What Lot's Wife Saw (21 page)

Out of breath, Montenegro leant against the wall and begged us to take him with us. He couldn’t be left alone tonight because he’d go mad. I explained that he wouldn’t be allowed to follow the Green Box procession so he pleaded to be accompanied to Fabrizio’s house. He’d wake him up and they’d play a game of chess. Montenegro seeking Fabrizio’s company – wonders will never cease!

On our way out of the villa the Priest asked in a quiet voice, “And Regina?”

“She’s changed positions with her maid. Governor’s orders,” I said.

Bateau overheard and his eyes lit up with his customary greed – its previous absence had been making it hard for me to recognise the Judge. He asked for details of the New Governor’s behaviour towards his daughter and looked triumphant when he heard that the youth had shown sympathy and kindness to the girl with the white eyes (those zombie-like eyes).

Any lingering doubts about the youth’s identity had been swept out of the Judge’s mind by the sobering prospect of a future alliance. He smoothed down the few hairs that formed a bristly line around his naked skull and suggested that we should hurry to avoid the Governor’s annoyance. I was flooded by my familiar disgust for him, which my body welcomed as a sign that I was recovering my true self.

We reached Fabrizio’s villa. Montenegro didn’t want us to leave him until Fabrizio had opened the door, for if he saw him alone, the Doctor would never open it. So, we waited until the face of his housekeeper appeared behind the half-open door. Markella became incensed on seeing the three of us, but especially the Priest, whom her master detested so much that he forbade her to attend services at the Metropolis. Still shaking, she asked us what we wanted.

“Dr Fabrizio.”

“The Doctor is looking after his dying caterpillars,” she explained. Fabrizio’s hobby was to order insects, although he knew they couldn’t survive the Colony’s atmosphere beyond the few hours which they would spend on his walls, but they gave him the illusion of a natural environment. He also ordered plants that arrived in special jars but withered within twenty-four hours, although he strove to keep them alive to create the impression that he was tending a garden. This was his way of protecting himself from the danger of madness or of suicide, which was an epidemic in the southern quarters.

Montenegro politely asked her to announce that he’d come to see the Doctor, which put her in a dilemma since she knew that her master would flay her alive were she to allow the Priest to cross the threshold.

Then the Doctor was heard from inside, speaking in a toneless voice. To his housekeeper’s utter amazement, Fabrizio, wearing a clean dinner jacket and with his hair washed and combed, appeared at the door and genially suggested to the Priest that they should go together to the Opera restaurant. Montenegro accepted, but only if the Doctor first took him to his villa to get some proper clothes. They walked off, arms linked; an unprecedented sight indeed. The lanky Montenegro, dressed in shredded rags beside the short, rotund but impeccably dressed Doctor, disappeared down the road like a bedraggled Don Quixote next to a resplendent Sancho Panza. Their long-standing and merciless feud over Regina’s bed, which had threatened to send the Doctor to his psychiatric ward and the Priest to jail, had entered a temporary truce in the face of the danger emanating from the dark Palace tonight.

We all felt this pervading sense of danger, although we couldn’t adequately describe why, and it was magnified by our inability to trust each other. The opportunistic friendships that had developed in response to our shared situation would quickly be forgotten should the present balances be upset and one of our number favoured by fate or fortune. We were still on the alert and we analysed each other’s reactions and expressions since the possibility that at least one of us had had a hand in the latest developments could not yet be ruled out. I doffed my perforated hat to Markella and, taking the Judge by the arm, sauntered down to the port.

On the way, I wondered what role Captain Cortez might have played in this extraordinary affair; after all, his ship had brought the New Governor to the Colony, if the ramblings of Lieutenant Richmond were true. I suggested to Bateau that we should bandy some explorative insinuations about to Captain Cortez regarding what had happened today at the Palace, in order to study any reactions or comments. Bateau, this new Bateau, forbade me to open my mouth. He threatened that if I disobeyed the Governor’s orders and revealed the minutest detail he would tell him everything. The new Bateau had no doubt that the pirate was faithfully following the directives of the Seventy-Five and he’d no intention of betraying his trust. The new Bateau was starting to get on my nerves.

