No, they weren’t so careless. There was oil in the north. There was oil in the south. But in the middle there was nothing. So the people from the middle stole the oil.
I patrolled the wire. Right, left, up, down. Up and down I looked at Rigel. Rigel was the left foot of the conqueror and that was a cold light. Right, left I gazed at Betelgeuse. That star was the right shoulder of the conqueror, and I found no comfort in its urn of ash.
Out in the dark there was sometimes laughter, sometimes screaming. Just like our camp. And some nights the sergeant would appear. It had to be in darkness and he came silent as a sniper, creeping along the wire towards me.
Look, sarge, I would say. I’m on your side.
Though he did not reply his mouth would make a bubble. And then he would laugh, a dark man the sergeant, from some southern tribe, black hair on his belly and his billyclub with a bloody ferrule.
Washed was he? Where was the water to wash in the Badiet esh Sham? There was no pool there, no tarn and no tarp to trap the dew. Even in that dry air he smelt like a mule.
Whose side? he would whisper.
And I would look at the whipcord in his cock and see that the border ran even there.
Whose side? he would hiss.
Your side, sarge, I would answer, the wind blowing, the sugar papers trapped on the wire, Orion and the madman’s stars almost overhead.
7. Swiftsure
There is a man lives in Eagle Street who deserted from the Royal Navy many years ago. I sometimes see him in an upstairs window where he will sit in the mornings, a thin man with a sallow face, a birdcage that holds a linnet beside him.
Manuela tells me stories about this Mr Swiftsure, as we sit over our coffee and cardamom during her breaks. Last night in my room, sleep had been particularly heavy. I had awoken with difficulty, a cabaret of weeping in my head. Yesterday there had been children’s voices in the theatre. A school party I supposed, although I knew the place was closed. And whispering too. A campaign of whispering, transparent voices floating to earth like cranefly wings.
Swiftsure has worked in the victualling yard and made himself useful during the sieges, even after losing a foot to a musketball. Once he ferried laudanum and lemon juice to the lazzaretto so people are inclined to turn a blind eye, even with a bounty on the old smuggler’s head.
Not me, whispers Manuela. I hate old Swiftsure.
Why?
He has hides all over the island. And a little popgun. Swiftsure shoots birds. He will sit in his hide all day for the chance of a potshot. Eagles, pigeons, the tiny birds that pass in spring, he shoots them all.
She leans closer.
He’s a snarer too. A poacher. Like the rest of them he uses snares to catch birds alive. But I think of him in his hides. Oh, so beautifully camouflaged. You’ll pass a yard away and not notice there is green canvas in the branches and a little man sitting in the scorpion grass with his gun cocked. You know…
What?
He could be with us in this room. And you’d not notice him. Of all the snarers, Swiftsure’s the craftiest. He can be invisible.
Now coincidentally, but the island of lightning is full of coincidences, I encounter Swiftsure this afternoon. He is in the street, whimpering after the linnet that has fallen from its cage. I find the bird in a drain and capture it, wings bedraggled, its eye a raspberry seed.
Ta boss, says Swiftsure. Ta very much. The old King o’ Naples wouldn’t last long with these cats. You must come up, boss. Come up for a drink.
Swiftsure pours cactus juice from a stone jug with a mitred lip.
To his lordship.
Pardon?
Nelson of course. What other lord is there in these parts?
I look around. There are stuffed birds everywhere. A bee eater sits inside the door, a plover in black and gold stencilling hovers from a wire overhead. On the table, otherwise covered with papers, wineglasses and an evil-looking nimcha, stands a brass astrolabe. Swiftsure follows my gaze.
Arab work, he says. Very useful if you want to say a few Hail Marys toward Mecca.
Do you use it?
Oh yes. It’s a stardome too. I go out mostly at night. Get away from the lights see. Just bob about out there and look at the globe then study the stars themselves. Sometimes I can even tell where I am. Watch this.
Swiftsure closes the curtain and strikes a light, applying it to the well of oil within the globe. In the gloom it starts to glow and the star holes cut in the copper make a smoky constellation. From its cage on the balcony the linnet starts to sing.
