C

by Tom McCarthy

  This last phrase is directed at a man who’s arrived bearing more photographs, maps, foolscap pages. As Serge and Macauley move aside, he sets them down on the table next to the folklore one and starts sorting them, stamping each with a different scarab-sized seal as he does so.

  “Half the people in the region are spies,” Macauley says as they move on. “Engineers, archaeologists, anthropologists: you name it. If they’re not spies, they’re suspected of being spies, which makes them just as much a part of the whole maddening caboodle as if they had been. To give you an example: we’ve been keeping a close eye on a consignment of butterflies that’s at quay here on its way from Baghdad to the Tiergarten in Berlin. Butterfly eggs, to be precise: they’ll hatch when they arrive. The French have been showing a keen interest in the consignment. The Italians too. The Wafdists not-which might be because they already know something we don’t. The eggs are being escorted by some acclaimed naturalist, Professor Himmel-This-or-That von Something-Else. Papers in order: all legitimate, perhaps; or perhaps not. We’ve picked up intimations that the whole operation forms part of a larger German rearmament plan, although how it does this isn’t clear; also, that Prof Von’s in cahoots with the Bolsheviks; or, in fact, the Turkish CUP. And it has been decided, at some juncture, that, for our part, we should act as though each of these theories held water.”

  “But what’s the truth?” Serge asks.

  “The truth?” Macauley repeats. “Who’s to say? Scientists-physicists-are telling us that two things can be true at once nowadays. The point is, if we think the butterflies are something other than what they are, or that they serve some purpose other than that which they serve, or if we act as though we think this, then the French will also think they are-do, I mean-or think that they’ve tricked us into thinking this, and the Italians will follow suit, which means the Germans will… I lose track beyond that point… It’s quite frustrating…”

  He sighs again, and leads Serge from the room. As they move down a corridor, Macauley continues, wistfully:

  “One of my men’s working on mirages: trying to prove they’re real…”

  They’re in his office now. The box files have been rehoused on new shelves; the desk has one large folder on it, labelled “EmpWirCh.” Macauley holds his thumb and finger to his scrunched-up eyes for a few seconds after he sits down, then opens them again and says to Serge:

  “So, finally: the pylon at Abu Zabal is to be completed. It’ll be switched on in May, they say. About eight years too late-eight years in which the nation that had radio before all others has slipped hopelessly behind. The French alone have high-powered transmitters in Beirut, Bamako and Tananarive; America has five times more foreign stations than we have; even the Germans match us kilowatt for kilowatt worldwide. It’s an embarrassment. And all because the Post Office Department and the Committee of Imperial Defence couldn’t agree; or if they did they couldn’t get the Admiralty on board, or the Treasury, the Board of Trade, the India Office, the Air Ministry or whatever other gaggles of failed politicians had to be in accord in order for the whole thing to progress. Do you know,” he asks Serge, “how many committees have been set up to address the Imperial Wireless question in the last eight years?”

  Serge shrugs his shoulders.

  “Six! The technology’s not even the same now as when Marconi first proposed the whole chain idea: arc-transmission’s giving over to the valve method; there’s talk of a new beam-system that’ll enable long-distance communication without intermediary stations; who knows what else? The man himself, meanwhile, seems to have lost his marbles. Last I heard he was heading to Bermuda, to find out if Mars is sending wireless messages to us.”

  “Marconi?” Serge asks.

  Macauley nods.

  “But I thought,” Serge says, “that he wasn’t involved in the whole chain thing anymore.”

  “Oh, he’s not,” Macauley reassures him. “The Cabinet felt he’d have a monopoly, which is precisely what they wanted for the Post Office. They forgot, though, to consult with their Australian and South African counterparts, who’ve thumbed their nose at Whitehall by developing their own high-powered transmitters with him-Marconi, that is. Now Whitehall’s worried the Dominions will start distributing counterproductive content through the airwaves-which is why they’re setting up, back home, a national Broadcasting Corporation, to pump a mix of propaganda, music and weather reports all around Britain and, eventually, to every corner of the Empire. Which, in turn, is why they’ve realised that they’d better get the Abu Zabal pylon up and running, and start working on the next one, and the next…”

  “Strange timing,” Serge says.

