What Lot's Wife Saw (34 page)

The guards watched them, smacking their parched lips. They asked me if they’d be allowed to do the same. I forbade them to drink their urine. Batourim maintained that urine purifies when filtered several times through linen and sand. I hit him to shut him up. He looked at me with hate.

“We’ll die, Captain, the desert will desiccate us. The cyclists are wise, we’re the fools.”

I stood up and kicked him so that he collapsed, moaning. I menacingly asked if there was anyone else wanting to drink his own urine. I’d already been humiliated enough, I wasn’t about to allow any of my guards to ape the cyclists’ antics.

Batourim dragged himself up and screamed at me, “It was really stupid to put all our water in one berlinga; you should’ve split the quantity among many since an accident was bound to happen. You think you know it all but you know nothing.”

Enraged, I charged at him and hit him with such fury that he lost consciousness. I spat out the bilious foam that clogged my mouth. This explains why there’d been no loading plan – the bastard! – he’d done it on purpose, he’d wanted me to make an utter fool of myself! How the hell was I to think how the water should be distributed in no time flat? What an idiot I was! How did I manage to slip on every banana skin that that depraved youth laid in my path? Which guard would put his trust in me after this fiasco?

The foam clogged my mouth and throat again as if I had rabies. I cursed everyone onto their feet to restart. I ordered the unconscious Batourim to be loaded on the lightened water berlinga and started to whip the others with the butt of my pistol to drive them up to speed. I heard feverish muttering of discontent behind my back and turned. “You three, take off your boots and socks.” I forced them to walk barefoot and the scorching desert seared their soles. They danced like dervishes and their cries drove back the desert’s silence. Their example put the wind up the others, who put their backs into carrying the planks and their legs into keeping up the pace. It didn’t take long before the three dervishes fainted and joined Batourim on the water berlinga. I calculated that I could sacrifice at least six to warn or inspire the others. I wasn’t worried about injuries they’d recover from, I just hoped that we’d get back alive. The greatest danger our caravan faced was to give up, to lose heart due to the hopelessness of our expedition and, sapped of strength and beaten by thirst, to collapse in a listless heap on the sand. I kept them in a feral state so that they’d rely on instinct, and keep thinking to a minimum.

Four torturous hours later, we finally drew near the place marked on the map. I’d calculated that it must lie just behind the next sand dune. I sent a scouting party out to make sure that we weren’t walking into a Mameluke ambush. Meanwhile, I clambered onto a berlinga and scanned the surrounding desert with field glasses. The desert was strangely quiescent, we hadn’t caught sight of a single Mameluke’s robe. The size of our caravan was too large not to have attracted some attention. It made me think that the Consortium had taken the precaution of clearing them away before sending their salt in this direction. It wasn’t long before the scouting party returned, their officer looking totally bemused.

“Captain Drake, you won’t believe me, but behind yonder sand dune, it’s snowing!”

I stared at him in astonishment, still sweating profusely. I figured that the heat, or the thirst, must have released the last tethers of his mind. I climbed down off the berlinga and tied myself to his rope and ordered him to lead me to this mirage. I gave instructions that we were to be followed by another four, equipped with binoculars and loaded pistols.

We carefully climbed up our side of the dune and reached the top. We raised our heads over the ridge and halfway down the other side there was a circular flat surface like a plateau. That seemed to be the exact spot where we were supposed to offload the salt. Unbelievably, our eyes attested to the fact that there was a thick, white layer of fresh snow covering the plateau. I looked up at the relentless sun, which was baking us to above fifty degrees, and couldn’t imagine how that could co-exist with the snow.

I chose two men to go down with me and check the frozen surface. We adjusted our ropes accordingly and started down the slope. The guard next to me sped ahead, desperate to put some ice in his mouth and was about to take his first step on the ice when I warned him to tread very carefully since we didn’t know whether it was firm enough to support him. He extended a tentative leg and gently placed his boot on the white surface. We all heard the crunch that fresh snow makes when compressed, so he brought his other foot forward and declared that the surface was firm. Driven by thirst, he bent over, scooped up a handful and put it to his mouth. His eyes bulged as he spat it out.

