What Lot's Wife Saw (3 page)

Richmond got up from his chair, the better to portray Cortez’s shape – as if I didn’t know it. He opened his shoulders wider and pulled on his cheeks to transform himself into the tall, broad, craggy Cortez, the scourge of mere ratings, whose hoarse baritone would cause one to jump, sweating, out of any slumber, months after disembarking.

Cortez, if that is his real name (and who, apart from Richmond, that naïve young man, goes by their real name when they work for the Consortium?), dragged the Lieutenant by the nape of his neck, like a puppy, all around the deck so that he could keep his eye on him. The fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Visibility was down to half a metre, it was as if the clouds had descended and swallowed the vessel. The sea breeze, caustic like acid, etched one’s face, penetrated one’s clothing and caused one’s whole body to smart continuously. And Richmond, yes Richmond, who had been dreaming of this post for years, to sail to this violet sea and feast his eyes on the Colony, was growing more and more certain that he had committed the gravest mistake of his life and that he was heading straight to Hell – the place we call home.

As soon as they had passed the Colony’s continental shelf, Cortez had ordered the engines to be shut down and the crew to hoist the sails. The ship became a sailing craft. At the same time he switched off the generator, plunging cabins and decks into darkness. Small fish-oil lamps were lit which stank unbearably. “Consortium Orders,” Cortez explained.

They only allow fish oil as a source of energy, as it alone can be chemically tolerated by the ultra-sensitive salt. This salt is very idiosyncratic, vulnerable to electricity, to radiation, to the chemicals given off by all fossil fuels. The tiniest traces of all these are a threat to its violet colour, its exotic taste and to its fine aroma. The Colony is akin to a great greenhouse; it operates under controlled environmental conditions so that it may produce, without qualitative deviations, the valuable product which is sold like gold dust, by the ounce, even by the grain, in the cities of civilisation.

The ship had taken a few hours to power its way across half the Mediterranean and three whole weeks, under sail, for the final few miles, which we now call the Dead Sea. The winds were weak and sickly, the water as solid as steel, the vessel at a virtual standstill. Richmond had felt his pulse drop in tune to the sluggish sea and sank into the hypnotic blindness of the fog, just as someone falls into lethargy. It didn’t matter whether his eyes were open or shut, he’d had to feel his way around to find the cabins, the bridge, the spokes of the ship’s wheel. He’d become indifferent to the time of day, as there was no variation between dawn and dusk. Even peoples’ voices had altered, or at least that was how he’d felt when he had been trying to match the sounds to a hidden face. The only sounds he could reliably recognise were the cough of the Captain, the lame step of the boatswain and the panting of the deckhands as they used scrapers to remove the violet frost from the deck. He wanted to undress so that they could scrape his skin as well, to peel away the violet crust which blocked his pores.

Poor Richmond, once you are exposed to the violet, you will always carry it with you, even if you use a wire brush on yourself to your dying day.

The deeper he sank into the fog, the less Richmond trusted his own senses. Nothing seemed normal anymore. The ship, forced up by the all-powerful buoyancy of the salty sea, seemed to be trying to leap out of the surface, and was exposing most of its belly. Cortez had given orders to retract the keel and to deploy the special fins which appeared around the ship’s waterline like the pleats of a skirt. The vessel sailed on, balanced on those petals, not ploughing through the water but dragged over it. It was impossible to tell what course they were on, in which direction they were pointing or how fast they were going – it was a bit like a bar of soap skidding on ice. Only Cortez’s experience had saved them from immobility. He would suddenly shift the ballast weight to extort some movement out of the unwilling conditions, he would trim the sails to perfection to catch the nearly non-existent wind, and miraculously he had somehow kept them moving. It was a sure bet that the Lieutenant would never forget that voyage.

We must have drunk half the bottle by the time Richmond finally talked about what had been haunting him, about the youth. He leant towards me, his eyes filled with a mixture of inebriation and fear, and he whispered that he had seen him. He had
definitely
seen him. Cortez hadn’t believed him and had told him that he had been dreaming, but Richmond insisted that he had seen him.

“Bateau,” he said, “I don’t know whether he was an angel or a demon, but he was standing beside me on deck, just before we reached the Gates.”

