What Lot's Wife Saw

by Ioanna Bourazopoulou

  “Could it be, Father, that the whole Colony is trapped in that same pattern and fails to see anything out of the ordinary?” Fabrizio asked sarcastically.

  The Priest swiped him on the back of his head and told him to stop being a smartass. We hadn’t asked the whole Colony to check whether anyone else had seen it. Perhaps others had seen it and were in a similar state of disbelief as we were. Perhaps they too were not daring to say a word about it in case their eyes had been playing tricks on them.

  Siccouane, getting angry, clenched his fists and said that the real reason why the Governor had gathered us together had been to drug us so that we’d be maddened, go back out into the Colony and make fools of ourselves. The Treasurer of the Bank, the passengers of the requisitioned berlinga, the dock workers, the harbourmaster, have all been supplied with some fascinating gossip to regale their friends with. Tomorrow, the Colony will be buzzing with the news that the five medal bearers and the Personal Secretary went mad, or at least breached the law. Did the youth think that he could push us towards resigning in this fashion?

  “I handed him my Star but he didn’t take it,” Drake reminded us.

  “Well then, is it that he just wanted to make complete fools of us, to break our morale, so that we lose any initiative and fall apart?”

  “What would he stand to gain by that?”

  “So that, once broken, he can mould us to his requirements and transform us from the trusted advisors of his predecessor, into his own dedicated supporters. He’s training us. Didn’t the old Bera, God rest his soul, play such games until we didn’t know if we were coming or going?”

  The truth was that the young pirate was reminding us more and more of the late Bera. Totally different, but very reminiscent. Another, but the same. I began to wonder whether by the Colony’s anniversary they’d have grown so alike that we wouldn’t even be able to see the gold earring.

  22

  The sound of the latch turning, slight though it was, was enough to make Phileas Book jump since his hearing was particularly acute at that moment. He turned towards the door, clutching his heart. An employee was coming into the room, announcing himself, “Pierre Galois, steward of this floor. I am bringing you your dinner, Mr Book.”

  The statement might have been addressed to the trolley he was dragging rather than to Book since he hadn’t bothered even to lift his head to look at him. He rolled the trolley over the plush carpet and brought it to the small round table next to the window a few metres from where Book was sitting. He unfolded the tablecloth he’d draped over his arm and laid it on the table. From the covered plates on the trolley a mixture of aromas was wafting, suggesting a large variety of dishes – meat, pasta, fruit, sweets – which had been made to tempt someone who’d not been asked what he wanted to eat.

  Book tried to calm the residual flutters his alarm had caused him. He concentrated on the rectangular table with the glass top and the metal legs on which he’d been working for hours. This table, which had been set up for Book in the middle of the brightly lit lounge, was solid and spacious but it caused him to appreciate that his narrow office in the attic of the camping goods shop offered him a better working environment. The papers he’d spread on this enormous glass surface continuously seemed to be inconveniently placed; no matter how often he shuffled their relevant positions, he just couldn’t get organised on it. The glass top distracted him as well since each time he looked down either the pattern of the carpet or the sight of his muddy shoes invaded his field of vision. On the top itself, a cornucopia of pens, pencils, magnifying glasses, rulers and rubbers addled him. Knuckling under their pressure he’d tried nearly every one of them and after a considerable waste of time he rejected them and ended up feeling nostalgic for his own humble pencil drawer. The six letters he’d been given were very lengthy and he resolved to get the best ergonomic use out of the vast space available. He sorted out the pages into groups and formed six long rows, which he arranged along the whole length of the table. At the end of each row he stuck labels: “Regina Bera”, “Judge Bateau”, “Father Montenegro”, “Captain Drake”, “Dr Fabrizio”, “Secretary Siccouane”.

