What Lot's Wife Saw (7 page)

Confidentially, I’d suggest that you be very wary of any material that originates from Priest Montenegro, as he’s a mountebank. He was the one who’d suggested that we should write our letters in separate rooms and he’d insisted that we mustn’t read anyone else’s letter so that he could, with immunity, libel us in his own. All his high-minded talk about professional confidentiality was just deceitful posturing. His appearance and behaviour throughout all these years speak for themselves. He ladles French perfume on himself, paints his eyes, tends to his goatee like a dandy and scandalises the ladies. I’m not only talking about the Governor’s wife, who chose him as a lover just because everyone else wants him, but about the women of the Colony who are after him just because the Governor’s wife chose him. A vicious circle, Your Excellencies. He spreads through the Colony like an infection, leaving aside his associations with the shadier elements of the southern quarter. No self-respecting resident of Hesperides should ever lurk down there. The Consortium had purposefully set up the class system so if they’d wanted anyone from Hesperides to consort with salt miners, or even worse, cyclists, there wouldn’t have been any separation by quarters and any hierarchy of privileges – right? And to cap it all, who’s ever heard of a Christian Priest with a Moslem servant! He walks in the streets hand-in-hand with his enormous Negro and at night he forces him to sleep under his bed since he wakes up screaming from nightmares and needs Ali’s comforting hug, otherwise the whole of Hesperides would be kept awake. Troubled sleep betrays a guilty conscience, that’s what I believe.

I return to the tragic events that followed that foggy Thursday, the 20th of August, which are the reason behind this letter. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve no view of the harbour from my villa’s veranda and so I couldn’t have seen the Correspondence Ship enter the bay. How could I have, in any case, with such heavy fog? The Captain of the Guards had already imposed a curfew due to the stiff easterly, so I’d found myself confined to my villa, with no possibility of communication, a fact that, as it turned out, some others took advantage of.

By Friday morning the weather had cleared. I woke up with a massive headache and decided not to go to work. I sent my servant to the Infirmary with instructions to the doctors to call in extra staff for the Respiratory Clinic, to have plenty of serum at hand and to be ready for the influx. An easterly fills the Infirmary, both with patients with breathing difficulties and with drugged colonists shot by Drake’s men who shoot darts at anything that moves in the fog. I asked Markella, my housekeeper, to prepare some tea and to move my armchair to the veranda and bring me a few magazines.

As I was leafing through the
Amateur Gardener
, July edition – as you know, magazines come to the Colony with substantial delay – Markella informed me that a visitor had shown up at the door. I don’t ever see patients at home so I asked her to turn the visitor away but she protested hesitantly, saying that it was Bianca, Desert’s maid, claiming that she carried a very important message from her mistress.

Bianca Bateau is Judge Bateau’s daughter and the only child to ever have been born in the Colony. Here, women never conceive and men do not fertilise. The Colony stubbornly refuses to repopulate itself despite very generous incentives offered by the Consortium to that end. It’s more my physician’s suspicions rather than documented medical opinion that it is the pill we are given daily to protect us from salt fumes that has a contraceptive effect, and so it’s futile for the Seventy-Five to hope for native colonists. Bateau had been lucky enough to arrive with his wife in her third month of pregnancy (although he leaves nothing to chance, did he leave this?) and so the sole native colonist was brought into this world. The Governor publically rewarded him to excess, bestowing the Purple Star on him and promoting him to Presiding High Court Judge, a position totally unmerited by his drunken opportunism. Despite my well-founded fears about the environmental dangers to the infant’s integrity and health, Bianca developed more or less normally. Her only defect is her unique eyes, which have completely colourless, white irises. Her vision is unaffected however, so that the only repercussion is the disconcerting effect she has on others who are taken aback by her empty corneas and confused by their inability to tell where she’s looking.

When I handed her to Priest Montenegro to be baptised, he had gazed deeply into her cloudy irises and whispered, “Whiteout,” with a smile – it’d been Montenegro’s idea, submitted to Desert, passed to the Governor, then in turn to the father, and nauseatingly embraced by Bateau to have her called Bianca for her whiteout fog irises. He is
that
contemptible.

