What Lot's Wife Saw (31 page)

He fervently flicked the pages and stabbed his target with a finger.

“Exodus, chapter 3, verse 13: ‘And Moses said unto God, “Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, ‘the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you’; and they shall say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say unto them?” And God said to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM.”’ Ha! Do you call that an answer, you with the condescending smile who insists on hiding behind the clouds of salt? ‘I AM THAT I AM’ … It’s probably the fault of the Overflow that our religious queries have turned in this direction. The agonising question that plagued previous generations of: ‘Is there a God or not?’ is now considered a bit naïve and passé in face of the thorny: ‘Who is He?’”

He brought his fists down with force on the pulpit railing. “I’m in the very core of the most meaningful thought! And what do I find? That this path of divine dialectic leads nowhere!”

Depleted of inspiration and exhausted of strength, his hands cupped the railing and he cast his eyes down onto his stunned flock, like a ship’s passenger studying the crests of waves marching towards him. “A sea with no buoyancy,” he murmured. He swung himself onto the railing and then stood up precariously on the narrow wood. “Am I doing this right, Bateau?” he shouted, and ceremoniously spread out his hands like a martyr on a cross and bent his knees in preparation for the dive.

“The deranged fool!” shouted Captain Drake next to me. “I wouldn’t put it past him …”

Thankfully, the Captain wasted no time in processing his thoughts since the rest of us had turned into immobile effigies of ourselves. He rushed forward to the pulpit and grabbing the Priest by the collar, plucked him out of the air since he’d already launched himself. He didn’t let Montenegro’s feet touch the ground and bundled him straight out of a side entrance.

The moment they disappeared, the congregation exploded like the roar of an avalanche. In an instant, the shocked, silent temple was flooded with words, expletives and gestures, as if the crowd’s plug had been connected to a socket. Suddenly, there was a surge of humanity heading out through the doors, hot on the trail of the demented Priest, but the Captain and his prisoner had vanished. The deacons hurriedly laid the tables in the courtyard, bringing out half-squeezed lemonade and dumping the sweets any old how as they had been taken by surprise by the abrupt conclusion of the service.

The normally casual, pleasant strolling of the medal bearers in the churchyard seemed instead to be a horrifying prospect today. Our Purple Stars felt like they were burning holes into our chests. We avoided anyone who tried to get too close, pretending that we couldn’t hear their questions, couldn’t see their harshly critical eyes and failed to notice the accusing fingers pointed in our direction. We could hear our names pronounced behind our backs – the names we use in the Colony, I mean – and never had the “Bateau” that I’d adopted in a moment of desperation seemed so alien, so ridiculous and so far-fetched. This angry crowd couldn’t possibly be addressing me. I didn’t have anything to say to them.

We scattered. The others preferred to return to the haven of their bedrooms, but I hesitated since I didn’t have the stomach to face Eliza, whose ears had probably already received various accounts of our exploits in the Metropolis. News moves at frightening speed in the Colony. I glanced at my watch. I had another three hours to wait before the Governor’s lunch and I couldn’t afford to be seen in Hesperides. I chose to head towards the port where I could rely on the daily commotion to provide me with a desperately needed smokescreen.

I burrowed among some coils of rope at the end of the shadiest pier and sat with my elbows on my knees. I pondered the depths of wretchedness that I’d so easily reached. It seemed hardly possible that I could be afraid of going home and had to hide out in the maze of the port. The sound of the door of the Returnees’ Stores being unlocked jolted me out of my introspection. Someone was leaving the Colony and so his old clothes were being returned to him.

Old Alessandro’s green cabin nestled against the warehouse with the sign reading “Returnees’ Stores”, which is simultaneously our hope and our nightmare. Somewhere stashed in the depths of that dark storehouse were the flannel trousers and the striped shirt that I’d worn when I first arrived in the Colony, unless time has reduced them to a pile of dust.

