What Lot's Wife Saw (20 page)

Bateau’s head just couldn’t get around either his surprising arrival or his extraordinary appearance. He believed that he was an imposter taking advantage of the fact that we’d no way of confirming his identity. To be honest, anyone who entered the Palace and claimed to be the Governor would have had to be taken at face value since the Consortium doesn’t disclose its plans and policies to us. That means, simply, that again we found ourselves at an impasse. If we refuse to obey him and it was later verified that he actually was the Governor, we’re screwed. If we follow his orders and he’s proven to be an imposter, we’re screwed again.

“Siccouane should be the one listening to this, with his admiration of the Seventy-Five’s faultless system of government,” said Bateau vindictively. “I’m waiting to see whether that pirate shows up at the anniversary reception in a decent suit or insists on wearing his ridiculous outfit. No, please, answer this one particular question! Why is he dressed up for carnival, like a corsair in a theatrical production?”

“So that we can have one more unanswered question,” I said sadly.

SECRETARY SICCOUANE

… I pulled out the payroll by mistake. “The distribution documents are in the second drawer down, Siccouane,” the young Governor shouted from a distance of three rooms and two halls away. I shut the top drawer and opened the second in a fluster. He either had X-ray vision or his knowledge of our filing impressively exceeded that of the old Bera.

I prepared the paperwork for the distribution of the drinking water, the washing water, the fish oil and the fruit. There’d only be a distribution of alcohol to outlets in Hesperides due to the inadequate quantity delivered by the last ship, and the remaining quarters would only receive consignments of beer. The Opera would get a special delivery of champagne, tins of smoked salmon and caviar. The delivery of flour to the bakers had top priority since the distributors were in the port, waiting for the order. With difficulty I lifted the stack of documents that reached up to my chin, because the Governor had demanded that I should take in all the outstanding matters.

Heavily laden as I was, I searched for him up and down corridors until I tracked him down in the kitchens. I saw him bent over in front of the open door of the oven, looking into its interior, his black eyes reflecting the flickering flames. The stench of burning flesh hung cloyingly in the air. I tried to read his expression but his beautiful face remained impassive. He shut the door and motioned me to follow him, without commenting about his predecessor being slowly carbonised.

Bianca had managed to mop and tidy the office and was carrying out the broken chairs. At that moment, Lady Regina was coming down the stairs, hurriedly buttoning up her dress. The Governor took in the tidied room, knitted his eyebrows in fury but said in a calm, if ice cold, voice, “Mrs Regina, I thought I was quite clear when I asked you to clean and tidy my office.”

The Lady stammered that she’d only shot upstairs for two minutes, to get dressed. Her eyes surveyed the office, looking for faults in Bianca’s work and quickly upbraided her for failing to dust the Governor’s swivel chair. Bianca immediately dropped the chair she’d been carrying and picked up a dust cloth. The Governor however reached out an arm to grab her by the waist and stop her.

“I wonder, Mrs Regina, why you insist on pretending that you don’t understand.”

He took the cloth from Bianca and threw it at the Lady’s face and told her to hurry up, as he needed to work in the office. The thunderbolt halted Lady Regina in her tracks. She gave the cloth a spiteful squeeze with her fingers, went over to the chair and started dusting.

The Governor gently kissed Bianca’s filthy fingertips and advised her to go and lie down to rest. Bianca blanched. I’ve never seen a more terrified human being in my life than her, as the youth, in an astonishingly tender voice, told her that she’d suffered enough for one day and she really needed to rest. The Lady swivelled her head around in surprise and I could not believe my ears. It wasn’t the behaviour that had surprised us but his new voice. This voice had nothing in common with the one that had issued from his mouth before, it couldn’t have come from him – it was the voice of a child, soft as silk, reassuring like a caress. Lady Regina’s eyes lit up with the clash of surprise and envy that they recorded. She swung back to the chair and rubbed the armrests manically. The Governor, having satisfied himself that Bianca had indeed departed, resumed his acidic voice, to our relief, as his momentary metamorphosis had unsettled us once more.

