by Lavie Tidhar
Electric light: the sudden brightness made him blink back tears. A shape moving with big easy steps, a hand on his face, holding him down, something put over his eyes. He didn’t resist, didn’t see the point. A voice murmuring in his ear, the hint of an accent: ‘You are blind, like worm.’ Joe let it pass.
‘Why you keep going?’ the voice said. ‘Even with your eyes open you are blind. Why grope in the dark, tap-tap-tap, like a blind person with a walking stick? I am sorry about your friend.’
His friend? He thought about Mo, the lingering scent of cheap cigars, ‘I mainly do divorces’, a name in a phone book made momentarily real, then cancelled with the sound of gunshots. ‘Why you not give up?’ the voice said, and it sounded perplexed. ‘You have good life, before. Drink coffee, sit in office, is peaceful, no?’
Somehow he wasn’t scared. It was like a dream, he thought: the closest to dreaming he could come. The words, ‘Are you going to kill me?’ came floating into his mind and stayed there, movie dialogue unspoken.
‘I am not wishing to kill you,’ the man said. ‘Death is merely a gateway to another place. I used to think it was paradise, but it isn’t.’ A short laugh like a cough, bitter like coffee. ‘I spit on it.’
Ambiguity. Spit on what? The bed was like hard clouds, and he was floating. The man above him had no face, he was convinced of it now. A man with no face. It made him laugh, but inside. Only inside. ‘You are brave,’ the man said. ‘But stupid, too. Yes, I think you are very stupid.’ One hand was still on his face. Cloth on his eyes, worms’ cocoons woven into silk and dyed black. ‘You stay here,’ the man said. ‘For you, paradise, now. All good, no? What you miss? Why you make trouble?’
No answer expected. The man speaking to himself, not to Joe. ‘When I was kid,’ the man said unexpectedly, ‘I look out window, I see clouds. All time, clouds are different. I see faces in clouds. Ears, eyes, mouths—’ he pronounced it mouthes — ‘eyes, I see eyes, many eyes. I see smiling faces. I see sad faces. In clouds. Outside bedroom window. You understand?’
But Joe didn’t.
The man’s other hand on Joe’s hair, stroking it. Sadness in the moving fingers. ‘Then wind comes. Clouds move, change. Sometimes make new faces. Sometimes gone. Men like clouds. You ever think of God?’
The hand stroking his hair. No answer expected. The man said, ‘Old man with long beard, yes? High up in clouds. God, for children it is God. Sometimes for grownups, too. You understand?’
Joe moved his head, an almost imperceptible shift. No. The man said, ‘You stay out of trouble. Go back to coffee, sunshine, walk to office and back. Is more good.’
More good than what?
‘Or you go other paradise,’ the man said. His hand was no longer on Joe’s head. ‘Stay, go, all the same. You make trouble, I send you. Ok?’
Joe felt like laughing. But the voice above him, fragile, was still dangerous. Joe moved his head, minutely, perhaps yes, perhaps no, and heard the man sigh. ‘All the same,’ he heard the man say, but quietly, and then the dark material was pulled gently from his eyes and he saw the back of the man as he moved towards the door, and the door shut behind him with a soft click and then the room was dark again.
a short history of dreams
——
When he woke up again it was morning proper, a part of it already gone. Of his early morning visitor there was no sign. His hand had stopped hurting. He flexed it and the fingers responded as if they had never been cut. He felt better than he had in some time. He showered, and dressed, and went down to the lobby, and nodded hello to my-name-is-Simon who seemed never to leave reception. Just outside the hotel he found a café and sat down to order breakfast. It was a hot humid morning but that didn’t disturb him. He had fried eggs and sausages and fresh bread and coffee and as he ate he thought about the day ahead.
There were leads to follow. There was detecting to be done. There was work. He didn’t think until his food was finished — it was a relief.