My mind followed that well-worn path it always took when thinking about a return to the outside world, but for the first time the prospect of facing up to the list of transgressions I’d committed in my previous existence no longer seemed so frightening. Perhaps there’d been a relaxing of the laws in the intervening twenty years and that I’d now get away with a sentence of a few months at most. Twenty years is a very long time, and some of my crimes will have exceeded their statutes of limitations. And hell, what was I guilty of anyway? I’d posed as a lawyer without the proper qualifications since I’d had to make a living. Had any of those that sued me ever stopped to wonder what it was like to suddenly find themselves without a past, nationless? To be able to become anything because you are nothing! Why should I be rotting away down here, what could be worse for me if I returned to civilisation, what could be worse than what I was going through now?

Old Alessandro, “Guardian of Lake Acherousia,” which lies between the living world and Hades, came out with a pencil tucked behind his ear, shouting to the colonist within to hurry up and get dressed because the ship was beginning to untie its moorings. He washed his hands under the tap – this was an important ritual since he’d have already examined every inch, crevice and opening of the colonist’s body.

Everyone who leaves the Colony is subjected to a thorough body search to make sure that they aren’t smuggling any salt out. Old Alessandro always suspects that any colonist that abandons the Colony would never leave empty-handed unless thwarted by his personal ministrations. He even listens to their digestive system with a stethoscope in case they’d swallowed a bagful. And to think that here we scrape the stuff off our bodies, scoop tons of it off the streets, while in the civilised world they weigh it grain by grain and its value rivals that of gold. You can imagine how these thoughts undermine our mental health. We live in a diamond mine, we vomit diamonds, we curse them as we sweep them off our yards but we can never sell them.

Old Alessandro is the first person that you meet when you first arrive in the Colony and the last you see on your way out because anyone that leaves becomes non-existent and no one comes to the port to see them off. From the moment your exit licence comes through, you’re a forgotten entity even though you might still be here physically. The colonist who leaves is a colonist who was never here in the first place. What I’m trying to say is that, somehow, we take the departure as an insult.

A man came out of the door of the Returnees’ Store, still struggling to button up his shirt. His right arm was missing. I recognised the cylinder operator Roman Montano, whom I’d condemned the previous day. His arm had been mangled by the jaws of the cylinder he’d been operating. Had he resigned or had he been fired? He couldn’t have been fired since the Consortium hates paying the compensation – I have secret instructions on this matter. The cripples are transferred to the warehouses, or to building maintenance and janitor duties, where they are purposefully needled and irritated so that they’ll give up in disgust and quit. Cripples cost more than the value of what they can produce. That Roman Montano had decided so quickly after the trial to abandon the Colony meant that I’d done my work very well.

Roman Montano shouted to the ship to wait for him, while desperately trying to keep his trousers up. It was evident that his dimensions had been substantially different when he’d first arrived here. He passed in front of me, our eyes met and his gaze surveyed my face. He raised his hand – to wave farewell? – but his trousers plunged groundwards and since he’d no other limb available, he preferred to tend to his garment. He clumsily gathered it up and hobbled up the gangway.

Nauseous, I bent down between my knees and threw up.

I mechanically wiped myself with my handkerchief. It was nearly two and I had to go to the Palace. I ventured back onto the streets and registered each time that heads swivelled in my direction. I heard the occasional greeting but mostly furtive whispering as I advanced. I felt nothing at all; a sweet numbness permeated my body and even if the port had blown up behind me, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.

I reached the Palace gates and hung around, waiting for two o’clock with impressive exactitude, as if the only important thing in this life was to be punctual for the Governor’s meal. When the time was ripe, I traversed the garden. Some garden! No plants, no gnomes, only headless statues. The heads had rolled in honour of an extravagant dance by Regina, back when she still danced and there were heads to roll.

The garden and the steps were covered by the sand of the previous day’s storm. Evidence of the complete lack of domestic staff was obvious. The whole Colony had been swept clean apart from the Palace, which now looked like a sandbank surrounded by the sparkling tributaries of mopped streets. This building was becoming conspicuously lifeless.

