21.

How we got our POW papers was as follows. We came to the head of the line. I was nervous. There was a rope. A man undid the rope. We pa.s.sed through: the four of us. There was a woman behind a metal desk. She had a big chest with many medals on it. She took the papers Leona gave her. She stamped them. She signed them. She then filled out forms for half an hour. She would not speak to Jacques. She looked at me, but did not react to my appearance in any way at all. She did not once speak to any of us except Leona.

When she was done with us, she sent us to another queue. This queue was inside the building with black and white tiles on the floor and peeling paint on the walls. We were in this queue for two hours thirteen minutes. At the end of this time we were taken into a room where we were given a pink slip of paper* and instructed to place our right hand, underside upwards, on a silver cuff which was set into a wooden block. A machine was then clamped across the wrist. The wrist felt hot. When the machine was removed we had a number. Mine was A034571. My maman was born in Saarlim, but this was my status a 'Guest' number it gave no guarantee of residency or protection of the law but it was, just the same, there for life. and instructed to place our right hand, underside upwards, on a silver cuff which was set into a wooden block. A machine was then clamped across the wrist. The wrist felt hot. When the machine was removed we had a number. Mine was A034571. My maman was born in Saarlim, but this was my status a 'Guest' number it gave no guarantee of residency or protection of the law but it was, just the same, there for life.

*'You have come in chains and the Republic has cast off those chains. You come defeated and the Republic grants you the spoils of the victors. You come without home and the Republic offers you shelter. You are, at all times, a guest of the Republic.' The pink slip.

22.

Using the Guilders the business-gjent had donated to the Simi, we purchased two nights at an hotel the Marco Polo in one of the rougher parts of Kakdorp. The room was large, but gloomy, backing on to a wide balcony on which robed men with blue-black skin and yellow eyes landlopers were living.

They were outside. They washed their clothing there, in a pink plastic tub, and spread it out to dry on the hot concrete.

I was inside, on the floor, trying to find a place where I could begin to unpick the body of the Simulacrum.

I sat next to Jacques, so close to him that his short cuffs brushed against my wrist, his hand against my hand.

'Not there,' he said as I fiddled with the Simi's blue sequin waistcoat. 'You'll rip it.'

'Mollo ... mollo.' I tugged at the creature's white plastic boots.

'Don't hurt it,' Jacques said. 'This is worth a fortune in Chemin Rouge.'

'Worth ... good ... money ... here.'

Wally sighed loudly. I looked up to him through my sweaty white hair. He was sitting on the rumpled bed and rubbing his bare feet. He stared belligerently at the Simi which he had once, so blithely, invited into our life.

'Please,' he said, 'don't tell me you're going to be a tin-rattler.'

'If ... we ... don't ... have ... money ... we're ... as ... good ... as ... dead.'

'For G.o.d's sake,' Wally said, 'no one needs to beg.'

'You'd ... thieve.'

'Yes, I'd thieve, I'd con, I'd be a lever man, if it was necessary.'

'I ... don't ... want ... you ... to ... thieve.'

'I never said I was going to thieve. I said I'd rather thieve than beg.'

'The ... Simi ... paid ... for ... this ... room.'

'You don't need the Mouse to pay the rent.' He was trying to catch my eye and hold it. I ignored that. I held up the Mouse's grey spongy paw.

'Our ... meal ... ticket,' I said.

'Our Sirkus ticket, more like it.'

'Yes ... that ... too ... I ... can ... get ... the ... money.'

He shook his head. 'We're not going to the Sirkus.'

'You ... know ... that's ... why ... we ... came.'

He shook his head. 'You hate the Sirkus, Tristan.'

'We've ... come ... to ... do ... the ... Sirkus ... Tour.'

'Bulls.h.i.t.' He was all closed down, hooded and bony narrow eyes, shining cheeks. 'Ten f.u.c.king years,' he said to Jacques. He took some beef jerky from his back pocket and bit down on it. 'Ten f.u.c.king years the Mouse was the devil. You would think it was Bruder Mouse killed his maman. He wouldn't even let me say its f.u.c.king name.'

'The ... Sirkus ... is ... for ... you ... It's ... my ... gift ... This ... Simi ... is ... going ... to ... finance ... your ... Sirkus ... Tour.'

'Bulls.h.i.t.' Wally tugged at the jerky. 'You think I'd go through all of this for some Sirkus?'

'Not ... for ... only ... one.' one.'

'Not for a hundred. Let's stop playing games, Rikiki. Let's just admit it, we've come to Saarlim so you can make peace with your father.'

'NO.'

'Oh yes,' Wally said, pa.s.sing his hands repeatedly over his bald skull. 'It's time to say it. We've come to see Bill Millefleur. So don't give me all this c.r.a.p about the Sirkus. You hate the Sirkus.'

I did not answer. I was still trying to find some st.i.tching, a seam that would allow me to unpick the Simi's skin. My hand was shaking.

'Tristan ... just telephone him. That's all it'll take.'

'I'm ... going ... to ... make ... money ... and ... I'm ... going ... to ... take ... you ... to ... the ... Sirkus.'

