Song Of Time (32 page)

I suppose we all knew that this situation was a mess, but you could already see Claude re-arranging his reactions. Watching him as he asked new questions and made fresh calls on his bracelet, I was reminded of how he always was at the podium when things were falling apart. A phrase that wouldn’t play, a tantrum in the reeds—they were the stuff of life to him. The initial plan of giving Christos a dose of his own medi-cine and bundling him into a van and recording his brief incarceration now seemed as stupid as it had probably always been. But to have him re-emerge now, and with clear evidence that he’d been physically assaulted…You didn’t need to consult the spin machines to know that Boullard’s people would have a field-day. All the stories about the filthy, untamed left would be resurrected. It could mean a five percentile drop for the socialists, especially with today’s delays in voting, and the differ-ence between winning and losing.

“The best possible outcome,” Claude cracked his knuckles as he paced around the tripods and wires, “is that none of this gets out. We’ll have to keep him here, and the whole thing under wraps, until after the results this evening…”

“What happens then?”

“Mathilde will be in power. Christos can say what he likes. None o f it will matter.”

Christos raised his head. He seemed to sniff the hot air. “Ah…!” He shouted. “Just because of this hood, do you think I can’t see?” His back was arched, straining against the chains which bound him. “That woman, the one who bandaged my arm—she smelled so
afraid
. But she needn’t have fear. Fear is past. This is the end of everything. Do you understand?” Claude had to attend a reception at party HQ. It was the start of the party which would go on into the night—and beyond, we hoped, at the announcement of a socialist victory. I, though, was a lesser light, and I felt sorry for the man up in the rank heat of this warehouse, for all that I disagreed with everything he stood for.

Christos complained. Christos drowsed. Christos made demands, or said he was hungry, or uncomfortable, or in pain, or that this was all the end of everything and that he wanted nothing. I went back to our atelier and found towels, plates. I called in at the corner shop and bought food. Christos’ white vans were out in force. So were his water sellers, and I bought half a dozen bottles from a thin, white-faced girl wearing a tee-shirt with a moving image of a bleeding, suffering Christ.

Back up in the warehouse, Christos was still complaining, but Tiger-Stripe Jill and Thibaut were ignoring him and watching the news on one of the many screens. I saw Mathilde looking happy and elegant and hopeful as she stood on the steps of party HQ, and then Boullard looking devious and smarmy and seen-it-all—in fact, the archetypal French politician—as he kissed the hands of nuns at some suburban nunnery. It was depressing to think that people accepted such obvious cynicism. Then, as the faces, the forest fires, the desert fields, the clogged or empty roads, flickered around us, we listened for word of Christos’ disappearance. But he wasn’t part of the regular round of interviews, police cordons, press conferences and scandals which fed the news channels. The only angle we found on the apocalyptic cults was the predictable one that they believed the end of the world would be brought even closer by whatever happened today in France. There were brief scenes of dancing circles and flagellating figures in one of the abandoned theme parks, then the news moved on to a ceremony commemorating the melting of the last snow in Africa on the peak of Kilimanjaro.

I walked over to Christos and gestured to Jill to turn down his helmet. Sensing a presence, he raised his chins. He smiled.

“I’ve brought you food,” I said. “But perhaps you’d like a drink first…”

“Do you know how your friends captured me? No? Sometimes, I go out and sell water. People, the ones who say they advise me, they tell me not to. But I know I should. Not to stop someone taking me to this high place, but
because
of it. I always knew this would happen. It’s part of the prophecy.”

The chains went round his waist and legs, binding him to the chair, and they’d put some kind of padlock under the chin of his VR helmet. But his hands were free. Warily, as one might approach a snake, I laid the bottle in his lap, then quickly stepped back.

Christos took it in his left hand, smiling as he felt its shape. “It’s my water, isn’t it?”

“Yes. As if it matters.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t.” He tried to move his splinted right arm to open the bottle, winced, then held it out in my approximate direction. “I need your help.”

I took it, uncapped it. Our fingers brushed as I gave it back.

Christos drank quickly and messily. Water ran around his stubbled cheeks and across his fat neck and soaked into the dirty collar of his smock. He gave a liquid belch.

“You’re not French, are you?”

