by Peter Corris
'And what are you, Dick?'
I drew on an aromatic Mexican cigar, stared into the sagebrush fire, and had no answer to that question then as I have no answer to it now. Then, I had an occupation. I was taking photographs of the Sierra Madre and the painted deserts with an enthusiasm I had never felt before. The colours were marvellous and colour film had only recently become available. Intermittently, I surveyed tracts of land according to Basil's directions and made hasty geological assessments of certain areas, frequently those where exhausted or abandoned silver mines were located. I saw little point in these imperfectly conducted exercises but Basil seemed satisfied with the results.
On the trek I experimented with a number of drugs—marijuana, peyote, mescalin. When taken after extreme physical exhaustion and thus combined with an induced low blood sugar, I found the results remarkable. I experienced states of elation so marvellous as to be almost unendurable and visions of despair that drove me close to suicide. I travelled through time and space and found mystical associations between wildly disparate things. Basil encouraged me to keep notes on my psychic journeys and to relate my experiences to him. I did so, at night, sometimes still under the influence of the drugs, as the camp fire burned low and I smoked pipes, cigars and cigarettes. Basil resorted only to rum and he remained clear-headed always through my multilingual, disassociated narratives.
At this distance in time I remember only that flight, literally flight through bright sunny skies, high above the clouds, represented freedom and happiness and that the opposite was confinement—in rooms, beds, vehicles. I have no clear memories of the journey. The terrible crossing of the wasteland known as the Silver Plate is a painful blur and I do not know when the two Apache girls became attached to our party, nor how they were acquired.
Pedro Cordobes stayed with the expedition as we entered the United States but several of his followers, half-breeds and whites, did not cross the border, persumably because the Americans had serious charges to bring against them. The Comancheros wore male and female clothing and ornaments as they pleased. I had grown used to seeing hawk-nosed men with garishly painted faces wearing skirts and women's blouses, so I did not at first notice the two small Apaches with braided hair, beaded jackets and long skirts. Eventually I saw that they were constantly attended by alert guards and I knew that Basil had secured his subjects once again. Jura and Na-da-Sho were Ned-ni Apaches whose territory lay partly in Mexico and partly in Arizona. They spoke no English and very little Spanish. When I questioned Jura about how she came to be a captive, she poured out a torrent of Apache and Spanish. All I could understand was, 'Pedro Cordobes killed my father'.
The two young women travelled with us through the southern United States and the crossing of Death Valley, always under guard. I experienced no lust for them although both were handsome in a wild, almost feral way. Their skins were the colour of copper and their eyes were dark slits in their broad faces. They had perfect teeth which, in one of my drug dreams, I imagined sinking into my flesh as one girl tore at my buttocks and the other at my testicles. But I was in no doubt that Basil had not had intercourse with them by the time we reached Nevada. This puzzled me and gave me some hope until events in Los Dados showed me that Basil was further sunk in depravity than before.
Our arrival in Los Dados attracted a little attention and I was obliged to give several interviews to the press as I had done in Marrakech. I managed to stifle interest in the expedition. Given the blinkered parochialism of provincial American newspapers, this was not a difficult thing to do. An ambitious reporter from a local television station proved a more taxing problem. Basil was desperate that no film record, other than my photographs, be made of the expedition and he speeded up the dismantling of the company when he heard of the interest from the TV station. Pedro Cordobes and his remaining followers melted away and the animals were disposed of. I was installed in a hotel and fended off the reporter until he lost interest.
Basil took the Apache women to an auto court. I tried to interest myself in the diversions of Los Dados but they held no attraction for me. I hired a car, a Cadillac with tinted windows, and took long drives out into the desert. I studied and photographed the landscape by day and the sky at night. Several times I took prostitutes on these drives; we ended up drinking whisky and smoking and talking about our lives. I lied about mine, I assume they did the same.
On a night I will never forget, Basil called at my hotel. It was late, near midnight, and he was in agitated state. I had had a good deal to drink and was in no fit state to move, let alone do what he wanted.
