The Tyrant's Novel (25 page)

Chaddock said, Don't get too messy, Alan. We've just had a call for you.

A call for me? I asked, unbelieving.

Yes, you know, a call. And he pointed his index finger towards heaven. I'm sure it's good news. But you can't linger.

He yelled to his subordinates. Where are those fucking lazy Overalls?

He meant the Metropolitan Police in their blue overalls, who would eventually come to take Mrs. Carter away. Crimes of such passion as Mrs. Carter had just committed were not within the purview of the Overguard. Their tasks were both subtler at one extreme, and more Gothic at the other.

Chaddock returned his gaze to Louise. We both saw her eyes roll up in a strange way. An ambulance wailed into the curb, and Overguards lifted me away so that the ambulance men could deal, kneeling, with the victim. It seemed that within seconds a creaky old Fiat of the Metropolitan Police rolled up too, and a man in a suit and three Overalls got out.

One of the ambulance men tried to pump Louise James's heart, but deep veinous blood emerged instead of breath. The ambulance man looked up to the plainclothed Overall and Captain Chaddock. No, he said. Sorry, he told me, as if I were James's husband.

Chaddock said to me, Sorry Alan, but you've been called away.

Not now, I told him.

He pulled my elbow.

Not now, I yelled.

Calm yourself, Alan.

Curse you, Mrs. Carter, I yelled stupidly as Overalls pushed her into the Fiat. She looked at me with purest hatred. Now two Overguards took me, for the first time in our association, firmly and fiercely by the arms, and dragged me off.

You see! yelled Mrs. Carter through her window. Perhaps in her mind, the Overguard were taking me to be punished for long-established lies. I was thrown, rather than aided, into the back of the car. Someone opened a flask and brandy went willy-nilly down my throat. By the time I had stopped choking on it, and its artificial comfort entered my veins, the car was rolling, leaving behind the Overalls and the ambulance men and ranting Mrs. Carter, and the limbs of Louise James.

As the limo rolled, the blindfold was applied again, and in the darkness I began the futile yet disabling business of absorbing all that had happened to me and to others. I mentioned to the darkness of the limo that I had blood on my shirt—I could feel it.

Don't worry, Chaddock told me. Palace will look after you. Long as Boss isn't kept up after midnight.

This time the journey seemed shorter than the first one made by McBrien and myself. Soon, all were whispering at whatever palace gate it happened to be, and the Overguard men slipped my blindfold off while we were still in progress within the walls. I was surprised to see, well dug in, amongst the splendid gardens, a battery of antiaircraft rockets. Who were these rockets intended for? The Americans? Or the internal dissenters, some of them in the army and air force? The colonnade at the end of the driveway was a different one from that of the palace in which I'd first met Great Uncle. I presumed that this was Highgate Palace, the one nearest Martyrs Avenue.

They opened the door of the car and helped me out, and I went up the stairs in my bloodied shirt and pants with Chaddock. A palace Overguard officer, member of the Praesidia and a far more scholarly-looking man than Chaddock, met us inside the door and saluted to Chaddock as he handed me over. But the procedure as I progressed along the corridors was similar now. I surrendered my clothing.

Do I get my passport back now? I asked.

In a while, said the officer. Not tonight.

No distaste showed on the faces of the men who handled my clothes soaked with poor Louise James's blood. But I felt that the astonishment and horror I had brought with me would swamp my coming conversation with Great Uncle, and I confess I was pleased to see them clear out with the mess. I showered, gave a urine sample, had an anal examination, and dressed in the same sort of sterile costume I had been put in last time, and dipped my hands in permanganate. This time, however, there was no stop in any anteroom. Stumbling, accompanied by two Praesidian guards, I was taken at a good clip along corridors, and unlike last time there was now no dim office or bureaucratic corridor, but a hallway which seemed to be all gold cloth, and in its midst double doors, molded with tigers and dauntless fifteenth-century hunters. If Great Uncle had greeted me like a soldier in a bunker last time, this time—so the molded and sculpted doors indicated—he would greet me as a prince.

