What Lot's Wife Saw (2 page)

He sat on the only chair, a well-worn armchair, and opened this week’s package with
The Times
letterhead which had arrived from London. He emptied the contents onto the table, creating an irregular heap of the letters that had been received by
The Times
from its readers. For a few seconds his eyes hungrily scanned the pile of envelopes much like a prospector who is gathering his strength, facing a promising riverbank, before he starts panning for gold. At that moment, he heard an insistent knock on the door.

“Is this Mr Phileas Book’s office?”

Given that no one had knocked on this door for the last fifteen years, Book was so surprised that it took him two whole minutes to answer. It then took Book a quarter of an hour to ask the visitor whether he found the umbrella stand comfortable, since he hadn’t seemed to mind not having been offered the armchair. All this time, the visitor had parked his thighs on the umbrella handles and had been talking solidly as if he were reciting a prepared text. Book tried to find a coherent connection between himself, the stranger’s presence and his chosen subject but failed to reach any positive conclusion. He shouldn’t have answered – what on earth had come over him to make him open his door? Now it was too late, the visitor was pointing with his long, manicured fingernail at the heirloom on the wall.

“You come from the South, Mr Book?”

“There is no South.”

“I mean the old South.” He smiled as only someone born in the North could smile. “It wasn’t easy to root you out, you don’t even have a phone. I assumed you lived in London but I then gathered from
The Times
that I would have to cross the Channel to meet you. They don’t even have your address since they communicate with you via a Post Office box. So, I travelled from Paris to London only to be told that I must return whence I came. I have been looking for days and I work for people who can’t wait.”

Book had never imagined someone outside of
The Times’
circle looking for him, especially someone sporting a tie of such hues as his visitor wore. He preferred not to mention it, but it upset him when he saw people attracted by violet. He realised that he missed classic ties. Twenty years ago no one would have dared wear such a brash colour.

The visitor described how difficult it had been to locate him, as if he was telling him off, and wondered why Book lived in Paris. “Is it to be as close as possible to the old South?”

Book refused to bite.

“We mustn’t live in the past,” the stranger admonished him.

He looked no more than twenty-five years old, and Book was forty. The young man surely did not remember, whereas Book would never be able to forget. He gazed through the window at the enormous billboard of the Consortium that ruined the beauty of the square.

“We are very interested in your work, Mr Book, and we wish to learn more about it. We were informed that you compile crosswords for
The Times
.”

Book nodded and asked to whom the plural referred. The visitor ignored the question, but Book had already reached his own conclusions, based on the shades of the tie. Not only did this fool work for the Seventy-Five but he tried to suck up to them by wearing the colour of their product – surely a low-grade employee, a clerk, a messenger or an enforcer, perhaps?

“… Or, rather, I didn’t express myself clearly, Mr Book, because the term ‘crossword’ doesn’t quite fit your constructs. You have invented a new type of crossword, not using letters, but ‘letters’.”

He pulled a folder from the pile that was spread on the table and held it up. “Would you like to show me how it’s done?”

Book simply referred him to the
Sunday Times
supplement where his Epistleword was printed every week. There he supplied the relevant letters which he gathered, mostly, from
The Times
Correspondence Department, having deleted the names, edited out some paragraphs and changed the place names. Anyone who had an inquisitive spirit, was capable of analysis and synthesis and had plenty of time to spare could try to find the common denominator behind the dissimilar documents and so fill in the blanks of the Epistleword. Very few bothered and even fewer reached the solution, but the diehard readers of the paper could not imagine
The Times
without Book’s Epistleword and that saved him from dismissal. By now he had become accepted as a rather iconic fixture, in some ways like the Geographical Museum, which, although everyone knows where it is, no one visits. He tried not to think about it while he absent-mindedly studied the youth facing him, who was clumsily pretending to open the folder and even more clumsily pretending to know what it was talking about.

“Let’s see, Mr Book, if I properly understand the Epistleword instructions. So, I read the badly written letter from a Mr X, who is complaining about the rubbish collection in Kensington, and after taking into account the age of his house, the description of the weather conditions and adding a touch of the day of the week, I answer the question: ‘Which of Mr X’s five senses is keener than the others?’, in order to find three down. Am I right?”

