What Lot's Wife Saw (50 page)

He fingered the shoulder of his jacket, bringing the sketch of the meandros back into his mind. The name of the Black Ship that went
“diagonally”
across the bay was IEREMOI, seven letters but there must have been two missing, as it fetched up in the
ninth
cove, as Secretary Siccouane kept reminding us. And the two letters could be found on the sand plateau in the desert where Captain Drake cleverly introduced them in his monologue. When Book added the “L” and “B” to the ship’s name he arrived at LIBERE MOI, which in the tongue of his sunken homeland means FREE ME. That comprised the seventh missing epistle, the epistle that Bianca Bateau would send him and would make sure that he would pay it the proper attention when she turned the tables and instructed
him
on the Epistleword rules. At least as they applied to her variant:
“If you failed to find the key reversal, you would never find what you are looking for.”
Book reversed the first of the two words of the ship’s name, changing “Black” to “White” and read it in French, Blanche Bateau, Bianca Bateau. Black Ship in blue waters.
“I have not yet come across a spirit so brave that fails to shed tears when black and blue combine.”
Bianca had not only become an expert in the techniques of meandroses, after solving countless puzzles over the years, but she’d understood its essence and ramifications. She was probably as conversant with them as their inventor was.

The mere fact that her six mentors had taken deliberate pains to portray her as naïve, timid to the point of despair, harmless and confused, had been enough to put Book on his guard. She had been the instigator and cutting edge of their planning and the others would be reminded of her role every time they saw their eyes reflected in hers. The “Black Ship” that they were raising was rotting in the violet bay, forcing them to recognise their prison in which they were simultaneously guards and inmates. They’d gladly sacrifice their lives in exchange for Bianca’s freedom but they realised that that wouldn’t be enough.
“If only it were that simple,”
observed Siccouane on the deck of the Black Ship. Bianca’s freedom had to be achieved necessarily through their freedom as well. A true meandros.

Book’s mind revelled in imagining Secretary Siccouane, alias Forger Le Rhône, distributing the directives of the invisible Governor, each bearing Bera’s perfectly forged signature, while Captain Drake, alias Thief Bercant, stole fully one-third of the daily production of salt right under the noses of the Consortium and sold it at exorbitant prices on the black market to the Suez Mamelukes, with whom he must have developed a working relationship over the twenty years of his patrolling the desert. Perhaps he had been accompanied by Smuggler Danilovitz, alias Priest Montenegro, on some of the nights when he was supposed to have been spending time with the cyclists. On other nights perhaps his purpose there was to study their capacity to ascertain whether large quantities of salt could be transported through the desert by berlinga. Regina Bera was responsible for keeping the seat of operations clear and also for destabilising the colonists. Dr Fabrizio provided medical assistance to those who participated in the caravans and Judge Bateau ensured that there wouldn’t be any legal repercussions from the blatant flaunting of regulations. The desert was traversed, the taboos were broken and with the Governor dangerously absent and obviously ineffectual, the Colony filled with seditious rumors and was moved to rebel.

The seven conspirators not only fleeced the Consortium, they humiliated it. The Seventy-Five were out-manoeuvered by their creations, who brilliantly used every technique that they’d learned against their teachers. They had managed to capture the essence of exploitation as an administrative tool and had turned it against their employers, concealing it under layers of fabrication and misinformation and had left the baffled Consortium facing an impasse. They couldn’t accuse the seven of murdering a phantom, there was no victim to be found, nor could they charge them with theft and fraud since that would mean that they would have to admit their howling failure. The Seventy-Five had more pressing reasons than even the perpetrators to keep the crimes firmly under wraps, assuming, of course, that they could figure out what had happened in the first place.

There’s one drawback that is a corollary of a perfect crime: there can be no recipient of its message. However, such an honourable crime at the expense of the Seventy-Five needs at least one witness to vindicate it and to testify that it was committed. It needs a Lot’s wife who’ll turn her head at just the right moment to verify that Sodom had indeed been destroyed, without flinching at the prospect of being turned into a pillar of salt. Phileas Book was chosen to fulfil this particular role.

Book had swayed under the weight of the honour bestowed on him and of the trust and confidence of the seven strangers. A switched date in Regina’s letter had immediately aroused the suspicions of the Consortium as the Epistleword that Regina had claimed to be of the last Sunday in July had, in fact, been published on the 11th of February. A rather clumsy mistake, and so the Seventy-Five sought out the unsuspecting Book and dragged him to their lair for questioning. They gave him the letters to read and scrutinised his every reaction. That was exactly what the seven conspirators had hoped for. But this meant that a meandros would become the playing field, and Book was unbeatable on a meandros. From the moment that the quest became entwined with the labyrinthine structure of the meandros, the conceiver and creator of Epistlewords was playing virtually without opponent. He’d played the game coached by the seven, and, following a scare or two, had emerged from the building with his only preoccupation being how to spend the fat pension the Consortium had generously endowed him with for invaluable services rendered.

It was a great shame that he’d never get to meet them, as he so wished that he could explain to Priest Montenegro that he hadn’t needed all those allegories about sabre-toothed tigers, Australopithecines and dinosaurs that he’d written to get the message across to Book.
“Is this the dawn of a new era in which the laws of the previous era do not apply and the balance of power between the protagonists has altered?”
Book had worried that Montenegro might have overdone it and was in danger of becoming exposed, so he took pains to strip him of trustworthiness in the eyes of the bald man. Alarmed, he’d discarded the dangerous pages to protect him, because the reckless Priest had reached the point of spitting at the Seventy-Five, right in their faces.
“Was it the triumphant smile of the sabre-tooth that had emerged victorious from the isolated contest with the all-powerful Seventy-Five or the frozen smile of the first mighty dinosaur to die when their nemesis was unleashed on earth, and which heralded their complete extinction?”
A smile frozen on the wicked lips of that first dead dinosaur that foretold the complete extinction of their kind.
Would that it were
, thought Book as he cast his eyes towards the standards of the Consortium proudly catching the wind at the four corners of their headquarters. He doubted whether there was any citizen of the submerged lands that now comprise the extension of the bed of the Mediterranean who hadn’t dreamt of the day those flags would be lowered, never to fly again.

