‘But the patterns...?’
‘I can match them. As a sculptor of figurines I have no equal, save yourself in the days when your joints were supple. I am you, when you were younger, without your arthritis.’
Once more the middle-aged man studied the statuette, minutely, weighing it in his hands. Then he picked up another and did the same.
‘This is truly a great work of art,’ he said when he had finished, ‘but I shall have them inspected closely before I allow them into my chambers. After all, you may have hidden a spring-loaded trap amongst them? One of those cherubs perhaps, lets loose its arrow as I hold it up to my eye? Or some devious device to administer poison? Perhaps if I pricked my finger on one of those spearpoints? I have lived so long, because I am without trust.’
‘It is part of your genius.’
‘Which has rubbed off on you, it seems.’
‘Am I not my father’s son?’
Da Vinci placed a hand on Niccolò’s head.
‘You are indeed. You took a great risk coming here, to give me these. I almost had you beheaded before I saw you. There are many plots against me. Many. But there was something very audacious in the manner in which you expected an audience. I was curious to see you before you died.’
‘Am I to die, my lord, for being your loyal son?’
Da Vinci snorted.
‘Don’t put too much faith in flesh and blood. You can’t prove I’m your father, and it means nothing to me anyway. There are a thousand like you, by women whose faces I hardly looked at.’
He paused and strolled across the room.
‘However, you have, as you say, great talent—no doubt inherited from me. I am an artist too. A genius. I have decided to let you live, at least until you carve the last figure. What use is three hundred and thirty-two? A broken circle? It must be 333—all with my face. Go down from the tower, find your marble, and do the work. Once you have completed your task, we shall see if you are to live.’
‘I understand, my lord.’
The High Priest then said to his guards, ‘When you take him down, send me up a stone mason. I want to construct a raised circular platform, to display these pieces.’
They then led Niccolò away.
They released Romola, and she found Niccolò. He was pleased to see her. She had holes in her hands and feet, where they had tortured her, trying to extract some kind of confession. She knew the ways, knew the limits, having been one of them herself. She professed a profound hatred for her old master, wishing he would rot in hell for his treatment of her.
‘I sent him a message, telling him I was in the dungeon, and he ignored it for the first few hours, knowing they would torture me.’
She went with Niccolò and watched him, as he spent the next week, carving the final figure to complete the circle. As he worked, he told her what had passed between his father and himself, high in that room above the world. They were staying at an inn, on the far side of the river. Accommodation for those not directly connected with guarding the Tower was on the north bank, while the Tower itself stood on the south bank. It was another safety measure, to protect the High Priest. All river traffic ceased at sundown, and anyone found on the south bank, after dusk, was immediately put to death.
‘When we were out in the desert,’ she told him, ‘I often wondered... well, why didn’t you bring the statuettes by river, on a barge? Why risk that terrible journey over the wasteland?’
Niccolò had left the carving of the facial features until last, and this he had completed within the last five hours of close work. He held the statuette up to the light coming through the dusty window, inspecting it. The piece, as always, was pristine, immaculate. It would fit, patterns matching exactly, into its place in the holy ring of angels. It was the sibling of the other 332 figurines—with one exception.
Instead of da Vinci’s youthful countenance, it had the face of a monkey. Worse still, a monkey whose features resembled those of the High Priest. A cruel caricature.
He wrapped the statuette in a piece of cloth, before she could inspect his final work, and answered her question.
‘The river is crowded, full of his agents and spies. I know how fanatical they are. I knew I could convince him, once I was here, but they would never have allowed me to reach this far. Besides, one is only permitted to carry agricultural goods by river craft, unless one bears the authority of the High Priest. I had no such authority. They would have killed me simply on suspicion, before I reached the Tower.
‘The river is a deadly place, as you know. Then there are the pirates...I stood far more chance of being murdered on the water, than I did of dying of hunger or thirst out on the sands.’
‘That’s true, and it’s also true that you could cross the desert relatively undetected, until you came within sight of the Tower, of course. Yet...you
took me along with you, knowing the risk. I might have been one of his spies.’
He stared at her.
‘Yes, you might. I think you were—and still are. It is fascinating, and horrifying to me, that people like you are prepared to go through torture for the sake of discovering his enemies. It’s a enigma I don’t think I shall ever solve... but I am glad for my father’s sake that he has his devoted servants.’
‘You wrong me,’ she said, looking into his eyes.
‘No,’ replied Niccolò, ‘I don’t think so. You are still besotted with the mystique of the man, and you think that if you can uncover some plot against him, he will reinstate you, and you’ll return to his favour. You have been blinded, Romola, but I shall restore your sight.’
Niccolò dispatched the statuette to da Vinci by courier. Then he asked Romola to walk down to the river with him, so that they might cross, and gain audience with the High Priest, once that man had had time to gaze upon the final figurine.
On their way down to the river, Niccolò said to her, ‘You have been asked to guard me, haven’t you?’
She stared at him, then nodded.
‘Yes. That’s why they let me out of prison.’
‘I thought so. Da Vinci would never let me run around loose, of that I was sure. So it had to be you.’
They reached the jetties, and waited for a boat to come which would carry them across.
