The Color of a Dog Running Away

by Richard Gwyn

  We had remained under the plane tree in the little square while I spoke, and the shadows were beginning to lengthen. If my two companions had lost any interest in my story, they were not showing it. Also, in the telling of it, I felt a great sense of release as the stress of the past three months’ emotional turbulence began to loosen its hold. Although I was unable to convey to Zoff and Hogg the anger and anguish I had experienced over my enforced separation from Nuria, it was somehow easy to recount this first of Pontneuf’s perorations as though it had been delivered to somebody other than myself.

  We agreed upon a change of location, and from Poble Sec headed towards the Barrio Chino, by which time our conversation had strayed from the theme of my abduction and into the caverns and cupolas of a well-practised bibulous repartee.

  Igbar, after demanding that we eat at a particular Lebanese restaurant, promptly fell asleep with his face in the yogurt dressing that covered his plateful of skewered lamb. Pulling him back repeatedly into an upright position only guaranteed an almost instant nosedive back into his dinner, so there he remained while Sean and I enjoyed ours, Igbar eventually stirring after an hour or so, his face decorated with yogurt and springs of coriander, to complain that his meal had gone cold. After a trip to the washroom, and presented with a re-heated ration of food, Igbar began to regain lucidity, if not complete control of his motor senses.

  Once fed, we made a quick tour of some of the quarter’s more insalubrious drinking holes, attracting attention from the working girls and transvestites who lined the streets, on account of Igbar’s increasingly eccentric manner of walking. This involved a half-skip, a hesitant pace or two at walking speed, followed by a lopsided sprint into the nearest immovable object. He hummed, or sang while travelling in this peculiar way. I had long since given up speculating as to why he moved in this fashion, since when sober he denied that he did, and when sufficiently drunk to be doing it, he was unintelligible. In any case, Igbar regularly ended the night with a collection of cuts and bruises. The safest thing was to get him inside a bar and hope that he would go to sleep. We headed therefore for Joaquim’s filthy den, and managed to find a table at the end of the room, as far from harm’s way as possible. By the time he was seated, Igbar was talking to himself quite contentedly in Russian.

  Sean and I took up snatches of conversation from previous meetings, about half-remembered friends or acquaintances. And then, out of curiosity, I asked him if he had heard of the roof people.

  Sean looked impenetrable, brushed his hand over his receding jet-black hairline, and scowled. His scowls showed he was giving a subject considerable thought before replying. I sat back and played with the rim of my glass, which contained a cuba libre with a larger measure of liquor than I really required. It was hot in the bar, and the fan that whirred above us in lieu of air-conditioning made a sound like a chain-saw.

  “The roof people,” Sean began lugubriously, “probably do not exist.”

  The torpidity of this place was infectious. I yawned.

  “That is to say, they may exist as individuals, or even collectively, and may live on roofs for much of the time, but to use the term “roof people” of them as a commonality misses the point. It lends to them not only a degree of cohesion, but also honours them with a mystique, gives them a certain status that they cannot pretend to. It allows the good burghers to tell their children scary stories about them, and others to mythologise them in a way that the citizens of Nottingham might once have spoken of the Men of Sherwood Forest. So they become romanticised by a minority of the population, those who would secretly like to be one of them, and demonised by the majority.”

  Sean Hogg took a sip of beer. I had no idea whether he had any knowledge of what or who the roof people were, or whether he was simply improvising.

  “Have you ever met any of them?” I asked.

  “Well, not exactly. Not up on the rooftops. What would I be doing up there? I might have seen clutches of them down at street level, but if so, how am I to know whether or not they are truly roof people, since being in the street they are not, ipso facto, on a roof.”

  “Sean. Do you know what the fuck you are talking about, or is this just your way of making conversation? I’m interested to know about them. They paid me a visit before I was abducted.”

  Sean gazed at me blearily, then grinned.

  “Ah, the abduction. I’ve heard it said that they steal children, like the gypsies. So maybe they steal little children. But not big ugly bastards like you.”