“It’s salt. White salt.”

White salt – we’d forgotten that salt was white. If violet salt was exposed long enough to the atmosphere, it turned into white, common salt, unless it had been treated. Obviously the plateau had somehow trapped the fumes from nearby craters and the salt had precipitated and formed the thick layer. The guards were massively disappointed but, I must admit, I was relieved that I hadn’t come across yet another thing that defied logic. I broke off a piece and crumbled it in my hand. Some things that seem totally incomprehensible from a distance can become obvious from up close, as long as you have the courage to approach them. I felt that this thought could characterise most of my experiences of the past few days, but my mind was too tired to think straight. I ordered the unloading to begin.

We fixed the pulleys to the crest of the dune and lowered the bags carefully. We stacked them up in medium-sized piles so that they wouldn’t cause the ground to give way. The directives ordained that the bags should be placed in a certain shape – a “B” shape. Perhaps they’d approach from the air and needed to see the shape from a distance – not that it was possible for aeroplanes to fly in this magnetic cloud, but what else could I imagine? I drew out the shape on the ground and we placed the bags as directed.

After some time, we’d finished. The guards sat on the bags and their eyes asked the question: Now what? Do we just wait around? I’d no idea what we should do or what to wait for, or even whether we should be waiting at all. On the other hand, how could we just up and leave the salt to its fate? I climbed to the top of the sand dune and scanned the desert with the glasses but could see no sign of any kind of life approaching. I came down in a quandary. A quarter of an hour passed. I paced around, checked the horizon with the glasses, not a soul. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the company of sunburned, bedraggled guards, plastered with sand, thirsty, looking at me with mounting desperation. I read the instructions again. Nowhere did they mention that I was to guard the bags until the next lot showed up, I was only to bring and dump them here. Okay, I’d done that. There in the middle of nowhere I’d stacked them in a “B” shape. If there was anything else, it should have been written in the directives. I tore up the papers and called out for us to start back.

The announcement was met with exclamations of relief. Finally logic had prevailed. The guards’ backs were broken and their hands injured by the planks, but everyone felt that it’d be downhill on the way back, partly because we knew where we were going, why we were going there and why it was imperative that we get there. The berlingas were empty and light, they moved easily and could carry anyone who passed out. The sun grew softer as the afternoon wore on and our hopes were raised. We’d begun to believe that we’d make it back to the Colony alive. Throughout the whole way back, I didn’t think once about the Suez Mamelukes, who were only conspicuous by their absence. It wasn’t the fact that they hadn’t appeared that was remarkable, but the fact that I hadn’t thought of them at all.

Several men burst into tears when the scout first returned at a run, shouting at the top of his lungs that he’d seen the Colony. The exhausted guards could no longer keep pace with the cyclists pedalling their lighter vehicles and so the berlingas kept getting bogged down in the sand. Spokes snapped and tyres melted; with hope had come a release of tension that probably made that last kilometre to safety the most difficult. Dehydrated, bloody, half-dead, but finally certain to live, what we’d kept in reserve had been spent in that instant of jubilation. It was as if that glimpse of the Colony had been enough for us and we didn’t have to physically reach it. Our mission had been accomplished. Our legs no longer obeyed, it seemed as though we were moving further away with each step we took. We even had to make a conscious effort to draw each breath. Thank Allah that the guards at the outpost spotted us with their binoculars and they ran out to help. Our pride, our egos had totally evaporated. All we wanted was to lie spread-eagled on the sand and have these fresh guards, with their clear faces, pressed uniforms and polished boots, lean over us attentively so we could surrender to their confident care, nothing else.

Independently of my will and defying reason, I called out in a broken voice for all the men in the caravan to make one last effort to reach the borders. If my body actually moved, it wasn’t in response to my brain, which had lost the ability to communicate with my muscles, but through a mysterious will of its own. My brain registered in wonder that the outpost was getting nearer and nearer to me, without registering that my limbs were moving. It was only when I got near enough to touch the wall with my raised arm that I became convinced that we had returned. The cyclists cheered in relief, finally back on terra firma and glorious Colony cobblestones.

