Freedom Island (14 page)

❊

A soft light, a numbness, then giddiness as gradually I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was Haussmann like the devil at the gates of hell, tugging at my arm. Next a doctor—a pale and sickly-looking man with regulation stethoscope dangling from his neck, who evoked sympathy rather than comfort.
              ‘Welcome back, Ollie!’ chuckled Haussmann.
              I could tell from the bricked-up windows, the arch of the ceiling, the damp, that damp in the sheets and my craving for sunlight, that I was in a cellar. On the wall opposite hung various tools that could only be for torture, some with electrical cables, while on my side were arranged the temporary facilities of healthcare.
              ‘You are a lucky man, you know. One of the benefits of my little team is that when something happens, we are there so fast you can’t imagine! You may think you are alone, but you are not: we always protect you!’ And with that Haussmann, glancing around, smiled. ‘Free healthcare, what a job you have! We have brought you to Brussels, you know . . . I do actually have other things to do. Can you hear me, Ollie?’
              ‘Unfortunately.’
              ‘Umm. Don’t forget, I am the man who saved you, saved your life! You must owe me some politeness, at least?’
              I stared expressionless, still dazed.
              ‘Well, your friend Max certainly put a stop to your little plan, although I think we can agree he was a little overzealous: he was supposed to be your Observer, not your executioner! These bloody aristocrats, think they can do anything! . . . Max is one of ours, Ollie, always was.’
              ‘Somehow it doesn’t surprise me.’
              ‘It was Max who picked you out for us in the very beginning, in fact . . . by the way, your own father was an informer too.’
              ‘I don’t believe you.’
              ‘Well have it your way, but who do you think got you that cozy job of yours in the first place?
              ‘Well,’ he went on, ‘I saw what you wrote, of course. Hardly evidence, was it?’ he paused a moment, ‘to be honest, I had expected something like this from you. But you’re rather a special case, so I am giving you one final chance to make yourself useful: you would be wise to take it. However, I can’t let things like that go unpunished, so we killed one of your nephews . . . ’
              I choked violently, trying to respond, to do something though I had no idea what, but the nurses stepped forward to restrain me. ‘Which one?!’ I pleaded.
              ‘And so we find ourselves here again,’ Haussmann said sadly, ignoring my question. ‘Next time—should you try it again—I shall have to choose between your brother’s other boy and your boring little Spanish girl,’ then he frowned heavily: ‘I know that no one is more prepared for death than the mixed classes, with our monopoly on suffering, but should you decide to martyr yourself . . . well, I will kill them all. I’ll hate myself for it, I truly will, but I will do it!’
              His face had turned grey in places, but then, as he was prone, he brightened suddenly, a healthier colour flooding his cheeks: ‘This really is check-mate, Ollie.’
              ‘Ok, I will get to the point,’ he went on. ‘I can see you are still not quite ready to talk like gentlemen. Let’s see. Well, we have a system of drugs: obedience, loyalty, loneliness, all of those things, it’s great! Fluoride in the toothpaste eroding individuality, free vaccines with hidden agendas, belief drugs in the communal wine! Of course, we also pour a productive cocktail through the water supply, medicating the masses. Your chaps think all those cameras are to control people, eh? but the truth is we hardly need them! If you control people’s emotions, you control their thoughts, don’t you? If you want to go to war, pop in a few chemicals and away we go! Bang bang! My personal favourite, by the way: low-frequency vibrations, invisible hums through the Lower districts. You know, just turn the knob and watch them sink into their dismal personal failure. I call that my soul music, ha ha. Come to think of it, I’m like the conductor of a giant orchestra!’
              Something was being dragged in, a man: a peasant; an asymmetrical face, tobacco-stained teeth and fingers—hands and feet in chains, gagged, face smashed and bleeding . . . but the drugs were blurring my eyes, my memory; I felt giddy. I could recognise the man but not place him, and then more so: Max! good God, that miserly bloody dentist was doing the dragging, together with a monkey whose face was cut to ribbons. I looked at Gustav, bewildered.
