Late afternoon.
Jujube Palace beckons. Named by Numen after his favourite lozenge, the edifice is a compound of dormitories, refectories, recreation centres and pharmacies – a dead-end where pasts and presents are mummified, and all the maps of the future are illegible.
Originally a cloistered tenth-century Romanesque Abbey, it was taken over by the Secular Franciscan Order for those who wished to observe Saint Francis’s ‘Gospel of Lord Jesus’.
The Order soon attracted itinerant visionaries. Within a century, the tombs of nine of these ethereal men spiralled into shrines and the Abbey, expanding ramblingly, became an anchorage for pilgrims, wayfarers, outcasts and seekers of miraculous cures. Frequently pillaged and razed while Europe ladled out endless wars, it eventually lost its historical and pastoral importance.
The Abbey was given a new life after World War Two when an audacious entrepreneur converted it into a modish hostelry by restoring its ruins, adding another storey in its original style and installing open-air kitchens on the lawns.
Numen, affronted by the Franciscan fiat on the Abbey’s portal, ‘Pax et bonum’, and paranoid that the supplication for peace and goodness might embolden pacifist opponents, confiscated the edifice and transformed it into a gingerbread version of the old Saviours’ psychiatric hospitals for insubordinates. To gull the Western democracies, he now flaunts the place as a showpiece sanitorium where his compassion for ill-starred citizens leaves every leader in the shade.
Effectively, Jujube Palace is a narcotic Shangri-la. Nicknamed ‘The Waste Land’ by the literati, it dispenses, in addition to such favourite drugs as cannabis, heroin and cocaine, sundry chemical concoctions produced as new panaceas by Numen’s shrouded laboratories.
The denizens are divided into four categories.
The first comprises the ‘stinging nettles’, the politicians who tried to sabotage Numen’s dominance by campaigning for democratic rule. Numen would have preferred to liquidate these ‘Brutuses’ but, needing to curry favour with the EU, he had reluctantly abolished capital punishment. Nevertheless, bearing in mind Nelson Mandela’s extraordinary odyssey from prisoner to president – a reminder that leaders can surface even from remote jails – he incarcerated them in this overheated conservatory that guarantees early graves. At the very least, he surmised, Jujube Palace would scare vacillating supporters to unreserved fealty.
The politicos are complemented by numerous civil servants, military and security officers who, classified as ‘schizophrenic cosmopolitans’, fell from grace for their lapses.
The second category consists of servicemen wrecked in Numen’s punitive wars. Categorised as ‘dross’, these veterans lie on hallucinogenic cloudlands that whisk them to firmaments where they can disown their fragmented bodies. This category includes the families that refuse to abandon their men.
Aware that these isolated people would feel forgotten, Belkis and I regularly visited them. Belkis devoted herself to sprucing up the veterans’ female relatives with cosmetics and colourful dresses. I, for my part, goaded by memories of my own Empty Quarters, mingled with the children and tried to instil into them that, beyond the bleak spacewalks they resorted to, there’s one mysterious force – hope – which rescues forsaken children. As examples I related how Hope had guided shepherds to baby Oedipus abandoned on a mountainside; how it had also sent a she-wolf to suckle the twins, Romulus and Remus.
It is rumoured that initially this group was designated to accommodate additionally those soldiers gassed by friendly fire. But Numen, alarmed that the existence of these poisoned men might reach the world’s ears and thus expose his criminal use of internationally prohibited chemical weapons, not only vetoed the proposal, but also decreed their immediate demise as ‘heroes with unknown tombs’.
The third, nicknamed ‘Cloud-Cuckoos’, consists of the artists, writers, journalists, scientists, students, academics, judiciaries, unionists, enlightened military and Security personnel who turned quisling by condemning the human rights abuses Numen’s social engineering had let loose. Spared long terms in dungeons by the grace of international appeals, these stalwarts of yesterday bandage their mental wounds by courting amnesia. Families of these illuminati are also included in this category.
The fourth category – derided as ‘Damselflies’ – is composed of drop-outs from notable families who, having travelled from hippiedom to yuppiedom, embraced nihilism in confirmation that life, devoid of any intrinsic value, is purposeless. Ineligible for free narcotics, they’re admitted as outpatients on two conditions. One: that they consume their drugs on the premises – a measure that at least saves them from the claws of dealers – and two: that they buttress Jujube Palace’s philanthropic work with hefty donations.
A fifth off-the-record category comprises people of different sexual orientations, who come out publicly to campaign for their rights. Tagged as ‘Chameleons’, Numen discriminates against them as brutally as the ultra-puritan communities where they’re treated as mutants. Those who warrant special attention and thus cross the arbitrary red lines are arrested at unearthly hours and rushed to Jujube Palace where they’re injected with lethal panaceas. Within twenty-four hours their remains are returned to their families with harsh homilies against the perversions that killed them. It is said Numen considers this procedure to be far more civilised than the ‘act of mercy’ whereby the victim is hurled from a rooftop.
