Authors: Christopher Priest
She then recited the list of what the music was to contain. Her words went past me, irrelevant, meaningless, ridiculous. Was this really happening? I heard her say there would be a full symphonic orchestra. A minimum of four movements. At least three major instrumental soloists had to be featured. A mixed chorus of a minimum of three hundred voices. Four operatic soloists. There was to be a triumphal march at the beginning or end (my choice, of course). Serving soldiers would troop through the hall with a display of battle colours. It was to include a sequence of peasant celebration, with performers from the Glaund National Dance. Poetry was to be recited entr’acte – the words would be supplied by the current Laureate. When she said ‘cannon effects in the climax’ I almost laughed.
Was I losing my mind?
Finally, she said, ‘And in recognition of the greatness with which you will fulfil this commission, your country offers you a single royalty. Kindly step forward, Monseignior Sussken.’
To the sound of more cheering and applause I went towards her. She handed me a large, stiff envelope. Her hand never touched mine. Her eyes did not meet mine. I took the envelope from her and went back to where I had been standing.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, turning towards the crowd of dignitaries. ‘I shall now have a brief private audience with our honoured guest. Thank you for witnessing this important moment in the cultural life of our country.’
The crowd started to move away. I stood still. Not at all sure what was expected of me and in a mental state of confusion and distress I watched what was happening. I could not believe what had taken place. That woman, this place, those words!
Everyone dispersed with remarkable alacrity – presumably they had been told in advance what to do when they were asked to leave. There were two large doors on each side of the rear wall, and they exited through them. Someone came forward and removed the lectern. The armed guards stood alertly at each side until the last of these guests had moved into the next room, then they followed them.
The Generalissima moved back and away from me, until she was standing in front of the raised platform. A single large desk stood on this.
While her back was briefly turned, I slipped a finger into the flap of the envelope to see what it contained. There was a thick wad of pages held in a card binder, and a single slip of paper. I peered closely at the slip.
It was a banker’s draft made payable to my account number, and it had been signed by some kind of printing device. The amount was thirty thousand gulden.
It was a huge sum of money, conferring instant wealth. It was much more than I had ever earned in my life, to date, in total.
She stood with her hands held behind her back, squaring her shoulders. Her knees were slightly apart. What more did she want of me? The steel desk was behind her, an expanse of grey metal. It was bare of papers, books, any kind of computer equipment. A sheet of white paper lay exactly in the centre of the desktop. Other furniture stood around: I saw without paying too much attention some chairs, cabinets, smaller desks at each side, two huge windows where the rain was streaking diagonally, roofs dimly visible outside through the veil of falling rain, a grey carpet, light-grey paint on the walls, nothing unusual. Glaundian drab, but clean and recently placed there. What was going to happen to me?
On the wall behind the desk: one large photograph, five smaller ones. The smaller photos were of groups of military men and women, standing in tiers like football teams. The large photograph was of the ruling military junta: five people in army uniforms, four men and this woman, the Generalissima, at the centre. All the men were wearing dark glasses. Two national flags were mounted above the main photograph, cruciform, dark grey and deep red.
What was this private audience to be about?
I was alone with her.
Just me and this woman. It was an effort to breathe.
‘Msr Sussken, it is an honour to meet you in person. Your music is distinguished and beautiful. You are a credit to our country.’
I had no idea what to say.
‘You may relax, Msr Sussken,’ she said. ‘May I offer you a drink?’
‘I was brought here against my will,’ I said.
‘You must address me as madam.’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘You were free to go.’
I knew I had not been. If the ceremony was what it had seemed to be, why had they not issued a formal invitation? There was more to come. I said nothing, feeling my hand and lower arm starting to tremble.
She said, ‘I have a few extra matters I must raise about the agreement you have made. There is a full contract in the envelope. You must read it and abide by it. Your signature is not necessary. The prime qualities it insists on are your manner and your means. The piece of music you are being commissioned to write must be wholeheartedly patriotic. You are expected to write it from the heart. We have no wish to hear –’ and unexpectedly she pulled from her breast pocket a slip of paper, and read aloud from it ‘– we do not want irony, subversion, subtlety, cryptic statements, cross-references, allusions, knowing asides, quotations, hidden meanings. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, of course, madam,’ I said.