A short while afterwards a barge came down the river with a giant man at the tiller. He had a gentle face, a good face, and he was wearing a knitted waistcoat that looked new. When his boat reached the jetty he clambered ashore. The Holy Guardians swarmed over his craft, inspecting every spar, every beam, before allowing the dockers to unload his cargo. The only goods permitted to be carried by river barge were food and drink, and if you were found with any other freight you were executed on the spot, no excuses accepted. The big man nodded to the two people who watched him amble past them.
When the big man returned, his barge had been unloaded, and his craft stood high in the water.
‘Will you take us across?’ asked Niccolò.
‘Two sesterces,’ growled the giant.
‘Agreed.’
The three of them boarded the barge, and the giant raised the lateen sail, and the craft caught the current. They headed downriver, towards the sea.
Romola looked puzzled, stared at the far shore, then into Niccolò’s face.
‘Where are we going?’ she snapped.
‘Away from here,’ answered Niccolò.
‘Out to sea?’
‘Yes. We shall be island-hopping for as long as necessary, staying one jump ahead of da Vinci’s people, I hope.’
She nodded towards the giant at the tiller, with his knitted waistcoat and benign expression. Romola became angry, clenching her hands, making them into fists. Niccolò stepped away from her, warily.
‘The two of you are together—conspirators?’ she said.
‘We came to help da Vinci destroy himself, and now we are making our escape. Now, I realise you’re an ex-soldier, and I still have the lumps to prove it, but my friend Domo here,’ he indic
ated the giant, ‘is not an effete artist. He could snap you in two, like a twig, so no violence please.’
She stared at Domo, who smiled broadly. He did indeed appear to be a man of enormous strength, and while all three of them knew Romola would put up a spirited fight, the outcome could not be in doubt. Especially since Domo had a wicked-looking baling hook in his free hand.
Niccolò said, ‘We don’t want to kill you, Romola—at least, I don’t, though gathering from the looks Domo has been giving me, he thinks I am a fool, and jeopardising our mission. I’m afraid you got under my skin, out there in the desert, and I’ve fallen in love with you. However, if you try anything, anything at all, Domo will kill you where you stand, and throw you to the fish. Is that understood? I shall be unable to prevent him, or help you.’
She stood a long while, as if weighing up the situation, and then turned her head.
The craft eventually reached the ocean, and Domo set a course for the outer islands, behind which the sun was settling for the night. Niccolò stood in the bows, watching the prow cut through the water as the wind carried them westwards, into the red glow of the evening. When it was almost dark,
Romola came and stood beside him.
‘How did you do it? The assassination?’ she asked.
‘Oh, he’s not dead yet, but he will be.’
‘How? Did you poison the statuettes?’
Niccolò shook his head.
‘No, I gave him a gift—an imperfect gift. Perfection is an obsession with him. Now he is caught in a cycle of madness. He will not destroy the gift, for the angels have his face and it would be like destroying himself. Yet one of the figures mocks him—resembles him in a crude way, but actually has the face of a monkey. Without this figure the ring of angels is incomplete, an obscenity—three hundred and thirty-two statuettes. The pattern on the marble is broken, the circle unfinished, yet with it, the art is marred, twisted into a joke of which he is the brunt.
‘He will go mad, it will destroy him.’
Her eyes were round.
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘I’m certain of it. He loved my mother very much—my friend the sage Cicaro was there at the time—but he had her executed after my birth, because... because her beauty was marred.’
‘In what way?’
‘Stretch marks,’ said Niccolò. ‘In giving birth to me, she was left with stretch marks on her abdomen. He destroyed her because she was imperfect, blemished by a natural act of which he himself was the author. He killed someone he loved because of his madness for perfection. Now he will destroy himself—he’s caught in the web of his own vanity. He has to have the circle of angels, for they immortalise his youth and beauty, yet he cannot have them, because one of them is a mockery. He will rage, he will consume himself with frustration and fury. He will destroy himself...’
‘You are a genius,’ she said.
‘I am... subtle.’
They stood, watching the water sliding beneath the craft, as darkness fell. When it became cooler, once the sun had finally gone, she put her arm around him.
BLACK DRONGO
Written during my years in Hong Kong, where I used to watch the black drongos fighting amongst themselves. Hong Kong was seething with ideas for short stories one just had to reach up and pluck them from the air.
So what you want to do is take Marcia’s personality and put it in the body of a bird?’ said Steve. ‘What are you trying to create, some monster freak? Some creature that’ll think, like...like
Marcia?’ We were at dinner, just the three of us, in a small restaurant off Mody Road in Tsim Sha Tsui. My brother Steve and his girlfriend Marcia were flying out of Hong Kong the next day. They were going on a business holiday, to some remote place in the Philippines, which was incidentally Marcia’s homeland.
I explained patiently, ‘I’m not transferring her psyche, Steve, there are laws against that. All I want to do is copy Marcia’s persona, and superimpose it upon that of the drongo.’
‘Okay Einstein, what’s the difference?’ he said.
