it, Papa?” I asked. “What is the EYE with capital letters?”

“Hush, Lucia,” Mama told me. Papa did not carry me back upstairs. I wondered if he was angry with me. I had hoped I could sit with them to watch the broadcast that would tell us what had happened. Mama insisted I go to bed.

I listened hard in case I could make out any of the words of the broadcast myself. But all I heard was Papa talking in an angry tone I had never heard him use before: “There were no terrorists,” he said. “They have staged this cataclysm themselves so that they could set themselves up as our saviours.”

“But who are they, Enzo? Who is behind the EYE?”

“I don’t know, Fiammetta. I don’t know.”

How sad he sounded. I wanted to go to him, but worried they would be annoyed with me. So I lay still, pondering what he had said to Mama. Of all the words he had spoken, it was “cataclysm” that hooked in my brain. I dared myself to try its harsh syllables silently upon my tongue. Although I did not understand its meaning, I sensed the steeliness grinding beneath the skin of the word; a sound like something snapped in half in the dark that could never be made whole again. No matter how often I repeated the syllables, the word remained a coarse and misshapen thing in my mouth that would not be softened. It seemed to fit all that had happened that night: the terror set alight and branded deep within me, and the sight of the lidless eye scored into the sky.

My body told me the EYE’s promise to keep us safe was a lie. When I pictured the grim red image, the soles of my feet turned icy cold and the chill crept up my legs and lodged in my belly. I had felt this sick, numbed powerlessness once before — when Mama accidentally sliced through the base of her thumb with the sharpest of her kitchen knives and I saw the meaty texture of the flesh exposed and the white bone that lay beneath.

In school that week we began to learn by rote the “truths” by which the triumphant EYE would govern us. Our political instructor was Corporal Sweetman. He was a stocky, sparse-haired man in tight-fitting black uniform. Spittle flew from his mouth in a wide arc as he talked. Repeat after me, he began: “Pursuit of the economic imperative — which we hold above all other values — is why the EYE has taken charge, and consolidated the machinery of government under one strong arm.” Eleven times we tried, our tongues encumbered and faltering, until at last he gave up and grimaced at us in disgust.

He handed each of us a pamphlet with a khaki cover bearing the official insignia of the lidless eye. Inside, printed in bold black type, were the questions and answers that contained the precious revelations of the new regime. Corporal Sweetman warned us that unless we got these truths perfectly to heart, he would have no choice but to discipline us with his rod. He showed us this tool, which dangled from his belt alongside the heavy gleaming baton we were soon to recognize as a prime identifier of the EYE’s officials. The rod looked harmless enough, slim as a pen and with a pleasing silvery sheen.

Corporal Sweetman then asked if anyone in the class had ever been hurt by an electric shock. The trusting victim who put up his hand was Charles McPhilmey, whose lavish cap of auburn curls and milk-white skin seemed a marvel to me. Charles had his mother’s good and giving nature and a rare beauty that made people like to look at him and smile.

So we were frozen in disbelief when Corporal Sweetman bore down upon him, seizing him by his bright hair and jerking his head back. The corporal thrust the silvery stick at the boy’s chest. Charles’s cry hooked into my brain, just like the cutting “cataclysm.” This time though, the hook went deeper, tearing open a crevice into which a dreadful darkness rushed. For a moment it was as if I had gone blind. The interior of my skull went black except for two words, “Why?” and “Unfair” blazoned in an orange-red light. They ricocheted until I felt bruised inside by their battering.

My teeth were clenched. My hands gripped the sides of my desk. I wanted to leap up and protest. Fear kept me clamped in my seat, and I despised myself for it, although I could not then have defined that mixture of shame and deep unease that skirts self-hatred.

I looked to where Charles lay slumped on his desk, the fingers of his right hand twitching. I wished I could go to comfort him, but could not move.

“How do you like Mr. Rod?” Corporal Sweetman asked.

His eyes swept over us. I saw how protuberant and colourless they were, and I tightened, as hard as I could, the muscles that controlled my bladder.

This was our introduction to the pedagogical methods of the EYE.

I still have the EYE’s repulsive catechism to heart and cannot think of these axioms without a sudden clench of cramp as I see again the slim shock-rod and blunt baton dangling from Corporal Sweetman’s belt. At seven years of age, we students were at a loss to understand many of the words we parrotted. What was “acronym” or “innovative industry”? What did “inerrancy” mean? We were told just to mouth the sounds.