“Bianca’s life is precious to the Consortium. She constitutes the proof that our investment has the capability of fruitfulness and reproduction, to give birth to its own citizens and to repopulate without relying on transfusions of questionable quality, like yourselves. Bianca embodies our vision, she’s the only true citizen of the Colony and we’re responsible for her wellbeing. I don’t wish to have to remind you again, Mrs Regina.”

The widow motioned her acceptance. The Governor ordered her to turn over her room to her former maid and to give her some of her clothes to wear. If Regina wanted to stay an extra two weeks in the Colony, she’d have to make herself useful by undertaking all the upkeep of the Palace. She’d sleep in one of the servant’s rooms and she’d be held responsible for making sure there was always enough food, wine, fish oil and ink. For the next fifteen days no one would be allowed to enter the building, and that included the servants. The special circumstances demanded secrecy and everyone had to make sure it was maintained. The Governor’s tone of voice made it quite clear that the death of her husband had rendered her both unemployable and undesirable.

She begged not to be sent back to England and burst into tears. She described her squalid youth in Liverpool with its horrifying culmination of being wanted for murder and her subsequent furtive existence as a fugitive from justice in Plymouth. She’d passed many a night in its cabarets suffering the attentions of drunken clients until the enigmatic Bera appeared one daybreak out of nowhere and had come upon her lying bloody and battered by her lovers. He’d dragged her to her feet by her hair and had informed her, heaven knows why, that she was to be his wife. He’d baptised her “Lady”, bought her some silk stockings and taught her to fear no man but himself. No, she could never return, she’d die first, rather than set foot on England’s shores again. She wiped her tears away and promised to perform all the duties required of her for the upkeep of the Palace. Before anything else, however, she’d write out the lists to facilitate the orderly handing over of all the contents of the Palace to her successor, the New Governor’s wife, if and when she’d make her appearance.

She made me inwardly smile. Even under these circumstances her female instinct had remained alert and seductive. She stressed that she “was preparing the lists for your wife”, fishing for information on the marital status and availability of the young Governor, to try to gauge her chances of sharing the occupancy of his bed. The youth however blocked the indirect question.

“I don’t need you to waste time with lists, madam. I’m fully acquainted with the furnishings and fittings of this mansion down to the last detail. I’ve already made note of all the damaged items and their value will be withheld from the wages due to you. I fear that after the deductions there’ll be nothing left, apart from the pair of silk stockings and the linen suit that you were wearing when you arrived. Make sure that they still fit you, as you’ll be taking nothing else with you. Siccouane, go to the port to notify Captain Cortez to come to collect the Green Box. On your way, make a stop at Judge Bateau’s villa and wake him up since he’s probably in a drunken stupor by now and is certain to have forgotten that his presence is required for the procession.”

He then turned his back to us and his perfect shoulders, which rose so magnificently over the back of the chair that had previously hosted Bera’s asymmetrical frame, caused one to think that the mansion was far too pedestrian and small to house such stunning beauty. We left on tiptoes and silently shut the door. I pulled my torn redingote and my holed hat on (Montenegro had personally torn the band off “looking for the lost key”) and scurried towards the exit to avoid meeting her eyes. God knows how often I had dreamt of seeing her humiliated, evicted from the Palace, banished from the Colony, but now I felt desperately sorry for her, even sorrier than I felt for myself.

That man’s presence had exposed the six of us. We’d voluntarily discarded our false identities, the ones the Consortium had so generously allowed us to create and use on its soil – too generously perhaps, since its silence had to be repaid with our devotion. We revealed who we were, and worse, who we’d been before the Overflow. He hadn’t forced this on us, quite the opposite, it had been on our initiative, and the revelation, instead of stigmatising us, had provided a purification. We confessed that we were hypocrites, but by doing so we proved we had at least some remnants of morality and so deserved his leniency. We seemed to have put on a show of honesty and self-pity, vying with each other to gain the sympathy and mercy of the Governor to mitigate our circumstances. Only Regina had abstained from our confessing, and so when it had poured forth, she’d seemed shocked by her revelations as if, for all these years, she’d been hiding them from herself rather than from us. When I reached the front door, I sneaked a look behind me and I saw her curled into a pathetic heap at the bottom of the stairs, hands on her thighs, wracked by silent sobs that welled up from a source of unbearable pain deep within her. I wondered if there was any sincerity in her breakdown, or was she just acting out a role far more cleverly than the rest of us?

