I explained to him that I’d never done anything like it before and I couldn’t guess what I must do. I wished someone could show me how to liberate ships. He leant in my direction.
“By killing we liberate, Fabrizio. There is no other way.”
At that moment, we were interrupted by a tearful Markella, who informed us that the first violinist was in a terrible state because the damp of the Colony was destroying the wood of his Stradivarius and he was demanding that we immediately stored it in a dry vault.
Regoleone laughed ironically. “It seems that the Colony’s atmosphere destroys all the rare and valuable things of this world. Should I be getting worried about my precious self?”
I told Markella that I would be attending to the first violinist at once and I offered to escort the tenor to his room. He asked me if he could keep the empty Chianti bottle. I told him that it’d be my pleasure and he climbed up the stairs, clutching his invaluable bottle, devoid of its contents.
35
Letter of Judith Swarnlake
(page 67)
LADY REGINA BERA
… Defeated, I removed myself from on top of him and lay down on the floor. Montenegro covered his naked body as if in shame. Despite our foreknowledge that this experiment would fail, the realisation crushed us both. The fault might have been that we lacked a repertoire of erotic fantasy in our imagination – we had only employed a single fantasy these last few years which we had just seen come to life, so that we had no appropriate alternative to choose to arouse ourselves. Fantasy that becomes reality loses its potency and cannot perform its function. Much worse, it betrays you as it shows how wrong you can be even in your most intimate imagination.
There was a time when hurried, stifled sex with Montenegro, under my husband’s nose, could brighten a lousy day – not, alas, a lousy life. At least it helped me escape without moving; desire always led me to my favourite refuge of illusions, where I could comfortably move about without restrictions. Now, I no longer feel desire, nor hate, just a vacuum and my stillborn illusions burst like bubbles as I reach for them. I am at one with the thick, sluggish and unclean sea that adheres to the Colony’s shoreline without cooling it.
Not being able to stand suffering his unshared misery any longer, Montenegro repeatedly attempted to meet with the young Governor, but without result. He shook his head in wonder at the impenetrability of the Governor’s modus operandi. This person was invulnerable, inscrutable. He ignored the dissolution of the Colony; he ignored the filthy state of the Palace floor; he even ignored anyone wandering within these walls, unless it was at his invitation. Montenegro suggested to me that we should push him to the limits to test his blinkered self-control, to see whether there were any limits! It had to be completely impossible for him not to react to the widow of his predecessor and the High Priest of the Metropolis screwing their eyes out on the floor of his office.
I agreed to his plan, mainly because I hoped the hubris of doing something so provocative, something I had never dared to do while my husband was alive, would finally awaken a spark within my body. It was exciting to imagine coupling with my lover in his office, spiced with the thrill of threatened discovery. We asked Siccouane for his key, and quite unlike himself, he handed it over without a murmur. We entered his office, flung our clothes all around the room and lay on the floor. From this position, directly next to his armchair, we waited for the Governor’s entrance.
Sadly, we were stymied by our lack of desire; we didn’t feel any urge, any warmth and that made things next to impossible. We waited side by side, naked and immobile. We retained the hope, however, that when we heard his footsteps in the corridor, the key turning in the lock and the creak of the handle, it would awaken some hint of passion, or even of fear, which, at least, Judith Swarnlake’s glands could traditionally convert to arousal. Time passed and no one came, making us feel like a couple of damp logs, discarded from the fireplace, miles away from the fire. At one point, Montenegro actually fondled my breasts. It was so mechanical that my body’s only reaction was on the nape of my neck rather than my nipples. He removed his hand. The sensation of the floorboards against my body seemed more bearable than that of his body.
I looked down at my nakedness and all I could see was how my body had aged. It was hard to imagine that there had been a time when I had used it as a tool, rather than borne it like a weight. All these kilos of flesh, bones and fluids were alarmingly superfluous. I had become uglier, and I was not alone. I could see Montenegro’s pathetic efforts to arrange himself in the least visible fashion. We had not been trying to join our bodies, but to make them disappear. The shreds of my fiery, sensuous temperament and of his Balkan allure had died out long ago, but we were just now experiencing their unattended funeral.
We tried talking, but found nothing to say. Incarcerated in these strange bodies, our voices themselves became unrecognisable. The silence was leaden, conversation was dead. If that door didn’t open soon, I would go crazy.
Finally, we heard the corridor floorboards register the footsteps of someone approaching the office. I could distinguish the light, confident tread of my lover amongst a thousand others. The way he walked on the wooden wharves of Liverpool, the way his youthful soles would caress the boards and make them lovesick. Suddenly the memories of the waves lapping on the Liverpool dockside churned the lethargic sea in me and thrust the blood through my veins. Galvanised, I leapt on Montenegro, the ecstasy of each step, rhythmically approaching from the corridor, reverberated in my skull. The key turned in the lock, the handle rotated, the door opened. For those few seconds, lust rekindled my ashes, my body was encased by the skin of my memories and I became a woman again, or a reasonably convincing image of one. The steps crossed the floor and reached the armchair. I felt, rather than saw, his leg rise and stride over our joined bodies. He passed over us, sat at his desk, opened a drawer, removed something, stepped over us again and disappeared out the door.