“What difference does that make? Now I’m going to put some food down for you on this plate.”

“No food. I’m not hungry.”

“You should eat.”

“You sound like someone’s mother.”

“I’m not.”

“No, you’re not, are you?” He said it with sinister emphasis. Then he smiled again, but in a sour, different way. “I need to get off this chair.”

“I’m not sure—”

“—You don’t understand. I need to shit. I can do so anyway. But you’ve got to stay up here as well…”

I exchanged weary glances with Tiger-Stripe Jill and Thibaut. Over in the corner lay an old, empty paint tin. Seeing that neither of them had considered this obvious necessity, it would have to do. We ended up releasing Christos from his chair but leaving him chained by his left ankle to a bolt in the floor so that he was free to move within the circle described by all the now-useless recording equipment they’d set up around him.

Deciding I had no particular desire to watch Christos shit, I crossed the floor to stand at the edge of the wide opening which looked out across Paris. A variegated mid-afternoon smog—fruit of the mingled exhaust of all the supposedly cleaner non-petrol fuels—hung over the city and I could feel the damp heat of my own body wafting up from the shirt I was wearing as I breathed. I think Tiger-stripe Jill and her little group had expected more of Christos: that he’d live up to his name and sing psalms, or fight or curse them. They probably even hoped for miracles, and I could see them losing interest as the afternoon progressed. I, though, remained curious. We left Christos chained just by his ankle once he was finished on the basis that he could do no more harm that way, and I told Tiger-Stripe Jill to keep down whatever sounds she’d been feeding into his helmet.

“You’re not afraid of me, are you?” he asked—or stated.

“Why should I be?”

“The rest of them are. That one over there—” he cocked his helmeted head.

“—especially.”

Thibaut glared, but said nothing.

“You’re just some…” I thought for a word. “You’re just a man.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t mean it as a great compliment.”

“Do you fear God?”

I shook my head before I remembered that Christos couldn’t see me.

With Mum, I told myself, I should know better. “Why should I?”

He gave a laugh. “You’d fear him, if you knew what I knew.”

“What do you know?”

“You’ve heard me speak. Why do I have to say these things again and again? Especially now. When it’s too late.”

“So this is the end, is it? You’re like the
sadhus
and holy men my mother—” I stopped.

“Go on.
Tell
me about your mother. I can’t help the world, but perhaps I can help you. You’re lost, you’re deep in sin. But it isn’t too late. So tell me. Do you think I don’t know who you are?”

“Then say my name.”

But he said nothing.

The minutes crawled. The heat deepened. The hours stood still. I considered going back to our atelier to try and rest before tonight’s performance, but decided against it. The forced sweaty intimacy of this warehouse somehow felt like part of my preparation to play that eerie tune. The piece was still changing. Even at that meeting this morning, Claude had remained reluctant to settle on an absolutely final version. But then, he knew the value of publicity, of doing a high-wire act, and wanted to make sure that the buzz going around Paris about what would happen tonight at the Opéra was greater than that which surrounded the midnight unveiling of Harad’s 6th floor.

I heard Christos’ chains rattle. His breathing sounded irregular and asthmatic.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked, turning from looking out over Paris.

“What does
that
matter?”

“If you’re in pain. If it’s your arm. If something’s—”

“
There’s nothing
,” he growled in a voice so sudden and ferocious that I almost took a step back. He stood bunched at the end of his chains, head bullishly raised, as if waiting for something, and the air reeked of our confinement.

“We’ll let you out, you know, at the end of today.”

He gave a quick laugh.

“We’re not monsters.”

“We’re
all
monsters, sinners, demons—that’s the point.”

“With you, there seem to be many points. And there are people out there—people who listen to what you say and…” I felt the same frustration Claude must have felt in that debate. The misogyny. The money. The lies. The denials. The—yes—the kidnappings. The sheer
illogic
. But where to begin, when you knew everything would be evaded or ignored?

“If you’re worrying about what happens when I leave here,” he said eventually, “you needn’t. I’ve told you—I won’t get out of here alive.”

“I wish you’d stop saying that.”

Wish you’d stop saying that.
His fat lips, eloquently disconnected from the hidden features of the rest of his face, mouthed the words in silent parody. “I’m sorry if it depresses you.”

