Island of Lightning (11 page)

And I choose. Finger by finger I unwrap my right hand from the ladder, the ladder that is tied to two iron brackets in the ceiling and I reach up towards a hand that extends towards me, a saint's hand or even God's or maybe the skinny finger of a demon because perhaps the fresco is a depiction of hell, but angel or devil I am glad to touch this figure in the paradiso, his face an empty dial, the colour gone entirely so that only his hand remains here one hundred feet above the auditorium, and beyond that hand yet unreachable are the stars, all dark lanterns now, those stars once silver which today are mere outlines of stars. Yes, a constellation of dead stars and black planets above the gods themselves.

4. Television

Yes, I say to myself. Or rather, no. But what's certain is that it's not taken long to lose my mind. Is that something to be proud of? Perhaps I should treasure the fact.

I turn on the television. Channel One is the Government Channel. Channel Two the same. These are live broadcasts of the government's pronouncements. Channel Three is a repeat of what the government announced yesterday. Channel Four is what the government said two days ago. I zap and zap.

Then, at last. Channel Forty Two is the forecast. Here it comes.

Sea?
Confused

Wind?
Bourgeois
.

Sun?
Indiscriminate
.

Air?
Vanishing
.

Fire?
Numb
.

Earth?
Mythic
.

Snow?
Bisexual
.

Visibility?
Salacious
.

Pressure?
Yellow
.

Tomorrow?
Xenophobic
.

Long term?
Vodka martini, no ice.

Yes, I say to myself. Yes, yes, yes. Then, no no no no no. Then I say, or. Or or. That's it, I say. Or.

5. The Pealing

I make an appointment with the Superintendent of Bells. Because I have questions.

Why do the Carmelite church bells and the bells of the shipwreck church and the cathedral bells and St Pawlu bells and St Christopher's bells and the Lady of Damascus bells and the Victories bells not strike on the hour or the half or the quarter? And if they do strike on the hour, why do they strike the wrong hour?

The Superintendent comes to my apartment to listen. He sits there on my sofa with a saucer upon his knees. We wait. When the bells start to ring, he consults his watch. After one hour, his tea not touched, the Superintendent of Bells says he will inform the pealers' sergeant-at-arms and that officer will act. Or not, as the case might be.

There is a backlog of enquiries, he says, that must be dealt with first. Some complaints, of course. But also praise for the bells and the bellringers. Some people want more peals.

Did I know that?

There are one hundred and forty seven saints' days, he says. And that doesn't include Sundays. Also, there are victory celebrations. There are so many wars. It is lucky for you we do not celebrate the defeats. And of course the bells must be tested. Every so often bells must be brought to the boil. Bells must be allowed their bellowing, as I have heard it put. Bells must bawl. Bells are bowls. We must fill them to the brim. That is why they are bells. If bells don't ring it is surely a crime and an insult to the bellmakers' union, the bellbrokers society and campanologists everywhere. At one time, sir, we will all be summoned by bells.

You betcha, I say.

And as far as I am concerned, he says, these bells are not loud. I have visited homes where the grandparents' dentures have rattled, where the window glass has shivered, where an ikon of Our Lady was disturbed from the wall.

What about the fresco? I ask. In the theatre?

What do you mean?

It's flaking away. It's unique and priceless and it's flaking away. I blame the bells.

Surely not, says the Superintendent. Though now you mention it, the Carmelite bells are particularly…

Unbearable?

Particularly…

Deafening?

No, particularly fine bells.

Particularly loud bells, I say. With monstrous clappers. When they ring, as you've heard, it's like a hundred blacksmiths hammering horseshoes.

Hmm, he says again. The fresco.

I look at the dandruff on his shoulders. The dust.

Perhaps, he says, regarding the fresco, perhaps the Department of Tintinnabulation should be informed.

6. The Soldier's Tale

There was a man I sometimes saw at Leone's on the island of lightning. We would talk, and one day he told me his story.

Yes, I escaped, he said. Came here in the bottom of a fishing boat. The crew threw me out on the north side of the island, not a crust in my pocket, not a word of the island's language in my head.

