What Lot's Wife Saw (35 page)

It helps me to have a set routine, to help keep track of the time, otherwise the surrounding void would swallow me into some kind of limbo. I constantly need to have a clock to consult and since I lack the time to wind up all the clocks of the Palace, I ensure that one clock per floor is properly wound up. The trouble is that I forget which one is keeping time so I have to dash to the next floor to cross-check and even then the thought that I might trust a clock that I might have wound by mistake continually haunts me.

At eight-thirty sharp each morning I bring the breakfast tray to the Governor’s Pet. I knock on the door that used to be my door and enter without waiting for a reply. Bianca is always awake, huddled near the shuttered window, painstakingly sketching meandroses. She doesn’t see me, doesn’t hear me and doesn’t eat what I bring. I collect the old tray and leave. Today, for a change, I saw her lying on the floor attentively listening to the floorboards. I realised that she had felt it as well. How could she not – she belonged to this land more than any of the rest of us. She looked at me and for a moment I thought she might have seen me – recently I had begun to doubt that Bianca sees what she looks at. She murmured, “Three down,” which confirmed that she hadn’t. I shouted to her that her breakfast was on the table and left the room.

Out of habit, after leaving this room, I go in the direction of my husband’s bathroom and try the handle. I find it locked and then I remember that the person who expected lather for his morning shave is no longer alive. Bera had demanded that I prepare the lather, although we had plenty of servants for this task, because it was an integral part of my humiliating routine. He strictly specified that the foam should be whipped up by hand and that the razor be sharp enough to bisect my hair. If the blade didn’t bisect the strand dangling from his fingers, I was in deep trouble. Long-bladed razors were his fetish, a fact that might explain why he was attracted to a Liverpudlian streetwalker like myself, whose file in Scotland Yard’s archives is stained by the blood that dripped from such blades.

That daily morning routine, from room to bathroom, had imprinted itself in my memory and it was hard to break out of. Today I mechanically made my way to the bathroom door, opened it and entered. I wheeled the glass-topped table over to the hand washbasin, checking with a glance that the toothpaste tube was full and the bar of soap freshly opened. Next I whipped up the lather with hot water, beating it hard to make it fluffy. I brought out new towels and stropped the razor. I chose three shaving lotions, a hydrating cream and an antiseptic cream in case of a nick.

Throughout this procedure there was something nagging me, as if there was another item that I hadn’t prepared but I couldn’t think what it might be because every time I checked all the gear seemed arrayed properly in front of me. I raised my eyes to the mirror. The black eyes that I saw watching me through the mirror paralysed me. My neck refused to turn to face him. That’s what had escaped me, the fact that I had no business being here. He was sitting, studying me, in the armchair with the leather cushions that Bera had used when shaving himself. He obviously had been sitting there when I had barged in, but I hadn’t looked into the mirror and so I hadn’t seen him. I couldn’t think of how to explain myself. The blame lay on the unlocked door. If he hadn’t wanted to be disturbed, he should have locked it. I struggled to breathe.

“A lot of wasted space,” he said, looking around the luxurious bathroom. “It’s at least eighty square metres, and a whole wall covered in mirrors is superfluous. My predecessor had no sense of proportion and no sense of economy, either.” His glance fell onto the bowl I was holding. “Is the foam hot?”

I managed to nod.

“Then it shouldn’t go to waste.”

He indicated that I should approach him. I pushed over the trolley with the shaving gear on its glass top. I fixed it to the left of his armchair as I would have done for Bera. My lover surveyed the neatly arranged items out of the corner of his eye but he didn’t stretch out a hand to any of them.
Ha!
I thought.
Gotcha!
Bera was left-handed. If you introduce yourself as Bera, sign like Bera and pretend to be Bera, then this trolley on your left is in its proper position. Why don’t you pick up the razor? If you are waiting for me to shave you then, again, you are not Bera because Bera forbade me to remain in the bathroom while he shaved. Knowing about my past, he would mock me by saying that I was far too skilled with the blade for his tastes.

“Are you?” he asked.

It hadn’t been possible that I had thought out loud, unless I had been staring so intently at the razor that I had betrayed myself.