When he was done he found himself staring at the remains of his breakfast on the plate: the ruins of an ancient civilization etched in egg yolk and sausage grease. Where should he go first? He felt restless now; eager for movement. He made to leave when a shadow fell over him and he looked up and said, ‘Not you again.’ He noticed the waiter glancing their way then looking away. A voice with a distinct North American accent, continental United States, said, ‘Why are you here?’ and didn’t mean it in any sort of existential questioning. ‘Having breakfast,’ Joe said. ‘It’s the most important meal of the dead.’
‘Of the day,’ the man with grey hair said, sounding disgusted, and added, ‘And it’s a luxury you may not be entitled to for very long.’
‘Even more important to have it while I can, then,’ Joe said. Grey Hair sat down opposite. His two companions were nowhere to be seen. ‘Left your muscle at home today?’ Joe said. Grey Hair smiled, and Joe thought that, really, the man had a pleasant enough face when he made the effort. But the face felt as if it could slip off the smile as easily as it had put it on, and what would be left would not be nearly as pleasant. ‘I thought I told you to stay away.’
‘Refresh my memory.’
‘You wouldn’t like it if I did.’
Joe took out his packet of cigarettes and shook it, sliding a couple half-way out, offering them towards the man. To his surprise, the man took one. Joe took the other for himself, brought out his lighter, and Grey Hair leaned forward to accept the light. For a moment they were caught like that, two heads leaning towards each other, in stillness and secrecy, as if one was about to impart a great knowledge to the other. Then the tip of the man’s cigarette flamed red, he pulled back, and Joe lit his own cigarette and put the lighter away. Something had changed, subtly, between them. ‘You won’t,’ the man said, ‘find what you are looking for.’
‘What am I looking for?’
The man nodded, as if the question merited greater consideration than it perhaps seemed to suggest. He said, ‘What do you know about opium?’
It was not a question Joe was expecting. He said, echoing something half-heard the night before, ‘You can use it to finance wars or heal the sick.’
‘And which one would you choose?’
‘You didn’t come here to talk to me about opium.’
The man said, ignoring him, ‘It can’t be used to heal the sick.’
‘Oh?’
‘It can only relieve their pain.’
‘Better than re-living the pain.’
‘Don’t,’ the man said, ‘be a smartass.’
‘Sorry.’ The man nodded, acknowledging the apology. He signalled to the waiter. ‘Two coffees,’ he said. Joe shook his head. Why did he apologise?
‘Sertürner isolated morphine in eighteen oh five,’ the man said. ‘Named after Morpheus, the god of dreams. Robiquet isolated codeine in eighteen thirty-two. Heroin was first synthesised right here in London, by Wright in eighteen seventy-four. With me so far?’
‘Sure…’
‘But only became popular when Bayer re-synthesised it in eighteen ninety-seven. Heroin from the German heroisch. Do you feel heroic, Joe?’
‘Only when I’m paid to.’
The man smiled and blew out smoke. Their coffee arrived, and he added one sugar and stirred it. ‘Bayer lost a part of their trademark rights on Heroin after the first world war,’ he said. ‘Incidentally.’
‘I see.’
‘Joe,’ the grey haired man said. ‘I want you to understand something. Opium and its derivatives are still, even after more than three thousand years in constant use, the best known pain relief medication known to science. Period. The opium poppy is the single most beneficial plant in the world.’
‘What do you want?’ Joe said. ‘I didn’t realise you came here to give me a lecture in Botany.’
The grey haired man shook his head. ‘There are a lot of things you don’t realise,’ he said. Joe let it pass.
‘In our own civil war,’ the grey hair
ed man said, ‘opium was known as God’s own drug. Our combat medics still carry morphine packs to inject severely-wounded soldiers with. The United States of America is still the world’s largest consumer of opium-based prescription drugs.’
‘I guess you lot care a great deal about opium, then,’ Joe said. The man ignored him again. ‘The world, our world, is safe,’ he said. ‘Safe and healthy. Opium comes from Asia, is made into medicine by German and American and British firms, and eases suffering. The money earned is taxed, which aids governance. No one, Joe, is sponsoring wars with opium.’
