Watson, Ian - Novel 16 Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘I
doubt if it damn well matters. Much. Might get our toes stubbed.’
                 ‘Won’t
get impaled for jaywalking, you mean?’ He winked.
                 People
crowded by.
                 ‘God,
you do construct cages around yourself.’
                 He
slipped briefly into English, and joked, ‘Well, we are looking for bars.’
                 She
looked shocked, insulted, on the point of marching off alone. Perhaps
high-born ladies did not walk these streets alone; so she stayed.
                 ‘Sorry,
Deb. I’ll ask directions to the nearest beer shop, or wine palace, or
whatever.’
                 The
man he chose to ask - a short, dark, Hispanic type - was kilted and
bare-chested but wore leather sandals, so obviously wasn’t riff-raff. What else
he was was betokened by his tattooed forehead. He wore there the sun-disc mark
of Shamash. The sides of the man’s head were shaved, and the curious quiff of
hair which remained on his crown made him resemble a sun- browned version of
the comic-strip French detective boy Tintin. Alex stepped in his way.
                 ‘Excuse
me.’
                 ‘I’m
busy.’ The man spoke gruffly, thrust past, and continued on his way. He smelled
of sandalwood.
                 ‘You
just asked a slave,’ said Deborah.
                 ‘So?’
                 ‘A
temple slave.’
                 ‘Obviously
he wasn’t my slave.’
                 ‘A
slave.’ She repeated the word, to savour it. ‘A real honest-to-goodness slave.’
                ‘That’s right. The old country has
reintroduced slavery. White slavery; not just black.’
                 She
looked defiant. ‘What old country?’
                 ‘Okay,
we’ll pretend it doesn’t exist. Not yet.’
                 It.
He’d found himself unable - reluctant - to mention the name America . Another tattooed slave passed. The man
spat irritably as they stared at him.
                 All
of a sudden Alex really saw these people in the street, not just witnessing but
experiencing them.
                 Slaves.
People owned by other people, as you own a horse or a dog. Though horses did
not wear scent. . .
                 Was
everyone in Babylon - tattooed or untattooed - equally a slave?
All slaves to a dream, to an almighty pretence, a fabrication? Were the
visiting free Greeks all applicants to a curiously fulfilling kind of slavery -
no matter whether they were fated to prosper here, or to fall on hard times?
                 ‘I
guess,’ mused Alex, ‘if they were just phoney slaves, that would make the whole
place phoney.’ What if the slaves ran away? Would soldiers hunt them down in
the desert, using dogs to track and spears to chivvy? Could one escape across a
state line from Babylonia into America and be free again?
                America didn’t yet exist. America was unknown. Any state line was a fault
line in time, behind which all Babylonia had slumped into the past, had submerged itself like a whale sounding deep
into the abyss of history. How could one even imagine escaping from the belly
of such a whale? Because it had dived, the whale would survive - emotionally at
least - whilst the surface of America would wither under the scorching rays of
the eternal, epoch-mocking sun, Shamash, who judged and condemned all human actions,
who sent kingdom after kingdom into the empty hollow darkness which was the
afterlife, and which also was posterity.
                ‘I guess,’ said Alex, ‘some people
might give up their freedom gladly - so they can become authentic. Maybe people
do this all the time. You’re a little interested in that too, eh?’
                 She
didn’t answer; perhaps because he had not really expected an answer.