'So what did you get?' he said. 'Why would you risk it? What the f.u.c.k could you get anyway?'

Roxanna stood up and walked to her handbag which was sitting on a milk crate underneath the window. She opened her handbag. His neck bristled when he heard the sound of small objects, clinking. Then he saw what they were: small Ritz shampoo bottles, moisturizers. Oh my G.o.d, he thought, the b.i.t.c.h has wired me.

'Put them there.' He pointed to the window ledge.

When she had arranged all the items on the sill, she stepped back. He stepped forward, picked up the shampoo. It seemed heavier than normal to him. He opened the cap, poured the goops of shampoo on to the floor, peered inside, then stopped. He was being an amateur himself.

There was a plastic shopping bag amongst tangled dirty clothes on the floor. He picked it up and swept the little bottles into it.

'We could never let them win the election,' he said. 'Don't you see that? Do you have anything else?'

'You're not a banker,' she said. 'What are you?'

'Very funny. Do you have anything else?'

She stooped and lifted up the corner of her mattress. Turning, she held out a big menu from the Ritz dining room. He dropped it in the plastic bag.

'I would never have picked you,' he said.

'I picked you.' She smiled uncertainly. 'I thought you were the answer to my prayers.' He saw her smile collapse, and the tears begin to run. Resisting the desire to embrace her, he turned and went out the door.

57.

I could feel suicide all around me, viscous, shameful, wrong. I could see the inside of Natalie's mouth in my mind's eye, the broken tooth. The odour of death lay in the hallways. It got mixed with pie, cinnamon, sugar, pigeons' throats, vents opening, closing, was overlaid with a persistent vision of the dead woman's bony chest birds' bones, white translucent skin.

Wally would not let it matter. He was a sergeant-major, stamping and stomping in his big suede boots. He brushed my teeth. He made me gargle salt and water. He combed my hair with his comb, digging its sharp tortoisesh.e.l.l teeth into my scalp. He strapped on my mask and sent me down into the leafy courtyard where old Ducrow got eaten by his lion.

'Do your warm-ups,' he said.

'Are we going to do a show?'

'Just do what I say.'

He was hectoring and impatient with Roxanna too. He bullied her into going out for coloured chalk. I had not seen him treat her this way before. I did not understand it, why she let him, why he wanted to do it. I did not know why she was so upset she had less connection with Natalie Theroux than any of us.

She had a little lambswool cardigan she had found in Props. It was a size too small. She b.u.t.toned it to the neck and folded her arms across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her eyes were weepy, her nose red, her shoulders were rounded, but she went out to buy the chalk and came back to the courtyard where Wally, having swept the cobblestones fastidiously, was now running a long orange power-cord to one of the stolen vids he always had around the place.

Roxanna, in giving him the chalk, made a small noise, a sob.

'Don't dwell on it,' was all he said.

As for me? I could not warm-up. I was too disturbed. Whenever I closed my eyes to begin my breathing I saw the crazy woman's face-her throat, her tooth, blood, gore, ooze.

Then Wally turned on the vid.

Roxanna sat heavily on the garden bench. She held out her arms for me. I sat in her lap and pressed my body hard back into her.

The weather forecast was on the vid. Wally began to draw white and yellow chalk marks on cobblestones. The chalk did not always take well, but he was not prepared to wait. Following his blue-lined exercise book, he made a series of loops, arrows, arcs, all with the greatest urgency, but when my mother's face appeared on the screen, he stopped. He tucked his chalk back behind his ears.

'Shush,' he said, but the only voices were crackling from the slightly damaged two-inch speakers. 'This is it.'

What they were saying was my maman as good as killed Natalle Theroux, and when I saw Felicity's ghosted image on CRTV4 it seemed as if she really had. I watched her mouth, her eyes, the 625 lines across her face, at noon on 20 January, in Chemin Rouge in the year 382.

'This is political,' she said.

It did not seem the right thing to say. They wanted to talk about her and Vincent. I pushed further back into Roxanna's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I tightened the buckles on my mask and stared at my mother through the slits. She was scared. She laid her hand briefly against her throat. She tried to smile. It did not seem the right thing to do.