You’re honoured, Swiftsure says. Old King o’ Naples doesn’t do much of that these days. He’s a good old bird.
We stand together in the dusk listening to its song. Then he touches the globe.
See this star. Its name is Antares. The pride of Scorpio. And if you look at it as I do, through a spyglass, it’s exactly the same colour as this. A ruby in the night. That’s Antares. With a sapphire close beside it too, because Antares has a pale companion. You’ll have to come out one night and see for yourself
I’d like that.
Learn to set the equipment, laughs Swiftsure. You know, his lordship used to look for Antares most nights when in these waters. Can’t see it a lot of the time in England.
The poacher pours another round.
Good health, I propose.
Well, maybe. I always say this stuff’s the only thing that keeps me going.
The linnet like a clockwork bird, has stopped its song. Swiftsure and I stand together in the dark, the furnace of stars between us.
You know, he says, after Trafalgar they sent his lordship home stood up in a barrel of grog. Pickled the poor sod, they did. Buried the bugger in brandy. And no kidding, sometimes I know just how old Horatio must have felt. Cheers, boss.
8. The First Couple
One day Omar and I are leaving the Piccadilly when a man hails us from a balcony. We climb his stairs and part a bead curtain.
Salutations, says Omar. How the devil are you? Now, may I perform the introductions?
There are two men before us in the tiny room. Behind them the balcony is set with two plastic chairs and a table.
This is Mercurius, says Omar. A man extends his hand, a greyhaired man with a stubbly beard, the apron over his jeans covered in paint. His clothes too are discoloured, also the fingers I take.
The room is full of canvases, always, it seems, of the sea, the sea at dawn with the mist upon it, the midnight sea where the island’s lights are reprinted in yellow, a sea teeming with whales and dolphins and creatures that can never have existed. And ships too, the ships that have visited the island since men ventured into the deeps.
And this is Gloriana.
Pleasured to you, says the second man, hair in toffee paper twists, his kimono pumiced with cigarette burns.
We share their supper of bread and blood oranges, Gloriana tipping fino into himself, the rest of us coffee.
You knows what Omar calls us? he cackles. Dido and Anaeas. How grand he makes us sound. And how old.
Surely Gloriana is grand enough, I say.
He shrugs and blows smoke. Ah yes, darlings. The virgin queen. She has been a role model once but I seem to have departed from the script.
We had an unfortunate incident, says Mercurius.
Unfortunate? shrieks his partner. These sailor boys come up the stairs as good sailor boys does, but I knows they is trouble in storage.
Inebriated, says Mercurius.
Steaming, darlings. Pisticated. Anyways, to cuts the short stories shorter, they kicks the place to kingdom come.
Paintings over, easel broken, the lot, said Mercurius.
Pushes Dido here over too. Fat lots of good Dido heres is. Not Caravaggio, are you, darling? Where’s Caravaggio when I need him? Not seen at his lodgings a long times now.
Yes, they roughed Old Glory up something chronic, said Mercurius. Dangled the little darling over the balcony. Didn’t they, you silly ox?
&n
bsp; That’s how I gets the shiner, says Gloriana. Losing thirty-five cents, too. Hanging there, I sees the wolves in the street, their greedy eyes below me in the dark.
Problem is, says Mercurius looking at me, our street used to be well known.
Notorious, smiles Omar.
But times, they changes, says Gloriana. Supplies, demands.
Unfair competition, says Mercuius.
So our friends here are the last, says Omar to me. Of the line. To perform, shall we say, a public duty.
Too true, says Gloriana, looking round. We soothes. We consoles. We gets the steam out of the radiator and boys I tells you that steam has got to gets out of it somehow. But blimeys yes, as you well knows, there’s no problems with sailors. Sailors with problems, yes honey. But not the other ways about. I counts ships sometimes under my sleep. The Simon, the Santa Theresa…
The Matrona…
The Punta la Gaviota
Good ship the Punta, says Mercuius.
The Viver Atun Uno…
The Baltic Breaker.