The two guards either side of the door advanced to meet in the center and pushed both leaves open. One of my own escorts gave me the slightest nudge before peeling away. The room I now entered was prodigious in size, one entire wall taken up by a mosaic of gold, green, scarlet, and blue in which stylized old emperors triumphed above the smiling waters of the rivers. The wall to my left told with echoing richness a tale of forgotten classic gardens and orchards. To my front—it seemed the distance of a football field away—there was a far-off dais, and beyond it an enormous window down which water ran in a copious fall, a triumph of architecture by which light would enter, cooled and refracted, though one could see neither out nor in. On the low dais beneath this marvel sat Great Uncle in a sober, bankerlike blue suit, and the immediately recognizable Sonny in some fantastically lapeled and bell-bottomed costume almost certainly of his own design. I had a sense that I had entered upon a family scene, a dialogue well in progress and not yet done.

From this distance I could barely hear anything, what with the thunder and whispers of the water window. I saw Great Uncle wave to me. I came forward down a carpet like a river, with gold and bejeweled fish swimming towards their master in a stream of vivid blue—just as I now swam to him. I found on that short journey, and to my astonishment, that indeed I was not keen on perishing, even if Sonny told me it was about to happen, giving me moments of preparation. My hands were sweating, my feet prickled as I stumbled along like a giant baby in my immune toddler suit.

Both men stood up as I approached. How extraordinary, I thought. I noticed that Sonny's M16 was propped against the back of his chair. Did it serve tonight as an accessory, or a genuine weapon? I remembered what an NCO had said on Summer Island one night: No one can imagine being dead, but thousands of kids with no talent for it have managed it without any trouble at all. The dead could thus easily imagine themselves dead, but I worried about it in my own case on my way down the carpet.

As I got within shouting range, Great Uncle cried, Alan! Alan! and demanded greater speed of me.

I could not avoid being in some primal way flattered and willing. There is a reason why Great Uncle's portrait is everywhere, the religion of state, on walls throughout the city, in one mural an ancient emperor in a chariot, in another a young radical atop a tank, yelling for true independence. And here he was, standing again, the god in the suit, to welcome me, as it remarkably seemed. At last I reached the foot of the dais. Without inviting me to join Sonny and himself at their symbolic level, Great Uncle reached down to me and embraced me in his arms. It was a huge embrace, typical of northern tribesmen, a sort of wedding embrace, I thought, an embrace of clans united by mutual favors and profoundest blood. I half expected Sonny to get his M16 and let off celebratory rounds into the ceiling. He was said to do that where he lived, on his own island in the river. But it was too early in the night for him. His parties were midnight affairs, his excesses were the excesses of four
A
.
M
.

I could smell Great Uncle's cologne, Tommy Hilfiger, the same I had smelled on Captain Chaddock.

He released me in a way that sent me staggering back a little. This is a splendid book, Alan, he said. Pearson Dysart are over the moon!

He pointed as if the astral body were above us in the huge chamber. It's a wonderful tale. The Clancys are a classical family. I know such people.

He laughed and pointed to Sonny.

My son hasn't read it, of course. But he rejoices too, in his way. You have done a wonderful thing for the state and the people. Come up. Sit down.

When I had risen a step or two, he pointed to a footstool, on which I tried to sit with some dignity. It was a strange thing. A book stolen from Sarah, yet gaining praise from the tyrant. And that was good enough for the moment. For an instant I felt like a king, though I knew that had I looked I would have seen Sarah's haglike, valid disappointment in the falling water behind Great Uncle.

It was the best I had to give, Mr. President, I told Great Uncle, for that was true. Yet I involuntarily made a cleansing gesture at my chest, remembering tortured Louise James, shuddering to death on the pavement for Private Carter.

Forgive me. I'm a little confused and overwhelmed, Mr. President.

He laughed.

I said, A friend of mine was attacked this evening by the mother of an old comrade. It was Louise James. You remember her father, Mr. President?

I've heard something of that attack. I'd rather talk about Clancy, said Great Uncle, waving the name of James away to the extent that I knew it to be accursed to him. I've heard a rumor, in fact, Alan, that you might have let Mrs. Carter loose. Yet that has its good side. James will not go back and broadcast her possibly malicious views.

I absorbed this.

Whereas, he continued, Clancy is a great hero of the people.