LADY REGINA BERA

… I saw my lover assuming the role of my husband. I saw the lover I’d always longed for, but never had, standing in for the husband I’d had until the day before, but never wanted. He’d taken his place, his job and his name. What metamorphosis did that transposition demand of me, who was I supposed to become? Wife of my erotic fantasy or widow of a husband that refused to die?

My new role, complex and vague, definitely included manual labour, which at least would release my tensions. I swept the floors of the kitchens, mopped, put away the tools in the storeroom, arranged the kitchenware on the shelves. The stench of the dismembered Bera was suffocating as the slits of the shutters were insufficient for the recirculation of the air. I wasn’t allowed to open them, as my lover demanded that everything remained shut. Like a bandaged eye, the Palace faced the Colony sealed shut.

I put oven gloves on and carefully opened the oven door to check the progress of the incineration. Melted flesh, protruding bones and the half-blackened face greeted me. It seemed impossible for the flame to reach the smile which had widened as the skin retracted, exposing the dentures which gruesomely replaced the lips in the smile. Bera had decided to be admitted into Hell, smiling. I shut the door firmly.

I heard hesitant steps in the corridor and went to see Bianca coming down the stairs on tiptoes like a cat escaping from its basket. I immediately ordered her to go back to my room because my lover had told her to rest. I told her off for still wearing her maid’s outfit and said that she must put on one of my silk nightdresses and that on no account was I to see her down here again else we’d both get into trouble.

Bianca started trembling, sniffling and moaning. I despaired that my lover would hear as he was working on the Green Box in the office, and I implored her to keep quiet. Self-control, however, was beyond her and she fell to her knees, saying that she feared him more than death itself and begged me to allow her to escape. Failing that, she pleaded, could I help her to commit suicide and free herself from her eviscerating terror?

I felt pity for the dumb, virginal crybaby, not for her predicament, but for her inexperience. Did she believe that with such shenanigans she’d succeed in resisting and avoid surrendering to his whims? No woman could resist the metallic caress of the Avenging Angel’s sword, no matter how clear a conscience she had, no matter how tightly she clenched her legs together. I took her hand and kissed her fingertips, exactly as my lover had done in the hall, since he might get angry if I touched any other part of her. I reassured her, saying that she’d nothing to fear, in fact she should be pleased that she was the Governor’s precious lotus blossom and, if she got really lucky, he would have her. Of course he appeared fearsome to her, as he was created from the abyss of darkness that I nurture within, and it was natural that the fantasies of unsatisfied, lustful women would frighten little girls. Now that he’d assumed flesh and blood, he dictated and we obeyed. She should go at once to my room and lie down. Bianca sniffed softly and asked if I’d at least allow her to go and get
The Times
from her old room. I couldn’t possibly allow her into the servants’ quarters so I promised to go and fetch the paper and bring it upstairs.

I listened to Bianca’s footsteps recede and then waited to hear her door shut before I ventured to her room. I stepped over piles of newspapers, supplements and magazines as I searched for the latest edition. The walls were festooned with weird crosswords in the shape of a meandros, with the answers written in various colours of ink, which showed that they’d taken several weeks to be completed. I picked up the half-open
Times
from her bed and climbed up to my room – I shouldn’t write “my” room but my hand refused to obey me.

I found Bianca standing pressed to the window with her hands on the fastened shutters. She was greedily sucking in air through the slats, as if the air inside the Palace was no longer breathable. I pulled her back, then chose a nightgown and helped her undress. Her naked body, like a thin and undernourished twig, was like an unkept promise of a woman’s body. My elegant nightdress was totally wasted on her with her flat chest, body like a test tube, no hint of thighs and matchsticks for calves. The satiny, snowy silk underlined the paleness of her eyes, all goggled up and vacant. Her irisless pupils, two tiny pinpricks, swam about in her egg-white eyes like crazed specks of pepper.