We were invisible then. We were the rubbish that littered the floor of the Palace and as such could not be seen by him. Montenegro gave up. “I cannot defeat him. He is perfect.”
The future was no longer the future as it had become as predictable as the past. I would die on the anniversary of the Colony, I had not the slightest doubt about that. This descent had become strictly one-way and its destination all too obvious. I was living my twilight hours. At twelve midnight the Governor would execute me, and so he must. The thought relieved me and the certainty gave me peace.
“At midnight he will execute us,” Montenegro echoed my thoughts. It was the first time since we had begun to share a bed that we had managed to share a thought.
We put our clothes back on, unlocked and left the office. We sought Siccouane to return his key. He didn’t even bother to take it and told us to just leave it anywhere. This Governor had no need of keys, nor of doors, or of security. He was absolutely safe, invulnerable.
We sat ourselves in the anteroom, it being too early for the meal, but since we had nothing better to do we might as well sit at the ready. The certainty of death is a calming sensation. I discerned this in the peaceful features of my companions, who had all arrived on time. We sat, side by side, cocooned in silence. We would no longer exist in a few hours; our tribulations would be at an end. Only the muffled sounds of the timbers of the Black Ship being gnawed by the violet salt in its berth were picked up by the nerves in our spines, but the sensations they caused were bearable because the sounds were reaching us from a previous life that was rapidly fading into the distance.
When the pirate bade us to join him in the dining room we did so in tranquility. There was nothing to eat or drink on the empty table. We were pleased by this, as we had no desire to sully our remaining hours by engaging in a hypocritical pantomime. The Seventy-Five had finally sent us the Commander we had so richly deserved. I felt tenderness towards my executioner, who would have to soil his hands with my tainted blood. I hoped that my employers would give him recompense
appropriate to the burden of this task.
The pirate instructed Judge Bateau to go up to his bedroom and ensure that the ropes on Bianca’s arms and legs were tight. Checking her bindings was totally superfluous in my mind since Bianca would make no attempt to escape. Who can ever wriggle away from their fate? Bateau returned after a few minutes and reported that he had tightened the knot on her right wrist as it had loosened somewhat.
Our fifteen-day trial was finally drawing to a close. It had completely drained us of strength, chiefly because for days we had been vainly struggling to overturn the unspoken verdict, only now it had become obvious how futile that had been. The moment had arrived for the sentence to drip like hemlock from his lips.
“Tonight you will attend the gala performance of the tenor Regoleone at the Opera, and then the open-air reception at Hesperides Square. Please inform Captain Drake accordingly, as soon as he returns from the desert. At twelve midnight I expect to see you all here.”
Twelve midnight. Just like clockwork.
Midnight was taking forever, every second was an eternity. Captain Drake came to the Palace directly from the desert and asked us why we were delaying, why wait till midnight? Our end was just around the corner and we were impatient to meet it. Drake had handed over the keys of the armoury to his officers and had designated his successor as Captain. Successors had also been appointed by Fabrizio at the Infirmary and by Montenegro to the office of High Priest of the Metropolis. Judge Bateau and Secretary Siccouane had both left the keys to their offices outside the Governor’s door. Together in the hall, we watched the minute hand of the only clock I had kept regularly wound crawl towards its apex. On the stroke of nine we all left through the Palace entrance.
Hesperides Square was full of people. The crowd, anything but festive, was sitting on the ground, some holding their heads in their hands, others flicking worry beads, their eyes inflamed. So this is what the open reception to celebrate the Colony’s anniversary had come to. A sea of huddled bodies, waiting for a fate foretold, for which the Seventy-Five had spent so many years preparing us. The Priest, visibly moved, was preaching. “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.” We passed like angels amongst these doomed bodies which, at least, by the realisation of the prophecy were liberated from the prolonged and agonising threat of the axe poised above their heads.
I don’t recall the performance, as I didn’t watch it; the very name of the opera escapes me. In any case, at some point, Regoleone stopped singing because the audience was ripping chairs apart, hurling shoes and was threatening to destroy the stage. I must have been struck repeatedly, judging by the mounting pains in my body that were becoming unbearable. I waited for midnight, bleeding, at the mercy of the crowd, which no longer sought answers, but revenge. I was sunk into a blissful state of semi-consciousness by the extent of my physical pains. Siccouane brought me to, and shouted through my protective haze that the hour was approaching midnight.
I rose to my feet, stiff with pain, and we started back. We had to struggle to make headway. Arms reached out for us; some grabbing our shredded clothing, others with more violent intent. I began to worry that the crowd might prevent us from reaching the Palace or that we may even die on the way. Only the Governor was permitted to despatch us. The executioners of the square would have to seek their victims elsewhere. Our souls had been pledged, by contract, twenty years ago. We redoubled our efforts and shouted to the mass of bodies blocking our way, to have patience and to allow our punishment to proceed as preordained.
