What Lot's Wife Saw (24 page)

The men were gathered in the antechamber. Silk ties, dark tailcoats, ironed cassock. I sat next to them. Fabrizio was playing with a caterpillar between his fingers to calm his nerves. It seemed dead but his actions gave it movement and from time to time he’d cup his hands and blow a gentle breeze over it. Drake caught my eye and tapped his lapel to show me that I wasn’t wearing my Star. I fervently hoped that Ali would bring it in time, and that Eliza hadn’t hidden it to spite me.

“I’ll explain to the Governor that I had to come here directly from the Courts. I’ll apologise for the omission. What else can I do, damn it?”

Montenegro started hopping in excitement and he exhorted me to go in without the medal, without offering the pirate any explanation. This was a splendid opportunity to surprise him and force him to reveal himself. I’d walk proudly into the room with an indifferent air, as if I wasn’t conscious of my missing Star.

“The only thing that the Governor would never expect is to be so blatantly disobeyed by slimy Judge Bateau!” he crowed.

I advised him to mind his own business and to leave me be. Montenegro opened his Bible and showed us the complicated diagrams that he’d scribbled on one of the pages. It resembled a mathematical equation but it was broken up by vectors, asterisks and sketches of animal skeletons. He said passionately that the pirate was hiding behind the multitude of surprises that he’d pulled on us, making him so difficult to analyse but for all that, he’d succeeded. He was, thereby, able to find his weak spot which we could use to attack him. The young Governor was bound by pre-existing decisions so he was trapped into following guidelines, a prearranged path. He reminded us of certain of the pirate’s statements: That he must be presented to the colonists on the anniversary, although he’d arrived two weeks in advance. That he’d be deprived of our services, not through his own choosing, but because the regulations stipulated it. That Regina must vacate her room immediately after the death of her husband. But the room should be occupied by the Governor’s wife for fifteen more days, so he hastened to stick Bianca in there to maintain the balance that he had in his mind.

“Can’t you see he’s chained to a conceptual correct order of things which he doesn’t dare deviate from! We must derail his predetermined programme and once off the tracks he’ll be stymied.”

“Never in my life have I heard such a concentrated load of bullshit,” Drake said indignantly.

Undeterred, the Priest reminded us that the pirate overtly ignored anything that didn’t fit in with his notion of “normality”, as if he couldn’t see it. He hadn’t asked a single question about the dismemberment and incineration of Bera. He hadn’t expressed wonder at the sight of us naked and bloody like cannibals nor commented about the fact that we were ready to break into the Green Box. Whatever was outside his envelope he couldn’t handle, couldn’t discuss, perhaps couldn’t see.

He ceremoniously turned the page of the Bible to display the extension of the diagram of the previous page. He pointed out two arrows that stuck out like the prongs of a rake which he’d labelled “X” and “Y”. The “X” and “Y” represented two questions which the Governor wouldn’t expect but which the Priest intended to pose to throw a spanner in his works. As it was, the Governor wasn’t expecting any questions from us since we’d come to listen and not to ask, so he’d be doubly taken aback by the two questions that the Priest had so devilishly chosen for the purpose. He’d be forced to answer but even if he didn’t, the result would be equivalent since he’d have deviated from the preordained path.

Siccouane gestured to me that the Priest was a candidate for a straitjacket and not to comment because it would only encourage him. Fabrizio, who’d no such aversion to taking this further as it would lead to the Priest’s humiliation, asked to learn what the two questions were that he’d chosen with such guile that his eyes had shone in anticipation. Montenegro conspiratorially looked up and down the corridor, and satisfied that we were alone, stretched out his thumb and index finger to enumerate.

“First, what did Governor Bera die of? Second, where’s the key for the Green Box?”

We looked at him as if he were mad. The insulting questions contained insinuated accusations and the youth would become furious because instead of his raking us over the coals about these issues we would challenge
him
. Fabrizio seemed delighted that Montenegro’s head was on a direct course to the chopping block, but I felt that this was no joke and that if Priest’s folly meant his head, ours might roll in company.

“Please, Father, when we go in, keep your mouth shut.”

“Why, Bateau? In any case, these are honest questions that’ve been plaguing me since yesterday.”

“Shut up, Montenegro, because you’ll be the death of us all!” Drake shouted.