For months, maybe years I had stood in the black land. There were the stars, as thick as leopard fur. And below the stars was our platoon. You could predict each one of us: clown, psycho, clerk, coward. Which was I? Apart from such conscripts there was only one real soldier. The sergeant.

We knew that out there in the desert was the madman's army. We could see their campfires and sometimes the plastic wrappers from their rations blew into our camp. Some of our boys would lick the sugar off the cellophane. But we all understood that their army was as poor as our army, as afraid as our army, as badly-equipped as we were, our guns without bullets, our boots without laces. And we knew they were as stupid as we knew we were stupid. And like our army we knew the other army would be full of beggars and boys and pederasts.

It seemed that I was always on guard. But there was nothing to guard. We were guarding the border but the border was a straight line. On one side, a grain of sand. On the other side, another grain. I used to look at the ground where the border was written and try to understand.

Surely it should be a special place, a border? Maybe it should be a holy place. So why such straight lines? Were the emperors so bored they required their draftsmen to draw the border through mountains and mosques and grazing land, separating the kid from the goat?

No, they weren't so careless. There was oil in the north. There was oil in the south. But in the middle there was nothing. So the people from the middle stole the oil.

I patrolled the wire. Right, left, up, down. Up and down I looked at Rigel. Rigel was the left foot of the conqueror and that was a cold light. Right, left I gazed at Betelgeuse. That star was the right shoulder of the conqueror, and I found no comfort in its urn of ash.

Out in the dark there was sometimes laughter, sometimes screaming. Just like our camp. And some nights the sergeant would appear. It had to be in darkness and he came silent as a sniper, creeping along the wire towards me.

Look, sarge, I would say. I'm on your side.

Though he did not reply his mouth would make a bubble. And then he would laugh, a dark man the sergeant, from some southern tribe, black hair on his belly and his billyclub with a bloody ferrule.

Washed was he? Where was the water to wash in the Badiet esh Sham? There was no pool there, no tarn and no tarp to trap the dew. Even in that dry air he smelt like a mule.

Whose side? he would whisper.

And I would look at the whipcord in his cock and see that the border ran even there.

Whose side? he would hiss.

Your side, sarge, I would answer, the wind blowing, the sugar papers trapped on the wire, Orion and the madman's stars almost overhead.

7. Swiftsure

There is a man lives in Eagle Street who deserted from the Royal Navy many years ago. I sometimes see him in an upstairs window where he will sit in the mornings, a thin man with a sallow face, a birdcage that holds a linnet beside him.

Manuela tells me stories about this Mr Swiftsure, as we sit over our coffee and cardamom during her breaks. Last night in my room, sleep had been particularly heavy. I had awoken with difficulty, a cabaret of weeping in my head. Yesterday there had been children's voices in the theatre. A school party I supposed, although I knew the place was closed. And whispering too. A campaign of whispering, transparent voices floating to earth like cranefly wings.

Swiftsure has worked in the victualling yard and made himself useful during the sieges, even after losing a foot to a musketball. Once he ferried laudanum and lemon juice to the lazzaretto so people are inclined to turn a blind eye, even with a bounty on the old smuggler's head.

Not me, whispers Manuela. I hate old Swiftsure.

Why?

He has hides all over the island. And a little popgun. Swiftsure shoots birds. He will sit in his hide all day for the chance of a potshot. Eagles, pigeons, the tiny birds that pass in spring, he shoots them all.

She leans closer.

He's a snarer too. A poacher. Like the rest of them he uses snares to catch birds alive. But I think of him in his hides. Oh, so beautifully camouflaged. You'll pass a yard away and not notice there is green canvas in the branches and a little man sitting in the scorpion grass with his gun cocked. You know…

What?

He could be with us in this room. And you'd not notice him. Of all the snarers, Swiftsure's the craftiest. He can be invisible.

Now coincidentally, but the island of lightning is full of coincidences, I encounter Swiftsure this afternoon. He is in the street, whimpering after the linnet that has fallen from its cage. I find the bird in a drain and capture it, wings bedraggled, its eye a raspberry seed.

Ta boss, says Swiftsure. Ta very much. The old King o' Naples wouldn't last long with these cats. You must come up, boss. Come up for a drink.