  The table was also encumbered with a whole pile of other items, like maps, dictionaries and a calculator that the Consortium had provided in case it might prove useful. A calculator, for heaven’s sake! These people seemed totally ignorant about Epistlewords, unless it was only a pretence. Be careful, Phileas, be careful. He gathered up all the superfluous supplies, stalked over to the armchair and ceremoniously dumped them there to clear table space.

  Due to his acquired talent of speed reading handwritten letters, skipping out of instinct the bits that wouldn’t add to his comprehension and, conversely, concentrating on the bits where small variations in the handwriting betrayed emotional stress that accompanied important truths, he advanced quickly. He progressively redistributed the pages and, before long, internally started to sing the praises of that generous glass top. He removed pages with indifferent content and formed new piles of the crucial ones. He carefully rotated the pages until he was satisfied that he had pinpointed the orientation of the author with respect to the paper. He scrutinised the thickness and smoothness of the paper so as to best calculate the resistance it had put up against the pen’s pressure. His attention was drawn by any smudge, stain or stray mark, even in the margins. He gave the impression that it was only the text that didn’t interest him since he read it at an angle in the twinkling of an eye. He “listened to” rather than read the letters. His facial grimaces betrayed the ultrasounds that curled like invisible smoke out of the six handwritings, causing him great visible discomfort.

  A pop was heard as Steward Galois pulled the cork out of a bottle of wine which, for a second time, made him jump in fright. He realised that he would have no peace while the employee was laying the table, so he decided to take advantage of the break and visit the toilet. He stood up and approached the steward.

  “Mr Galois, could you tell me where to find the toilet, please?” he asked.

  The employee continued what he’d been doing without seeming to have heard him. He adjusted the positions of the knives and forks and twirled the bottle of water in its cooler. Book very politely repeated his question but the steward continued to ignore him.

  “The colour of your tie is so eloquent,” Book whispered with feeling.

  The steward refolded the napkin on his arm and answered without looking at him. “You’re here at the pleasure of the Supreme Command, Mr Book. Only it can answer your queries.”

  “Mr Galois, it couldn’t be more obvious that your employment here is slowly killing you, and I wish that I could help you but until an opportunity presents itself, could you possibly help me a little?”

  “No one can help you, Mr Book. You are a guest of the Supreme Command.”

  Book politely bowed to the employee, who returned the gesture and left the lounge. At that very moment the bald man’s head poked through the open door. Book had been enjoying his absence which had allowed him to work undisturbed. The man strode across the room, holding a thick file under his arm, and stopped in front of the glass-topped table, surveying at a glance the pages of the letters spread across the whole expanse of the surface.

  “Mr Book, there is a certain procedure that must be followed before you can leave the room so, next time you wish to use the facilities, try to give us some warning beforehand. Now you’ll have to bear with us for a few moments. Please sit, don’t wait standing up.”

  He pulled up a chair and opened the file that he’d brought with him. The file contained exact copies of the six letters. He compared the pages on the table, one by one, with those from the file to verify that none was missing. A few of the originals had torn or frayed corners and he extended the comparisons to these details as well. Book found the exercise puerile and pointless, since he was certain that there must be hidden cameras in the ceiling that were trained on him while he was working. He’d need to have been a conjuror to
have surreptitiously stuffed some pages into his pockets to take with him without the cameras picking it up. He felt that the whole rigmarole was designed more to intimidate rather than to counter-check him. He sat on the edge of his seat, in annoyance, gently pressing on his stomach to underline the urgency of his need. He wondered whether this was the best time to ask what was on his mind. He took the plunge.

  “These are letters written by colonists, right?”

  “Since you’ve read them, why ask?” countered the man, absorbed in his task.

  “My name is mentioned,” said Book, and shyly proffered the pile labelled “Regina Bera”, in which on two successive pages he had seen his name mentioned several times.

  “Mmmm,” agreed the man.

  “That explains your sudden interest in Epistlewords. I wondered why the Seventy-Five had bothered to seek the help of humble Phileas Book. That’s why you invited me here. Because I’m mentioned.”