  “Okay, forget it. Let’s drink up and get this wastrel home. How shall we do it? Taxi?”

  “Taxi.”

  Outside, once we had commandeered a taxi willing to take the mumbling Igbar and drive him home, we still needed to help him up the stairs to his flat in Carrer Carders, which involved the usual crisis of searching for keys buried deep in the fastness of his overcoat. As soon as we were inside his flat, Igbar regained full consciousness and demanded to know what we were doing there, insisting on going out for a drink instead. When Sean Hogg produced an envelope overflowing with cocaine, however, Igbar decided that he wanted to hear more of my story. I was willing to comply with this, but felt like buying some brandy to take the edge off the drug. An over-enthusiastic snort already had me rushing, and I could sense the demons of my paranoia galloping fast behind.

  I made my way out of the building and then remembered what Igbar had told me about the yellow crosses in the street called Els Cecs de Sant Cugat. This street was on the corner of Carders, within spitting distance of Igbar’s flat, as he had said. I had in fact visited a bar at the far end of a parallel street several times for a cheap meal. It was little more than an alley: dark and uninviting, with one side covered in ripped posters and graffiti. I walked on a little way. The end of the alley led into a wider thoroughfare called Assaonadors, where there was an abandoned house, the windows of which had been boarded up with rough planks. Several large yellow crosses had been daubed on the house front. I searched closely to see if there were any other marks that might provide a clue. But I did not really know what I was looking for, and it was too dark to see properly, my cigarette lighter illuminating only a small area of wall at a time. Nothing here gave me any feeling that I was on the verge of a breakthrough regarding the Cathars. I imagined the Ninja roof-boy spraying the yellow crosses just for the hell of it.

  The bar at the end of the next street, Neu de Sant Cugat, was disgorging its last customers. A small group of them began walking in my direction, talking low amongst themselves. It was around two in the morning. I was aware of what a sinister place this part of town might appear at night, and yet I had never felt much concerned for my safety there. I lit a cigarette as the group of men passed by, still talking in stage whispers. The little tableau, with its hushed voices and lively gesticulation, was reminiscent of a Jacobean drama. All they lacked were short cloaks and rapiers.

  Fortunately, the owner, Santiago, who was just closing the blinds, recognized me, and shuffled inside the now empty bar to fetch a bottle of Fundador. When he returned I paid him over the odds, telling him to keep the change.

  “That building at the end of the street,” I said to him, pointing, as he wrestled with the long pole that hooked down the rolled shutters. “The one with yellow crosses painted on it. Do you know what it used to be?”

  Santiago squinted in the direction I was indicating.

  “Ah yes,” he said. “It’s been closed for years now. They’re going to have to do something about it, though. The roof timbers have gone. Pity. Until about, let’s see, ten years ago, it was a small convent.”

  “A convent with nuns?” I asked.

  The man looked at me wearily.

  “Is there any other kind?”

  I had an idea, originating in a desire to follow my last question with a more intelligent-sounding one.

  “You don’t happen to know what order they were, do you?”

  “Order? Shit. No. I’m not a religious person.” He go
bbed defiantly in the road.

  “Oh well. Thanks anyway.”

  I started back the way I had come, clutching my bottle. Then he called out after me.

  “But this much I know—” I stopped in my tracks, frozen by an incipient sense of déjà vu. “It was a refuge for so-called fallen women. Plenty to choose from around here, wouldn’t you say, huh? And it was dedicated to Mary Magdalene. They say she is the patroness of whores.”

  I returned to Igbar’s flat and we made cuba libres with the brandy, Coca-Cola, and a lot of ice. The flat was stuffy and hot, and opening the windows did little more than attract mosquitoes. The cocaine was working well, however: Igbar and Sean were ready for another instalment of my story, and as I got underway the words came with a surprising facility.

