His sponsors were enjoying his visit, pleased with his attentive behaviour. They watched as he stared at a photograph of an elder of his tribe, sitting before an elaborately carved dwelling. It was a significant image of anthropological value, a first contact document that showed an uninterrupted culture in domestic vigour. Tsungali stared at his grandfather. The old man had never been photographed before, and he’d had no idea why the stranger was covering his face and shaking the box at him. Sitting on the steps of their Long House, legs holding an animal-tailed fly swat, the other hand quietly trying to cover his balls; his expression was confused, cocking his head slightly to see around the box, trying to look at the photographer’s face. His grandfather’s eyes and mouth had just been wounded by strangeness, he was too dazed and absent to ward off the event. The outside of the Long House was encrusted with climbing, crawling, and gesturing spirits. All of their carved and painted faces were alive, talking to the stranger, laughing at his manner.
The old man looked through the box, through the stranger, through to his reflection, and appeared to shudder. The doorway to the house was dark, but another figure could just be seen inside. A boy, happy and grinning, all teeth and eyes in the darkness, open, smiling amazement. It was Tsungali, caught young, and in opposition to his beloved grandfather’s nakedness, bewilderment and pain.
Tears filled his eyes as he secretly begged the print to move, to turn away or turn back, to do anything but confront his memory with such resistant loss. He could look no more. To find his grandfather trapped behind glass and nailed to a wall, so far from home and his earthly remains, was beyond sacrilege and blasphemy. It gnawed into him, along his genetic ladder, an emotional, hidden thing, chewing back into extinction. He slid backwards into the crowds and quickly became dissolved among their throng. He ran from that place and became lost in the streets of liars outside.
He was, of course, found and returned to his homeland, where it was trusted that he would explain the splendours and dominion of the masters. Instead, he explained that the True People’s gods had been stolen and replaced by cross-sticks, that all they once were, all they had once worshipped, had been given to others. He explained that their masters had cheated them, had stolen their ancestors and locked them in prisons of glass. He explained that there was only one way to treat such wicked profanation: on the third of June, on a bright spring afternoon, he began the Possession Wars.
By the next day, two-thirds of the invaders were dead or dying, their houses burnt and the church torn apart; the airstrip was ripped up soon after and the cricket pitch desecrated beyond recognition.
Peter Williams vanished into myth. So had the blessed Irrinipeste, child who never grew old, daughter of the Erstwhile and heart of the True People.
It was difficult to know who was the most shocked. They had shuddered into the dining room of the old house without a word, Mutter swallowing loudly, trying not to look too obviously at either of them, but continually dragging his eyes up off the floor to make sure of the vision before him. Ghertrude was ruthlessly busy, daubing and scrubbing the mess from her clothing with a rag she had snatched from Mutter’s pocket.
And Ishmael? It was impossible to guess what the little, half-naked cyclops was thinking behind his hands, which had locked over his face the moment Ghertrude had released him from her protective grip. It was she who broke the silence with a command.
‘Mutter, you will tell no one of this.’
He looked up into her dominance, which was rapidly drying off her humiliation, the steam it produced smelling of anger. Mutter nodded automatically.
‘You must help me hide this poor, hurt child.’ She put her arm around Ishmael to emphasise the point. She had ignored him while repairing herself and the sudden embrace made him jump. ‘Does anybody ever come here?’ she demanded.
Mutter assured her that he was the only one with keys, and that he had never seen the owner or anyone else here; neither had his father.
‘Good,’ she said to herself. She was thinking fast now, and the clarity pleased her. ‘Do you have the keys to the rooms upstairs?’
‘Yes, Mistress, but all the doors are unlocked,’ Mutter said, a tone of unease creaking in his voice. The room was beginning to feel cold, and she became aware of the boy’s shivering.
‘Go and fetch some clothing for him,’ she said. ‘Anything will do. And light a fire in there.’ She pointed to the reception room next door. ‘Go man, and say nothing.’
He nodded and made for the door.
‘Oh, and…’ she called out, as he made to leave. He turned to question her and she met him halfway, pushing four heavy coins into his hand. ‘Bring food and drink, something hot.’
With that, he was gone instantly. She returned to Ishmael and pulled the sheet more closely about his white body.
Two hours later, the boy was dressed in hand-me-downs from Mutter’s children. They had eaten, and the room was warm. The exhaustion had put the cyclops to sleep, and left Ghertrude free to make her plans. She questioned the anxious servant about his unseen masters, the house, the crates and how his family had been paid over all these years. When she realised that he knew nothing, she started to build her palace of lies.
The foundations of this baroque edifice were dug in need and fear: Mutter’s fear of becoming unemployed, or being held responsible for the damage and strangeness that so deeply perplexed him, gave her a foothold with which to begin her journey of deceit. She had explained in some detail that kidnapping was a crime punishable with the gravest of verdicts; that he was the only person with keys; that many would have seen him take food to the house each week. Moreover, there was nobody else there and any statement from Ishmael would be inadmissible, if he was allowed to speak at all.
The need, however, was hers. She wanted to keep the little monster to herself, to find out more and not share him, yet, with the many and the mindless. But she lived in her father’s house. She needed another place to hide him, and 4 Kühler Brunnen was perfect. She would seal off the lower floor, and any abomination that lived there, and keep him in the attic, or the rooms on the third floor. She would visit him every other day, nobody would know. Mutter was the key to making her plan work. He would be the engine to drive the day-to-day mechanism of concealment, and she would stoke the fires of that engine with dread and money. The only unknown in all of this was the response of his invisible masters, when they learned of her trespass and the destruction of one of their puppets.
She waited for their appearance, but it never came. Meanwhile, Mutter carried on as usual, collecting the crates, taking them to the house, opening them, shuffling their contents, nailing them shut and taking them back. He brought regular food; he cleaned the stables and looked after the horses. Now he had two wages for doing the same job and keeping his mouth and his eyes shut.
The upper floor had been full of furniture, so it would be easy to make a usable suite of rooms. She could set about making a home that was comfortable and discreet. But before that, there was work to do in the basement. She told Mutter to bring tools, locks and a gun.
Drawing a chair up to the door of the basement, she instructed him on what had to be done below. With his keys in her hand and his shotgun across her knees, she told him only what was essential to make him do the work, calling instructions down the stairs that she had so recently escaped. He was to go down, beyond the old kitchen and into that shrunken place. He was to take the remains of that repulsive thing and drop them down the well shaft. He was to change all the locks and board up the doors. She would guard the house and listen to his progress from the stairs.