  “Our interest in you and your work is totally genuine, I assure you,” the man interrupted. “Since we’re on the subject, how’s the Epistleword coming along, Mr Book? Are we getting anywhere? I don’t see a meandros among your papers.

  The fact that that observation had come from the man without his having thrown the slightest glance at Book’s notebook, which had been lying closed on the table, proved that Book had been justified in supposing that there were hidden cameras following his progress. With a sweeping gesture that encompassed all the strewn pages as if they were the source of a rather offensive smell, he said with obvious bitterness, “You gave me these six letters and expect me, on command, to construct an Epistleword based on them? You insult me, sir. You’re forcing me to realise that you have no understanding of my work, and if you, the intellectual giants of the corporate world, cannot grasp it, then there’s no hope for anyone else.”

  He shook his head sadly. He got up and walked around the room, either under pressure from his bladder or because he was searching for the right words to express his frustration. He suddenly stopped and turned to look the man in the eyes.

  “Do you know what an Epistleword is, sir? I don’t mean whether you know its shape or its rules, but do you have any deeper feeling for it? Do you think your intuition could lead you to come to grips with it, because it’s evident that your logic would fail you? Has it crossed your mind to wonder why I spend weeks, months, years, opening mountains of letters to discover the particular seven that are linked and can become the constituents of a meaningful meandros? There are countless ‘horizontal’ letters stuffed over the past decades in my drawers waiting for their ‘vertical’ counterparts that will define them; there are complete sets of ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ letters pining for their ‘diagonal’; there are ‘diagonals’ gathering dust while awaiting their accompanying sets. Did you think that I pulled seven letters out of a hat and designed an arbitrary meandros from them? If I changed the chemical composition of your salt, would the resulting product have the same taste, aroma and colour as that which I consume today, just because I called it ‘salt’? Have you ever heard of a seed sprouting without sunlight, water and soil just because it was ordered to?”

  He shut his eyes and, moving his fingers in the air as if in awe at a wondrous physical phenomenon, continued, “What you fail to understand is that the seven letters are ‘attracted’ to each other without any manipulation on my part, otherwise I’d never kill myself sifting through mountains of correspondence but would leisurely compose them myself! Open any Times supplement and look up my Epistleword and tell me honestly if the seven authors, unaware of each other’s existence, often occupying a broad spectrum of ages, nationalities, and languages, would have been able to adequately reach the heights of content and meaning if they weren’t combined.

  “They are transformed, they integrate and each letter now becomes vitally dependant on the others; one breathes with the lungs of the others and speaks with the other’s voice. If you study a meandros, you’ll see that the seven letter writers are so dependent on one another that you’ll begin to believe that humankind corresponds in groups of seven but they aren’t aware of it, which makes their task so difficult. They end up writing one-seventh of what they had to communicate and read only one-seventh of the information intended for them. What I’m saying is that the letters are by nature incomplete, like most human expression, and they struggle for completion. They merge of their own accord, like atoms as dictated by their valences, obeying the same universal rules of synthesis and harmony which can be found in our planetary system. I’m only an observer and recorder of the process. You’ve given me six discordant letters that show no innate desire to merge and you demand that I join them by force. Their authors might’ve known each other for years, as they claim, and might’ve shared countless experiences, but they’re distant from each other, and if they were represented as mutually repulsive unconfined magnets, they’d disappear to six points along the edges of the universe. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you, sir? That by asking me to construct an Epistleword with this material you’re asking me directly to deceive you.”

  The man stared at him, taken aback.

  “But they have a common theme, Mr Book: they all retell the events that occurred in the Colony over a particular fortnight. When we studied them, we even found that they often display similarities in their phraseology. It’s impossible that they are as far away from each other as you’re making out.”

  Book couldn’t contain his exasperation.