A revelation in the presence of a tyrant is a terrible thing. I thought of how Captain Chaddock was to protect me from all hostile influences, including those within myself. And yet he had let Mrs. Carter, a creature I had in my way created, hang round my apartment door for weeks on end.

Great Uncle, I said, you are not implying that Mrs. Carter was . . .

I am implying nothing. I'm saying that Louise James will not report her minority view.

I must have wavered on the footstool.

Are you all right? Sonny asked me, as if he might have a pill which would rouse me.

Thank you, sir. Yes.

Sonny patted the arm of his chair in a hyperactive way. Tell him about the Yankee writer, Pop!

Oh yes, said Great Uncle, back in spacious form. Pearson Dysart has paid a leading U.S. novelist to read it and he declares it a classic and comments how real it is . . . in the troubles faced by the characters . . . compared to most American writing, which is all about disenchantment and the frustrations of love. Above all, he said it will change attitudes towards the sanctions.

Great Uncle's profound dark eyes glittered like those of . . . well, of a proud great-uncle. I consider you have performed your duty fully, he said.

Sonny tapped the arm of his chair again. Good job, he said.

And to show my appreciation, Great Uncle continued, I have ordered that preparations be made for you to live from now on in a special and splendid villa at one of the palaces. You'll be given the location soon. An announcement will be made that you have been created bard of my tribe, and of the people.

Was he making a joke, prior to expressing a total rejection of my work and asking Sonny to shoot me? Elaborate spoof as it might be, I felt a peculiar onrush of panic. And in the face of both possibilities—that he was and was not joking—the blood seemed actually to want to escape my veins.

So what do you say to that, eh? asked Sonny.

Yes, I answered stupidly, trying to frame the word “Thanks,” and producing just the one bleated syllable.

I . . .

Great Uncle raised his hand. No, he said, you have done your service and this is a reward. You will be Shostakovich to my Stalin, Molière to my Sun King. You will be able to write and publish under your own name. You will be my storyteller laureate.

Sonny beamed in a distracted way at my good fortune, and stole a look at the huge watch at his wrist. Perhaps he wanted a fix, perhaps it was drawing close to time for his night's saturnalia. I became aware that after Great Uncle died this edgy Sonny would be my master, at least until the army rose and killed him, and me in my villa too, if the villa itself were not also a joke.

I am overcome, sir, I told Great Uncle nonetheless. Naturally I shall have to make preliminary arrangements.

Take your time. The workers are still at the villa for another week to ten days.

I nodded, hoping he did not see how happy that made me.

In the meantime of course, beamed Great Uncle, you have been assigned an automobile and driver to look after all your needs and be at your call.

I expressed even more thanks as best I could.

Tell me, he then further asked. Did Captain Chaddock treat you well?

I wondered whether the question was somehow the springing of the trap. But despite the unanswered matter of any culpability of Chaddock's in the slaughter of Louise James, I said, The soul of discretion, Mr. President.

I even think he'll miss you, chuckled Great Uncle, as if he had recently had quite a talk to Chaddock.

Oh, the President continued, clicking thumb and forefinger together in self-chastisement. I didn't tell you that Mr. McBrien's been appointed cultural attaché in Paris. The French have always had a soft spot for us. After World War I they hoped we'd be their puppet state. But the English got here first.

Great Uncle smiled within his godhood, far above the curious passions of the English and the French.

I am delighted at McBrien's good fortune, I told him. I believe he sometimes found it challenging to deal with me.

Ah, said Great Uncle, looking at Sonny. The artistic temperament. I know all about it. If it were not for the demands of the state, my son would have been an artist.

Sonny grinned crazily at me in echo of his father's grin.

Well, they'll take you home now, Alan. And thank you.

I rose as the President did, but again, an apparently forgotten item came to his mind.

One thing! he said.

He looked to Sonny, who half yawned and reached down into his boot to extract a
chardri,
the national dagger.

Oh, yes, I said, full of fear and crazy boldness, exposing my wrist to let erratic Sonny induct me with the three promised cuts. At each lusty incision, I thought of Louise James, so recently dead and worthy of memory, but swept from my mind by these potent, sharp-edged entities with whom I shared a crown room.