  13. PONTNEUF’S PERFECT PITCH

  Pontneuf suggested now that they walk for a while, as walking, he said, helped to nourish the talking and receptive processes. Lucas agreed, reluctantly. The truth was, he was fascinated, and mildly horrified by Pontneuf’s story. He was certain that he was in the presence of an inspired madman. Pontneuf spoke with the authority of one who was accustomed to being taken seriously, and Lucas was not immune to the sense of gravitas that accompanied his discourse. So they walked out of the village and into the rocky shrubland of the surrounding mountains; and Pontneuf continued talking.

  “Now is not the time for me to reveal to you precisely what I have concluded in respect of the group’s apparent disappearance from the world. Suffice to say, for the moment, that there exist certain openings where the structure of Time as it is normally measured breaks down, and what to the rational mind seems utterly inconceivable takes place. These magical zones are known to so-called primitive peoples throughout the world, and always have been. Modern man has simply forgotten about them, or chosen to ignore them. They enable a transubstantiation of spirit, a clear passage between one state of consciousness and another. I do not for a moment expect you to accept this.”

  Then, he added, softly, “Yet.” He savoured the moment, and smiled, as if remembering the taste of the word, its delicate placement in past conversations with new converts or captives, and their subsequent acceptance of his doctrine. How many had there been? If, as Pontneuf had suggested, Nuria and Lucas were the last two, there must already be fourteen of Pontneuf’s acolytes in the community. Presumably not all the people who lived there were among the chosen ones. The mutant thugs who had carried out the abduction, for example. How were these others convinced to stay? What were the details of their contract with him? But Pontneuf had taken up his story again.

  “I realised that if I was truly who I thought I was, a reincarnation of Rocher, then why should there not exist others: reincarnations of the remaining sixteen refugees from Mélissac? Why should they not exist contemporaneously with me? I went back to the accounts, read and re-read the often scant details about the other Cathars who made that final journey. I underwent hypnosis with an eminent psychoanalyst whom I paid handsomely until he developed an inkling of my true intentions and declared, rather unkindly, that he considered me to be profoundly deluded. No matter, I thought, I would practise auto-hypnosis, and would develop a type of dreaming known to certain esoteric traditions which encourage reflection upon past lifetimes. I began to visualise the human forms which my thirteenth-century friends and followers had been given in their present lives. I studied everything I could find that has ever been written about reincarnation. I visualised those Cathar refugees first en groupe as though from a distance, saw them walking through a mountain pass and gradually halting, spellbound, as though simultaneously overwhelmed by a manifestation of the numinous. A moment in which I grasped the holiness of their joint realisation and the absolute necessity of its fulfilment. This was the great turning point in my search. But I could only scan the group; not break through to the individuals themselves. So I went to the village of Mélissac, bought a rundown property, restored it, and began a lengthy process of meditation and visualisation in situ. Gradually, one by one, the characters began to take shape. I cannot of course be sure whether those forms replicate the physical appearance of the thirteenth-century originals. What I saw during these visualisations were the current physical attributes of those individual souls. I visualised them in particular settings, which eventually led me to them. They were all living, or had recently lived, relatively close to these mountains. I was on the right track. The members of the group had been drawn back to, or else had been reborn in, the vicinity of their last parting from this world.

  “I won’t go into the details of my search for these lost companions. But as you now know, they were all found, and they have all, up to this point, accepted the truth of their existence in a previous lifetime. They have acquired a new vision of their world, and have, by so doing, fulfilled their destiny. Not that this process has been without its difficulties: families, businesses, schedules, taxes to pay, and so on. But they all came to recognise the truth in the end, and somehow arrangements were made to bring them here.”

  He spoke here in terms of unqualified success. But, Lucas wondered, of those identified by Pontneuf as reincarnations of the original group, how many had resisted his argument, had refused to play his game? What happened to them? Were they discarded, left out of the equation? How many had jumped ship from Admiral Pontneuf’s merry armada? Pontneuf’s reply was just on the polite side of disdainful.

