by Simon Parke
He continued with his reflections on Barnabus Hope, co-director of Mind Gains:
‘And of course there’s a fragility to him that can lend itself to victimisation.’
‘Interesting choice of word.’
There’s a pause on the phone which some, fearful of the void, might feel obliged to fill. But Abbot Peter is not a member of this society; he can live for days in the void.
‘Having said that,’ he adds, ‘Barnabus is a fine therapist in a wounded healer way. Very fine... a discerning and kind listener... he’s helped many when the wheels have come off their lives and I can give you his number, if you’re seeking help.’
‘Me?’
Why else was she ringing?
‘You sound shocked.’
‘Why would I be seeking help?’
‘Everyone needs help sometimes, Tamsin.’
‘Only the mad.’
‘No, strangely the mad never seek help, have you noticed that? You have to be sane to realise things are not right.’
‘How do you mean?’
Infuriatingly, the Abbot’s answers lead only to more questions.
‘Visit an acute psychiatric unit and you’ll not find any there who imagine they need help. Quite the opposite, they’re Jesus, Napoleon or some other grandiose concoction. The mad are quite oblivious to their illness or their need.’
‘Then everyone is mad.’
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’
A dismissive female laugh comes down the line.
‘There’s no shame in it, Tamsin. Or aren’t Detective Inspectors allowed to be vulnerable?’
The unspoken answer is ‘No’ and one well-heard by the Abbot.
‘You look after your body, Tamsin - so why not also look after your mind?’
‘Can we get on?’
‘Care of one, without care of the other, has always struck me as perverse. And Barnabus is a good port in a storm. You should speak with him.’
‘I’m not sure that will help,’ says the police woman.
‘How do you know until you’ve tried?’
‘Because he’s dead.’
‘Who’s dead?’
‘Barnabus Hope.’ Silence.
‘He was found yesterday morning in the office cupboard in Henry House.’
‘In the cupboard?’
‘Dressed as a clown.’
From a standing start, Peter’s imagination slowly creates the scene:
‘Dressing as a clown isn’t normally fatal.’
‘He’d been stabbed... repeatedly ...and his skull smashed.’ Further silence.
‘And do we know why he was dressed as a clown?’
‘I’m coming round to see you now,’ she says. No more stupid silences. ‘We can discuss it further then.’
‘And if it isn’t convenient?’
‘I’m still coming.’
‘I have someone here.’
‘Then ask them to leave.’
‘I could ask them, but -’
The phone line is dead in his hands. The Detective Inspector is coming to call, while Peter’s mind swims with images of a clown in a cupboard, his old friend Barnabus Hope, who’d always hated fancy dress.
Four
Hafiz stood at the centre of the world.
And let us be clear, this was no cheap boast but indisputable fact - and yes, one which brought responsibility. A poet on the edge of the world, dwelling in some smoky cave or dreary wood, will be declared a god for simply being able to write. But at the centre of the world, with everyone so knowing and closet poets themselves, rather more demanding targets were set. He was a wordsmith in a country of wordsmiths.
And if Persia was the centre of the world, then Shiraz was the jewel in its turban. How to describe it? A city of poets, literature and wine - yes, the local grape, named after its home, was really very fine... though Behrouz must be careful, and Hafiz had told him so, for an excess of wine can make the hand shaky, not helpful in his profession. But that said, this ancient metropolis was a remarkable city and his home - his adopted home, adopted long ago, when brought here as a child, young Shams-Ud-Din, (his former name), from Isfahan. In that sense, the city had not been a choice... but then few things are. What do we really choose in life?
And until now, it had been a city to be proud of. The equal of Isfahan in trade and grand capital of the Fars region - yes, the river of civic pride ran wide and deep through the streets of Shiraz. But more glorious still was its cultural and artistic magnificence. Was not Shiraz called ‘The House of Knowledge’ and perhaps even better, ‘The Athens of Persia’? And here Hafiz had found powerful patronage, the ruler Shah Shuja no less. He’d also found celebrity and condemnation, affection and hate. Celebrity and affection among the common people, who heard love in his words; and condemnation and hate from those who smelled in his lines the wretched stench of blasphemy - and who wished to stop the evil flow at source. The man thought he was God! What more was there to say? How could he be allowed to live?
So if the poet was a little distracted today, and demanding more from the quill of his copyist Behrouz, this was why, this was the reason, the shadow of the net, a net of harsh orthodoxy, knotted and strong, waiting to drop, trap and entangle him before the final kill. When would it fall? He didn’t know. He knew that it would fall and that he’d be caught, but how long did he have?
A wandering Dervish walked past his window, plenty of those around, hovering at the back gates of the rich, holding their kaskuls, their begging bowls, with arms aloft to facilitate donations from upper windows, as they passed. For once, Hafiz offered nothing but pondered instead his journey to this point, to this moment. How had he come to now?