Oo yes, says Gloriana. All those happy Finlandings. I had one in here, you knows, and he wouldn’t stop crying. Hanini, I says. Here’s grapes. Here’s pommies. But you knows what he wants? He wants cold. He wants dark. He wants to sleep it all days and gets up it all nights. He wants it all backs to fronts. Look, I says, here’s a pin for the pommie. Stick it theres. And theres. But it’s no uses, so he goes back early. Or late. I don’t even cares no more.
Anyway, says Mercuius. We have news. Which is the reason for bringing you up. Look.
And both he and Gloriana show off the rings they have bought one another, wiggling their fingers with the two gold bands.
The Bishop of the Blue Lagoon came last week, he continues. But an official visit, you understand.
Ceremony very good, sighs Gloriana. I cries right through it. And, you knows? We are the firsts, I think. We are the firsts to be ever on the islands and so will be even since.
9. Tiny Gods
It’s a small island and I have become used to meeting the same people and exchanging greetings. But there is one man whom I see taking coffee on the ramparts and surveying the ocean who is differently familiar. One morning I decide to act. I take my cup to the next table on the bastion and look out. The Lambusa of Limasol is entering harbour and an old ketch is leaving on an expedition for trigger fish.
Bonju, I say. A wonderful morning.
The man turns to me.
How are you these days? he smiles.
I look closely at him then.
The last time we saw each other, he says, I believe I was crying. You might think that a difficult thing to admit. But it no longer matters.
We’re alive, Mohammed.
He lifts his cup in a brief toast.
Remember that hotel room in the madman’s capital? I ask.
Yes, he replies. You and your companion laid out the money on the bed. Black dinars I wouldn’t wipe my arse with. Royal Jordanian pounds that were more like it. But no dollars, my friend. Not a George Washington to be seen. And I needed dollars. All that work I had done. All the special services.
But the government paid you, I say.
Pistachio shells. But to repeat, it doesn’t matter now.
How did you get away?
From the insanity? Surprisingly easily.
We order more coffee. The ketch has disappeared, the Cypriot cargo boat is tying up below us at two of the castiron capstans askew on the quay.
Do you know? says Mohammed. I was in a restaurant in Amman when that fool, the Information Minister, came on television and said there were no Americans. And no American tanks.
What’s that then? the journalists asked. There was a Challenger coming down El Rashid Street behind this oaf. A Challenger tank with a barrel long as a palm tree.
Oh, pardon me, gentlemen, says the Minister, I have an urgent appointment. And he disappears.
How we all laughed in that café. Or maybe I was still crying, but the coffee was very strong. Yes, that café was an excellent place. There were CIA there, braying and bragging, but I wasn’t afraid. Small fry, you see, I was never more than that. My picture wasn’t on their screens. Not one of the playing cards, not even close. A different game entirely.
How did you get here?
Mohammed smiles again and points into the dock. There are people disembarking from the Lambusa, filthy sailors, an old man, a woman with a suitcase.
Well, maybe Amman was a little fraught. So I hired a pickup and took my bags to Beirut where I have a friend. Then, when the money started to come in, I decided to travel. See the world. I have a pleasant apartment here, you will have to come over.
So money’s no problem? It used to be.
Mohammed looks hard at me. He is a man of about sixty in a linen suit, a shirt with a frayed collar.
I apologise, he says. For crying, that is. How unedifying it must have seemed.
Those were strange times.
No, my friend. Those were good times. Well, better times, despite the embargo. These are the strange times. The dangerous times. He whose name we could never speak, he whose photograph was in every room, he was maybe not so mad after all.
You miss those times?
The certainties? Yes. Being able to sit in a restaurant or walk down the street without some imbecile blowing his useless carcass up beside you? Yes I miss those times.
How do you live?
He looks at me tolerantly.
Remember the museum? I had it opened especially for you and your friend.
It was unbelievable, I say.
Before I left I paid it a visit. And then another visit.
It was marvellous, I say.
Mohammed produces his wallet and from it a plastic wrapper three inches square. From this he takes a piece of bubblewrap. Within it might be a dark coin.