Swiftsure pours cactus juice from a stone jug with a mitred lip.

To his lordship.

Pardon?

Nelson of course. What other lord is there in these parts?

I look around. There are stuffed birds everywhere. A bee eater sits inside the door, a plover in black and gold stencilling hovers from a wire overhead. On the table, otherwise covered with papers, wineglasses and an evil-looking nimcha, stands a brass astrolabe. Swiftsure follows my gaze.

Arab work, he says. Very useful if you want to say a few Hail Marys toward Mecca.

Do you use it?

Oh yes. It's a stardome too. I go out mostly at night. Get away from the lights see. Just bob about out there and look at the globe then study the stars themselves. Sometimes I can even tell where I am. Watch this.

Swiftsure closes the curtain and strikes a light, applying it to the well of oil within the globe. In the gloom it starts to glow and the star holes cut in the copper make a smoky constellation. From its cage on the balcony the linnet starts to sing.

You're honoured, Swiftsure says. Old King o' Naples doesn't do much of that these days. He's a good old bird.

We stand together in the dusk listening to its song. Then he touches the globe.

See this star. Its name is Antares. The pride of Scorpio. And if you look at it as I do, through a spyglass, it's exactly the same colour as this. A ruby in the night. That's Antares. With a sapphire close beside it too, because Antares has a pale companion. You'll have to come out one night and see for yourself

I'd like that.

Learn to set the equipment, laughs Swiftsure. You know, his lordship used to look for Antares most nights when in these waters. Can't see it a lot of the time in England.

The poacher pours another round.

Good health, I propose.

Well, maybe. I always say this stuff's the only thing that keeps me going.

The linnet like a clockwork bird, has stopped its song. Swiftsure and I stand together in the dark, the furnace of stars between us.

You know, he says, after Trafalgar they sent his lordship home stood up in a barrel of grog. Pickled the poor sod, they did. Buried the bugger in brandy. And no kidding, sometimes I know just how old Horatio must have felt. Cheers, boss.

8. The First Couple

One day Omar and I are leaving the Piccadilly when a man hails us from a balcony. We climb his stairs and part a bead curtain.

Salutations, says Omar. How the devil are you? Now, may I perform the introductions?

There are two men before us in the tiny room. Behind them the balcony is set with two plastic chairs and a table.

This is Mercurius, says Omar. A man extends his hand, a greyhaired man with a stubbly beard, the apron over his jeans covered in paint. His clothes too are discoloured, also the fingers I take.

The room is full of canvases, always, it seems, of the sea, the sea at dawn with the mist upon it, the midnight sea where the island's lights are reprinted in yellow, a sea teeming with whales and dolphins and creatures that can never have existed. And ships too, the ships that have visited the island since men ventured into the deeps.

And this is Gloriana.

Pleasured to you, says the second man, hair in toffee paper twists, his kimono pumiced with cigarette burns.

We share their supper of bread and blood oranges, Gloriana tipping fino into himself, the rest of us coffee.

You knows what Omar calls us? he cackles. Dido and Anaeas. How grand he makes us sound. And how old.

Surely Gloriana is grand enough, I say.

He shrugs and blows smoke. Ah yes, darlings. The virgin queen. She has been a role model once but I seem to have departed from the script.

We had an unfortunate incident, says Mercurius.

Unfortunate? shrieks his partner. These sailor boys come up the stairs as good sailor boys does, but I knows they is trouble in storage.

Inebriated, says Mercurius.

Steaming, darlings. Pisticated. Anyways, to cuts the short stories shorter, they kicks the place to kingdom come.

Paintings over, easel broken, the lot, said Mercurius.

Pushes Dido here over too. Fat lots of good Dido heres is. Not Caravaggio, are you, darling? Where's Caravaggio when I need him? Not seen at his lodgings a long times now.

Yes, they roughed Old Glory up something chronic, said Mercurius. Dangled the little darling over the balcony. Didn't they, you silly ox?

That's how I gets the shiner, says Gloriana. Losing thirty-five cents, too. Hanging there, I sees the wolves in the street, their greedy eyes below me in the dark.