Behind the outposts, I could see a fleet of ambulance berlingas and the shape of Dr Fabrizio. He saw me and rushed over, placing his shoulder under my arm to prop me up. I didn’t have the strength to ask him how he’d got here. I leaned against him and slumped. Out of the depths of my daze, I heard him say, “He sent us to wait for you. I’ve prepared camp beds in the Infirmary. Damn you, Drake, you’re enormous, how can you expect me to hold you up?”

LADY REGINA BERA

… The salt is escaping through the desert!

I wonder whether the previous inhabitants of the Dead Sea had felt the Evil approaching before the Overflow wiped them out – had they felt that hollowness in the pit of their stomachs that we felt? What about those Sodomites and Gommorians of the Biblical Dead Sea, before having the punishment of Yahweh unleashed upon them, could they not see a warning hovering like a cloud over their homes? We could, so clearly, that the strength of the signal was terrifying in itself. Unless, perhaps, we had developed a heightened sensitivity because we had already felt the lash of punishment; and you learn to respect premonitions rather than to let yourself be taken by surprise twice.

The salt was escaping through the desert. I might have been shut in the Palace, but I could feel it departing like something being drawn out of my own body since, in this part of the globe’s crust, our bodies had become the earth’s loudspeakers. There are no animals or plants to get between us and the deep subterranean rumbling; there is no civilisation to distort or occlude the messages; the connection is immediate and crisp. The flow of the crystals had changed direction and was now going up the waterfall instead of down. Not through the port, but via the desert. The desert gates are not considered exits but an entranceway for lepers, thieves and ghosts. Anyone who has lived in the Colony has learnt to respect the desert. It is straightforward, absolute and it always turns the same face to you. The desert never fools you nor does it tolerate those that try to fool with it.

I got up and walked to the window, at least I thought I had, but the window in my maid’s room is not in the same spot it is in my old room, so I actually fetched up against the wall. I put my fingers on the hard surface and felt the foreboding surge up them like electricity. A sense I must have shared with all inhabitants of the Colony. It must have been four in the morning, but no one was sleeping because fifty berlingas laden with salt were heading north along the cobbled streets. No one could sleep untroubled and secure from now on.

It is obvious I am not a brave woman. If I had been I wouldn’t have been in this situation now. But given the circumstances, I did what many a brave woman wouldn’t have had the guts to do. I dared and succeeded. I returned to my bed, shut my eyes and fell asleep.

I knew that I would wake up in a different Colony, which was why, when I got up, I peered through the slats of my shutters at a scene that didn’t surprise me. The people were in a state of shock – some stood still, hands tucked under their armpits, while others wandered about, babbling to themselves. Where was the salt going? That only one single route existed for the salt to leave the Colony was an axiom on a par with the earth being round and circling the sun. The idea of an alternate route was conceptually unacceptable, like having an orifice at the back of your head as an alternative mouth. If the Seventy-Five risk the emergency despatch of the salt through the desert to save it, what else could that mean, if not that the days of the rest of us are numbered?

I carefully left my erstwhile maid’s room, checked the corridor and headed for the kitchens, hoping that I had turned in the right direction. Now that the building had been emptied of personnel, its size seemed to have doubled, or tripled, because I get lost so easily. I forget which floor I’m on, I mix up corridors, I am surprised by unexpected doors and my feet lose count of the steps if the light is dim. It must be that for all these years I have gauged the dimensions of my surroundings only with the aid of the perpetually moving bodies that filled the Palace with their presence and the sounds that they produced: the white caps of the servants, the sly looks of the stewards, the tuneless whistling of the cooks and the scraping of gardeners at work. Now it is as if I am wandering about in an abandoned flagship, stranded for centuries on a deserted sandbank, targeted by soaring seagulls. I am disoriented by the unbroken silence. I climb onto the deck, explore the gloom of the holds, pace around the once proud bridge but the only external sound that reaches my ears is the wind whistling through the sail-less masts. Below deck, there are plenty of stores – food, clothes, stationery – but no people.