A Void (35 page)

to track you down!

I found out, as I said, that a truck had run into you during

your flight from Uskub, its impact causing a concussion that was

so total, so profound, that nobody had any notion what to call

you or what your background was and so on.

But I was told by this man who took you in that you soon

struck him as, basically, a bright young lad, not at all as stupid

as you had at first. You gradually got to know how to talk again,

and would display a gift: for counting. Supplying you with an

adas, an assistant at a local school had a long talk with my man

and got his grudging approval to prolong your tuition as far as

it could possibly go.

In all you would pass thirty-six months in Mitrovitsa.

Occasionally a bunch of snotty kids would attack you and spit

on you and shout out, "Anonumos! Anonumos!", a callous, cut-

ting word that was your local patois, naturally, for "anonymous".

And, I was told, it was finally so familiar a catcall around town

that it almost stuck to you for good. By quitting Mitrovitsa,

though, you at last saw an opportunity of burning your boats,

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throwing off your past and starting out again as "Amaury Con-

son", an alias you took from that assistant who taught you all

you know.

I was hoping to contact this original Amaury Conson. But on

my arrival in Mitrovitsa I couldn't find him at all. A cousin of

his, with whom I had a long chat, thought Conson was possibly

living in Zurich. And in six months I too was in Zurich, profiting

from a symposium in which I was giving a talk. I finally got in

touch with your tutor, who had no information about your situ-

ation but did pass on a crucial fact: that a man with a bushy chin

- outwardly, just a typically shabby old crackpot living from hand

to mouth but, inwardly, boiling with fury - was also asking about

you!

This, I thought, was curious. Who, apart from yours truly,

would want to contact you? And why?

Now, at that point, fairly constantly, I had an intuition of bad

luck pursuing both of us. In fact, waking up at night with a start,

I found I had, again and again,
pavor nocturnis,
a vision of a

killing.

It brought to my mind a day - but which day? - in our child-

hood, a day on which, whilst I was idly playing with a yo-yo and

you with a spinning top, our doctor saviour had sat us both on

his lap and told us, softly, almost inaudibly, that in a distant land

a man was looking for us, a man who had it in for us and would

probably try to harm us and that, on that far-off day on which

our own sons would start growing up, and run a similar risk,

you and I must vigilandy stand guard against him.

But this flashback, if I may call it that, was so hazy and confus-

ing that I took about six days to work out just what it was trying

to signal from my unconscious.

And, abruptly, Acapulco was to pop into my mind - Acapulco,

that city in which I was born. I rang its municipal hospital and

found out about our birth, about how a young doctor had

thought to switch us about with a pair of stillborn twins, about

his adoption of us and our flight. And, chillingly, I also found

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out that, oh, long, long ago, a man with a bushy chin had burst

into our hospital rambling away about his poor lost son and

shouting, "An I for an I, a truth for a truth!"

So, starting out with hardly a crumb of information, this man

had by now got to know virtually all about us, had found out

your alias and had actually got in touch with your homonym,

that first Amaury Conson. It was a long haul, but today our

arch-antagonist was swooping down upon us, was hot on our

trail!

I was struck again by his untiring obstinacy, grasping instandy

that this was a pursuit that would last right up to our dying day,

that its instigator wouldn't think for an instant of pausing, that

such a fanatic had but a solitary ambition driving him forward:

that of having us at last within his grasp, of watching our sons

writhing in agony, watching
us
writhing in agony!

I thought it vital that you in your turn should know of this

man in whom such wrath was stoking up such fanaticism and

who would go all out to find us. But I didn't know in what

country to start looking for you. Or in what city. In a colonial

bungalow? In Chicago, in a mansion by Frank Lloyd Wright, say,

or an airy, glass, skyscraping condominium by Philip Johnson? In

a Saint-Flour slum? In a villa with a balcony full of aspidistras in

a provincial, almost pastoral suburb of Hamburg or Upsala? Did

you know what risk you ran? And, most importantly, had you a

son? All such points I quickly had to clarify.

Naturally, I had a possibility of communicating with you by

radio or in a want ad. I did occasionally think of doing so, and

I almost got round to it, finally changing my mind, though, as

I was afraid that an unambiguous signal of that sort would also

assist our Bushy Man.

Whilst, for his part, Amaury Conson, your tutor, was trying

to obtain information as to your lot, my own papa, that charming

British drum-major, sinking fast, and having no natural kin, had

his solicitor add a codicil to his will according his only (if unnatu-

ral) son a gift of thirty diamonds, all of amazing proportion and

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purity, and including a particular rock that was practically worthy

of a Koh-i-Noor or that Grand-Mogol for which Onassis was

willing to fork out a cool million.

Having thus no financial worry of any kind, I quit my job to

work only for you.

And, dying to know (if I may put it thus) from what was

born that damnation pursuing us, my first act was to fly out to

Ankara, in which city, I was told, our man was born.

So I alit at Ankara. But, at its airport, a customs and immi-

gration official, who visibly had a high opinion of his own

position, instantly sprang up, yapping, "I want to look at

your arm!"

Though put out by such an offhand approach, I duly took off

my parka. Adjusting his lorgnon, grasping my right arm, studying

my wrist and giving out a loud cry of satisfaction, this official at

last said that I should follow him into an adjoining room, a small

back room in which sat a civil-looking chap who, though sporting

not a uniform but an ordinary casual suit, was obviously his boss,

for my man saw fit to bow to him and practically curtsy.

"What is it?" his boss said to him in a forthright way.

"Sahib," said my man (who couldn't know that,
au fait
with

almost thirty subdivisions of Ponant patois, I had no particular

difficulty with Turkish), "it's an individual from that . . . that

Family, with . . . with that mark . . . you know what I'm talking

about . . . on his right wrist. As soon as I saw him, I thought

I'd find it - and I did. It was just a hunch, but, as you know,

Sahib, my flair for this sort of thing is unfailing!"