‘I’m not sure I follow you,’ Joe said. The man said, ‘Yet it still, somewhat surprisingly, poses a problem for us.’
‘That’s too bad,’ Joe said. The man smiled, but there was nothing friendly anymore in that expression. He said, ‘Do you dream, Joe?’
The man kept surprising Joe. He thought about his black-filled nights; took a sip from his coffee; did not reply. ‘A theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain,’ the man said. ‘Which presented nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendour. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. De Quincey.’
‘Friend of yours?’
‘Joe,’ the man said, ‘listen to me carefully, because I won’t say it again. What you want — what you would do — is open a door that we would, very much, like to keep closed. Keep tightly shut, in fact. You have to understand I am not unsympathetic. It is not easy, for refugees. But refugees must nevertheless respect the sanctity of their hosts. Do you understand?’
Joe didn’t. But he nodded. The man sighed. ‘Good,’ he said. And, ‘There is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind,’ he said. It had the same intonation of reading out aloud a memorised quote. ‘A thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind, but—’
‘Yes?’
‘The inscription remains for ever,’ the grey haired man said.
PART FOUR
IN CASABLANCA
the secret inscriptions on the mind
——
There was a Hamlet in full costume walking down Frith Street, declaiming a soliloquy as he passed. He was not, Joe thought, a very good Hamlet. As he passed Joe he was shouting, ‘To die, to sleep! To sleep, perchance to dream! Ay, there’s the rub!’ and Joe thought he had never heard Hamlet done with so many exclamation marks before. Hamlet spoiled it even further by sticking a question mark over the next line — ‘For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?’
Joe tossed him a coin. Hamlet turned, gave him a short bow, and continued on his way, changing his patter inexplicably to a rant about Ophelia.
Joe was back at the Castle. This time, he was watching the tradesmen entrance. He’d reached his quota of quotations for the day. He should have started earlier, but had been derailed by breakfast and the man from the CPD, and talk about opium that left him more confused than before. Was Longshott involved in pharmaceuticals in some way? He shook the thought from his mind. He knew the next visit from the grey haired man could prove fatal; and he didn’t intend, if he could possibly help it, for the fatality to be himself. He settled down to watch and wait instead.
At 09:45 there was a late employee arriving from the direction of Leicester Square, running and out of breath, and she disappeared inside the tradesmen door but Joe didn’t quite spot what opened the door — was it a key? Was she buzzed in?
At 10:03 there was a delivery truck, parking on the curb, burly men offloading crates of frozen foodstuff. A woman appeared at the door, vacated her place for more Castle employees who ferried the cargo inside. A camera then? And employees only inside the building — no tradesmen let through. Interesting.
He could actually keep an eye on the main entrance too, but it seemed to be a quiet morning. At 10:22, at last, something more interesting than frozen lobsters — a solitary figure strolling over, brown paper bag in hand — a boy who, unconcernedly, turned right at the Castle’s tradesmen entrance and paused briefly before the door. The door opened. The same woman stood in the entrance. A brief conference. When the boy left he was no longer holding the brown paper bag. The boy had the black hair and pale skin of a Han Chinese. The boy turned the way he had come. Joe followed him, at a distance.
He was still trying to fathom the grey haired man’s words to him. De Quincey’s words, really. There is no such thing as forgetting. Was memory, then, the secret inscription? And, what was the point in a secret inscription? He wondered if he was forgetting something, then wondered how he would know. What he did know was that he should be keeping an eye out for the CPD men. The others too, the ones who shot at him. Recently, it seemed, both parties had decided to talk to him instead. He couldn’t decide if that was an improvement. They didn’t strike him as people who liked to talk a great deal. Neither would probably bother again. Still, he had to give them full marks for effort.