Wally sighed. 'You can't go tin-rattling with a Mouse,' he said at last. 'You know you hate hate that thing.' that thing.'

'Please,' I said.

'You think it's legal, it's not. It's just as illegal as thieving.'*

I ignored him.

'You'll get sick,' he said. 'Is that what you want? You climb inside that stinking thing, you'll catch a virus. You want doctors poking at you in a foreign country?'

He watched me as my mouth began to dribble, my head to nod. I hated how I was, how I looked, how I trembled.

'You want strangers looking at you? Is that what you really want?'

'SHUT ... UP,' I said. The words came out of me. Without warning, hot and shameful as s.h.i.t itself.

Wally pa.s.sed his big dry hand thoughtfully across his mouth. Then he stood, picked up his stick, and walked towards the door.

I called to him, 'Don't ...'

He stopped at the doorway. He had his hand across his mouth again.

'Please ...'

'Please what?'

'Promise ... you ... won't ... see ... him.'

'Who?'

He knew. He knew exactly.

'Bill ... Mille ... fleur.'

'So,' he said. 'You can actually say his name.'

He walked out. I threw the Mouse aside.

'What is it?' Jacques said. 'Can I help you?'

I was trembling. I shook my head.

'It's your father? Your father is in Saarlim? Then let's go see him.' Jacques pulled the Mouse to his side. He folded its grey arm across its blue metallic chest. He stroked its fur. 'We could borrow the jon-kay from him?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

I could not tell him. But now, I see, I must tell you, Madam, Meneer. I must return to that night, that death, the single event I spend my waking hours avoiding.

*The soliciting of alms in public places is prohibited by law in the Canton of Saarlim and is punishable by a minimum sentence of six months (the first offence) and twelve months (the second). All sentences to be served in Work Camps. No remissions or reductions of sentence can apply.

23.

Bill had not been there the night my maman died. He had been in Saarlim City, eating cheese and herring for his breakfast. I had telephoned him after Wally cut the death rope with a box cutter, after I began to hit the Bruder Mouse mask with the brick, pulverizing it against the theatre's concrete floor.

There was the smell of the s.h.i.t.

There was no sequence of events.

There was Rox arriving, before the rope was cut, after the rope was cut.

Vincent had been already in the theatre, had arrived by car soon after.

Wally had a definite memory of laying my maman on the sawdust and of Rox fetching a stainless-steel mixing bowl of soapy water. She wanted to clean my maman.

She said, 'I am a nurse.'

Rox was not a nurse.

Vincent was in a terror, circling my maman like an injured dog, fearful of blame, angry with everyone around him. He would not let Rox touch the body. Everyone remembered that. Rox and Wally discussed it afterwards, often. Rox always said, 'What was he afraid of?'

My maman's body lay in the same place they had once placed old Ducrow's remains. So much for history.

Wally remembers me talking to Bill on the telephone. Was I left alone? Wally cannot remember. He can remember thinking: Bill will soon be here.

Wally did not like Bill, but Bill was my biological father and Wally had a strong sense of what was right and wrong he thought he must be there.

Wally can remember Vincent trying to light candles on the stage and refusing to let Rox wash her, my maman, his lover.

'Don't touch,' he said. 'You must not touch her.'

Rox tried to get me out of the building. I would not leave. Maybe it was in response to this that Vincent covered my maman's face with a green plastic garbage bag. In any case, too late, too late none of us would forget what we had seen before the bag came down the bared gums, the bleeding eyes.

When the garbage bag was across the face, I was present. They gathered around me. I had talked to Bill by then. Bill was maybe on his way already, flying 30,000 feet above the frozen lakes of the Canton of Saarlim. Wally steeled himself against this intrusion.

Vincent's candles were finally burning. The police arrived. They asked endless questions about the candles.

I was like an injured cat. I did not want to be held or touched. Rox and Wally circled me like a bandage, a blindfold, a blanket. They stayed with me all through the night. Other things happened police, doctors, sedatives, statements but they all happened after this. At five a.m., against my wishes, my maman's body was removed on a stretcher.

I rocked back and forth, pounding the now hateful Meneer Mouse with the brick, turning the balsa wood into a feathery pulp.

Vincent sat behind me. Sometimes he put a hand on my shoulder. He was so frail and guilty, unwashed, matted, so wan and washed out in his crumpled lint-and snot-marked black suit no one could have guessed he would be married again before two years were out.

Bill arrived late the next day, the Tuesday.

He was tall, tanned, gravure-handsome, with huge padded shoulders and pointed snakeskin shoes with silver tips on the laces. He looked like the embodiment of everything the Feu Follet had fought your culture, your Sirkus. He opened his arms and, with tears streaming down his crumpled face, fell on his tightly trousered knees. He pressed the snotty rag of my face against the puffy shoulder of his black silk suit.

Wally remembers this.

He remembers also how he swallowed hard, how he felt grief and jealousy combine deep in the darkness of his throat. His hard freckled body woodenly resisted Bill's embrace. Yet when he said, 'I'm pleased you came, mo camarade,' he meant it sincerely.