The Museum of Doubt Read online

  Only the mud proved thin, and the boat shot through it. Mak felt gravity flip, like a swing going over the top, and instead of being pressed down into the mud the boat was shooting up into the air in a spout of water from a hole on the mud’s other side. He, the boat and the goat landed keel down with a slap in a glutinous river in a different place.

  Here, it was light, or at least not wholly dark, a light like a foggy day before the sun has risen. The banks of the river were undulating clay littered with stones. There was no vegetation. Flat brown toads croaked a merged, scratchy song. On one side of the river, human forms walked slowly to and fro, squatted in groups or lay on the ground crosswise, eyes to what passed for sky.

  Mak’s boat drifted to the populated bank. He put his boots on and stepped out, dragging the goat behind him. There were thousands of people in sight. The individuals kept at least twenty feet from each other and the few groups didn’t contain more than three people. No-one looked at Mak.

  He went up to a couple of men squatting opposite each other. They wore tight-fitting business suits so covered in dust it was impossible to say what colour they were. The tips of their fingers were dark with moist fresh clay. As Mak approached, one of the men dredged his fingers through a fresh scoop in the ground, oozing and green-gray against the white surface, and lifted a dollop of dirt into his mouth, then chewed and swallowed it. The two men weren’t speaking to each other. Mak was struck by the absence of hope in their grey faces. He’d never seen anyone so drained of hope before, and for that reason had never understood how it was a primary emotion. It wasn’t an optional part of the palette. He realised that when he’d seen people defeated before, the hope had been turned right down, but it’d still been there, like a TV where you could tune out the red or the green but not make them go away completely.

  Hi, said Mak.

  The men didn’t look up.

  Hello! Gentlemen! Could I trouble you for just one moment of your time?

  No, said the guy on the left.

  Look, sir, I’ll make it as brief as I can, and then you can go back to your dirt.

  We don’t have moments of time, said the talkative one. If you have moments, that’s fine. I’ll take one of your moments. I’ll take as many as you can count out.

  That’s very kind of you, said Mak.

  No kindness involved. I need your time. I haven’t got any. ’Cause you’ve just arrived you’ve got time. You can still reckon in hours, maybe even minutes. You still think the sun’s going to rise and set. You still think your watch is going to work. You still think your heart’s going to beat, leaves are going to fall off trees in fall and flowers are going to bloom in spring, the moon’s going to wax and wane, the tides are going to come in and out, ladies are going to bleed once a month and you’re going to guess the hour from horns and bells and the noise of the traffic. None of that happens here. We’ve got no time. Nothing beats, nothing ticks, nothing changes. You can try counting for a while, clapping your hands, drawing lines in the clay. Over there – the man pointed – there’s a place covered a day’s walk in any direction with five bar gates scratched in the ground, each stroke a guess, a guess, at a day gone by. And a cross every six gates, for a month, and a star every twelve months, for a year. Then the one that did it lost a star. He doesn’t do it any more. And over there is a crowd of maybe fifteen gathered round someone who counts. Just counts numbers out loud. He’s up to one billion now.

  I can help you, said Mak. I’m a lawyer.

  Excellent, said the man. But if you’re one of those lawyers that charges by the hour, we’d better start counting. He began to clap his hands together, chanting in rhythm:10 cents, 20 cents, 30 cents, 40 cents – start talking – 60 cents, 70 cents, 80 cents, 90 cents, a dollar …

  It’s OK, said Mak. No win, no fee.

  I was joking, said the man. He picked up a toad sitting next to him and squashed it brutally between his hands. The toad emitted a guttaral wittering as it deflated.

  Why did you do that? said Mak.

  Laughter, said the man. It’s too tiring to laugh ourselves so we crush the toads instead. The sound is similar.

  I’m going to go out on a limb here, said Mak. I’m going to guess that you don’t like being dead.

  The man seized another toad and compressed it with the same ferocity.

  I didn’t mean to be funny, said Mak.