My mother swallowed. She touched her hair. I could feel her shame behind my own eyes, a cold, cold pain like ice.

The camera showed the interviewer with his head on one side, stern, judicial.

My maman was irritated, angry.

'This was a political a.s.sa.s.sination.'

'No,' said Wally, 'she doesn't need to say that. She shouldn't say that.'

Then she started to talk about 'military and security elements in Voorstand'.

'No one wants to hear this,' Wally said. 'She makes herself look bad ...'

'Shush,' said Roxanna.

'She should not be saying this,' Wally said. 'She looks as if she doesn't care about Natalie.'

'Shut up,' Roxanna said.

'This was a political a.s.sa.s.sination,' my maman said. 'Natalie Theroux did not break the laundry window of her own house in order to kill herself from one foot away ... ' 'Natalie Theroux did not break the laundry window of her own house in order to kill herself from one foot away ... '

'OK,' Wally said. 'That's that.' He turned off the television.

'Gabe did this,' Roxanna said. 'This is what he did.'

'That's history,' Wally told her. 'It happened in the past. Now we've got to deal with the future. Whatever happened between this Voorstand jerk and you, that's one thing. What happened with Vincent's missus, that's another. It's all in the past.'

'What are you so scared of?' Roxanna said. 'What aren't you telling me?'

'You've got to keep it clear in your head,' he said. He was back at work, drawing on the cobblestones with chalk. He moved across the courtyard like a monkey, on his haunches. He had sticks of chalk behind his big lobed ears. He looked only at his exercise book and at the floor, never up at us. He made a dotted line.

Roxanna pushed her eye into my hair and rubbed against my skull. 'Wally, you can't see yourself?'

'I'm drawing lines for toucans ...'

'You are drawing lines for toucans. What the f.u.c.k is that?'

'I can train them,' Wally said. 'You know what I do. You've seen my birds.'

'I am sure that what the mother says is true. I slept slept with this little creep, do you understand? He was the one at the Ritz. Why won't you listen to me?' with this little creep, do you understand? He was the one at the Ritz. Why won't you listen to me?'

When Wally turned he looked as if his face had been slapped.

'Don't you see what's happened to me?' Roxanna said. 'I know him. His name is Gabe Manzini. I was going to marry him. He's the one I picked. He as-good-as told me he did exactly what the maman says.'

'He as-good-as as-good-as told you?' told you?'

'He said, Tell your people that they're dead.' Tell your people that they're dead.'

'That could mean anything.'

'No, no. It was very clear. He's not a banker. He said, we could never let them win the election. we could never let them win the election. Can't you even imagine how I'm feeling?' Roxanna said. 'Can't you see what's happened to me? Can't you imagine how bad I feel, how stupid I've been?' Can't you even imagine how I'm feeling?' Roxanna said. 'Can't you see what's happened to me? Can't you imagine how bad I feel, how stupid I've been?'

I looked at Wally. I had known him all my life, known the freckles and hair on his arms, the mole on his neck, the pouches under his grey eyes, but when I looked at him across that spray-wet sawdust I saw, for the first time, what his life had been like, how he had been in prison. He squatted on the floor, cold, cruel, like a dog, face drawn, hatchet-shaped.

'Just shut the f.u.c.k up,' he said. 'All you're doing is getting yourself in a panic.'

'All I want is a cuddle, Wally,' Roxanna whimpered. 'Is that so much to ask? Do I deserve to have you tell me shut up?'

Wally laid his chalk down on the cobbles. He put it down so slowly you could feel all his fear in the action. He laid the chalk as if it were precious crystal that might fracture, a bomb that might explode. He came and knelt beside us. He was stiff, contained. He put his hand towards Roxanna's shoulder. She flinched from him. He lifted his hands up, away, flat-palmed.

'Take responsibility for yourself.'

Roxanna held me tighter. 'Why are you so horrible to me?' she said. 'I am am taking responsibility. I'm saying it's my fault. But what the maman says is true.' taking responsibility. I'm saying it's my fault. But what the maman says is true.'

'We have to get on with our lives,' Wally whispered. I twisted my neck to look at him. He was very close to me. I could see the fear swimming in his eyes.