He was noticing such moments more these days, a sign of old age and the uncertainty it brings. Because really, when he thought about it, what else could he have done? That was the opening line of his defence. What else could he have done given that experience, that extraordinary moment of revelation? So was it sane to start punishing himself now - because, if he could go back and live it all again, would he really do it differently? In a way, he’d spent his whole life wondering.
Some called him a fool, understandable of course, and he’d limped ever since the revelation, that was plain to see: a hobbling man is a hobbling man. But the question again: what else could he have done in the face of such beauty? He’d simply had to go mad, there’d been no choice in the matter, just as there’d been no choice in his exile. Ah yes, we should mention the exile. This adopted child of the city was kicked out of Shiraz for a while, expelled from the Athens of Persia, forced to return to Isfahan for a few years - and all because Shah Shuja took offence at a perceived insult and got unreasonably aroused. And, although he’d not been there at the time - this was long long ago - Behrouz still blamed his master.
‘You can be rude,’ he said, on hearing the story.
‘Just so long as I am accurate, Behrouz. If accuracy is rude, then let me be the rudest man on earth.’
And he had been accurate in his own estimation and done nothing wrong unless truth is wrong! If truth was wrong then he was a very bad man for he’d mocked the city’s inferior poets, a mocking wholly deserved, they were both talentless and smug, an unpleasant combination - only to discover the Shah was one of their number.
‘You should have known,’ said Behrouz. ‘Everyone in Shiraz is writing that great poem. Draft after draft in the cabinet by their bed, their flying carpet to fame and glory.’
The Shah’s punishment of Shams-Ud-Din, son of Baha-Ud-Din, coal merchant, had been instant: he’d been exiled before sunset, not the Shah’s finest hour, a ridiculous decision and still stupid in Hafiz’ estimation, despite the passing of years. Looking back on his hurried eviction from court, he remembered travelling light, carryi
ng only a candle, an amusing aside he’d used more than once when recounting the story, though sometimes listeners were slow, a candle, travelling light... never explain a joke.
It was a great shock at the time, oh yes! At the time, his exile was the collapse of his world and the end of everything, he’d been quite sure of that in a dust storm of youthful self-pity. Yet now, all these years later, it was a barely remembered thing. And if it was remembered, it was remembered only for its irrelevance, as an event entirely dwarfed by beauty, by cruel beauty... well, his ‘uncomfortable marriage to cruel beauty’ to give the story in full, and the reason why death is a favour to us.
‘So how did it happen?’ Behrouz had once asked him, because Hafiz spoke of this moment in so many ways and on so many occasions that you had to ask in the end, if you wished to understand the man.
‘I remember the force,’ he replied, and as he spoke, he felt it again, the force of her dragging him in shock to the altar, that’s how it happened, a boy made helpless by her presence. And with Behrouz scribbling again - sunset tomorrow was his deadline - there was time for reminiscence if he dared, and if he was brave; for sometimes one must be brave to look back, to return to the left long ago, for it was not always left in happiness. And even now, he could feel her; feel the quivering and madness in his bones.
So let the remembering begin, because God knows, he’d tried to be orthodox. While his teenage friends drank sherbet on street corners, he’d sat at home memorizing the entire Koran, an extraordinary achievement, as he was often told, and he’d done it by listening to his father’s recitations, night after night. But when after a long illness his father died, he left a family in debt and a mother fit for little but grief and the harsh judging of others. His two elder brothers left Shiraz to find work and escape the judging, while Shams and his mother moved in with his uncle. Things had changed. He was now the provider of income - when he wasn’t at school - taking an evening job in a baker y.
And the stage was set for the great revelation, when ...
A loud banging on the door! Hafiz is jerked back to the present. Bang, bang! Angry voices outside. It’s the lovers of orthodoxy demanding entr y. Bang, bang! They must not see Behrouz and his copying, this is his first thought.
‘Behrouz!’ he whispers as loud as whispering permits.
He would get rid of them, tell them to call back. This was just a skirmish; the war was to come.
Five
Stormhaven
Six months earlier
‘The Feast of Fools,’ said Frances, ‘is based on the Roman festival of Saturnalia, Barney.’
‘I don’t want you to call me Barney,’ thought Barnabus.
Frances Pole and Barnabus Hope were co-directors of the Mind Gains health clinic but he didn’t want her to call him ‘Barney’ and he needed to say something rather than just think something. Thinking something was not a great act of courage in the circumstances, and the circumstances were getting on his nerves. The reduction of his name was presented as affection, but never felt consensual, had the feel of rape about it, something about power, about becoming what she wanted him to be. She’d call him Barney and he’d have to accept it - or be regarded as ‘way too sensitive, Barney Boy!’
Frances continued to explain: ‘It was in medieval Europe that it became known as the Feast of Fools. You’re familiar with that, I presume?’
Frances Pole was forty-ish, had short hair, polished skin, silk scarf, tight trousers and a penchant for the leather jackets which often accompany mid-life crisis. And here she was in lecture mode, which Barnabus, on this occasion, would allow. It was what she did and he could never do.