I shoved her into bed myself. She lay on her front, tightly holding her
Times
. I sat on the edge of the bed to calm her but the trembling didn’t abate. Every once in a while, her body would be wracked by spasms and I feared that she’d fall ill and I’d inevitably be blamed.

To get her mind off things, I asked her to tell me what was interesting in the papers, what was in these
Times’s
anyway? She shrugged and said that she hadn’t had a chance to read them yet. How was that possible since she’d been absorbed in it since yesterday! She admitted that she’d been struggling with Book’s Epistleword. From what I understand, there’s a puzzle in the
Sunday Times
Supplement which has seven rows of blanks which you fill in after reading the excerpts of certain letters. These were the small crosswords that she’d plastered all over her room and that had provided her with her mental exercise. There were Epistlewords that’d taken her weeks or even months to solve and one had taken her several years. The trembling ceased and I could sense that her breathing was back to normal, so I continued the subject as it seemed to relax her. I’d never had a conversation before with my maid, I’d never thought her capable of a proper discussion, and this wasn’t a satisfactory one but it served its purpose and I could endure her ramblings with a smile.

She confessed that Book’s Epistleword had been her only pleasurable pastime since she could remember. Her dull and lonely childhood had been spent in drunken Bateau’s empty villa, with an occasional trip to an Infirmary bed thrown in, so that she could be monitored, like a fish in a bowl, by the doctors. Only the peculiar labyrinth of the Epistleword relieved the tedium.

Ever since Priest Montenegro had taught her to read and write, she’d started to explore the paths that that man, Phileas Book, had pioneered with his meandroses and she’d lose herself in his mysterious world. It was no mean feat to interpret his clues and she’d found herself forced to keep up-to-date with current events through reading a number of European newspapers and the encyclopaedia as a source of reference. There’d been many instances when she couldn’t comprehend something and, there being no one that’d ever tried to help her, she’d had to wait until some pertinent article or letter appeared to enlighten her. To her amazement, more than her enchantment, she discovered that the people mentioned were plagued by a never-ending multitude of problems and issues, like the protection of endangered mountain bears, or whether smoking should be banned in railways, or whether the dimensions of tulip leaves could be optimised … What did a tulip look like, anyway?

I told her that I felt a migraine coming on and it was a pity that I couldn’t prolong the delightful conversation, so it’d be best if she kept quiet and read her newspaper until sleep overtook her. She told me that she’d plenty to do still since she hadn’t filled in one across yet. Using her little finger she pointed at the blank white squares on the left-hand side of the meandros. She’d reread a letter from Mr G countless times but that hadn’t helped and she still couldn’t answer Book’s question-clue. I pretended to be interested in the question, which referred to the letter of Mr G, who’d been wearing his black suit with the blue tie when he’d gone to the post office to receive his mother-in-law’s parcel. He’d been given another one by mistake, which had contained samples of knitwear. I covered her up, hoping that her eyes would shut soon and give me some peace. She knitted her eyebrows and brought the paper closer to her face and read, “The red with the blue is a daring combination, the two blues are boring, the shades of grey are too conservative and, impossible though it may seem, I’m resisting the paleness of the green but I have not yet come across a spirit so brave that fails to shed tears when black and blue combine. Are you trying to communicate your sadness to us, Mr G, or are you just trying to surprise us?”

Bianca explained that Book must certainly be referring to the combination of the black suit with the blue tie of Mr G, but the most common pitfall of Epistlewords is that you can rarely answer the question as put but usually a related one that can be deduced by reversing the meaning of one of the key words. If you failed to find the key reversal, you would never find what you were looking for. I said I hoped she’d enjoy herself and gently shut the door behind me. Bianca should have grown up among her peers and have had a normal upbringing, now I’m afraid she’s one mental foot in the real world and the other in a haunted dreamland.

I couldn’t resist going back to see how the incineration had progressed. I carefully opened the oven door. I’d thought that the human body would’ve been consumed faster, unless perhaps the corpse, having absorbed the water from the ice, was resisting the flames. I’d relax when I could see that my husband’s smile had finally disappeared. Unfortunately, I could still feel its sneer as I shut the door.