What Lot's Wife Saw (19 page)

“Siccouane, bring me the shipping documents for the salt to be loaded for export, the folder on the food distribution, and the residence permit for the tenor Regoleone needs my signature since he’s coming next Wednesday and his residence hasn’t been arranged yet. Father, I expect a written explanation for the illegal burials at the mines and you, Judge Bateau, prepare a list of the cyclists that have damaged buildings; it’s about time we dealt with these troublesome matters. Captain Drake, you’ll prepare for me an analytical report on the movements of the Suez Mamelukes and make sure it’s an improvement on the one you handed to my predecessor two months ago. Doctor Fabrizio, the position of Head of the Infirmary implies responsibilities that you are insufficiently aware of. The frequency of fits and other episodes have increased because certain groups of colonists are regularly remiss in taking their pills. The Consortium demands that the workforce is constantly in tiptop health and tranquillised, otherwise it can never be productive. Do I make myself clear?”

I promised that by tomorrow I’d have organised an informational drive to the most depressed quarters. The young Governor ran his fingers through his hair and loosened it. Then he carefully tied it again with the thong with such grace and beauty that our hearts blossomed like roses even as his razor-sharp voice lacerated our ears.

“I’ve studied your personal files in Paris, so please dispense with introductions since I am well acquainted with your résumés. Six ambitious scoundrels, corrupt and unscrupulous – ideal choices as courtiers to the Governor. The Consortium readily admits that it owes its strength to lowlifes with reprehensible pasts, like you. In fact, the majority of the colonists have some guilty secret in their past, as anyone who’s in self-imposed exile far from civilisation must be hiding from something. It’s a pity that I’ll be denied your services, but since the regulations dictate a substitution of officers, I’ll comply. Believe me when I say, however, that there’s a lot you can do to improve your situation. Much will depend on your performance over the next few days.”

He rose and jerked the tablecloth off the table and tossed it to Desert to cover herself. She wrapped it with trembling fingers around her naked body. He stood at the window and tested the latch to make sure it was firmly shut.

“The replacement of the Governor was programmed for the 3rd of September, the day of the twentieth anniversary of the Colony, and I was to be presented then to the colonists. Special circumstances have dictated a change of programme, a change in the date of replacement but not in the date of presentation. I’m here, but in reality I’m not here yet, since I’m coming on the 3rd of September. I wonder if we’re all clear on this?”

We all nodded agreement. I admit I was having difficulty following him, due to his voice, which being measured and frigid without an ounce of life in it, sucked all the oxygen from the room.

“I don’t need to add that you will not mention my arrival to anyone until the day of the anniversary, and I, in turn, will try to judge with some leniency the events that have occurred here today.”

He motioned us to go, leaving us speechless with the brevity of our interrogation. We shuffled towards the door, awash with doubts and queries. Only Bateau, at the threshold, found the courage to stop, made an awkward bow and in a quavering voice requested the name of our New Governor. He answered wearily, in a tone that showed that he considered our Judge to be a major idiot.

“Bera, naturally.”

PRIEST MONTENEGRO

… The image of the sabre-tooth kept going through my mind as I was wrapping the remains of my torn cassock around me, on the way to the exit. I stuffed the Bible under my armpit, mutilated, bloody, profaned, just like me. I went out of the door and stepped into an unknown, menacing Colony.

I’d believed that I’d left the nightmares behind me in the jungles of South Africa. By burning copious amounts of incense in the Metropolis and with frequent praying, I’d managed to pay off my demons, to confuse them, and they’d granted me the right to grow old tranquilly in exile. But demons are immortal, they jump off the gunwales of ships in front of the astonished eyes of lieutenants, they swim in unswimmable seas, they share the warmth of cyclist’s fires, they appear in the Palace as Governors – and they’re beautiful, so overwhelmingly beautiful that you almost beg them to devour you.

Which of our darkest dreams had spawned the boy with the black eyes and the blood-curdling voice; which of our grisly fantasies did he personify? His image was so familiar to me that, if I weren’t petrified, I would have laughed at the tragic irony of it. Only his voice didn’t conform, only that voice revealed the horror. In the hall, Regina had been looking at him insatiably and we’d exchanged complicit glances because this youth was intimately known to us both. We’d summoned him to our erotic games, we’d described him in our clandestine couplings and he was always present, with his eyes observing us … those Stygian eyes.