All of his worries now seemed superfluous, as the Seventy-Five had been totally blinded by their arrogance, just as the seven conspirators had foreseen. They’d read the letters without understanding what had been written. On the contrary, the breath had been knocked out of Book when he realised what he was reading, and under the spotlights of the Consortium at that. Almost the entire contents were allegorical. The letters didn’t describe facts as much as exhaustive and honest internal soul-searching. Leafing through the pages looking vainly for real events, he found instead the stories of six damned humans seeking their purification, who gave the details of their nightmares before they dispelled them and described each bar of their prison before sawing through them. They admitted their mistakes and overcame their faults, they were reborn from their ashes.

Highlighted in the glaring luminance of the lounge, Book had been at a loss as to how to handle the incendiary material in the presence of the bald man, but Siccouane had reassured him that the Seventy-Five were ignorant of the subtleties of written language: “
I can’t imagine any other major company treating the written word so contemptuously
.” Every time the cadence of their handwriting minutely altered, he felt as if needles were pricking him, since from the depths of their monologue there would arise a brief message for him and then it would be lost in the cross-currents of their introspection, allowing him to realise their unity:
“Think of the symbol of the Consortium: the united arms”
and their natural talents, deliberately nurtured in the Consortium’s bosom and finally put to good use: “
The sole attribute of the Star Bearers is their ability to deceive
,” but also about the values that they’d fought for with impressive pathos:
“So what I do today, I do only for myself, for Judith-Regina Swarnlake-Bera, for my salvation!”
, because the ultimate goal was not theft but to resurrect their dignity.

Book walked to the edge of the quay and looked down at the waves breaking against it as if in a trance. To achieve such a monumental objective it would be necessary for there to be an impregnable bond of mutual trust between the comrades. Where did those dishonourable antagonists, steeped in the poisons and solvents of the Seventy-Five, find the strength to forge such an indivisible unit? How did six damaged souls, six dregs of society, who constantly suffered the oppression of the complex subjugation of the Colony, come to believe in themselves? Book realised with relish that he was regaining his own belief in humanity and his fascination for it.

FREE ME, Bianca had begged him as she sailed along the diagonal but, in the end, it had been she who had freed Book. She had reunited him with his life, from which he’d departed in despair at the age of fifteen, and she’d forced him to re-evaluate all his beliefs in the grandiose sight of Bianca’s guardians, facing down the demons of their nefarious past and nightmarish present and overcoming them. Their demons had been more monstrous and powerful than those that had pursued Book, yet the six courtiers, one hundred times more subjugated and guilt-ridden than Book, had climbed, inch by torturous inch, the vertical wall of their miserable well of ignominy and were set free. If that could happen then everything was possible, he thought enthusiastically.

He gazed out at the Mediterranean Sea, which held buried in its depths his precious past, and for the first time ever felt the blessing of having lived it rather than the devastation of having lost it.
Anyone who has actually walked over the Massif des Maures should consider themselves lucky just because of the experience
. He turned and started on his way home. The sea breeze caressed his face, not like a funereal veil but like a fresh cool breeze. Book was contentedly opening the gates of his being to allow Phileas back in.

Oddly, he never thought of the six prodigious letter-writers again and his mind buried them irretrievably. As he aged, he also relinquished the ability to design meandroses. Occasionally, however, he was allowed to sit for a long time in the sun on one of France’s beaches for the elderly, with his straw hat lowered to his chin and his aged shoulders exposed, watching the mischievous wavelets arrive all the way from the south-eastern Mediterranean only to break in front of his open-toed sandals like a series of winks. He would smile under the brim of his hat. His minders would worry that the smile signalled the onset of sunstroke and would pull his chair back into the shade and ply him with cool lemonades. They had no idea that Phileas Book had had a ringside seat on the collapse of the Consortium when others had thought that it was still meteorically rising. He would plead with them not to move him as he obediently sucked down the lemonades and stretched out his short legs on the footrest to show that he was helping his circulation. He would beg for five more minutes in the sun.

“Only five more minutes,” they warned him.

He would pull his hat over his face and patiently wait for the minders to move on. Then he would peer slyly through the straw weave of his hat and observe his shadow that was spread out on the sand. His eye would measure it and find it to be … sixty metres and seventy-five centimetres.

Published by Black & White Publishing 2013

This electronic edition published in 2013

ISBN: 978 1 84502 548 9 in EPub format

ISBN: 978 1 84502 549 6 in Mobipocket format

ISBN: 978 1 84502 457 2 in paperback format

Copyright © Ioanna Bourazopoulou 2007

English translation copyright © Yannis Panas 2013

The right of Ioanna Bourazopoulou to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in Greek by Kastaniotis Editions SA, Athens, Greece.

This translation of WHAT LOT’S WIFE SAW is published by arrangement with Kastaniotis Editions SA.

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Black & White Publishing Ltd

29 Ocean Drive

Edinburgh

EH6 6JL

www.blackandwhitepublishing.com

This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.