Papa squatted to speak to me face to face when I told him about the memory work and Mr. Rod. His eyes were wet. “You must be brave,” he said. “This dark time will pass, and it will seem to us then like a bad dream.”

I must remember the good household spirits of our ancestors, he counselled me, and draw courage from them. I must pretend obedience on the outside and memorize the questions and answers perfectly so that I did not suffer the pain inflicted by Mr. Rod. And I must remember, always, that the EYE’s truths were really lies.

“Do you understand, Lucia?”

“No,” I told them. “Why must I say these things, if they are untrue?”

“The people behind the EYE are ill,” Mama explained. “They have a mania. They suffer a kind of madness or confusion in their brains so that they think foolish things, as people sometimes do when they are sick and feverish. We are unlucky that they have come to power. We live in an unlucky time, but this will pass, as Papa told you. And we will love each other and help each other through it. We will keep this secret: that we know the EYE’s administrators are mad and that what they force us to learn is untrue and unkind. We must not let them know our secret. Do you understand, Lucia?”

“Yes.” And so over the following months I learned to reel off the words embodying the “truths” of the EYE, beneath which moved a will denatured and without scruple.

THE EYE’S CITIZENS GUIDE

What do the letters of the acronym EYE stand for?

EYE stands for the Ever-Yielding Elite.

What is the Elite and how is it Ever-Yielding?

The individuals who make up the EYE are the Elite. This does not mean they are superior to the people. They are Elite only in terms of their special expertise, which will enable them to revivify our ailing economy. Pursuit of this economic imperative — which we hold above all other values — is why the EYE has taken charge, and consolidated the machinery of government under one strong arm. As the economy grows stronger and the people recover from their errors of selfishness, self-indulgence, profligacy, lassitude, and flagrant abuse of liberty, the EYE will yield its power to them. We say the EYE is Ever-Yielding because this process will be gradual.

What actions will the EYE take to make our economy strong?

The EYE’s first step was to defeat the terrorists, who on the night of April 24, 2051 Old-Time, sought to destroy the infrastructure essential to the people’s survival. As a second step, the EYE will utilize its exceptional expertise to harbour and build upon our essential resources of food, fuel, and raw materials. The EYE’s third step will be to develop new innovative industries that make optimum use of our resources. These industries will generate profits for all the people.

What are these innovative industries?

To reveal the substance of these industries would jeopardize our economy’s competitiveness.

How can ordinary citizens contribute to the EYE’s vital work?

The EYE is aware that many of our citizens suffer from a sense of purposelessness. These citizens have been long unemployed in a stagnant economy and as a result, they find time lies heavy on their hands. Along with this sense of purposelessness, citizens often experience a sense of shame.

The EYE appreciates the suffering of the long-time unemployed. We have developed a program that will alleviate this suffering, and at the same time, enable these citizens to help strengthen the economy. This program, which is entirely voluntary, is called the Chrysalis State.

What happens in the Chrysalis State Program?

Citizens who opt to join the Chrysalis State Program will receive a scientifically designed support package. This package includes subsidized rent and a monthly pain-free injection that substantially reduces the quantity of food and drink an individual requires to sustain existence. By reducing their consumption, citizens in the Chrysalis State will directly contribute to cost savings for the economy.

What is the significance of the name Chrysalis State?

Citizens who opt for this program will be in a state of transition, like the chrysalis waiting for its transformation into a butterfly. Once the regime has the new innovative industries up and flourishing, there will plenty of jobs available for all citizens. Those in the Chrysalis State can then emerge to become active, productive members of the economy.

Is there a danger of lethargy in the Chrysalis State?

Citizens who opt into the program may initially feel more tired than usual. There will be some sacrifices entailed, for which the EYE will compensate these citizens.

How will the EYE compensate citizens in the Chrysalis State?

The EYE will provide free, non-stop entertainment to all those in the Chrysalis State. Gigantic sky-screens, now being erected over our cities, will offer exciting viewing to enliven the hours of these self-sacrificing citizens.

How should we regard the Chrysalis State?

There is no shame in the Chrysalis State. Those who opt into the program are vital contributors to the general well-being of all citizens.

What is the role of employed citizens in the new regime?

Employed citizens will henceforth be known as Survivalists. They will face their own challenges as some jobs are lost and new ones created in the EYE’s restructuring of the economy.Survivalists will be expected to hone their skills of adaptability and self-reliance. These skills will be particularly useful as the EYE introduces essential cutbacks in social services, including reductions in the superfluous policing of our streets.