'You have to come to the auto court, Dick. Now!'
I protested. 'I'm tired and drunk, Basil. Tomorrow.'
He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me from my chair. Always enormously strong, he now seemed possessed of superhuman strength. He moved me like a doll. 'Now, you drunken fool. If I could drive one of those wretched machines I wouldn't need you, but I can't, so you have to help me.'
I had learned to drive in the army. It was not something that came naturally to me and I seldom enjoyed it, but Basil never learned to drive. He had a loathing of motor cars. I put on a coat, gathered my keys and drove him back to the auto court. It was a hazardous undertaking. I was drunk and the streets were unfamiliar to me. Basil had walked to the hotel, several miles, and had difficulty directing me. He was exhausted and silent on the drive. I smoked and he did not protest. When we reached the auto court he instructed me to circle the block several times. I did so and he minutely examined every side street, driveway and vacant lot. The area was dark and quiet and Basil eventually instructed me to pull into the auto court parking area.
His cabin comprised of a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. I glanced into the bedroom and saw one of the Indian women motionless on the bed, apparently asleep. The kitchen was a sea of bottles, cans and other debris. The bathroom was a vision of hell. One of the women lay in the bath. There were slashes and gaping wounds, dark and gory, against the shining copper-coloured skin. The bath was half full of blood and the walls were spattered where the blood had spurted and spread.
It was too much for me. I vomited immediately into the toilet, adding the smell of whisky and greasy food to the reek of blood and death in the little room.
'You're disgusting,' Basil said.
I was too shocked to speak. He took a towel from the rack, wet it in the hand basin and began to clean the wall above the bath. I shut my eyes and leaned against the door, waiting for something like sobriety and sanity to return. I don't know how long I waited but Basil worked fast. He cleaned the room with towels and ran water over the body until blood stopped oozing from the terrible wounds. I opened my eyes and saw him unhook the shower curtain and lay it on the floor. The half-cleaned room was pink now, rather than dark red. Worse.
'Help me,' he said.
We lifted her out of the bath. She was amazingly small and light. We laid her on the curtain which Basil wrapped around the body. Basil tied the package at both ends and lifted it easily onto his shoulder. 'I know you drive out into the desert with your whores, Dick,' he said. 'You must know a good dumping place for something like this.'
He stalked out of the cabin to the car and I followed mutely. He threw the wrapped body into the trunk and gestured impatiently for me to get in. I started the engine and drove, automatically, seeing and hearing nothing, shocked and still drunk, in the direction of the desert.
'One of those crazy Indians came back,' Basil said. 'He surprised Jura in the bath and slaughtered her. I was sleeping with Na-da-Sho. I heard something, got up and grabbed at him but he wriggled free. I found her much as you did. There was nothing I could do.'
'The police,' I said.
He laughed. I was astonished that he could produce the sound. 'How would I explain being in an auto court with two Indian girls thirteen years of age? You deal with the press, Dick. How would you explain that, eh?'
I said nothing. His voice and the starlit road mesmerised me. I drove until
I came to a turn-off I thought led to the desert, but about a mile further on I realised that the road was unfamiliar. A high mesh fence appeared suddenly beside us and through it I could see the heaped-up bodies of motor cars and hillocks of rubbish.
'A rubbish dump,' Basil said. 'Perfect.'
I have no clear memory of what followed. I must have driven into the dump and used the headlights to allow Basil to dispose of the body. It was hardly a secure hiding place, and I later came to think that Basil must have been close to panic himself that night. I have one memory, recalled often in nightmares, of him flourishing the shower curtain, shaking blood from it, like a bullfighter waving his cape.
I sobered up gradually on the drive back to the city. I stopped a short distance from the auto court, unable to face returning to that dreadful scene. Basil patted me on the shoulder. 'Thanks, Dick,' he said. 'Forget all this, old man.'
'How can I?'
'I'll help you. This expedition has been a great success and the money men are very happy.'