Bianca had appeared on my veranda, shaking like a leaf, bewildered and panicky. I really didn’t pay much attention as that was her normal condition. She was a girl who had had no friends of her own age when she’d been growing up and so had had to endure the society of adults who looked upon her as a curious insect due to those colourless eyes. Small wonder that she lacks confidence now. I cannot imagine that her present position as Desert’s maid has done much to bolster her self-esteem either.

“Doctor Fabrizio …” she stuttered breathlessly. “My Lady wishes you to come at once to the Palace.”

I answered that I would come as soon as I felt better. If the Lady was suffering from migraines, then she should take a pill and let it melt slowly under her tongue, just as I’d shown her the previous time.

“Governor Bera has been immobile since dawn … he’s probably dead.”

I sprang from my chair, suddenly overwhelmed with dread. I couldn’t believe my ears: the Governor lying motionless since dawn and his personal physician hearing of it from the lips of some foolish maid at midday, it was insane! Please note that apart from other considerations, I’m the only one who can rightfully pronounce the Governor dead. Not only was I not summoned to my patient’s bedside but I was being informed by incompetent sources of his demise as if I were an irrelevant colonist. I grabbed Bianca’s arm to prise more information out of her but all I got through the inevitable tears was that Desert had sent her to fetch Montenegro at the crack of dawn. So the Lady had not only deemed it proper to certify her husband’s state herself, but to call for a priest
before
a doctor. My fury welled up and I only managed to bottle it up and not throttle Bianca because Markella was in the kitchen and I’d enough presence of mind to know that I mustn’t be overheard. This earth-shattering news should not be disseminated lightly throughout the Colony. So I took her aside and insisted, quietly, that she tell me all the details.

She swore that all she knew was what the Lady had passed on to her and that was that the Governor had died in his sleep. She whimpered that it had taken her ages to unearth Priest Montenegro as he’d spent the night in the cyclist’s quarter, confined by the fog. She’d found his manservant at the villa and he’d managed to locate his master and bring him to the Palace. Next Bianca had gone in search of her father, who’d also been impossible to find since he’d spent the night in a cellar knocking it back with a young Lieutenant. Then she’d been sent to Siccouane’s home as he was the Governor’s Private Secretary, and so she’d had to wake him up too. Finally it’d been my turn. In short, Bianca had spent the last five hours criss-crossing the Colony, trawling for all the incompetent, useless drones that the Governor had seen fit to patronise, except for the one person that could’ve been of any use – his doctor. I slapped her hard, which I confess, I now regret. Bianca was nothing but an innocent messenger and it was unfair to take it out on her. The main reason why Bateau accepted, nay, sought, his daughter’s taking the position of maid in the Palace was that he’d be apprised of all that was going on there. The slap her father would have given her had she not informed him before me would’ve been much worse than mine.

I pinned the Purple Star on my lapel, grabbed my medical bag and rushed to the Palace with a wailing Bianca in my wake. I was still praying that things were not as final as I’d been told and that Desert had been mistaken in her amateur diagnosis. Loss of consciousness, catatonia, lethargy – anything would be better than being brought before the Governor’s corpse. It might seem inappropriate now, but I’d been worrying more about myself than my patient at that moment. I dreaded to imagine what would become of me should another Governor take over the Colony and begin appointing our successors.

Despite all my efforts along the way, I couldn’t get anything more from Bianca apart from fresh tears. I couldn’t resist it again so I reminded her that she’d wasted five hours before summoning his physician and if that were to prove critical to the outcome of events then I would kill her with my own hands. She’d wiped her eyes and blubbered that Montenegro had already made the same threat and it had devastated her since the silver-tongued Priest had never spoken to her like that before! Montenegro on everyone’s lips, always Montenegro.

Colonist’s File No.:
00058993

Place of Birth:
Liverpool, United Kingdom

Position:
Governor’s Wife, Governor’s Palace Chief of Staff

Administrative Level:
B1

Adopted Name:
Regina Bera (Lady)

… Death. I had never considered death as an escape mechanism. I never thought that Bera would be capable of such a foul, malicious exit from his position and his responsibilities. The Colony is bereft of a Governor and I’m left without a husband, a profession and a livelihood.

