Grand Menteur Read online

  “You know, we used to have a policy for decisions like this,” Serge began. “Why aren’t we drawing lots with caterpillar cocoons? Closest one to the butterfly loses . . .”

  “Annual trips there and back so our supplies are well-stocked,” the Derwish continued, taking no notice of my father. “On occasion you would be visiting South Africa and Réunion in lieu of Port Louis as well. Please be mindful of the restricted goods list before submitting a claim to the Office of the Exchequer. You will, in turn, be given notice if there is enough revenue for your quantity allocation. All in favour of Sergent’s nomination?”

  “Aye.”

  “Aye.”

  “Yea.”

  “Oh, bugger.”

  “You’ll think twice now about ordering so many pounds of sausage, you stupid cadger,” the Derwish said triumphantly.

  The meeting was then adjourned for a thirty-minute recess while the men bought sandwiches or sorted the next cycle out at the launderette nearby. I was left alone with the Derwish’s girl, who put away her things in a small, worn-looking knapsack. She was chomping away on a bag of nellikai berries as I slowly walked along the edge of the table and around to her side of the room, my fingers tracing the lines of the engraving burins.

  “Pe nas trakase. I’m Cherelle,” she said. I shoved her off her chair and she fell with a clattering thud. The shock of the fall overcame any instinct she might have had to cry.

  “What the hell did you do that for? Gone soft?” she yelped.

  “Who’s your dad think he is to go slapping little girls around that don’t belong to him?” I demanded.

  I pulled out the Barlow knife and gummed up the Typer’s keys through her sack. I hacked at the seams and slashed at the fine Shagreen hide. I kicked it about on the floor and heard the sound of gears and bolts flapping around like a grandfather clock being murdered. Then I retracted the blade back into the handle and put the knife away into my pocket.

  “Putain,” I scoffed. “That’ll learn your stinking Derwish.”

  The men stooged around for a quarter of an hour before they returned to continue their proceedings, while I watched Cherelle simpering in a corner, holding the pieces of her typewriter in her hands. Occasionally she’d try lobbing one in my direction. Green entered the room like a ramping ninny who’d realized he’d left the kettle boiling. He carefully set the kettle aside on the floor, and arranged the cups for tea without bothering with the washing-up first. He produced a single tea bag from a jetted pocket to make four cups with, before arranging the mugs in the order of the members’ preferences. My father and the Derwish bickered briefly over the first and strongest cup, and then took their places once more around the pedestal table.

  For the better part of three hours, the four claimants hemmed and hawed over various disputed articles and promissory notes, succeeding at times to determine a trickling train of preference. If my memory does not fail me, Sergent arranged notes written in blood on paper napkins, only to be obstructed by three more identical documents, all promising the same surety. Derwish in his turn tried to arbitrate matters concerning his own person, brokering satisfying resolutions in his favour. In Ti Pourri, all I saw was an exterior of calmness. If I had to guess, I would say Green merely wished to leave the proceedings without going home empty-handed.

  I tried to remain as unobtrusive as I thought possible. Occasionally Cherelle and I were given perfunctory tasks that would help streamline the administration of the testator’s wishes. We held up documents as the four men stared across at us earnestly. They would break their hunched huddle to place calls to different chapters and functionaries of the Sous gang, phoning home or to the north to gain a second opinion. In this way futures were bought and exchanged, souls were bartered like meagre scraps that were caught between the fangs of esurient beasts: Derwish took claim of the Sous stamp collection that belonged to Malbar, an assortment of self-pressed postage stamps that exclusively adorned gang-related correspondence and chronicled the exploits and history of the group visually. My father suspected the reason the Derwish made such a bold gambit was that the stamps contained commemorations of my father’s successful candidacy for membership, as well as unflattering silhouettes of Malbar and Old Faithful to immortalize the former officer’s own effective application.

  The look on my father’s face at this loss made me realize that he was there to lay claim to as many of Malbar’s possessions as possible. He had great success in procuring Malbar’s salacot, his stakes in the Sous jockey horse winnings, copies of classified police gang enforcement tactics that Malbar liberated from his former place of employ, a few of Malbar’s molars that were knocked out when he was forced to surrender to beatings at the hands of Sous leaders to convince them of his devotion, and lastly, a worn-out Manurhin revolver. These items I was tasked with making room for in my bag.

