Freedom Island (12 page)

              We rumbled up to an ugly overblown hotel that looked as if it had been lowered from outer-space. I was led in and down a long corridor following the huge slow back of the guard, as though he belonged to a different species, and on into a guarded conference room where I was roughly searched, shoved into another windowless room and down into a chair. A man stood on either side of me, armed and a fraction too close. Haussmann himself sat calmly behind a desk, reading some papers and seemingly oblivious to it all. He looked quite different to how he was on TV. Shorter. Less distinguished: there was something of a Lower in him—his short-cropped hair topped off a broad indistinctive face typical of the small-time criminal types you see everywhere in the Lower Zones.
              Ten silent minutes passed before Haussmann looked up:
              ‘You will go back and manage the British Department for me. For this you will pay me each year. How you collect from your little fiefdom is entirely up to you. How much extra you collect for yourself, is up to you. If you fail to pay me on time, you die. And please, don’t whinge! We will be planting a device into your heart and at the press of a button, you will bedead: clever stuff. Also
. . 
.’ and he then released a satisfied snort, ‘we will also kill whoever we consider to be important to you, so let’s just say resignations are not accepted!’
              ‘I want to stay in Spain,’ I whined. ‘I am happy here.’
              ‘Ha! Come on Ollie, you Brits can’t bear anyplace other than your anachronistic little island. Besides, you were sent to Iberia for Rehabilitation, not for retirement! No, you will not stay. And forget that new bitch of yours: I need hunters, not farmers. Spritzer!’ And the mutant on my left darted off.
              ‘I love her.’
              ‘You will collect the taxes, run the fucking trains, oil the wheels that matter, you know, hungry mouths to feed etcetera etcetera, keep the people squabbling amongst themselves and pay me my hundred fucking million a year, vote for me, with me, and we will be the best of buddies. Got it?
              ‘And as for the girl,’ he added, ‘with you Anglo-Saxons everything is disposable, isn’t it? —the lure of the new, remember? Just get another one.’
              ‘You want me to do your dirty work!’
              ‘Corruption is the glue that holds the Union together, Ollie: The price of stability, if you like. Besides, if it wasn’t for corruption nothing would ever get done.’
              ‘Why me? I don’t know how to run a country!’
              ‘Ha! Who does? Have faith, Ollie. All you need to know is that you do what I tell you. Beyond that you can stick your fingers wherever you want. Besides, it’s not a country, it’s a department, and this really is a good time for you to accept that. Your “United Kingdom
”
is a historical anomaly: it’s not about lines on maps anymore. And don’t worry, Insurgents like you evolve naturally into self-serving officials,’ and he smiled as though paying a compliment, adding
:
‘I can never know where I stand with ordinary men.
              ‘I am a firm believer,’ Haussmann went on, pleased with the sound of his own voice, ‘that only a Brit can control the Brits—see the order in the chaos, if you like. The way you people talk, with your petty qualifications, colluding and manoeuvring like a race of back-stabbing lawyers, well, what could be better than a chap like you? They will overlook a little exploitation from one of their own.’
              I groaned.
              ‘You even know the Insurgents! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking you to wipe them out, they are like those healthy bacteria in our stomachs: good for the system! Society needs enemies;they give me a battle to fight and the people love me for it
. . 
. but don’t go appeasing them either, respect will make them stronger.’
              ‘You underestimate us,’ I snarled, as Haussmann gulped down the spritzer. ‘Besides, if you people don’t like England, then give it back!’ The man was irritating me more with every word. The anger, the resentment, the distrust that had been removed from my life in Spain, came flooding back.
              The Minister looked at me more sternly, from the corner of his eye, pointing his finger. ‘Don’t you ever forget, I am in control of your life. I know you English—you take what you can and move on.
              ‘And shave that damn beard off,’ he added, looking me up and down
:
‘We will select your clothes. If you are going to walk in and run the place you’d better look the part
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. as you well know, in your country they respect a man of means and, ac-hmm, a rather obvious financial style.’ He smirked. ‘Ha, they think if you are rich you are smart!’
              Leaning in now, he whispered: ‘Be happy—you will become rich and powerful. And trust me, the girls will like it! —with money you can do whatever you want!’ then following a gurgling man-to-man laugh, he noticed the frosty reception and straightened up.
              ‘Oh, why be a fool, Ollie? I mean, you respected the old man, didn’t you?’
              ‘Which old man?’
              ‘Don’t play games. The old man with the bookshop, of course. Remember now?’ and he tapped a brown manila folder on the table in front of him. ‘Well, he now resides in a coastal villa in the Italian Department, with his wife.’
              ‘Rubbish.’
              ‘No, not at all. He had his price: we all do. You think because of his age he was immune to money?’ and he gave me a knowing look: ‘He was an actor, Ollie, not a very successful one, but it seems he had your lot convinced! He planted you into the Insurgent movement for us: our “Guinea Pig”!
              ‘All that about some woman he never married was his own creation,’ Haussmann went on, ‘“getting into character” —not bad, eh? Yes, Ollie, the Interior Ministry chose you!
              ‘Incidentally,’ he continued, ‘you don’t even know his name, do you?’
            