“Do you see what he’s done to us? We feel guilty for having legitimate questions, whereas he should be the one feeling guilty for not answering them. He doesn’t need to formulate charges against us nor press us to confess to them since we’ve willingly volunteered both these services.”

“Your guilty conscience is fighting tooth and nail to prove its innocence, even when there are no specific charges levelled against it. The truly innocent are serene, untroubled,” Fabrizio said, and in an effort to portray himself as living proof of his theories, he peacefully joined his hands on his stomach and blew the curled caterpillar down his arm.

Regina entered at that moment and announced that the Governor and Bianca were waiting for us in the dining room. The fact that she’d mentioned my daughter and the Governor in the same breath, as if they were a couple, caused mixed feelings in me. Of course I was proud that my child was the subject of such care and attention from the young Governor, but her ascendance was too precipitous. Up until yesterday she’d been wiping the Lady’s shoes. She’d not dare to look me in the eye and she’d cringe with fear if I raised my voice. Now, should I thank her for receiving me, should I kiss her hand, should I request her permission to sit? I don’t know whether I felt pride or irritation.

We found them sitting in the lesser reception room which was set with gold candlesticks, silver knives and forks and crystal glasses. The youth still wore the pirate’s outfit with the ring hanging from his ear as if he hadn’t removed it all night – even the leather thong that held his thick ponytail looked identical in all respects. Bianca was wearing one of the Lady’s gowns but occupied a tiny percentage of it, as she was a mere twig by comparison to the bountiful Regina. She’d one hand holding the gown up above her breast, otherwise it would’ve slipped down to her navel, and the other in her mouth manically biting her nails, unless her teeth were chattering of their own volition and she had only put her hand there to dampen the sound. She was sitting opposite the Governor, the seat which, while Bera had been alive, had always been occupied by the hostess. We all headed towards our accustomed places, those that Bera had assigned to each Star Bearer. The only one who seemed lost was Siccouane, who’d never attended such a dinner before. Regina was still standing, taking the position of the Head Butler, waiting for the order to begin serving.

The whole meal seemed like a parody – I felt as if I were attending a circus and that at any moment jugglers and clowns would burst into the room. We didn’t manage to sit down however because the pirate stopped us with a wave of his hand.

“I’ll redraw the geography of the table,” he said.

His pointing finger guided us to new seats, placing Montenegro between me and Fabrizio, while Drake was instructed to sit next to Siccouane. The map of submerged Eurasia didn’t make sense like this. Bera had arranged us around the table in the order of inundated peninsulas – starting from the east with Drake, the Turk; next Montenegro, the Balkan; then Fabrizio, the Italian; then myself from Iberian Spain – to remind us that he was aware of our origins and that he wasn’t taken in by our assumed surnames. The absence of Siccouane from the table was always more than obvious since the European Arc of Overflowed lands was incomplete without France. British Regina – the only Star Bearer that came from an untouched homeland – sat opposite the Governor and together they formed a solid land bridge between the sunken peninsulas, providing a safe refuge for the drowned Eurasians. The reshuffled arrangement was, with the addition of Siccouane’s Marseilles, Turkey rubbing shoulders with Southern France and the Balkans driven like a wedge between Spain and Italy. A world gone mad!

Numbed, I sat in my appointed seat, trying to become reconciled with the idea of a cassock on my right and my daughter to the left. I could not understand what kind of map we formed like this. In my mind it was more like a surrealistic painting. However, with the Seventy-Five’s representative at the one end and the one and only native colonist opposite him, the strip of land which was formed between them was Colony, purely Colony. The symbolism of the table had shifted from the seabed of the Mediterranean Sea to the bottom of the Dead Sea. I felt exit gates being barred and the Consortium sucking me into its centre.

Suffused with grim premonitions, I heard the pirate ask Regina to bring bread and wine to the table and in my imagination the Last Supper materialised and someone was being expelled because he’d dipped his bread in the bowl and the curse of Judas was branded on his forehead. There was a blizzard of symbolisms flying about, threatening to overwhelm me, but I reminded myself that this was the Seventy-Five’s favourite tactic, to allow symbolisms to bounce around until you buckle under the weight of your arbitrary fearful interpretations and you surrender before they even waste their breath asking you to. I had to remain calm and wait, otherwise I’d die before they killed me. If the pirate wanted me to surrender my Star and my gown, well I wished that he’d hurry up and ask because I honestly couldn’t stand any more of these games.