  The final item on the docket was the object rolled in painting canvas and tied together at both ends with baling wire that Green and Pourri had brought in. The four men leaned in at the table with their heels digging into the floor like tent stakes when I retrieved it from behind some boxes of loo paper. I immediately recognized this to be the joyau de la couronne of the evening. Cherelle, taking notice of the screeching chairs being pushed back by the four curving bodies, put her magazine away and stepped atop her stool.

  “Guts, guts to open,” she announced. “One ochre muslin mantelet, fallen into slight disuse.”

  Green was the first to speak.

  “How the holy hell did he blag his way into possession of that?”

  “It’s a sight. I’d know it anywhere!” Derwish exclaimed.

  “I don’t care who knows it – we all lay equal claim to it,” Sergent said stiffly.

  “A monkey’s tit it’s an equal claim, kok depaille!” Derwish retorted. “Who here can lay a claim bigger than I can? I spent the most time under the Baba Yaga’s wing, more than any of you!”

  “Plug your ears girls,” the Bowling Green cautioned.

  “We could alternate possession,” Ti Pourri suggested. “If the Derwish will have us.”

  Through half-covered ears, we heard that the well-travelled article was the fountainhead for years of raging, internecine jockeying between those in contention for it, chiefly because its history united the length and breadth of the Sous chronicle, forged as it was around the shoulders of a madwoman and in the crucible of her sickly armpits. Any child who wished to line their stomachs with the nourishing meat of a feathered fowl had only to agree to a exploitative contract written in blood with the poulterer’s representatives; hoisting a small tumbril to their backs for the purposes of vending chicken was the sole obstacle to a towering hunger both replete and satisfied. To Malbar, the woman bore another connection though, having given him birth and thereby being furthermore his mother on a foul, stupid technicality. The furtherance of my father’s designs on an empire of headless chickens seemed outwardly curbed by this hereditary title (not to mention a genuinely flourishing friendship), and a small, doubtlessly provident event caused a case of “double vision” – and again later in triplicate – to occur, which proved disastrous to more than one concerned party involved.

  The poulterer began to be unable to distinguish between Malbar and my father, and later Malbar, my father, and the Derwish, who while fate deigned not to put on equal footing in terms of age or intelligence, saw fit to sponsor with nearly identical builds and statures. In this way, the three boys were positioned in a fractious mise en abyme, united in the way in which the poulterer doted on her “sons” and prepared meals for them. She even did three times the amount of washing! She thought her child the most capricious person imaginable for this reason, but somehow concretized their varying preferences, attributes, and annoyances into a unified individual. Malbar was content to share his mother’s attentions with my father, but could not stomach the thought of the Derwish’s mitts on any of his personal effects, partaking in any aspect of the life he rightfully called his own.
It was possibly this thought which raced feverishly across my father’s sensorium, the disgrace of it hardening his features.

  “What do you mean ‘If the Derwish will have us?’ you cretin,” my father said venomously. “You’ve got your histories mixed up.”

  The door through which we had entered burst open, shaking the fixtures on the walls. An arm disinclined to reveal the rest of itself held the door open, and a voice pronounced, “Ten minutes. And lug your garbage back with you this time.” Without much fanfare, the door closed again, causing the glasses on the table to rattle around on the tea tray they’d arrived on.

  “We’ll have to resolve this quickly, if not permanently,” my father said. “And don’t forget the vig this time, Green. I don’t want that idiot taking it out of my hide because you can’t remember how to count.”

  “Look, Serge. What could you possibly want with that mangy shawl anyway? Cut seven cozies out of it for your daughter’s tea party?” the Derwish japed.

  “You mean on Cherelle’s behalf, Derwishy-wash.”

  “I’ll lay you odds on the next Sous tortoise race for it.”

  “I don’t need your odds. The shawl is mine according to this codicil.”

  “Look, un bras de fer. For all the marbles.”

  “Of course, you lost them somewhere when you were young and want them back. Malbar gave the shawl to me. It’s a lucky thing I bothered to read this hogwash. Go on and tell him, Green.”