  “What’s that?”

  “That we start broadcasting central content Empire-wide just as we lose our empire…”

  “The irony is, as they say, striking,” Macauley concurs.

  “They should play dirges,” Serge suggests.

  Macauley breathes out heavily, then tells him, in a voice that’s laced with fondness: “I can see your father in you.”

  “You know my father too?” Serge asks.

  Macauley looks back at him bewilderedly. “Well, yes, of course,” he says. “After all, he’s the one who sent-” He stops, as though catching himself, and looks away, then, shifting in his seat, continues: “The new chain will run in parallel-through Egypt at least.”

  “Oh yes, you mentioned that,” says Serge. “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” Macauley tells him, “that beside the Abu Zabal pylon, which we’ll visit after lunch, Egypt will host another mast. The chains will split beyond here: one running through Nairobi down to Windhoek and the other on to India and Singapore.”

  “And where will the second Egyptian mast be?”

  “Where indeed? That’s where you come in. I’m sending you upriver to scout out a possible location.”

  “When?” Serge asks.

  “Few days from now,” Macauley tells him. “There’s a large party heading up to Sedment. We’ve been helping them with the Antiquities Service: concessions and the like. French interests prevail there, I’m afraid.”

  “We’re going to a place called Sediment?”

  “No: Sedment. Falkiner’s the archaeologist: a good man, friend of the Ministry. He’s been digging there a while; returning there this week with some equipment too large to transport by train. The Inspector of Monuments is sending a man too. Then there’s some Frenchie-chemist, I think. Keep an eye on him.”

  “And you want me to decide whether the second transmitter should go there?”

  “ ‘Decide’ might be too strong a word. ‘Advise.’ Assess the spot’s particulars: whether it’s got easy landing, flat ground, raised rather than sunken-that kind of thing…”

  A bell sounds somewhere down the corridor. Macauley rises from his chair and beams:

  “Ah: lunch!”

  Their table seems to be the refectory’s senior one: its occupants are older, all Macauley’s age, and ooze the same air of confused frustration.

  “Falkiner got his concession at last, did he?” a moustachioed colonel asks. “Thought the whole thing had passed right out of our hands.”

  “We had to let Lacau send one of his men along,” Macauley explains, buttering his bread.

  “Is that the chemist?” Serge asks.

  “No: that’s Pacorie,” Macauley answers.

  “That cad?” the colonel snorts, spraying his soup. “Méfie-toi!”

  “French are being sneaky as hell of late,” a red-faced HumInt officer adds, pouring wine for himself and the others. “They’re setting up semiautonomous local states within Syria.”

  “Why?” asks Serge.

  “They’re tied in with Amir al-Husayn,” the HumInt officer says.

  “You think so?” asks Macauley.

  “Without doubt,” the other answers. “They’ve been undermining us right from the off by siding with the Arabs.”

  “We’ve sided with the Arabs too at times,”
Macauley reminds him. “Fomenting unrest and all that.”

  “Yes, but for other reasons than the French,” HumInt responds.

  “Half the Wafd have spent a good long stretch in Paris,” says the colonel, whether by way of agreeing or disagreeing with his colleague Serge can’t quite work out. “They were liaising there with Comintern envoys. Bolsheviks are the real villains of this piece.”

  “Oh, let’s not forget Constantinople,” cautions HumInt. “They’ve got their finger on the button as far as Mecca ’s concerned. They could summon up an armed conspiracy at any moment-one that would spread like wildfire through the entire Muslim world.”

  “So in stirring up the Arabs, we’ve been doing the Turk’s work for him?” Macauley asks.

  “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On the role of the Muslim Soviets in Jeddah.”

  “Exactly!” the colonel sputters excitedly, pushing his bowl away. “It always comes back to the Soviets. Arabia’s becoming Bolshevised: the Zionist immigration to Palestine is seeing to that.”

  “But I thought,” Serge chips in meekly, “that the Jews and the Arabs hated one another.”

