The Tyrant's Novel

by Thomas Keneally

  The two guards either side of the door advanced to meet in the center and pushed both leaves open. One of my own escorts gave me the slightest nudge before peeling away. The room I now entered was prodigious in size, one entire wall taken up by a mosaic of gold, green, scarlet, and blue in which stylized old emperors triumphed above the smiling waters of the rivers. The wall to my left told with echoing richness a tale of forgotten classic gardens and orchards. To my front—it seemed the distance of a football field away—there was a far-off dais, and beyond it an enormous window down which water ran in a copious fall, a triumph of architecture by which light would enter, cooled and refracted, though one could see neither out nor in. On the low dais beneath this marvel sat Great Uncle in a sober, bankerlike blue suit, and the immediately recognizable Sonny in some fantastically lapeled and bell-bottomed costume almost certainly of his own design. I had a sense that I had entered upon a family scene, a dialogue well in progress and not yet done.

  From this distance I could barely hear anything, what with the thunder and whispers of the water window. I saw Great Uncle wave to me. I came forward down a carpet like a river, with gold and bejeweled fish swimming towards their master in a stream of vivid blue—just as I now swam to him. I found on that short journey, and to my astonishment, that indeed I was not keen on perishing, even if Sonny told me it was about to happen, giving me moments of preparation. My hands were sweating, my feet prickled as I stumbled along like a giant baby in my immune toddler suit.

  Both men stood up as I approached. How extraordinary, I thought. I noticed that Sonny's M16 was propped against the back of his chair. Did it serve tonight as an accessory, or a genuine weapon? I remembered what an NCO had said on Summer Island one night: No one can imagine being dead, but thousands of kids with no talent for it have managed it without any trouble at all. The dead could thus easily imagine themselves dead, but I worried about it in my own case on my way down the carpet.

  As I got within shouting range, Great Uncle cried, Alan! Alan! and demanded greater speed of me.

  I could not avoid being in some primal way flattered and willing. There is a reason why Great Uncle's portrait is everywhere, the religion of state, on walls throughout the city, in one mural an ancient emperor in a chariot, in another a young radical atop a tank, yelling for true independence. And here he was, standing again, the god in the suit, to welcome me, as it remarkably seemed. At last I reached the foot of the dais. Without inviting me to join Sonny and himself at their symbolic level, Great Uncle reached down to me and embraced me in his arms. It was a huge embrace, typical of northern tribesmen, a sort of wedding embrace, I thought, an embrace of clans united by mutual favors and profoundest blood. I half expected Sonny to get his M16 and let off celebratory rounds into the ceiling. He was said to do that where he lived, on his own island in the river. But it was too early in the night for him. His parties were midnight affairs, his excesses were the excesses of four A.M.

  I could smell Great Uncle's cologne, Tommy Hilfiger, the same I had smelled on Captain Chaddock.

  He released me in a way that sent me staggering back a little. This is a splendid book, Alan, he said. Pearson Dysart are over the moon!

  He pointed as if the astral body were above us in the huge chamber. It's a wonderful tale. The Clancys are a classical family. I know such people.

  He laughed and pointed to Sonny.

  My son hasn't read it, of course. But he rejoices too, in his way. You have done a wonderful thing for the state and the people. Come up. Sit down.

  When I had risen a step or two, he pointed to a footstool, on which I tried to sit with some dignity. It was a strange thing. A book stolen from Sarah, yet gaining praise from the tyrant. And that was good enough for the moment. For an instant I felt like a king, though I knew that had I looked I would have seen Sarah's haglike, valid disappointment in the falling water behind Great Uncle.

  It was the best I had to give, Mr. President, I told Great Uncle, for that was true. Yet I involuntarily made a cleansing gesture at my chest, remembering tortured Louise James, shuddering to death on the pavement for Private Carter.

  Forgive me. I'm a little confused and overwhelmed, Mr. President.

  He laughed.

  I said, A friend of mine was attacked this evening by the mother of an old comrade. It was Louise James. You remember her father, Mr. President?