              ‘Surprised to see your old friend again?’ Gustav paused smugly for a moment, then pressed a pistol into my hand and gestured toward the man.
              ‘Shoot him. Now. Show me your loyalty. Remember, I am giving you your last chance: defy me again and there shall be no forgiveness. Shoot him!’ And he took a step back to protect his suit. He was enjoying it.
              ‘I don’t remember . . . ’
              ‘Does it matter?’
              I looked at the gun, just a twitch of my wrist the other way and Haussmann would get it instead—or Max! But what if the gun was empty? If it was a test? Either way I would be killed, then everything I knew would be lost. They could replace Haussmann, or Max: men like them can always be replaced . . . and this farmer . . .
              The rasp of the automatic blasted off the bare walls and the man dropped limp in his chains. I wondered if I could have done it if I’d remembered him more clearly; I did feel I knew him, I felt something for the man, and what if we had been friends? —perhaps we had drunk together, though it seemed unlikely—could I have done it then?
              Haussmann rested his warm Rolexed hand on my shoulder and smiled awkwardly, with an uncomfortable tightening of the skin, then simply picked up the lecture from where he’d left off.
              ‘To curb nationalism, it was necessary to centralise communications, otherwise it’s all babel, of course. Democracy protects the system so long as information supports the system, you know, rather like “I love you” in a relationship: the more times you hear it, ha ha, the more you believe it.’
              ‘I did work at Morality and Culture, remember?’
              ‘Yes, ok, but my point is that your Brits, for example, were once proud to be British or English or whatever, because they were told to be—but now they are told something different and mostly they accept it. They’re too busy feathering their nests to care anyway. Though I have to hand it to you, you’re a trickier bunch than most. Not dangerous exactly, more like a mosquito on my arse!’ And flushed with his own humour, he paused.
              ‘We do all this for the people, Ollie,’ he went on. ‘We stopped war in Europe, try not to forget that. Besides, if the people have their church and their folk music, and they are citizens, why do they need nationality? Their religion transcends borders, their belief gives them trust, and without trust there can be no progress. Nationality destroys all that. That’s old-think. Isn’t it simply time to become a European, Ollie?’ and he delivered a wink. ‘It’s a win-win, you see: the Church and the Union are the optimal combination! If they think God’s watching them, we don’t need to! Besides, people do need hope, Ollie; we can’t just give them the lottery, can we?’
              I was speechless, Haussmann was a believer, beyond doubt! Passing on the bloody responsibility! I could see it now, his face was full of it: that terrifying Christian exaltation, that intense, insane enthusiasm for believing the absurd!
              ‘The churches were empty, Ollie: we filled them. We turned the people back to belief. There are now blessings for offices and apartments, even cars.’ Haussmann looked curious: ‘Incidentally, Ollie, why do you find nationalism easier to believe than religion?’
              I remained silent.
              ‘Go north and make them holy! I am offering you one final chance to save yourself—besides, do you really want pagan hoards running amok all over the place, cheating on each other left right and centre with their incense and baubles and yoga?’
              ‘It doesn’t always work, though, does it?’
              He sighed. ’Don’t test me. As I’ve already told you, it does work. You would be surprised how much of my time I spend trying to
increase
crime, nurturing minor scandals: Fear turns them to us, or to the Church. Ha, there’s no limit to faith. And your band of misfits did wonders to help with all of that, my friend! However, perhaps you were referring to yourself, so let me explain a little about
your
life: Max picked you out for a trial of a military depression drug.
              ‘Drop it on the enemy and off they go and kill themselves! Not a bad idea. Well, as you can imagine, there were some colourful side effects; paranoia, hallucinations, visions, premonitions, apparitions, revelations . . . Most of the testers killed themselves, fine, but a few—with a certain personality type: underdeveloped adulthood, lack of purpose, frustrated intelligence—developed hyper-aggressive tendencies instead, and, well let’s say, megalomania and self-obsession, and it was those types whom we planted into roles where we could observe the effects. Amongst that group, my friend, was you.’
              ‘Maybe you quaffed a little too.’