As I left the building I saw that the weather had cleared. You couldn’t see the sky of course, that was rare indeed, but the cloud had lifted several metres above the ground and you could see the street ahead. I got my bearings by the feeble light of the fish-oil lamps, and headed towards Bateau’s villa.

A tousled and bleary Eliza opened the door, stinking of liquorice and wine – like master like maid – and rudely demanded why I’d woken her.

“I’m looking for the Judge.”

“The Judge does not want to be disturbed, Secretary.”

“Then he’s forgotten that he has a duty to attend to.”

I pushed past her and she started to squeal. I wondered whether she’d been dreaming when she shouted, “Uncle Monty,” as opposed to “Uncle Bernard,” but she was proved correct when the bedroom door opened and Priest Montenegro appeared above. Eliza grabbed my hat and, guffawing, showed it to the Priest while sticking her fingers through the holes. I quickly climbed up the stairs with Eliza’s laughter echoing in my ears. I didn’t possess enough dignity to be offended, the ingredients that used to make up Siccouane were pouring out of me at an alarming rate through holes much like those in my attire. So who was this Siccouane who was climbing up the stairs like a tramp in rags to meet with the two greatest scoundrels of the Colony, and why shouldn’t he deserve the ridicule of chambermaids?

The Judge’s room reeked of vomit, soured brandy and sweat but that seemed to suit Bateau and Montenegro just fine. They’d been passing their time lounging on the bed with the bedclothes rumpled at their feet and between them was the dirty Bible, its pages furiously scribbled on. They were estimating the odds that the young Governor wasn’t who he claimed to be and the possible repercussions of any action they might take. I glanced at their notes, but all I saw was a labyrinth of arrows and asterisks. They were in exactly the same shape they’d been in when I’d last seen them, dressed in rags, rent gown and torn cassock – not that I was any better. I opened the closet and tossed the Judge a pair of trousers and a shirt to wear, and also took a decent jacket for myself as I wouldn’t have time to go by my house. I informed them that the Governor had been working to get the Green Box ready on time and had ordered us to transport it to the docks as usual, before midnight.

“Well, I say that he is a fraud,” Bateau announced.

I smacked my fist against the wall in despair. The youth knew where everything was in the Palace, he knew where I kept each document, what matters were under consideration and the contents of each file before I opened it. He’d signed a whole mountain of documents with Bera’s signature, his exact selfsame signature – and believe me, in my previous life I was a forger and can vouch that it was impeccable. The whorls of the “B”, the slant of the “r” and the swoop that connects the “a” back to the beginning, creating a half moon to cradle the name, all looked authentic. The best graphologist would’ve gone cross-eyed but still failed to spot the minutest difference. If he was a fake, then he was so capable, so well prepared and every bit as dangerous as the real Governor, that he was tantamount to the real thing. I would blindly serve him because if he wasn’t afraid of the Seventy-Five, if he could deceive and toy with them, then he was even more frightening than they were.

Montenegro started to laugh wildly; he lifted his cassock and at the same time began to twirl like a dervish, babbling away to himself as if he was on something. He informed us that that’s how the Consortium trained them in Paris, in Governors’ School, where an endless string of “Beras” graduate like so many Russian Dolls. He ranted on that the new model was a hell of a lot more hair-raising than the obsolete one because with the lately-deceased you were frightened of the Seventy-Five, whereas with this one here, the greatest danger to you was yourself.

I dragged the Judge off of his bed and forced him to get dressed. He whined that he had no intention of serving the clown that passed himself off as the Governor. I asked him not to forget to tell me as soon as he has a better idea. Until then it was better to be on our best behaviour because before rejecting this implant we, as mere organs, must decide whether we’re viable without it. Furthermore, he’d caught us in the act of dismembering and burning Bera and attempting to rifle the Green Box. He already had a sheaf of charge sheets groaning under the weight of our misdeeds, enough to condemn us all of first-degree murder, conspiracy and robbery and to consign us to life in the Guardhouse dungeons. I suggested that we should go along with him until we could tell what he was up to.