'We make our lives out of what we have, out of what's possible.'

'Out of toucans?' toucans?'

'This is Efica. We've got to be reallstic.'

He reached behind his ear for another length of chalk.

'We can make a decent life,' he said. He knelt and began to draw a long yellow arc across the stage. All this was happening in the last twenty-four hours of my mother's life. No one told me it was so. I thought I would have her for ever.

58.

If Natalie's suicide had damaged Felicity more, she might have lived.

Her support dropped seven points not quite enough for safety's sake. They came and put a rope around her neck, and pushed her off. She hung and kicked above the sawdust ring, her own d.a.m.n stage. She p.i.s.sed, she s.h.i.t, she bled, she died. Tristan's mother, a young woman in a yellow dress, forty-three years old.

Vincent was in the car outside playing with his gun. Tristan, Wally, Roxanna, were on the floor above her. Friends all around her, seconds from her side.

The maman loved Efica but she was born in Voorstand. The Voorstanders did not hate her personally. They stole her life Manzini, the VIA, someone. It was not personal. They took her life from Tristan, not personal. They did not think through the consequences. They did not even think that when the boy found his maman, at two a.m., they were presenting him with a horror he would carry all his life, the picture of his mother dead and ugly, hanging from a bright green rope.

Tristan came down the stairs because he heard a noise, thought his mother's master cla.s.s was about to start. His green rope was missing from the stairs. He came down a step at a time. Slowly. He heard the scuffling. Theatres are always full of scuffling, shouting, cries it is the business of the theatre: life, death, catharsis.

Until this happens to you, you have no idea how the brain works, how it refuses to deliver the bad news, how it seeks anything but the truth, runs naturally away from it like water running down hill.

Tristan saw his mother hanging dead inside the Feu Follet theatre. Her handbag was on the floor. Her eyes bulging, her jaw slack. His brain lied to him.

It is a mask.

Then: It is an exercise. It is an exercise.

Then: It is someone else. It is someone else.

Then: It's Natalie. It's Natalie.

Only the smell. Forget it. It was a smell. I cannot go to the bathroom without remembering my maman's death.

The night my mother died, other things were happening to the Blue Party land scandals,* money scandals, money scandals, they rose like mushrooms after rain. I did not know Gabe Manzini's face or name, but he was an ace, the best. One scandal one day, a new one the next. He made the Blues appear both incompetent and corrupt. they rose like mushrooms after rain. I did not know Gabe Manzini's face or name, but he was an ace, the best. One scandal one day, a new one the next. He made the Blues appear both incompetent and corrupt.

In the history of Efica my mother's death is an adulterer's death. She is remembered in the mora.s.s of shame that Eficans feel about this time.

Me I never doubted what had happened not for a second. Even before I saw there was no stool, chair, ladder, I knew. I could not reach her but I cut my mask off my face with a box-cutter. I could not reach her but I smashed Bruder Mouse with a brick. Wally was there then. Vincent was there.

It was Wally, G.o.dd.a.m.n, dear Wally who got the ladder.

I ground the mask, pulped the wood, paint. My real face was snot, tears, drool. I brought it into the lights of the vid camera and screamed at them.

I did not appear on vid. Edited out. Not part of the story.

*Helene Rivette, the Shadow Minister of Finance, was alleged to have been a beneficiary of an illegal subdivision in Berthollet. Doc.u.ments 'proving' this were in all the zines on the day after my mother's death. A week after the election it was shown that these damaging charges had no substance. [TS] [TS]A series of faxes (first published by Zinebleu) Zinebleu) which seemed to prove that Jack Mifflin and St John Theroux had received $100,000 each from French aircraft manufacturers. These doc.u.ments, later shown to be false, did much to discredit the Blues' platform on armed neutrality and, of course, helped further destroy the party's credibility. which seemed to prove that Jack Mifflin and St John Theroux had received $100,000 each from French aircraft manufacturers. These doc.u.ments, later shown to be false, did much to discredit the Blues' platform on armed neutrality and, of course, helped further destroy the party's credibility. [TS] [TS]

BOOK 2.

Travels in Voorstand