              ‘Ha! I’m no megalomaniac, I’m an administrator—like you were once! I keep things in order, that’s all. The people need a strong hand, a pragmatic organiser. I keep life in balance. That can’t be so bad, can it?’
              I was gobsmacked: ‘You kill innocent people!’
              Haussmann became irritated. ‘For better or for worse, it’s my job to confront where morality starts. You have to “break some eggs”, as your precious English would say. Besides, you paint
me
as a monster when
you
commit random murder!
              ‘Anyway,’ he insisted, ‘the point I am attempting to get to is this, that ultimately you were the only one who went on to display the ability to combine all those screwy characteristics with resourcefulness, logic and control. And we’d put you precisely where you could use it. Lucky we got you out when we did: you could have become a true menace, and one created by us! Isn’t that always the way—great things destroyed from within? Anyway, thanks to something in your
island
genes, which we are still working on, combined with our depression drug, we created—and I really don’t want you to start thinking you’re Jesus again, but in many respects we created a leader.’
              ‘Do you want me to thank you?’
              Haussmann sighed heavily. ‘You know, I am beginning to know what you’re going to say before you say it. My mother told me to be careful of the children of teachers . . .’ and he paused resignedly. ‘I know your file well. You became something of a hobby of mine, you know: I’m quite sure I have a considerably better idea of your reality than you do.’
              I scoffed.
              Haussmann frowned angrily: ‘You were a real loser before that drug, you know.’
              I felt sick to the stomach, torn apart: by fury. All that I had once despised in the system—in my life—was here, embodied in just one man! ‘Your drug destroyed my life! And made me a murderer!’
              ‘Yes, quite an achievement . . . but quite clearly not without its limits!’
              Haussmann’s face hardened. He snorted, then angrily between clenched teeth, as though to himself: ‘you know what . . . I got it wrong with this one—I’m wasting my time! I should have known better . . . ’ and he waved flippantly, then excitedly, to the nurse.
              Dizziness overcame me. There were swirling blotches and a thudding deadweight pain grasping at my chest—I was quite certain a giant hole was about to appear beneath me and gobble me up. My jaw clenched. I went into a hyperdrive as if I were falling in a dream a spectator in a timeless nothing then tired, saggy-eyed, middle-aged and overweight resting my head in my hands, hunched forward, staring, hairy nostrils inhaling, and next Noelia, more beautiful than ever, smiling more completely than ever, her eyes warm and tender saying I have an unbelievable body, then running down a country lane, her chestnut hair in the wind . . . then I knew: they would kill her! Children’s voices: my dead brother and my dead brother’s cute little dead kids, with my father swinging together again back and forth from the rafters, creaking in the family barn now swallowed up by the vast dynastic estate of some government lackey, those carefree fields and rolls of hay scattered in some invisible pattern that only my father and brother had understood, red with blood now because of me—again Noelia, heartbroken, ruined, calling me a liar, a user, a liar in those soothing caring tones, Morality and Culture and its relentless fucking tinkering everywhere invisible to everyone else they just don’t know where to look! Dickinson-Standing laughing, rotating in his perfect blue business suit, me as ever torn in two, one who thinks and acts and reacts and the other waiting, eating away at myself, back again, uncomfortable with this, needing that, unable to decide, afraid, pathetic, the inner me and the outer me locked in conversation. Good grief, the rational and emotional mixed into one agonising inflamed consommé ripping at those little blood vessels in my head my veins my heart my nerves my eyes sinking but bulging at the same time my bloody arms and shoulders stiff bruised dead and useless—

❊

Light flooded the stage. Velvet curtains parted and out strode Dante in full evening dress, top hat and cane,
              ‘Ladies and Gentlemen!’ The crowd applauded on cue, he stepped aside and two perfect white horses pranced out, in time, with unicorn horns and a golden chariot behind them: the twins, Sohna and Mohna, stood aboard, arguing behind their plastic smiles, in leather bikinis and fur trapper hats. As they leapt down, the horses stopped dead and the pouting twins continued on around the circus ring, in the same fashion as the horses had, to the accompaniment of wolf whistles and inappropriate comments.