“Pardon?” I said hoarsely.

“Are you, I said,” he stroked his cheek, “highly skilled with the blade?”

I stepped backwards.

“Bera forbade me to shave him,” I said curtly.

“It’s plain that he never utilised the potential of the personnel of this Palace. Would you, please?”

He settled back into his chair, threw back his head and offered me his throat. I didn’t dare move an inch closer. His head was at a delicate incline to the side, he had shut his eyes and his breathing was calm and regular as if asleep. Even his closed eyelids were perfectly still without a hint of motion from the eye underneath. Never before had a body been placed so unreservedly at my disposal. To be exact, it seemed that he had departed from his body in order to let me indulge myself at my leisure.

I edged forward until I was standing over his head and could confirm that his eyes were truly shut. I bent over as close to his face as I could so that my nostrils could catch his undiluted aroma. Liverpool harbour, its most remote wharf, the last silver night, my unwrinkled hand, my unclouded mind, my unfettered conscience. The normally impenetrable wall between the present and the past had parted and then crashed together again, crushing the twenty intervening years, bringing the two disparate ports into conjunction so that I could be in both simultaneously. The sensations had lived on in my diminished and deteriorated grey cells.

My hand advanced hesitantly and gently caressed the veins of his neck; my fingertips felt the pulse, the dark red blood coursing, throbbing irresistibly with the vigour of youth. The serenity of the flow took me aback and my eyelids fluttered open. That perfect alabaster skin could never be found encasing another human being. It was so mercilessly beautiful, so devoid of emotion. No inhibition, vagueness or imperfection tainted it. Its rich lustre seemed to bear down on him like a weight that would crush anyone else, as they wouldn’t be able to tolerate the absoluteness of his beauty. It enclosed him tautly, a perfect envelope for his body; there were no blemishes where any doubt or indecision could nestle and soften his image. I gazed at him like a rag and bone man would a Renaissance masterpiece. This creature was not for me, not even close.

I dipped the brush in the bowl and made sure it wouldn’t drip so as not to awaken him. Very carefully, I spread the lather on his cheeks, struggling against allowing my eyes to succumb to the gravitational pull of the bulging veins that were tinged with the blue colour characteristic of those with wheaten-hued skins. The bas-relief network that followed the contours of his throat was like the filigree cracks across a Byzantine fresco of a youth, or like a river delta frozen in time. He was cold, precious and unapproachable. I was going to shave a statue, a reclining Praxiteles’ Hermes. I felt less like a woman and more like an art restorer.

With the fine edge of the brush I applied a thin trail of foam over his upper lip.
My boy, where is your jealousy that drove me mad in Liverpool, where is your fickleness, your cowardice, your superficiality that’s ruined my life?
I started on the second cheek, applying an even coat on both.
Why aren’t you petulant, why don’t you complain, why don’t you react, you who got angry without any reason, who cried over nothing, who loved without knowing what the word meant?
I silently put the brush down and wiped a drop of foam that was poised to trickle down his Adam’s apple.
You were blind but now you see with a thousand eyes, you stammered but now you make speeches, you hated but now you are indifferent, you were easy to kill but now …

I reverently picked up the razor. I checked whether his breathing was still regular. I knew perfectly well what I should do to stop it permanently for a truly live man but I wasn’t totally sure that this one was. Was it really blood pulsing in his blue veins? I studied his face, seeking signs of life. I got very close, my lips reached the level of his until they were almost brushing. I felt a surge of desire. I wondered whether I should dare taste them. My lips parted in preparation; how else was I to confirm that he was actually alive?

“Talk to me about your love life with my predecessor,” he said softly.

I was thrown off-balance, standing, as I was, in two ports simultaneously, one foot in the Colony and the other in Liverpool, with my mind awkwardly straddling twenty compressed years. I couldn’t understand the question, I mean, to which of my two men was he referring? Whom did he consider his predecessor? I repeated the question in my head, hoping it would be easier to cope with the second time around. Alas, it was impossible to discern whom he had nominated as his “predecessor”. Love life? The man that had loved me in Liverpool would melt inside me, whereas Bera would remember his need for me every time he found the Green Box’s instructions distasteful and he needed to let off steam.