 
‘I never thought about it.’
            
 
‘Gottes Willen! We turned you into a bloody narcissist! This “old man” changed your life, and you never even asked his name!’

❊

‘
You have been possessed by the devil!’ the old women told Frank dramatically, rubbing his broken back with nettles and tipping an enamel cup of putrid infusions which he drunk to keep them quiet. They remained all hours of the night—to prevent the vampires from draining his blood, but the more grounded among them offered a more earthly explanation of his ills, though no better—consumption, ‘brought in by the homeless, damn novices.’ The establishment wouldn’t help a runaway, that was known well enough, and the Governor’s subsequent attempts to re-ignite his old Masonic contacts were to return silence: ‘I am so sorry.’
              ‘Thank you,’ Frank placed his hand onto the Governor’s, ‘but it would have been no use anyway,’ convinced as he was that it was in fact a curse from Mary: ‘this anger she bears for me would dissipate were she to see me now’—he had aged ten years inside a few months.
              Wracked by pain and bouts of dizziness Frank’s face went from shades of green around the mouth to yellow at his ears, his breathing now inadequate beneath the weight of his shrunken chest such that he was only able to continue by virtue of the surprising mildness of his fever. The persistent stench of his rotting body alone was almost enough to defeat him, and his spine had become so wretched that he was losing height, ‘3cm already’ he concluded as he stood to survey the Governor’s growing stature.
              ‘Am I condemned to die of a curable disease?’ Frank wheezed, as he coughed up sputum into a fruit bowl.
              By day in his creeping despondent dementia he took to writing colourless poems in an illegible hand though no one doubted the subject was Mary, and at night he would rave on and on about the wasted days prior to his incarceration—a nonsense without punctuation interspersed with bouts of euphoria, spitting as he spoke: ‘the Devil’s words!’—the old witches kept their distance, mumbling defensively, leaping forward to dab his brow as he stopped to breathe. Only the Governor seemed unperturbed, more comfortable with the bacteria than he’d ever been with Residents.
              But Frank winced at the Governor’s pity. After all (mumbling to himself in his delirium), ‘he has that beautiful girl—he doesn’t give a damn!’
              Caught in a melancholic downpour the venom of Frank’s tortured soul escaped in bilious explosions of twisted bitterness as he tore apart everything he’d ever had with anyone, their malice greed selfishness and stupidity he hung in a long washing line of hate for the Governor to see, who maintained his patience and respect for the dying through the entirety—a man not alien to paranoia himself, he murmured soothing empty assurances and wiped the sweat and phlegm from Frank’s withered face. Random violent coughing fits doubled-up the clammy remains of his friend, emaciated and wretched like he was already dead as the Governor held him in his arms, with a bottomless sympathy for the man he had admired ever since that day Mary had first declared his name.
              ‘At least you will die a free man.’ 