  Oh, I wasn’t laughing, said the man. That was anger. He shrugged. None of us can be bothered with emotion any more, so the toads stand in for everything. The toad laughs. The toad cries. The toad gets angry. It’s all the same.

  He toppled over and lay on the ground, staring at the river.

  Have you ever thought about getting back at the people responsible for leaving you in this state? said Mak. Have you ever thought about claiming damages?

  La-la-la, sang the man softly, not moving his head. Ba-baba.

  Sir?

  The man whipped over onto his other side and curled up into a foetal position. He moaned.

  Sir?

  No name, whispered the man. I lost my name. The names are the first to go. No-one recognises me. Sometimes we play the mirror game. We sit opposite each other and match each other’s movements. Sometimes I find a good reflection. I start to recognise myself. But as soon as you start to recognise yourself you begin to fail to reflect your reflection. Then your reflection gets angry and fails to reflect you. You don’t recognise yourself any more. You still don’t know who you are. Nobody knows who you are, because you lost your name.

  I’d need your name for an affidavit, said Mak. He looked along the riverbank and saw Najla sitting at the water’s edge, hugging her knees tight to her chest. He went to her and spoke her name. She listened while he made his pitch.

  Did you see my son? she said.

  Yes.

  How was he?

  He was good. He had a little bit of shrapnel in his leg. He’ll be fine.

  I saw the fire after I was already dead, said Najla. I thought he’d be dead too. She pressed her hand to her face and waved it at Mak palm up. Where’ll he go without a roof? Who’ll cook for him? She lowered her face into her hands and shook it from side to side, and straightened up. Her eyes widened as she spoke to Mak. That world. She pointed her thumb over her shoulder. That world we came from. It was better, wasn’t it? It had a good smell. She inhaled and knocked on her chest with her fist. A good smell. And colours. I was cooking. He was out on the street playing football. I put the bread on. There were some herbs. Mint. A few mint leaves, not a handful, enough to pick up between your fingertips. I rinsed them in water from a bowl and shook them and held them to my nose for a second. There was a pain shooting down between my shoulders and along the edge of my jaw and I saw the fire. I saw the fire and I saw my son running and I knew I was already dead. It was a good world, better than this, whatever it is. Now I can’t get there and he can’t get here, yet, unless the next bomb hits him. I’m glad he’s still there in that world. Only I don’t know how he’ll get by without me. And here I am without him. What use is a mother without her son?

  Mak had been nodding all this time. When she finished he asked whether she’d thought about legal redress. About suing. Would she be prepared to give testimony.

  I’m dead, said Najla. My son’s alive. We’re apart. You can’t take me back.

  Najla, if we’re going to work together, there’s a few things you have to understand, said Mak. One of them is, I don’t like the word can’t. Another is this thing about you saying you’re dead. My feeling, and at this stage it’s only a feeling, is: that isn’t going to play well with the jury when we get this case to court. Terms like dead and alive, those are their terms. We don’t want to make ourselves prisoners of their terms. We not going to accept this outrageous, offensive division of people into dead and alive. It’s an affront to human dignity. As far as we’re concerned, you’re not dead. You’re a victim of, a victim of … ISL. Involuntary Separation from Life. Try that for size. T
ry saying it.

  ISL, said Najla.

  Good. And what happened to you? I’m not coaching.

  The Americans dropped a bomb close to my house and I was killed.

  No! No. I’m not coaching here but what we want, I think, is something like: as a result of US negligence I was forcibly separated from life.

  As a result of our negligence––

  US negligence.

  ––US negligence I was forcibly separated from life.

  And made to endure conditions of appalling discomfort, etc. We can work on your full deposition later.

  Can you take me back to my son?

  The law is a strange and wonderful country, said Mak. It has many new lands still to discover. It would be wrong of me to promise that I, a humble lawyer, could raise the dead. I mean, resolve ISL cases. But I wouldn’t be taking part in this action if I didn’t think we were talking about colossal damages. Absolutely colossal.

  Damages?

  Money.

  What can you spend money on here?