  Green kept silent, while his face betrayed a look of incredulity.

  “What’s the shawl worth to you?” my father then asked the Derwish excitedly.

  It looked like the Derwish had failed to consider this before, though I could not be sure. If I were him, anyway, I would not want to answer with haste and let someone else determine the touchstone against which I would barter. Fearing the Derwish was beginning to lose interest, however, my father spoke out of turn, so as to entice his competitor on to new acmes of foolishness.

  “Maybe you should ask yourself if you can afford to let it slip out of your grasp?”

  “You’ve brought your daughter along. This should tell me something.”

  “So did you.”

  “We know why Cherelle is here,” Ti Pourri said matter-of-factly.

  “She’s here because I have no one else to look after her, you git. Or haven’t you been paying attention these past few months?” my father blared.

  Derwish’s temper subsided at this point. He calmly turned to Cherelle and nudged his moustache to the left and right.

  “Du calme. Let the last few remarks be stricken from the record.”

  Cherelle complied with her father’s request and tore out the piece of paper from her minutes.

  “Serge,” the Derwish began. “I apologize. No one meant anything untoward with regard to . . . the unpleasantness that has occurred to your wife. Let us continue in much more civilized terms.”

  “Derwish, why don’t we leave the formalities to les guels kok? I will allow one fair offer of exchange for the shawl – all you need to know is that it’s something that holds value to me to be enough to satisfy you. If you insult my sense of fairness, or try to obtain it illicitly, you can be sure you’ll never be able to confer it to any descendant. You know your brocards better than I do.”

  The Derwish thought long and intensely, and settled his gaze on what I was doing. I stood by my father’s side and he had his arm around me again, clasped against my forearm. The Derwish then looked at Cherelle’s bag, which bore the incisions I had made just a few moments ago. He lingered on the sapless state of this gunnysack.

  “A stay of five years, the constitutional maximum, on your moon cursing. You’ve cheated an early death yet again, but the Menteur will have his due. They say knavery may serve for a turn.”

  “I’m not an idiot pinere. I accept. Fine this man twenty quid – I grew sick of sententious bastards before he had the notion to scratch his own balls. Warnings have been given enough this session.”

  “Derwish, Kaartikeya. You are fined twenty pounds on the grounds of Article 5, whereby any act of expostulating moralization, whether in the form of adage, proverb, epigram, or any other form not otherwise specified here, against a member of the alliance is an act of expostulating moralization against them all, and consequently they agree that each of them will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with other Parties, such action as it deems necessary to restore and maintain an atmosphere of suggestive criminality.”

  “The one time you sticks-in-the-mud decide to put your heads above the parapet and it’s for a punctilio. You plok poners are a real piece of work. Fine me your twenty quid then, but damn me if I won’t have it out of your hides in one way or another! Mo pou zigeler toi!”

  The Derwish and my father forthwith shook on their agreement, and signed a contract testifying as much in the company of all witnesses present. Derwish was brimming with excitement. He had made shift to conquer the obstacles before him. Cherelle and I were asked to undersign the contract, though on what grounds – certainly not on any authority anyone acknowledged – was not made explicit. We saw ourselves as having risen to prominence among these familiar men who factored so obtrusively in our lives; silent recognition passed between Cherelle and I, a recognition that immediately forgave the violence I had visited on her, I thought. She received this silent apology with equanimity. I handed her a peace offering from the recesses of my bag.

  “What is this? Pareto optimality? Give me that,” Sergent hooted.

  He hoisted the guava out of her hands and deposited it in his mouth with satisfaction. He fingered out the seed and dropped it in Cherelle’s open hand, which had remained hanging in the air.

  “You’re bound to be sick of those after eating a lifetime’s worth, eh Cherelle?” my father joked. Cherelle’s face worked itself into a pout as she heard these words.

  I handed a fresh guava to Cherelle when Sergent’s back was turned, and though what my father had said was likely to be true, she had manners enough to accept my gift graciously. I replaced the chair I was seated on in the corner where it had originally stood and waited along the crooked wainscoting of the wall opposite the doorway. Serge was at the door having a few words with the custodian whose domain we presently occupied. He then stepped out, followed by Ti Pourri and Green. The Derwish glided his way toward his daughter and helped her collect her things along with the appurtenances of State left on the table. The last thing to be packed away was the poulterer’s shawl, which the Derwish scrutinized in the dimness that now suffused the room.