She put away the piece of paper, her cultural crib.
‘The other matter concerns your wife. We know your present situation of separation from each other, but you are still in fact married to her.’ (A mental image of Alynna suddenly formed: still young and delicate as she had been when we met, years ago, time lost, not gained.) ‘Your wife is to appear beside you at every function. This is non-negotiable. We do not know how you will arrange your affairs but the appearance you and she give at all your public functions must be plausible and consistent.’
The Generalissima still had not looked directly at me. She was addressing a point on the grey carpet approximately two-thirds of the distance between us.
I waited. I could not bring myself to speak to this woman.
‘Now, Msr Sussken. We know what you were planning to do today. You were intending to be at the harbourside when a troopship docked. We decided we should see you before you went to the harbour.’
I suddenly knew that my first thought had been correct. ‘So this is this about my brother?’
‘It concerns Captain Jacjer Sussken, yes. It also concerns your attempts to elicit information about him from officials. It concerns your unauthorized use of library archive equipment. We have information that you have taken a particular interest in a non-aligned territory called Dianme.’
An army captain? Jacj had become a captain? My harmless, lovely island, Dianme?
The Generalissima was dizzying me with hints at what they might know about me. And what they were suspicious about. And what measures they would take.
‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ I said.
‘Msr Sussken – this country is in a state of emergency. Address me as madam.’
‘Yes, of course, madam,’ I said, remembering how deeply I loathed her.
Only the week before this woman had authorized the execution of two dozen people the junta called subversives. She, Madam Generalissima Flauuran, had issued the orders. Although she would have been too young to have led the original military coup, she had emerged in recent years as the leader of the junta, a dominant and extreme personality, legendary for her ruthless control over the other generals, and her ways of ridding herself of them when they under-performed or had outlived their usefulness to her. All laws and directives were commanded from this building, or another like it somewhere else in the city. There was no civilian police force – only an armed militia, trained and regulated by the National Affairs department, answerable to the ruling military junta, answerable to this woman. Many of her enemies were in barracks or forts or hidden camps, imprisoned for life. I had nothing I wanted to say to this woman, the Generalissima, I wanted nothing to do with her.
I suddenly knew that with this enforced interview with Flauuran my life in Glaund was coming to an end. I was known, marked, identified and tagged. I was in danger. Anonymity, insignificance, were no longer mine.
Kill her!
The thought came from an impulse, a shock.
Kill her now!
Never mind how, you are alone with her, there’s no one watching, knock her down, stamp on her, kill her. Kick her in the gut, kick her face in, kick her to death. Make it swift before they stop you. Afterwards, they would … but that’s later, worry about that later. Kill her now!
Grab the chance!
I reeled inwardly, appalled by what had coursed through my mind. I exhaled breath – I had been holding it in. Never before, never ever, had I felt the urge to kill someone. I honoured life, I treasured life. No enemy was ever so loathsome that I would kill.
‘Your brother joined the 289th Battalion, we believe.’
But how would I do it? I mean, how do you actually kill someone? What is needed? I had never even struck anyone in my life. How would I kill this woman, how would I in fact do it? A fantasy of violent physical attack: a sudden assault, pushing her to the ground, holding her throat, kicking her.
Me? I couldn’t do it. Not just
wouldn’t
do it, I could not. I had no idea how. I would fumble, mess it up, fail even to hurt her, I would damage myself instead.
I tried to expel the fantasy of practical action. Greater than that was the abhorrence. But the fantasy lingered in me, like the rise of nausea.
‘Msr Sussken. Your brother?’
‘The 289th,’ I managed to say. ‘Yes, madam.’
‘You look unwell.’ A statement without concern.