              Next the trapeze, out of nowhere, streamers trailing. Metres beneath a tiger prowled: flanked by the twins, each wielding a golden stick as their feet continued to trot the rhythm.
              There were no hours for the show; it picked-up as the sun went down, as people gathered, and would continue on oblivious to the clock’s usual rules—the audience coming and going as they pleased: children dragged-off home then replaced by drunks from the all-night bars in town, stamping their feet and bellowingas Queen Sissy in her satin dresses asked with her bottomless charm if they wanted the show to continue
. . 
. well, did they?
              The furore had already gone on for five hours when the Governor’s magical moment arrived. Unexpectedly, because he’d long become convinced he’d been overlooked, Queen Sissy announced to the roaring crowd:
              ‘And now, from the depths of the most terrifying asylum withinthese shores, Bedlam!
. . 
. a magician so great that he even managed to behere
. . 
. rather than there! Yes, we welcome the wonderful, the elegant, the cultured [wink] gentleman who chose the sorry likes of you over his own better kind: The Great Gajo!’
              The Governor’s mind went blank. Not through fear, but thrill—this was without question the most magnificent moment of his life: a moment certainly never supposed to happen. But, without thinking, his legs carried him forward in their patent leather shoes and satin green trousers, and above them he wore a gold lamé morning suit and a battered top hat—he became the man: The Great Gajo! He improvised, teased, messed up, invited the crowd to bloody well come and try it for themselves
. . 
. he was humiliated, adored, booed and hissed until after ten whirlwind minutes that felt like sixty the band drowned-out the playful jeers and Tolstoy picked him up and carried him off.
              Dalma was delighted. Vindicated: that she had indeed found herself a special man, a performer! Handed a unlabelled bottle of spirit by Dante, the four of them swigged the nasty fuel in fearless gulps, chocking in unison,
              ‘Why everyone doesn’t join the circus, I’ll never know!’
              The Governor then laid with his love in the back of the truck that would become their home. Throughout the heatwave summer of endless journeying that followed, amid a comical trail of unroadworthy vehicles, they were to crawl at the pace of the slowest: ‘these are not people of an impatient nature!’ the Governor would laugh, and then he’d wave happily as locals drove past—waving back, or else shouting abuse and blowing their horns as the ensemble made its way from one forgotten place to another, and occasionally back again. The truck was almost sixty years old—as ancient as the Governor himself, and hand-painted with the promise of ‘Circus’ in Western lettering across either side. He would sit in the back with his legs wide and an arm draped over Dalma’s shoulder: a swashbuckling buccaneer amid a floor littered with ropes and gear, opposite a monkey in a cage that screamed whenever he looked at it.
              They caroused identical medieval towns and eternal prefabricated suburbs. They amused stiff officials, hardened labourers, prim housewives and local dignitaries as they edged with their agonising slowness over thousands of miles of baking tarmac, over hills and across long tedious plains. They met ruddy farmers who threw furious profanities, old ladies who fed them apple pie and permitted them to use the bathroom, children wide-eyed with wonder beside protective parents, and cheery country policemen who turned a blind eye and enjoyed a drink.
              The Governor attained with time and the ease of those carefree days the same appearance as the others; his skin darkening—the sun, the wind and the labour, his hair mangled and free, grown down to his shoulders again—as it had as a teenager, only now sparser on top—and a protective chain of superstitious importance dangled from his neck.
              By the summer’s end, Dalma was a full year older than when they had first met, and as the Governor quietly admired her he saw how in even such a short time she was changing, evolving—the childishness in her face giving-way to womanly beauty; playfulness being displaced by elegance. But her adoration of The Great Gajo remained undiminished—he knew that, and still she held his hand as tightly as if they were children in a crowd: Like a ripened fruit her skin breathed fertility, such that the Governor was dependably as straight as a soldier in response to her most innocent of touches—not one night of that roaming summer passed without the urgent magic of their lovemaking amid the ropes, and Dalma would boast to the giggles of her closest newfound friends of the reliable stiffness and remarkable diameter of her Gajo’s wand, and how she was the only one among them to have witnessed the finest of his tricks.