  Najla, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to slaughter the goat now, said Mak.

  He led the goat to a smooth mound of clay a few yards away that gave the highest elevation as far as he could see in any direction. With his hand he dug two scoops in the clay at the foot of the mound and two shallow channels running down to the scoops from the top. Standing on the mound, he took the bottle of water and the coil of rope out of his bag and set them down. He hunkered down next to the goat, which turned its head away, placid and anxious about the lack of vegetation, and bleated.

  There now, said Mak. Easy. He stroked its back with slow, firm strokes, murmuring Easy, girl, easy. After he’d stroked for a while he grabbed the beast around the neck, holding it in a tight lock, and with his other arm reached around to enfold its legs and jerk them off the ground. As soon as the flank of the struggling animal hit the clay he pinned it there with the full weight of his body and looped the rope around its ankles. Dust rose off the surface as he pushed his locking hand out from under the goat to finish the knot binding the goat’s legs. When it was done, still pinning the animal down, he dragged it, bucking and twisting, so that its head was more or less over the top of the channel. He took out the knife, pulled the goat’s head back by the ears, felt for the pulse, and cut its throat. The blood ran free into the channel and flowed down to collect in the scoop. When the animal had stopped moving and there was no more blood Mak stood up, lifted the goat by the legs and flung it to the bottom of the mound. He drank water from his bottle and poured the rest into the second channel.

  Within a few seconds a crowd of clay-eaters was mobbing the scoops. Where there had been puddles of blood and water there was a seething tide of scalps and outstretched tongues. The goat was torn to pieces. Its stripped white bones flew out of the scrum in broken lengths, sucked dry of marrow.

  Ladies and gentlemen! called Mak, clapping his hands together. Could I have your attention, please. Thank you. My name is Maurice Mak, I’m an attorney, and I’ve come here to your afterlife today to talk about litigation to ease the difficult conditions you find yourself living in, through no fault of your own. Firstly, my sincere apologies to those who were unable to taste the goat or the water. In the fullness of time, if we are successful, I hope there will be goat and water enough for all of you, as much as you need. That’s the very least you deserve.

  The crowd peered up at him, silent and attentive. Mak took a legal pad out of his pack and brandished it. In the colourless realm it seemed to shine like a hazy sun.

  At the other end of the river, in what they like to call the land of the living, they call you the dead, he said. That’s when they call you anything. That’s when they don’t forget about you. Because they don’t like to think about you much, do they? They live their fine lives in the light, with their steak and wine and their beating hearts, and they don’t concern themselves with you. If they do, it’s for no other reason than to be glad of the distance from here to there. They don’t want so-called dead people coming into their homes and their gardens and their shopping malls. They’d do anything to shut you out. They’re afraid of you! It’s true, isn’t it? They’re afraid of you. Why is that? Why should they be afraid of you? After all, you used to be where they are now, and chances are they’re going to be coming here some day themselves. Wonder why they’re afraid? Could it be because they’re guilty? Could it be because they know they’re walking round in a civilisation built by the people they call dead, and deep down they wonder whether those people aren’t going to come back and claim it? Well, maybe they’re right to be afraid. Maybe it is time you went and claimed what’s properly yours. They call you the dead. But let me ask you this. Was anybody here born dead? I don’t think so. Did anybody here ask to be dead? OK, the gentleman at the back, I see you, but you thought you’d end up somewhere better, yes? Yes. My friends, this is a defining moment in the history of dead rights. As long as enough of you are prepared to testify, and you can remember who you are, like Najla here, we are going to pursue our campaign for justice in the very highest courts of the still alive. And believe me, when the dead begin to sue, the living had better run for cover.

  Excuse me, said a voice over Mak’s shoulder. He turned. A thin, short, bespectacled man in tee-shirt and jeans and sneakers stood hunched there, arms folded, all Adam’s apple and no chin.

  Yes? said Mak sharply.

  Can I see your papers?

  What papers?

  This is a restricted area, said the man. It’s off limits to living people. I need to see your permission.