  “What the hell is the reason for it?” the Dewish asked himself, shaking the shawl open and closed as if he were setting a picnic blanket. “They’re just leather samples stitched together . . . There must be an answer. Something I’ve overlooked. Ah-ha! Look at this, Cherelle, her bookkeeping! Poor cow did have her wits about her after all. Mystery solved. Sylvan 06-09-44, Darlo 08-11-44 . . . There’s me, Derwish 16-03-43, Malbar 23-05-41 . . . Ah, Sergent 26-09-54. I’ve got you dead to rights, gogote. He’s always going on about seniority this, seniority that, when he’s a decade short to be playing with the big boys. Eh, what’s this? Sergent 26-09-44, Sergent 26-09-42! How can he have three inauguration dates?”

  “I can tell you why,” I peeped. “Because you blinked.”

  “What are you waiting around here for?” the Derwish said. “Royal assent?”

  “Sorry about your bag, Cherelle,” I said with contrition in my voice. “It was the Derwish’s face I wanted.”

  The Derwish screwed up his face at the insult – as if someone were squeezing a grapefruit into his eyes. He was unaccustomed to being addressed that way by anyone, never mind by a child. He looked at the state of Cherelle’s typewriter and made the connection. He turned to face me, where his mouth blossomed into a sinister grin.

  “There may be a use for you after all,” he said cryptically.

  I sailed across the floor with a
spring-heel and caught up with the others just as they were passing through the entrance doors. I hopped into the car last, as Serge had already made room in the boot for Malbar’s effects and found his place in the passenger seat. Ti Pourri was the first to speak as the engine turned over.

  “Where to now, boss?”

  “Kettering first, then Uppingham. Might have time for Leicester too, but I’ll not push my luck after that pretty pass. I can handle the rest on my own.”

  “You promised me the pistol,” Green said.

  “Here, it’s not with the other things. Nobody wanted it anyway.”

  “Thanks, Serge. You’re a top bloke.”

  “Pourri, take the car. Malbar wanted Simone to have it, but I doubt she’d have much use for it, much less know about it.”

  “His tart is getting most of his clothes,” Green said bitterly. “It’s all Simone bloody well cared about. What’s she need a car for too?”

  “You sure, Serge?” Pourri asked.

  “You’ve earned it,” my father replied.

  “Don’t think twice old man,” Green interjected. “This old girl has a few sleepless nights left in her, that you can be sure of. Listen to that engine purr!”

  “Thanks for helping with my reapplication after they cashiered me,” Pourri said. “I knew the Sous couldn’t hold a grudge for long. Relatively.”

  “The rest of his birds are spread across London. There’s no rush for them. What I can’t do myself, I’ll ring you up for. The heart wants what it wants, but someone has to foot the bill, as per usual.”

  “The Derwish will think we hatched it together if he’s not satisfied with the shawl, Serge,” Green opined. “We didn’t exactly hide the fact we’d arrived together, now did we?”

  “That’s fine,” my father responded. “I have the stay in writing now. It just means he won’t be approaching any of you together in the future about what he thinks happened tonight. It’ll be one at a time. Easier that way. To get your stories straight, I mean.”

  We didn’t get all the way to Leicester before heading back home as planned. Tilting at my knees on the back seat, I could just see above my window out onto the numerous scenes that unfolded at every stop we made. Was I looking at my future? There were lissom women who tearfully accepted the gifts Malbar had bequeathed them. Some women hugged my father expressively, others shut the door on his face after receiving the parting gifts, and still Serge did not break the stolid composure he’d strangely arrived at on this occasion. We even made a trip to see my mum at Stone House, where my father left a parcel at the foot of her bed, as she was unresponsive to all of our attempts to communicate with her. I did not ask my father why Malbar had left her some of his belongings like the other bints. Several hours later, the car turned in on our street and careened to a half-hearted halt over the curb. Serge stepped out and moved to the back of the car to collect the things for which he had a use and which he believed Malbar would want him to have. I stood at our gate fiddling with a button on my coat.