It was a fact. I had, and had always had, on my right wrist, a

livid, narrow furrow, forming a sort of parabola (just as did that

Zahir that had so forcibly struck Augustus or that curious whitish

scar that Albin would tattoo on all his gang of rascals and lascars)

- a parabola that was, you might say, ajar, not joining up in any

normal fashion but finishing with a straight inward dash. But,

until that instant, I hadn't known that it was a family trait.

"You don't say?" said his boss. "I want to look at it."

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His assistant, his "Chaouch", as Turks say, took my arm to

show to his boss, who said to him, a bit grudgingly, I thought,

"Insh}Allah,
it
is
in truth what you said it was, Mahmoud Abd-ul-Aziz Ibn Osman Ibn Mustapha, and for this I'm going to put

you up for promotion. But," now dismissing him with a nod,

"not a word of it to anybody, or it'll all go wrong."

"Barakalla Oufik," was all that, on his way out, Mahmoud

Abd-ul-Aziz Ibn Osman Ibn Mustapha said.

At that point his boss, not saying anything but pointing to a

chair, on which I sat down, and lighting up a hookah that had

a sharp, sultry aroma of Turkish tobacco, rang for a boy, com-

manding him to bring a jug of
kawa au jasmin
, a lurid Tahitian

concoction which all Turks of distinction drink in gallons.

"You know Italian?"

"Jawohl
," I said.

So, talking in Italian or, should I say, "spiking da Italianisch",

this chap said that Ankara had had, that autumn, as many as

thirty victims of coronary thrombosis. And, as my vaccination

had long ago run out, I could not lawfully stay in his city.

This, I was conscious, was a totally phony claim, that wouldn't

stand an instant's scrutiny in a court of law, but I was also con-

scious that, if such intimidation didn't work on its own, my man

wouldn't stop at physical obstruction.

It was obvious that his instruction was to stop any individual

with such a furrow on his wrist, any individual of "that . . .

Family", as his assistant, Mahmoud Abd-ul-Aziz, had curdy put

it, from coming into Ankara. But what I didn't know, and had

to find out, was what was prompting so unusual a form of dis-

crimination. Why was Ankara so afraid of my arrival, of that of

anybody of my "Family"?

Not daring to ask point-blank about that taboo that was cling-

ing to my family, I took him in with a cunning trick.

Acting as panicky as though I truly thought I was running a

mortal risk by coming to Ankara, I quickly got up, took off in

my Lagonda-Bugatti and, driving to a small town not too far

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away, took a room in a B-and-B in which I was to stay put for

about six days.

In that room I brought about an amazing physical transforma-

tion, staining my body a swarthy walnut colour, wrinkling my

brow with a stick of charcoal, disguising my blond hair with a

long black wig and putting on a brown burnous. And, casually

mingling with a group of actors arriving in Ankara for a gala to

launch its Municipal Casino, I got my visa, and an all-important

pass, without any difficulty, finally making my way into town.

From a chum in London I had a card of introduction to a

Turkish solicitor. So, continuing to sport my wig and adding a

donnish-looking lorgnon, I took off my burnous and put on

a chic Cardin suit.

In addition, afraid of an official coming up at random to study

my wrist, I stuck a conspicuous Band-Aid on it and almost

thought to put my arm in a sling as though I'd had a boil or a

bad wasp sting and was just out of hospital.

I paid a visit to this solicitor that my chum had known at

Oxford. Not daring to blurt out all my suspicions straightaway

to a man with looks as sly and crafty as his, and so practically

ad-libbing, I told him a long story about my passion for folk art

and music and my coming to Ankara to draw up a vast Variorum

of sayings, myths, sagas, amusing facts, songs and traditions.

Luckily, I'd hit upon his own particular hobby, for, grinning

as broadly if I was actually tickling him, my man was to hold

nothing back.

"Now . . . What should I start with? Do you know Ali Baba

and his Tradition?"

"Uh, no . . . I'm afraid not."

"Oh, but you should. It's simply charming:

To a tinny ocarina playing a potpourri by Paganini, Ali

Baba, tiny Pacha but as stocky as a buffalo, as a big fat tub

of lard, now starts guzzling macaroni sizzling in a frying

pan, guzzling pasta with a musty, fusty, rusty, dusty savour

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to its flavour. Lying down on his divan, a cat starts licking

its own down. Ali Bab a burps and gulps down a joint. Good,

says Ali, now I must go. Taking his gun, his arrows, his

bazooka, his drum, mounting a darling stallion, Ali gallops

through pampas, woods, mountains and canyons and, without

knowing why, starts chasing a lion that was no doubt grazing

on fruit and thinking it could lift up a rock and find allu-

vium. Ali Baba shouts: Oh, what good is it all? Did Ali know

what it was all about, this thing, this thingamajig? For that

you would want addition, subtraction, multiplication and

division. Adding 3 to 5 is 8; adding 6 to 1 is 8 minus 1.

What? says this moron, a calculation? It kills Ali Baba; as

for our lion, it runs away so fast, so fatally fast, it croaks.

I said "Bis! Bis!" with as much animation as I could summon,

causing him to bow and blush with obvious gratification. And I

finally got down to brass tacks, hinting that in all this information

at his disposal I'd no doubt find a handful of spicy notations on

which I might draw for my work.

But, as soon as I'd said that, I saw him growing ominously

broody, his brow furrowing. I was conscious of making a faux

pas.

"In Ankara I know of a solitary spicy notation, as you would

put it. But, and I'm not kidding, it's a thing that nobody's willing