I met the Doctor and Secretary in the antechamber. Nervous blank stares, moist eyelids and silence. I sat between them. Almost at once a grim Captain showed up, still dragging Montenegro by the scruff of his neck.

“Fancy meeting you here,” joked the Priest, rolling his eyes as he hung like a puppy from the Captain’s grip. “Oh, we have to stop meeting like this.”

“Shut up or l’ll batter you. I’ve put up with too much from you today,” growled Drake as he dumped the Priest into the nearest chair.

Montenegro stayed in the slumped position he’d landed in. No one spoke, no one looked and perhaps no one had any feeling. We all waited in absolute silence for the Governor to summon us to the dining room.

CAPTAIN DRAKE

… We all stared at our full plates and wondered what to do with them. Dr Fabrizio pulled himself together, wiped his tears and continued, “You understand, sir, what a difficult situation we face now. The silent Palace is raising questions among the colonists, which are quite justified, in my opinion. I cannot face my colleagues in the Infirmary, I daren’t venture into the streets. I’ve no answer to those who ask why the Palace shutters don’t open, why the servants have been fired, the garden is unswept and the Governor has vanished off the face of the earth.”

The pirate filled his glass with wine and with the tip of his knife tapped the medal on the Doctor’s chest.

“You mean to say that you’re incapable of living up to the responsibilities of your position, Dr Fabrizio? Unless you believe that the sole purpose of that star that you have the honour of displaying on your lapel is to reserve a box seat at the Opera.”

Fabrizio’s mouth opened once or twice but no sound came from it. Judge Bateau cleared his throat and said politely that the medal bearers had never been expected to do more than the itemised duties described in their employment contracts. The pirate boned the fish on Bianca’s plate while fixing the Judge from the corner of his eye.

“What I expected from an intelligent fraud like yourself, Bateau, is to have suspected that it isn’t possible that we provide you with a villa, domestic staff and quintuple the salary of other judges, only to leaf through regulations and play with the bell on the bench. You’re forcing me to suppose that you’ve never wondered why we chose you particularly to preside as High Court Judge when you lack a legal degree.”

“I thought,” stammered Bateau in surprise, “that I’d been awarded that honour because the departed Bera had recognised my conscientiousness …”

“Your what?” the pirate laughed malevolently. “Bateau, you amuse me.”

Montenegro returned at that point to the dining table and sat next to me. I felt his hand on my knee. Two taps.
No
. I stroked my moustache nervously. The Priest had been the third to dash up to the terrace to search the port in case that accursed Black Ship should put in an appearance again. Our last hope had been to see whether it appeared only at that particular time of day and was only visible from the Palace terrace, in which case it might’ve been a product of a combination of optical tricks due to the sun’s position and illusions brought on by salt fumes. Alas, apart from that once, no one else had seen it. I had to reluctantly accept that I must simply have imagined it. What hell-spawned mass delusion could this have been, seen, identically and simultaneously, by all six of us?

Beside me Bateau was trying to explain our situation to the pirate. He’d forbidden us to tell the truth and then had locked himself away in the Palace before sending us out, thus emasculated, to deal with everyone’s questions. All we could do was stammer excuses and platitudes and be disbelieved.

The pirate slowly folded his napkin.

“Gentlemen, let’s not waste more of my valuable time on this subject. The Consortium is paying you very generous wages, it has provided you with luxurious villas and pandered to your vices. It favours you and protects you and all it asks in return is that you use your most singular talents, your capacity to deceive and to defraud! Transitional periods are the most critical for every administration, and we’re in the midst of one now. Delicate handling is called for because fundamental changes are in the works. You’re not called on to worry yourselves about them, you basically don’t have anything to do but your endlessly repeated routine; in fact you don’t even need to use your brains. How much simpler could I make your duties? So don’t ever bother me again with ridiculous excuses, which insult my intelligence and underline your laziness rather than expose your incompetence. Prove to me that the Consortium wasn’t mistaken when it chose you for such positions of responsibility. Tomorrow, at two, I expect you all here for lunch.”

He waited for Bianca to get up out of her chair before standing up himself, and then the others followed suit.