“I didn’t notice any signs of your presence in his bedroom,” he said.

In Bera’s bedroom I used to enter and leave as a transient visitor, how could he have found evidence of my passage? I had never spent an entire night in that room. Bera didn’t trust me enough to allow me to sleep next to him. He wasn’t wrong though, who knows what ideas would have passed through my head looking at him, flat-out beside me.

“Why did you kill him?”

He had me there for a fraction of a second. My mind clouded with confusion. I tried to separate the two ports to decide which of my men was he asking about. I hadn’t killed Bera, I had killed the other one. If I had murdered Bera, I would have remembered it.

“I am accused of a murder in Liverpool,” I blurted.

But I wasn’t sure; suddenly I wasn’t sure about anything. It was the fault of this damned youthful face that insisted on introducing himself as Bera and so mixing up two separate lives that I had never confused before. Liverpool’s Judith and the Colony’s Regina are two different women, two different widows of two different men who had died in different ways.

“Did it hurt?” he inquired.

Did who hurt? Did which one of the two hurt? Unless he’s asking whether I got hurt, that maybe it hurt me. Why can’t he be more precise with his questions?

“Death didn’t bring the relief you might have hoped for,” he observed.

Which of the two deaths? Which relief was he referring to? Death never gives you relief, I wasn’t so naïve. I killed him to give
him
relief, all Liverpool knew that afterwards. He would live on and I would be extinguished! No death provides relief to the surviving party, especially since this death had been freely offered by one who thought that she had boundless reserves. How stupid I was! Since, no matter how many men I lost and no matter in which manner I lost them, their graves will always haunt me. I had never loved the old Governor enough to kill him nor did I love myself enough to revenge myself on him. I had accepted the punishment and imprisonment that he had offered me because it was the only way for me to pay the price of my imprudence. To offer my lover release from his bonds at the cost of clamping them onto my own wrists.

“You owe it to yourself,” he stated.

Yes, he was right, no woman should be condemned to two merciless unions, to twice being nailed to the cross, to twice being torn apart. I had been a victim of two men who were so dissimilar in their love and so identical in their destructiveness. No woman should be deserving of torment just because she breathes. Either as the object of love or the victim of its absence, I’m equally punished. Whether they love me or not, they bleed me; whether I desire them or loathe them, I pay them! Whether I kill them or they die by themselves, they live on! I owe it to myself! So what I do today, I do only for myself, for Judith-Regina Swarnlake-Bera, for
my
salvation!

Blinded by rage, I grabbed the razor from the trolley, aimed it at his neck, at the carotid, raised my arm and brought it down with full force. His hand, like a bolt of lightning, stopped my wrist a fraction of an inch before the blade met his skin.

“Not yet, Judith,” he whispered. “I’ll let you know where to direct this rage when the time comes.”

“Will it be long?” I queried impatiently.

“I am sure you will realise when. I know I can trust you.”

He carefully removed the razor from my hand. I stood up, totally spent. He softly said that I could go. I nodded obediently and turned for the door.

PRIEST MONTENEGRO

… I heard those infernal teeth of the stubby African gnawing at the wood of my bed and I jumped but didn’t escape my nightmare. I was being covered by an avalanche of stolen idols, which made me cry out as the mound of statuettes, figurines and coins grew and buried me. The ground beneath me was giving way and I was about to be sucked under. Ali rushed the bed and shook me out of it. The dream receded but the foreboding did not. Someone was breaking the seals of the Apocalypse.

I rushed over to the window. Banana trees, bushes and tangled undergrowth, like unsteady reflections in water, fell away from the periphery of my consciousness as I peered out into the parched darkness of the Colony. Then I saw, or thought I saw, a river of laden berlingas flowing north along the cobbled streets, like the Israelites of the Exodus escaping unrestrained from Egypt. I was sure that it was all a figment of my imagination and I was impatient to wake up from this dream, but the berlingas just continued to file past as if there was no end to them. I turned to Ali in desperation, hoping he could draw the line between illusion and reality for me.