In bed Regina had always kept her eyelids shut so as not to allow my image, or Bera’s, to spoil her arousal; it was to the youth that she’d whispered, to him that she’d surrendered her passion; it was his loss that she’d mourned come dawn. At some point in the discussion, the young Governor had divinely rested his beautiful head on his palm, exactly as we’d dreamed but with his body half-covered by the sheets and his breath coming in sweet, soft pants. Regina had been thunderstruck and had asked me with a glance: is that him? The youth had seen, sensed or understood it, for he’d pulled up the tablecloth and had forced her to cover up her nudity, making her abandon her reverie. In our fantasies, he’d never spoken, we’d never heard the sound of his voice, so we weren’t expecting it to be that of a serpent.

I hesitated, undecided, at the Palace’s outer gate. I didn’t know where to go. It was impossible to return to my villa, to the quiet that frightened me, to Ali’s gaze that denuded me, to the walnut bed that belonged to me even less than my cassock. I craved the company of the wretches that’d disgusted me until that moment, but who now shared a common feeling that we’re fellow drops of the same poison. Dr Fabrizio had run off, however, not wishing to talk to any of us. Captain Drake still believed that we’d led him astray and was cursing us. “So the New Governor was coming in at least one month and a half, was he? So you’d had it all figured out? Damn you scoundrels, you’ve got me into this mess!” I was wary of approaching him as I felt that he was itching for an excuse to thrash someone to relieve his frustrations. Siccouane had stayed behind to gather the documents that the New Governor had requested. Regina and Bianca were tidying the office. I wondered where Judge Bateau was as I’d not seen him leave. The fact that I was seeking the company of Boozy Bateau was something that, before, would have been beyond imagination.

I traversed Hesperides with the benevolent darkness keeping me hidden. The street lighters were gathered around a street lamp and leaning a ladder against it to fill it with fish oil. The gang saw me from afar and moved their heads in greeting. I instinctively started to raise my hand to bless them but took in the blood on my nails and plunged it back under the sleeve. I heard the ringing bell of a berlinga behind me and stood aside to let it pass. I felt the six hot breaths, six synchronised pairs of legs, six clear consciences pass by me and, in a moment, they had disappeared in the distance. My loneliness had reached dangerous dimensions. I felt that it could swallow me up. I started to run.

Out of breath, I reached Bateau’s villa and knocked on his door. His housemaid, Eliza, one of the Judge’s little sluts, opened. I don’t know how she can still put up with him. Chewing on liquorice, she lewdly informed me that “Uncle Bernard” had locked himself in his room and wouldn’t open the door for anyone. Her eyes sparkled as she could see plenty of skin through my torn cassock. I repulsed her grasping hand with a well-aimed blow of my Bible and she uttered a mew of complaint. She often causes me problems in the Metropolis and when I give her Communion – she licks and bites my fingers. I don’t dare turn her over to Dr Fabrizio for a cure, as he’s worse than the Judge. I pushed her aside and climbed the stairs to the bedroom. I had that familiar, hateful feeling that I was entering my own villa, even though it was someone else’s.

All Hesperides villas are identical, same construction, same layout, only the name on the knocker differs. Bateau had filled his with cheap antiques, to give the illusion of possessions; I preferred to leave mine as I’d received it since I don’t harbour such illusions, there being nothing that we can buy with our money apart from consumables. The Consortium believes that ownership of durable goods endows us with a sense of security and we become less dependent, less obedient, and so when we desire some new item we submit a request to the Governor, and if he approves the expense the Consortium buys it for us. That means that the item belongs to the Consortium and must be handed in when we leave. The Seventy-Five remind us
ad nauseam
that we’re merely passers-through and guests on their soil.

Once I’d begged to pay for an anthropology book with my own money, just to feel that it was truly mine, but the Governor vetoed it. The Consortium bought it for me and I threw it in the bin. I wrote it down as worn-out and its value was deducted from my pay – we can use our money to pay for damaged goods but never for something new.