  “Maybe they do,” says the colonel. “But Moscow ’s perfectly capable of playing them both.”

  The main course comes. More wine is poured.

  “There’s little evidence,” the HumInt officer continues after they’ve all taken a few mouthfuls of lamb chops, “that the Russian residency’s actually doing much at present.”

  “All the more reason to conclude they are,” replies the colonel. “Time of study, period of observation and all that. When somebody goes quiet, they’re usually cooking something up. Take the Swiss.”

  “Yes: you’ve been paying them quite a bit of interest these last few months,” Macauley says. “I was wondering why.”

  “Back door to Germany, and hence outpost of Soviet Marxism. They have their own paper here: read by bankers, watchmakers and the like. Least obvious of all channels, and for that very reason the most dangerous…”

  “I sometimes think,” says HumInt, “that we need to look closer to home: Sinn Féin, the Labour Party…”

  “Precisely!” snaps the colonel. “And where do those two take their orders from? You want to see what links Sinn Féin, the CUP, Young Persia, Labour, Spartacus and who knows what else: follow the Cyrillic script…”

  “And Sarikat al Islam?” Macauley asks.

  “That’s harder to track,” the colonel concedes. “India Office back home are uncooperative. We listen in on them too.”

  “Sarikat al Islam?”

  “No: the India Office, for the Foreign Office-who, quite possibly, are having them spy on us…”

  “Then there’s Churchill’s old bugbear, the Egyptian Vengeance Society,” HumInt adds.

  “Does that one exist, or not?” Macauley asks.

  “It does now.”

  “I seem to recall Standard Oil using them to stir up trouble,” says the colonel, squinting a little.

  “Me too,” says HumInt, also staring vaguely in front of him, as though trying to discern some kind of outline. “Them or the Kemalists: that one was never entirely clear to me…”

  The discussion continues while they ride in a car towards Abu Zabal. As they pass the city limits it winds down, and the four men stare in silence at the desert. The colonel dozes; once, as the road’s surface jolts them, he mumbles the word “Comintern” into his moustache, only it sounds more like “coming turn” or, perhaps, “coming term.” They pass through groves of date palms, then, just beyond the old Ismailia Canal, a village at whose edge a slaughterhouse stands. Heads and entrails have been thrown over its wall for dogs to pick at; their muzzles, purple with clotted blood caked by the sun, briefly emerge from their carrion nosebags to follow the car’s progress before burying themselves in cartilage and membrane again. The station’s beyond this. Its four masts, each about two hundred and fifty feet tall, are woven together by a net of wires.

  “Like in the Chilean archipelago,” Serge says.

  “What’s that?” Macauley asks.

  “It must be powerful,” Serge answers.

  “You bet it is!” Macauley exclaims proudly. “Got to reach all the way to Leafield in Oxfordshire.”

  The colonel and HumInt wander off towards a table from which a large urn is doling coffee out to engineers and workers, all European, some of whom wear boiler suits with “British Arc Welding Company of Egypt ” printed on the lapels. Further away, scantily clad Egyptian Qufti pass homrah slabs down a long chain that runs from the spot where the Mataria railway line ends towards the radio station’s compound.

  “Before the track came out here,” says Macauley, noticing Serge watching them, “we had camels carry it all in: whole caravans of them crossing the sand. Looked like a scene from pharaonic times: building the Pyramids or something…”

  Serge, looking across his shoulder, sees an arc welder perched halfway up one of the masts’ steel frames, soldering a cable into place.

  “Look at the terrain,” Macauley continues, walking Serge away from the pylons. “Flat, unencumbered, plain. That’s the type of landscape our parallel erection needs.”

  They pause at the compound’s edge. Serge stares out at the desert. In the distance, a caravan, or perhaps a line of joined-up, sleepwalking schoolchildren, seems to glide across a shimmering, reflective lake.