He followed the boy a short distance, across Shaftesbury Avenue and onto Gerrard Street. Here was the heart of London’s Chinatown. The typeface advertising businesses was English made to look a little like Chinese characters. There were deep-red, roasted ducks hanging from hooks in the restaurant windows. Cleaver-wielding chefs stood behind the glass, hacking away at the carcasses of chickens and pigs. There was frying garlic smell everywhere, and that most exotic of ingredients for the British, the ginger. There were greengrocers selling tamarind and lychees and bok choi. There were travel agents advertising the wonders that could be had on a package tour to Kuomintang China. Pictures of Chiang Kai-shek hang everywhere. Even the red phone boxes were transformed into miniature Buddhist temples, but without so many stairs.
The boy turned left on Gerrard Street, and Joe followed. Into Newport Place, where several columns rose out of the ground, culminated in a decorated roof, and formed an open pagoda which took him by surprise. For a moment it was as if he were back in Vientiane, at his office overlooking the black stupa. Then it was gone, and it was merely a gaudy pagoda that looked like a bus shelter from the rain.
The shops in Newport Place were different. Joe knew that a small alleyway, Little Newport, joined it to Charing Cross Road, but here there were no books. The atmosphere was laden with a different kind of smoke than that of Gerrard Street: cooking, but not of ducks or noodles. The boy went past the pagoda and disappeared through an unmarked door. There was little advertising in Newport Place. There was one pub and its windows were grimy and the interior was dark and he could see no one inside. It was called the Edwin Drood and he thought of graffiti and felt suddenly cold.
He’d seen places like this before.
He approached the door the boy had gone through. He knocked and the door opened, just a crack, showing nothing beyond but a face, not Chinese but darker, Hmong perhaps, or one of the Tai groupings, and it said, ‘What you want?’
‘To come in.’
He couldn’t see anything beyond the door but he could smell it. The man in the doorway said, ‘Forget it, mister. No place for you.’
Joe worked on a hunch. ‘I want to see Madam Seng.’
The face, disembodied, as if let loose from any mortal anchoring of flesh, sucked its teeth. ‘No Madam Seng here. You go.’
Joe fished in his pocket, came up with a note. ‘This refreshes your memory?’
The face smiled and, for just a moment, dropped the accent. ‘My memory is just fine as it is,’ the man said.
‘Too bad your manners aren’t,’ Joe said. He lunged for the face, but the man who owned it was faster, and the door slammed on Joe, almost catching his fingers. There was the loud sound of a key being turned in the lock.
‘Son of a bitch!’ Joe said; not without feeling.
the body in the library
——
He knocked hard on the door, but there was no reply, and he didn’t expect one. Passers-by stared at him. He stepped away from the door, glared at it, but it still wouldn’t open. ‘I’ll
be back,’ he said, which made him feel better, somehow. He glanced across the road at The Edwin Drood, thinking of a drink, but the dilapidated building glared back at him from its dark, stained windows, repelling the notion. Instead he walked down Little Newport, passing stalls selling incense, Buddha statues, posters of Sun Yat Sen, compasses, animal figures shaped in copper wire, cheap makeup, even cheaper perfume, past a door opening onto a stairwell where a hand-written sign said Miss Josette was available for French lessons upstairs, another for a Miss Bianca and Greek, past a dumpling restaurant, a stall where he could have had his name engraved on a grain of rice, and onto Charing Cross Road.
This time he turned right. As he passed the entrance to the underground, he avoided looking at it. He ran into the mass of people passing to and from Leicester Square, kept a hand on his pocket, waited patiently for the lights to change, crossed the road, passed Wyndham’s Theatre, passed Cecil Court with its row of rare book dealers, and went into the Charing Cross public lending library.
Joe had always liked libraries, though he could not remember having gone into one recently. There was something comforting about the intimate space, rows of books marking orderly borders, the only sound that of turning pages, whispered conversations and the dimmed noise of the traffic outside. He went to the reading corner and found the week’s newspapers draped neatly on wooden sticks, looking like an exhausted flock of albatrosses. He liberated a few and retreated to an empty desk by the wall.
Three days ago.
He found nothing on page one for any of the days.
Three days ago and it seemed like a lifetime.
Nothing on page two.
Somebody’s lifetime.
The late edition, three days ago. Page three. A Shoot-out in Soho.