  I've heard something of that attack. I'd rather talk about Clancy, said Great Uncle, waving the name of James away to the extent that I knew it to be accursed to him. I've heard a rumor, in fact, Alan, that you might have let Mrs. Carter loose. Yet that has its good side. James will not go back and broadcast her possibly malicious views.

  I absorbed this.

  Whereas, he continued, Clancy is a great hero of the people.

  A revelation in the presence of a tyrant is a terrible thing. I thought of how Captain Chaddock was to protect me from all hostile influences, including those within myself. And yet he had let Mrs. Carter, a creature I had in my way created, hang round my apartment door for weeks on end.

  Great Uncle, I said, you are not implying that Mrs. Carter was . . .

  I am implying nothing. I'm saying that Louise James will not report her minority view.

  I must have wavered on the footstool.

  Are you all right? Sonny asked me, as if he might have a pill which would rouse me.

  Thank you, sir. Yes.

  Sonny patted the arm of his chair in a hyperactive way. Tell him about the Yankee writer, Pop!

  Oh yes, said Great Uncle, back in spacious form. Pearson Dysart has paid a leading U.S. novelist to read it and he declares it a classic and comments how real it is . . . in the troubles faced by the characters . . . compared to most American writing, which is all about disenchantment and the frustrations of love. Above all, he said it will change attitudes towards the sanctions.

  Great Uncle's profound dark eyes glittered like those of . . . well, of a proud great-uncle. I consider you have performed your duty fully, he said.

  Sonny tapped the arm of his chair again. Good job, he said.

  And to show my appreciation, Great Uncle continued, I have ordered that preparations be made for you to live from now on in a special and splendid villa at one of the palaces. You'll be given the location soon. An announcement will be made that you have been created bard of my tribe, and of the people.

  Was he making a joke, prior to expressing a total rejection of my work and asking Sonny to shoot me? Elaborate spoof as it might be, I felt a peculiar onrush of panic. And in the face of both possibilities—that he was and was not joking—the blood seemed actually to want to escape my veins.

  So what do you say to that, eh? asked Sonny.

  Yes, I answered stupidly, trying to frame the word “Thanks,” and producing just the one bleated syllable.

  I . . .

  Great Uncle raised his hand. No, he said, you have done your service and this is a reward. You will be Shostakovich to my Stalin, Molière to my Sun King. You will be able to write and publish under your own name. You will be my storyteller laureate.

  Sonny beamed in a distracted way at my good fortune, and stole a look at the huge watch at his wrist. Perhaps he wanted a fix, perhaps it was drawing close to time for his night's saturnalia. I became aware that after Great Uncle died this edgy Sonny would be my master, at least until the army rose and killed him, and me in my villa too, if the villa itself were not also a joke.

  I am overcome, sir, I told Great Uncle nonetheless. Naturally I shall have to make preliminary arrangements.

  Take your time. The workers are still at the villa for another week to ten days.

  I nodded, hoping he did not see how happy that made me.

  In the meantime of course, beamed Great Uncle, you have been assigned an automobile and driver to look after all your needs and be at your call.

  I expressed even more thanks as best I could.

  Tell me, he then further asked. Did Captain Chaddock treat
you well?

  I wondered whether the question was somehow the springing of the trap. But despite the unanswered matter of any culpability of Chaddock's in the slaughter of Louise James, I said, The soul of discretion, Mr. President.

  I even think he'll miss you, chuckled Great Uncle, as if he had recently had quite a talk to Chaddock.

  Oh, the President continued, clicking thumb and forefinger together in self-chastisement. I didn't tell you that Mr. McBrien's been appointed cultural attaché in Paris. The French have always had a soft spot for us. After World War I they hoped we'd be their puppet state. But the English got here first.

  Great Uncle smiled within his godhood, far above the curious passions of the English and the French.

  I am delighted at McBrien's good fortune, I told him. I believe he sometimes found it challenging to deal with me.