“You welcome it, do you—all this fire and brimstone you say is coming?”

He gave a shrug. “It’s coming anyway.”

“So why…” Giving up, I strode back over to the drop and leaned against the edge of the hot bricks. Distant thunder rumbled. Some-where, it might even be raining. But not here.

“I know who you are.” Now, his voice was wheedling—self-consciously unpleasant.

“You’ve said that before.”

“Then why do you doubt it? I’ve heard people say you have a God-given talent. I’m not so sure I can understand what that means—for surely every talent is God-given, even the meanest? And I know nothing, I
care
nothing, about the kind of music you play. I’m completely ignorant. So why don’t
you
tell
me
?”

I continued to stare out, considering what he really knew. After all, my French was still tainted with an obvious English accent…

“Now you’re sulking,” he murmured. “But I bear you no resentment. This isn’t your fault—not any of it. This is the start of the end of every-thing where all judgements will be made and the dead will return to life…”

Clever, I thought. He’s toying with me when I should be toying with him. As I walked around the space beyond the tripods, I could tell from the pout of his lips and the movement of his helmet that his eyes were following me. I knew from Mum that the blind have a way of seeing which the sighted can find unnerving. She exploited it shamelessly. So, now, did this man. But he’s been here before, I told myself—in confined spaces with the hopeless seekers of faith who’ve been lured or dragged into those ghost vans. That’s why he seems so comfortable, so amused.

The clouds were growing darker outside. I stepped to the very edge of the circle made by Christos’ chain and he shuffled close to me. We were both breathing in unison. I could smell his body, feel its heat.

“How do we fill in these last hours?” he said. “What can we say? I suppose we could talk about your stupid tunes. I could tell you that all your so-called arts are all a trick of the devil. That those words you use about feeling and power and glory and honesty are misdirected. What you think you believe in as
truth
is the wind over the graveyard. It’s the death rattle of lost souls turned into an ugly jig…”

“Who are you, really?” I breathed.

An arid chuckle. “You
really
want to know?”

Sudden, dry lightning crackled. I felt the hairs prickle on my arms.

Thibaut had fallen asleep beside the flickering screens, but Tiger-Stripe Jill was hunched forward and watching us, her face gleaming with sweat.

“Yes,” I said.

Starting once again to pace in circles, hunched lopsidedly, his shifting voice punctuated by the rumble of thunder and the drag of chains across the ridged concrete floor, Christos began to talk.

“It isn’t a lie, you know—that I’ve got no recollection of a life before these recent years. The first time I awoke, or it seemed like the first time ever, I was lying on fresh sheets in a clean white room, and I was in pain. There were wires, tubes, monitoring equipment and I was tended by figures who wore masks. They mopped my flesh, they gave me water…” He smiled and chuckled. “I remember how I loved its cool ease. Sometimes, I heard screams which didn’t seem to be my own. Once, I thought I heard someone call out what sounded like
Christos
, and I clung to that name.

“Slowly, the pain lessened. One day, I was sitting on the side of my bed. Another, and I was walking—or learning to. Talking, as well—or at least giving voice to the words which already filled my head. The figures I saw still wore masks, but they seemed interested—impressed, even—by what they called my
progress
. They laughed when I told them I was called Christos…They often laughed. Helped by them, I began to leave my white room and I found that there were similar rooms fanning out along corridors, and that their occupants suffered on sheets amid wires and tubes much as I had and did.

“I came to understand that this place was on the fringes of the great city known as Paris. Sometimes, I’d be allowed to stand outside
.
There was wreckage and barbed wire. Many of the surrounding buildings were burnt out, but I saw the twisting projections of distant adverts, read wind-blown leaflets which talked of other places called heaven and hell. And still the screams and pleas from the occupants of the other white rooms mingled in my head. But the others all came and went—some-times alive, sometimes dead: the masked figures told me it really didn’t matter—whilst I, Christos
,
stayed. And they were all I knew, and I wanted to impress them and I was keen to learn. I helped give injections. I mopped wounds. I laughed when they laughed beneath their masks. I tightened or loosened the straps by which the living subjects were held. I hauled the gurneys which bore out the dead…”