Suddenly, I felt the Priest’s fingers touching my knee under the table. I realised that he was transmitting a coded message, alternating short and extended taps. This was our accustomed method of communication during the Governor’s meals, our fingers tapping out code under the table, usually insults and swear words. I counted out the taps.
I’ll do it
, he was saying.
I’ll ask him
. He evidently meant that he’d actually pronounce the two idiotic questions that he’d revealed in the antechamber, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about – no, we’d go out of our way to rile the youth and go looking for trouble! I didn’t dare answer Montenegro and I made sure my elbows were clearly visible above the table, in case the pirate knew the medal bearers’ sub-table code and would suspect something if he noticed hands disappearing under the tablecloth.

So as not to allow Montenegro a chance to speak, I hurriedly took the floor myself. I apologised for not wearing my Purple Star, offering the excuse that I’d been held up at the courts and I assured him that Ali would be bringing it any moment now. Montenegro would not be denied, however, and he made our blood run cold when he spoke in a small but portentous voice, “I’d like to ask you something, sir. What did Governor Bera die of?”

We all turned in terror towards the pirate, expecting the crystal to shatter from his rage. He, however, remained apathetic, as if he’d not heard the question, exactly as the Priest had predicted. He picked up the bread tongs and filled Bianca’s side plate. Montenegro, encouraged, pressed his advantage and repeated the question, but louder this time. The pirate finished serving the bread then blew a few breadcrumbs off the tongs. With the speed of a striking cobra he thrust the tongs towards the Priest’s chair, snared the Bible out from where it’d been hidden in Montenegro’s pocket and threw it onto the table, where it opened at a scribbled page. For a few seconds he studied the diagrams, the arrows, the curves and the annotations.

“Your curves, Father, end exactly where they’ve begun. So the question remains, am I forced off my chosen path or am I sticking to it? In addition, you’ve neglected to include yourself in your algorithm of my path, an unforgivable omission for an anthropologist, especially since it’s repeating a costly mistake of the past. With your rubbish you have desecrated the Holy Bible that you yourself use in teaching, an unpardonable transgression for a clergyman. It seems that you are completely ill-suited for your professions, apart from that of a stateless refugee.”

Montenegro was struck dumb. He started to rummage about in his cassock as if the answer he wished to offer had inexplicably got lost somewhere in it, so he beseechingly looked around for help, but we’d our eyes riveted on our empty plates while, internally, we were thanking God that we weren’t in his position. The pirate himself relieved the Priest’s desperate anxiety before it had turned into terminal panic.

“Don’t try to explain yourself. In any case your drawings are as pathetic as your syllogisms. The only pattern you should be trying to analyse is the one that you create by your own frantic efforts to find one.”

He then instructed Regina to start serving, indicating that she should start with Bianca. Regina seemed unable to overcome her confusion and stared at him transfixed, as if his every word struck a target in her heart. She tremulously lifted the dish with the stewed meat and prepared to apportion it on our plates but didn’t seem capable of controlling the actions of her arms, so I feared that she’d tip steaming food over someone. With jerky motions, she filled Bianca’s plate, spilling sauces right and left. The pirate suddenly snatched Fabrizio’s handkerchief from the top pocket of his dress-coat and swabbed up the splashes from Bianca’s plate.

“You never requested permission to stitch your monogram on this handkerchief, Doctor.” He shook it open to display the calligraphic
A.T.F.
, which obviously was in discord to his adopted name of Niccolo Fabrizio. “If you’d brought it with you, it would’ve been recorded in the list of items that you’re entitled to take when you leave, and I’m sure I haven’t read such an entry in your file.”

Fabrizio was blindsided. There was, indeed, a clause in our contracts stating that any item carrying proof of your previous existence had to be handed in before landing in the Colony and that naturally included the discarded names of those that’d chosen to adopt new ones. Without being spelled out in the contract, to avoid legal repercussions, those with a shred of common sense realised that the Consortium was willing to accept trumped-up curriculum vitae so long as the colonist fully adopted the mantle of his chosen identity, otherwise there’d be unending chaos in transactions and colonists wouldn’t know who they were talking to and who they were impersonating.