It’s a stamp, he says. Or a seal. A stamp, a seal.
I look at the broken disc which he doesn’t let me touch. There are designs of antelopes upon it and men who might be hunters.
Pretty isn’t it, he smiles. And, guess what?
What?
It is six thousand years old.
He sits back, the bubblewrap on the table between us, the disc catching the sun. It waits like a tip for the waiter.
Such a pretty thing. And there is so much more, so much you wouldn’t believe it. You see, we Mesopotamians are a civilised people. Six thousand years ago we had artists and craftsmen and kings who craved such fine art. When your people were rubbing sticks together.
You looted the museum?
Of course not. I went with a friend who knows Nineveh, who understands how Babylon and Ur were built. Who knew what wouldn’t be missed and what the country could afford to lose. Oh, we were careful in that. We were scrupulous.
We both look out. A dredger called the Sapphire is coming in with its gravel and mud.
See, says Mohammed, we walked down the aisles of the museum and we were the only people there. Just like when you paid your visit. No wardens. No guardians, no professors muttering or students sketching. And no glass on the floor as there soon would be.
We came to a hall. In a cabinet was a copper mask, a bearded king’s head, and the king’s beard was cut in curls and ringlets in the copper, and the king’s eyes were hollow and there was a copper crown upon his head. But his lips were a woman’s lips, red and royal and alive. I looked at that king in the twilight and thought, yes, I could love that man. For that man is an imperial leader, maybe a cruel man, maybe a murderer of his people, a sacrificer of children, a lunatic, a psychopath. But here he is, here is the king. After five thousand years, here is the king.
And my hands were on that cabinet and I said we must take this, we must. And you know what my friend did? He touched me on the shoulder. Such a beautiful touch. It explained everything. And the passion passed. And we walked on through the museum and we left Nebuchadnezzar’s dragons and the Assyrian magicians with their square whiske
rs and we took what would not be missed. Tiny gods. It was only the tiny gods we took. The smallest gods who never really mattered. Not gold but alabaster gods. As tiny as chessmen, those gods. My gods now. And seals like this. Some tiles from Babylon. And a red cheetah that fits my hand.
Because I am silent, Mohammed thinks I am critical.
I saved them, he says. I saved them for the world. Where is the great king now? Where are the lions of Uruk or the golden bulls? Where are the chariots? Where are the tablets with the world’s first writing? Gone my friend, gone with the smugglers who lacked my scruples. Gone with the idiots who exchanged eternity for cigarettes. I sell what I took to dealers who make one hundred times, one thousand times the money I could ever do. But my tiny gods will be safe in Damascus or Los Angeles when the rest of it is dust in the street.
Yes, I say. I agree with you. And I wish I had done the same.
Another time, he says.
You mean for coffee?
No, says Mohammed. It was all another time.
10. The Prophet’s Garden
Quickly I’ve learned that this island is a bad place to fall asleep. Because it is difficult to wake. Sometimes I will sit up in bed at noon or later, bewildered by the dreams that began on the first night and still continue. But often the dreams are forgotten immediately, becoming I suppose a kind of dark dream humus in which other dreams will flourish.
One afternoon I wake still delirious. The music is playing again. It was part of my slumber but I can still hear it, the silverish music made by wires and gourds, hear it even after I rub my eyes, take a glass of sweet tea.
And the dream is clear. I am in a garden surrounded by minarets. Beyond us lies a rocky region where the wind pilfers the grass. A clockwork bird is singing, a muezzin playing prayers at a mixing desk. I see a man who bears milk to a minaret, a man carrying two pails of milk climbing the ziggurat steps. It is dusk and I am on my hands and knees searching for coriander. As it is too dark to see the herb’s constellations, those tiny flowers on their long stems, I have to rub the leaves of all the plants that grow there.
I know that if I touch its leaves the coriander’s perfume will eke into the night. In the dream the mosque’s shadow lies over the plot like a fortress fallen on this pauper’s ground. It seems the land has been given to the poor that they might grow food and not starve. So maybe that is why I feel safe there. Because I am not threatened in the dream. Confused, yes, but not terrified.
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