I go in and sign the guest book in an antechamber where visitors used to leave their weapons before entering the Abbey. The residents’ privilege to receive guests and socialise is an integral part of their rehabilitation.
There are some Pinkies sitting on chairs here and there like museum guards. But since, except for painful groans, frustrated shouts, muted arguments and the occasional hysterical outburst, nothing of Security interest happens in Jujube Palace, the Pinkies have been reduced to showpieces. Indeed, the observant eye might note that they’re quite lethargic – caused either by narcotic fumes or by the moonshine they surreptitiously gulp down.
The bars, the cafés in the cloisters and the eateries on the lawns are packed with many familiar faces: senators, judges, writers, journalists, artists …
The first-floor quarters the war veterans and their families.
The second provides dovecotes for single incumbents. Five for men; three for women.
On the first-floor balcony, clusters of women chat, smoke, drink. Presumably their men cannot leave their beds.
I spot someone familiar at the bar: Willis, the Inspector who interrogated me and Belkis when we were caught distributing Amador’s poems.
I approach him. ‘Inspector…’
If a face can be slurred, his definitely is. ‘Willis … Just Willis …’
‘I’m sorry to see you here.’
He stares at me with eyes that have few embers left. ‘Who’re you?’
‘Oric. You interrogated me. And my partner, Belkis.’
‘I’ve interrogated thousands.’
‘You have a daughter – in Denmark. She was pregnant. Belkis urged you to be there for the birth.’
The embers in his eyes flicker. ‘Belkis, you say?’ He points to the war veterans’ floor. ‘You mean her?’
I look. I hadn’t noticed Belkis. But there she is helping the women try on new dresses.
I wave to catch her eye.
She sees me and waves back.
Willis titters. ‘She’s preparing a fashion show.’
‘Naturally.’
Willis smirks. ‘I was too lenient with her. With you both.’
‘You were kind.’
‘Fat lot of good!’
‘Did you go to your daughter?’
‘Stupidly.’
‘What did she have – boy or girl?’
‘Twins. One of each.’
‘Great!’
Willis takes a pill and swallows it with a swig of brandy. ‘Great for them. But my undoing. Didn’t want to come back. When I did, couldn’t get going.’
‘You should’ve gone back to your daughter.’
‘A schizophrenic cosmopolitan? On travel-ban? Perfect candidate for Jujube.’
I touch his shoulder in sympathy.
He offers me his pills punnet. ‘Have some. They work wonders.’
‘I’m a visitor.’
‘We’re eyeless in Gaza here. True there are Pinkies about. But they’re in somewhere else, too. If they see anything they’d probably think it’s a mirage. Go on, pick a pill.’
‘I won’t. Thank you.’
‘To celebrate.’
‘Celebrate?’
‘Rumours percolate. Your Belkis – she was gunned down, someone said. Yet here she is – alive!’
’Only her earthly body was gunned down. She still lives.’
Willis snorts. ‘Ah, your mantra. Death is a lie … I remember.’
‘There’s the proof. Here she is with us.’
He watches Belkis. He looks inconsolable. ‘My daughter. And the twins. They’re with me, too. But not here … Where? In my dreams? In my prayers …?’
‘In your heart?’
He sneers. ‘You’re full of shit!’ Then he nudges me. ‘Go on, have some poison! Free – even to visitors I never get …’
I catch sight of Childe Asher. On the greens. Surrounded by elders. ‘What’s he doing here?’
He turns to look. ‘Childe Asher? He visits regularly.’
‘On his own?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What for?’
‘Teaches the kids. Discourses with eggheads – like boy Jesus at the Temple.’ He points at a flyer on the counter. ‘He’s having a debate. You should hear him.’
I read the flyer: What’s the difference between the readiness to kill for a cause and the readiness to sacrifice yourself for a cause? What use is reason when irrationality governs us?
I know Childe Asher is already a Dolphinero, but I didn’t expect him to be active so soon.
I wave at him.
He blows a kiss and beckons me to join him.
I should, but I linger. The subject is not one I need today.
Willis senses my ambivalence. ‘Come on, have a pill!’
I vent my frustration. ‘How about this, Willis? There’ll be a protest tomorrow. Against Numen. Come along. You might feel better than being cooped up in this latrine.’
Willis takes another pill. As if it’s cleared his head, he speaks lucidly. ‘Does it ever occur to you Saviours might be right? That they really save us from the worst?’
I growl. ‘There’s nothing worse than Saviours!’
‘You’re a fool, man! Sure there’s worse. More to the point: there’s us: the ultimate worst! You and me: humanity. The Evil within us, timeless, invincible, determined to destroy the planet, which we will. Maybe it’s thanks to Saviours we haven’t yet.’
Then, wearily he shuts his eyes.
Childe Asher has started his debate: ‘Whether in pursuit of a cause or in defence of one, killings are always glorified. Why?’