  If you’d just wait while I finish this meeting.

  I’m not going to wait, said the man, simpering. I’m Ashbath. One of the servants of Ereshkigal. Now show me your papers.

  I don’t care who you are, said Mak. Get off this fucking mound and let me talk to these people.

  Ashbath laughed for a second, wiped his nose with his finger, took a flick knife out of his pocket, triggered the blade and stabbed Mak through the heart with it. As Mak went down he felt Ashbath gather his hair together in a bunch in his fist and start dragging him along the ground.

  Later Mak woke up on a plain of fine, talcy dust littered with sharp pebbles. He was lying on his side outside a trailer home. The only other feature in sight was a rusty iron gibbet with a butcher’s hook hanging from it. He felt no pain. When he got up he felt nothing except a sense that he had been simplified. His hands, arms, legs looked and worked the same as before, but if he’d been told he’d been reduced to cardboard, clay and straightened-out coat-hangers, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

  The door of the trailer creaked open and a woman stepped out, chewing gum and holding a cigarette. She was tall and slim, in a tight black polo neck and black jeans, with a tiny pouty red mouth and her eyes covered by a fringe of curly brown hair. She plucked the gum from between her lips, tossed it into the dust, took a drag of the cigarette and said: You Mak?

  Yes.

  Come in.

  Inside the trailer Mak found the woman sitting behind an almost bare desk, a cheap sheet of veneered chipboard on a trestle. There was a full ashtray and an open bottle of red wine. On the wall was what looked like a calendar and in one corner a muscular black dog dozed.

  Hi, said the woman. I’m Erishkigal. I’m in charge here. She leaned over the desk and shook Mak’s hand. Mak sat down on a three-legged stool facing her.

  So, you’re an attorney, said Erishkigal. She took a swig of the wine from the bottle. What brings you to these parts?

  Just a little routine legal work, said Mak.

  OK. What do you think of our realm?

  It’s unusual.

  I need to see your passport.

  I don’t have one.

  Any ID?

  Mak handed her his driving licence. Erishkigal examined it while helping herself to more booze. After a few moments she tossed the licence over her shoulder. The dog sprang into the air, caught the licence in its jaws and sl
unk back to the corner, chewing.

  Hey, said Mak. You have no right to do that.

  Don’t worry, said Erishkigal. Don’t worry! You’re so anxious! All these travellers get so anxious about their papers. They’re in a strange place, they don’t have the right documents, they start to panic, they go to the police, the police start asking questions, the travellers freak out. Like if you don’t have the right visa the police are going to take you out and shoot you! She laughed. Mak laughed with her. I mean, said Erishkigal, chortling in a girlish way Mak found attractive, what must these travellers think about the world? Like some bureaucrat is going to destroy you because of some crappy stamp.

  Right! laughed Mak.

  No, said Erishkigal. No. If someone like yourself, a living person, comes here without my permission, then there’s absolutely no problem.

  No problem, said Mak.

  We cut right through the bureaucracy. We just stab you through the heart, you’re not living any more, and you remain here for the rest of eternity among the dead.

  Mak clenched his teeth to stop his jaw going slack and clapped his hand to his chest. He felt with his fingers under the brittle clay crust of his shirt and stroked along his ribs. There was a dry slit in his chest over his heart. He fumbled with his fingertips for a pulse in his wrist. He couldn’t find one.

  You look fairly flummoxed by what I’ve just said, said Erishkigal. Have yourself a drink. She handed him the bottle.

  Mak drank. The wine was profound, majestic and noble, a dark stream seeped through loam, beech-mast and truffles, trickled round venison sepalled with cobwebs.

  Good, isn’t it? said Erishkigal. That’s your blood you’re drinking.

  Ma’am, I’m a lawyer––

  I know who you used to be, said Erishkigal. You’re dead now. We don’t have courts here. We live pretty much in a general state of injustice, and there’s no going back. So you won’t be needing your law. Or your reputation. Even your name won’t be much good to you after a while.