‘Don’t worry about the next bit,’ said Cale pointing further down the letter, ‘start again there.’
‘Out of every corner of the place they came creeping on their hands and knees because their legs could not bear them; they looked like the very anatomy of death and spoke whispers like ghosts crying out of their graves. It was told to me that they were happy to eat moss where they could and then finally in desperation to scrape the carcasses out of their graves also. I know you to be a person of clemency but though I describe pitiable things, and ones easier to read about than to witness, there is no hope that these Antagonists will amend and it is a dire necessity that they be cut off. This judgement of the heavens that makes us tremble touches us not with pity.’
‘That’s enough,’ he said letting her hair go and bouncing her head off the soft bolster of the sofa – not the cruellest violence he had offered the world it must be said.
Slowly she pulled herself up and eased into a sitting position.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said at last. ‘What has this got to do with me? Or even you? This dreadful thing wasn’t what you intended, was it?’
‘Haven’t you heard? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. My intention is to be left alone with a decent bed and some decent food to go with it. But what I do is just what you said. Catastrophe follows me everywhere. I sat in the shadows back there listening to your chinless wonder whining about his reputation -‘
‘He’s not chinless!’
‘Be quiet. My reputation is that I’m a bloody child who cares no more for the lives of people than he cares for the life of a dog. My reputation is that I consume everything I touch. You put me there back with them. The blood of everyone I’ve wasted since then is on your hands as well as mine.’
‘Why don’t you just stop killing people instead of blaming everyone else?’
She said this more violently than was perhaps wise given the circumstances. But she did not lack courage.
‘And tell me how am I supposed to do that? The Redeemers won’t stop, not for anything. They intend to wrap this world in a blanket, pour on the pitch, and then set fire to it like a match. There’s no stopping.’ He stood back glaring like the Troll of Gissinghurst. To be fair, she glared back giving as good as she got. ‘Now I’m going to leave by the door – not how I got in, just in case you were wondering. I want you to think about that in the nights to come. You’re not going to call anyone because I’ll kill them if you do and even if I’m caught I’ll be sure to mention to your chinless wonder of a husband that you claimed I was the father of his child.’
‘He won’t believe you.’
‘He will a little bit.’
And with that he walked to the door and was gone.
He moved quickly down the almost empty corridors – where the only guards were the young and inexperienced and easy to avoid – and considered his evening’s work with a peculiar satisfaction. He had made her feel worse and that was what mattered. Whether he was also truly heartbroken at the unintended consequences of his orders concerning the women and children of the veldt was hard to tell. As the Englishman used to say: the truth depends on where you start the story.
By the next day Cale was thinking better of his late-night visit. He had, all said and done, threatened a pregnant woman with violence and made himself look like the monster Arbell had claimed him to be as he stood listening in the shadows. And as for the child, she was certainly lying to save her skin. He could hardly bear to think about what it meant if not. So he didn’t.
Depressed and ashamed he had gone for a walk and stumbled by accident on the great park that spread eccentrically shaped as a salamander just north of the centre of the city. It was a warm day for the time of year, bright sunshine, and the park was full of people, flirting young men and women, children playing and shouting, older couples walking up and down the great promenades with their budding lime trees doing the passagiata for which Spanish Leeds had been famous for two hundred years – the seeing and being seen. Feeling oddly woollen-headed and with one ear blocked as if water from a bath had become stuck, he walked in the sunshine until he came to one edge of Salamander Park – a huge wall carved into the granite that topped the city. It had been cut flat and into it, and thickly carved were the great figures of the Antagonist Reformation who had taken refuge in Spanish Leeds during the initial persecution and before they had moved on to found the Antagonist city at Salt Lake. Here were thirty-foot-high reliefs of men who had fought against the Redeemers to the point of hideous death and yet he had never heard of them: Butzer, Hus and Philip Melanchthon, Menno Simons, Zwingli, Hutt and the unhappy-looking Mosarghu Brothers. Who were these giants in front of him and what in the name of God did they believe? It was almost impossible to grasp that the rejection of the Redeemers had such heft to it. Then he moved on across the park feeling ever more distant and removed from the flow of ordinary human happiness taking in the sun and each other as they would do a week today and all spring and summer long. And now he had to get away, out of the great ornate cast-iron gates of the north end of the park and round the side heading for his room. But he was so tired now, utterly weary, exhausted in a way that was completely new to him. He walked ever slower down the street as if each step was ageing him by a year, but it was so much worse than ordinary fatigue. He felt he had been on the move for a thousand years and nowhere to sit down, no rest, no peace, nothing but fighting and fear of the next blow. His heart was so heavy in his chest he felt it dragging him to a halt. How was it possible to feel like this and live? By now he was at the West Gate and he stopped and rested his head, pouring sweat against the sandstone.
‘Are you all right, son?’ But he did not have the strength to reply. Afterwards he could not remember how he made it back to his room, not even unlocking the door, only his lying on the bed gasping like a fish drowning on dry land. And then it came for him – the earthquake in his guts, a shaking and an avalanche of collapse and burst. His inside world gave way of flesh and soul together, hideous pain of tears and eruption. He rushed towards the jakes and retched and retched and nothing came but so violent it was as if his soul was trying to leave his bowels and belly while he was still alive. And so it went on for hour after hour. And then he went back to bed and wept but not like any child or man and nothing to do with release, and then when he thought, whatever thinking was, that bellowing in tearless pain would never stop, that was when he began to laugh over and over and for hours on end. And laughing was how Vague Henri found him just before dawn, still laughing, weeping and retching.
31
For a week they kept him in his room but he did not improve. He would sleep for twelve hours or more but wake more exhausted and black-eyed and white-lipped with weariness than when he went to sleep. There would be a pause for three hours during which he would lie on his side, knees bent, and then the retching would begin – a hideous sound more like some great animal trying to expel some poisonous thing it had eaten. After a few days the terrible laughter stopped – no relief to Cale, only to those who had to listen to it. Cale kept retching and such tears as he wept clearly gave him no ease or peace. Soon the tears stopped too. But he kept on retching though never being sick and even though he ate and hungrily enough. After that week it settled into a dreadful pattern: hours of sleep that gave no rest, eating hungrily, then the spasms lasting for an hour, then rest in silence, another attack, more food and then an exhausted sleep. Then the cycle would begin again.