'Basil, you . . .'
'Shh.' He reached into my pocket, took out my cigarettes and put one between my lips. He flicked my lighter and held the flame for me to draw at. His hand was rock steady. 'Things have got a bit out of hand. I can see that. But listen, Dick. No more of this. We're going to Switzerland to open a hospital. Be good for all of us, eh?'
35
ENTRY FIVE
If I did not actually believe Basil's story about an Indian killing Jura, I nevertheless persuaded myself that it could be true. The Apaches were a strange, savage people who had been renowned for their cruelty. And if an Indian had had a claim to Jura and seen Basil dispossessing him . . . blood is thicker than water. My first duty was to protect my brother and there was the other Indian woman to consider. I drove back to my hotel, intending to pack quickly, leave money on the bed and return to the auto court, but the alcohol and the emotional violence of the night flattened me. I sat down to rest for a minute and fell into a deep sleep. It was morning when I woke up. I rushed to the auto court but Basil had gone. A couple driving a car with Idaho plates were moving unconcernedly into the cabin where a woman had been hacked to death. I did not want to draw attention to Basil by enquiring at the office so I slunk away.
I left Los Dados that same day and travelled back to Britain in a confused and distraught state of mind. I had no doubt that Basil was mentally ill and needed to be controlled, but I could think of no way to bring him under control that would not destroy him. And his destruction would mean my own. I was the only possible instrument of control but I knew that my own mental health was problematical. I clung to the memory of Basil's words, 'Switzerland . . . a hospital . . . good for all of us' and I waited.
An article I wrote on our American trek was published in a respectable journal, somewhat to my surprise. I had wondered whether the machinery of suppression was still in operation. Evidently not. On the strength of the article I was sent books to review by this journal and other magazines and was occasionally invited to lecture at one of its sponsoring society's monthly meetings. I accepted several times and discoursed carefully, avoiding mention of any names and places that might attract unwelcome attention. None was displayed. I worked in a Charing Cross Road bookshop, holidayed in the Yorkshire cottage and, on one level, enjoyed life.
I watched with dismay, however, the beginnings of the creation of the welfare state, the tide of coloured immigration starting to rise and, with it, the brain-sapping influence of television. Necessarily celibate and frequently lonely, I often yearned to be out in the desert somewhere with Basil, where daily survival concentrated the energies and the intelligence and the camp fire and meal at night were a just reward for the effort expended. Basil's talk on those occasions was often amusing, always interesting.
Humourless himself, he nevertheless had the gift of being funny. He had met, or claimed to have met, and in some cases corresponded with, many of the leading figures of the time—Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, Hemingway, Jack Dempsey. I later searched published accounts of the lives and letters of these notables without finding any reference to my brother. I suppose he lied, but he did so very convincingly. My life was like a sagging wire strung on poles. The only high and solid points were those provided by association with Basil, the rest was depression and decline.
Basil's telegram early in 1956 was characteristically decisive and succinct: 'Money wired your Post Office savings account. Meet me Zurich station 20th inst.'
I went, of course I went. Basil was waiting for me at the station with a driver and a big Mercedes. We embraced and told each other how well we looked. In my case, it was far from true. I had become thin and a succession of British winters and little outdoor activity had made me pale. Like Basil, I wore a moustache but whereas his was a brown, bristling affair mine was flecked with grey and tobacco-stained. I had a slight but annoying smoker's cough. Basil, by contrast, had put on flesh and his cheeks glowed with health. He wore his hair rather short and brushed in the German manner. In fact he looked like a prosperous German professional.
We drove the several miles to the clinic, situated on the shores of the lake. Basil kept up a stream of talk, mostly about our past adventures. 'Too old for that sort of thing now, eh, Dick?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'I sometimes think I could regain my youth in the desert.'