Fires had started all around the square. Furniture was being hurled from surrounding buildings and fish oil poured on the fires from domestic containers; anything to feed the flames that were quickly spreading to shutters, doors and roofs, they wrapped around Hesperides, which for the first time appeared so brightly illuminated in a rosy light. It must have been some sort of miracle that had allowed us to reach the Palace, ragged, bleeding and singed. Not before I had caught my last image of the outside world did I close the door behind me. Sodom was burning.
We filed in the hall at the precise moment the pendulum was sounding midnight. We raised our eyes to our executioner but had difficulty recognising him. He no longer wore a pirate’s garb but had put on the official uniform of the Governor: the ceremonial suit, the green jacket, the trousers with the violet stripe down the sides, the gold braid, the epaulettes, the medals on his chest and the cap with the peacock feathers. Shiny patent leather shoes had replaced his pirate’s boots and the buckle on his belt bore the joined hands emblem of the Consortium. His piratical locks had been cut to a military length. Thankfully, he had left the gold ring shining from his ear so that we could be sure that this was, indeed, our master. We had become impatient, waiting for our execution.
He plucked us from our anticipation and tossed us into sheer panic.
“I would like to congratulate you on your invaluable services provided during this difficult transitional period. Tomorrow, a new day dawns for the Colony, the first of the second twenty years of its life. You have been worthy associates, and I am pleased that our collaboration will continue. I wish you all a good night.”
Speechless, we watched him ascend the stairs until he was lost from sight on the floor above. It was utterly impossible that this insignificant nonentity was our Governor. We had been taken in by an imposter, a pathetic fraud, who lacked the backbone to fill his role.
The realisation of what was expected of us by the Seventy-Five was immediate. It was so obvious that we couldn’t understand how it had taken us so long to realise. So obvious that it wasn’t necessary to voice it aloud, in fact not even to look at each other. Montenegro went to the storeroom to fetch the axe, Siccouane went to the kitchen in search of the knives and Judge Bateau went to lock the doors. I went to the bathroom and chose a long-bladed razor and went in the direction of the Governor’s bedroom. At the same time the others were going upstairs and we met en route.
“His neck is mine,” I stated.
We opened the door and saw the imposter, wearing the uniform of our master, lying down on Bera’s bed. The judge demanded to strangle him but I wouldn’t hear of it. I’d already laid claim to his throat! I tested the blade of the razor on a hair from my head. It cut like butter.
We fell upon him and pinned him down. The Priest and Siccouane held his legs, the Doctor and the Captain secured his hands to the bed, while the Judge held his head in a vice-like grip so that it couldn’t move. I jumped on his chest and stuck my nose to his neck. I smelled his aroma, the unmistakable fragrance of Liverpool! I should have guessed. A youth with such an aura could never have originated from the Seventy-Five.
In keeping with his pedantic, bureaucratic character, Siccouane said that it was important that we ask him his name before killing him, as if it made any difference to us. He added that the pirate had promised him that were he to pose the unique, key question to solve the riddle, the pirate would answer it.
“Then hurry,” I said, “because the pirate had promised me that one day, when the time was ripe, I would kill, and that day has come!”
The Judge shouted that to him the pirate had said that one of the persons present in this room was superfluous and that he had finally identified the supernumerary beyond doubt. Fabrizio followed suit, murmuring that he had just realised why the pirate had assigned Regoleone to him. The tenor had told him that killing liberates. Drake shook his head with the sudden understanding that the Suez Mamelukes had disappeared from the desert because the supreme threat was no longer outside the Colony’s boundaries but in its very heart. The Priest crossed himself with fervour, and thanked God for permitting him to identify the Biblical King of Sodom and granting him the tremendous honour of meting out his punishment with his own hands.
Siccouane thrust his face close to that of the pirate and asked him
in a frenzy, “Who are you, curse you, because you certainly are not our Governor! The true Governor would have executed us at midnight.”
The Judge released his stranglehold enough to allow the youth to speak. The youth gasped and with great effort spoke in a hoarse voice, accompanied by drops of blood that spattered the walls, “I Am That I Am.”
With that my arm descended and the razor viciously slit his throat. Simultaneously, my mind was haunted by Bera’s sardonic death smile, so that, with my return stroke I sliced his cheeks from ear to ear, making sure that we would never have to endure the sight of such a smile again.
36
The shrouds of the night were slowly parting and the ill-matched old and new buildings of Paris started appearing awkwardly in the struggling light, as if embarrassed by each other’s proximity. The heavy rain must have just let up and the wet pavements were reflecting the first rays of the autumn sun.
Phileas Book watched the raindrops that were still sliding down the windowpane. He was trying to imagine the rest of his life without The Times and Epistlewords, with no Tuesday delivery of his reader’s correspondence from London and no meandros. Up to the previous day the prospect of an early pension sounded like a harsh punishment, but today he wasn’t so sure. He had begun feeling that the twenty-five-year journey along the columns of thousands of meandroses was coming to its natural conclusion with this last Epistleword. Paradoxically, the hunt for the words to fill the blanks that had started in his youth and was ending today was bringing him back to the starting blocks. He could reconcile himself to a life without meandroses, but he could no longer abide a life without Phileas Book. It was the first time the absence of himself from his own body had become so tangible and his desire to reunite his shattered parts so honest.
What Lot's Wife Saw Page 37