I had no idea how I looked – internally I was in a kind of panic. I felt hot, shaky, on the point of falling over.
‘May I have some water?’ I said.
And with those words, it seemed on their instant, a door opened at the end of the room, behind the Generalissima. A man in civilian clothes walked in with a tray. It bore a carafe of water and a glass tumbler. He put down a cork mat on the surface of the desk, then placed the water and the glass on top. He paused for a moment to arrange them symmetrically opposite each other on the mat.
I had to step past the Generalissima to pour the water. The man was leaving with the tray, after a curt but civil bow to the woman. How did they know I was going to ask for water? As I picked up the carafe I looked up at the walls, the ceiling. I had not noticed them before, but tiny cameras were embedded above the photographs. Another was between the crossed flags. Two more were high in the walls, close against the ceiling.
The water was cold, refreshing. I did not drink much of it – I felt better as soon as I had swallowed the first mouthful.
‘Thank you,’ I said to the woman I was fantasizing about, kicks to the head, a stranglehold on her throat, death.
‘Do you have any questions, Msr Sussken?’
I was facing her again. I left the carafe and the glass untidily on their mat.
‘I am interested only in finding my brother,’ I said, and I could hear my voice was revealingly pitched higher than normal. Already my throat and lips felt dry again. ‘Is Jacj still alive, madam? Is he unhurt?’
‘That is the case.’
‘Then where is he?’
She said nothing.
It was so long since I had had any contact at all with Jacj – it was impossible to count the years because of what had happened to me. So much had changed since he was drafted, the family in which we grew up was destroyed. I had aged, he had aged. I could not imagine what so many years of army life would have done to his personality. All I felt by this time was his absence. I had known him only as my elder brother, a sensitive young man, a teenager. He was musically skilled if not prodigious, but a good violinist, a sometimes emotional musical performer, a passionate advocate for justice. He was a lover of books and film, never physically fit nor even competent at active things. Like mine, his childhood had been blighted by the air raids on our towns – he had been affected by them more than me because he suffered them longer.
I had never forgotten his apprehension and concern when against all our expectations he accepted the draft order and reported for training. My parents had pleaded with him to abscond. But Jacj had spoken instead about a perverse sense of duty, of having to serve, that to infiltrate these people was a way of informing himself and strengthening his resolve. He said he wanted to be within, inside their system.
It made no sense to me, but he tried to reassure me. He showed me the promises that were spelled out in the draft order. The enlistment would be short in duration, the military duties were arranged to minimize danger to the recruits, the major part of the fighting would be conducted by regular troops, there would be an honourable discharge at the end. Against everything that he had said and argued in the months before he was drafted, Jacj believed these promises.
The same promises now looked like glib lies. The short enlistment was obviously the first of all that followed – what about the other false promises, the ones less obvious?
I could not help glancing past the woman towards the discreetly mounted cameras. Every move I made was being observed, and no doubt every word was being recorded. I knew what would happen if I made any aggressive move towards the Generalissima.
I could hear no sounds from other rooms but the icy rain continued to rattle in hard flurries against the windows. I saw the slate-grey sky, the pall of dark clouds moving quickly from the direction of the sea.
Her hands were no longer behind her back. Now she was letting her arms hang straight at her sides. She still had not looked directly at me. She silenced me with her inscrutable cold manner. I could sense we were coming to the end of this interview. I noticed that a small red light, embedded somehow in her desk surface, had come on.
How would this meeting end? Was I still under arrest and to be kept in custody? Punished? Forced to join the army? Shot as a traitor? Anything seemed possible, because the régime she led was capable of anything. I had started trembling again, terrified of the unknown, but wishing once more I had the courage to make an attempt on her. That’s what it was: a lack of guts. My lack. She rendered me useless. I had never before met anyone like her. The physical steadiness, the lack of gestures or eye contact, the deadly calm. The mountain country accent, modified by a military inflection. I still hated her, hated her more than before I met her. I had had no idea what she was like. I had not known that were I to meet her she would terrify me.