He fell silent at that and I felt I'd touched a nerve somehow. I wanted to ask him about the women and what I'd come to think of as his 'issue', but I hadn't the courage and the answers were soon provided anyway. The clinic was a splendid, if rather sombre, set of buildings. The grounds were magnificent and the hedges, trees and walls were designed to give a maximum of privacy. Basil ushered me inside, introducing me to domestic and medical staff as we went. He, I noted, was addressed as 'Herr Doktor' or 'Herr Kontroller'. One handsome dark woman, a senior nurse named Merle Benoit, appeared to use the latter title with a hint of irony. I felt a familiar thrill shoot through me as I shook hands with this woman. I knew that she was Basil's mistress and that I wanted her.
To cover my discomfiture I gazed out the window and saw a remarkable sight. It was mid-afternoon on a mild spring day and a group of children were sitting on the grass being instructed by a man who was waving his arms about and pulling faces. The children were laughing. I was a little too far away to determine their ages and sexes but there were four of them, three quite large and one much smaller.
'The Kontroller's children,' Merle Benoit said. 'Being taught German by Signor Barassi who thinks it is the funniest language in the world.'
'He's a damned disrespectful little dago,' Basil growled. 'But his methods seem to work.'
Over a drink in his study, Basil told me about the Craft Clinic. His main function was to provide rejuvenating treatments for the rich and celebrated. His contempt for most of his clients was absolute. 'They have never done, thought or said anything remotely useful and they want to go on in the same way. It's ironic that they have the means to do so while productive, creative people do not.'
'Why are you doing this then, if you find it distasteful?'
'I didn't say that. I find it interesting, clinically. We use secretions from animals and other techniques. All quite dangerous, really.'
That was the old Basil, attracted to danger and irony and contradiction.
'Also,' he said. 'They pay extremely well.'
I occasionally indulged myself in a very expensive bottle, and I had noticed that the brandy we were drinking was not of the first quality. 'Surely you're not in want of money, Basil. Your fees from your masters from our investigations . . . '
Basil frowned as I lit a cigarette. There were no ashtrays in the study but he pushed a metal wastepaper basket towards me with his foot. This tolerance suggested a need, a weakness—I had grown used to thinking in combative terms about my brother. 'They haven't kept faith,' he said. 'Not altogether. It's been difficult.'
I drew in smoke. 'Tell me about it. Also about the children.'
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br /> Basil then gave me the fullest account I ever heard from him of his career as an operative for the body he said had no name and no formal structure, or one so complex no single mind could grasp it. With enormous wealth and contacts, there was little they could not organise. They were not interested in politics or ideology. 'The best way to think of them,' Basil said, 'is as men who want certain things done. They wanted remotely located mineral reserves and hiding places. I provided them. They paid me well. They also helped me with other things.'
'Such as?'
'The resettlement of the mothers of the children. The deflection of police interest from the murder of Jura in Los Dados. These things, of course, give them a hold over one.'
'Have they financed this place?'
Basil's voice was adamant. 'No! This is my show entirely. But it has been incredibly expensive to set up. You would not believe the venality of Swiss officials, Dick. And the ongoing payments, royalties, you might almost call them I expected from our masters have not been forthcoming.'
Uncharacteristically for Basil, he avoided my eye as he spoke. I squashed my cigarette out against the side of the bin and immediately lit another. 'Why?'
'You could call it a contractual dispute. There's nothing in writing, of course. But I made a verbal agreement to conduct another expedition.'
'You mentioned Australia when you recruited me.'
Basil frowned as my smoke drifted towards him. 'Don't talk like that, Dick. You sound like that awful Philby and his ilk. Did you ever meet Philby?'
'Philby who?'
'It doesn't matter. Yes, Australia. That's where they want me to go. I'm not interested. I'm too old and I have things here that interest me far more than . . .'
'The children?' I said.
He nodded. 'It's the most fascinating experiment. They're remarkable examples of their races, remarkable specimens. You'll see. Those innate, thousand-generation-old instincts crossed with my intelligence and Englishness. The results are already significant and will be more so if I'm given the time to continue the work.'