  “Theme, phraseology … please, sir! What relevance does the subject of the letter have? The subject is a conscious choice of the author, so it’s of no interest to me, and the phraseology is an acquired technique, rarely illuminating of his true inner nature. I couldn’t care less about what the author is consciously trying to say. I’m not a philologist, detective or prosecutor; I’m not even the addressee of the letter; I’m an artist! I strain to pick up the muted whispers that hide behind the subject, the content, the words and the intentions, like a babbling colourful, melodious brook. It’s this babbling that I tap into and sort its message into my files as ‘horizontal’, ‘vertical’ and ‘diagonal’, each one of which will lead me to its counterparts, like the notes on the scale, each suggesting the next one. To get back to the six letters, I’ve barely taken note of the contents, being so appalled at how estranged they all seemed from one another.”

  The man’s eyebrows knitted in consternation. He admitted that he’d been waiting eagerly for Book’s opinions on the contents. He’d made a name for himself as the most charismatic reader of correspondence. It was said that he could discern secrets that even the authors had been unaware that they’d been revealing or that they’d even known. In the corridors of The Times, it was whispered that through reading the correspondence between Sartre and De Beauvoir, Book had discovered unimagined facets of their relationship. He’d uncovered the fetishistic fascination of Beethoven for dissonance and revealed Einstein’s belief that his theory of relativity would be refuted. It was incredible that nothing in the letters on the table had drawn his attention, nothing had raised questions that he wanted to investigate. Did he really have nothing to remark?

  Book admitted that the only thing that had impressed him was that the writers contradicted themselves; they continuously changed their attitudes, their opinions and their style of writing. These were six seriously disturbed personalities, but he hadn’t expected any better from the dregs of the Colony. Rarely did their words agree with their actions, they had an almost diseased imagination, they were pathological liars yet they are unguardedly frank about the magnitude of their stupidity and incompetence. They were suspicious, narcissistic, deceitful and spiteful. The Seventy-Five had constructed this model of a citizen in the image of their own greed and so got the type of colonist they thoroughly deserved.

  “What about the ‘babbling brook’ that you described previously? What sounds did you pick up and what colours did they display?” the man wanted to know. />
  “Surely you jest, sir? There isn’t a drop of the brook in the letters. What you saw was what you got, one hundred percent transparent, one hundred percent bone dry. I didn’t hear any musical notes, just the ebb and flow of hatred and the discordant note of impaired sanity. I couldn’t perceive colours either, just amorphous fear and, perhaps, a longing for oblivion. They’re six ‘strangers’ who’ve never managed to know each other nor, for that matter, themselves. They’re an amalgam of the worst in humanity and they make me feel ashamed to call myself a human.”

  Exasperated, the man snapped shut the folder he held in his hand. “Very well, Mr Book, at least finish the meandros so that you might justify the money we’ve invested in you.”

  Book fought back tears of despair. “For heaven’s sake, sir. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? Had anyone ever asked Picasso to paint Franco’s portrait, had they ever asked Byron to write a hymn to industrialisation, had anyone ever had the effrontery to ask a prima ballerina to tap dance? How can you demand that I do something so foreign to my nature, to sully my meandros with these discordant letters and to presume to defraud you in front of your own eyes? I need the money that you’re offering, God knows I do, but I cannot condescend to deceive you – even though you’ve insulted my art by the six letters you’ve chosen since it made it patently obvious that you hadn’t bothered to learn what I do before inviting me to do it.”

  The man wouldn’t give up so easily. He couldn’t accept that Book hadn’t been intrigued by Regina Bera’s letter which had mentioned a specific Epistleword, the one that used a letter written by a Mr G, who had put on his black suit and his blue tie and had gone to the post office to pick up his mother-in-law’s parcel only to be given someone else’s knitwear samples instead. The Governor’s widow mentioned it, with surprising detail, because Bianca Bateau had been trying to solve the puzzle. Considering the dates The Times reach the Colony, it must have been the meandros that had appeared in the edition of the last Sunday in July. He asked Book if he’d read all that had been said about his Epistleword on that page.