  Ah, said Great Uncle, looking at Sonny. The artistic temperament. I know all about it. If it were not for the demands of the state, my son would have been an artist.

  Sonny grinned crazily at me in echo of his father's grin.

  Well, they'll take you home now, Alan. And thank you.

  I rose as the President did, but again, an apparently forgotten item came to his mind.

  One thing! he said.

  He looked to Sonny, who half yawned and reached down into his boot to extract a chardri, the national dagger.

  Oh, yes, I said, full of fear and crazy boldness, exposing my wrist to let erratic Sonny induct me with the three promised cuts. At each lusty incision, I thought of Louise James, so recently dead and worthy of memory, but swept from my mind by these potent, sharp-edged entities with whom I shared a crown room.

  I was to be made the emperor's caged canary.

  The Overguard dressed the notches in my wrist and gave me a suit of nondescript army fatigues to wear home—they would deliver my clothes to me, dry-cleaned, later, they promised, as if it meant a great deal to me. Chaddock met me at the palace door and led me down the steps.

  Going home with the blindfold on, I asked, Captain?

  Present! he told me.

  Was it you brought Mrs. Carter along to kill Louise James?

  What?

  I think you heard me the first time.

  There was a long pause. The engine hummed. I imagined the Overguard exchanging glances.

  How could anyone organize a thing like that?

  While I was upstairs with her, I explained, you or someone go to the old woman. You say, Look, he's enjoying a woman. Your son will never enjoy a woman! That knife, too. It didn't look a Mrs. Carter sort of knife . . .

  Stop, said Chaddock softly to the driver. When obeyed he left the front seat and opened the back door for me and ripped my blindfold off. Get out, Mr. Sheriff!

  I obeyed him, too benumbed to feel fear or abandonment, being reduced, it seemed, to the mere span of my three small sores of gouged flesh, the only three small voices of pain which proved I had emerged from the confrontation with Great Uncle. I got out of the car under my own power though, without any involvement one way or another by my backseat escorts.

  He took me to a high wall which rose above us to the crumbling villas of an old suburb named Saltash.

  Don't know what you're saying, sir, he said softly. Really don't.

  It was a great temptation to believe him.

  Wouldn't be so snaky, he assured me.

  I couldn't honestly say he would be.

  Say it was a set scene. Then someone else arranged it. Someone higher. And more secret. See? Okay. Don't talk in front of my men like that. Might get back.

  Illogically I held up my bandaged wrist. I've got the marks, I told him. I'm in the clan now.

  Back in the car, he said.

  I accepted his logic for the moment, and rejoined the limo. As we arrived outside my block of flats, I saw the corner of the fatality had already been hosed clean of Louise's passionate and decent blood.

  I took note of that, and then entered the building trembling. There was the old sofa only she had used. In my living room would be minor untidiness, the mark of our failed adventure of the flesh.

  Behind me, Chaddock called, All right, Mr. Sheriff?

  Yes, I said, dismissively.

  I rose up the stairs alone as he watched, entered my apartment, and sat most of the night regarding a rumple our hunger for each other had made in a red and blue mat by my desk. I could not absorb any more phenomena than that; I could not bring my mind to more comprehensive exercises. And my heart creaked now for the inconsolable spirit of Louise James.

  Even that next sleep-deprived day, I began to consider my options. I rang McBrien to begin with. He had heard about the James tragedy and hoped I had recovered. He had intended to call in and see me about it and other things, but he'd been all day at the ministry being briefed by experts from other government departments, and had been packing all night. He and Sonia were off in four days. Their child would be born in a top-class Parisian hospital.

  And thank you, thank you, Alan.

  What's your flight number?

  He gave it to me.

  I'll try to see you off, you miserable bastard, I told him, just to make sure you are at last off my back. You are absolved of my care now?

  You're your own man, yes. But don't do anything that will reflect badly.

  What if I do?

  He thought about it. Please, just relax. Enjoy the rewards. I intend to.