I passed in front of a knight’s torn surcoat pitifully hanging from a nail on the wall (permission had been obtained for the nail), a sword with a fractured handle and a kitschy Buddha with puffed cheeks and closed eyes. Bateau had considered the acquisition of each of his cheap decorations as a personal victory, having asked Daddy Consortium for it just as little Xavier would’ve done when walking around the bazaar with his father. We become diminished and figures of ridicule with every breath we draw in this borrowed land. I hammered so loudly on his door that he was forced to open it lest I tear it off its hinges. I needed to talk to someone, otherwise I would’ve gone mad.

Bateau was sprawled on his bed, had already downed half a bottle and thrown up twice on the floor – when had he found the time?! I opened the window to let fresh air in and fetched him a bowl of water to wash himself. I shook him to bring him to his senses, because if we fell apart at this critical moment, we’d be doomed, as we’d be playing into the dangerous youth’s hands.

The Judge, pale from the retching, rubbed his red eyes and muttered that what had been happening since the morning was insane, he either had to be dreaming or his senses had abandoned him. We’ve always been surprised by the Seventy-Five, taken unawares by the Governor, but this had grossly exceeded every precedent.

I lifted the soiled sheet from the edge of the bed so I could sit. I found a pencil on his commode and opened the Bible. We’d write down the facts and study them to force our brains to function and derive some logical explanations. Bateau shouted furiously that I should derive them alone since he intended to drink himself into a stupor and forget he’d ever existed.

“That’s exactly what the Seventy-Five want,” I admonished him. “Don’t make it so easy for them!” I propped him up in a sitting position and detached the bottle from his lips. I needed his help, his attention at least because if we all isolated ourselves, we’d succumb to our fears.

I jotted down anything that crossed my mind so as to not to allow my brain to stop. Were we so familiar and so transparent to the Seventy-Five that they could eavesdrop into our lewdest fantasies, could know to the finest detail what arouses us, could know what terrifies us, know what paralyses us and send it in a single package to confront us? Perhaps, if Bera’s reports had been phenomenally analytical, our psychological profiles incredibly detailed and our employers had decided to mess with our minds for reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom.

“Now, what I can’t understand is how the New Governor plans to run the Colony over the next fifteen days with the colonists unaware of his existence,” Bateau said. He was worried that we would end up like Siccouane, who suspects that there are administrative ploys hidden even between the paint and the wall.

What bothered me was how the boy had managed to surreptitiously land on the Colony when the private sea and the port are patrolled so tightly. If Lieutenant Richmond’s delirium had substance, then the youth had been on board the Correspondence Ship and one mile away from the harbour had dived into the sea, an act of suicide according to Richmond. Was it possible that the lad had responded to a signal sent by a nearby vessel lurking in the fog and had jumped off at the right moment and place to be picked up? Then, this vessel had delivered him far from the port, to avoid the boatmen’s patrols, and that was why he’d emerged in the southern quarter of the cyclists, where I’d seen him.

Bateau half shut his eyes and said that it was certain that the youth had slipped into the Palace at daybreak and had gone up to Bera’s room and killed him. Then he’d dressed him in his ceremonial uniform and had gone into hiding in the Palace. Hidden there, he’d observed us throughout the day, followed every action and overheard every word. He’d chosen to appear only when we decided to break into the Green Box, just before Fabrizio had had a chance to turn the lock. Bateau demanded that I write this in my Bible as he considered it very important.

So maybe the Seventy-Five had sent him to thwart some plan of Bera’s because he’d been getting ready to sabotage something in anticipation of his replacement, something that they couldn’t allow. Damn, if he’d delayed a few minutes longer, we’d have opened the Box and read Bera’s reports and then we would now know the answer to that question.

“Didn’t it strike you as strange when he claimed that he was also called ‘Bera’ … Could he be a relative of the deceased?” Bateau mused.

I shrugged my shoulders. I for one believed that he’d given that answer to emphasise that he wasn’t yet officially here. Up to the anniversary of the Colony he’d remain Bera. He’d wanted us to get that firmly in our heads.