Book did not dignify him with either an aye or a nay as he thought that he was dealing with a complete incompetent.

The youth burst into laughter. “In any case, I must admit that the shape of the Epistleword is charming. It resembles a
meandros
, the decorative Greek key pattern. Thus no one can understand which squares you mean to be ‘across’ and which ‘down’. To make things even more obtuse, you have given the Epistleword three dimensions: Across, Down and Diagonal. The instructions insist that the only way for the solvers to orientate themselves is to imagine that they are within the shape, looking out, and not from the outside, looking in. Do you not think that your crossword is too complicated to be entertaining?”

He threw the folder back on the table and Book patiently arranged it at the bottom of the pile.

“I heard that
The Times
do not intend to renew your employment. After twenty, and more, years – is that not how long you have worked for them? – it’s sad. Your dismissal will spell the end of a whole culture, useless but charming, which requires the puzzle to encompass the solver and be developed around him. Truly, does your future not worry you?”

Book had already used his imagination to excise the annoying visitor and could see the unpainted wall behind him. He would have to get around to whitewashing it soon.

“Mr Book, I have come to deliver an invitation. You have managed to attract the curiosity of my employers, who pay much better than
The Times
and demand much less. They kindly request you to follow me to their offices and they offer you this, to prove the utmost seriousness of their proposal.”

He produced a cheque and laid it on the table, straightening its edges with his fingers. The youth’s employers would never request anything from Book – of this he had no doubt. Book did not touch the cheque, on the watermark of which he could discern the well-known trademark of the Consortium – the clasped hands – and waited to hear a more realistic explanation for this visit. The youth slowly pushed the cheque towards him.

“My employers would like you to solve a ‘Book-type’ crossword.”

Book glanced at the enormous billboard of the violet woman over the square, at the eye on the tip of her tongue that stared at him full of surprise, terror and guilty craving.
What did Lot’s wife see? Three down?

Under the advertisement, a group of deranged, ecstatic, red-eyed people sat cross-legged in front of their glass saltshakers and entwined their tongues.

“I will follow you wherever you want,” Phileas Book said gloomily.

Colonist’s File No.:
00456321

Place of Birth:
Valencia, Spain

Position:
Presiding Judge

Administrative Level:
B1

Adopted Name:
Bernard Bateau

… The Colony is not visible from the sea. On this everyone agrees, even the most experienced mariners such as Captain Cortez, who has served the Consortium for twenty years and can navigate these violet waters with his eyes closed. Indeed, that is the best way to navigate the approaches, with eyes firmly shut.

Young Lieutenant Richmond, who was serving under the orders of Cortez, was exhibiting all the symptoms that seamen show on their maiden voyage to the Colony, and did not look at all well on that Thursday. I am struggling to remember his expression, his gaze, the cadence of his voice, so that I can discover a deeper meaning in his intoxicated confession, if indeed there was a deeper meaning in his ranting. Your Excellencies will read this and judge for yourselves. I vow to write in this letter, word for word, all that was disclosed to me, without leaving the slightest bit out or adding a single thing, so help me God.

As I was saying, after the four of us had safely delivered the Green Box, Richmond and I left the Governor’s Palace – it must have been nine-thirty by then. My daughter had previously delivered Lady Regina’s instructions: “Governor Bera is resting so be off with all four of you.” Bless her, my daughter’s manner is not the most tactful, and since Governor Bera employed her, to my great honour of course, to iron the Lady’s undergarments, she has become impertinent and does not show any respect for her father – my poor child. So we obeyed. I don’t know what the other two did, but Richmond and I left together. We must have been a fine sight – by God! – an old judge and a youthful Lieutenant, I with my gown, he in his uniform, looking for a table and a bottle to see us through the night – well, how else would we pass the time? The Guard had declared a curfew due to the impenetrable fog and so we were forced to seek shelter in a wine cellar in Hesperides, close by the Governor’s Palace, to wait there till dawn. Out in the streets, Captain Drake’s men were prowling about, fully armed, so we didn’t dare stick our noses out. The proprietor had not closed in time so he had been forced to spend the night in the cellar.