Cortez had actually slapped him to knock some sense into him but Richmond had not been daydreaming. Cortez had bellowed that the Lieutenant had been hallucinating just like most of the seamen who visited those waters for the first time. In fact, the emanations of the violet salt are hallucinogenic and you must always take the pill that the Consortium prescribes to keep your mind anchored. Perhaps Richmond had forgotten to take his? “No, Bateau, I saw him and I can describe him.”

Richmond rose from his seat again to describe the youth he had seen appear in the violet cloud, on the borders between illusion and reality, just before they reached the Gates. He placed the palm of his hand perpendicularly to his head. “He was this tall, twentyish with long, black, very curly hair, tied in a ponytail. He wore a red shirt and high black boots and from his ear a gold pirate’s earring gleamed. He was standing on deck next to me, leaning on the rail like me, as if he were my shadow. I wasn’t afraid of him, Bateau. I was more afraid of doing something awkward myself, believe it or not. Was he one of the crew? Impossible! Bateau, I’d never before laid eyes on that strange boy with the aura of belonging to the past.”

“What did you do then, Richmond?”

“For a time, neither of us moved, Bateau, we simply stood side by side, leaning on the rail, invisible in our cloak of fog. It was only the persistent gleam from his hoop that revealed his immobile presence to me.

“Suddenly the youth murmured, ‘What did Lot’s wife see?’

“I swear, Bateau, the question arose from somewhere within him and not from his lips. His lips hadn’t moved. You’ve read the Bible, Bateau … Boozy Bateau, how long has it been since you’ve been to church? God decided to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, but to save Lot and his family under the condition that they should leave without turning their heads to see the destruction. Lot’s wife, we are told, curious like all women, couldn’t resist the temptation and her gaze wandered back … and God turned her into a pillar of salt. Salt …

“The youth with the piratical earring licked his lips and tasted the salt that the sea breeze constantly deposited upon us, as if he was sensing the spirit of that woman who had succumbed to her curiosity. Bateau, I swear it, believe me, I tasted it along with him even though I hadn’t parted my lips. It was as if his tongue had somehow entered my mouth and mysteriously delivered the taste to me. I felt the roof of my mouth go numb, my saliva grow bitter, my gums on fire. We are sinning, I thought, but I could not work up the courage to cross myself.

“The boy had wondered aloud, ‘What could she have seen to merit such punishment?’

“No one ever found out, isn’t that right, Bateau? The reason why God turned her into salt was so that nobody else could ever find out what had actually happened to Sodom. The youth considered it curious that a God that is always demonstrative when angry, and arranges events so that his acts of retribution are amply witnessed, behaved like that. Why was He so secretive about the destruction of Sodom? Have you ever wondered why He turned her into a pillar of salt, Bateau? Is it that somehow salt is the cost of knowledge?

“The fog suddenly thinned and for the first time I could see the eyes of the youth, eyes pitch-black like the darkest night. And then, you really won’t believe what happened, Bateau. He gripped the railing with such strength that for a moment I thought he would rip it off. But no, he just levered himself on his hands, drawing his legs upwards until his boots rested on the handrail and, balancing with confidence, stood upright, spread his arms wide as if nailed to a cross and launched himself into the violet sea.”

Richmond had clambered onto the table to demonstrate the youth’s dive. Having risen on his toes and spread his arms wide, he precipitated from his perch with such force that his arms couldn’t prevent his jaw from staining the floorboards with blood. He spat a few teeth out, blinked through watery eyes and whispered, “Bateau, I swear to you, I saw him plunge into those waters a mile out of your port.”

I asked him if he had reported all this to Captain Cortez and what his response had been. Richmond wiped the blood from his mouth and whimpered that the captain had reprimanded him, accusing him of not taking his pill, which was why he had been conversing with phantoms. He must have been affected by the posters advertising the Colony’s salt that the Seventy-Five had posted in all the cities of the civilised world, the posters of the violet woman who had no face but only a mouth and an eye that stared from the tip of her tongue. The eye that saw, the tongue that tasted the guilt of knowledge, the salt of punishment.