  “There have been, and can be, no recreants or deserters from this community. We are bound together by immutable fact and by a common destiny.”

  Lucas shied away from this favourite expression of Pontneuf’s. “Destiny” implied a kind of determinism which he could not bring himself to tolerate or even understand. What was more, Pontneuf’s use of the term “deserters” cast an interesting light on his earlier claim that Lucas and Nuria were free to leave the community if they wished to.

  They had approached a stream, which, with its surrounding boulders, provided a peaceful music and shade. Lucas sat down between a large polished-looking grey boulder and the water, removing his shoes. Pontneuf also found a convenient rock, straightening his robes once he was seated. Lucas had many questions to ask, but was aware that by showing too much interest in the other man’s story, he might be granting it plausibility. He was, he admitted to himself, impressed by the way Pontneuf had researched and fashioned his project for a caucus of dedicated believers to be nurtured in this community, and he wondered how much money he must have to engineer such a scheme. Moreover, he was curious as to the part that Nuria and he were to play in Pontneuf’s vision, although, at the same time, he had not the slightest intention of accommodating to any role designated him. But he might, he conjectured, at least humour Pontneuf in order to discover why the two of them had been chosen.

  “Where do we come into this then, André? Is it André, or would you prefer Bernard, as in Rocher? Where do Nuria and I fit into your plans? Did you visualise us also? And for how long, by the way, have you had me followed? Did you ‘arrange’ our meeting at the Miró Foundation? Pay off the roof people to spy on us?”

  Lucas could feel his temper rising with each emergent question. He had intended, as far as possible, to remain calm and detached, but the moment he opened his mouth he could feel the onrush of an unstoppable anger. Nuria and he were merely figments of some other person’s deranged fantasy. They had been delivered here like parcels, to participate in Pontneuf’s dance of the dervishes with his dualistic dropouts. Lucas’s pride hurt too, because Pontneuf’s deterministic vision attempted to undermine the belief Lucas had always held in free will and the overriding dominance of chance. There was a comfort in believing that things came about for no particular reason. It fell in with his atheism and a lifestyle which decreed that nothing much mattered. Being a pawn in someone else’s strategy for the setting up of a world religion was one of the very worst things that could have happened to him.

  Pontneuf, seated beside him now, turned and smiled. A full holy-man smile,
with eyes twinkling, that was probably designed to convey to Lucas the triviality of personal anger.

  “Let’s discuss you right now, rather than in conjunction with Nuria,” he began.

  “You appeared to me in dreams early on. There was a special glow around you, or rather the person that you were: Raymond Gasc. The reports go into some detail about Gasc. Outwardly a simple shepherd, but obviously an intelligent and pious follower of the faith. He was a popular man, with a strong inner life, and a loyal commitment to his wife and elderly relatives. His lack of children was a source of mystery to many in the village, but I think I have the answer to that. I believe that Rocher had consulted with four people about his intentions long before the escape from Mélissac. They were the two other perfecti in the group, and Raymond and Clare Gasc. He had, even before the fall of Montségur, discovered the potential for selecting one’s own reincarnation at a propitious time; had discovered one of the secret doorways to the numinous, and he knew the people he wanted to accompany him on this journey. Moreover, Raymond and Clare’s childlessness was part of Rocher’s scheme. He knew that they would accompany him to the edge of the abyss, but had doubts as to whether children could be asked to follow them there. He conveyed all this to Raymond and Clare in secret, promising them a new life in a safe future, in which the Gascs could have children who would not suffer the persecution of being born to known heretics at such a dangerous time in history. Better now than in the 1240s, wouldn’t you say?”

  For a moment Lucas was stuck for a response. This talk of selecting a doorway between lifetimes and somehow forcing an entry into the last years of the twentieth century, in order to breed children during a more tolerant epoch, had moved beyond the realms of the merely eccentric and into unqualified dementia. But there was one element in this account that contradicted the version Lucas had read the night before. Here perhaps was a breach in Pontneuf’s argument.