❊

Frank opened his eyes, stronger. The former Deputy’s circular spectacles loomed above an out-of-place smile,
              ‘Welcome back to Bedlam. The Governor returned. He brought you too.’
              Frank’s eyes closed again. He drifted in an endless sea—it was snowing and cold, opposite him sat two passengers bolt upright in their Sunday best: one a shark and the other a golden labrador. ‘You betrayed us,’ they uttered. Then just as suddenly the sun: a vast and fierce desert, and Frank was on his knees his throat contracted, face-to-face with a scorpion.
              ‘Frank?’
              After a moment’s focussing Frank’s intoxicated eyes settled back on the Deputy’s stoney glance. He thought for a moment: ‘May I speak to the Governor?’
              ‘Actually, we can’t find him,’ the Deputy replied gloomily. ‘Do you think he left us again?’
              Frank didn’t reply. He gazed about amid the hallucinatory nausea of his fever and of the drugs they had sent to fight it: staring at the walls of Zadir’s once dreadful ward he now saw all the life you could possible squeeze out of pots of paint and the various mediocre skills confined to Bedlam: A landscape filled one wall—it reached from idyllic meadows to a rustic village of matchstick men and generic farmyard animals. On the neighbouring wall, a naked woman reclined awkwardly.
              ‘Next time the Union won’t be so forgiving,’ the Deputy added.
              Frank pulled himself up in the bed to gaze out of the window behind him. He saw Lunatics in grey tending an impeccable vegetable garden below, bordered by wild flowers. It felt like another dream.
              ‘Mr Sloth, how are you feeling?’
              Frank turned. Nobody had used his family name since his first arrival at Bedlam—more a case of deliberate disrespect than formality—he’d imagined they’d forgotten it. The Deputy was gone. He saw the sympathetic face of a handsome doctor,
              ‘I am fine, thank you.’ And he thought for a second. ‘How’s Mary?’
              ‘She is wonderful,’ the doctor purred.
              Frank waited, but nothing further was offered. The doctor moved on to the next bed. Frank gazed down, feeding the woollen blanket between his fingers.
              ‘Doctor!’ he blurted out. The doctor turned to face him again.
              Frank’s sickly face blushed
:
‘I want to meet Mary.’
              ‘Very well, I will tell her. But she is a very busy lady.
The Governor had made his way back to the gypsy village, painfully aware it was no longer a sanctuary. He knew—this time—the Union would come after him. Twice daily Dalma covered his face in a miserable routine of tanning lotions in an attempt to immerse him with the others, but he knew how easy he would be to find.
              ‘Dalma, we have to get out of here
. . 
. ’
              ‘We must ask the elders,’ she replied without hesitation.
              Even though the village elders were sitting less than 30 metres away, in clear view, a proper audience—a Diwano—had to be arranged. So Dalma spoke to her aunt, who in turn spoke to her grizzly sister-in-law, who arranged it for noon the following day.
              ‘What is your problem?’ The three elders were old women, with faces so deeply wrinkled it was impossible to guess their ages. Other times they peeled potatoes, skinned cats or spat, just like everyone else, but in the Diwano they were the final word.
              ‘My man is a runaway. He has powerful enemies,’ explained Dalma, ‘and now they are hunting him because he helped Didikai Frank.’
              The central woman whispered to the others, who each in turn returned a barely noticeable, but infinitely wise, nod.
              ‘You must join the circus. It’s not far from here now. We will give you a note and they will accept you.’
              The fear vanished from the Governor’s face, replaced by joy. With excitement! Just one year ago he’d been a fat, bald, boring man of 56 with only decline stretching before him, but this last year had become an impossible adventure, a roller-coaster ride of young love and comradeship. And now the circus?!
              ‘I am a magician!’ he declared immediately, as though already expecting rapture.
              ‘Yes, we know,’ and the elder wrote the note, and handed it to Dalma.