  “Mirages are real,” he says to Macauley, suddenly remembering his conversation with the optician on the Alexandria-to-Cairo train. “They’re caused by the light’s gradient as it…”

  But Macauley’s gone, headed towards the urn. Serge watches his figure shrink beneath the station’s geometric mesh, then turns away from this to face once more the utterly ungeometric desert. A squeal carries towards the compound from the slaughterhouse-and makes him think, again, of Abigail, her high-pitched, squeaky voice. He recalls what she told him about feeling sick at Gizah, her impression of watching what she called an “obscene spectacle.” Perhaps she wasn’t wrong. What if the whole of Egypt were one big, endlessly repeating pornographic film, Love’s Madness on a loop? The camel-schoolchildren turn into dancing girls with flailing limbs, then flowers or umbrellas opening, or perhaps bodies being torn apart: tricks of the light casting a flickering pageant of agony and remorse across a dense and endless sheet of matter.

  12

  i

  He’s to travel upriver on a steel-hulled dahabia, departing from quay 29 at Boulaq. He arrives to find the boat already being towed out into the river.

  “Not again!” he moans to the docker repositioning the fenders hanging from the berth’s edge.

  “What’s the problem?” the man asks.

  “I was meant to be on that,” Serge tells him.

  The docker stares at him for a few moments, then breaks out in laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” Serge asks.

  “It’s not leaving yet,” the man says. “They’re only sinking it.”

  “Only sinking it?”

  “They sink it to get rid of all the rats. Then they refloat it and kit it out with clean stuff; then you board it, it’s towed out again, they hoist the sails and set off properly. Understand?”

  “It’s a sailing boat?” Serge asks.

  “Has to be for this trip,” the docker answers. “Vibrations not good for the instruments.”

  He jerks his thumb towards a group of men carrying large wooden boxes from a warehouse to the quayside. Overseeing them is a bespectacled European girl; barking orders at both her and the porters is a bearded European man.

  “Careful with that box!” the latter calls out in an English accent. “If the theodolite gets damaged, the whole expedition’s stuffed. Lawrence & Mayo label upwards.”

  He looks about the same age as Serge’s father.

  “Are you Falk-?” Serge begins to ask.

  “Label upwards!” he shouts. “Who are you?”

  “Serge Carrefax. From the
Ministry of Communications.”

  “Ah, yes: Pylon Man. I know thee, and I know thy name, and I know the name of the god who guardeth thee!”

  He speaks these last few words as though somehow performing them: arms straight by sides, head up, voice measured and incantatory.

  “I’m sorry?” Serge asks.

  “Look: it’s sinking,” says the girl, pointing over the men’s shoulders.

  Serge and Falkiner both turn round. The dahabia’s hull, deck and cabins have all disappeared beneath the Nile, leaving only two bare masts to mark its watery burial site. Small eddies whirl around these, giving over to more violent eruptions as air from the boat’s interior rises to the surface.

  “Rats abandoning: not a good sign,” another English voice at Serge’s back says, ominously. Turning round again, Serge finds a man in his mid-thirties, in plus-fours and a chequered yellow waistcoat. “You Macauley’s scout?” the man asks.

  Serge nods, a little apprehensively. “And you?”

  “I’m from Antiquities. Alby’s the name! Seems we’ll be shipmates on this jolly spree.”

  As Serge and Alby shake hands, an argument breaks out beside the warehouse. This time the voices aren’t English: one of them’s Egyptian and the other, which belongs to a man wearing a long, black jacket and a matching bow tie, is native to the language in which the argument’s being conducted.

  “C’est marqué dans le manifeste!” the bow-tied man’s trying to convince the clipboard-holding Egyptian, over and over again.

  “Pas marqué dans mon manifeste, Effendi,” the Egyptian’s insisting, tapping his board. “On nous en a donné des nouveaux hier.”

  “A mon insu!” the Frenchman cries, turning his palms out.

  “Désolé: je ne peux pas les embarquer,” replies the Egyptian, shaking his head.

  “Ce sont mes utils!” the other hisses, gesticulating with his hands in a way that reminds Serge of M. Bulteau’s gunpowder-act in Kloděbrady. Running his eye along the quayside, Serge can see the object of the argument-objects, rather: a new set of boxes, smaller ones, have been unloaded from a taxi and stacked up next to Falkiner’s surveying instruments.