“A masterful interweaving of symbols, a diabolically cunning advertisement if I were to judge by the sales of the salt,” growled Cortez, and he rapped Richmond’s temples with his knuckles. “The poster is infecting your nightmares.”

The Lieutenant, however, was sure that there had been a stowaway onboard the ship and that he had been a witness to his suicide. Cortez had derided the suicide’s choice of venue as these waters refuse to drown you, whereas the open Mediterranean, like quicksand, will greedily suck in those wishing to part with life. He had used his finger, leaning over the railing to point out the hull’s bottom, exposed by the water. Here we have thousands of tons of vessel that fail to part these waters, so how could a few tens of kilos of humanity? The Lieutenant’s reported suicide would have bounced off the surface and then floated. But no, Richmond stuck to his story since he had seen the golden earring describe an arc through the air before disappearing into the violet depths.

“These waters foment malicious hallucinations. Do remember to take your pill regularly,” admonished Cortez.

The lookout, his eyes glued to his binoculars, shouted from the crow’s nest that the Sea Gates had been sighted. The Lieutenant turned his head and saw a great column emerge from the fog, near enough for him to fear a collision. Cortez rushed up to the bridge and shouted to all the crew to take their positions for the turnaround. The sailors swarmed up the rigging like monkeys to adjust the orientation of the sails, while the fins around the waterline went up and down like piano keys. With a mighty noise the ballast weights rolled to starboard, causing Richmond to lose his balance and plunge to the deck. He grabbed onto the rail and watched as the sea came up nearly to his face as the deck tilted almost vertically. The listing hull managed to successfully manoeuvre a forty-five degree turn. Slowly, the second column hove into view from the opposite side. The ship succeeded in bisecting them and its raised side gradually descended until the vessel became horizontal again.

Over the Lieutenant’s head, he saw the pediment that joined the two columns and the giant relief of the two linked arms. The elbow of one of the arms extended much further than it did on the classic Consortium trademark and hung like a stalactite. The main mast passed right underneath it, briefly becoming its stalagmite. Cortez locked the steering wheel. “Now all we do is wait.” He licked the tip of his pencil and noted in the ship’s log:

Thursday, 20th of August, 18:00 hours. Passed through the gates of the Colony.

I am writing this down, Your Excellencies, exactly as Richmond related it.

Colonist’s File No.:
03256458

Place of Birth:
Antalya, Turkey

Position:
Captain of the Guards

Administrative Level:
B1

Adopted Name:
Andrew Drake

… The Green Box is not among my responsibilities, which is why I am ignorant of anything to do with its contents and its transportation. Dr Fabrizio, who is in the room next door, writing his own letter, can confirm this.

I return to that night, of the 20th of August, which marked the beginning of this affair. It was a difficult night for the Guard because an easterly was blowing. We had heard the warning bells of the wind tower since early afternoon and from their frenzied sound I could tell that we were in for eight on the Beaufort scale. I gave instructions that the guardsmen be armed and set about planning the patrols. The men were split into teams of twelve. They covered their mouths with wet handkerchiefs so as not to breathe the cloud in and then spread themselves throughout the quarters.

Whenever an east wind blows, the number of crimes rises, so we go on the alert. The vast saltworks of the Consortium can be found to the east of the Colony and the fumes are dangerous. A violet cloud spreads over the houses, it stings the eyes, scrapes one’s throat raw and can even harm the brain if the pill the Infirmary dispenses isn’t taken. For reasons of safety, whenever the wind reaches eight Beaufort we impose a curfew. My men patrol with pistols that fire tranquilliser darts to sedate anyone who has a crisis.

Some colonists get lost in the fog and when it clears, we find them floating in a daze on the waters of the port. If they go in the opposite direction, towards the desert that is, then we never find them. In the desert leprosy rules and whoever gets lost is not sought.

On Friday, at daybreak, the officer of the watch brought the list with the missing persons, according to statements that he had collected. Seven colonists had been lost the previous night – a comparatively limited loss. I completed my report and ordered the members of the band to gather in the courtyard of the guardhouse to rehearse our pieces. Governor Bera had given me orders to include a new waltz in our programme, and he had also pointed out that the trombone had been playing out of key. The trombonist still needed a lot of work and I had already relieved him of his morning duties to get extra practice, but these things take their time.