“Do come in,” he said, “here’s your bottle. I will retire behind the bar and please be kind enough to wake me at dawn.”

We slumped into our chairs and looked out the window at absolutely nothing. When the fog descends on the Colony you can only see your reflection in it.

The floorboards of the wine cellar were filthy, the place stank of stale alcohol and the proprietor’s snores nauseated us. We were too spent to turn and look at each other. Our backs were aching from the carrying and our middles had come out in a rash from the rope that Cortez had used to tie us for the procession, so that we wouldn’t get separated in the fog and to help us keep in step. At times Cortez overdoes it, as he is an insufferable stickler for the rules. We rubbed our backs, filled our glasses and touched them without proposing toasts just to hear the clinks.

Soon Richmond, warmed by the alcohol, was overwhelmed by an inner urge to unburden himself to me. No one ever forgets their first trip to the Colony, much less Richmond, whose freshly sewn Consortium insignia on his green uniform had lost none of its shine to the ravages of the salt.

“Look, Bateau,” Richmond demonstrated, “this was how Cortez stretched his arm over the gunwale and wiggled his fingers so as to test the vapours of the sea. That was how he measured the density of the water and calculated the distance to the shore. His fingertips collected all the information necessary for navigation since he didn’t trust the instruments once he had entered the territorial waters of the Colony.” Richmond used his finger to press on his Adam’s apple to roughen his voice to the gravelly level of Cortez’s.

“‘The compass goes mad with the magnets of the salt. The log sticks, the plumb line won’t sink, precluding the possibility of getting your bearings. Richmond, you must judge from the weight of the water as it sticks to your fingers, from its colour, its smell and from the morphology of the seafloor. Take note of what the sailor who studies the depths with the lamp tells you and mark the rises and dips of the submarine landscape, the mountains, the valleys, the buildings of sunken cities, on your map. If you are precise in your calculations, in three weeks you will see the Gates on your port side with the joined arms carved in relief on the Gate’s frontispiece. It will leap out at you without warning from the fog, so be prepared. Manoeuvre using the weights and make sure you pass between the great columns dead centre. You will know that you are right in the middle if you lift your head and see that the long stalactite that hangs from the pediment is hanging exactly over your main mast. It isn’t a stalactite, they just extended one elbow of the joined arms to help us sailors. Lock your wheel and steer a straight course. In three hours you can make out the first lights of the Colony.

“‘Don’t expect anything impressive, like Paris, Vienna or the other ports of the Mediterranean. What you’ll see are small flames that waver like candles. Then you can heave a sigh of relief, thank your lucky stars that the fog didn’t swallow you and just sit back and wait. The towboats will come to you – the boatmen can see you before you can see them because visibility is better when one looks seawards from the Colony. They will come alongside and before you know it they will grapple you and attach the hooks to the rings on your bow. When it is made fast, they notify the supervisor with bugles. He waits in the harbourmaster’s hut and gives orders to the winch men to start hauling. Come out on the bridge to watch the docking, it’s worth it. The winch men sweetly reel in the tethered ship to the berth, like hauling a fish on a line. Meanwhile, the boatmen are constantly escorting you in so they can adjust your course with their poles if you go astray. Don’t worry and don’t hurry to tie up. Since the berths in the port are limited and the channels are narrow to the point of suffocation, wait until they secure you tight, fore and aft, especially a Correspondence Ship like this one here.

“‘The Governor’s correspondence is the most valuable cargo for the Consortium. Anyone that you suspect of getting too close to the Green Box must be clapped in irons immediately – remember that. As soon as the boatmen unhook the lines from the rings, you know you are secure and you can toss out your hawsers towards the bollards. You must wait, though, for permission from the supervisor before lowering your gangway. The land here belongs to the Seventy-Five and you mustn’t even breathe without permission.’”