I’d sensed that he was dead before I opened my eyes in the morning, because I couldn’t feel my skin. I arose and tiptoed to the door of his room. I entered without knocking, something I’d never done before because we always had to have been invited to go in. I saw him lying on the bed. He was wearing the ceremonial outfit, was completely motionless and had a smile stamped on his face. Unbelievable though it might be, he was indeed dead.

Twenty years of insults, humiliations and violence I’d spent by his side, which had served to consistently remind me that I was indeed the Governor’s wife. It’s written somewhere that such a hellish existence is the lot of a Governor’s wife. Bera had treated me in the same manner that he had the Colony: he’d caressed me, whipped me and drawn pleasure from his control over me. I’d feared him, hated him, needed him and I’d never envisioned myself free of him. Seeing him lying dead staggered me, because I’d no idea what I was to do with my ill-omened, wretched freedom.

Like a mad thing, I’d rushed downstairs to the servants’ quarters and knocked on Bianca’s door. Thankfully, she wasn’t asleep. She’d been leafing through a copy of
The Times
that the Correspondence Ship had brought – she has a ridiculous passion for newspapers. She was born in the Colony and has never left it, so she avidly explores the unseen civilised world, which she has heard of only through our tales, by studying the articles and commentaries that the papers print about a world the rest of us would all rather forget. I asked her to go immediately and summon Priest Montenegro and to rush straight back without dallying and on no account speak to anyone else. Bianca, for whom obedience is second nature, as is indifference and lack of perception, surprised me by screwing up her colourless eyes and asking, “Is he dead?” She, like so many of us, had probably dreamt of this moment, but dreaded its arrival.

The kitchen staff were busy preparing the Governor’s meal as they always did at that time. The clanging of pots and the clatter of china being carried between kitchen and dining room were fuelling an incipient migraine. I overheard the cook giving instructions on exactly how long the eggs should boil. “No more than one hundred and twenty seconds, the Governor is most particular about them, so be alert.”

Shaking like a leaf, I returned to my room and locked it. I collapsed against the door, trying to marshal my strength while keeping a distance from the body.

Presently, from the stairs, I heard footsteps, the rustling of robes and cursing muttered through clenched teeth, announcing the arrival of Montenegro. I stepped out and stood in his way. “The Governor is dead,” I said. Our eyes met and clashed. Before he had time to collect his thoughts, I grabbed his hand and shoved it between my legs. I wasn’t about to allow him to see the body without being reminded of my existence. He pushed me, I grabbed him by the hair and he responded by wrapping his hand around my throat. We could have easily killed each other at that moment if we’d been assured of privacy.

Without Bera, the essence of our supposed affair would evaporate, leaving only the poison exposed at its core. My husband’s absolute power had been a powerful aphrodisiac, obviously our liaison’s only
raison d’être
since his death had signalled the demise of our desire. Apart from that it belonged to him, since he had cultivated it on purpose. Bera had manifested his dominance through my dalliances rather than my devotion and I’m sure it would have disturbed him had I remained faithful. Anyone who has difficulty sensing the claw beneath the velvet glove would never understand why he had decorated my lover with the Purple Star. It was thus that he had manipulated us, thus that he had punished us and thus that he had governed us.

Unrecognisable due to his fear, Montenegro could only think of saving his skin. He distanced himself from me as if mere proximity would make us look like accomplices, even though there was no one else in the room. He shouted that I must’ve been out of my mind to have called him first. What imbecile would choose her lover to stand alone with the corpse. What would people think? He demanded that I send Bianca for the doctor immediately. It really hadn’t struck me that I should’ve sought a physician since it’d been so obvious that my husband was dead. Montenegro had insisted that we summon all the Star Bearers, plus Siccouane. He shouted at Bianca to hurry since every moment of delay would further incriminate us. I was forced to agree with him, although the thought of filling the room with Purple Stars nauseated me.