  Louise's body was still at the morgue, and Andrew, who had undertaken a campaign to have it sent back to relatives in Houston, with whom he had already spoken by phone and who were more than willing to pay that expense, asked me to come around to discuss it, perhaps to employ me as a witness to the crime to write to the authorities and plead that the body be released.

  On the way to Andrew's, I told my driver, I'll be going to the airport tomorrow. To see a friend off.

  Oh, he said. I'm sorry, Mr. Sheriff. The airport's a place I'm not permitted to take you.

  The airport? How many other places?

  None, he told me cheerily. Just the airport for now.

  That's good, I said, because later in the day I wanted to go and see a friend who helped me out with a book. He's a barge captain down in Ibis Bay.

  Certainly, Mr. Sheriff.

  Since the airport's out of the question, we might as well go in the morning now.

  For I trusted McBrien's Air France flight to be off in time.

  Do you know a fellow named Captain Chaddock? I then asked him. A captain in the Overguard?

  My driver said, I haven't had that pleasure, sir.

  Well, I said, you're bossier than he is.

  The driver chose to laugh and drove me to Andrew's place. Grace answered the door. What's wrong with your wrist? she asked me.

  A graze, I told her.

  The three of us, Andrew, Grace, and I, sat together in the pleasant afternoon uttering the necessary clichés with which the death of the young and the handsome needed to be honored.

  What I'm expecting next, murmured Andrew, is that they'll come and ask for her program tapes. But I've already had them remastered, so that we can post them out to PBS. I mean, there's already a lot of speculation in the American papers about this death.

  Admirable Andrew. I accepted from him the name and address of the appropriate official in the Ministry of Justice to whom I should write about Louise. I thought I had one literary service left in me. This one.

  I wrote my plea that night, and slept lightly but at length. In the morning I checked with the Air France office to see that McBrien's plane had left. It had. So I went down to my car and driver.

  We drove up over dusty Beaumont, by the hopeful markets, past the women gathering their tainted water, Mrs. Clancy-like, as children worth a dollar yelled after us. Men in ragged clothes were busy on pittance-paying tasks of an ill-defined nature. The broken promises of the world and of regimes were seamed into their faces like grit and legible in their bent backs.

  W
e parked at last by the teahouse and the fuel-sodden soccer ground. You're free, I told my driver. Take some time off. Come back in two hours.

  In fact I doubted he would go, and was delighted to see him edge away past the oil-sodden soccer field and into a side street. I feared he might not go as far as I hoped.

  I set off across the pier and went looking for McCauley's barge. It was as I remembered when I'd done it with McBrien, a slog over many decks. Some backtracking and sidetracking, until the barge, Joanna, presented itself.

  McCauley's deckhand, Bernie, was all I found aboard. Pity you came all the way out here, he told me. McCauley was back on land, in the teahouse. So I hiked and vaulted hoses and barrels and gunwales back ashore and approached the oily awning of the teahouse, hoping to look as if I merely sought refreshment.

  McCauley, himself grimy and seamed, but appearing wise to the earth, was drinking Turkish coffee inside the place with a man who had the air of being the proprietor. Seeing me approach, he muttered something, and the proprietor rose and went back to his zinc counter.

  I smiled broadly at McCauley. Do you remember me?

  Yeah. You were going to make a film about us.

  Some problems arose with that. But you're still in the business.

  Why not? Sit down if you like.

  As soon as I took a seat, I leaned across to him. I told him, You have to get me out.

  He immediately rose. Don't you damn well dare say that to me here or anywhere.

  They've taken my passport.

  Why should I care? What's wrong with your wrist?

  A graze, I told him.

  For God's dear sake, don't even say these things here. Come out the back.

  He rose and led me through a bead curtain to a yard where there were a number of rooms for rent by truck drivers and bargees, and a pungent toilet and washhouse. From the door of the washhouse, the bitterness of human ammonia emerged boldly to take on the general air of oil.

  We entered deep into the room, a shower in one corner, grimy underwear hung diagonally, the undercleaned toilet in the other rear corner. I followed, standing amidst lank, damp laundry.