Barnabus was happiest sitting alone with a client, this was his strong hand. His weak hand was lecturing people and being a salesman, promoting the Mind Gains clinic to the world outside, the purpose of this current meeting. Frances seemed to have it all sorted anyway. Could it be - and here was a thought that she’d make a better administrator than a therapist? The idea had often crossed his mind.
‘I have heard of the Feast of Fools,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t it the time when social norms were reversed for a night?’
‘Correct, Barney.’ Barney again.
‘So I won’t despair of you completely!’ she said.
Why would she despair of him at all? He was always on trial with Frances, that’s how it felt.
‘You do have a negative worm inside you,’ he said.
‘Barney, don’t get moody on me. I was complimenting you if anything!’
‘Really?’
‘In the Graeco-Roman world, the festival of Saturnalia, as you say, was characterised by role reversals and complete behavioural licence. Role-playing, mask-wearing or “guising” as they called it, rampant gambling, over-eating, over-drinking, over-everything - imagine it!’
‘These days it’s called “Christmas”.’
But with notes in hand and spectacles applied, Frances was driving the idea on: ‘In what Horace called “The December Liberty”, slaves were treated to banquets usually reserved for masters and allowed to show disrespect while remaining exempt from punishment.’
‘I can’t imagine that.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I’m just wondering how it worked.’
‘I don’t see your problem.’
Frances didn’t see other people’s problems, which he felt was an unfortunate trait in a therapist.
‘Well, you can’t just put the genie back in the bottle.’
‘Why not?’
Barnabus smiled. There were plenty of genies bottled up in Frances, each gasping for air.
‘Do you seriously imagine that last night’s barbs were all forgotten the morning after? Imagine it, Frances: you’re a dishwasher and you’ve called your boss vain, pompous and insecure over dinner, because they are - and the following morning it’s somehow all fine and dandy? It may happen in a parallel universe but not on planet earth. Very few of us forget, particularly the powerful.’
Frances wished to get back to the point - and the point was saving Mind Gains from early extinction.
‘The thing is, Barnabus - and this is our point of entry - it’s an evening that creates this arena for psychological disturbance, for the breaking of established behavioural patterns.’
‘I can see that’s possible.’
‘I mean, think of the material there for the therapist!’
‘I’m never short of material, to be honest. And I’m now remembering, from some dark corner of my mind, that not every Roman was keen on the idea.’
‘Pliny?’
‘Yes, that’s the man.’
‘Pliny would lock himself in a secluded part of his villa throughout the festival - a fact you remembered, Barney, because like him, you’re a killjoy.’
‘Just a different joy perhaps, Frances. Quiet joy is not the same as no joy.’
‘So you say.’
Barnabus decided on a further observation:
‘I know you have to binge, Frances, seek the path of alcoholic annihilation - but it’s not true of us all.’
‘This isn’t a therapy session, Barnabus.’
‘Who said it was?’
She closed her notebook and put it back in the drawer.
‘We’re going to use the name, going to call it “The Feast of Fools”.’
‘This is your idea for publicity?’
‘It’s a therapy package, Barney, a promotional one-off. It’ll get us some local press, get people talking about us and, my God, how we need that!’
‘We do need something.’
‘So we offer one session for participants before the evening, live the evening itself and then offer one session after the event, to work with the material that came up. It’s brilliant!’
‘So it’
s an evening of disguise, social chaos and alcohol.’
‘Indeed. But with one wickedly demonic addition.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The Lord of Misrule.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘You didn’t know about the Lord of Misrule?’
‘No.’
‘The most important figure at the Feast of Fools! The evening subverted the ordinary rules of life, but the whole affair was conducted by a Master of Ceremonies, the Lord of Misrule, the purveyor of darkness.’
‘Sounds a little disturbing.’
‘They were disturbing, Barney, with the power to order anyone to do anything during the Feast!’
‘Interesting and dangerous in equal measure. What a fine role for any psychopath in our midst.’
‘I don’t know about that. Most just used the position to mock their masters.’
‘While others no doubt used it to abuse the weak.’ Barnabus wasn’t sure he liked the Lord of Misrule.
‘He’s just another ambiguity in the mix, Barney, another source of confusion and alarm.’
Barnabus nodded.
‘And how is this Lord chosen?’
‘By lot.’
‘So it could be anyone.’
‘Indeed.’
The idea for a Feast of Fools seemed both brilliant and irresponsible, mainly the latter. But beyond sticking cards in newsagents’ windows, or paying for a full-page spread in the Sussex Silt, he didn’t have a better one.
‘You couldn’t sell a drink in a desert,’ his mother had once said, so how on earth was he to sell mental health in Stormhaven?
And then there were the financial pressures. They’d bought Henry House at a reasonable price - more reasonable than they dared expect - but they had to be paying their way within the year, or give the whole thing up and go back to... well, Barnabus wouldn’t be going back anywhere. He was a Non-Qualified Teacher whose qualification period had just run out. If he wanted to teach, he’d have to start the training all over again. Mind Gains just had to work.