‘Her persona is simply her personality. A psyche is someone’s conscious and unconscious, someone’s mind or self, if you like. I’m not allowed to screw around with psyches, although it is possible to make a transfer under controlled conditions. Only the GRL, the Government Research Labs, are permitted to dabble in that. This won’t hurt her in the least, and she’ll have the satisfaction of knowing she’s furthering my studies of behaviour patterns in wild birds.’
‘What if I don’t want you to mess around with my girl’s persona?’
‘Stevie...’ said Marcia, in that soft voice she has, but he cut her off, with, ‘No, wait, I want to hear what Einstein here has to say about it. You just keep quiet for a minute. No, I’m sorry Marcia, this is for me to decide whether it’s right for you to do this or not. You don’t understand these things like we do.’
Steve can be a real pain in the ass, when he wants to be, which is most of the time, but he is my brother and I put up with him because I love him. He is unbelievably insecure, and this manifests itself in hostility and aggression. Tonight, he was being nice: any other time he would have blown his stack and started throwing things around the room. He always mellowed a little prior to travel, gradually becoming as pliant as he would ever be with Marcia, or any woman.
Men could take him better than women: they recognised the apprehensive hunter-gatherer in him as something they had within themselves, though often not to the same extreme. Steve was one of those people who believed you had to prove yourself all the time, against the competition. If you didn’t, you would be taken advantage of, and eaten alive. They would fall on you like jackals while you were exposed to them. You had to keep your defences up, show them you were a man to be reckoned with, never let them see your vulnerability.
He played squash as if to lose would mean the guillotine. He was merciless against business rivals. My older brother was still living in a world where you clubbed a man senseless and took his meat and his woman and made sure you felt damn good about it. Any weakness in you would be exploited, and you would become carrion for the vultures.
I did not consider Steve a bad man, and most other men liked his company, many women too if they were the kind who preferred being told what to do, but there were others who considered him an aggressive thick-skinned bull.
I hadn’t told Steve that the reason I wanted Marcia’s persona, as opposed to any other, was because of my observations of their relationship. Steve had always been a bully, and the person who took the brunt of his obnoxious behaviour, was Marcia. She, on the other hand, had soaked up his abuse with not a flicker of annoyance or retaliation. I used to sit and watch her being verbally attacked, Steve imposing his will on her with unbelievable insensitivity, and yet she took it all calmly, letting it all wash over her, leaving her unmoved. She wasn’t submissive, not in a way that was visible, she just allowed it to happen while seemingly unimpressed.
‘I think it’s for Marcia to decide, not you Steve. I’m not asking you for your persona, and Marcia is a grown woman. She doesn’t need your permission.’
‘Yeah, but she’s my girl, Pete. I’ve got to look after her interests.’
‘You don’t need to do anything of the sort. She’s a capable person.’
Steve was typical of many expatriates living in a far eastern enclave consisting mostly of other expats. He was conservative, thoroughly conventional, and about a hundred years behind the times. His passport said he was an Amer-European, but in truth we had long since left our original nationalities behind, and had become something else. I’m not sure what. Gweilos I suppose, which is the Cantonese term for all Caucasians living in their society. Literally it means foreign devil, but language is dynamic and it has become a quick description of a western businessman living on the China coast, out of touch with reality, holding on to out-of-date values, talking in clichés like: ‘Your average British workman is lazy, but take the Chinese, they’ll f
log their guts out for you for a few dollars a day, and they can live on it you see, because they know which markets to go to get cheap vegetables, they don’t pay the same prices as me and you...’
There are Chinese businessmen like Steve, who exploit the local labour, but they don’t make excuses for the poor pay they offer, they simply do it. Steve thought the Thatcher-Reagan years of the last century were wonderful, but of course he only went to Britain and America for business conferences, a few days, nothing more.
‘Is that what you think?’ said Steve, his tone belligerent. ‘Well, okay, I’ll leave the decision to her, but I’m going to come along. I only have her best interests at heart.’
Steve, being a man’s man, a hard drinker, naturally believed eastern women were toys to be played with, but Marcia was the immovable object, who took all he had to throw at her, and remained intact, without reprisal, without going under. She was a small woman, even for a Filipino, with a gentle smile. She withstood the storms and remained undaunted. I had great admiration for her in one way, though I felt she lacked the spirit to kick Steve in the balls, like many gweilo women I knew would have done ages ago. The Filipino maids, fifty thousand of them in Hong Kong, were an accommodating group. Most of them considered a little abuse worth pursuing the romantic dream of marrying out of the terrible poverty which was their cultural heritage. Even if the man be a boorish old fart like Steve, twice her age and with a body ravaged by too many gins.
‘That’s what I think, Steve...’
In the end, I had my way, and Steve even drove us to the lab in his new Mercedes, chatting quite amiably on the journey under the forest canopy of neon branches that grew from buildings either side of the street. The night watchman was a little surprised to see us, at eleven in the evening, but he let us in, and stood by the lab door in that guarded manner of the Cantonese security worker dealing with the unusual, wondering whether he is going to get into trouble for allowing someone to enter the building after hours, even if that someone was perfectly entitled to be there. The Cantonese like to live lives of complete order, within a vast sea of chaos.
Moby Jack & Other Tall Tales Page 3
